The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 181 - Things That Don’t Scale

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: So, it happened again...

Jen: Oh no. What? What happened?

Pete: No, it's a good thing. You know, when we are coaching a client...this is actually one of the clients that you and I share. We have a handful of two online coaching clients, and we were having a conversation the other day. And something came up in that conversation, and I was like, "I need to remember this." And I wrote it down as something that Pete needs to learn.

Jen: Ah, okay. What is it?

Pete: So it was around the idea of doing things that don't scale. And I can explain what all that means, but I just reminded myself of how helpful and rich that insight can be. So I'd like to like throw it around with you, if that's okay.

Jen: Yes, okay. Now that you've said that, I do remember the moment you are speaking of. Things that don't scale. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Now, I remember that this came up, because I made a joke at your expense. I was like, "Don't take advice from Pete about what to do when you are vetting new clients. He does this crazy thing where he does these two-hour discovery calls." And then you were like, "Yes. Because sometimes you have to do things that don't scale." Like, ah, right.

Pete: Yeah. So, I can't take credit for that idea. I learned this, or first heard about this from Brian Chesky, who's the co-founder of Airbnb. And there's an interview, which I'll pop in the Box O' Goodies...I actually included it in the Box O' Goodies recently as well, but let's like double down on it. There's an interview on the Masters of Scale podcast, where they're kind of unpacking the journey of creating Airbnb, which had the classic kind of founder story of like, "Everyone thought we were crazy. No one thought we had any idea what we were doing, which we didn't, because we were encouraging people to sleep on the floor of other people's houses…like, total strangers." So, it's quite a hilarious journey. And part of the conversation around what he's sharing is that there is this obsession, especially in our culture, especially in tech, with always doing things that scale. So whenever you're building a company or whenever you're starting a new project from scratch, you should be thinking about, "How would I scale this to ten thousand, twenty thousand, one hundred thousand, a million people?" And it's like this over-obsession with doing things that scale. And what I really loved about this particular interview is that Brian Chesky shares, they did kind of the opposite, which was like doing things that don't scale. And so, he talks about a few examples of what that might look like. One I really liked is flying around to each of the original Airbnb hosts houses and taking photos for them, and getting to know them and having a conversation with them. And how, obviously, when you scale to millions of people around the world, that is completely unscalable. However, in the process of doing that, they learned what their hosts like, what their guests like, what they might need to build into the platform, like all of these great learnings. And so ever since I listened to this podcast years ago, I've been just obsessed with and noodling on this whole idea of, "What if we did things that didn't scale?"

Jen: Yeah. It's a very tantalizing idea. And as soon as you said, "We are in this scale obsessed culture," I was like, "Ugh, and I hate it." I don't like it. It makes me feel very uncomfortable, and not in the good way of like, "So challenge yourself to move through it," but in the sort of like, "That feels out of alignment with my values," kind of discomfort.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. I have like two examples in my head that are very top of mind, which I'm happy to share. You kind of alluded to one, which was, especially when I first started my coaching business, I would do these (like you said) literally two-hour discovery calls. So a discovery call was a very, very common practice for executive coaches, where you say, once someone has, you know, reached out and said, "I'm interested in coaching for these reasons, and here's what I'm working on," and instead of saying (which a lot of people do), "Let's hop on a call for a thirty-minute discovery call and get to know one another, and I'll share how I might be able to help,”…I read in The Prosperous Coach (which is a great book, which I'll put in the Box O' Goodies), a few ideas around expanding beyond that regular idea of thirty-minutes. And I kind of overlaid that with Brian Chesky's idea of doing things that don't scale. And so I would do two-hour discovery calls, which was basically a giant two-hour coaching call where I would ask a bunch of questions and hold space and inevitably get, hopefully get to a place where the person on the other end is like, "Wow, that was incredibly helpful." And even if they decided they didn't want to continue working together, which is totally okay, they would walk away having had a great conversation, having learned something, having experienced something. And I did that for a good like eighteen months to two years. I've since, ironically, scaled that back to one hour, because it really did get to the point where I was like, "This is not scaling at all, and I have other projects that I'm working on." But I still think an hour is quite a generous thing to do.

Jen: Yes, it is.

Pete: So, that's one example. The other example was actually from my brother, Matt, which I really liked. Which is, you know, he's a business owner as well, and a consultant. And for some reason, we were sort of having this hilarious and like icky conversation about money, and invoicing, and how, you know, certain projects we feel discomfort around like, "Oh, do I send the invoice before the event or after the event? Or like, what's the protocol? And do you set up automated invoicing through accounting software?" And I remember him saying to me, like, "I could do that, but I think that money is such a big, icky story that so many people have that when I present invoices, when I share the costs and request money from people, I feel like that is such a personal thing. And I don't want to automate that. So I deliberately don't, and I write an email and attach a PDF manually, because that's part of me doing something that's a bit more human, and that doesn't scale." And I adopt the same philosophy. I haven't automated any of my invoices. Which, yeah, it's just another example, I guess, of doing things that don't scale. So, I'm just going to stop there after those two examples.

