Episode 60:Copy Everything Kai Does
Summary
Nick and Kai work through how to filter business advice, what to take seriously, and why deliberate refusals give a small business character. They sort advice into categories, rank them by usefulness, and use Hot Doug’s and Aesop as examples of businesses that ignored obvious best practices to their advantage.
Highlights
- Nick frames business advice as a buffet: come hungry, skip the Cheerios, go for the bacon. Getting from F to D minus at knowing what to take and what to throw away has been, in his words, one of the best things he has ever done in his business.
- Kai sorts advice into four categories: tactical, strategic, systems, and ethical. He ranks systems advice highest because even a poor fit is usually 75% mappable, 10% disposable, and 15% adaptable with duct tape.
- Strategic advice ranks lower for Kai because it is built on the specific preconceptions of another person’s business, their market, and the problem they solve. Those conditions rarely transfer cleanly to a different operation.
- Hot Doug’s, a Chicago hot dog restaurant Nick has written and spoken about repeatedly, never franchised, never sold recipes, and closed any time Doug was sick or on vacation. Every customer got Doug.
- Aesop has never held a sale, builds every store to a unique design, and tracks samples in its CRM so staff can ask by name how a previous sample worked out on the next visit.
- Kai committed to daily email as his sole marketing focus, explicitly passing on Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and other channels. His reasoning: there are more ideas than time available, and concentration on one thing done well beats spreading thin across many.
- Nick refuses the same five pieces of advice on repeat. He has no Facebook account, runs no Google AdWords, and declines a long list of ‘obvious’ moves. The pattern of consistent refusal is, in his framing, how a business shows who it is.
Read the transcript
So I’m a big fan of breaking from convention, breaking from the pack. I very much like identifying as Lone wolf isn’t the right word, but let’s just say I am comfortable being alone and I’m comfortable taking the road less traveled in business, in life. I mean, Kai randomly moves to Hawaii, very much breaking from convention. Kai, you know, doing crazy things different from convention. I’m very comfortable with Breaking from the pack, but I still like to observe the pack and see what the pack is doing because that often informs whether I want to zig when the pack is zagging, or if the pack has stumbled on a strategy that makes sense that I want to. Incorporate into my marketing strategies. I don’t want to operate in a vacuum, but I don’t want to be a Me Too marketer or a Me Too business owner who just Parrots, when I see the gurus or evangelists or loudest person in the room saying, Oh, yeah, we have to do it this way, so everybody does it this way. I’d much rather take the information I’m seeing and go, Oh, This is useful, or this is not useful, and from that, go off and do my own thing. I’m very comfortable breaking from convention. Yourself?
I kind of have a belief that all businesses are privately a disaster in some way. And so when I get business advice, it usually comes from other business owners. And they never want to acknowledge that their businesses are privately a disaster in some way. And so I have to kind of feel out the contours of what might make this a disaster for me. And so I look at business advice. It’s a buffet. I have come to a buffet and I’m hungry. And I want to ignore the Cheerios and go for the bacon. And that’s basically it. I I want the I mean, regardless of what you eat, uh I want the thing that I desire, you know? And gaining sense for what to take from advice and what to throw away from advice and cultivating that sense. has been, I don’t think I’m good at this, but even getting from F to D minus has been one of the best things that I’ve ever done in my business.
I think it’s also valuable to categorize the different types of advice. And the three that come to mind are tactical advice, strategic advice, and system advice. Any other you’d add to the list as sort of like larger meta categories?
I would say there’s a certain amount of I don’t even know if it’s maybe this falls under strategic advice, but it’s more like ethical advice, like what your North Star is. And that can be it can be really big stuff like we’re a design agency, we won’t work for tobacco companies. It can be smaller stuff like I work in this way and that’s why. And that’s effectively what like a closed ended productized engagement looks like. I think that there is value to be had for both of those things.
But yeah, I think I’ve that’s those are the ones that I would add. Yeah, in terms of like the weighting system I’d use, ethical, I’d put high up on the list. If somebody is teaching me. . You know, some ethical principle or something that they found works very, very well in their relationships and their business. I will listen to that because, like, it might not apply to me, but Somebody has spent some time learning this thing. I want to learn about it. Systematic advice, I rank really, really highly. If somebody’s like, let me tell you about the system we implemented that reduced. How much time we spend maintaining our website by 50%, or how we switched from writing an email once a month to writing daily emails, like I am interested in these systems because even if the system wholesale doesn’t apply to my business, I’ll be able to say, okay, 75% of this map’s on, 10% I could throw away, 15% I need to shove into place and duct tape together. Strategic advice, I think, is okay, but strategic advice is built on the preconceptions of what your business is, the market you’re in, the expensive problem you’re solving. So, it doesn’t play as well. And tactical advice, I will look at and say, Oh, that’s cool. And most likely, I won’t necessarily implement the tactical advice, just so it’s just since it’s so steeped in the particulars of that specific situation. I might. Over time, extract overall tactical advice and say, oh, these are best practices. Let me put them in a swipe file and this becomes sort of the test file, things I want to run my business against. That’s sort of how I rank them. Thoughts on your side?
