The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Secrets of Market Disruptors: How to Innovate Without Failure with Warren Schirtzinger

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

Secrets of Market Disruptors: How to Innovate Without Failure with Warren Schirtzinger Hightechstrategies.com About the Guest(s): Warren Schirtzinger is a leading authority in the field of diffusion research and technology adoption. With several influential studies published under his name, Warren's work primarily focuses on understanding the factors that influence the acceptance and adoption of innovations, such as new technologies or novel inventions. He places a strong emphasis on understanding the role of risk perception and how it can influence the spread of new ideas or products in the consumer market. Warren is associated with hightechstrategies.com and diffusionresearch.org, where he extends his expertise to businesses aiming to minimize risk and effectively market their innovations. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss sits down with Warren Schirtzinger, a preeminent expert on diffusion research and technology adoption. Warren shares his extensive knowledge on how businesses can reduce perceived risks to increase the adoption of new innovations. Their discussion spans from historical examples, like Thomas Edison’s lightbulb and the automobile revolution, to modern scenarios including the iPhone and Amazon. Warren highlights three critical elements for successful innovation: end-user harmony, reliability, and safety in numbers. Listeners get in-depth insights into how companies like Amazon started with low-risk products like books and gradually expanded their offerings. Chris and Warren explore case studies such as the unprecedented success of Vermont's COVID vaccination program, the rise of Uber, and innovative guarantees that boost consumer confidence. This hour-long conversation is packed with valuable advice for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and anyone interested in understanding how to drive acceptance and adoption of new products and ideas. Key Takeaways: End-User Harmony: Understanding and aligning with the end-user’s needs is crucial for innovation success. Reliability and Commitment: Demonstrating long-term commitment and reliability can significantly reduce the perceived risks of new products. Safety in Numbers: Innovations adopted in a social or community context have higher chances of success. Examples of Success: Case studies like the transition from gas lamps to electric light bulbs and Vermont’s COVID vaccination program illustrate successful risk reduction strategies. Stage-Based Innovation: Gradual rollouts and stage-based changes are more effective than sudden overhauls in gaining user adoption. Notable Quotes: "People don't just jump on new things. In fact, they actually resist change." "The most successful companies, the founder is the customer." "Safety in numbers is a full 33% of the total risk reduction." "Try before you buy is one of the biggest elements of end-user harmony." "Amazon began with books because they were ultra-low risk, well understood, and had an established ecosystem."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is for the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law.

Because, you know, she wanted her daughter to marry Ted. And Ted went on to that wonderful VC career and made all that money. And you'll never hear the end of it. But you can refer to the show. Go to Goodreads.com for just Christmas. LinkedIn.com for just Christmas. YouTube.com for just Christmas. And Facebook.com That's Christmas. LinkedIn.com. Fortress. Christmas. YouTube.com. Fortress. Christmas. And Facebook.com.

Fortress. Christmas. And I am not going to explain how the connection between your mother-in-law and referring people to show is a thing because it's not. I just made it up. We have an amazing young man on the show with us today. We have Warren Schertzinger on the show with us today. We're going to be talking to him about how his work and how you can reduce risk in all manners of life,

especially if you're like an entrepreneur, a builder, working with teams, your company, etc., etc. Warren is a leading authority in the field of diffusion, research, and technology adoption, having published several influential studies. His work focuses on identifying the factors that influence the acceptance and adoption of innovations, such as new technologies or novel inventions. He also emphasized the importance of understanding the role of risk perception, he should probably go to Vegas,

which can influence the adoption of new ideas or products. His research has important implications for both market transformation and product development, and by understanding how innovations spread, companies and organizations can be more effectively designed winning strategies that can create products that are more likely to be adopted by consumers or end users. Welcome to the show, Warren. How are you?

I'm good. Things feel excellent today. That's because you're on the Chris Voss Show, my friend. That's right. That's correct. We call it the Chris Voss Show Glow. It's the glow. So give us your dot coms. Where can people find more about you on the interwebs? You bet. So hightechstrategies.com would be a good place. There are other what I would call academic websites that are more research oriented that's not for everybody the that one would be called diffusion research.org and and of course linkedin

linkedin always the great place to do business it's still it's still the only serious social media site on the internet but you do have to curate your audience too so that's important yeah i had to go through and clean everything out for i think we've been on it forever and we have maxed i think we're maxed out over there and we've been on forever so give us a 30 000 overview of what you do yeah yeah absolutely so i i call myself the luckiest business person alive. And it's just because my grandfather was a professor at Ohio State, and he worked with a guy named Everett Rogers. Everett Rogers is the guy who shows that bell curve, and he coined the term early adopter. And literally, as a kid, I got to grow up going with my grandfather to conferences

and meetings and listening to Everett Rogers talk about what is it that makes a new innovation successful? What do you have to have in order to get, maybe it's a new product, maybe it's a new product. Maybe it's a new method or idea or invention. But people don't just jump on new things. In fact, they actually resist change. And so I've been learning since 1970 about how to get people to perceive less risk so that they will accept something new. And we unfortunately, especially in some industries, have an astronomical amount of failure. All right. Like 90, 95% of all new products fail, something like that. Oh, really? Yeah. And it doesn't have to be that way. You know, you just follow this curve, which is a risk adoption curve. It's how much risk am I willing to take?

