What's Keeping Your Business Small? | Ozan Varol

24:15They're just a story layered on top of some facts. And I think if you can help to explain to your team this relationship, again, Jad, like you just said, this is a brand new idea to most people. This is not something any of us were taught in school or for the most part growing up. And so if you can link that, there's this thing that happens in your life, you know, these facts that happen, and then there's what you tell yourself about it, which is, you know, what your narrator is kind of giving to you, this story, and then based on the story, you're going to take certain actions and those actions are going to lead to the results that you're getting.

24:50That all of a sudden really helps to break this open. And so when you're challenging limiting beliefs, if you can help your team separate the facts from the stories, you're really giving them a massive skill in life and business. You kind of have to do it with humility and it's best if people come to these conclusions on their own if you're just kind of a facilitator. But man, this can really open things up for people. You know, as you were talking about, Jonah, it reminded me that it's difficult for any of us to see our own limiting beliefs. And this is the value of trying to bake this into your culture, where you give everyone on your team permission to challenge everyone else on limiting beliefs.

25:31Now, I'm not talking about going overboard, because sometimes even beliefs, limited though they are and maybe imprecise as they may be in every detail, they're still useful. And it's not like we can deconstruct every story we've been telling ourselves. We couldn't function. So oftentimes, even a flawed story is better than no story. But there are times when the limiting belief is impeding our results. And when that happens, that's the opportunity to say, hey, I wonder if this is really true or if this is just a way we've assembled some facts and it's a story we're telling ourselves, maybe it's just a limiting belief.

26:07Well, that gets into some really rich conversations and kind of gets you back into that growth mindset where you could explore things that you've never explored before because the limit of your limiting beliefs keeps you from going there.

26:29well that leads us to our fourth action which is to cast a better vision um you know one of the things that i thought of immediately as i was considering this point is our former coach eileen who we talk about in mind your mindset and this idea that she shared with us many times in our work together about this idea of standing for somebody, standing for the greatness that you see in someone, which is actually why you're willing to get out of your own comfort zone and challenge somebody's limiting beliefs or provide constructive feedback or coaching, those kinds of things. And I think that people can't always see their own potential.

27:09Certainly, they don't necessarily see the long-term vision of the company unless you share that with them and all that, but in and of themselves, they don't have a sense necessarily of what they're capable of, what's possible for them. And when you see that in them and you call that out of them and you're willing to challenge them and hold them accountable and encourage them to that end, that is hugely valuable. Okay, so the point of this is not just so we can examine our thinking. We want to do that, of course, but we want to do it for a purpose because we're trying to change the results. We want better results.

27:43We want bigger results. We want a growing company. We want growing opportunity for our team and for ourselves. And so at some point, this vision has to expand our thinking and really kind of raise our sights on what seems possible. And that's going to get expressed in things like our vision script, if we have one of those. We've talked about that on this show before, and I talk about that in my book, The Vision-Driven Leader. or in goals, you know, are we going to take riskier goals? Because now all of a sudden, we've been freed from those limiting beliefs and we have more of a growth mindset.

28:19And so this is how it has to be, how it has to change the culture and the way that we operate as a business for the sake of generating better results. This is not just a psychological exercise, but it really is a business exercise. And in our experience, this is the best way to get better business results is to examine our thinking. That's where it all starts.

28:47So to review the four actions that you can take to change your team's limiting beliefs and generate the kind of liberating truths that will unleash your company's potential are action number one, model a growth mindset yourself. Action number two, communicate and demonstrate that people are safe. Action number three, challenge limiting beliefs. And action number four, cast a better vision. And as you do that this week, let me suggest a mantra that you repeat to yourself. I have a growth mindset. And then ask yourself the question, how can this play out this week in my business? How can I demonstrate this to my team so that they also develop a growth mindset, and that as a company, that becomes our dominant culture, and we begin to grow and become all that we're intended to be.

29:43What happens after you've identified your organization's liberating truths? What if you can't think of new empowering truths to help change the trajectory of your business? And what does this have to do with going to the moon? Well, all of those answers will be revealed after the break. Dun, dun, dun.

