MBS962-David Schonthal, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at Kellogg, and Author

David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new
venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, venture capital, and creativity.

Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory – a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promising
innovations and change initiatives struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and more importantly, what to do about it. This work is popularized in David’s Wall
Street Journal and National Bestselling book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas (Wiley).

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to yet another cracking instalment of the Map Brown show. With me on the line from the University of Kellogg, you may see his room. It looks pretty intelligent. So it's going to be an intelligent conversation, I hope. But with me on the line is uh David Strundal. Welcome to the show, bud.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yeah, it's a privilege to have you on the show. Um, the least of which I've been doing a lot of research on you. You're obviously an award-winning professor of strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship at Kellogg School of Management, where you teach courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, vent capital, and creativity. I mean, is there anything else you don't teach? Economics. Economics, thank God, for you. Let's not talk about game theory today. Uh but um you've obviously been also another accolade as top 30 global thinkers to watch in 2022. Uh but I think it's 50, so you're you're kind of a big deal. Um so thank you for making it only only in the nerdiest community. Yeah, exactly. Only in the University of Kelog, that's pretty much it, guys. Uh but you're also um an author, we're going to be talking about uh your book, uh The Human Element, Overcoming Resistance That Awaits New Ideas, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestseller, just FYI. Uh but uh so there's lots to get into today. Uh but um David, if you could kick us off, uh what's the kind of elevator pitch um for our audience around the world who potentially haven't been following uh your research and the contribution that you've made to the not only the faculty of Kellogg but to uh business, uh, you know, the community of business uh leaders around the world. So um kick us off. What do we need to know?

SPEAKER_03 1:42

So I guess the elevator pitch, and maybe specifically around the book, um, is that my background is in design, innovation, entrepreneurship. And I've always been interested in the question of why it is that people resist new ideas. Why is it that somebody says no to what is clearly a good idea, good innovation, or a new product they should adopt? And for the large part of my career, the focus it was on if they're not saying yes to a new idea or saying yes to my new innovation, there must be something wrong with the idea or something wrong with the innovation. So I should figure out on how to feature it differently or how to talk about it differently or how to price it differently. I spent a lot of time thinking about the idea or the thing, but then realized uh with the help of my co-author, Lauren Nordgren, that it's really partially amplifying the magnetism of the idea. But as important, if not more important, is making sure that we think about the resistance that awaits that new idea from the audience we're trying to affect. And so for the last several years, my research has been focused on what it is about people and human beings that make us resistant to change. And the human element is about spotting that resistance and overcoming that resistance so that our new ideas and our new strategies and our new products make it to market successfully.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Interesting stuff. Um, how did you get onto this train though? Like, you know, walk us back to the beginning. What sparked your curiosity in this particular topic?

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Uh, working in venture capital and entrepreneurship, all too often I see portfolio companies or entrepreneurs who obviously have a really interesting idea that people should adopt into their lives that never actually get traction. We sometimes refer to it as product market fit, the right offer for the right customer. Most of us think that if product market fit doesn't exist, we're not developing the right offer. And so um started thinking about, you know, that's certainly partially true, but why is it that people don't like to adopt new things when they ought to? And that got me involved with partnering with Lauren, who's a colleague of mine here at the Kellogg School and a psychologist. And together we sort of dug into this problem, me from an innovation and entrepreneurship lens, Lauren from a psychological perspective, about what it is about human beings that make us that way.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah, that's fascinating stuff. Um, maybe if we could double-click on your venture capital experience. So, you, from my understanding, we're going to get into design thinking as well. So you spent a long time at IDEO, um, amazing design company. Uh, you're obviously also an operating partner or were at Seven Wire Ventures. So that's a healthcare technology-focused venture capital firm and also a venture partner at Pritzka, Group Venture Capital. Uh, so you spent a lot of time there. Um, so it's interesting that you've got this design hat on, but you've also got, you know, in the trenches of VC thinking and what uh what is a backable idea versus how do you actually, from a founder perspective, get the thing to scale at all, you know, um and and overcome this resistance that you write about in your book, The Human Element. Um so um maybe if we could start with the the venture capital uh side of things. Um what has that taught you about a founder engaging with a VC who's trying to get funding as an example? Because ideas are not only resisted from the users themselves or the customers themselves, they're they're they're resisted oftentimes by all the stakeholders in the supply chain. So this could be partners, it could be you know uh third-party suppliers, uh venture capital people, etc. So in that context, uh what have you learned about overcoming resistance to ideas?

SPEAKER_03 5:26

From the lens of a venture capital. Yeah, from a venture, yeah, venture capital. Yeah. Um I think well, one of the frameworks that we talk about in the book is called inertia. Uh so we have four frictions that we highlight in the book, four reasons that people people primarily resist new ideas. One is inertia, which is our overwhelming desire to stick with what we know. The other is effort, how much physical, mental, economic effort is required to implement the change. The third is emotion, which is what is the anxiety that new idea provokes in other people? And the fourth is reactance, which is uh a fancy word that effectively means people don't like being changed by other people. When it comes to uh VCs in terms of how VCs uh evaluate different ideas, I think that first principle of inertia is really the key. A lot of VCs resist things that feel inherently unfamiliar to them. And many VCs as a species are pattern recognizers and they type that we like to look for things that we know. Maybe it's maybe it's a new business, but it's a business model that has been proven, and therefore the business model has minimal risk, even though the idea might be different, the business model is known, or the entrepreneur is known and it's a new venture for that entrepreneur, but we know that entrepreneur has a track record. So, what I find to be the biggest source of resistance from VCs to new ideas is when the entirety of the thing is unfamiliar, the entrepreneur is unfamiliar, the idea is unfamiliar, the market's unfamiliar. So, one of the things, one of the mistakes that entrepreneurs make when they're approaching a VC with an inherently unfamiliar concept is to highlight all of its newness. Like, look at all this radical change it'll bring about, look at how it's different than this, look at how it's different from that. And in some ways, the instincts of the entrepreneur are the inverse of what the instincts of the VC are, which is by highlighting all of its newness and how it's going to be the first to do X, Y, and Z, you're actually making me a little nervous because that's something I'm not familiar with and something I don't recognize. So to overcome that, it's actually in the entrepreneur's best interest to try to make an unfamiliar idea feel a little bit more familiar. We're like A, but for B. Or you might not know me, but let me tell you about all of the people that I'm connected to. You might not know about this market, but let me tell you how the business model we're trying to implement is similar to the business model that you are familiar with. All of this is in an effort to minimize that friction of inertia.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

So I actually brought up your quadrant on the screen. Excuse me, guys. I've been coming coming over a head call, so peace do excuse the occasional cough. Um so I've got it up here.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

I just assume you cough when you get really excited.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

But this is the other thing. Or when I'm oh well. Or when I'm going to the doctor. Cough, please. But um, so I'll sort of quickly bring it up on screen and and maybe double down on this because I think this is quite a cool um uh point of departure here because we've touched on the VC thing. I love how you describe them as a species. Uh but you've got inertia, effort, emotion, and reactance. Now, are these four frictions uh uh essentially part of what you describe as friction theory?

