hi Shannon Waller here with Dan Sullivan and inside strategic coach today we're going to talk about the value of having a process as opposed to just a one-off event and this applies several ways strategic coach program is a process but it's also something that we coach our clients in that they in fact need to provide a process for their clients so Dan I'm looking forward to our conversation about the difference between standardized transactional experiences versus the value of being in a longer term process both in terms of providing and being on the receiving end so let's jump in and let's talk about one of the traps that entrepreneurs get stuck in with just kind of one-off experiences or doing things just once and then moving on to something else yeah or the other thing is that they're selling a product and they see each sale as just a transaction and there's nothing more involved than just the transaction I don't know where this started but I do remember being very very aware very early in life that things that lasted a long time and seem to have a repeatable process to them and I'll give you a few examples I grew up on a farm and farm life is a whole series of processes and it's dependent upon the seasons it's dependent upon the crops it's dependent upon the markets but there is this sense every year of starting a new process over their all sorts of activities that are involved in this annual process I also paid attention to the educational system and how it was every September you got a fresh start and the year that you spent each of the years 1 through 12 each of them was sort of like a repeatable process so I had a lot of organizational experience my kby is a 10 quickart but I'm very process oriented I like being part of something that repeats itself but in the repetition you get better in the repetition new things are created out of the repetition of the process I grew up Catholic so Catholicism has enormous number of processes I was in the Army the Army is processes but the one I think that really struck me is that in the 1980s early 1980s as my strategic coach career really started taking off I was staying at Four Seasons Hotels and four seasons is a worldwide brand now but it started in Toronto and what I noticed about the Four Seasons when I stayed there this is my experience in the 1980s that it seemed like everything had been thought about there was a very high Consciousness about what your experiences were as a customer or a client okay and I got to know a lot of Four Seasons Personnel especially the concierges during off hours of that i' invite them for coffee or tea and we chat and I said everything seems to operate according to there's a real Rhythm to how you do it but it's like nothing gets forgotten and I've stayed lifetime I've stayed in 23 for Seasons Hotel and it's a uniform experience doesn't matter where I am I've been in Paris I've been in London many places in North America and I always had the feeling that the experience was exactly the same even though the people were different the guests were different the locations were different and then one day I was talking to a coner who's been there for 30 years and she said well you know she said we don't own any of the hotels Forest Seasons doesn't own any of the actual buildings we don't own the property what we offer is a process that investors will bid to see if we'll come in and if they establish a hotel they ask us if we'll come in and we'll bring the Four Seasons process and she actually use the word for Seasons process she says this is all written down and it's secret it covers everything that can happen to a customer when they come to a Four Seasons Hotel from the moment that they phone in or the moment that the reservation is made until even afterwards because we stay in touch with them and it's all been tested out literally millions of times in terms of customers everybody who enters the Four Seasons learns the processes and your promotion inside of Four Seasons is learning all of the processes I said well how many steps are there to the process and she says well there's over 200 100 and I says do you think I could see them and she says no you can't see them this is secret okay and it really struck me how uniform the quality has been over 30 or 40 years because I started staying there very early in my entrepreneurial career I was so struck by this whole thing of process and I said you know as we're building strategic coach we have to build everything on process how we put workshops together that's process and how every quarter new materials are created that's a process there's all sorts of Backstage activities that have to be in place for the front stage experience how the food is ordered how the binders are put together these are all processes inside strategic coach and then one step further because we were basing our own company on processes I said you know I think one of the most valuable things that we can do for our entrepreneurial clients is to get them to recognize that this is a much better way of building their entrepreneurial future not on products not on services not on transactions but to base it on processes that quarter by quarter year by year just keep getting better and as a result they keep producing a bigger result that sounds really exciting and kind of radical to me because if I can think of so many industry it's based on these one-off transactions it's not based on longer term repeatable processes that really entail that you have a relationship with your clientele not just a one-off experience so our clients who put in place processes for their business really transformed how they did business especially from how they were taught to do business and it was a interesting shift in thinking for them to do that yeah one of the greatest impacts we had with the whole concept process was the financial services industry which I've had lawn experience going back to the 1970s with first of all life insurance and then the investment component of financial services and then every other aspect of financial services what I remember very early in the 1970s when I was coaching life insurance agents and I was fortunate right from the beginning Shannon of having what we're