Join Dean and Dan as they talk about procrastination by design.
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep061
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: And of course, there's Mr. Jackson, I presume.
Dean: That's me.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: So, greetings from Scottsdale.
Dan: Oh, good.
Dean: Yes. I'm in Scottsdale, at the Andaz resort here, getting ready for … I've an Email Mastery workshop that I'm doing with Joe at his office tomorrow and Tuesday. Yes. So, that's going to be fun. And where are you?
Dan: I was just reflecting on our expanding global network of like-minded, creative people that we're part of.
Dean: Yes. Isn't it amazing?
Dan: More and more and more so, I'm noticing a resonance, meeting people and the person that you meet knows four or five other people that you know. It's interesting thing that I've been more and more aware of it over the past year than I had previously.
Dean: Yeah. My GoGoAgent annual event in Orlando last weekend and I met Chris McAlister who's in 10x program. He's a very sharp guy. Really was excited to meet him. So, you're right. It's a small world.
Dan: Yeah. I was in Detroit on Wednesday evening, and Thursday. I was a guest speaker at the conference of all the POS entrepreneurial operating system implementers, so it's 250 of them and of course, Gino Wickman. Gino, who is in the Game Changer with you and me and also Mark Winter, who's also in there and then Mike Paton, who's the overall head of the EOS organization. He's in my 10x program. Then, there's a growing number of their implementers who are in Strategic Coach. I had five of them up on stage as panelists. I went through the complete who not how model. At opportune times, I would stop and simply say, "Well, C.J. or Jill or Alex or Mark or Ted are going to tell you how this actually works in the EOS world, as an EOS implementer and also what it would do for the best of your clients who use the entrepreneurial operating system."
At the end, I said, "Well, I just want you to know that we're making a commitment from the stage here that the moment that someone comes into Strategic Coach, we're going to encourage them to use the entrepreneurial organizing system for their company, and we feel that if they immediately do that, then the delegation will be much better, they'll be much more protected, and that the who not how concept and strategy will be easier for them to make rapid progress with."
So, our goal will be to keep them for 25 years and if we keep for 25 years, you'll keep them for 25 years.
Dean: Yes. That's so great. That whole, yeah, that. When you're finding, I think this is what's really helping is finding people who are thinking in frameworks and are setting things up that just blend in complimentarily, too, because look at all the Strategic Coach mindsets, everything about it. If you have that as a foundation, all the things like, I look at the Breakthrough Blueprint. I look at that model of the 8-Profit Activators as something that blends perfectly with that model as well. When you've got a framework like that, all these things just start falling into place for people. It's so cool.
Dan: Yeah. Why don't you do a spotlight at the Game Changer?
Dean: Yes. All these collaborations. That's really what becomes the possibilities.
Dan: Yeah. Why don't you do one of our spotlight presentations of the 8-Profit Activators?
Dean: Yeah. Happily. Yeah, yeah. No. I would love to. That will be great.
Dan: Would April be too soon?
Dean: April might be too soon. Let's do July. I'll do July for sure.
Dan: All right.
Dean: Okay?
Dan: All right. Mm-hmm.
Dean: That's perfect. Yeah, because I've got events all between now and April.
But I read something, and I may have shared this with you because it's been coming up again and again now since I saw it. We may have had a conversation about the McKinsey study on design, but I'm not sure that we have. I'm not 100% sure that we have.
Dan: Doesn't ring a bell.
Dean: Okay. Perfect, then. So, this was really interesting. In my More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast world, I often come across people who are designers, we have people who have a background in design and often high-end design. We've always known intuitively that design is important. You always feel better when things are designed but I always look to have people create sort of quantifiable proof of that, to be able to show what is the return on design because I was looking at things like that.
I had a designer on the podcast who did high-end wine and spirits label and packaging design. As when I did that episode, somebody contacted me, emailed me right after it and just the week before I had done it, McKinsey had released a big study that they did on the actual return on design, the monetary effect of design. It was a multi-year study looking at thousands of companies over several years. What they were looking for was what was the economic impact of design-led companies is what they called it. What they found was that companies that they graded as design-led had a 32% more revenue premium over their non-design-led cohorts and returned 56% more money to shareholders than the non-design-led companies.
