Death of a Salesman: Why Your Customers Aren’t Buying

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So how do you make it easier for your customers
to buy your products and services and use your products
and services, and even how do you design services and
the sales message so they want to buy them and
use them. And we have an expert today who we're
going to discover exactly how to sell to the laziest customer.

(00:22):
And I love this topic. I think it is brilliant
at this time in the marketplace. Our guest today is
Ashman Gulotti, our author of Soul Venture all about the
startup culture and Ashland. It is so great to have
you on the Weal Stability Show. Would you please give
us a little of your background how you start talking

(00:44):
about this innovative selling process.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks Tom, It's great, great to be here, appreciate this opportunity.
So yeah, let me give a little bit of backround
myself and give a little bit about the book, and
you know why I wrote it, and we can dovetail
into this this lazy customer topic, which I also find
very very interesting. So my background really is in kind

(01:07):
of three parts. And first part of my career I
really got into sales and business development and technology in
both US and in Europe. I worked for you know
software companies done Bradstreet and so forth. I lived in
England and Spain, then I moved back to the US.
I'm originally from India. I came from India to the US,
moved to Europe, and came back to the US. And

(01:28):
for the last thirty years, I've actually been involved in
just startups, both my own startups. Also I've been an
er entrepreneur and residence for incubators, accelerators vcs. I've helped
SBA do you know, new new programs and technology in
Silicon Valley. So I've been living in the startup trenches

(01:50):
for thirty years. And and I wrote this book, and
it's kind of a different book. I don't know if
you've fully read it yet, but it's it's a fusion
between a memoir and a knowledge share book. And frankly,
I talk about things that people don't like to talk about,
you know, things about success and redefinition of success and
why people really do startups, you know, and if you

(02:14):
if you disclose all that information, you know, most investors
won't invest in you. But I just put it all
out there, you know, after thirty years of experience, and
it's been in quite well and you're right. One of
the topics is about about lazy customers.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So let's talk about it because I think, I actually
think consumers are getting lazier and lazier. I think that
it used to be that they were willing to work.
You know, books used to be a big deal. We
were talking earlier about people don't read anymore. So how
do you make I mean, that's a perfect example. How
do you make a book easy? And one? And a
couple of things that I've learned in my experience in

(02:51):
publishing books is you have to do an audiobook because
that's a lazy person's way to read. And you have
to do an ebook because it's easier to pick up
your iPad than it is to pick up a physical book. Okay,
so yeah, you know I have to tell you I knew.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
I knew this was going to happen when I was
We took it a long time to write this book.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
By the way, this is not like I came up
with an idea one day.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
This is you know, you'd be surprised if I told
you it took me twenty years to write this book.
And then I knew that, you know, the world had
changed and in some ways in this long period. I
think my book is more and more relevant now than
it was, let's say, five years ago. But people are
more and more different now than they were five years ago.
And yeah, I knew about ebooks and audiobooks, and my
audiobook is coming out in a couple of weeks, by

(03:36):
the way, and my ebook came out right away, but
I didn't realize how people have actually changed. I mean,
I think the brains have really changed to a point
where and I don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
It's not just because they're lazy.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
I just think it's I think the human race is
going through an evolution here where like.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
An old technology.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Oh yeah, social media snippets of information. And it's funny
now might talk about my book people, you know, people
ask me, hey, do you have an audiobook? You know,
like first question, right, not what the book is about,
but you have an audiobook, right, So yeah, it's coming out.
But yeah, people are getting more and more saturated with information,
saturated with you know, uh, with innovation as well, and

(04:18):
so you know, going out away from books to kind
of what I talked about in my book regarding this
lazy customer.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Profile.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
What I'm really saying is and you know, I'm I
come from a sales and marketing background. I'm not a
tech guy. You know, I'm not a tech innovator. I'm
a biz deev innovator. And you know, in meetings, I
would always say, you know, I don't care how the
product is, you know, market traction, Trump's all right, And
technologist would get angry with me and they would say, no,
if you don't have a product, you can't sell anything.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
And I'm like, well, I'm not sure about that, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
And hey, I grew up. I grew up in the
era of pet rocks. You can't anything.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
You can sell anything, and then and then the build
it and deliver it sometimes exactly. So I think the
example I was using and the reason I and there's
a whole chapter on it. And it used to be
called it used to be called customers are slippery. Then
I changed it to customers are lazy. And now it's
really called the nine next effect. So I was really