And so what I do is I just show anyone with any kind of new innovation how to reduce the perception of risk. There are so many cool examples. So give us some examples that you have. Oh, yeah. So I'm going to start out and let me just mention real quickly the three items that all successful innovations have. So one is what I call end user harmony. That's, you know, proving you understand the person, you know, and what their circumstances are, what their life is like. And, you know, take that into account. Number two, show you're absolutely committed and reliable. You're not

going to just give them something new and then disappear. And number three is what I call safety in numbers. That's where you enable people to take on new things, but not by themselves. They accept new things or adopt new innovations with their friends, their neighbors, their colleagues, with other people they relate to. So those are the three things. And the one I start with, which is, I think, just a lot of fun, is Thomas Edison and the electric light bulb. When he developed the light bulb, people were using gas lamps. And what Edison did is he goes, okay, those gas lamps put off about 12 watts of light. The first electric light bulb was almost the same. It was 13 watts.

And he had the shape of the bulb and the appliance the same, very, very similar to what people were already using. So you see he's showing that end user harmony. He knows what people are using and he doesn't make them change very much so he's just doing small tweaks so he's doing very small refinements okay and and and this is the cool thing those existing gas lamps had people had conduit or pipes or tubing bringing gas into their house. And he said, okay, let's just run our electric wires through these existing tubes. Let's don't make people change and put in new things, use what they're already using. That's one of those examples from way back of end user harmony,

where you go, look, I'm going to do it the way you do it. I'm not going to come with something new and say, hey, you've got to change and change and change. No, you let them do what they've always done and just refine it a little bit. So I think that's one of the fascinating examples. Interesting. Now, there's been times in our world

where stuff has been revolutionary, but I guess it kind of was a refinement. So let's take the iPhone for a second. Yeah. I guess technically, according with your theorem, that it really was a slight. I mean, everyone had phones before and stuff, but it was

it was innovative in so many ways and maybe people just i mean it wasn't overwhelming to be i remember seeing it just being like this is amazing all the stuff you do with this and the touch screen as well yeah well so here's the the fascinating thing about that is before the iphone people were carrying many times three four five different devices they had a phone they had an ipod maybe for music they had one of those little organizers kept their calendar maybe they had a digital camera all right what what did the iphone really do it just put all those together put all those together you know it's it's like why carry five six seven different devices we'll just do it in one so people already know how to use their phone already know how to take pictures already know how to

you know keep their schedule it it's just it's just a you know it's just a combination of devices that already existed and were well known yeah it it and it made it so that they put the put the keyboard in the screen instead of you didn't have to carry around us you know like i always had to because i have such big hands and big fingers i had to always carry around a separate keyboard that would plug into any phone because i was like you know trying to navigate those little buttons was a nightmare yeah but it was so innovative and you know there's there's an old there's an old business lesson called move who moved my cheese right yeah and it talks about how you know like you said we're pretty as as creatures we're pretty resistant

to massive change. Yeah. And we don't deal with it. I'm still trying to get over, I don't have a joke for this, I'm still trying to get over the 80s. Yeah. Which is when I graduated. So people are organization to change for teams and stuff. Is that, so if you're going to move people's cheese, you want to move it slowly away from them? And do we need to do some innovations in segments or, you know, cut them up into pieces and slowly dole them out to people?

Yeah, yeah. Kind of like the Star Wars series on Disney Plus. And, you know, that could be a good example. A lot of this is what I call evolutionary. So if you think about that willingness to accept risk and the adoption curve, you've got innovators and early adopters, and they're fine with risk. They are happy. And, but that's only about 15% of any group or population. So the massive numbers, 85% go, no, okay, we, we don't think we have the capability to do this. We don't like to learn new things. What if I try this new thing

and it fails or I fail? Do I get to lose my job? Do I get to lose my reputation? Do I get to lose my friends? So there's all these things that they're worried about losing, but you can slowly address that need for risk acceptance, little steps at a time. And the example that, and you tell me if this is one that most people can relate to, is in the state of Vermont, they had a vaccination program for COVID. It was the most successful program in the world, not just the United States, everywhere in the world. The adoption of the COVID vaccination in Vermont was higher than anywhere else in the world. And what did they do? They did all these three things in different ways and at different times and in different amounts and you know it's like slowly reducing that perception of risk like for

example and i i don't know if you you know got a covid vaccination but i did for i think four of them yeah yeah and you know i i got three or but I did it by going to, they had converted a parking garage. I think it was for the first one. Yeah. And then another one was actually in some kind of strange clinic. But in Vermont, they go, no, no, no, no, no. We're not, we don't want to make you change. We're, we're going to come to you.

So they, they sent vaccination specialists out to the county fair. They sent them out to local sporting events. They, they, they, they put them out where people were actually doing their normal life. Just jab them as they go by. Exactly. I'm going to go watch this football game. Can I get a vaccination real quick? And then I'll go, maybe it's during halftime or something.

But you see, that's radically different and much lower risk. And they did so many fabulous things. Over the program length, I think they provided 145 updates so that people could continuously see how the program was, how it was going, what kinds of changes there were.

But here's the thing that was mind-blowing in terms of brilliance, is they got a well-known radio platform called NPR, National Public Radio, to come and sponsor the Vermont vaccination program. And what did NPR do? They got everybody together in groups. They had these town hall meetings, these community meetings. They're objective, they're unbiased, and they say, okay, we want you guys to not, this is safety in numbers, right? You don't want to do this necessarily on your own. You can talk to your friends, your neighbors, see what their experience was like. And they included all kinds of emergency people like firemen, EMTs. They all helped.

And it was just the most dramatic, systematic lowering of risk so that the population in Vermont was happy to adopt. Wow. It's really, really fabulous in terms of risk reduction. Mm-hmm. And, I mean, maybe we should do the voting. That'd be kind of interesting, but I don't think some people want that, so I don't want everyone to vote. Yeah. Yeah, but you show you understand people and what their life is like, okay?