So, you got to like … McKinsey has a reputation of being really quantifiable, depth of understanding of things. So, for somebody like McKinsey to do what Peter Diamandis would call is above the super credibility line for somebody like McKinsey to come out with an idea like that. So, really, it made me think about the position of design in things and that often, that's one of the things that sometimes gets not overlooked but not optimized with an 80% approach.
So, part of it, what I wanted to think about because you really, I would say that Strategic Coach is also a design-led company in that everything about Strategic Coach has been consistently designed including the environment, the experience, the look, the colors, the standardized kind of design of it. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts and approach to that, because I think it's really now we have quantifiable proof of how important it is.
Dan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I can just talk about three things really quickly. Number one, that the first staff member that I actually hired was actually an artist. He was an early computer artist. So, I mean, you talk to entrepreneurs. "Who's the first person you hire?" They say, "A secretary," or something like that, but ours was actually an artist.
Number two is that I had developed some role model companies that I felt were great design companies, starting in the 1980s. It goes back to the mid-80s. One of them was Apple. I thought Apple was an extraordinarily well-designed company and seemed to really use design as part of their marketing and other marketing thrust as a company. Number two would be Starbucks. I thought Starbucks right from the beginning had really, really great design sense.
Then, in completely other field and had a lot to do with our travel habits back in the 80s was the Four Seasons hotel who I thought had a very consistent design. At that time, we were going to Canyon Ranch for the first time. I felt that those four companies, they seemed to make design really a very, very important factor in all their communication and just how they treated you and just how they created an environment around you. So, that's my second point, the role models.
Number three is that, within the first year of the Strategic Coach program, we had already established a range of colors, a typeface, how everything had to look at.
Dean: A style guide, yeah.
Dan: I would say, 30 years later, it's what we established in, let's say, 1990 is still true in 2018 that we're still 80% consistent with what we established 29 years ago. I had just had finished shop that, so there were three things, one that our first person was an artist. Number two, I had role models. Number three, we traded a design framework right away.
I would say this, that I had noticed the opposite being that people who fool around or don't pay attention to it tend to be always fighting against themselves with trying to get their message out because they keep showing up and they keep showing up in a different form.
Dean: Yes. I agree 100%. You and I have had conversations about our joint love of Helvetica as a simple choice. You know I mean?
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That's, and, I mean, we laugh about it but that is such a simple choice that we should probably let people know about the movie. There's a documentary called simply Helvetica. The whole documentary is about the font Helvetica. What I really found amazing, it was eye-opening, because it was right around the time that I was really kind of getting into these timeless things. One of the most impactful things that has happened in Strategic Coach for me in a workshop was when we were talking about influences and everybody was sharing what are they influenced by right now and it was all contemporary people. It was all things that were going on right now. Then, you were talking about Bach and Euclid and James Madison and all these things that were Shakespeare.
Dan: Shakespeare.
Dean: Shakespeare, yeah. Hundreds of years old, hundreds of year frameworks that were there. The movie Helvetica came along at a time when I didn't really realize how timeless a font Helvetica is. In watching the movie, them showing all the companies that use Helvetica in their branding. One of the most amazing things was you talked about everything was Strategic Coach looking just as contemporary today as it did in 1990, that they showed all the airlines that had changed and had to update their logos from the 70s all the way through. The one airline that hasn't changed a thing is American Airlines. Their font choice is Helvetica. I thought, "You know, boy, there's such an interesting wisdom in that." It's hard to really make things look bad if, with the right, there's nothing that you can't express with Helvetica because of the range of different ones.
Dan: Yeah. It's a really interesting thing. Then, on Kindle, because all my travel reading is done on my Kindle. So, there are books that I read, but I wouldn't take them with me on a trip. I would read them at home and leave them here. But on Kindle, something the story, I'll download a book and it'll be presented to me in a type other than Helvetica. I immediately am jarred by it because I say, "Oh, this is going to be hard to read," so I go to the side choice. There it is, Helvetica. And I switch the site to Helvetica. Immediately, it's easy for me to read. Now, that may only because I'm used to reading Helvetica but it's hard for me. I have to work harder to read things that are in other type fonts.
Dean: Yes. I get it. Just as far as readability, everything like that. That really goes a long way. So, that jives with the 80% approach.
Dan: I would love to, at some point, to get a hold of this McKinsey report. That would be very useful information.
Dean: Yeah. I will forward it to you because, yeah, it is fascinating. They take a holistic approach to what they define as design-led and meaning not just the visuals but the actual user experience and environment of everything that the actual experience is outwardly focused like looking that it's easy and relaxing kind of thing to use.