30:30going to the moon, whatever your particular business is. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the expert I chose happens to be a former rocket scientist. His name is Ozan Barol. And in fact, he wrote a book called Think Like a Rocket Scientist. His new book, which is actually out tomorrow, Awaken Your Genius, Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary. You can find out more about it at GeniusBook.net. But I want to talk to him right now about how business owners can generate the kind of thinking that will deliver great results in their businesses. Ozan, in your book, Awaken Your Genius, you talk about the value of distinction.

31:12And I was reminded of a line from Kevin Kelly where he mentions that you shouldn't worry about being the best. You should worry about being the only. And I was reminded of that as I was reading your book because this emphasis on distinction comes up right at the very beginning and is sustained all the way through. Tell us, what is the value as a creator, especially as a small business owner who's busy bringing a product to the world? What is the value of distinction? Sure. We notice things because of contrast. Something stands out because it's different from what surrounds it. if there is no distinction if there is no contrast no anomaly no idiosyncrasy no fingerprints you become invisible you become the background and there is so much copying and pasting in our culture so much following the herd much of which is genetically programmed i mean thousands of years ago conformity was essential to our survival if you're too distinct if you stood out too much you would be ostracized, rejected, or worse, left for dead.

32:17But I think from a creative perspective, from a business perspective, that creates a problem because you end up blending into the background. And if there is no idiosyncrasy, nothing that makes you stand out, then it becomes hard for customers to find you and choose you over the competition. I was interested in your conversation in the book around trends. and we have a tendency to follow trends. But the way I was thinking about this as I was reading that passage of the book was that hot trends are really dead ends. Unless you're on the very front end of it, which almost nobody ever is, unless you're on the very front end of it, you're really automatically signing up for that lack of distinction that you just described.

33:02Yeah, exactly. Because over time, imitation makes the trend obsolete. In some cases, there might be a first mover advantage, But research shows that the first mover advantage actually is overblown in many cases. You know, Facebook wasn't the first social network. They actually came on the scene like after MySpace and Friendster. But yeah, following trends is a really dangerous thing to do. I think leaning into what makes you different is the way to go. And I'll give you an example just to make this more concrete. One of my favorite things to do is to walk into a bookstore. And I walk into a bookstore not to buy the best-selling book that's sitting on everyone else's shelf, but to find undiscovered gems.

33:45And I've noticed a trend in recent years that's relevant regardless of what you do for a living. So it looks something like this. You walk into a bookstore and you're greeted by this massive bestseller section that's displaying all the usual books. You walk past the new bestsellers and the books that are displayed on the other shelves are the old bestsellers. You ask a staff member for recommendations and he gives you three suggestions from, you guessed it, the bestseller section. There is all the books on all the shelves are organized in alphabetical order by the author's last name. It's a system that was designed 50 years ago for the rapidly shrinking category of people who walk into a bookstore knowing exactly what book they want to buy.

34:30If I knew what book I wanted to buy, it's much easier to do that on Amazon or a different online retail store. And so there is no personality, no quirkiness, no charm, no distinction. So why would customers go out of their way to visit you? Like you can't, as a bookstore, you can't compete with Amazon on price and availability. but you can do what Amazon can't do, which is to give people a personalized experience that goes beyond ads algorithms and bestseller lists. So organize your shelves in a delightful way that will help people discover the books that they're gonna love. I walked into a bookstore a few years ago and instead of putting their books in alphabetical order by the author's last name, they created categories like time travel or young adult books that adults will also love or page turners that you can read in a weekend.

35:26So they had created this experience, designed this experience that was uniquely them, that was distinctly them. And it helped create this point of differentiation that became a reason for someone like me to decide to go into that bookstore versus buy a book online. That's a great example of that idea of being the only. Only they are gonna come up with that particular arrangement. of books. And you'll seek that out because it's uniquely valuable to you at that point. Yeah, exactly. And you're going to build a personal relationship with them. And they're going to be able to curate books for you in a way that algorithms never can.