And you go to them and you don't make them change. And you show that you're committed and you really are going to be the ideal supplier or partner if it's in an organization. And then you provide safety in numbers you help people interact with others they trust and go through the change as a community and and wow it does does that make a difference and and you see that's that's really what made the personal computer a success you know different elements that i could point to but that's really what made the personal computer a success. You know, different elements that I could point to, but that's really why everyone has personal computers too. So let me ask you this. How important is that to help with the community adoption?

It is huge. It's a full 33% of the total risk reduction. It just, you know, NPR brought the community together in vermont maybe maybe you remember in the old days of the ibm pc and when personal computers first came out they had essentially had things called users groups oh yeah the like copy service you could you could find a users group for anything yeah you know i mean if you were an accountant in oregon and and you raised cattle you know you could find the users group for accountants that raise cattle right yeah they had at least four oh oh and guess what that is? That's safety in numbers. That's people going through change together. And it's huge.

It is one of the things that, you know, going back to that original author I mentioned, Everett Rogers, and his book was called Diffusion of Innovations. That's what he talks about is that it's a social mechanism that allows people to feel safe wow so if we move in numbers it's kind of like the wildebeest when they are deer or you know things on the serengeti when they're they move in numbers because it's safer i didn't really ever think about it. It's like humans like that. I mean, we are kind of, we do a lot of animalistic shit because we're, I'm not sure we're that far evolved. But we're working on it.

The one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history. That's why we go round and round. But as I like to say, the, you know, part of this is, and that helps with the scaling, right? Of anything, the adoption. Yeah. So people saw the iPhone and they just went, this is awesome.

Let's all adopt it. And I mean, my friend called me up one day and I hadn't bought the iPhone yet because I don't know what it was. I think it was still in the crisis of 2008. Yeah. So I wasn't like spending a lot of crazy money on stupid stuff. I was rebuilding. And he called me up and he goes, you have to buy this iPhone. And I'm like, how much is it?

He goes, it's $500. I'm like, I'm not spending $500 on a phone. I'm building businesses again from the 2008 crisis. And he's like, you have to have this. And I was like, what is it about this phone that is so great he goes you have to try it if you try it you will see and i was like it cannot be this great yeah it cannot be like i've got i would always buy the latest nicest you know whatever phone was the most popular i never had a i never had had the one for business that everyone had with the keyboard.

I forget. They were like the god of phones after Nokia. Blackberry. Blackberry, yeah. Yeah, I never had a Blackberry, but I had all the other hot phones. Yeah. And we had phones going back to the brick phone, the big, giant, murderous phone that you could use it as a hammer

and put in nails when you were born. And I couldn't figure out what it was, but the push for adoption of friends and then the social pressure, you know, even Apple to this day still has this FOMO attached to it. How much is, you know, FOMO, fear of missing out, how much is that attached to scaling and adoption of a product or or a system or a policy yeah yeah the this built-in and i'm not even sure what i would call it but you know like you said a moment ago we were more like animals than we realize all right so this turned on the

news exactly the news in florida man that need to be part of the herd and move with the herd. You see, that's a huge element of safety and risk reduction. So just think about if you are a member of a herd and the herd is moving away and you're not going along, you're going to start to go, ooh, I don't think I'm as safe as I was when I was part of that pack. And this is, again, one of these things that all successful innovations, they encourage this. They find a way to enable this herd mentality, this interaction between people. The thing that you just mentioned, which was a friend who talked about, here's what I'm seeing, and you really should check this thing out.

That there, if it's okay, I'll give you an example or two. Some of the most successful solar programs, solar electric electric programs are neighborhood programs where essentially someone comes in and goes look i don't want to just put solar on your house i want to put solar on all of the houses in this neighborhood and you guys can go through this together. And when they did that, the response was huge. The outcome was just incredible. And it's because we're acting like a herd. We're not testing this new thing called solar as an individual. And there are all kinds of ways you can enable that sort of visibility. Some people call it references or testimonials, but one of the most fabulous ones, and speaking of solar, there's an organization called the New Buildings Institute. And all they do is document how well schools, public schools, how well they are doing with solar installations.

So if you say you're an administrator in a school and you think, hmm, we should put solar on the roof of our school, you can go to the New Buildings Institute. You can look up all of the people who have a school that's exactly like yours. Oh, wow. The same size, the same number of students, the same geographical location, and you can see how well that's performing before you buy. And you talk about that feeling of being part of a group, and that's before you've actually purchased. There are all kinds of creative ways that you can enable this thing that I call safety in numbers. That sponsorship by NPR of the COVID vaccination program, they were actually bringing people together in town hall meetings and

community meetings and and you know and they didn't control it they let them talk to each other okay really so they were like you you know gun to your head sort of joke that i made earlier of no do it or else you know and sometimes that's happens in workplaces you know you kind of feel that sometimes like either you do your job do your job or else is the thing. And that's a hard way to motivate people with fear. No, no. What NPR did was just say, go around the room. You talk about what you're afraid of.

Why is it you would decide not to get vaccinated? What are your concerns? What do some of your neighbors say? What were their fears? What did they experience? And it's that social interaction inside the herd that just is, it's just enormous. It's huge it's so how do i so if i'm if i'm developing products how do i how do i take a look at here's my product or service yep how is this going is this fit the model that you

have i think you had three rules or something like that yep for this tell us about that work yeah and and i have a i have a template you know just sheet of paper. You can fill it out if anybody's interested. It's on high-tech strategies. And you just essentially look at the known proven ways. And you start with the first one, which is end-user harmony. Some people call it affinity. How well do you prove that you know the person that you want them to change? You want them to adopt or change or buy or in some ways utilize some new thing. All right. How are you going to prove that you understand their situation? You do that by not making them change very much. You do it by allowing them to use things they've already got. You do it by, and this is a huge one, try before you buy.