Dan: Yeah. It's interesting because we started off with a self-created logo back in the 1980s. It was kind of an interesting logo, but it was kind of dated. We noted about 10 years into it. Now, this wasn't the fonts that we used in our print materials. We were Helvetica right from the beginning, but we had kind of hooked ourselves on a logo type. For example, I can give you some famous logos that are never going to change because they're just totally known. One of them is Coke, you know?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: The Coca-Cola, if you think of it, it would be suicidal on their part to tamper with that logo. It's instantly recognizable. I would say, Ford, of all the auto makers, have stayed with over 100 years, Ford has stayed with that very scripted Ford, and it's known everywhere. Disney has a particular logo. You don't fool around with them. IBM's got a logo, although I think that is Helvetica that IBM has a logo. But there are certain things that are like a stamp and you just went full run. I mean, Starbucks has the mermaid built into it. You wouldn't fool around with that.
But then, we got some designers from outside to come in and look at Strategic Coach. We didn't like what they did and actually our in-house designer actually did a good job. We really like our logo now and we can live with it forever. In fact, it's so funny because then she, having been a hero to us, she tried to put herself into trouble because she says, "Well, now that we have this logo with this different type that I've used, then all of our print materials should use this typeface." I said, "No, no, no. We're going to stay with Helvetica." She said, "Well, you know, why don't we do something unique? Everybody uses Helvetica."
Okay. I said, "You said two things to me. You used two sentences. The last one, I'd like you to repeat the last sentence that you told me." She says, "What? Everybody uses Helvetica?" I said, "Yeah. I just want you to go away for a day and just think that through as deeply as you can and come back what you think tomorrow." I said, "Of course they use it, because it works."
Dean: Yeah. That's something. There's something. One of the things that I've also overlaid is Pantone has, every year for 30, 40 years or so now, they've had their color of the year. I've thought about that as just a built-in style guide type of situation that you could use Helvetica as the font size and width of your base set of colors. Then, to contemporize or to make things current to use the Pantone color of the year palette for that year as a …
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as long as you hold one thing as your anchor and so just use Helvetica as an anchor. Then, you can introduce a variety of new things on an ongoing basis, and you don't do yourself any harm.
Dean: Yes, that's right.
Dan: And I've noticed that we have gone through periods where orange is a really big thing, and we use a lot of orange in our site. There's a bluish-green color that has appeared on a sideline and everything else. You can use them for accents and tints and everything like that.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Dan: But you have to pay attention to where the center of this is.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, so I think the Pantone color of the year this year is coral. So, you're starting to see that everywhere. It's what really struck me about this is I'm at the Andaz resort in Scottsdale.
Dan: Where is that? Where is that, by the way? I don't know where that is.
Dean: I don't know what to tell you, Dan, other than Scottsdale. As much as I come to Phoenix, I have zero spatial awareness of where it all is. I just know.
Dan: What's it near? Is it near anything?
Dean: I wasn't really paying attention.
Dan: Is it near old Scottsdale?
Dean: No. It's more over towards… I don't know what to say. Sorry. The only places I am when I'm here is at Joe's office in Tempe and at The Henry is my favorite restaurant in Scottsdale.
Dan: Is it near The Henry or Joe's?
Dean: It's west of The Henry, which is north of Joe's office, so it's like a triangle to get from. Yeah, so it's almost straight west from The Henry.
Dan: Okay. And it's the A-N-D-A-Z?
Dean: Yeah. That's right.
Dan: Yeah. So, it would be on Camelback Avenue, then, probably.
Dean: Near there. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Dean: So, there. But, it's a beautiful property all spread out with bungalows or casinos kind of … The way it's spread out. The grounds are really attention to detail, like everything. They've got the fine gravel, which is raked perfectly lined so everything about it, the grass is at the perfect level and just the right green and the trees and then colorful chairs all throughout. It's a design-led environment, everything about it.
Dan: Yeah. It's really interesting, just speaking about Scottsdale and design. For example, The Phoenician is beside as one of Scottsdale's leading hotels. I've stayed there two or three times.
Dean: Uh-huh. Yeah. Me, too.
Dan: I always find the experience really jarring when I go there because, from a design standpoint, they just never really got it together. It looked like they were digging a tunnel with three different teams.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And the three different parts of the tunnel don't actually link up with each other. I've always had this sense that the rooms, everything about it, they had all these different teams. There was one, there was no master planner in charge. Number two, they didn't have many meetings. They didn't really compare their work.