Jen: Well, this is also making me think of my friend Erin Williams, who is the founder and CEO of Erin's Faces, which is a cosmetics company.

Pete: Yeah, I love Erin.

Jen: And I love it, by the way. Their products are amazing. I do not get a kickback for telling you this, listeners. Go to erinsfaces.com, it’s so good.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: When I place an order, I get a handwritten, personalized note on every receipt.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: Just the other day, I got my Erin's Faces order. I opened up and it said, "Hey Jen, can't wait to see you on the...," and I can't remember what the date is but, you know, we have a meeting coming up. "XO, Erin." Like, she wrote that with her hand. That is amazing to me. And what it's all boiling down to in this moment is, things that don't scale make people feel seen.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: Because when something is built to scale, it's built for the masses. It doesn't consider you as an individual.

Pete: Yeah. I was noodling on, "Is the opposite of scale, human?" You know? Like, if you were to do things that don't scale, are you doing things that are more human?

Jen: Interesting.

Pete: Because, by definition, if they're not using technology to scale, it probably requires more human intervention.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: So, yeah. I like what you're saying though, it's, you feel far more seen, connected, heard, and understood by a brand or a person or a business, I think, if someone has added that personal touch. And I can think of a few examples here in Australian companies too, where they write the handwritten letter. And every time I get it, even though for some brands, I know it's coming, I'm like, "What a nice touch. Someone actually wrote that. That's so cool."

Jen: Yeah. The thing that is really fascinating to me is when a company is large enough that keeping these personal touches is costly. Like I've mentioned, because I'm loving my time there right now, Mark Fisher Fitness on several recent episodes. And I have received notes from them over the years when I have had a life event happen, that have been signed not just by Mark Fisher, but by every single person (with a personal note) that works at Mark Fisher Fitness. They have a lot of clients, like more than it is reasonable to do this for, and yet they continue to do it. And that is just amazing to me. I mean, it really speaks to values. Okay...right before we jumped on, you held up a stack of paper and said, "Oh my god, my friend Josh wrote me a handwritten letter, like on stationery," and we were laughing about how old-fashioned it was. And then you said, "Ah, something else that doesn't scale." So, can you unpack that for me?

Pete: Yeah, such a good reminder. So, my friend Josh...who, by the way, lives I want to say a kilometer away, which is less than a mile, for those in the States. So, very close. He lives very close. And we see each other like once a week for a walk. And he sent me a message the other day, which was, "Have you checked your mail recently?" And I was like, "What? Why is Josh asking me if I checked my mail?" And I checked my mail and there was this letter in there from Josh, handwritten, three pages, which is just hilarious, and surprising, and amazing, and felt like...oh my gosh, I hadn't received a handwritten letter for I don't even know how long. And it was really nice. It was such a lovely experience. Even though I know Josh so well, even though we live so close, even though I see him once a week, it was such a delightful experience to read someone else's prose, someone else's thoughts on handwritten paper. And I mean, you talk about not scaling, he then proceeded to tell me that he actually sent the letter a month ago, it got stuck in the post, it got rerouted back to him, he then just walked past my house and popped it in the letterbox, and then texted me. So like, it definitely didn't scale. However, the impact is, I felt so seen and heard. And I'm going to write him one back. We're going to become pen-pals, I think. So, yeah.

Jen: I just love it. I love it. And it makes me think about things that we've done to create more convenience, that maybe we hadn't even realized we were doing in order to scale.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: For example, templates. So if a certain kind of email comes in, you might pull up the template that you use to respond to that kind of email, and sort of fill it out, and then send it. But a handwritten letter, even if it followed a template...which I can't imagine that it did. But you know, the "personal best friend letter" that you handwrite to your pen-pal friend. But even if it did, it doesn't feel like a template. It doesn't feel like this person was trying to spend as little time on you as possible.

Pete: Yeah. So true. I mean, I feel like one of the questions that this comes back to is kind of, what's it for?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So, what is scaling for? I think is an interesting question. And then, how that applies to each particular thing. So if I'm sending an invoice, what would scale look like? And what is that for? Is it to save myself five minutes to PDF an invoice, attach it to an email, and type an email? Okay. Well, like is that then worth it, because of the potential impact of writing an email that might have on a client, which, I don't know, maybe makes them feel more inclined to do more work with you. Like, I just think that scale is often the default. And time saving is often the default. And doing more, or reaching more people in a shorter period of time is often the default. And, you know, writing an email is often the default. But what is that for? And what does it look like to do things that don't scale, that maybe get at what it's actually for far more accurately? Like if an email to a friend is for checking in with a friend and making them feel like you care about them, actually a handwritten letter does it like exponentially better, even though it doesn't necessarily scale.