(05:19):
referring to innovation. People will say, oh my god, I
got this best technology in the world, is best idea,
and you know, it saves companies money, it saves them time.
Here's the ROI. It's all documented. They've talked to a
couple of customers, even a couple of customers are using it,
and it's like, this is a no brainer. And then
they scale up their sales team, they scale up their

(05:41):
marketing activities and wait a minute, it's just not moving
as fast as the data shows, right. And the reason
the two reasons for that in my mind, and one
is that customers just don't like to change, even if
they raise their hand and say, oh, yeah, this is
a great product. There's this nine next effect, the nine
next effect. This is written in Harvard Business Review one time,

(06:02):
and it's about the reality is that the entrepreneur and
the customer are nine x separated from realt reality. Right,
the entrepreneur believes his or her product or service is
nine or three times better than the competitor, and they
believe that three times more valuable to the consumer, right,

(06:22):
and the like, they're like nine times separated. And so
what happens takes longer costs, more sales cycles are longer,
you know. So I've learned this where Katy, unless you've
got ten twenty customers in the bag and you know
they're calling you and reordering, you actually haven't really hit
that scale button yet, you know.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, so let's talk about so, so what don't to
talk about. There's there's two, I think two issues here.
One is communicating to the customer in such a way,
and you've used the example of Prius, right, communicating to
the Let's talk about that. Communicating to the customer as
to how simple it is and what you know, the

(07:05):
how easy it is, and then second of all, actually
delivering easy. Those are two different things, right, I mean,
one is communicating, one is delivering that. Let's talk about
the communicating because I think that's very important for people
to find it to be easy, that they're hearing that
it's easy. And if you would, you know, talk a
little bit about the Preus example, because I think that's

(07:25):
a really good example.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I mean there's so many examples, and I'm talking
about a pizza example too.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Prius I think was like a great innovation right in
the end of the day, though what the customers saw
was a very simple thing called gas milage. Oh my god,
I was doing twenty five miles per gallon and I'm
doing fifty miles per gallen. They're still going to the
gas station they were still pumping gas. But the technology
is kind of hidden, right, I mean they were saying,
of course it was not hybrid, hybrid hybrid. It was
not like, let's talk about hybrid, Let's talk about gas knowledge, Right,

(07:57):
that's what the consumer really wants, you know. A better example,
I think is Google. So I, you know, in my
first company back in this is a this is a
funny story and first coming back in nineteen ninety seven,
I was sitting in you know, University Avenue in Silicon Valley,
and I saw this little flag of a of a
of a balcony and said.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Home of Google. And I took a lookd at my
business partner. I said, look at these you know idiots.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Do you think they're going to the world needs another
search engine? They were like seventeen search engines at the time. Right,
These guys didn't know what they're doing, and how wrong
was I What they did was they had this incredible
innovation in the back end, right, But all the customers
did was what they did on Yahoo or Alta Vista.
They just typed in something in a box.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
So I think it's not about actually communicating, it's almost
about not communicating. It's almost like saying, hey, life's not
going to change, it's just going to get better, right,
And I think that's that's where you know, when people
say to me, I got this great product and then
I look at their user interface and.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
It's this new way of doing things, even though.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
It's so ten times better, it scares me, not because
people don't want to change their habits as much, you know.
So I think that the Prius is a great example
because they sold so many cars and they still do.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
And I even know one.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
It's like the gas mileage is amazing, you know, it's
just like it's like, but the innovation was amazing, right,
It's hybrid technology, which didn't exist before.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
So I think that's kind of the the a good
example of it.

