Founder's Story - What It Means to Be ICONIC? | Ep. 64 A Founder's Story with the Author of the Best Selling Book, ICONIC, Scott Mckain

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

Scott is a customer experience (the Ultimate CX®) and distinction expert teaching companies and individuals how to establish strategies and execute seamlessly to stand out from the competition. Known internationally as a top-rated keynote speaker and virtual presenter, Scott’s clients represent the world’s most iconic brands. You’ll have the confidence of working with a professional known for impacting bottom-line results.  Scott is the author of the best-selling book, ICONIC. ICONIC is filled with insightful advice and practical examples. It’s not a book merely expressing an unproven, unrealistic theory. ICONIC teaches the critical, specific steps required to attain the highest level of distinction. Each chapter includes study questions to be used in company-wide or departmental focus groups to help you achieve iconic status. https://IconicBusinessBook.com   For more info on guests and future episodes visit pix11.com/impactOur Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Inspired by Her, the podcast that will give you the inspiration, motivation, and tips for success from some of the top executives, CEOs, and influencers from around the globe. With your host, serial entrepreneur, and named one of the most influential Filipina in the world, Kate Hancock. Yerskat, can you tell us what was your journey like to get where you are? Oh, gosh, what a great question. I'm from a very, we were chatting before we went live, that my background is in Indiana, just like a previous guest who was the former president of Playboy. I don't have anything like that in my background. Certainly, I grew up on a farm in Indiana.

My parents owned the one grocery store in Crothersville, Indiana. So I worked a little bit on our small farm and did the kind of things you think a kid would do, you know, stocking shelves and waiting on customers. And one of the pivotal moments of my life, I didn't realize it at the time, but a supermarket moved into our community. And the pressure of competition and how are we going to make our little stores survive as small entrepreneurs. And all of that came into play in that experience. And it really changed how I look at business and changed how I look at life. It really set the stage for that.

Then I was very fortunate to be involved in a student organization as a kid. And one of the things I did was take two years off of college and travel full-time for the student organization. I gave a thousand speeches all across the United States and then later around the world for this group. And people started asking me to come back and speak. So what I would do, because what's somebody's 21 have to speak about to a group of adults, right? So what I would do, because what's somebody's 21 have to speak about to a group of adults, right? So what I would do is I would make a list of what the entrepreneurs in those audiences had told me. And so I would say, Jane Doe in Moline, Illinois gave me this idea and I would tell her idea. And one of two things would happen. Either people would write it down and go, oh, that's a good idea. Or they would come up and say, hey, I've

got a better idea. Try this, you know? So then I'd write that down. Well, you do that for 10 years and it's an incredible learning laboratory. So by a decade, I had done real frontline research. And Daniel, to your point about the bottom line results, I mean, that's what these people were talking about, right? It wasn't theory, you know, from a book. It was things that people that were dealing with customers every day were telling me. So I was very fortunate. I worked in sales for a while. I worked in the college where I graduated from, invited me to come back and work for the college, worked in broadcasting, but the speaking and teaching and researching and writing. I mean, that, that's what I've always wanted to do.

So I was very privileged that the demand was there that got me on this journey. Well, I have to say we've interviewed a lot of people in clubhouse and I still remember your talk the last time it was so memorable. I appreciate that so much. You guys were so great to talk with. And I just felt like we really hit it off. And then I don't know if you've seen, I drop in every once in a while when I get a chance and listen in because you folks just, that's the other reason it's such a privilege to be one of your guests because you guys have the most fascinating and eclectic, such a diversity of

people that you bring on. And I think you are the example of what Clubhouse should be about. Oh, thank you, Scott. That's really nice thing for you to say. But can you tell us about Iconic? Why Iconic? How did you end up naming your company Iconic? That's a great question. I went through a personal tragedy. I lost my first wife to cancer and my business had, because I'd put my business on hold to take care of her. I got back in the business and I was struggling. I was in deep, deep debt because of the healthcare costs. I, you know, I really didn't have the emotional strength to get back to work, but yet I had to,