Oh, so that helps with adoption then. You know, think about, I don't know if you remember, again, back to the personal computer days. You know, there were new computer stores. I think one of them was called Computer Land. But they were sold through Sears. You remember Sears stores? You could actually go into a Sears store and play around with a computer. You didn't have to buy it.

You could just play with it. That try before you buy is one of the biggest elements of end user harmony and in understanding the needs of an individual as a user. You play with it, beat on it. I mean, you can't actually really beat on it, but you know,

they don't allow you to do that in the store because I did that once and the judge says I can't actually really beat on it, but you know, they don't allow you to do that in the store because I did that once in a judges. I can't do that anymore. So keep your pants on people, those places. Exactly. So you let them try before you buy. And you know, one of the other ones that really helps people understand, feel like they're being understood is if they can buy it from somewhere or go to some place

where they've already purchased other things. It's known, known, trusted channels. So reputational trust, maybe. Yeah. And let's say you buy, and this is one of the reasons you've always bought your car from Ford. Okay. Guess what? If you have a vendor wants to sell you an electric vehicle, but you can't buy it from Ford like you've bought every other car in your life. Ooh, that's a problem. so it's a democrat or republican vote for the other stuff vote for the constitution yeah if you if you can go through a channel that's

really well known and trusted that's it's a big big deal yeah and elon musk kind of did that with electric cars you know and he created kind of created that with electric cars, you know, and he created, kind of created that Apple effect. Like, even now, I have friends that are on Facebook, and a lot of my original core audiences, Silicon Valley types and technology types. I mean, the first 10 years of the Chris Voss Show was just basically VCs and Silicon Valley discussions about iPhones and Androids and all that stuff. So even now, I have friends that are like, yeah, the iPhone isn't still as innovative as the Android. It doesn't. And it costs more for the iPhone.

And we understand the game that's being played on us. Because I mean, the CEO of Apple just basically said years ago, yeah, we're slow to adopt. But it fills our bank accounts and max profitability. And they know that they're getting kind of ripped off. Like right now, the new iPhone still doesn't have 8K video. Android's had 8K video for maybe six or seven years now. I don't know. It's been a long time.

It's at least five. Or five. I don't know if it's a full five years, but five variations of Samsung models. I think now I've had 8K. And you can correct me if I'm wrong. It might be four. But, you know, it recently came out. They're using, and I think the cheaper version, the new iPhone,

they're using like a USB 2.00 speed i don't what would you call it like technology you know they have to buy the part for it but anyway it's 23 year old speeds it's 23 three year old technology and there's something that's on you know what is supposed to be the most innovative phone and but people adopt it you know they they my apple friends always say they go yeah we know that the technology is behind android at least the ones that are delusional let's put that way and they'll they'll go yeah we know it's behind the times but it fits the ecosystem we have to keep feeding this ecosystem that that apple's made where it's you know it's got to be able to pair with the iCloud it's got

to be able to pair with the iMac and you's got to be able to pair with the iMac. And, you know, they've got all the systems. And, of course, the family's on the system of the iPhone, you know, and now Apple's built in the services as well. So now you're hooked into all the services and Apple TV. And so you're just, and I've had friends say to me, they're like, you just can't get away after a while. You're just so freaking tied in but the fear of missing out the FOMO you know what's known as the what's known as you know it for a while

there you know if you were a cool kid if you had the iPhone because it was innovated ahead of its time at the time and so you were you you you could you know help her the market and stuff and there's still people that do that. I have friends that go wait in line. I'm like, why? Just wait a week and order it online. Do you really have to be the first to have that stupid-ass phone? And they're just like, yeah.

You don't see that with Android. And so that herd mentality that goes on. But yeah, if you can get that sort of adoption. One of the other things that's going to... Do you want to comment on any of that sort of adoption one of the the other things is going to do you want to comment on any of that just i just kind of went on a rant there oh just you know again you've got two different kinds of mindsets you know the the people who are all technology oriented right you've got innovators and early adopters and and this this is where a lot of the smartphone companies they feel like they might get ahead of apple haha because they're just trying to

sell newer features newer specifications better capabilities and they and they sell those core technologies. But that's not what the mainstream buys. The mainstream buys, how well does this vendor understand me? What is their reputation and track record? Do they have domain expertise? Are they really good at what they're providing? And can I find that safety in numbers? And you see, that's what Apple has. And that's why they've got this lock on the mainstream audience. It doesn't really matter how many new features, what new specs are available from from android you know the the the mainstream

is buying intangibles intangible reputation expertise and and you know heard thinking right that's that's what they're buying you know again another great example yeah yeah i remember when i was publishing my book and i i had a consultant and and i said you know how should we price this thing a lot and he goes make sure you price the the the apple books higher i'm like what why like why are we doing different pricing like why is that the thing? He goes, because people on iTunes and Apple systems will pay more for something. Yeah. Because they do that for the phones and everything. Everything else Apple sells, really.

Yeah. And, I mean, they sell computers at crazy freaking prices that still can't run VR, AR. Like, for me, you run at 4K speeds, pushing 120, you know, screens a second on Modern Warfare 3. Good luck with that on your little Apple toy. The people, you know, like we've been talking about, people adopt it. But what was interesting was they're like, yeah, they'll pay you more. So increase the price of all your books $5 over there.

You charge everyone else. And you know what? It's true work i was like really this works and it's interesting that people pay a premium another example i want to cite for you that kind of plays into what you talked about where doing what you already do and changing it so one of my friends was sitting in the taxi with the guys who started uber and it was at a big event from one of our friends who is from france and i forget what it was it was a big it was a big

conference he used to put on every year and and and he was he was in the taxi with and i believe what's his face the gal who left google and was ceo of yahoo for a while was sitting on his lab and not in a kinky way people he's an upstanding young lady i don't want to infer that but they were crammed in this taxi and there wasn't enough taxis in france at the conference so they all kind of just didn't have the taxi together yeah and he they pitch what's his face i forget his name pitches him uber and he's just, wow. And, you know, it was a slight variation of the taxi system. But really, when you look at a lot of the innovative unicorns that came out of Silicon Valley, a lot of them came from Craigslist.