Speaker 4 (09:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
It's like, you know, when you want your kids do
I put this in my book as well, when you
want kids to eat kale or spinach or something, you know,
you put it underneath that cheese of the pizza to
start off with. So it's like they don't want they
want to just have the old experience with new innovation.
That's I think what the key of the laziness really is, you.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Know, right, So let me give you a really difficult example.
And wet to this ta earlier, But this is a
really tough one because I'm in the tax planning business. Yeah,
I have a franchise of CPA based tax advisory services,
and people go, oh, taxes are scary, taxes are difficult.

(10:07):
Einstein even said it's the most difficult subject in the
world to understand. Is Albert Einstein has said that how
can I possibly understand it? And from my standpoint, I
think taxes can be fun, easy and understandable. So how
do you? And so part of the issue is talk
about people hating to change. They have an accountant, right,

(10:28):
and I'm not pure hasn't account Everybody has their CPA.
Their CPA is not serving them, but they're they don't
want to change. So so let's walk walk us through.
So what would you do to go? Okay, well, let's
make this so it's a change. It's doing the same thing,
but it's a lot easier and a lot better. That's

(10:49):
what I'm hearing you say.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Yeah, now I was scared you want to ask me
that question because because I'm not a tax guy, right,
although it is taxing.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
You don't need to be a tax guy. I'm looking forward.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Let's talk about before I answer the question, which, by
the way, I don't know how to answer yet, let's
talk about, you know what the experience really is, right,
Let's live about my experiences.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, I've been using the same tax guy for a
long time, so they have two experiences. That one is,
I gotta damn prepare for that stuff, right, I got
to prepare for the tax person, right, And that takes
a long long time because it's my job to pull
all that information together so the tax CPA can do
his or her job. And then the second experience is
I gotta pay or get paid in the end, right,

(11:32):
I get a refund or I gotta pay.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Those are the two that's my experience, and they're both like, well,
second one you don't have much control over. But the
first one is. Another one is pay. You have to
pay the CPA, right, you got to pay them a
couple thousand dollars or whatever it is. So those are
three things that go through my mind, you know, when
I'm doing my taxes.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
So well, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
I mean, I think if there was a way to
to somehow streamline that delivery of information to the CPA.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
I don't know what that is.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I mean, I have to go to all my accounts,
I have to you know, download all the ten ninety nine's.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
You know, it's got to be some way.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
There is. We're working on that. So that actually goes
so that goes to the product side. And I want
to get to that, you know, you know, how do
you make the product easier, the delivery easier. And that
goes to the product side. But but what about the
communication side of hey? And I'm going to go to
the second one where you say something that is commonly said,

(12:28):
which is, well, I don't have much control over whether
I pay a refund, And I would tell you have
total control over pay a refund. You want a refund,
you can do that. We like to say, if you
want to change your tax you have to change your
facts and you can do it. We can tell you
how to do it. But how do you communicate that
to make it so simple that people go, hey, would

(12:50):
you like a refund instead of pain? I mean it
sounds like maybe it's that simple.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, you know, lately you see all these ads on
TV now because it's tax season, you know, and all
those people doing and they're they're doing the exact same
thing you just said. They're they're aiming, Hey, we were
giving you know, last year, you got a thousand, This year,
gonna get five thousand back. Okay, So they're not selling
the tax, they're selling the refund.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Selling the refund.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
They're selling the refund. So I think it's it's a
little bit of marketing. But if there was one way
of doing that and lowering the the personal toll of
collecting information, I think that's the trick. I don't know
what it is. Maybe some sort of a magical message
that says, hey, if you did these three things and

(13:36):
had a cup of cappuccino at the same time, then
instead of taking three hours, you can get it done
in one hour.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
And I was, you know, my my my topic was
more at the product side. The service side is so
relationship driven and so marketing driven that I think the
messaging is uh, you know, is key, right?