On the other hand, the Biltmore, which is one of the older hotels, but they had people in from the Frank Lloyd Wright … Frank Lloyd Wright had a whole design company in Phoenix. They brought him over. That's a very distinctive early 20th century style. It's really well put together. Even though they're using a very, very old architectural style, they've upgraded it but there's a resonance to almost everything that they've done there. I really pick up on that. Things either fit together, they don't fit together. I couldn't tell you exactly why but just kind of says, the words don't match the tune here, you know?
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting but this place where you're staying, obviously it gives you pleasure.
Dean: It does. I start to recognize a lot of the things that we both enjoy, the environments that we both frequent and enjoy are very much design-led. It's something about that. So, the reason I brought that up is I'm kind of looking at that and reconciling with the 80% approach and what the balance of that and what's the counter to the next level of the 80%? I guess that's kind of the thing is how do you think about those kind of things? Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. I mean, here's something that I've noticed in some of the, let's say the self-improvement organizations because I guess, in the broadest sense, that's really what the industry that Strategic Coach is in, when they coaching self-improvement organization. I've gone to other conferences where there was an attempt to have all the staff and team members who are involved with the sponsoring organization, to all dress the same, men and women, they all dress the same. Usually, it's black and it's slacks and T-shirts or sometimes they have blazers or something like that. Personally, I find that a little jarring. It seems that you've crossed the line from design into conformity.
Yeah, and so we tell people, we have a dress code. Workshop day dress code. The women have basically worked it out in the company. They're, first of all, the majority. Then, they kind of let the men know how the men have to show up. So, you can't show up in jeans on a front stage day, and you can't wear sneakers on a front stage day, and you can't wear T-shirts on a front stage day. You've got to dress up a little bit. Not formal but casual, but business casual. I guess that's what they call it.
So, that would be a thing where I would never want to show up at a Strategic Coach event where there was some sort of uniform.
Dean: Where everybody's wearing a uniform or something, right?
Dan: Yeah, yeah. No. No. Yeah. I just don't like that, you know?
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Anyway, but on the other hand, how everybody gets treated, we have a whole bunch of rules about how people are greeted, how they're treated, how they're responded to throughout the day. So, I put a lot of emphasis on what I would say a constant high-level first class approach to how people are engaged with when they come to our workshops, you know?
Dean: Yes. Uh-huh.
Dan: Yeah, so that would be where we would put all of our emphasis. Then, in the materials there. We try to have a good design sense about the materials.
Dean: Yeah. Both the content and the design. I mean, the content, it's amazing how sometimes the content has to be packaged in the right design, in the right framework in order to really get that attention. I'm sorry to see it now as you see the why it all makes sense when you think about the premium. If something really looks great, that makes people feel confident about something other than if it doesn't look great. No matter what, if the content is great, it's not going to maybe shine through as much as it would if it were packaged really nicely, too.
Dan: I think one thing is that it's one of those things like, Dean, you go to movies a lot.
Dean: I do.
Dan: In that's in the movie and they have musical soundtracks. The majority of movies have musical soundtracks. If you're sitting in the middle of the movie and you're saying, "Boy, the soundtrack's really good on this," it's probably not a very good movie.
Dean: Mmm, because you're paying attention to the music more than the … Yeah, yeah.
Dan: The soundtrack. Yeah, yeah. And I think that I would use that, saying if the clients are noticing how you've packaged this, rather than they're really into their own thinking about their businesses and everything else, probably you've kind of failed with your design and your packaging.
Dean: Mmm. Yeah.
Dan: Oh, no. Yeah. It's just a thought because you kind of want them into their own world, and you've protected them. You've created a space in which they can just be completely comfortable with looking at their own experience and communicating with the other clients and everything else. I know. Some people come in, and they immediately using their iPhones to photograph how we're doing what we're doing and everything else. We never give them any trouble about that or maybe they're just really design sensitive, and not everybody is. They're just looking for examples or confirming something that they have in their own mind about how they like to design their business or make improvements.