you know, just to pay the bills and take care of everything and save my small business. So I thought, well, how do I make my business stand out? I started researching what it took to get a business to stand out simply to save my own small business. And then I had that blinding flash, the obvious, you know, if I need this material, if I need this information, what's the likelihood that others are going to need it as well? And so I started writing about it and I wrote a couple of books about it and business went well. And so I did this whole program on how do you create distinction? Well, a company, Fairmont Hotels, went through that process. And I'm having breakfast with one of the leaders of Fairmont. And he said, OK, we've gone through this. We've created distinction. What's next? It occurred to me I hadn't really thought about it. I taught you how to create

distinction, but not how to take it to the highest level and not how to keep it once you get it. And he said, I guess next we'll become iconic. And it was like the light bulb went over top of my head, you know, like in an old cartoon. And I said, gosh, what a great word, what a great idea. So to me, distinction means that you stand out in your particular field. Iconic means you stand out, you transcend your own category so no one would say oh and this is an overused example but no one would say oh you know apple boy they're really great at computers you just go apple but they're an example we all follow right i mean you even hear companies saying we're trying to be the apple of construction or whatever, your industry. No one would limit Starbucks to just coffee. But in every area, in every region, in every

large community, there's some business in that community that they're not just the best at what they do. People in other industries and businesses look at them and say, gosh, I wish our business was as good as this. I'll give you a quick example. St. Elmo's Steakhouse in Indianapolis. There's eight steakhouses in an eight block area, but yet St. Elmo's has higher gross revenue than Tavern on the Green in New York City. Now, how does that happen? Well, they found a way to be so distinctive you know other businesses in Indianapolis wish they could be like St. Elmo's even if they're not a not a restaurant you know my doctor wants to be the St. Elmo's or doctors in Indianapolis back home so that's what iconic

is it's being so great at what you do that you're not only considered the best in your field, you're considered one of the best of the best. Wow. This just blows my mind. And, um, how can a brand achieve that? Like we found, uh, and as I was researching this, uh, you know, it's, it's incredibly difficult. I mean, there's no doubt about it. But yet the rewards, I think, make the journey worth it. And there were five factors of iconic performance. And they were a little bit, they were strange. It wasn't the typical thing that you would think of. Let me give you one example.

Iconic organizations stop selling. Now, by that, I don't mean that they don't need to do business. Of course, we all do. But they don't use pressure tactics. You know, Apple never says we're going to stack them deep and sell them cheap. Right? Disney doesn't say, hey, we're cheaper than Universal Parks, right? Iconic organizations focus on building connections and relationships with customers that transcend transaction. Therefore, they become more referable, right?

I mean, as friends, why would I refer you to anybody that does pressure sales you know so they create these incredible experiences and and my friend jay bear has a great term he calls it a talk trigger in other words it's something that people will talk about after the experience with you so example jay uses is double tree hotels man i uses is a double tree hotels, man. I check in a double tree hotel. I'm ready for that chocolate chip cookie, even before I get to the front desk. Right. And so it becomes something that people talk about. It sets them apart from every other front desk experience. So part of what we have to do in our respective businesses is to find these things that will make connections because that's what people want.

Nobody says, good grief, they really sold me hard and I loved every minute of it. You know, we don't do that. That's why we talk badly about the places that do those kinds of things. So when I say stop selling, don't get me wrong. We all have to sell. You know, I have to sell to keep my business going. We all have to sell. You know, I have to sell to keep my business going. We all have to sell. But the way that we do that changes for iconic organizations because they build relationships. And through those relationships, they stimulate significantly more repeat business and referral business. Your customers become your advocates in the marketplace. Wow, I love that, Scott. And now you're mentioning you've worked with Fairmont Hotel.

I have to tell you, there's one particular hotel in Cabo San Lucas that Stan and I go to and our kids. And it was so iconic. I have to say it's so iconic because I could never put it even a four season caliber. They're not that good compared to the hotel. It's just the execution from start to finish where it made my kids cry because we have to leave. So creating that wonderful experience, not everyone can do that. Like that experience that stays in your memories that you're willing to share it to all your friends. Now they want to go and like, I want to go there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You nailed it, Kate.

