Start With A Win - Finding Opportunity in Disruption

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

On this episode of the Start with a Win podcast, Adam and Mark discuss the misconception that “disruption” is a bad thing. So many people are talking about “market disruptors” in a way that unsettles and instills fear in anyone who doesn’t have a firm understanding of what it means to be a disruptor. It has become a buzzword that doesn’t communicate much besides anxiety. Common examples of market disruptors are Uber, Airbnb, and Netflix — companies who recognized a need in the market and created an innovative solution to the problem customers were facing. You can do the very same thing. Rather than running around and making impulsive decisions out of a desire to not be disrupted, you can look at potential disruptions as opportunities to innovate and provide what customers really need and want. You can be one of those innovative companies who creates a new order of business and creatively solves problems rather than sitting on the sidelines admiring what other people are doing. Have your ear to the ground and truly pay attention to what your customers are saying, then create a plan and move forward with a solution. Deliver value to your customers and they will be loyal to you.Adam also answers a caller’s question about the best way to approach goal-setting and growth by encouraging her to publicly share the numbers associated with her goals in order to remain accountable and to show commitment to reaching those goals.Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the Win Nation. Good morning, good afternoon, or good night, Win Nation. Adam Kantos here coming to you from the 12th floor of Remax World Headquarters in Denver, Colorado. We start with a Wynn. In studio I got with me producer Mark. How you doing? As always. As always.

Yeah, I am so good. I love it. Hey, Mark, got a question for you. Have you ever been disrupted? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've been disrupted. What does that word mean?

Because I went to this meeting last night about disruption, and I want to talk about this today because I think that is like, first of all, one of the most overused fear-inspiring words, but also you kind of look at it and go, what the hell does it really mean? Yeah. It's kind of like the trendy thing to say, like breakthrough. Yeah. Are you ready for a breakthrough? Are you ready for disruption? We're going to disrupt today. Yeah. So yeah. So I mean, let's talk about disruption a little bit because it seems like a buzzword that a lot of people get into a room and talk about, but don't really know what it means. We like buzzwords. Yeah. Buzzwords really kind of cause emotion to happen, don't they?

Mm-hmm. And usually that emotion is fear. Yep, drives fear. So we come up with this and we go, this is overwhelming disruption. And you go, what does that mean? Because I have like, you know, it's funny. I can see it across the room right now sitting at my desk. I have a Nerf gun here.

You know, we shoot these little Nerf darts around at each other here. And it's funny because you know what it's called? The disruptor. It's called the disruptor. It totally is called the disruptor. Oh, Kayla's grabbing the Nerf. Kayla's got the disruptor. Here it is. Thank you, Kayla. Look at this bad boy. Oh, yeah. It's got the multi-chamber rounds. Yeah. I think they whistle when they fly across the room. Whoa, you can spin it like you're in an old- If you want to disrupt a meeting. Disrupt a meeting with the disruptor. But I mean, ultimately, have we stooped to like Nerf gun name levels in business?

Sounds like it. It kind of has, but this is interesting because this meeting I went to, a lot of really high level business leaders, like CEOs and other C-suite people, as well as a lot of really high-level business leaders, like CEOs and other C-suite people, as well as a lot of board directors and things like that. And you look at it, and the title of it is The Risks of Digital Disruption. That's scary. Oh, my gosh. The risks. The risks. It was like a bad movie title. And then we start getting into it, and we were talking about some of the observations, which, I mean, this is fantastic because you need to go out and observe the business environment

and figure out what are the threats and the risk that you are up against. But you can't look at them and then label them with this fear-mongering word. It's like we turned on the news. We're seeing disruption across the city. And that's what everybody's saying. I'm seeing disruption across my business environment. You know what it is? Let's define disruption first, because that's one thing we didn't do at this event. We did not say, what is disruption? OK? So Mark, here's a question for you.

Yeah, I love questions, Adam. All right. So let's come up with our start with a win definition of disruption here. Can we do that? I think we can. I think we can as well. Here's kind of what I'm thinking when I hear this and when I see it. Before we throw this definition down of disruption, let's talk about some of the different businesses that are thrown at us every time we talk about disruption. We hear things like Uber. Remember when the taxi industry got disrupted by Uber? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's-

The hotel industry by Airbnb. Oh, my gosh. How about when video rentals got disrupted by Netflix? Yes. I mean, come on. You know what they did? They innovated. Yeah. They asked the customers, hey, customers, what do you want? Disruption is not forced by technology. It's because, frankly, Airbnb was some guys that were saying, hey, let's go to a festival and we need somebody's floor to sleep on, a couch to sleep on, or something like that. This was not driven by technology.