called topof the table agents and these were recognized by their success and by their production as being the top life insurance agents in an organization called million dooll Roundtable which generally is recognition that you're a very successful life insurance agent I remember they kept talking about product and they had products and what really struck me about the products is that they weren't a product like shoes they weren't a product you could hold in your hands but they were a conceptual product that you're going to invest in a policy that should such and such happen in the future or this happens in the future money is going to be released the death benefit in life insurance or the cash value in life insurance is going to be released to you it really struck me that they were calling at a product but it seemed to me that it was actually a process okay and the best life agents and later the best financial advisors approached their experience just like the four seasons did you can go to many other experiences Walt Disney is just innumerable processes when you go to Disney World they've worked out enormous numbers of processes so that people are taking care of regardless of what happens anything can happen and I just noticed that there was something that happened to you as an entrepreneur if you thought you were selling products that was very very different than if you were selling a process there are just a couple distinctions which are noteworthy if you're selling a product then you're involved in transaction but if you're selling a process you're involved in transformation I just noticed that all the entrepreneurs who are getting into trouble were the ones who are approaching their future as a series of one-off transactions and all the entrepreneurs that seemed to be really thriving had created a process that actually made their clients and customers into creative partners and producing a certain result and that every time they did this with one customer or client they learn new things which they could apply to the next customer or client and it seemed to me to be a profound learning process that the really best financial advisors where the others were just always doing the same thing they were playing hit or miss and the other thing I noticed that the clients and customers of the process based advisers were much better people than the clients or customers of the transaction-based one there was almost an adverse serial relationship that seemed to govern the relationships where it was a product where it was much more of a partnership situation and of course not everybody's geared to partnership so a lot of the agents just didn't really really care what the relationship was like as long as the check was big enough so I just began looking at this in all the other entrepreneurial fields and I found the same thing and what I mean process is that you begin to understand that certain things have to be solved for a client or customer whether it's the Four Season Hotel or whether it's a life insurance agent but there's dangers that have to be eliminated there's opportunities that have to be captured and there are strengths that have to be maximized for it to be a great experience and that essentially the big thing that I zeroed in on and this is 25 years ago that people don't actually buy things they actually buy experiences if it's a transaction experience they don't want to pay very much for it but if it's a transformation experience they'll pay a great deal for it and therefore it's much easier to commoditize a transaction experience because there's no transformation in it so if you can get something that you've been paying $10 for for $2 you'll go for the $2 because nothing's been lost as far as transformation the $10 experience wasn't transformational and the $2 experience isn't transformational but you're paying $8 less and that's the experience that's the experience and Walmart has created a worldwide Empire and it's being surpassed Now by Amazon and actually the Amazon experience is probably better than 98% of all transaction experience in actual stores you know if you have Amazon Prime in some cities you click on pay for it and two hours later they deliver it to your that's a nice experience but again Amazon is a complete process it's not a transaction experience it's a transformational experience and I'll tell you the difference I used to go to borders when they were the big giant bookstore in the states and there's one thing that I remember from my hundreds of borders experience no one knew who I was and no one ever called me by my name but every day about five times a day Amazon calls me Dan Amazon says dan we noticed that you've been reading this book and this book and we just think that you might enjoy these books and these books also you know and all day long I've got sort of this artificial intelligence protector who's looking over me looking out for the well that's a process that's a huge process Amazon's not in the transaction business Amazon's actually in the transformational business they're actually completely transforming people's understanding what it's like to buy things that they really want and to get them with the least amount of Hassle and to get them remarkably quickly so it's a transformational experience and that's why they're taking over every retail industry in the world is because what Jeff Bezos has actually created is a profound Electronics based process it's not a transaction I could not agree more because I was on there ordering something last week and they said it would be there in three days and it was there in one which was really impressive always says welcome back Shannon which I really love and just going back to that whole clientele creative partnership is that they learn from all of their experiences with their clients with their customers and the great thing about Amazon is there are ratings so you get to say yes I love this product or no I didn't so it's a very interactive experience that keeps getting more intelligent and more useful the more that people use it totally agree and Google does the same thing Apple does the same thing very interesting because it really points out the difference Tesla is very very