SPEAKER_03 8:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Yeah. Frick friction theory is is basically the the name for the phenomena that we talked about before, which is despite people knowing they need to change, they resist it.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Uh, because of how they're wired as human beings, and these four frictions, as we refer to them, uh the four that you've got on the screen, these are the primary sources of friction that await any new idea on its way to market.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Um Is there one that you find most prolific in terms of friction and the resistance to the adoption of new ideas?

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Like prolific. Um I think well, let me answer that in two ways. I think the one that's most obvious to people is effort. Uh effort in in in because it's most obvious, we tend to spot it more than we spot other frictions. So obviously, the whole business of UIUX design is to minimize effort-related friction through a digital experience when we're doing service design or experience design. Our job as designers is to try to remove all of the unnecessary effort, cognitive or otherwise, in order to get somebody to change. So that's the one that we notice the most. Uh, like fewer clicks to get to a buy, the better. The one that I think is the hardest to spot, but often kind of always present is emotion. And the reason it's hardest to spot is we don't often wear the true emotional reasons we do or don't do things on our sleeve. Those are things that have to be discovered through often qualitative research. So whether you're buying a pack of gum or you're buying a new piece of enterprise software or a home, emotional friction is always there to some extent. It's just what's the magnitude of it? Stay with us. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Hey there. I know being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience. You sometimes get stuck, don't you? Well, if you're like me, being stuck sucks. But what if you could access the minds of over 850 CEOs who have built companies generating billions of dollars in revenue and access all of that knowledge in a fraction of a second? Well, the good news is you can't literally do that today. What my team have built is MathBrown AI. It is trained on all the interviews, over 850 of them that I've done to date, all my books, all the knowledge capital that has been generated over the last 10 years right here on the Map Brown show. And you can get access to all of that right now for free. So, how do you get access to this? Well, head on over to mapbrown show.com and at the top you'll see community. Hit that link, sign up, it's absolutely free, and you'll be given instant access to Matt Brown AI and a community of over a hundred thousand subscribers. So, what exactly is emotional friction? Because I see here up on the screen that we uh you basically said it's the unintended negative uh emotional consequence of adopting a new thing or change, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:32

So walk walk us through it. Maybe maybe the best way to describe it is through a story, and I'll take one from the book. Uh back in the 1920s, uh, I imagine many folks in the audience uh are familiar with what instant cake mix is. Yes. Instant cake mix is either Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines here in the US, where you've got all the dry ingredients for a cake. You add, you know, a couple of fresh ingredients to cake mix, you mix it up, you pop it in the oven, and you get like a perfectly consistent, delicious cake every time. Cake mix was invented in the late 1920s by General Mills, which is a CPG company here in the United States under the brand Betty Crocker. And this was based on a bunch of research they did with their market about why people who would like to be home bakers are resistant to being home bakers. And part of the discovery of the research was that it takes a lot of effort to go to the grocery store and buy all these ingredients in small amounts. Even though, you know, we have ovens that work, gas ovens in the 1920s were less consistent than electric ovens today. So there was the imprecision risk of ruining a cake once you popped it in the oven. Of course, all of the physical effort required in baking it. So a lot of people that would like to be home bakers were resistant to home baking because they didn't have the tools and the know-how. So the innovation that came out of that research was, of course, instant cake mix, which had all these dry ingredients, powdered eggs, powdered milk. All you needed to do as a home baker in the 1920s was add a bit of water, whisk in those ingredients, pop it in a cake pan, put it in the oven, and it would churn out this delicious, perfect cake. And it did exactly what it said it was going to do. It created these beautiful, delicious cakes, taste test after taste test, usability study after usability study proved it did exactly what customers were expecting. But for one reason or another, it would take another 25, almost 30 years before cake mix would actually become successful. So Duncan Hines, I'm sorry, uh Betty Crocker was in this position of like, wait, we're solving the problem people clearly have. We're doing it in a way that clearly works. It's priced less than buying the ingredients for a normal cake. Why isn't why aren't people actually like coming in droves to buy the thing that we have created for them? And in order to figure out the answer to this problem, they hired in the 1930s and 40s, they hired a Viennese researcher who is a psychologist, psychiatrist that came from the same school as Sigmund Freud, a guy named Ernst Dichta. And if you're sort of listening to this or watching this, imagine in your mind what like a 1940s era Viennese psychiatrist looks like. And that's pretty much exact that's pretty much exactly what Ernst Dichte looks like. Yeah. So they brought him in. Ernst Dichta, just sort of funny enough, was credited with inventing the focus group. He was one of the first people to apply principles of psychological analysis to customer research to understand what the emotional reasons people do things are. So Ernst Dichta dove into this problem, and through his analysis and his discovery, he determined that the reason people were resistant to the cake mix they clearly said they wanted was because, in an effort to take a lot of the energy and frankly effort out of the process, Betty Crocker had inadvertently made making a cake too easy. And you sit there and you're like, what do you mean too easy? And and if you think about it, like really all you have to do is add water whisk and pop it in in the the pan and put it in the oven. Like, is that really still a cake that you made, or is that cake store-bought now? Like, what's the line between buying a cake and baking a cake? And and what Ernst Dick to realize is part of the reason that people hire a cake, they hire the process of making a cake, is because baking a cake for somebody else is like the ultimate greeting card. It's like this beautiful display of sentiment and care. I've taken the time to make this for you. I've baked it, I've delivered it to you. It's this show of emotional sentiment to somebody else. Now, if I just add water and I put it in the oven, is that still me taking the time to make this for you or am I cheating? It's sort of like the equivalent of Matt. If like if I invite you over to my house for a homemade gourmet dinner and you walk in and you see me microwaving like lean cuisines in a pan and then pouring it onto a plate and serving it to you, it's like, is that still a homemade meal? So, in this effort to make it easier, they sort of robbed uh these users of the very value they were hiring the cake for, which is how it would make them feel about themselves when they gave this cake to somebody else. So they hire it for both functional and emotional value. And inadvertently, as they removed effort, Betty Crocker actually created this emotional friction which was causing anxiety in their users of like, wait a minute, like maybe this isn't delivering the value or giving me the value that I was seeking. So, what did they do? Uh, for for they what they wound up doing was actually adding deliberately a little bit of friction back into the process. And for some reasons that were deeply, deeply Freudian, uh, the one ingredient that Ernst Dichter recommended they add back in was to remove the powdered eggs and insist that homebakers crack fresh eggs into the batter, whisk in the fresh eggs, and just the effort of buying another fresh ingredient and cracking the fresh eggs and whisking in was just enough effort to make homebakers feel like the cake was theirs. And cake mix took off like a rocket ship, and the industry has never looked back since. So the summary point on emotional friction is sometimes when we're trying to help people, we inadvertently cause this anxiety or this discomfort, which is hard to spot on the surface, but easier to determine once you spend some time talking to them and understanding why.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, it's fascinating that story. Uh the thing, the thing that jumps for me is is context. So you touched on earlier, um, you know, digital friction, uh payment processing, like going to a coffee shop paying with Apple Pay is very different to taking out your card, plugging it in, putting in your, you know, putting in your pin code or tapping whatever the case might be. Um and so even that in that small example, context for payments is is different to context for cakes, which is different to Amazon e-commerce. Um and so context is really important. So if you take your you know your four ideas of inertia, effort, reactance, and emotion, um, and we'll get into your book a bit more in more detail in a moment. Uh excuse me, context is so so so important in my experience. Do you um do you subscribe to the idea of uh of context when it comes to design thinking? So if you take about baking a cake, there's a very different context. Like you made it too easy. I actually want to suffer a bit, so when I put it in front of David, I want him to know how much I love him. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_03 18:21