Speaker 3 (13:54):
And how do you get your how do you get
your word out? I mean I'm just curious.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, So, so for first, why we make it simple?
So my book Tax Free Wealth, all it does is
make taxes simple, and you know, it's simple to reduce
your taxes and you do actually have control. Do you
want to do you want to pay or do you
want to refund? I love that sell the refund and
and the other side of that is I think you're
you head on a big thing. We I've noticed that
throughout my industry and I've been in the industry forty

(14:19):
five years. Is that getting that info together? So we're
actually developing that product right now because we do see
that as a huge friction. And it's not just the
info for the tax return, it's it's all of the info.
So it's the info for you know, the information we
need to reduce your taxes, for the planning, all that
kind of stuff, all that gathering information. We're actually putting

(14:42):
that into a software package because I think that's the
that's the future of the system. So let's talk about
then products and how do you make the products easy
to use?

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, I think that it goes back to even the
previous example. Right as long as we don't have to
change the behavior of the customer too much. If they're
used to using email, if they're used to using you know, accel,
whatever they're used to using, if we can just use
that behavior behavior too for the new product. I think
that's the key. It's when you have to say, by

(15:17):
the way, instead of double click, you got a quadriple
click to get there. That's where I think even if
that quadriple click is ten times better for you and
saves you three times of money, I think that's the
key there.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, Apple did was go one click, right, so that
that much easier. They want the other direction they're.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
Going with a voice click. You know, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
I guess it's laziness, it's saturation, it's human behavior. And
you know, if you can get your kids to listen
to you, you can sell anything to anybody, right, I mean,
it's just it's all it's all over the map is
with innovation right now.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
So how do you actually strike that balance. You're developing
a product and you go, hey, this is really cool
because course of the innovator, you get all excited about it.
It's really cool, right, this will be fun. And you know,
like you said, we've talked to two or three clients
and oh yeah, that is really cool. That's that's that's
gonna be really awesome. And yet you want to make

(16:18):
it so so easy that they don't have like you said,
they don't really have to change their behavior. Let me
ask you a question. So you talked about Google. AOL
I always found to be very clunky and Google was
not clunky. That was a big difference, right, AOL is
not in business. Google is huge, right, and it's just
not clunky. So part of it sounds like it's just

(16:40):
make let's not make it clunky, clunky?

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Correct? Correct? I mean do you remember back then there
was asked jeeves.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
I don't know if you, Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
That was the simplest of all. Just ask jeeves, ask
them a question, you know. I think the the the
key though with Google was the algorithms and the innovation
that was under the good right, you don't see it
just the way you don't see the hybrid technology. So
how do you? So here's to answer your question. And
here's what I've learned is if you're going to develop

(17:09):
a new product, right, sure, there's a little bit of
an issue. You know what an innovator's dilema is where
if you're inventing something that doesn't exist yet, you can't
really ask your customer because they didn't even know, right,
you know, Like if you're going from flip phone to
you know, a smartphone. You're not going to go to
a flip phone users say hey, what should my UI
for for for smartphone be? They don't know that, right,

(17:30):
So you know that there's a risk of innovation there.
But if you can innovate with the customer upfront, like
make them part of the development team or make them
part of the of the product so that it's almost
as if it was developed by them, and that could
be a good marketing strategy for the future customers because

(17:51):
they're not buying from an innovator or a new you know, entrepreneur.
They're actually buying from a trusted peer or their port.
I think that's really that's number one, right, is if
you can wrap that customer in that early stage and
somehow find a way to incentimize.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Your customers then become your beta testers.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah yeah, no, they become your.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Development the developers.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Almost almost your developers, right. And the second one, and
this is the one that's the hardest, is is that
early success. You almost have to question your early success.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
It's like, if you you do this, if you get
ten customers, you don't know if these ten customers are
those type of customers that spend you know, the night,
you know, in front of Apple because they want the
first new Apple generation or are they the ones that
you know, the laggards or the you know, mainstream market, right,
And so I've seen that happen to me as well,
where you know, you get ten customers, you're like, oh