Jen: Yeah. Well, this is making me think that, like in the invoice example, it really is a matter of calculating your resources. Like it would be ridiculous in my business for me or for Jake, who really runs the studio, to personally tend to every invoice because there are just too many people.

Pete: Right, right.

Jen: So if it takes five minutes to do that, you know, you're taking an entire eight hour day to send invoices.

Pete: Right.

Jen: And that's not a good use of the time.

Pete: Yes, that doesn't make sense.

Jen: But if you think about what the personalized invoice is for, it's that personal touch. It is that, "I know what you care about, and so I am actively tending to what you care about." So like for me, my version of that is, after a class, if someone has done really meaningful work and I think they need to know, I'll send them a quick email or a text. It doesn't even have to be long. Like it could literally be one sentence, "Still thinking about your incredible work session," and that is often enough to let someone know that they have been seen. And it's genuine. I think that's the other thing, is that there's a genuineness to things that don't scale.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, I agree. And I appreciate you calling that out. Because in the invoice example, like my brother does consulting work, and I do, I guess, larger scale coaching/keynotes and consulting and leadership development, you're sending less frequent invoices, and often they're for, you know, a significant sum of money compared to like lots of small invoices. So, it actually makes sense. I think it's very doable to personalize that. So, definitely worth calling that out. So the other thing that comes up in this podcast episode (which is kind of a build on this, I think) is one of the activities that Brian and the Airbnb early employees did was, "Let's talk about, 'What does a five-star experience look like?' And then, let's actually talk about, 'What does a six-star experience look like?' 'What does a seven-star experience look like?' 'What does an eight...?' 'What does a nine...?' 'What does a ten-star experience look like?'" And it's quite comical. I'm pretty sure they talk about, "You get off a plane at your destination, and it's like you're a member of The Beatles, and there's a crowd of people like screaming your name, 'Oh my god, we're so excited to see you,' and you get chauffeured away." And like, it's this hilarious idea that clearly doesn't scale, and clearly isn't quite reality in terms of creating a ten-star experience. However, that thought process, that exercise helps you, I think, stretch into places that you might not have thought about and probably don't scale that actually, maybe you could add an element of each of those things into your product or service or offering.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So it's an exercise, actually, our mutual friend Kirsty Stark (the Emmy Award winner), she's utilized this like exercise of, "What does the ten-star experience look like," time and time again. And so, I would encourage anyone listening to think about that as it relates to your product or service or business or project.

Jen: This is making me think of a phrase that is often bandied about in all sorts of business ventures, in regards to the relationship with the customer. And that phrase is "surprise and delight". And it seems to me that doing things that don't scale, another way to say that is "surprise and delight". So if you're thinking of the ten-star experience as the Beatles-style welcoming into the space, and people screaming and chanting and so excited that you're there, what is the surprise and delight version of that? Oh, maybe it's when the person gets to their Airbnb, there's a bottle of wine waiting for them and a note that says, "We're so happy you're in our home." Maybe that's what that is.

Pete: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I'm not necessarily advocating for doing everything manually all the time, or handwritten.

Jen: No.

Pete: Like, there is a time and a place to...

Jen: Oh hell no, Peter.

Pete: Right, exactly. There's a beautiful example that I'm going to put in the Box O' Goodies, by Derek Sivers, who founded and created and then sold CD Baby. And they have this email, that ended up going viral, that is a confirmation email of your order. Now, I would say that 95% of confirmation emails, when I order something online, are exactly the same. They are some scalable version of, "Please see below a copy of your order. Thanks for your purchase, (insert company here)." And Derek Sivers talks about sitting down for like half an hour and thinking, "How do I add some more humanity and delight for my customers through this email?" And he wrote the most incredible, hilarious, quirky confirmation email which again, I'll put in the Box O' Goodies, which ended up being something that scaled because it became the confirmation email they used. But sitting down and writing it didn't necessarily scale, compared to using the default. So I just think, yeah, there are all these ways (you're right) to delight our friends, customers, clients, colleagues, collaborators, that is just worth thinking about.

Jen: Yeah. I can't wait to really put these things-that-do-not-scale goggles on for the next week or so, and just sort of pay attention both as a creator and as a consumer, like, "Where am I interacting with other people's work where I am just part of the scaling? And like, how do I feel about that?" In some cases, I feel great about it. Like, I don't need my dishwasher to be personalized to me. But there are times where I am surprised and delighted. And I really do want to make a concerted effort...because this episode has really been inspiring to me. I really want to make a concerted effort to pay attention to the things that I could be doing that don't scale, that help the people I'm working with to know that they are seen and heard and valued and validated.

Pete: Making people feel seen, and heard, understood, and validated. That is The Long and The Short Of It.