Context is is crucial. And you're right. I mean, some in some situations, people desire friction or effort because of how it makes them feel afterwards, right? If working out were super easy, yeah. I mean, presumably some people would do more of it, but some people actually like the effort required and the feeling they get, the endorphins they get from after putting in that effort. So context is crucial, and and and I'll build on that even further by saying uh, especially now, because contexts change so rapidly with global health and and economic situations and and unrest politically. Uh, our context is changing faster than ever before. So an answer that you give me today about what you might want to do in the future, while truthful today, could change next week because the context you're in will change out from under you. For example, Matt, if I asked you, like today is Thursday here in the US, Thursday morning, um what will you have for dinner next Thursday night? What what would you what would you tell me?

SPEAKER_00 19:19

No idea. No, take a guess. What would you have next Thursday night? Okay, okay, cool. Um I'm gonna go with uh steak and sweet potato. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Steak and sweet potato. And he's you know, that's a pretty reasonable answer. Like once a week I'll have steak and sweet potato. Usually it's later in the week, so Thursday feels about right. And the answer that you're giving me right now is truthful, like to the best of your ability. So next week I'm gonna go and make a bunch of steak and sweet potatoes. I'm gonna wait for you to show up and buy them and you don't, and then I wonder why you don't. And the reason is because, like between last week and this week, maybe somebody invites you out to dinner. Maybe you have to work late, maybe you're too tired to make steak and potatoes and you want to order something in. And it's not that you're giving me an in invalid or or unreasonable answer today. It's that something in your context has changed that renders that answer obsolete. And so when we're designing, it's crucial we don't design for something that is context static. We have to design for things allowing for context to shift.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah. Um, I just want to maybe change gears and talk about your uh blog post, because I think this is quite a uh an interesting article that I picked up on your your your website. It's called human elementbook.com, guys. If you are interested uh to learn more about David and uh and his book. Um, but the the title of the article it's the it's the autonomy stupid.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

I've got a 90s political reference, if anybody's that what it is?

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Okay, cool. Wow. Um but um walk us through this because this is actually about resistance to change. And if you think about the pandemic, um, you know, a lot of us went uh you know, work to working from home situations. Um and and you're basically saying that um, if at least from from my initial reading, is that to get people to go back to the office the way things were now that they've been working from home, it's gonna be a hard job and we'll encounter a lot of resistance. Um so walk, I think that's correct. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yes, okay, cool. So walk us that through that in terms of you know the resistance to ideas. One this idea specifically, the context now is you know, how do you get your distributed workforce to come back to the office?

SPEAKER_03 21:32

Yeah. Um so the the basis of this post is really uh it was written right around almost exactly the two year mark for the pandemic. And the general idea is this that if I had asked your audience in March 1st of 2020, would you rather have your work situation be where you're in the office and working with your colleagues and in a professional environment? Or would you rather work Work exclusively from your kitchen table or from your second bedroom and never go into the office. Most people would probably say, I'll pref I prefer option A, like I want to have the ability to go into the office. Then mid-March rolls around, and all of a sudden working from our second bedrooms and working from our kitchen tables is better than not working at all. So we're sort of forced to change context. And so we start doing that out of obligation. Then we fast forward two years later to mid-March 2022, where in many places the pandemic starts to ease. And now all of a sudden offices are reopening. And executives and business leaders are saying, hey, that thing that you wanted to do two years ago, working in the office with your colleagues, like, come on back. Let's do that. It's open. Let's let's everybody come back. Let's do it. And people in their companies are like, not so fast. And now these executives are thinking, well, all right, if they're not coming back, the reason must be because the idea of working in the office isn't appealing to them anymore. So like, let's make that idea more appealing. Let's pay for their parking, let's pay for their commute, let's give them lunches. And this isn't a joke, right? Like, let's bring in ice cream machines in the cafeteria because the thing that people are missing is ice cream. Like, who knows, right? But they're throwing all these benefits and perks at people, thinking that's what's going to bring them back to the office. And what many of these business leaders, I think, are missing is that it's not the idea of being in the office that's no longer appealing. I think that that's there's still some appeal to that. What they're missing is that in these last two years, when people have been working from home, they've actually gained something that they didn't realize that they valued as much, which is autonomy. Meaning, like I now have much more control over my time. I can wake up a little bit later than I normally do. I can have breakfast with my kids every morning. I can take the dog for a walk in the middle of the day. I can take a nap in the afternoon if I want to. I'll still get my work done, but it's basically on my own schedule in my own time. So people that had been working for big companies were kind of like freelancing or entrepreneurs, like they had more control over their own schedule. And one thing that people value almost above everything else, with maybe the exception of meaning, is autonomy, like the feeling that we are in control of our own experience. So we've given people this remarkable autonomy for the last two years. And now we're saying everybody come back in. And what we're actually doing to them or what we're signaling to them is we're taking that autonomy away. And so I think friction theory explains, and this article tries to dive into that rather than solving for making the idea of coming back into the office more appealing, let's address the autonomy issue and see if we can find some ways to make people feel more comfortable with this idea of coming back.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