(18:50):
my god, it's two hundred. Then it's to one thousand,
and then you there's something happens at you know, customer
twenty two, like things kind of slow down a little bit.
So I think, you know, just nail it before scaling it,
That's what I call it is really important. And if
you can just spend time with the customers, do case studies.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Have them as references? I think, so.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Take your time off It sounds like you want to
take your time with it. Don't don't rush it.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Which is very hard to do when you know you
have financial pressure. Yeah, when you have you know, excitement.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Around the product. You know, oh my god, don't lose,
don't miss the boat. You know what if you like,
what if competition comes in and takes over the pie.
It's a it's a fine balance, right, But I think
in the end of the day, the message is that
the customers aren't as open to change even if.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
The ROI is so clear. That's what I think I'm seeing.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
So so what I'm hearing you say is don't try
to don't try to force the customer into that ROI
make it could maybe bring the ROI down a little
bit if you need to, to make it easier for
the customer to use it.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
It's correct.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
It's like, because you know, they don't want to learn
something new, you know they want to they want to
just save money and get better guess knowledge and just
you know, that's all they want.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
They just want to go into a little white box
and do a search.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Do you think that's part of the issue with electric cars?
That you have to plug them in, you have to wait,
you have to do all that. It's it's different even
though they did put the plug in the same place
as that as the gas tank would be, gas pump
would be, which is smart, but it has been a
very slow adoption.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
I yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to figure that
one out. I talked about hybrid electric versus hybrid.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
I just talking about the electric I think electric is
it or is it just the mileage? Is it just
that you.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Can't combination of things in my mind, right, And like,
why did I not buy an electric car yet?

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Right?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
All right, because well I have to let make all
these other decisions now. I kind of like I could
put solar panels on my roof. I gotta, you know,
if I have to go to la I gotta you know,
is it really gonna take me six hours or nine hours?

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Instead of paying sixty thousand dollars per car, I gotta
pay ninety thousand now because it's more expensive. Yet, so
I have to my ROI and then everybody's telling me
that those guess, those those mileage, those those ranges aren't
really what they are because that's if nobody's not in, air.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Conditioning is not on.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
And so I'll just wait a little bit because my
prius is giving me fifty five miles per gallon or
something like that. You know, it's not about electric cars.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
It's just about the.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Decision process, right, And I believe it's all going to
be you know, electric cars in the future, and it's
a price is going to come down and you'll be
driving and the roads are going to you know.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Be one thousand miles.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, So I think, you know, I'm not saying, but
but the adoption is much slower. You're right, isn't it.
It's much slower than then the graphs showed five years.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Right, So so how is there anything you can do?
Like take a sales funnel, right, which is the whole
idea is to lead a customer down a path, right,
And you're trying to make it easy for them because
you're assuming they're going to be lazy, and they're also

(22:22):
going to always choose the cheapest option. Right, So if
they want a piece of you, this is what we
say when we're on stage, is that they want a
piece of you, they're going to take the cheapest piece
of you. And if that's a book, they're going to
take the book versus your program because there's a big
cost difference. So don't sell both the book in the
program at the same place. They always want the cheapest part. So,

(22:43):
so can you discuss like how that sales funnel works
for that lazy customer?

Speaker 3 (22:49):
You know?

Speaker 2 (22:50):
I think you know, there's like the difference between the
sales funnel and the Saints pipeline, right, So I think
the sales funnel is kind of like you know what
experience they go through until they get to.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
The buy decision.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Okay, I think that the sales funnel doesn't really change,
It just slows down. In my mind, it's becomes the
sales funnel is the sales funnel, no matter if it's
an electric car or non electric car.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
It's the same funn the same funnel.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
But it's just it's not as it's a little wider now, right,
It's instead of it going faster down, it just goes
slower down. So I think the sales cycle is longer,
so you have to adjust your.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
You know, your business for that.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
But I think that the way to get the customer
through the sales funnel is to make that sales funnel
look as close to the old sales funnel, you know,
to make it look as if you know what you're
you're getting the same experience. It's just the fact that,
guess what, you don't have to stop at a gas
station anymore. You don't have to pay five dollars a
gas or four dollars a gallon for gas anymore. And
I think that the it's almost like you have to

(23:53):
superimpose the old over the new so that the customer
can reframe their mind and know that they're actually going
through the old experience as well, because in the end
of the day, it is still a car, right, it's
still the same experience. You know, you're still going for
point at a point B. So, I mean that's a
good question, but I think my experience is I think

(24:16):
it's called reframing strategy in sales, right, where you just
reframe it back to where you what the customer understands.
Try to show them the new thing too much.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Is it go either way?

