Episode Transcript
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You know what it is? That'sright. It's time to talk money with
your money nerd and financialcoach. Now tighten those purse strings
and open those ears. It's theMoney Talk with Tiff podcast.
Hey, everyone. I'm so excitedbecause I have Rick Evanovich on
the line, and Rick is here totalk to us about Kaizen, which I
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have heard before, but I don'tknow all the details. So I'm like,
come on, let's talk aboutKaizen for our business owner. So,
hey, Rick, how are you?
I'm good, Tiffany. Thanks forhaving me on your show.
Thank you so much for beinghere. So let's just dive right in.
What is kaizen? If this waslike, beginner 101.
Okay, so for beginner 101,Kaizen is a Japanese word. I'm probably
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making a mess of pronouncingit, but I call it kaizen. And the
literal translation is changefor good. It was originally popularized
by Toyota, you know, theToyota way and the. The change for
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good. What does that reallymean? It's. My interpretation is
that it's all about constantimprovement. So it could be the constant,
you know, as far as Toyota wasconcerned, or. Or in a company, it's
constant improvement of, say,a process. And that improvement can
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be teeny tiny. It doesn'tmatter how small it is. But if you
make lots and lots and lots ofthose constant improvements, you
get a big improvement. Ireinterpret Kaizen as lifelong learning.
It's the constant improvementof ourselves. So it's constant growth.
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You know, it's that growthmindset or that infinite mindset.
And. And to embrace that, itreally means learn something new
every single day. So Iadvocate for learning something new
every single day. Doesn'tmatter how small it is, but learn
something new.
Very, very interesting. And soif someone is like, okay, I feel
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like I'm a lifelong learner.This is, you know, how I love to
live my personal life. How canthis translate into my business?
So what are those Kaizen principles?
Well, the Kaizen principle isthe we can always improve things,
okay? Nothing is perfect,okay? So we can always improve processes.
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And just because your businessis running great today and you think
the processes are perfect.Well, there are things like technology
which sort of moves thegoalpost, doesn't it? So, you know,
two years ago, we hadgenerative AI hit the world, and
we're all now very familiarwith ChatGPT or whichever flavor
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of generative AI you wish touse. And that's really moved the
goalposts. On some processes.So we thought we had it all worked
out and super efficientbefore, but now we have generative
AI and you know, it's cominginto things that we use every day.
It's there in Google now, it'sin Microsoft Office. You know, it's
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just in sort of everything. Sohow can we embrace that and improve
our processes? And that's justone little technology thing that's
come out in the last fewyears. I'm sure there's going to
be another one next month andthe month after the month after.
So we can continuouslyimprove, right?
Yes, yes. And utilizingtechnology. I feel like for me, that
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is one of my biggestexpenditures in my businesses, in
my business is technology. Iuse a ton and a lot of people are
like, well, Tiffany, how doyou get so much done? Like, how do
you do everything? And that ismy secret weapon because just like
you said, Rick is constantlyimproving. And so if there's technology
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that can be utilized toimprove a process or improve what
I'm doing, then I at leastwant to try it.
Absolutely.
So what is another way thatour businesses can improve? You know,
do the Kaizen philosophy intheir business?
Well, okay, there was. The oneaspect was, hey, let's just look
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at the business process andtry and make it better. That's a
sort of very typical thing todo. But as I said, I. I reinterpret
Kaizen as lifelong learning.This the constant improvement of
self. So within a business,not only are should we be focused
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on improving a process, itdoesn't matter what the business
process is, but the focusshould also be to empower our people
and inculcate into them thatthey really need to grow every day,
they need to learn somethingnew every day. And so not only do
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you have a documented, youknow, efficient process which you're
constantly trying to get makebetter, is you're making your people
better. In fact, your peopleare making themselves better. And
the fact that they're gainingnew skills and improving behaviors
and learning maybe better waysof doing things because they didn't
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know them before, they've justlearned them. It opens up all sorts
of new opportunities and givesthem greater wisdom to improve the
processes in yourorganization. It's very much an upward
spiral.
Yeah. And that makes completesense. And what I hear you also saying
is knowing where we're goingto get this information from. So
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is data a big thing when itcomes to Kaizen?
No, it's not necessarily datawhen I'm talking about learning,
it's really about skillsacquisition. So it's acquiring more
skills. We before, remember wewere just talking about generative
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AI. Well, generative AI waspretty much alien to most of us two
years ago. Now we've had twoyears of generative AI and ChatGPT
and Claude from Anthropic andothers. You know, one could argue,
you know, in the workforcetoday the use of generative AI is
a basic skill set. Okay. Sothat's a new piece of technology
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that's hit us that we're nowexpecting people to know. They should
just know it's okay. Andthere's going to be more and more
technology and other stuffcoming out. As time goes on, it's
coming out faster and fasterand faster. So these are all skills
and tools that we need. I meanI remember I went to a Talk given
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by LinkedIn and this was prepandemic, it must have been seven
or eight years ago. And themessage that LinkedIn was giving
us at that point in time, theysaid that everything that we knew
today, the skills we knowtoday would be out of date in about
18 months time. Okay. Now ifyou read sort of World Economic Forum
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future work reports, they comeout every year, or was it two years?
Can't remember. You know,they're looking at the skill sets
that we need and it's beenidentified. We, you know, ever since
we've had Industry 4 comealong, uh, we've had the skills gap.