different because the Tesla car that you're driving gets smarter every night while you're sleeping or while you're not driving it the software is being upgraded recently there was a thing about a fatality it's the first fatal ity that Tesla's had after 130 million miles of people using the autopilot function feature on the Tesla everybody was up in arms you know this is dangerous but they actually upgraded things overnight with that Fatality and said Keep Your Hands on the Wheel just reminded you remember it's autopilot but don't climb into the back seat and be tweeting in the back seat stay in the front seat stay in the driver's seat and keep your hands so that was upgraded they didn't have to pull a recall in or anything else all they had to do is send a message so that onboard computer that they have and that big gorgeous screen that they have is part of a process they're creating a lifetime unique process for you with an automobile which for most other people is just a transaction at a dealership so this is a very very different thing that they're doing and Tesla owners are just raving F ecstatic they're ecstatic yeah and that shows that it's transformational nobody Raves over transactions people only Rave about that they're somehow being transformed I love it so there's another aspect too that it strikes me with a process and that is maybe not with Amazon necessarily although it feels very personal is the group of people with whom you're doing it so if I think about the teamwork at coach or if I think about when I'm part of someone else process I get to know somebody better I get to develop that relationship we know each other's likes and dislikes and preferences and we can work better together as a result of that so one of the other aspects of process is expanding teamwork so can you talk a little bit more about that Dan because you've got some great insight into this well I think there's two aspects to processes and that is they can be expanded through teamwork but they can also be massively supported through technology one aspect of living in the 21st century is that every day new things happen that are surprising shocking disruptive and what it brings up is that nobody can live that kind of life you can't live a continually unpredictable shocking type of Life your nervous system is just not geared to it nobody's nervous system is geared to it and they find that there's enormous bad things that happen if people are dealing with a NeverEnding series of oneof never saw it before it won't repeat itself so it's not predictable things okay and whether it's terrorism or it's natural disasters or the stock market going strange or anything along this line and what we seek out is processes that we can go through again and again and again and again and every time you go through the process it feels incredibly familiar but at the same time it feels very comforting it feels very very supportive and you learn new things you find new meaning every time you go through this process so in strategic coach at the lead edge of the program which is the 10 times ambition program between quarters when I'm designing a new workshop there's some oldies but goodies that I have to bring back in like the moving future like the ABC model and identifying the five breakthrough projects for the quarter doing the impact filter there's a great deal of comfort and then breaking out in the small discussion groups so over the years I've watched where the line is between the desire on the part of the clients for yes I want something new I want something that engages me in a new way so I have to create new things but at the same time they want a repetition that's comforting and reassuring to them that's been established throughout their strategic coach career you know so there's part of human beings that we like variety we like new things but at the same time we like to experience that variety of new things within a process that's predictable and and totally supportive to me this feels like great advice so one to put yourself into that and environment a process that works for you and the other one is to provide that for your clientele if you want to have that transformational impact and if you want ongoing relationships which I think one would because it's a lot less work oh yes you know transactions one-offs are exhausting it is as you talked about earlier way too easy to be commoditized if you're always competing on the basis of price it's just a race to the bottom so I think that's really key in terms of process I just want to tie back to entrepreneurs here because I do think myself included of entrepreneurs as people who are very easily seduced by the bright shiny object we kind of nickname it bright shiny object syndrome so is it easy or difficult for entrepreneurs to put themselves into a process it's such a big question because there's various responses when you recommend people to do processes and what I try to get a handle on is first of all if I'm going to design a process I'm going to first of all tap into the experience and knowledge of the entrepreneur themselves and that is if you could conduct a complete cycle where you meet someone and you develop a relationship with them and you cultivate them and you learn what's going on and you create value for them and you're paid for this but it's not the end of it because there's an ongoing life to the relationship there's going to be a favorite way that you like going about doing this which if you could repeat it over and over again you would feel really really good okay and it's going to be unique to you it's not going to be something that you can pick up from the outside so you've got to know the processes that you like and a lot of entrepreneurs say I don't like repeating things and I said are there some things in your life let's just say your personal life that you repeat for example is there a place that you go back to on vacation over and over again and they said yes and I said and when you're having free time is there certain activities that you always like doing and yes and is there certain people you like being with and what you begin to realize this entrepreneur who thinks that they're just into variety and doing new things