Yes. So it was services and products people were using in Craigslist, like Rideshare. Yeah. So it was services and products people were using in Craigslist, like Rideshare. And there was a thing on Craigslist where if I wanted to go to Vegas, I could find somebody who's driving to Vegas and go with them. Hopefully they weren't a serial killer burying me in the desert. But there were lots of people doing that. And they were Ridesharing. Hey, I'll split the gas with you and do the thing.

And most of the unicorns came out of a lot of the services that were offered the people utilizing on craigslist they call it craigslist effect or something like that and here's another example of the low risk associated with a book. Everybody knows what a book is. They've probably been to a library. They've got, you know, they've read books. They know what, you know, they've got this thing inside the front cover. It's called the ISBN number.

And so there's this whole ecosystem that supports and organizes the publishing number. And so there's this whole ecosystem that supports and organizes the publishing industry. And so you can't fake a book, really. It's really hard to fake 50, 100,000 words. Yeah, and it's not like… Although people are doing it with AI right now, so there's that. Yeah, that's true. But see, it's not like shoes where you got to try on a pair of shoes to decide because there's a lot of variability, even though it's all size 10 or whatever.

There's variability in width and just the feel and all these kinds of things. There is no variability in books. And it was exceptionally low risk, understood, massively supported in terms of safety and numbers. And that's where Amazon started. And they go, we've got a new method here of e-commerce. And we're going to, you know, whether or not he knew what he was doing is a different story. But it is the ultimate example of how you pick something that's ultra low risk for a lot of people and let them try a new way of having it delivered.

Yeah. So that's, you know, that's a great example. That was the other question I was going to ask you, and I was going to feed that into Amazon. So thanks for bringing me around to that. Does guarantees help with adoption? You know, we talked about how familiarity of who the seller is and stuff. You know, one of the things that really made a difference with Amazon was this championing of customer service that we hadn't ever seen since In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters. That whole kind of customer service age that seems to have died right now. But basically, you know, just for a while there, it was kind of the Wild West.

Hey, if you don't like it, just return it. Fuck it. fuck it yeah and i remember being an amazon seller going this is a little out of control because it really started pioneering some abuse and people abusing the systems you know people were like i never got it or it doesn't say what it is and i would be like no it really does and we would actually find people that were scamming the system yeah and i think i think in recent years they've kind of started to curtail that but it went on for a good decade like it was really i almost started looking at looking at buyers to see if i even want to ship to them because if they had problems but that guarantee that they had you know it was so express yeah and then really they took you know what they now call showrooming where people would go to best buy or other places to to look around

a shop they did so you can sit in line and do in your underwear like you don't have to go out you know put on pants and go out and and you know take a shower so you don't smell bad you know and you can just sit on your phone and you can just you can anywhere you are you can shop you know you're like hey i need that i do it all the time i'll be out running errands or something it's hey oh yeah i'm out of shampoo you can just run your phone go get some shampoo yeah so yeah absolutely to to address your question about guarantees that is fundamentally another version of try before you buy even Even though they ask for money up front, you get to receive it. You've got this guarantee that if you don't like it,

you just send it back and they return your money. So it's an extension of walking into a store and playing with a personal computer. you get to, you get to see if you really like it. And, and if you don't, you don't have to, you know, keep it. And that's, that just lowers the perception of risk quite dramatically. You know, just, it's just, you know, huge. And, and the, the whole industry that's called cloud computing guess what that is with cloud services you can because the vendor will always let you try it for a week you know you want to see what you know a software product does if it performs well sure they'll you know it's all in the cloud they'll let you try it out for 7 14 days if you like it you buy it if you don't you

don't have to the cloud computing enabled massive amounts of try before you buy yeah and people love it freemium models are another kind of way to do that yeah yeah you know i think it was evernote or something that pioneered the i don't know who started it but i know evernote early on was doing the fifth freemium model yeah and where you basically you can you can try and use it for free you can keep using it for free you don't get all the bells and whistles and stuff, but you can pay for a small upgrade and unlock all the features. And people do it.

I mean, I still do it all the time. I did that with RunKeeper recently. I started walking more, so I started doing the app. So if I'm running a company, I've seen what it's like to do disruptive policy making because every now and then I to be an asshole and be like This is being done now or else. Yeah, the is it better to plan? Like change. I mean, I feel I'm gonna feel manipulative where I'm like, I'm going to slowly

Move the cheese and like basically go through stages. Yes people's cheese moves inside of an organization? What are some thoughts on that? Absolutely. Because remember, everyone's risk acceptance profile is different. So what you, and you've probably seen this, you know, my neighbor is a good example. You know, he drives an electric vehicle that makes him really kind of an early adopter of EVs, but he refused to ever get a COVID vaccination, which means he is a laggard in a biological innovation. So it's every time something comes along, people look at it and go, okay,

how much risk is there in this? And it's always situation specific, but you absolutely want to plan in advance. You want to think about how can I introduce this new change in an organization slowly? How can I really package the rollout so that it's small, not big, that it doesn't just totally wipe out someone's workflow. If somebody's used to doing certain things and you see that they're experts, you're talking about people in an organization who have perfected their job. And you're going to go in, you can't go in with something and say, look, all of your expertise is now gone because we're going a hundred percent in a different way. And you know, that that's, that's just unacceptable. It's, it's too high risk. It's too, you know, it's just not safe. And so you do it in small bits again, back to the try before you buy, you can