Speaker 2 (24:30):
You know, it could go either way. Some people are oh, great,
beautiful or something. By wait a minute, right, So.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
So in electric car, if the only difference was they
went to the servant, the the seventy eleven or the
service station, whatever, they go to the convenience store basically
because that's what they are. You go to the convenience store.
Instead of putting gas in the car, you plug in
the electric But it takes same amount of time. It
just costslus. There you go, Yeah, then you'd be fine. Right,

(24:58):
that's how it is. You're gonna get the same mileage,
You're going to go the same distance. You're still going
to get that five hundred miles or four hundred miles
that your gas gas tank was used to now, but
instead of being four dollars a gallon, it's going to
be a dollar fifty basically a gallon for the equivalent mileage.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
So now the customer only has to think about one thing,
which is, oh, I'm paying twenty thousand dollars more for
the car, but I guess what it will pay off
in two years because I'm paying X a month in gas. Right.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
But but right now they have to think about a
whole bunch of things. Right, they have to think about
where do I charge it? How long does it take?

Speaker 1 (25:34):
You know, how far can I go?

Speaker 3 (25:35):
How far can I go? I like to go on trips?
Do I need two cars?

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Have any decisions? Yeah, it sounds like it's too many decisions.
That you have to bring down the number of decisions
so that it's really just the easy decisions like I
want do I want to pay less? Yes? Okay? Am
I willing to sacrifice maybe a little bit? Maybe instead
of five minutes at the station, I'm fifteen minutes of
the station. I might be willing to do that a
little bit of the sacrifice. I'm not willing to stay

(26:01):
there for forty five minutes.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Do you know, what's the easiest decision?

Speaker 1 (26:05):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (26:06):
No decision, that's the easiest decision.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
So how do you do how do you incorporate that?

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Well, as you said, you know, in that car example,
if you eliminate all the variables and bring it down
to just one, and now all you're doing is stopping
at the gas station and you know, in in less
than two minutes, you're maybe doing some sort of you know,
switch on, switch through or something like that. I don't
know what the technology is, but you know, then the
decision is just one, one decision, right, And it's it's

(26:35):
sad because if the customers just slowed down just a
little bit. And you know, cars is one example, but
you know, software is really another. It's a very I mean,
they could save companies millions of dollars, you know, millions,
and the decision process sometimes now, I remember I used
to sell you know, decades ago, you know, enterprise software,

(26:57):
you know, and you had to understand the company's financial
and HR and everything, and the sales cycle was like
six months a year of of just decision making, you know.
But in the end of the day, you know, it's
an intangible product and it saves the company a lot
of money. So but you know, car is a different,
different example. It's just more of a you know, a

(27:19):
faster decision in historically.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Right for people to right right right right.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
So yeah, this nine X effect is interesting. It's uh,
it's people are very far removed from the reality of
of innovation.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
So so if we want to if we want to
adapt our because you know, most businesses, we already have
our products, right, we're not We're not necessarily a startup.
I mean, yes, we may be starting up new products
on a regular basis, but if we're thinking about whether
it's a new product or an existing product, can you
give us, like, what are two or three steps you
would take to make sure that you're going to appeal

(27:58):
to the laziest customer.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Well, first of all, you need to know how the
laziest customers operate, right, If you know their experience, the
first thing I would do is see how my product
can talk to that experience. Okay, if if they just
like to sit on the couch and click on TV.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
While Netflix made it big because Netflix, you know, is
doing great technology streaming you know, movies and everything, but
the consumer is just clicking the remote control, the way they.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Did, you know, all their lives, right.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
So I think the first step is to fully understand
from the customer standpoint what the experience is, not run
the technology or the innovation standpoint, right. And then secondly,
you know, I think as as as we said earlier,
you know, simplify, simplify, simplify, right.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
I mean it's like and I'd always people not.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Just because of the laziness of the customer, but but
because of the saturation and so much information right that
I think having it, you know, just neatly packaged and
simplified and then converted into their original experience, and then say, oh,
by the way, by doing this, you're going to the
benefits are and just give them like three benefits not twenty, right,