That's exactly what it is. And you know, I remember my wife and I went to the Fairmont in Maui and as they are taking our bags to the room, the bellman started telling us about how he came to Hawaii. And he planned on just a vacation, but he loved it so much he never left. And he said that was 31 years ago. And he's telling us this whole story, but it was also how much he loved working there.

Well, how does that set the table for us? You know, in that, golly, what an incredible thing. This, this person loves being an employee here. And that's part of the experience as well. You know, I mean, you can have a nice hotel room. You can have a very comfortable bed, but if the experience that you have suffers because the people that work there are rude or they don't take care of you, then it's never going to be iconic. So it is that mix of all of the things that touch us, that create this experience that we want to repeat and that we want to tell people about. Let's dissect Fairmont Hotel, Scott.

And what does that look like as soon as you get into companies like this? You know, what does that meeting look like? How can you transcend that experience from head to the main front desk? Sure. You nailed it there, Kate, in that question, because that's part of what you have to do. Organizations, no matter how big or small they are, I mean, every organization is structured vertically. So you think about a Fairmont Hotel, there is a front desk, there is housekeeping, there are restaurant staff, there are, you know, all of those have their particular channel, their particular silo. The problem is we as the guest, we as the customer, we don't experience Fairmont vertically. We experience it horizontally.

And so the front desk and housekeeping and, you know, all of the restaurants and all of the other things all make up the total experience and that's what we judge them on. So the first thing you have to do is to split it apart and look at those vertical silos and say, what does distinctive housekeeping look like? What is a distinctive front desk?

So for example, at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, where I've done the most, one of the things that they did is they got two golden retriever dogs. And so when you go in, these friendly dogs welcome you and it makes you feel like home. But then how do you extend that? So they created a coloring book, and the dogs' names are Bigsby and Griggs, and they give every child the coloring book with the story of those two dogs so that they go back to the room and they're coloring the dogs that they will actually pet and talk to and hug and all of that, which makes it a very, very unique non-hotelly type of experience. Okay,

that's a distinctive welcome. That's a distinctive front desk. So we went through all of those. And then when everyone does that, then the total experience becomes seamless. The other thing that we ask is we encourage groups to have their customers complain. Because as a friend of mine has said, a complaint is a gift because now we know what we have to fix. The worst thing is to read it on Yelp or Google Review afterwards.

If they'll complain, if they'll tell us what we can do better and during the process, and that's another one of the five factors of iconic performance is to go negative. Iconic organizations aren't, aren't afraid of bad news. They want the bad news because that's how they fix what's wrong. It's, it's incredible. There was a study, this one blew me away.

There's this, there was a study at Texas A&M university, and it said that SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The SWOT analysis has become irrelevant at many companies because managers perceive that the employees who tell them weaknesses are negative people. We got to get past that. We can't shoot the messenger. We've got to welcome the negative news so that we can create positive results. So one of the things I'm encouraging folks to do is to be negative in a positive kind of way.

In other words, look for what's wrong so we can fix the process so we don't negatively influence other customers. yeah that that's very true because what will happen is you know you're not a seasoned leader when a cost or maybe a front desk complaint this is what they complain and the initial reaction for you know a manager or entrepreneurs like what do you mean that's not correct even though that's that's the guest experience you're gonna fix that yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. It's so true. Or what they'll do is they'll, they'll do something to fix it for that guest, but then not fix the process that created the problem in the first place. So in other words, they're just putting band-aids on, they're not really solving the illness. They're just kind of masking the symptoms. And that becomes so critical in our

business is to really drill deeply and figure out what went wrong in the process so we can fix the process. Which brings another thing that I've heard you folks talk about previously, too, is that just because you need to do something different, it doesn't mean that it was wrong when you started doing it. It was probably right for that market or that situation or when we weren't in a pandemic. But people sometimes think, oh, if you want to change something, you're telling me I was wrong. No, I'm just saying for this situation now, this is where we have to be. This is what we have to do. So we've got to be willing to try new things and do new things and not, we can learn from the past, but we don't have to embrace it so tightly that we can't let it go. Yeah. Wow.