So, I mean, what do you what's your advice to founder entrepreneurs such as myself and many others who are watching us around the world right now who are mulling with this idea on whether they should or they shouldn't. So for me, I agree with you entirely around uh autonomy. They gained a lot, I think. I think that, you know, I don't think you know, when you go through such a disruptive period, everything go anything goes back to the way that it was. Um not entirely. It's not, you know, it's too just it's too much of a point of departure for in my from my perspective. Um and uh in the I mentioned to you up front that uh my businesses are being acquired. And um the the acquirers that we've been dating, um, a lot of them are amazed that we all work from home. Um and so I don't as personally for me, I think everybody should just stay at home. We're more productive that way. It's nice to get together, um, but uh, you know, there's there's for us this it's too disruptive to actually go back to the way things were. Um but if you're a founder sitting on the fence and you're some of your employees potentially are asking you, you know, hey, are we ever going to go back to the office or not? And they're mulling with this or wrestling with this idea of going back or not at all, or going maybe going back to some kind of hybrid. Um, what's your advice to a founder?

SPEAKER_03 26:15

It's hard to uh to give a blanket answer because every corporate culture and every work environment is so different. I mean, for businesses like yours, distributed work may work better than being in person for lots of different reasons. For other types of companies, like you mentioned that I used to work at IDEO and design firms, there's real value in being in a project space together and iterating and synthesizing in real time or being out in the field working with real users. So I think it, again, harping on the theme of context, I think it is context dependent. So it's hard to give like a blanket answer, like everybody should do X or everybody should do Y. But in the instances where companies are eager to have their people come back in, I mean, there's two, there's two things that you've mentioned that I would call out. Number one, one thing that drives the workforces nuts is not knowing, right? The ambiguity of what's going to happen or not happen is what kind of eats away at people. Uh, and this gets into effort. I mean, it's actually effort, cognitive effort for me to figure out like where am I going to base myself if I'm unclear every three months if I'm going back to the office or not? Where am I going to move or not move? What do I do about planning vacations or not planning vacations? The not being able to see three months, four months, six months in front of your face, that tends to drive people crazy. Um, so even just giving some resolution about timeline and giving them a roadmap to how the decision is going to be made, all of that clarity and transparency helps people overcome that ambiguity, which is a big force of resistance. The second thing around this autonomy issue, the force of friction that this really touches on is reactance, which is that uh principle about people resisting being changed by others. I know, maybe I know that coming back into the office is a good idea, but because you're telling me to do it and I'm not choosing to do it, that's making this a tough situation. So the best way to overcome that source of resistance is to allow people to persuade themselves. Allow people to persuade themselves that coming back into the office, at least in part, is a good idea. And one of the ways that we can do that, and one of the ways we've been advising companies on how to reintroduce people back into the office, is to involve those employees or at least a subset of those employees in the design of what the return to office will be. So, like come to them and say, do a little design sprint and say, here's the business objective we have, here are the collaboration objectives we have as a firm. Now, you can you, you employees, can you help us design the best way to get people on board with achieving some of these objectives? And now because they're inventors of the movement and not recipients of the movement, their relationship to that change is radically different.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

I suppose this is a good uh point of departure to actually not get deep into your book because um one of the key things for me is uh the idea that let's just say I could prove through data and analytics to my team that we're more productive. We get more shit done faster, and we're a more effective business. Um so data and analytics is everywhere. Uh you also, uh one of your research papers uh from my research, uh you you actually wrote about uh the role of data and analytics. In other words, you said what might be missing from your analytics strategy. Um so I know that you think about data quite a bit, and and from my understanding, the book, the human element, it's like the thing that's missing from data and analytics. In other words, if I could prove, I could say, listen, guys, check how more productive we are. But what you're saying is there's the human element that really needs to be understood uh in order to get to get that change uh to happen. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey there, I know being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience. You sometimes get stuck, don't you? Well, if you're like me, being stuck sucks. But what if you could access the minds of over 850 CEOs who have built companies generating billions of dollars in revenue and access all of that knowledge in a fraction of a second? Well, the good news is you can't literally do that today. What my team have built is Matt Brown AI. It is trained on all the interviews, over 850 of them that I've done to date, all my books, all the knowledge capital that has been generated over the last 10 years right here on the Matt Brown Show. And you can get access to all of that right now for free. So, how do you get access to this? Well, head on over to mattbrown show.com and at the top you'll see community. Hit that link, sign up, it's absolutely free, and you'll be given instant access to MacBrown AI and a community of over a hundred thousand subscribers.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Yes. Uh it it can almost never tell us why.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

And as an innovator or an entrepreneur or as a business owner, business leader, knowing that something is happening is really helpful, but understanding why it's happening is really crucial. And so uh I would never say, like, yeah, data's not very helpful. Uh, but getting to the why underneath it, the the things that explain the causal mechanisms is really crucial. Like that I am 45 years old and have two kids and live in the suburbs does not make me go to McDonald's. It could be that an overwhelming number of 45-year-olds that have two kids that live in the suburbs go to McDonald's, but those data are correlative in nature, not causal in nature. As an innovator or an entrepreneur, I need to know what causes somebody to go to McDonald's, what causes somebody to want to work from home or want to work remotely or want to work in the office or whatever it might be. And when I understand the causal relationships, that's where I can really dig in and do some cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

So, what do some of these causal relationships look like in the real world? So if you wanted to say um innovate in a corporate space, you mentioned that you were advising corporates around innovation and things like that. Um, so in the context of innovation, I had Alexander Osterworld on the show recently. You spoke about business model designs, D blank, uh, you know, the rest of the guys. Um, this idea of innovation has come up consistently. Um, and so I'm very, very curious to get your view here on um on let's just maybe paint it in the context again of design thinking. What's the role of something like social psychology in design thinking? So you want to take a new innovation to market, you're running a design sprint. What's the role of social psychology in that context?