They figured out how to use technology to help it. And Uber, oh, let's figure out a way that people can have more involvement and comfort in the feeling of the ride that they're sharing with somebody or whatever it might be. What did they do? All they did was they looked at what are the gaps in the customer experience, right? The fun part about disruption is how do we actually take advantage of this and make this an opportunity in our business? Because this is a huge opportunity. Everybody looks at it like, oh, I'm getting disrupted. I was interviewed for a panel the other day. And I think every other

word was disruption. And I said, excuse me, can we try and make it through this without saying disruption? Let's talk about opportunities. Opportunities to serve the customer better and provide a better customer experience. Because with technology, with data, with AI, things like that, we're actually able to discover better opportunities for customer experience, right? Yeah. We were talking about John Deere and some of the things that they had at CES. I don't believe you probably went to the John Deere booth. I did not. Okay.

They were talking about how with different cameras, drones, thermal imaging, whatever it might be, measurement devices, they were able to figure out where parts of the field that need water and parts of the field that need pesticide. So what does that do? That changes the customer experience of the farmer because they get to apply those things to where they're needed instead of waste them where they're not. Yeah, being efficient. Being efficient, better for the environment. But ultimately, it takes adding to their technology infrastructure in order to do that. So there's a cost to that. And that's the cost of disruption, but it's also the benefit of disruption. So ultimately, what does the customer want?

The customer wants a better experience, and they want to be more efficient and they want to be better at the results. The outcome should be benchmark or above, let's say, in business. That's kind of the question of this whole thing is how do we find disruption in our business, right? That's correct, Adam. Yeah. How do we find disruption? How do we find disruption? Because it's a positive thing. It's not a negative thing. Totally. Yeah. It's like, how can we serve the customer better? How can we provide a better experience for the end user? And if that happens to disrupt the current system,

that seems like a positive thing in my mind. Totally agree. Totally agree. Disrupt away, my friend. Yeah. I mean, that's really what you want to say. How can you wake up in the morning as a business leader, an entrepreneur, a real estate

agent, broker, call it whatever. I mean, you own a business, a branding company. How can you wake up in the morning and disrupt your industry? Well, the first question you should be asking yourself is, what are the opportunities to improve the customer experience? And then, is there technology available to measure and to modify that? And if there's not, we can create that. We can create that. Look at that. I mean, we entered that space a couple years ago at Remax.

We bought a company called Bouge that is a world-class technology provider to the real estate space. And I sat down with the guys and I said, okay, what do we want to do with product? And they said, well, we can give them what we got, or we can look at it and say, what do they truly need in the future to overcome their challenges? And we can build that. Because if you can think of anything in technology now, you can build it. You just got to get good people that are good at coding and putting the formulas together that get you from point A to point Z in this customer experience, the business process, things like that. And then you need customer experience professionals or user experience, the UX, CX type people that can kind of really mold the clay to make that product something that is delightful to use

and appealing to the customer base. Yeah. So it's wonderful to approach it from this perspective. Instead of saying disruption, we say opportunity to improve the customer experience. Yeah. And stop living in fear about disruption. Totally. And look for it. That's a good point, Mark. Let's break down fear for a second, okay? What happens when we experience something we don't know the answer to? We basically, you know, somebody says, is your industry being disrupted? What do they do? They open the loop in our mind. And you're going, I don't know.

But why do you not know? Because you don't have immediately the answer to that at your fingertips. So that's what we're doing is we're giving you the answer right now. But ultimately, because you have this open loop, an unanswered question in your mind, one thing happens as a human being, and that's you go to worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is always disaster. Generally, you don't see the ultimate death of a salesman type situation where you're like, out of business, can't function. I'm just completely paralyzed by this question. You get so hyper-focused on what the bad aspects of it are that it creates this fear-mongering. A fear response then becomes fight, flight, or freeze. The human mind only functions in fear

in three different aspects, fight, flight, or freeze. A good example of fight is making excuses. So excuses are actually a fear response. That makes sense. I hate excuses. Yeah. Nobody likes excuses. But we all have this unending amount of them that we can come up with for some reason. It's a fear response. Totally is. Because they're afraid, like, I didn't do good enough enough or I can't achieve what I said I was going to achieve. So let me come up with an excuse to make myself feel better. I'm going to rationalize my lack of a solution to this. And that's really what you're doing is you're rationalizing your lack of knowledge or the lack of a plan. Because once we put a plan together, we have something we can do, some direction we can go

in order to push that fear response behind us and move forward with a solution. Yeah. There's disruption in marketing, and you're sitting there going, there's always been disruption in marketing because you're kind of an opportunistic business leader. But other people are like, oh my gosh. So everybody who's buying Super Bowl commercials or everybody who's doing traditional, whatever it might be, type marketing, they're getting disrupted. I got news for you. It's called change. And all you do is you look at the opportunity in it instead of the fear in it and go, let's build a plan to work our way out of this.