all the time have a lot of very fundamental processes in their life that they've just not identified as processes I'll give you an example with Babs and myself you know we take a ton of free time we take the equivalent of 22 weeks but very seldom at this stage are we doing something new and we have some favorite places so the longest favorite place we have is a small town in Cape cat which is called Wellfleet so we first went there together in 1984 and we've gone every year since 1984 we do it exactly the same time every year it's the two weeks before Labor Day for the last 15 years we've stayed in the same Cottage our routine when we get there is exactly the same we go to the ocean beach there's a Harbor Beach right in front of our Cottage and then they have these wonderful freshwater ponds that we go to we have a series of restaurants we go to and I love going back there every year and then the other things is we love the city of London central city of London we love New York City I love Santa Monica we have a whole series of Arizona experiences every year which are predictable and then in the city of Toronto I have favorite places and we have our Cottage up north which you were very instrumental in letting us find and I think of the year as this process of visiting our favorite places and enjoying ourselves but at the same time I'm involved than the constant creation of new books New audios new videos and I couldn't do all that new stuff if I didn't have these predictable processes plus the number one process is just my relationship with Babs that's the number one process it's a process that gives both of us constant new sense of meaning and energy so this is fascinating because I think the point about you could not come up with all the new creative innovations that you do without the balance of those things that are familiar and known and not comfortable but you know oh they are comfortable yeah it's very comfortable nourishing very reassuring very reassuring that's right but it's the balance between the two that really Spurs that on and I think a lot of it is about environment and with whom you're with and the kind of conversations you're having and what the things that allows you to do and I love the fact that a great process is one that spins off new things I think everyone sort of afraid of a boring repetitive process but one that actually Fosters creativity is one to my mind that would be very attractive MH I've been a longtime jazz fan there's a thing called riffs and riffs are things where you were playing the same tune and all of a sudden you notice that you could do this with your piano or with your horn or your guitar it's a little side trip there's the main road of the melody line but you go off on a little side trip and you're kind of playing with something and then you come back to the main road again jazz is a lot about having main roads and a lot of side trips okay and there's one favorite pianist his name is Ahad Jamal probably 80 early 80s been playing since he was like 17 or 18 years old been famous since he was 20 years old and he's got one song that's called po Siana I mean it's just one of the very famous jazz tunes of all time and he's been playing it now I got the first album with Ahad Jamal in 1958 and every year he's done like a new version of Po Siana and he's got different musicians but if you listen to it over about 50 or 60 years of him doing this one song and it's very famous you cannot go to a Ahad Jamal concert without the audience absolutely demanding that he play and the reason is they want to see what he's done with the same process but new over the last year and it's one of the most beautiful examples of the security of the process but the possibility for Innovation well that is such a great balance is there any last words of coaching that you would give to an entrepreneur who's thinking about either creating a process or joining one in terms of what to think about what to weigh in their mind there's two considerations there's what you're doing that you always enjoy and what you're doing for your clientele or customers that they always enjoy so the unique process I call a unique process because I think every entrepreneur has to create this for himself or herself is that you are combining two Optimum situations you're combining an Optimum situation of how you like to work and there's a series of steps that you can then repeat over and over again so that you keep getting smarter okay and you keep discovering new things about what you can do with clients or customers and then you have to be very very alert and very attentive to what any client or customer would just absolutely love going through for the first time okay and you get smarter and smarter about that and you got to combine these two considerations into the process but if you can lock into place something that you always love doing and an experience that the clients and customers always love going through then you've got something that's actually permanent which repeats itself but every time you go through it new things are learned about yourself and also about the clients customers you will become famous for this process us the word of mouth about the truly great way that people are handled will become very widespread you'll be known for this wonderful experience great restaurants do this great resorts do this great entertainment venues to this great performing groups great baseball teams great anything if you dig down they have extraordinary individual performances but the whole thing is support Ed by an enormous sense of process that keeps getting repeated and repeated and repeated and they just keep getting better and better and better and it's a marvelous thing to see thank you Dan you've got me excited about all the processes I've been a part of and also to kind of deepen my own thinking about my own process and to me the direction for entrepreneurs is don't get seduced by the one-offs but really to as you said pay attention to those two considerations what do you always love doing and what's the kind of experience that people always love going through if you can do those two things that sounds like a match made in heaven great thank you thank you Shannon