Dean: Yeah. I think that's true because it's an inspiration in a lot of ways. When you come into both Chicago and Toronto, even the whole office environment. Everything about the experience is comforting. I mean, reassuringly expensive and design looking, you know?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and some of it is … I mean, afraid from the beginning, you got certain principles but then there's lots of trial and error as you go along. I mean, we've been through a lot of renovations in both our hotels because we had smaller space years ago, and we gradually expanded. So, every time you expand, you get a chance to upgrade your design sense. That's true of us humans, period. If it's important to you, you get better as you go along.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Dean: Agreed.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Dean: So, that was an interesting thing.
Dan: Can I ask you a question?
Dean: Sure.
Dan: You'd asked me about it, so I'll just ask you the question. The importance of the McKinsey study right now for you would be looking for something to the future. So, what are you thinking there, that perhaps this is a possibility for a jump of some sort in how you're presenting yourself?
Dean: Yeah. I think that's really the thing is that I would say that the content that we have is great. I feel 100% about all of that. And I see lots of opportunity for us in a unified experience kind of design. That's what has my attention right now as the biggest opportunity for us. So, that's where I'm observing and looking at these. It requires more than I think the 80% approach, in a way, where it's all there. I think this is connecting the dots for people. This is another layer of the 80%. I think it's an interesting thing that it's another layer of top, I think, of the 80%. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not quite seeing the connection there, the 80%.
Dean: So, I think that, one, I guess what I look at when things are like a minimum viable approach, a minimum viable product kind of thing versus now taking that and doing another layer on top of that, that would make it 80% better even, you know?
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Dean: That's what I've been thinking about our processes or our environment. So much of that now is at the stage where it's going to be the key that unlocks other expansion opportunities for us in terms of right now, I would look at what we do as Strategic Coach when you were the only coach, where you were doing the workshop, like I'm doing all the Breakthrough Blueprint workshops and I'm doing the Email Mastery program and our GoGoAgent things. In order to unlock the ability to have other people do those, it's going to require a layer of almost that the materials and the system sort of allows somebody else to facilitate that.
Dan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dean: That's what has my attention right now, like looking at the next 25 years.
Dan: Yeah. And what you're saying is that you wouldn't start with, you have to have a black baseball cap, black sweatshirt, a white pair of shorts and then … That probably wouldn't be the proper place where you would start expanding yourself.
Dean: Exactly.
Dan: Not that that's not important. That's iconic, though.
Dean: It is, absolutely for … Yeah. But that's where we're kind of going to the 8-Profit Activators, layering on the thinking tools and the kind of workshop ability of them, to facilitate something as opposed to it being time with me to get that, bring and deliver the insights for people.
Dan: Yeah. I mean, probably a mindset scorecard would be a starting point where I would is that there's the content that you have, but it's actually the mindset of the person providing the content where I would start where you would feel … And the best test is a Breakthrough Blueprint workshop is being given, you're not there and you're feeling completely comfortable with it. Then, you would say, "What makes me feel completely comfortable, I would not be worried at all about the presentation," because I mean, I have 15 coaches. This year for example, we'll have 500 workshop days so it's essentially 125 groups.
Well, I have 48 of those days and the other coaches have 450 or so of them. This started in 1995, so we're almost pushing a quarter of a century of other coaches coaching the workshop. I've never once been in the room when one of my other coaches is coaching the program, and I've never watched any videos of them coaching, and I've never listened to any audios of them coaching. I have a team who knows what a workshop looks like. I have a team that selects the interview and selects the coaches. They train the coaches and they manage the coaches when they're in the workshop. We have a number and then number is first of all, how many people sign up for the workshop. The other second thing is how many renew on an ongoing basis into extra years of the program? So, we use that number as the indicator that the coach is doing a good job or not.
So, yeah. But the whole point is, my feeling is that this really going to do the job, extending me out into the world. I can't be there as a rescuer once it starts, so I can't intervene. I've never intervened at all in the process of the other coaches.
Dean: Right. And I imagine that's what Gino and Mark had to go through, too.
Dan: Yes. Yeah. Same thing.
Dean: You know? Mm-hmm.
Dan: Yeah. And they have 250.
Dean: To set up.
Dan: I mean, I've gone way bigger than that, than we are, but I could tell. I was at their conference where I spoke. The first hour, on the first day before I went on, they had an hour where the tables all discussed among themselves what their biggest insights were the past year and then they selected one person from the table and they all stood up, about 25, 30 people stood. They had to talk quickly. I was enormously impressed with the kind of discipline and uniformity that seemed to come across with everybody talking, that they were really, really well-trained. I think Gino's got a special gift at making sure that everybody's singing from the same choir book.