do that internally. Okay, here's a way that you can work with this new thing inside your job, but you don't have to do it full time yet. And you've got people who are, you know, kind of early adopters, influencers, leaders, they can actually step up and say, look, I'll help all of my coworkers go through this change. And so you identify who those people are. You provide proof that you're not going to just try this new thing and then go to something else in a few weeks there's another mistake that a lot of companies make it is it's like they're just changing everything all the time and people just i give up i i can't compete here yeah yeah there needs to be proof that this is for real this is the that whole commitment or reliability piece. And we're going to, yes, there are going to be resources you can go to if you ever need extra training,

extra documents. Here's a specific set of resources just dedicated to this change that we're going through. Again,, again, you can have people that are seen as influencers. You know, they call, sometimes in an organization that's bigger, they call them connectors. They tend to talk to all kinds of different departments all the time, not just in their own.

So you can get a connector to help facilitate the change. It does help if there's a reward system. If somebody says, you know, it could be extra cookies, you know, you need to think about what the reward might be. But then don't make people feel like they're going through it by themselves. Don't say, look, you will do this. You're the only one doing this. Do it this way.

You actually enable a group of people to experience the change together. So same kind of thing in an organization or out in a marketplace. You just need to be smart about how you show that you understand the person that you want to change. You have to show you are committed and that you have the expertise to make this change happen. And then you have to enable safety in numbers. Safety in numbers. You led me into the question that I had set up for you about influencers and using influencers. What's an example of how you can use that inside of a company?

Do you just get rah-rah cheerleaders sort of type people to get behind it or no no i i actually i i was i i had a client that was essentially creating a product to identify these people known as connectors and what what they did and and to be fully honest, the product never went anywhere because nobody likes to be monitored. But inside bigger organizations, they would watch and they would look at email messages and meeting schedules and phone interactions. And they would say, oh, look, here's somebody who works in accounting, but they're talking to every department. They've got friends or colleagues or connections in every other department. And they could actually map that out and essentially show who the connectors were. And you see, that's one of those social things.

Those connectors had people from all over the company coming and asking them, I understand we're going to change our CRM system. What do you think about this? So you're asking for buy-in. And instead of forcing it on them, you're saying, let's create a discussion about this first and flush it out and get people on board. And you use those people who are just natural magnets. You know, it used to be around the water cooler a lot, but in every organization I've ever seen, you know, big and small, there are these people that they're just socially very, very well connected. And do they ever really need to meet with some of these people on a business basis? No, but socially, they interact with them.

And you can leverage those social connectors because they're a source of authority. They're independent from management and it's extremely powerful, especially if you want a whole organization to move to something new, is to identify connectors and help them or I guess more really they help you lower the perception of risk of the change that you are trying to mandate very powerful but not many organizations do that unfortunately yeah it's now let me ask you about this what about ceos that are great cheerleaders? I'm trying to find, John Legare is a friend of mine from Clubhouse, and we've talked a bit privately about stuff.

I need to get him interviewed for my next book. But he impressed me, what a great cheerleader he was for his company. And there are, in fact, I might be pronouncing his last name wrong, but he was the former CEO of T-Mobile. And he was such a great cheerleader. You would see these photos of him throwing basically like parties, cheerleader parties. He threw out the CEO suit and he would show up in these, you know, the pink logo theme things from T-Mobile and he dressed down and he became really like a human factor. And I think if anything, you can say,

you know, as a CEO, he was also a massive influencer. And, you know, how about people like that in an organization? Because, and what he did is he kind of showed that, hey, we can have fun with this.'s not just a job it's not just a oh we got to serve the customer customer's complaining day yeah and he made it seem fun and he created that culture and culture is probably you know we talk about this a lot on the show because it's so important organization establishing and or if you're coming in as a ceo and replacing another ceo see that movie it's so important on that culture so imagine having a i'll give you an example one of the things i read years decades ago back when i was a kid was peter singe's book or singe i think i said that wrong too his book the fifth the. And basically it was how to build learning organizations with a culture of learning.

Yeah. And I imagine that's an important factor to have as a ground floor or foundation. Yeah. Or, you know, as a culture as well. Because people realize you're a, like we always used to have this thing in the office. It was kind of a rule. The only stupid question is the unasked question. So that was usually the person you ever asked the question is to, you know, they slept through training.

They said, I don't know how to work the $30,000 machine. So they break the $30,000 machine. I have to pay for it. I learned the hard way that you want those people to feel like they can chat. So give me your thoughts on that. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Obviously, we live in an era of massive change and the best thing that a CEO or

a management team could do is really get it. So there are people learn how to learn because if things are always going to change, you've got to have that capability to learn a new thing and not do it once, but do it continuously. And that's the ultimate foundation is one based on learning how to learn. And actually, there's some colleges and universities that say, look, we can teach you all about biology, but you're not going to be able to use it for very long out in the real world. So we really have to teach you how to learn about things so that you can go out and be

successful in any setting or scenario. And that's a huge, big big deal the other thing that i like about a a growth minded learning organization that i found was just so awesome was it's it's it's an effect that is continual i don't know what the right word is but it's it's scalable too so the people become scalable so if they learn and they grow that's the thing i'm where i'm looking for growth if they learn and they grow as people they become people that you can have a send through a corporation to replace you or you know to fill your corporation as it grows with upper management and different things but the they'll

escalate their skills. You know, teachers do this where they go back and they get their master's degree and, you know, they usually get paid more in accordance to their education. So they go back and get more degrees and things along those lines. So let me ask you this. So what services do you provide? Do you do coaching on this? Do you do consulting, speaking? What are some things that people can utilize you provide? Do you do coaching on this? Do you do consulting, speaking? What are some things that people can utilize you for? If I'm out there listening in the environment, they're like,