36:04One of the connections to that idea of distinction and then value has to do with our attention span. Talk to us about the value of attention, this scarce resource that we have, and how that plays into how a business owner might think through how they position themselves in the marketplace. We tend to think of our most scarce resource as time or money, but it's actually neither. It's attention because attention doesn't scale. You can only pay attention to one thing at a time. Multitasking is a myth. You can't do two things at once. Human beings are just not capable of that. You can pay attention to one thing at a time.

36:48And the quality of your life on a day-to-day basis is determined by what you pay attention to. And so as a business owner, if you can capture the attention of the people that you're trying to serve, that's going to be extremely valuable. And again, you capture attention not by trying to shoot at the same obvious target as everyone else. And by the way, it's really hard to hit that target because everyone else is aiming for the same target. It makes much more sense as brian eno who's a musician says to shoot the arrow and then paint the target around it So create the niches In which you reside.

37:30I um, I was recently at a bruce springsteen concert. It was my first bruce concert And I was amazed Here's a 73 year old guy who's like jumping and dancing and sliding across stage pulling off moves that would put people in their 30s to shame. And as I watched him, as he grabbed my attention, I was thinking to myself, like, what explains his success? How has he been so successful at this? And he's been doing it since 1965. It's not because of his voice, but his voice isn't amazing. There are plenty of other musicians out there who have a better voice than he does. He can play the guitar, but as he writes in his memoir, the world is filled with good guitar players, many of them his match or better.

38:15So instead of trying to outplay or out-sing other musicians, he instead doubled down on the quality that made him distinct, which was his ability to write song lyrics. So he wrote, he became a sensation for writing lyrics that capture the blue-collar spirit, that explain the gap between the American dream and the American reality. And that's how he was able to capture the attention of audiences, not by trying to do outplay or out-sing, which were not his distinctive talents, but to lean on the one talent he had, one useful idiosyncrasy that he had that made him different from other people. And that's how he captured the attention of millions of people.

38:56What about the difference between principles and tactics? That comes up in the book, and this would seem to be an area where the trend following also occurs, where we see a tactic that seems to be working. So we go try to copy that tactic. You suggest that's the wrong move. Your better move is to try to understand the principle beneath it. Tell us how that works and why that matters. Absolutely. So I remember the first time that I saw a pop-up on a website. This was a long time ago. But I was like blown away. I'm like, oh my God, here's this thing that came up. It's like someone knows I'm here and I couldn't type my email address fast enough to receive that 10 % off coupon that I didn't even want.

39:42And then all of a sudden, within a few months, pop-ups started to, well, pop up on every single website. And then they began to blend into the background. It became the popular tactic and then it became copied. and once it was copied and pasted, it ended up blurring into the background and you lost the attention of the people that you were trying to serve. And so I find it much more valuable to think about identifying the principle behind the tactic. So if you spot a successful tactic somewhere, instead of copying and pasting it, think about what the tactic is there for. So focus on the why instead of the what.

40:24And then once you identify the principle, then create your own tactic. Create your own way of sharing a 10 % off coupon that others aren't doing. And, you know, I saw this so frequently when COVID first broke out. If you think back to the emails you got from so many businesses, it's almost like they had the same template. Like they were written the same way. The subject line was like, you know, important message about COVID-19. And then it would say like, dear valued customer. And the email was even using the same cliches like unprecedented uncertainty that everybody else was using. And then all those emails just became the same.

41:07But if you can identify the principle behind the tactic and ask, what is this here for? Then you'll be able to see other possibilities for better tactics, tactics that are uniquely you that you otherwise would have missed. What about diversification? So one of the things you talk in the book about is the need to bring in other perspectives into your thinking and into your play. I want to come to that in a minute. But how do you remain distinct while yet diversifying? And I mean that in terms of not only diversifying the opinions that come in your business, but even diversifying perhaps the products that go out of your business into the world.

41:46Sure. Let's talk about opinions first. I think the cliche great minds think alike is wrong. I firmly believe great minds don't think alike. And the best ideas come when you have diversity of thoughts. So cognitive diversity, people who don't think like you. Because I've got nothing to learn from someone who thinks exactly as I do. People who think alike are like two mirrors that reflect each other to infinity. and one of my favorite favorite stories that stuck with me about the importance of diversity of thought of bringing in different viewpoints into the mix is actually from harry potter when jk rowling wrote the first harry potter book publishers were unanimous in their opinion they all thought that the book was not worth printing until it landed on the desk of nigel newton who's the head of bloomsbury publishing in the uk and he saw promise in the book where others missed it.