Dean: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That makes total sense. So, that's, yeah, there's some good benchmarks there, good …
Dan: Yeah, but I think you have to simply say … It's like a strategy's their goal. You have the goal is that I can be 100% confident that all of my coaches are delivering the breakthrough booklet with an impact and this would be the impact and you would write down five things that would be true of someone else coaching that is sort of measurable. Then you come back and say, "Well, what are 10 obstacles that would prevent me from feeling comfortable or feeling, you know, that it's being delivered with a quality that matches my standards?"
I think this is really good for you because you don't have to be explicitly conscious of what your standards are because you have them internally but once you're asking yourself to be extended out into the world, now your standards have to become explicit and measurable.
Dean: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. You're absolutely right. That's the thing. This is where my investable who'd up hours are, where I'm allocating a lot of them is to this type of expansion.
Dan: Let's multiply Dean.
Dean: Yes. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's a new and exciting thing, because I don't want to expand Dean by expanding more of Dean, you know?
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I want more Deans. That's really the … We don't expand the ideas and the principles.
Dan: Yeah. And it's really interesting because you and I, I think, are of one mind on this because I'd looked at the coaching world. And I will say, I'll use Tony Robbins as the road that I did not take back 30 years ago, because even then you could see that there were famous platform speakers out there who were coaching. I mean, let's just use the world Breakthrough Blueprint is coaching, Strategic Coach is coaching, Genius Network is coaching and Abundance 360, Date with Destiny is coaching and everything else. I think the 21st century is just this vast coaching notion. Then where people can get their future custom design for them through the structures and processes, so that's great.
But I'd looked at it and I said, "There's only two routes to go here." There's a fork in the road and you have to choose which route. You can base it on personality, the power of the personality, or you could base it on the power of the system that is not dependent upon an individual.
Dean: There you go.
Dan: Anyhow, I looked at Euclid. I looked at Shakespeare. I looked at Bach. I looked at Madison, and I said, "Wasn't based on their personality. It was based on that they actually put together models that other people just pick up. Millions of musicians played Bach. Millions of actors act Shakespeare. Millions of Americans use the US Constitution. Every human being on the planet who wanted to build something that was stay put has used Euclid. So, I went the system route. Then, you have to give a lot of thought that even though you're not there, the things that you would insist on are there.
Dean: Yes. Yeah. That's the thing. It's because the things that I do share with people are all contextual and long term. Yeah, they're context-based. They're a framework, so it lends itself completely to application by through other people. It's not coming up with ideas that's applying a framework to a situation and that's all completely — What's the right word? — transferable. It's a systematic way of doing it and that can be transferred.
You know, again, there's the thing. It's the 80% approach of that is that in doing this now for so many years, there are things like in each of the 8-Profit Activators that the first 80% layer of it is going to have a tremendous impact on any business but then, it's the next layers of it that can go even further, you know?
Dan: Mm-hmm. Once thing you might think of here because you've got a big, vast market available to you with Strategic Coach clients. Just to say this, the question you have to ask your other Strategic Coach users, Breakthrough Blueprint, who you think might make good coaches because, in other words, that they've already been through your program and would they be interested in being coaches in your system and then have Strategic Coach entrepreneurs as the clients in these other workshops. I think you should give some thought to that.
Dean: I will, absolutely. Yeah.
Dan: And first of all, I'm just telling you that we would be totally open to that.
Dean: Mm-hmm. I appreciate that. That's really and I see it completely that the people that I have had that are Strategic Coach clients that come to the Breakthrough Blueprint, they get things faster. They get things on a … Because it already fits into a complimentary mindset that they already have because everything that I do has been under that framework of all the Strategic Coach principles. It's like I'm right there with it, so there's nothing contradictory or everything is completely complementary and amplified by all the concepts in Strategic Coach, so they get that.
Dan: Yeah. Well, they're toilet-trained. They're practically toilet-trained.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah. You know.
Dean: As am I, yeah.
Dan: You coach people. They just don't pee in the plants, you know?
Dean: Right. That's exactly right and so funny.
Dan: Well, we got the same feedback from the EOS that the EOS implementers that when they have Strategic Coach clients. In other words, these companies at their thing, the same thing that immediately everything moves really, really quickly with the EOS system because they're not renegade, rouge entrepreneurs.