No more fear response. Let's look at an opportunity response because we know we function either in fear or we function in love, which is unconditional giving. Opportunity comes from giving, giving back to the consumer, giving them a better experience, giving them more opportunities, options, things that they love. We're going to talk about on a different podcast, kind of value delivery, things like that, and how you kind of mesh with the customer's opportunistic viewpoints, their mindsets, things like that, so that you can really feel that transition from disruption and fear default to the intentional love, giving opportunity, creating value to the customer.

Yeah. So the key takeaway here is look for disruption. Find it. And instead of running from it, run to it. Disruption's a goldmine, man. Yeah. I mean, you think about it throughout all of history, right? I mean, Harrison Ford, not Harrison Ford, Henry Ford. Henry Ford. Yeah. You know, it was like, people kept saying like, oh, we need more horses or more,

you know, carriages and all these things. And he said, well, what if we just built a car? Right. Yeah. Yeah. That quote, what was it? Yeah. It was like, if I asked people what they want, they'd say they wanted a better horse. Yeah, exactly. And same thing, right? Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Amazon, right? The internet disrupted all these things. Bezos said, well, how can I push into that? And now he's the richest guy in the world. Totally, yeah. He said, okay, people don't like this experience. People didn't like the experience. He started Amazon as a bookstore, right? Yeah. I mean, I remember buying most used books from there because I could find it. It's like I'd have to search tons of local bookstores to maybe find a book that I want, or I can go online and find a used book for $2 that someone was selling in Michigan that could ship it to me.

And they were cataloged. Yeah. Yeah. You could go on there and instead of, you go to the used book bin at the bookstore and you're making this high level scan for a keyword that pops into your head. You're like, oh, that's close. Nope, that's not it. And then you eventually kind of whittle it down. Well, he solved people being able to resell books and be a bookstore and the online bookstore. You know what's weird, though? The online bookstore is being disrupted right now, too.

Yeah. Why? Because people want a different experience. They miss walking into a bookstore and sitting in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee and flipping through some books that they want to buy. Which is so funny because Amazon has a bookstore in Cherry Creek. Yeah. It's like a full circle.

I love it, yeah. It's funny to think, how is disruption being disrupted? But it's the evolving customer experience. And there's so many things that affect that, generations, financial conditions, community trends, things like that. So it comes down to, is disruption really a bad thing? I don't think it is. Yeah, I don't think it is either. I think it's insightful. It helps us see into the mind and the future and the desires

of the customer and help them define what they really want to try. They want to try sitting in the back of somebody else's car that is keeping it clean and has a bottle of water and greets them by name instead of a taxi that they feel like they're in the back of an old police car, because they are in some cases. That's where taxis used to be bought from. It's old police departments. And you're going, wow. It's like the back of an old police car. Oh, we got a call coming in, buddy.

Oh, yeah. So you know what time it is now. Yes, I do. Let's disrupt this bad boy. Let's disrupt this conversation and take a question from our audience members. Hey, Adam. It's Tracy Jennings. We met at the World State Center in Ames, Iowa, giving you a call. I have a quick question for you. So this time of year, there are a lot of us that have already set our goals or looking

to set our goals for 2020. When goal setting, there always seems to be a push to do more, grow your business, or to recruit more agents. When deciding on whether an agent should push for more sales, grow their team by adding additional team members, or a broker should recruit more agents to grow their brokerage, what three things would you recommend the person should consider before doing this? Thanks so much. into my favorite places in middle America. I mean, it's just such a wholesome, wonderful place. But I love this question because we're talking about getting better and setting goals. And I'm not going to give you three things. I'm going to give you two because we're going to narrow this down really succinctly. So there's ultimately two things you want to understand when doing your goal setting. Because what are goals? Goals are ultimately, they're a measurable metric that we're trying to get to, right? So what can we do to clearly

define those things? So what's your number? You've got to publicly share your number to somebody else to hold you accountable for. So that's the first one is, what number are you accountable to? Number, accountable. Just two words, number and accountable. That is incredibly important when it comes to these things because ultimately we have different reasons for scaling our business. It would be adding to your team. And really what you're looking to do is add talent to your team, add talent to your organization. And are those people coachable that you're adding the talent to? Because you want to add people that can get better, that can be more, do more, and ultimately that causes a stronger team, more results, that number you're going after in your commitments

as your goal. I just mentioned the word that is the second piece of this, and that's commitment. Goals are numbers. Commitments are actions. So we've set this number. We're going to be accountable to it. But what are our actions that we are committing to take in order to get there? And those really come down to our habits, the things that we do every single day, the time that we make a choice to block off and only execute on achieving those commitments, those actions that take us to our goals, those numbers that we set out there in order to accomplish that. So you set your first year goals, whatever they might be in scaling your business, scaling your team, scaling the number of sales, the growth, things like that. It comes down to that. What is your publicly stated

accountable number and what are your commitments in action in order to get there. That should help get you there, Tracy. Own those numbers, that commitment every day. Don't forget to start with a win. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question and potentially be on our next episode, give us a call and leave us a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, write a review and rate the show. For more great content, follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.