Well, the skills gap isgetting bigger and bigger and bigger
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and it's mainly because we'renot learning fast enough, we're not
acquiring the skills fastenough. Um, and you know, the work
that I do with, with students,you know, especially universities,
I tend to work with them, is,is students, some of them still have
this mindset. The, you know,you go to school, you might even
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get in. The lack of getting touniversity, you studied this long,
long time, acquiring thismassive amount of knowledge and that's
all you need. And when Italked to them I said, well, I'm
sorry to tell you this, buteverything you've learned is going
to be out of date within theyear. You know, you need this Kaizen
approach. It's all aboutlifelong learning, lifelong improvement.
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You could say that kaisen sortof comprises three components. There's
that lifelong improvement. Sowe've got to better our skills, improve
our skills, not just learnthem. You've got to apply them, you
know, practice them. We alsohave to reflect, you know, reflect
on our actions, reflect on ourknowledge, reflect on our growth
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and make the appropriate sortof fine tuned adjustments. And finally
we I think we need more than agrowth mindset. I think we need this
infinite mindset.
That's. That's deep. So, okay,when we talk about. Because I've
talked about the growthmindset here on the podcast before,
but when you speak of infinitemindset, how does that look differently?
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Okay. The, you know, the, thegrowth mindset was really stimulated,
I guess, by, you know, CarolDweck in, In her book Mindset the
New Psychology of Success. Thenew twist on that is the Simon Sinek
book, okay, which is about theinfinite gain or infinite mindset.
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And it's really looking atthings being infinite. They're just
never ending. And I just likethat this is not about, you know,
playing the game or doing theproject or a finite period of time,
you know, you know, with astart and an end, it's just infinite.
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And that really, really playsto me for this lifelong improvement.
Lifelong improvement means wemust work on improving ourselves
every single day until, well,we're no longer on the planet, as
it were, as in physically, Iguess we could be on Mars or something.
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But apart from that, I mean,we. We passed. So, you know, what
can we do, you know, to. Tolearn something new every day? It.
And, And. And that's reallytriggered by, I, I think curiosity,
okay, because it's. It'slinked to a desire to learn more.
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Okay? And this is important,Kaizen. This improvement is important.
But, you know, that's reallysort of super fueled if you link
curiosity to it. So withcuriosity and Kaizen, we can exercise
and train our ability, ourabilities. You know, it makes us
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more adaptable. It actuallymakes us more resilient, okay? Because
it's easy to. Easier torecover from setbacks because we,
you know, as I said, we needto reflect. We need to learn from
the experience, okay? Youknow, things go wrong. They're supposed
to go wrong, right? And by. Bydoing things wrong, we learn how
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to do things a better way.It's not about, you know, being right
all the time. It's abouttinkering, testing, stretching. And
as we know, I mean, you talkedabout, hey, you know, you focus on
education, you know, learningand growing happens beyond our comfort
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zone, okay? So in order tolearn, in order to grow, we've got
to be adding. Adding more in.We need to be looking at things,
things. And we need thatreflection because it. By learning
more, by becoming more awareof things, we may end up changing
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our own perception, changingour own understanding of something.
And here, here comes the othertricky bit is we need to learn to
let go of stuff, you know, wemight have been taught something,
you know, way back when, maybeback in school, and we're learning
today that it's no longertrue. You know, more research, more
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science has revealed thatactually what we were taught wasn't
quite right. So not only do weneed to acquire knowledge, we need
to be open minded. You know,not just open to other people's opinions
and perceptions, but the keything to open mindedness is being
proportional, prepared tochange our own mind, to change our
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own perception. And to dothat, we need to let go on what we
believe was maybe true becausewe may uncover that it was actually
not so true.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Andimmediately when you said that, I
thought about Pluto and howPluto is no longer a planet.
Yes, I was about to say that.Yeah. That's a fantastic. A fantastic
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example. Okay. Wow. That was abit mind blowing. That's one little
tiny thing. What else is there?
Exactly?
There's a lot.
Exactly. Exactly. Well, Rick,we can't give it all away here. So
if people were interested infinding out more about you, learning
more about your book orfollowing you on social, where could
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they find the easiest thing.
Is, I mean, my book. Okay, forthose who don't know, it's called
Business as Unusual. And onelittle unusual thing is, is go and
Google my name, RickEvanovich, because you'll find that
I'm the only person on theplanet with that name. Okay? So if
you google me, anything youfind will lead to me. Failing that,
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just take my name and stick adot com on the end and it'll take
you to my website.
Gotcha, Gotcha. And I'll makesure I have all of those links in
the show notes for theaudience. So just in case they're
doing something they don'thave their hands free. Don't worry,
it's right there in the shownotes. Thank you so much, Rick, for
coming on the show today.
Thank you so much, Tiffany,for, for inviting me. It's been an
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absolute pleasure.
All right, bye.
Thank you for listening,joining, and being a part of the
Money Talk with Tiff podcastthis week. You can check tip out
every Thursday for a new MoneyTalk podcast. But if you just can't
wait until next week, you canlisten to previous podcast episodes@moneytalkwithtee.com
or follow TIFF on all socialmedia platforms at Money Talk with
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T. Until next time. Spend wiseby spending less than you make. A
word to the money wise isalways sufficient.