So for you to build an iconic brand, you need to have a team that can pivot quick seconds. Because when you have someone that's not willing to adjust to change, it's hard because we're like swaying. And think about what's going on in our current marketplace right now. Scott, a lot of companies are understaffed. You can't create that wonderful experience when you're understaffed. What advice would you give to brands right now? Kate, may I just ask you a question? What's the biggest challenge you're facing right now in terms of team and staff and that? Is it finding good people, keeping good people? Where are you on that scale? Well, I have two different things. One, our facial center in

Orange County, I'm under staff. No one wants to work. This has been an issue the last two years, right? And then I have a business, I actually have a hotel business in the Philippines that's been shut down for two years. I have a staff, but I don't, I'm not allowed to operate. So that's my issue. And boy, there's both ends of the spectrum, right? I mean, we're open and we don't have enough staff. We can't open. So what do we do with our staff, right? I mean, we're open and we don't have enough staff. We can't open. So what do we do with our staff? Right? I mean, you have 180 degrees. It's incredibly challenging. And I think one of the things, there's no magic bullet to this, right? There's no wave your wand and boom,

it's going to be solved. I mean, that's unrealistic. But I think one of the things we have to start doing as business people, as entrepreneurs, is really, really looking at our employees as our internal customers and focusing on the employee experience with the same amount of intensity and passion as we focus on the customer experience. Because what we've seen, or at least part of what surveys are telling, what I've seen in my research with my clients, is that sometimes we expect employees that we're not treating well to deliver great experiences to our customers. And how does that happen, right? And so when we look at the challenges with employees, what we have to do is to say, where before we were kind of, you know, it was a buyer's market,

right? I mean, hey, there were people and we could pick and choose who we wanted to work. And now the pendulum has swung completely the other direction. So part of what we have to say is, how do we become more attractive to employees, just like we'd like to be more attractive to customers? And some of that is going to be, how do we recognize them? Some of that is going to be, are we looking to them to be our recruiters, one of the things that a company I was on the board of directors of did a few years ago is we went to our employees and said, you're going to be our HR department, basically. Our business is growing and we need good people just like you. Now, notice we were telling them they were good people, right? So help us recruit the people you'd like to work with. You can't believe, I mean, it was, well, there was one funny incident when I just happened

to be at the plant one day and they said, hey, Joe, your brother's looking for work. And he went, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not hiring my brother. He's lazy. We're not going to hire him. You know, they even screened out some of the bad folks for us, but finding unique ways because your, your, your current best employees are good people. Good people tend to hang out with good people. So are, are we working to make them a resource that would help us identify and attract people they'd like to work with? There's, there's a lot of things proactively that we can be doing.

And the other thing we have to think about is, do we need to raise how much we pay them? And I know that's a hard pill for entrepreneurs to swallow, but yet there's one group that we worked with and they raised the wages. And by doing that, people, wow, imagine this, got more productive and they paid less for overtime. So even though they raised the wages, when they did that, they were also able to attract a few more employees. And so they weren't paying double time

and the employees were happier because they didn't have to work overtime and their families were happier and it worked out much better for for both sides and these are some of the things I mean it's it's a new age it's a new time and and these are some of the challenges we're we're going to have to confront and figure out innovative solutions for absolutely thank you that. There are some that I find very helpful. It's in the execution,'t mind it. But the ones I hate are the ones where you know as a customer, I know I have a question the bot can't answer and I go representative.

Before you reach a representative, please answer these 14 questions. No, I don't want to answer 14 questions. I want to talk to a human being. I think some companies do it well. I think other companies, it is distancing them from their customer. It's having exactly the opposite effect of what they intended to have. And customers don't forget about that. I mean, I have status on a particular airline that I fly quite a bit, and I'm probably going to change airlines, not because the planes, anything's wrong with the planes or anything like that. It's when you call, they say, if you'd like a callback in two and a half hours, press one.

Otherwise, you know, two and a half, seriously? You're backed up? I mean, you got to fix that. I mean, and I'm calling the platinum line. I'm not just calling the regular line because I'm flying so much. Two and a half hours. I mean, so we've got to get back to serving customers individually, personally. And how do you create a connection with a bot?