42:45What was the secret? Well, he took the first chapter of the book home with him and he gave the book to his eight-year-old bookworm daughter, Alice. And Alice took the book chapter to her room. She devoured it. She came back down and she said, Dad, this is so much better than anything else I've read. And that input from an eight-year-old convinced her father to write a meager 2 ,500 pound check to J.K. Rowling to acquire the rights to publish the first Harry Potter book. And that, by the way, is the best bet made in publishing history. That 2 ,500 pounds is now a billion dollars, all because Newton did not conform.

43:28It didn't matter that all of his competitors had passed on the book. They didn't see promise in it. Instead, he stepped outside of his echo chamber and got the opinion of somebody who is a complete outsider to the publishing industry, but an insider of the target audience for the book, an eight-year-old. So it goes to show it doesn't take that much to seek input from others. It can be your friend, your significant other, your eight-year-old daughter. But beginners and outsiders have a way of asking questions and seeing things that the insiders miss because they are too close to the problem. And so that's the thought piece, and that's why diversity of thought is so important.

44:06And then I think the same applies to diversity of output as well. You know, we hear a lot about how you need to diversify your investments. You don't want to put all your money on Bitcoin or you don't want to put all your money on, certainly not on Silicon Valley Bank or one stock, right? Because then that stock might fail. The same idea applies to diversity of the products and services that we're creating. I think if we are putting everything into one bucket, there's a chance that something will happen that we're not foreseeing where that bucket might completely go away. And so diversifying your output and placing little bets on different things that you might be able to create with what you're doing becomes a rich source of not just potential revenue, but also for potential feedback from customers about what might work and what may not work.

44:59How do you do that while remaining distinct? If you think about that, it's almost like there's a tension there in trying to do that. There's only one you, but somehow we're going to multiply that into a diversification. It's the one and the many problem philosophers have been trying to solve since forever. Sure. There's only one you, but you contain multitudes. There are so many different parts of you, and you're not just made up of one skill. if you think back and this is a useful exercise think through as a person as a business what your first principles are and by that i mean your basic building like lego blocks of the services that you're providing and as a person of the skills that you have the the useful idiosyncrasies that make you different from other people like the things that come easily to you but feel like really hard work to to other people and then once you've identified those basic lego blocks then you can begin to diversify and build different things with what you're doing and so for example in my case you know i write books but i also speak about what i write uh so speaking is a logical extension of that in the past i've tried other things so like i tried coaching that was one little bet i placed.

46:16I tried consulting. That was another little bet I placed to diversify myself. And I did not like either of them. I did a pretty successful group coaching program for a year, a mastermind for high-level C-suite executives. And I enjoyed it for a little bit. And then I stopped enjoying it. So I stopped doing it. That's just one example of how you can take what you're doing, for example, the content that you have in a book and diversify it in different ways and try it out and see what works and what doesn't work. But you can still remain true to who you are. It's just taking what's there already and applying it to different areas.

46:56What about the example of Andy Grove and Gordon Moore? I found this example fascinating because this is a great example of two minds who don't think alike coming together, but they didn't come together to solve a problem in a traditional brute force kind of way. They played their way to a solution. Tell us about that. So they were leading Intel at the time. I'm trying to remember the exact problem that they were trying to solve. I think at the time, Intel was focused on memory chips. And that had been the traditional business model. And that traditional business model was getting disrupted by rising competition, particularly from Japan.

47:40And so they thought about switching to microprocessors. And they're struggling with this problem of what to do. And they're stuck. And one of them says, let's play a game. Instead of going around the circles and being stuck in this rut, let's leave, literally walk out the door and walk back in as our replacement. So if we were replaced as CEO and president of the company and two other people were brought in, what would they do? So it was this like role-playing game exercise and they walked back in and the decision was clear. They were going to leave their traditional business model and walk into this new path.