SPEAKER_03 32:54

Uh huge. In fact, to sort of like pull back the curtain a little bit on the design process and idea in particular, one of the most novel things that IDEO did when it was first getting off the ground and transitioning from David Kelly design to IDEO, what is now IDEO. I think one of the biggest moments of true innovation and radical change in the design space was the addition of human factors, research, into the design process. Prior to that, industrial designers were, IDEO is primarily dust industrial designers, and and specifications would come over the transom. The industrial designers would make things according to the specification and then ship it out the door and then wonder why nobody was actually using it. And in the earlier days of IDEO's founding, they deliberately brought in anthropologists and psychologists and people who were real experts on understanding the needs of human beings. We called it human factors at the time. Now it's called design research. Um, and that real radically changed the world of design and really sparked design thinking. And if you were to ask me what the most crucial ingredient in the design process is, uh, it's not the development of the product, it's not even the commercialization of the product, it's the insight that leads to that product in the first place. The thing that really good designers do that that other people don't is they learn things about people that their competitors haven't figured out. Like one thing that makes IDEO, or at least historically made IDEO as special as it was, uh, and makes some design industry uh leaders as special as they are, is they tend to know things about human beings that other other companies haven't figured out in helping people make that progress in new and novel and interesting ways.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

So that's really interesting. I'd love for you to talk more about um your time at IDEO and the role of insight mining in the context of design. So um I'm actually gonna bring up uh the IDEO website here. There's one particular headline, and it's like how a$4,000 vet bill sparks innovation at American Express. Um so I suppose insight can come from a number of different places. Um but if you're a startup founder and you're looking to run a design sprint and it's got to be more than just the technology, it's got to be about the insight, which I actually fully agree because we've got technology products in our uh in our stable, um, and we don't you know talk and as a team enough about uh insight specifically, like why this. You know what I'm saying? Like why this particular thing? Um, like if you think about Amazon and the recommendation engines, it's like people who bought this also bought this, you know, it makes sense insight-wise to recommend similar products to remove friction from the buying uh experience or time and effort to your point uh earlier. Um but if you're a startup founder, what's the right approach in terms of mining insights before you get into a design sprint?

SPEAKER_03 35:53

Um so I I first of all, I I should say that insights is kind of a loaded term. Like innovation is a loaded term, disruption is a loaded term. Like, what is an insight? Yeah, uh, I think let's start there because I think what most people think are insights are not insights. Like if it was obvious to you before you did research, it's not an insight. If it's true but not particularly helpful, it's not an insight. Like there's a phrase we sometimes use in design, which is the acronym TBU, which stands for true but useless. And like you may say, like, oh, people wish they ate less indulgent food. True. Useless. Like, what do I do with that? That's so obvious. I probably could have told you that before I did the research. So the key to an insight is that it's unexpected, that it's non-obvious, and it usually describes something below the surface. And typically, insights, like a nice way to think about insights is they tend to describe tension, right? People wish they could do X but are forced to do Y. People wish they were able to achieve this, but have to settle for that. And when you create that tension, what that does is it creates this space for design ideas to drop into, right? People wish they could do X. That's the progress they're trying to make, right? That's the struggle they've got in their life. In order to do Y is the is like achieving that goal. That's the that's the outcome they're looking for. And in between, there is where we can iterate on solutions, but we have to understand that tension first. So what I generally find is that successful entrepreneurs have discovered an insight about their customers or about the businesses they're serving that other people have missed, or uh they have uh followed a trail of breadcrumbs that their customers have left them and they other people haven't paid attention to. For example, um, many people are trying to solve their own problems. We hack together our own solutions, we duct tape things together. And you mentioned that$4,000 Amex bill is the inspiration for American Express. Uh, if you read that case, which is around uh the advent of Pay a Planet, which is this feature that's now on all American Express cards, it allows you to either pay something right away or pay it over time, but you know up front what the financing charges are going to be for paying it over time versus holding a balance and having a variable APR. The insight was that this particular customer, which was representative of what a lot of customers were doing in American Express, was coming up with their own way to do pay at Planet before the company actually said, What's going on here? Like, why are these customers choosing to do this? Why are they paying certain things and not paying other things? And only by paying attention to what their customers were already trying to do for themselves, did American Express say, wait a minute, like they're inventing this solution inside of our platform. Why don't we just try to make it more elegant for them to do the thing they already want to do? So if I were thinking about the longitude of a design project, I would spend for two-thirds of it on research and one third of it on product development and commercialization. Because if I start in the wrong place, I'll most definitely end up in the wrong place.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

But I think it but I think it's like an Einstein pro uh thing where it's like, you know, if you have uh 16 minutes to solve a problem, how do you spend your time? And I actually asked that as an interview question. Because you know, businesses, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurships like, you know, go out there and solve problems. And every day you're creating problems just by in through inertia. You know, you pick up on your word earlier. Um and so your ability to solve a problem fast is often what makes the difference in in a lot of contexts, specifically competitive differentiation as an example or tactical strategy or things like that. Um and um and so the process, going back to your point around insight, uh, for me is actually quite a revealing one. Um, not only because it matters in terms of the design process itself, um, but in terms of the richness of the idea in the first place. Um so with Einstein thinking about the problem, how do you spend your time? It's like, well, you spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes about the solution. Because the more you think about the problem, the more you think about the insight, the more you think about the context, the deeper you go, the better your your thinking is. It's just natural. And when that when that thinking transcends from your brain or from the collective consciousness of your people into a product that's usable and then scalable, that's when you start to disrupt markets, displace incumbents, you start to include through technology consumers who are previously excluded because of the richness of your thinking. You don't solve like concepts like universal basic income just by doing periphery thinking, or things like decentralized finance on the blockchain. Like these are very, very rich, deep technical things that require a lot of deep thoughts. Um and so the deeper you go, um, the better off your your product will ultimately be. Do you subscribe to that narrative or do or those sentiments? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:08

Yeah. I mean, the shortest answer is yes, absolutely. And we're not going to be able to do uh and and you know, even like you describe distributed web and things like this. Because things are feasible to do technologically doesn't mean that they will always resonate with their customers emotionally or in terms of desirability. So because I can create distributed web products or decentralized finance, like it's possible to do it technologically, but that doesn't overcome the trust issue that my users are gonna have.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