That's true. That's true. I love that maybe in the middle, because if you have a basic answer, rather than sitting there for an hour, then it's good. But that connection after that, that's crucial. For example, I call Walgreens pharmacy and they say, if you'd like the pharmacy hours, just say hours. Well, if I'm just calling for that, for me to say hours and they say the pharmacy closes at midnight, I'm done. That's, that's great. But if they say, if I say pharmacy and they say, please answer the next four questions and we'll direct your call as opposed to just ringing the pharmacy. Now I'm, I'm irritated, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm irritated. They've distanced me from service. And there's the thing we interviewed over a thousand customers and we asked them what,

what did they want? And for those households that were at the poverty level and below, the main thing they wanted was cheap prices. I mean, that's very understandable. But once you got above that level, one of the two things that they said they wanted was a frictionless experience. They wanted you to do what you said you would do when you said you would do it. And they wanted the elimination of friction in the process. And that doesn't sound like brain surgery, but yet evidently companies must have an awfully difficult time of delivering it because that's what people said that they're wanting that they're not getting. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Scott, when do you think this government website or customer

service is going to learn something? It's awful. Well, you know, it's funny, a friend of mine and I were talking and just totally out of the blue, she said, well, at least, you know, you have job security. And I went, good. What do you, what do you mean? You know, because their meetings didn't happen. And there's such, she said, no customer service is so rotten. You've got, you've got job security because you can be talking about this forever. I don't think there, you know, there is some, like the government's never going to catch up. So I'm not, I'm not holding my breath. Right. Yeah. I'm kind of curious, Scott, who's your iconic brand that you can think of aside from Apple who really done it? Well, you know, Apple obviously has Starbucks obviously has.

One of the things I tried to do in the book Iconic was I kind of gave myself a little rule, and I broke it a couple of times, but my rule was no Starbucks, no Apple, no Southwest Airlines, because those are the ones that just seems like people talk on and on. No Amazon's the other one that people talk on and on and on about. But the reason people talk about them so much is because they really have done it, right? I mean, they really have attained that. But I wrote about High Point University in High Point, North Carolina, that has gone from under 1,500 students to now well over 5,000 students at a time enrollment is declining at most because they did the things that I talk about in the book. They were executing strategies. There, Dr. Nito Cobain, the president of High Point, U.S. News and World Report, recently named the most innovative university in America. They just came out with a study today

that 98% of their graduates are either employed or enroll in a master's program within six months of graduating from High Point University. 98% either have a job or have enrolled in further education, which is like 16 points above the national average. So there are examples everywhere you look, whether it's St. Elmo's restaurant or High Point University, there's a micro brewery here in Las Vegas called Craft House, H-A-U-S, Craft House. And they're so cool. They do so many amazing things. They, for example, have a, they call it Comrade Day and they brew a Russian beer, but they only sell it one day, one day a year. That's it. And so they have a big festival, like a Russian festival with Russian food and caviar and that for Comrade Day. So they find these really innovative, creative, unique ways of capturing

attention that really makes them stand out. Wow. Dan, do you have a question for Scott? Yeah, I mean, this is amazing. Thank you, Scott. It's great being with you. Yeah, no, it's, I took so many clips of what you were saying, because I think those were, you know, you had some great quotes, and I think we all need to read the iconic book. So I'm kind of curious, is there a company who you would say maybe used to be iconic,

but actually did not make it? Oh man. Yeah. There's, there's a couple that come to mind. And to me, the real obvious example is Sears. I mean, Sears owned the marketplace. I mean, a lot of people forget, you know, there was a catalog company called Montgomery Wards that predated Sears and Sears was the disruptor that blew away Montgomery Wards because it was easier to order from them. And they had both the top name brands and they had their own brands like Kenmore appliances and craftsman tools and, and, and, and on and on. But the problem was they didn't know what they wanted to be.