48:27And that ended up being absolutely the right call for Intel. And I included that story in the book on a chapter on the importance of play. Most of us get stuck in our ways, get stuck with the status quo because we're too focused on process, too focused on repeating what we've done in the past. But play is essential to creativity. Play is essential to reimagining the status quo. Play is essential to finding your distinction, your basic Lego blocks. And so that exercise is one of many examples that I cite in the book of how you can infuse play into what you do so that you're able to create better ideas.

49:07I want to close out with an observation about what Grove and Moore did in that moment of play was they were able to see something that they couldn't see themselves before. So they had to sort of step out of their role to step out of the fight that they were currently fighting to come up with a different approach. But that is something the business owners have to do in some form or fashion all the time, which is to see something that somebody else doesn't see and then productize that and then take that to the marketplace, which ultimately takes us back full circle to the beginning of the conversation, which is distinction.

49:47There's something unique in the way you see the world that if you can turn that to the problems that are in the marketplace, you can uniquely solve. Tell us, like, how should a business owner, if you were giving them a parting note, how should they solve that problem? How do they approach that conundrum? The first important thing is to realize no one can compete with you at being you. You are the first and the last time that you'll ever happen. And if your thinking is an extension of you, if what you're building is a product of your inner wisdom, inner abilities, inner talents, you will be in a league of your own.

50:28And I think most people miss that point, which is why so much copying and pasting and following the herd happens. And so that's the starting point. And once you realize that, then being intentional about what you're building. So going back to the discussion we had around tactics and principles, instead of copying a tactic that your competitors are using, identifying the principle behind it and thinking through how you can bring your own basic Lego blocks to implement that principle. So in the case of the bookstore example we mentioned, for example, it's saying we're going to abandon this outdated tactic of organizing our shelves in alphabetical order by the author's last name and instead creating delightful categories like time travel or page turners that you can read in a weekend.

51:15And so that, I think, is the way to lean into distinction and to set yourself apart from the competition. And then one final point that I'll mention here, which is really important. The Intel example also illustrates the importance of carving out time to think. You're not going to be able to tap into your inner wisdom if you're moving from one email to the next, one notification to the next, one meeting to the next. You only can do that if you actually carve out time to think. I call this in the book, in Awaken Your Genius, I call it putting yourself on airplane mode. So carving out time to think throughout the day, just daydream.

51:58Let your mind drift. Go for a walk. Research shows that walking boosts creativity. No audiobook as great as this podcast is. No podcast. Just you and your thoughts. Take 20 minutes. There's so many examples of scientists, business leaders, literally walking themselves into the right answer. Like they'll be stuck on some problem and they'll walk and this amazing idea will pop up as if out of nowhere. This, by the way, is why most people get the best ideas in the shower. Like, you know, and it's not surprising if you think about it because it's one of the few moments of our day when we're just alone with our thoughts.

52:35There's no distractions, no notifications, nothing. imagine the types of incredible insights, incredible ways to distinguish yourself and serve your customers you might be able to generate if you replicate those shower-like conditions just briefly throughout the day. So take a few minutes, daydream, put yourself on airplane mode.

53:01That was on, Varol. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me on, Joel.

53:19That's it for another episode of the Business Accelerator podcast. If you're convinced that mindset really is the secret ingredient to your moonshot, then I recommend two books right now. The first is Michael and Megan's book, Mind Your Mindset. The science that shows success starts with your thinking. This is, if you've been listening to this show for very long, an anchor message of the Business Accelerator podcast. And this is an incredible book for generating breakthrough thinking. And along with that, so is Awaken Your Genius by Ozan Verrol. And so I want to recommend you check out his new book.

53:56You can find it at geniusbook.net. Now, if you're a small business owner and you want to skyrocket your results, I recommend you go to businessaccelerator.com slash coach. That's businessaccelerator.com slash coach. We help successful but overwhelmed small business owners just like you scale yourself and your business so you can win at work and succeed at life. It's what we call the double win. And if you'd like to experience that for yourself, go to businessaccelerator.com slash coach. That's it. We'll be back next week with more conversations to help you accelerate your business.

54:37Thank you.