That doesn't overcome the anxiety of the unfamiliar of utilizing a blockchain instead of using existing financial institutions. So because it can be done technologically is part of the problem, but figuring out how people will integrate it into their lives is absolutely essential. And the other thing, too, Matt, is like there's more innovation, there's more startups now than any time in human history. Anybody with an idea and$50 to launch a Wix website or a Shopify site can start a business today, which means that it's even more essential, because there are so many businesses in the UNESCO, it's even more essential to have that unique insight that separates you from everybody else because the market has never been more crowded.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Yeah. One of the um processes or tools that I've used is something called insight laddering. So I used to do it when I worked previous life at Ogilvie for advertising and communication strategies. So if you want to talk to a consumer about financial services, for instance, uh the idea to get to a rich insight is to ask why. So if we we all want to transact easier, why? And then you get to the level, you're peeling away the layers of the onion, if you like. Well, we all want to track transact easier because we want immediate gratification. Well, why? And so you know you can start to ladder down to a point where it's actually no, no, no, that's too narrow, back up, and then you're like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:01

To the point where it's it's about your parents. Exactly. Screaming use of blockchain. Why? Because of my parents, my relationship with that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but no, you're I mean, not to be not to be joking about. You're absolutely right. I mean, this is like sometimes we refer to it as the five whys, and we use it in operations management, we use it in customer discovery, but it's so true. Like the real reasons people do things are always several layers below the surface. Yeah, but most market research functions and most research functions are only designed to like skim that first layer. And it's no surprise that we're not developing anything truly novel or insightful. It's because we haven't spent enough time digging in to find the actual insight. Because that you, your experience, I mean, you're rare in the sense that you know the tools and the methodologies by which to do this. Because it's not as simple as being like, why? Why? Why? Like sometimes people don't even have the language to describe why they really do things. So you've got to practice certain techniques that allow. People to tell you their truth even though they might not necessarily realize what they're saying themselves.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Great. So let's double down on that. So what tools can an entrepreneur use, maybe even in the context of personal influence? So your ability as a leader of an organization, regardless of size, is to empower yourself with tools that will allow you to influence, you know, the people in your business to get what you ultimately want and to shift the organization, blah, blah, blah. Would you mind unpacking uh with us or for us what some tools are that we can go to to have a look at? Do you write about these in your book potentially?

SPEAKER_03 44:51

Sure. Um well, in terms of understanding the underlying kind of root needs of people, uh I mean, you you've named one, which is interviewing utilizing a method like Five Wise to understand the true, uh, the true reason for things. And we talk about a methodology for doing that in the book. One of the best, well, interviewing just sort of in general is great. The other thing is ethnographic research or observational research, because people will often say one thing or think they do one thing, but when you watch them actually do something else. And this is why I'm not a huge fan of focus groups as a research methodology or even surveys as a research methodology, an initial research methodology, because A, if I'm asking you a bunch of questions in a Google survey and you give me an answer, I don't get to follow up and say, well, why did you answer that way? Like, why did you rank this one over this one? And then why underneath is really essential for me. So that's the difference again between data and causality. Like I might see the outcome, but I want to understand why it was that people made that decision. And when I watch people do things, I get to interrogate them about it. Like, why did you do that that way? Like, why did you skip that step? Why did you not follow the instructions? Understanding that why is really, is really important. But if I stuck in a focus group in a conference room, I wouldn't get to see that contrast between what they actually do and what they say they do. The best research method that I have uh found in all of my years of doing this work is the jobs to be done method of interviewing, specifically the Bob Mesta and Clay Christensen approach to jobs, uh, which is really this is not a joke, it's an interrogation. It's actually modeled after uh uh law enforcement interrogation techniques. Because if you think about analogous inspiration, where else in the world are people not inclined to tell you the real truth, but you're desperate to find out what the real truth is? Well, law enforcement, and if you understand uh a little bit about how law enforcement interrogation works, the primary method is assembling a timeline of events, right? What happened first, second, third, and then they go backwards and forwards in that timeline, confirming and reconfirming their understanding about what happened. When we do jobs interviews, it is basically the same. I want to understand the entire timeline, what had to happen exactly the way that it did to get you to say yes. And then I have a series of those interviews, and then you start to layer these stories on top of each other, and a bunch of patterns start to emerge. What are the sources of push? Like what are the commonalities about why people said today was the day that I'm gonna change? What are the sources of magnetism about my idea or a competitor's idea that actually got them on board? But as importantly, what are the sources of resistance and friction that caused them to think twice? And how did they ultimately overcome that friction in order to say yes? And when you layer these stories on top of each other, solutions just begin to kind of emerge based on what the lived experience of users is. So if I were to choose only one research methodology to use going forward, if I was hamstrung in that way, it would without question be that method, jobs to be done.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

So that's fascinating. Uh why why did you use the term interrogation? Like what does what's the difference between that and say, hey man, can I chat to you for 20 minutes?

SPEAKER_03 48:15

Um, I guess it depends on the style in which you chat.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

So uh if you're in the military, yeah, if you're in the military, if you're in the military, it's an interrogation, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:24

Well, I mean, you know, it's interrogation because it's it's going back and over topics again and again.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:30

So when I'm interviewing you about why you decided to start this show, for example, and you tell me the chain of events, the first recounting of that chain of events is gonna gloss over a bunch of details that I want to know. And so if you were just chatting with me, I'd listen to the story and be like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like, and then let's move on. But if I'm interrogating you, and by the way, these interrogations do not feel like interrogations. It's not like me standing in front of you, like, where were you last week and being all crazy about it? It's not that. Okay, it's a conversation where I just go back and get into the details of what you were saying. So, like, wait, go back to the beginning. You said something about when you decided to start your first podcast that just doesn't make any sense to me. Like, explain this to me. And so I have the permission to kind of go back and be like, wait, wait, let's go back a little further in time or let's speed ahead. And the interrogative method is really trying to just unlock the real reason underneath some of the decisions you made.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Um, Henry Ford, there's like that just listening to you talk, um, David is you know, that that quote, uh, it's like if you if he asked people back then what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. That's right. Yeah. Um that always sticks with me. Because if I think about Steve Jobs and the iPhone, like we didn't know we needed that. We didn't know, you know, and then we got the iPhone, and it was like, that's it. There's some crazy stat.