I'm sure their executives would argue with that, but they wanted to have the low prices yet. They wanted to be in the high priced malls yet. They want to have their own brands yet. They wanted to sell everybody else's yet. They, and Sears to me was the example of um you know if if you try to be all things to all people you'll end up not being first to anybody and and that's where they kind of blew it so that when walmart came along and said low prices every day all walmart was saying is hey we're not going to be in the mall we're

not going to have you know the the all the things that you're talking about, but we're going to have the cheapest prices. And that became attractive. It's interesting that Walmart's, what I look at is their significant competitor is Target, who said, okay, how can we differentiate from Walmart? Let's differentiate by having a little bit better experience. We'll have a little bit better product lines. We'll have a little bit better, you know, a different look. I mean, if you were blindfolded and I took your blindfold off, you could look for an instant and tell me whether you were standing in a Walmart or a Target. They don't look identically, you know, the same. A company that I've worked with that I've developed a lot of respect for recently is United Airlines. United used to be fly the friendly skies.

And then the joke was their motto became, we're not happy until you're not happy. I mean, they were doing everything that seemed like to upset the customer experience. And, and, you know, it's, it's really been impactful for me how difficult it is to take an organization with what, 300,000 plus employees and, and turn that around. And do they do it every time? No, they don't. But I can tell you from, from the top folks in that it's, we've got to get back to the customer experience. By the way, one of the other things I really appreciate, and this is, this is the only way you get it back, is with integrity. And one of the things I really appreciate about them is they're saying, no, we're not going to be advertising the friendly skies

until we get our own house in order, right? But let me give you a quick example. I thought this was so cool. They just came out with a thing, and it's on their app on their phone. And if you buy a ticket you're flying from you know las vegas to o'hare and you're in the middle seat right so you buy the app will keep scouting for aisle and window seats and will ding you if somebody cancels their their flight so that you know that there's one available so you can move from

your middle seat to another seat. Now you don't have to, because you might be traveling with a spouse or a partner or a friend and you want to sit in the middle seat with them, but it'll let you know. It's the first one to ever do that. So it's like, how do we, how do we think of these things to make it better for our customers so that we can get back to the status that we used to have. Here's another quick example that you've got me on a roll here, Dan. I've got to tell you one more example. The book Good to Great is the biggest selling business book of all time. One of the things it says in Good to Great is that there's 11 great companies that they use as case studies. These are the great companies of the world. The model of retail was Circuit City.

Now, what happened, right? What happened? Well, there was a lot of economic pressure on everybody who was selling electronics at that time. But Circuit City, what they did was they fired their most senior employees, thinking they'd get more people younger and cheaper that would come in and work, which meant that you and I would go into a Circuit City and we'd see something and we'd have a question about the product and we couldn't find anybody to help us that knew what they were talking about. So if I can't find anybody to help me, why wouldn't I order it from Amazon? I might as well just have it delivered to my doorstep if I can't talk to somebody, which Kate gets back to your point about the bots, right? I mean, if I can't talk to somebody and get help, then heck, I just might as well have it dropped off of my doorstep. So those are companies that I have yet to find a company that improved its fortunes

by cutting the experience for their customers. And that's what we have to remember. So Dan, to your question, I think the only way you get it back is to do what United is trying to do right now. And that's reestablish and reboot the customer experience. Well, you know what? Circuit City never hired me. So there you go. And that's why they're down. I'm telling you, they're out. I'm kind of curious with downsizing of Bed Bath & Beyond. I mean, they were huge back in the day and now they're closing a lot of store. I mean, definitely with the e-commerce and Amazon taking over their share. I mean, that's very difficult. You know, Kate, what you just reminded me of,

I was talking about my family's grocery store. So, you know, it's funny. I've often talked with friends about, isn't it funny how much smarter your parents get the older you are? Some of the things you didn't appreciate at the time. And so when the supermarket moved in and they had longer hours, they had deeper pockets, they could always sell bread and milk cheaper than we could. And one of the things I realized now that my dad did was so smart was he cut back the hours of our store.

Typically what would happen is the small local entrepreneur would extend hours trying to keep up with the competition which either meant your overhead went up because of more staffing or the entrepreneur tries to do it all herself or himself and so they end up exhausted so the customer may not get the kind of experience you want simply because the person around the store is exhausted man they're wiped out because they've been working so hard dad cut back the hours of the store he looked at when we had the most customers when did people shop the most he brought on more staff during that time and because the hours were shorter than it wasn't increasing payroll and he served people over the over the top, over the moon.