I really like this gentleman. How can we see if we can get him over to the company to help us all out? Sure, absolutely. So this model that I've essentially been talking about, it's got a name. It's not what I would call necessarily a sexy name, but these three elements that all innovations have in common that are successful. And again, that's end user harmony, reliability or commitment, and then safety in numbers. Call that the low risk recipe. It's all the ingredients you put in the bowl that lower the perception of risk and allow your product to be successful or your change management issues to be resolved. And I do low risk recipe workshops and I help people plan their new innovation. Okay. So here's this core

innovation. Here comes something new. All right. What are you going to do to lower the perception of risk over time? How are you going to grow these elements? And what are you going to do at what time? And I'll basically step through that in a series of work sessions or a workshop. For some companies, I do fractional leadership. Right now, I'm working with a startup that's got a real interesting medical device that they've developed that could be absolutely transformational in dozens of health issue cases. I'm actually, you know, I've stepped into the organization just, you know, 20% of the time to work with them directly on commercializing their new innovation. So, yeah, it's workshops. Sometimes it's training, but it can take different forms. It depends on the company, the size, how many people are involved. But, you know, we find some mix of things that will fit pretty much anyone.

So let me ask you this. Oh, man, I didn't lose it, did I? Is it better to, there it is. Okay. So some people, especially in Silicon Valley, when they, you know, they're disruptors, everything, shock the system. When really they're disrupt is everything shock the system when really they're just they're just innovating off of craigslist or someone else's already established product they're just you i mean that's what entrepreneurs do really but in some cases i've seen where they've shocked the system too much they've

gone too far on the innovation and people are like lost they're just like i don't get it the i don't you can call this the i don't get it effect yeah and so is it better to go all in and that disruptor sort of thing and try and put it down the universe overnight or is it better to stage it out because i think like companies like uber had different they had different battle plans that they planned on rolling out as they scaled. Yeah. I can't remember exactly, but I know they made changes and there were upgrades. And, you know, it's kind of like some things like with Facebook where they were like, yeah, make business pages. They're free right now and you get free advertising for them.

And then everyone did business pages. I kept telling everybody, they're like, this is great. I'm like, you know they're going to charge for this as soon as they get adoption, right? As soon as it scales to a point of some sort of, you know, a point that they, I can't think of the word I'm looking for, but some sort of point that, you know, where they go, magic button, start charging people. And, you know, a lot of premium services do that. A lot of companies do that.

It's been a kind of silicon valley model and like you said as a way of building trust and scaling so is it better to do stage releases or just smack that thing out of the park and hope people get it the get it factor yeah no i'm going to go back to amazon as the example. So they started small with books and I'm trying to remember what their second item was, was CDs, I think. Yeah, I think it was music. Yeah. What is that? That's one niche and then a second niche that's in some ways related to the first one, and then a third, and then a fourth. And what do you have today?

You've got that Amazon logo with everything from A to Z, right? That's that arrow. We now sell everything from A to Z. And that is essentially the model. Now, if you can start low risk, like Amazon did with books, that's ideal. Even if you're going to start with something really disruptive,

you still should be very narrow and find the place that that disruptive thing fits the best. But still, then it's just one thing after another, after another, after another. Yeah, don't go for home runs. Or just be lazy and just be like, let's just totally turn the Apple cart over

and see if it still rolls. So how can people reach out to you? How can they get to know you better? How can they handshake for consulting and advice from you, et cetera, et cetera? Yep. You know, there are places on hightechstrategies.com. You know, you can just, you know, if you want, fill out a little contact request and I'll jump right back at you.

You could send an email if you want, info at hightechstrategies.com. And if LinkedIn is your favorite thing, I'm just Warren Scherzinger in LinkedIn, you could send me a message and that would work also. And look, maybe I could just throw out one last little idea here, if we have a minute. Please. Okay. There are really, really rare times when risk reduction does not matter. And that's when there's a full-on crisis. Okay. Okay. There was a thing way back in the 1890s in New York City and London, other big cities, called the horse manure crisis. So many horses, so much manure, that the air was unbreathable.

Oh, God. Okay. Imagine a city where you couldn't really go outside because you couldn't breathe the air because there was so much horse manure, as well as flies and other things. I think we call this politics in 2024. Yeah. Just kidding. Yeah. Had to get that joke in there.

So, guess what? The automobile comes along and bang, everybody jumps on it. Why is that? It's because it's better to have breathable air than stay with the old method, which is horses and that kind of thing. Plus, you're always stepping in it when you're in the streets. That would suck. Exactly.

I've done this really everywhere. Yeah. And then dead horses were everywhere, too. Like, they would have horses that would die. Yeah. I don't know why I'm laughing at that, but they would die and then just kind of start rotting in the street and, you know of like my my my chevy vega yeah so that you know that initial transformation to automobiles away from horses was more about

a crisis than it was systematic reduction of risk there are occasionally examples where a crisis will make an entire location transform, but you know, it's not very often. And falling back to the beginning of the show, this is a long callback. People are like, what happened at the beginning of the show? It's been so interesting. I've learned so much. The, you know, the know the you you talked about how they they brought covid flu shots to people instead of having you know you have to go down

to the clinic they're like we'll come to you yeah that was another innovation that amazon really did they're like no you don't have to come down to our box store you have to do all that you have to get in the car we'll deliver to you and we'll guarantee it where the box store really even won't either yeah i mean they kind of do a little bit, but the extraordinary guarantee of Amazon was always like, no, we don't care, just return it. And it was really interesting how they built that model. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And a huge indicator that we understand you. We have a good feeling for what your life is like. Certainly. have a good feeling for what your life is like. You know, and, you know, in Vermont with the vaccinations, they had people who could speak, they had different groups, they had 10 different languages that you could select from. You know, we were essentially just really admiring what Amazon did with their guarantee and the low-risk nature of their approach, as well as in Vermont with their COVID vaccination.