Dean: Yes. I've had that conversation with Gino, too, that that's really this overlaying the Breakthrough Blueprint or using that as the marketing system, the operating system on top of the actual entrepreneurial operating system.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I see no contradiction whatsoever.
Dean: Right. Absolutely.
Dan: Yup. Yup. So, anyway, Dean, we're using one of our Joy of Procrastination progressed nation sessions here to set up a deal, you know what I mean?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: There's a first time for everything.
Dean: Were we recording a podcast? Is that what we're doing?
Dan: This is a recorded deal, believe it or not. Very subtle on how you introduced this and actually hooked me on design.
Dean: Right!
Dan: Like you, "Hey, honey. You want to see my stamp collection."
Dean: Ah, that's so funny.
Dan: You know I'm a sucker for design talk.
Dean: Oh, man. Well, I saw it. That I really get it. I mean, it's something that now there's really no … Now, there's a quantifiable thing, is what it was.
Dan: Oh, yeah. There is. Yeah.
Dean: … costing. How much are you losing by not having a design-led elements of things? Yeah.
Dan: One of these funny stories, and this goes back 35, 40 years, is that when Apple switched over to graphic user interface, which was essentially the introduction of the Mac and then, of course, Microsoft immediately did it, introduced Word, you know, like Windows.
Dean: Yes. Windows, yeah.
Dan: Windows. Windows shows you which fan I was.
Dean: Yeah, right.
Dan: I haven't been that. Anyway, and Windows was never as good. To this day, Windows has never been as good as the Mac system.
Dean: Absolutely.
Dan: And Gates would really, really agonize about those. Every time they did a Windows update, he'd go in, and he says, "Is it as good as Mac?" They'd have to tell him, "No, it's not as good as Mac."
But the one thing he didn't ever get and Ballmer, the guy who took over after him, just never got was that Apple captured the market with its design. It had great technology for what it is, is that … And that adapting graphic user interface was just a design strategy. In other words, you don't have to learn codes. You can do that but that the first thing that Gates insisted on before they ever even invented the technology, they say, "What does the package look like that they bring this home in? They just opened the package and what's the experience they're having in opening the package?"
He started there and then he backed it all the way back to the factory and said, "Okay. What is it that we actually put in the package? We know they loved the package. We know that he loved the experience of buying it. We know they love the design of the package. What's the actual technology?" That's a total design approach to something where I can believe that the Windows forever is, "Oh, we designed this brand new thing." "Well, let's bring in the art guys and see if they can put together some design or something."
Dean: Slap something together. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Dan: Yeah. And you can just see why they never did it because you can tell by Gates. Gates can talk for five minute and you know he's not a design guy. Jobs would talk for two minutes and you know everything's about design.
Dean: Yes. You're absolutely right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. Even though it's all there. I mean, Windows … But you're right. It's that ever thing. It's like you know Windows versus Apple, that it's really the design is everything. I mean, everything about … You feel good about having something beautiful in your possession, too.
Dan: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I always, when I have to use a Windows computer, it kind of … I'm eating cheese that was produced by the government.
Dean: Yes. Government cheese!
Dan: Government-produced cheese.
Dean: Oh, yes!
Dan: You know that the taste can't possibly overcome your understanding that this cheese came from the government, you know?
Dean: You are right. You are right.
Dan: It's like Spam. It's like Spam, you know?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: It's like that. Mm-hmm.
Dean: Amazing.
Dan: But anyway, this was a departure today, Dean. This was a departure on one of our podcasts, yeah.
I have to tell you, I had an EOS man advertising all his life, had gone through radio stations, advertising agencies, PR agencies, 71 years old from Birmingham, Alabama. He said, "I want you to know that I absolutely love and adore you and Dean talking to each other on The Joy of Procrastination."
Dean: That's so great.
Dan: This is Gene from Birmingham.
Dean: Oh, nice. That's good. I had the same thing. Often, people, that's the fun thing that they say that. I love that.
So, yeah. Slight departure but still, I think that my context of coming into it about you was thinking about the … It's been something that's kind of a procrastination. That's why I was trying to explore the harmonizing it with the 80% approach of sometime things take a little bit more. Yeah. But they're worth it.
Dan: Yeah. You bet.
Dean: Yeah. I always enjoy it, Dan.
Dan: Thank you, Dean.
Dean: Thanks. I'll talk to you soon.
Dan: Okay. Okay. Bye.
Dean: Bye.