(29:16):
And you're going to save x gas is going to
go from five to a dollar fifty. You know, you're
going to save this much time and guess what, life
is still the same. You know, it's almost like why
why wouldn't you you know, type of a scenario.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
So I think those are the key things that I've seen,
and I worked with so many entrepreneurs, so many first
time entrepreneurs, and I mean brilliant people. Well funded, great teams,
great products, great ip and you know there's this like, gosh,
why is sales picking up? I mean, everything is, all
the boxes are checked. So this this, this story or

(29:54):
this phrase that always takes twice as long and costs
twice as much, I believe is not because of the
development of it, but it's because of the sales and
market traction.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
It's it's it's that interface with the customer. Is that
what what are they thinking? Not what are you thinking?

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Well, I'd love to know what you're going to do
with the tax, how you're going to end it on
the tax side, because that's a good news.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
It's a painful it's a right, there's a lot to
throw there.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
There's a lot of friction there. So you take that away.
That's a big deal.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah that is a big deal.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah it is. It is a big deal. So so
stay tuned for that. That's okay, stay tuned. It's not
that far off. So that's good. So the book is
sole venture, and I love that you combined your you know,
your personal history, you know, along with the whole start,
because I think that makes a book so much easier
to read when there's a story involved and of course,

(30:53):
you know you're, as you said, you're you're a sales
and marketing guy, so you're all about storytelling in the
first place. And uh, you know, just remember when when
we get that story right, I mean, that's really what
we're talking about. Do we have a simple story, not
that Hey, look it's uh, it's it's great technology. But
you just increased your gas mileage, reduced your expenses by

(31:16):
fifty percent, right, you just increased it. You've doubled your
gas knowledge or you've reduced your gas consumption by fifty percent.
And look that this is all you're doing, right, And
it's got on top of that, by the way, it
has more power, which is true. Right. You get into
a Prius and you go, whoa, this is like, this
is not like a Toyota. This is actually has power

(31:39):
behind it because of that electric boost to it exactly.
And it's a little surprising the first time you do that,
because I remember that many many years ago, the first
time getting into a Prius that i'd rented in Europe.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
Electric a lot of power. Acceleration is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, it doesn't have to go through the whole process
to get to the wheel, right, just go straight to
the wheel, right.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
So you give your customers a surprise benefit that they're
not expecting. That I think that's a that's a huge
bonus when.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
No one's marketing that, oh I acceleration zero zero to
sixteen in four secondstead of four point five seconds.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
No one really is marketing. Is just a surprise benefit,
as you said.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Right exactly. And I love that, Ashland. So where can
we go besides buying your book? Where can we go
up more information about what you're doing?

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Well, you can obviously, I'm on online LinkedIn my name
Ashwan Glatti. I'm on Facebook. You can go to soul
venture book dot com. And that is kind of like
a sub page of my website great, which is Matchpoint Ventures.
And I pretty much help, you know, companies take off
and land, and I kind of go in and look
at the business from a both personal and a business perspective,

(32:49):
you know. And I think that's one of the essence
of the book is that it's that it's not just
a business journey, but it's also a very deep personal
journey that entrepreneurs go through. And a lot of people
don't talk about that, and I think I kind of
go through that both for my own personal you know,
experiences of what I went through over the last thirty years,
and you know some of the private confessions of my

(33:10):
clients and friends.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
You know who you know wouldn't say things, you know.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
In a in a board meeting or an investor meeting.
But you know, you know what's going on. And I
think it's a it's it's been really well received and
so you can, you know, go to my website online,
look me up on Google and you can definitely get
to me.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Great. Thank you so much, josh One. And just remember,
you know, when we make it easier for our customers
to buy, just think if it's easy for the laziest customer,
think how much better it is for your best customers exactly.
And when you do that, what will always end up,
as you know, you'll always end up making way more
money and in the end paying way less tax. We'll

(33:50):
see all next time on the Wealltability Show. Thanks everyone.
This podcast is a presentation of Rich Dad Media Network.

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