How you could go to a vaccinator who was available in 10 different languages. You think about that. So let's just say you speak Japanese. You could actually go get a vaccination from someone who speaks Japanese as a native language. Think about how that demonstrates. We understand your life. We understand you. You don't have to come to us.

We're coming to you in your native language. Hmm. Think of that. That really makes all the difference because you're overcoming that hurdle as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And people go, look, this provider, this vendor, whoever it is, difference because you're you're you're overcoming that hurdle as well oh yeah yeah and and people people go look these this provider this vendor whoever it is they understand me they know me

inside and out so it sounds like that's a big factor you know in sales you learn rapport and you learn to signal to the signal to the customer that you empathize with them, that you want their best interests at heart, that you're trying to help them achieve their goals or fix their pain point, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, and there's a saying out there for entrepreneurs, and a lot of venture capitalists really like this. They say the most successful companies,

the founder is the customer and and that's really people fixing or creating something for themselves where where there was an issue or a problem and and you know i i helped commercialize a digital audio workstation for radio broadcast. And the founder of that company was a morning show radio host. He knew everything about the radio broadcast industry, what it's like to have a morning talk show. And he developed something to solve all of the problems he was having we took that out it is the industry standard in radio broadcast today you you cannot find i don't think a radio broadcast studio anywhere in the world that does not have that device. It's called VoxPro, digital audio workstation.

They're everywhere. Why? Because there is no better end user harmony than somebody who comes from that space and fixes a problem they had themselves.

So, you know, they know everything inside and out, top to bottom. And what they develop and sell is perfect. That's what you want, perfect. That's what you want. Perfection and adoption.

So there we go. Very insightful. This is really brilliant. So if you're an entrepreneur looking to create products, these are some of the things you want to think of. If you're an administrator or CEO or you're trying to get change evoked in your corporation invoked in your corporation you want to have you want to try and use these things because I've been guilty of that in corporations I've been you know we're going to change on a dime and you know I never

took into account which this is going to haunt me probably in my sleep what you talk about where people assess the risk factor i never would have looked at you know maybe maybe that's one of the things people look at when you invoke heavy change in them in an organization or maybe in a relationship like even an interpersonal relationship if you invoke heavy change yeah it can be destabilizing oh yeah it's like imagine like in a in a business like if you tell me there's gonna be changes i'm like the first thing i want to do is that do these changes include me keep my job yeah and then will i know how to do these new changes like right now you know if you're an employee at a place they're

like you need to start adopting ai you're like but i heard it can replace me yep and i never really thought about that from a risk sort of element i mean in sales you know you try and mitigate risk but i never thought of it as people thinking of it like danger or this is a risk to me like if it fails is it gonna suck when we used to we used to make decisions we used to call looking the dragon in the mouth and we used to okay so about our business. We used to call it looking the dragon in the mouth. And we used to, okay, so we're going to spend like $30,000 for this dialer thing or whatever. It's a lot of money. What if it doesn't fucking work?

What if it fails? What if it doesn't produce enough revenue for it to make it work? And we would sit down and go through, can we live with the failure and survive? And that would affect our decision. That was based on risk. People do it the same way too. If you go, you know, if you say, if you come home and say to your wife or husband, hey, you know, we're switching jobs

to move into Miami, you know, there's a certain amount of risk. If you change and, you know, you start working out. I remember one time I started working out in my relationship and I was just sick of me. I was just like, I'm going to start working. I'm sick of being fat. I'm sick of being tired.

I was in my 30s and was starting to feel the slowdown. And so I just started going to the gym one day, and my girlfriend freaked out on me because she's, are you cheating on me? Are you seeing other people? You suddenly changed. Where do you want to impress people? I was miserable with myself i just i just i just finally got sick of something of me and i'm changing it

but you know you change like that and people go you know this is sometimes why marriages can fail relationships can fail as well on top of business and things so as we go out give people your final pitch out where they can onboard with you utilize you you, hire you, et cetera, et cetera, what dot coms to use. Yeah, absolutely. And what you just said actually is fabulous. We all, human beings are wired this way. We have that part of our brain called the threat detector. And it's just always going out every minute of every day.

Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? And, you know, something new comes along, an innovation, a product, a new method. That's the question, is your brain is wired to keep you safe. You know, the better you plan for helping people feel safe, the more successful you will be. And, you know, be. And I've got some of these examples, a white paper that you can download or an ebook, and it's all at hightechstrategies.com. You can just send an email to info at hightechstrategies.com

or reach out on LinkedIn and I'll provide those things to you directly. Yeah, everyone's got a little voice in their head like Beavis and Butthead. Are you threatening me? Exactly. You bet. Absolutely. And we're not aware of it always, but it's constantly active, constantly there.

And any change, oof. Okay. Sounds like my first time marriages. The Chris Voss Show. We pull 90s MTV references at will so that we can confuse all the Gen Zers. What's Beavis and Bud? Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show, Warren.

We really appreciate it. Oh, yeah. I love, I hope it's obvious, but I love talking about this. I can tell. I can tell, but we had a great discussion. I mean, any show that goes over an hour hour there's usually something good we're cooking so if you're catching the show at this point people make sure you listen the whole thing thank you very much for coming on the show thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris fuss linkedin.com fortress chris fuss chris

fuss one of the tick tockity and all those crazy places on the internet be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time thank you