And several years later, the supermarket closed and left town. And the reason is primarily because, yes, the people of our community sampled the supermarket, but they decided in the long term it was better to pay a few extra cents for a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk and get this ultimate customer experience. You'd walk in our grocery store and it was like the old joke about Norm walking in the bar at Cheers. Everybody knew your name and you were welcomed and you felt liked and appreciated. And I know that sounds corny. And how do you do that if you're running an online business? But we've got to find ways to do it. Just because it seems interesting or convoluted to do it,

doesn't mean it can't be done. And the folks who find ways to do that in their respected businesses are the ones that are going to create distinction and attain the iconic level. Wow. Let's talk about customer experience, Scott. Are you ready for the Web3 or the VR 3D experience of e-commerce and store? I mean, I think you have a lot of things to do. Yeah, we sure do. And, you know, I think before it really takes off in commerce, it's going to take off first in the training and education of the people who work there, who serve us. Because AR, VR is going to give us the ability to educate folks in training situations in manners that we would not have been able to before. I think it's going to be revolutionary there. And once people start

experiencing that through the training, wherever they work, then the adoption level of how we shop and how we buy will be accelerated. So I think, I don't know if it's going to happen as rapidly as some folks are predicting, but I do think in the relative short haul, it's going to be revolutionary. The ability to, well, you know, we see it sometimes even now, you know, like my wife and I were buying some furniture and you can design like what your living room will look like with that furniture there. What color are your walls? What's the, you know, you give them the dimensions of your room and you can actually see it before you buy it, before you order it.

So just think about if you could put the glasses on and absolutely see yourself standing in your living room, you know, doing it. It's just, I can't wait. I'm so excited about what the future is going to be. But, but I think that's, that's the kind of thing I think about that first is first, we're going to use it to educate and train our teams because it's so powerful. And, and the, the return on that investment will be more immediate for the people that are in the companies that are putting money into that. And then we're going to see it in terms of shopping and, and all of those kinds of things.

Yeah. I think it's going to be a mix of AI because AI can read people's emotion now. I mean, a friend of mine is a CEO of behavioral signal. They said they have a 98% accuracy. If a person were willing to pay their bills or not just a tone of voice is that crazy so i think if we merge that i mean i'm not trying to say all machines going to be in xrv are running all this metaverse shopping experience right but i think the ai can really i think accommodate all our feelings or what we need things at that moment. That's going to be a fascinating, like you said, it's going to be a reboot. I mean, it's going to be a fascinating

world. I listened to a couple of years back, Google's presentation at CES here in Las Vegas, where their AI caller called a local beauty shop and made an appointment. And there was no, the people at the beauty shop had no idea that it wasn't a human being that was calling, making the appointment because the AI was that good. I think about what that's going to mean for our lives when instead of saying, you know, A-L-E-X-A, if I say it loud, if I, if I say the words, it's going to go off over here in my office. But you know, when we say to our device, you know, play and you say, you know, the song you want to hear when you can say, you know, make an appointment for hairstyling for me, uh, sometime Wednesday morning. And all of a sudden the appointment shows up on your calendar.

I mean, those kinds of things are just, they blow my mind. I just think it's going to be so cool. I can't wait. Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's actually this bakery store used to be next to my facial center and it was corner bakery and I would order and the AI would take my order. I was like, would you like to order next one? And I have it there. It's ready. It's like, okay, I actually, I have a better experience at AI than a real person. That's what it's supposed to be. And there you go.

I mean, I think it's fascinating, too. You bring up a great point because it's fascinating, too, because think about how communication, like what we're doing now, got accelerated because of the pandemic. I think if we follow that reasoning, there's also, if the tougher the employment situation is going to be for us to be able to get people to work for us, I think the demand is going to accelerate the implementation of AI rapidly because that's going to be the answer to the fact that we can't, you know, we can't find people to work for us. Okay. So if, if, if I have a, let's say I'm a financial advisor and I have a practice and I can't find anybody to be the receptionist, AI can take the calls and can

handle the scheduling and can do things that were never possible before. And because of the necessity, the implementation of that and the advancement of how good it is, I think it's going to be accelerated. It's just such an exciting time.