SPEAKER_03 49:47

Um Well, so these are like, I mean, these are definitely quotable quotes, right? The faster horse one you hear all the time. Yeah. The only the only thing I the only thing I would say to like amplify that or contrast that slightly is that that people always say Steve Jobs would say, Well, people don't know what they want until I show them. That's not true. I mean, people are very clear on the outcome they're seeking, which is I want to have as much music with me at all times as possible. And my workaround for that is carrying a disc man in one of those shoulder bags full of CDs. It's not the optimal answer, but it is it's it's the best answer I can come up with for the time being. Now, Steve Jobs, because of his knowledge of uh of personal computing and and how this could all work in a form factor, took the idea of carrying a bag full of CDs around with you and made it easier through a digital music player and a companion marketplace. It's not like that progress wasn't something that people were looking for, it's just the technology wasn't available to help them make that progress better. Same with Henry Ford, right? The faster horse thing is probably true, but the idea to get to a destination faster was still a need that people had. And it's up to the innovator to know what is possible technologically. It's up to the user to help describe the progress or the outcome that they seek. And we need to be focused on the outcome because we as innovators or entrepreneurs or or or or uh executives, we're the ones that have to bridge the present to the future through technology or service design or business model.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Thank you so much for solving that one for me because it was nagging me.

SPEAKER_03 51:22

I'm serious, it was nagging me uh around well, what's there's no such thing as a new job to be done. I mean, this is the thing that that other people will say is like, oh, we're the first to do X, we're the first to do Y, there's nobody else doing this. People are consuming something else, it's just not in your direct competitive set. Like I talk to a bunch of behavioral health businesses, I work a fair amount in in digital mental health as part of the fund that I'm affiliated with. And I'll often have an entrepreneur come to me and say, we're the first company to focus on behavioral health specifically focused on this community, or we're the first digital mental health business or whatever focused on that community. Nobody, like, people aren't doing anything else. There's no competitive substitutes. And I'm like, that's not true. Like maybe taking medication is a competitive substitute, maybe talking to their best friend about what they're feeling is a competitive substitute. Maybe alcohol and drug abuse is a competitive substitute. It's not that they're not doing something to make the progress they see, which is sort of numb their mind or whatever it might be, or feel better about themselves. They're just not hiring a digital mental health business. That doesn't mean that they're not seeking to make that progress in another way. I think one of the mistakes that companies and entrepreneurs particularly make all the time is not looking at indirect competitors when they evaluate an opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

Walk us through that.

SPEAKER_03 52:46

Well, um, if I were, let's stay in the behavioral health thing, if I were creating a digital mental health business specifically focused on college students, for example. Um and uh and I'm believing that I'm the first of my kind. There's no other digital mental. This is totally Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but there's no other business specifically focused on this customer segment. And because there's no other business specifically focused on this customer segment, we are gonna be the de facto choice that these college students have because our whole experience is gonna be designed around them. And um, we might wonder why it is that college students aren't actually opting into this platform that was purpose-built for them, sort of like cake mix, right? It was perfect, purpose-built for this need. And, you know, sometimes it's because we we've inadvertently caused frictions. Sometimes it's because the alternative is perfectly satisfactory. Like maybe I'm fine just having a couple of beers with my friends as my mental health outlet. Like it's working for me. I don't have to change the way that I live or work in order to adopt it. I don't have to worry about how I'm gonna pay for it. I don't have to worry about insurance or reimbursement. I don't have to worry about my parents knowing that I'm seeking behavioral health services. So I'm just gonna stick with the existing behavior. Now, if I'm a digital mental health business, I would say that these are non-consumers. Like this is a part of the market that we need to activate or convert. But if what they're doing is free and it fits into their life and they don't have to change the way they live and work, it's really hard to get somebody to change the way they live or work in order to adopt something new. And I think we underestimate, we underestimate the tug of that inertia, that status quo. And so how this translates back to there's no such thing as a new job, people are still trying to make the progress of feeling better about themselves. They're just finding other ways to do it that don't fall into your category on a market research report.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

Yeah, and also going back to the faster horses thing, the insight there was people want to get from A to B faster. You know, yeah. They may have said that they want faster horses, but the insight is like, well, get me there and you know faster. And the I the product is the car. Right. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_03 54:54

The design principle, like insights tend to lead to design principles. Design principles almost never describe the product, they describe the need state or what that product must inhabit or must must incorporate in order to help people make that progress. So, like what you've just described, faster, faster ways of getting to point A from point A to point B, that's a design principle. Underneath that is why do you want to get there faster? Well, my life has gotten busier and then the world has become more distributed, and now I'm living further from my friends and from my work. Well, talk about that. And if it was really interesting, if we were really getting into the whys underneath, understanding wanting to stay connected to their community could be one of the reasons they want a faster horse. Well, let's just give them a telephone. You know, like there's lots of ways you can solve the problem when you understand the underlying cause.

SPEAKER_00 55:43

Um, just a quick one on technology, because um, we have to ask about technology or the role of technology in this whole process. Um, so Alexander was was saying that you know technology is um overvalued, I think was the word that he used in the context of innovation. And I love what you're saying because what you're describing is insight mining and just in the relationship to social psychology and you know the why people will resist, and going back to your four quadrants, resistance, effort, um, all that kind of stuff. Um, and so um you're coming at this from a different uh perspective entirely. Do you I mean what what are your views on the role of technology? So assuming you've got insight bedded, right? You've got the social psychology stuff down, you've got the I want to go from A to B faster. Now, what is the role of technology in this context?

SPEAKER_03 56:35

I mean, I I agree with Alex's comment. Um, without hearing exactly what you said, I think the general principle is right, which is technology is so ubiquitous now that we can get tech to do almost anything we want. I mean, the exception to that would be like biotechnology and really advanced RD stuff that that's deep tech. Like I think that's a separate conversation. But usually, particularly in consumer or enterprise businesses, it's not the technology that's the thing that's special. It's what that technology does or the progress that technology helps you make in the experience around that technology that's crucial. And of course, that comes from the real intellectual property of the business, which is that they figured out something about the people they're serving that other companies haven't figured out.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Either we've messaged them in a way that feels more resonant, or we've designed this in a way that helps them do this more effortlessly, or we've overcome their emotional friction by alleviating all of their anxieties, or we've made it easier for them to depart from what they're familiar with to this unknown thing, which is why the human element is really crucial in these four quadrants are crucial, is that we overvalue the thing that we think is within our control, which is how to make the idea better if people aren't saying yes. Usually the key is just minimizing the forces of headwind that stand in the way of something that they already want to do. The friction. The friction.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Get rid of it. Get rid of the friction, dude. Get rid of the friction. That's basically the takeout yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:00

I mean, first get rid of it, but first at least acknowledge, like spot it. Like one of the things that we hope people take away from this book is when you read it, hopefully you'll it's impossible to unsee the matrix. Like you'll start to see friction places that you didn't know that it existed, and you'll once you start seeing it, it becomes really easy to address.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

Fascinating. Um, so I can see how passionate you are, and I I I love how you're using your hands a lot.

SPEAKER_03 58:25

Yeah, those of you that are those of you that are listening to it are missing this whole like zombie arms thing.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Get to my YouTube channel if you're catching this on the RSS video. But I have to ask you, um uh David, what what you know got you into the teaching side of things? Obviously, you're a professor and you know, Kellogg and all that kind of stuff. What do you love about teaching?

SPEAKER_03 58:46

Oh God, that's a great question. Um I guess the way that I would answer is what could be better than talking about something you deeply care about to an audience that's really interested in knowing more? And uh I think the best job I've ever had in my life to this day is still being a sleepaway camp counselor. Like that's something that happens in the United States where you send your kids off for the summer and they go to these camps and they hang out for for eight weeks or four weeks in the woods and then they go home. I was a counselor, I was a camper and a counselor of one of these camps. The best job I ever had was like waking up every morning and like trying to find creative and cool ways to teach kids how to sail or teach kids how to make a campfire or whatever. And there was just so much gratification that came from the creativity of that and the enthusiasm of what they were learning. Being a professor in a business school is like very similar in many respects, but like you can make a career out of it. So I feel like a camp counselor a little bit with a lot more rigor.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

I told you not to make me laugh. Sorry. No, I'm kidding. I was gonna splat all over this microphone. Um, yeah, I I actually I resonate with what you say entirely. I uh just before COVID hit, I did a talk in front of like a thousand students uh all about um how to how to build things really and how to overcome societal pressure and all this kind of stuff. Um it wasn't a talk for me, it was like a genuine spiritual experience for me to see how wrapped they all were in terms of their attention and to pick up on your on your word about the influence that you can have on a hungry mind. You know. Um and to maybe answer your question, you know, if you were to interview me and say, Why did I do this show? It's to it's a why did you do this show? Let's make it visual. Why did you do this show? Thank you very much. Thanks. Great question. Uh just thought a podcast. But um it's uh it's it's it's to um uh influence people through stories, um, and to help people understand that ordinary people do extraordinary things every single day.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:01

Um why is that important to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

It's important to me because I believed that I wasn't good enough. Like my self-worth wasn't I wasn't worthy of being a millionaire like I am now. Um you know, I wasn't worthy of the successes of um other entrepreneurs that I've seen on magazines. You know. Um and this podcast, funnily enough, um helped me also overcome myself. Um it's been a huge uh transformational personal transformational tool that I've used to influence my own thinking about not only my self-worth, but the way that I see the world um and what can be built, despite what challenges there may be in any particular context or industry. Um and so I use the the uh another saying, um it's kind of like my version of Faster Horses. But it's like the the more I podcast, the richer I get. You know, um and it's because of connecting with people such as yourself and and learning about in the short period that we've been together, how you see the world and and taking what works for me from your point of view and discarding what doesn't work, you understand? Um and so I become a better version of myself. And so if you go back to we're over like 400 and something episodes now, but if you go back to seven years ago, first episode, and you don't do this, guys, please don't. But if you listen to that, don't do it, do it, don't do it. Um and and and then you go and you you know you go through every single episode, it's it's you will you will hear the transformation in me personally, and and that's why I do the show. It's because I know that I'm changing so much uh through ordinary conversation. So I know that my audience are changing too in their own special ways. Is that a good answer? That's awesome. Is that a good answer? Per perfect, perfect, perfect note to end on. Yeah, exactly. So last question for you, uh David. Why do you do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:02

Um because it is, well, I'll I'll answer that question in two ways. In the world of venture capital, specifically healthcare, um, everything that we invest in is meaningfully trying to make people's lives better, whether it's curing chronic disease or helping people live healthier lives or care for loved ones, like there is nothing more purposeful than trying to help people live better, healthier lives. And so that's an easy one. Um, I think my answer to the Kellogg in the in the academic position is similar to yours on the podcast, which is this is a place that I learn as much as I teach. And I learn from like all of my colleagues here who are world-class at what they do. I learn from my students who bring a ton of experience into the room. And so while the perception is, is that I'm the one sort of teaching and conveying knowledge, I feel like I gain as much knowledge from being in this environment and as much stimulation from being in this environment as I give, if not more. So um, it's just a really great place to spend time.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

Yeah, amazing stuff. David, thank you so much for being in the hot seat. It's been a real privilege uh learning from you and uh and for having your time. So thank you so much. Uh guys, go check out uh humanelementbook.com. It's on Amazon. Go and get it. I'm gonna get myself a copy and uh yeah, I'll be reading that very, very soon. David, thanks once again. Thank you all for checking out the show. Always with the show would be nothing without you guys. We'll see you all again soon. Cheers. Hi there guys, and thank you so much for checking out the Matt Brown show. If you want more content like this, head on over to YouTube where you can catch my Million Dollar Principles channel and more interviews on the Matt Brown Show YouTube channel. Get weekly thought pieces and advice and so, so, so much more. And don't forget to like and subscribe for more Matt Brown show episodes. Ever wanted to become a best-selling author? Well, I'm in the influence business and I work with business owners and CEOs and business leaders to help them scale their influence. And we do this as a team by helping you to become a best-selling author, sought-after speaker, and industry influencer in only 30 days. My team and I have developed a system that delivers a best-selling book and a launch campaign 300% faster and a 50% less cost than anyone else in North America. This system is incredibly efficient. One of my clients, haiku, went from a 2% share of voice globally to an 11% share of voice globally in only seven days. If you'd like more information, head on over to showworksmedia.com for more. That is showworkswithinx.com. Ever wanted to become a best selling author? Well, I'm in the influence business and I work with business owners and CEOs and business leaders to help them scale their influence, and we do this as a team by Helping you to become a best selling author, sought after speaker, and industry influencer in only 30 days. My team and I have developed a system that delivers a best selling book and a launch campaign 300% faster and a 50% less cost than anyone else in North America. This system is incredibly efficient. One of my clients, haiku, went from a 2% share of voice globally to an 11% share of voice globally in only seven days. If you'd like more information, head on over to showworksmedia.com for more. That is showworkswithinx.com.