I don’t know if I necessarily. I mean, there’s kind of the ranking system, but I just kind of use my own squishy qualitative gauge for it. And, you know, sometimes a strategic advice is it outweighs the other things, right? So when you You basically come to Jesus to me at a mastermind retreat last year and said you should double down on A-B testing. That was strategic advice. And I took it extremely seriously and then acted on it, right? And I did it really, really well. And I but that was that’s outweighed pretty much any advice that I’ve ended up taking with it. So um Yeah, I don’t know. Like that, that’s one example. But most strategic advice I throw away because people think they have a really good idea of how I should use Facebook ads. I don’t have an account on that website. Like, right? Like. Like, there are a lot of things that seem obvious that I sh that I should quote unquote do that people tell me to do that I don’t do. And I keep and you hear the same five things every single time. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, here’s why, no. And they’re saying it because they know it’s a best practicey type thing, but they’re not listening to what the actual genuine needs of my business are. And so I think that, you know, the ways in which you’re, if you’re getting a lot of advice that looks like that and you continue to refuse it, that’s one example, right? Of you. Following your own North Star and breaking from the pack. I think of a restaurant in Chicago called Hot Dugs, which I’ve written about and spoken about multiple times. And uh he never franchised. He never licensed out his likeness while the restaurant was open. He uh never sold his recipes, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There was one hot dugs Also, the only way you could order at Hot Doug’s was from Doug. If Doug was sick, the restaurant would close. Right. And that’s that shit insane. When Doug wanted to take a vacation, the restaurant would close. So there was never a moment where it was like, hey, where’s Doug? You got Doug. Always got dog, right? I think of us, we’ve talked about this brand before. There’s a skincare brand called Aesop. Every one of their stores is unique. They’ve never held a sale. Everything is full price. Right? Batshit insane for a skincare brand. If you want a free sample, they track you. They do not just hand you free samples. They quote, sell you samples in your CRM for free. So the next time you come in, they’re like, hey, Nick, how was that thing? So, good customer service.
Geez.
Very, very good customer service, right? And I’m sure if they just gave, they’re getting, you know, the CEO gets. Entreaties to sell Aesop in department stores and throw discounts on Black Friday. and give away all of their samples for free and build stores in a cookie cutter way so they can just take new real estate and stamp it out. And they have not done that because it shows that they have a strongly held opinion about how it is they want to be running their business. And you, dear listener, are probably a small enough business that you have a tremendous amount of agency in being able to figure out How you want to go against the grain and in what ways that, frankly, helps you self-actualize as a person. Like, I will be hyperbolic on that. Like, those are the ways in which you will relish coming into work every morning when Everything is a trash fire, and you’re growing too fast for your own success. Right.
Now, I agree with that. I think it’s. I think it’s an unrealized advantage that we, as listeners included, as independent business owners, as consultants, as people running smaller agencies, have to say Well, the industry says A is the dominant thing. I don’t really like A. I’m going to go do B instead because that singular decision, unless it’s I’m not going to accept money for my work anymore. Probably isn’t going to bankrupt your business. Like you’re, you have a lot of flexibility. There’s a lot of elasticity in terms of what your business can handle. And so just because everybody else is doing it this way Does not mean you necessarily need to do it that way. It’s good, I think, at times to adopt that contrarian outlook and contrarian viewpoint because it lets you see, oh, what else can I do? If they’re saying A is the thing, What is being left off the table? What’s B through Z? What else is out there? How do I test that? How do I learn more about that? Why did we settle on A as a dominant paradigm?
Yeah, I mean, again, take all advice that you receive seriously. It’s insanely valuable. It is amazing that we have this blueprint together that teaches you how to run a business and that you can operate on that. But like take everything also as if it were a suggestion. And if you’re not willing to soberly look at and evaluate those suggestions, you’re going to take 99% of them. But that other 1% is like me not doing Google AdWords campaigns. You know, it’s me not doing it’s a lot of knots, to be honest. It’s a lot of like, you know, here are the things that we don’t do and here are the things that we do do. And here’s how it shows who we are as a business. ‘Cause that it gives you character and personality, you know.
Yes. No, it helps you stand out dramatically. And there’s that oft parroted or oft said phrase where The distinction between a good and a great business or an okay and a great business is realizing at some point you have to say no to good suggestions. You have to say no to good ideas because there’s only so many things you could execute on in a year or five years. There’s more ideas than time available. And so, by looking at it and saying, like, yeah, I probably could make money using Google AdWords, but That’s not a priority. That’s not the direction I want to head in. That’s not the strategy we’re investing in. I’m going to break from the pack here and do something else instead, focus my precious time and attention on this other thing. You will do a lot better. And again, it harkens back to what I said at the start: where one mission I’m trying to adopt is to do a few things very, very well. I just started doing a daily email to my list. That is high on my list of priorities. I want to do that singular thing very, very well at the ex and Doing it in a way where it excludes investing in Facebook ads, investing in Google ads, doing other types of promotional activities, because this is the thing I’m going to focus on right now. And see what it generates for me because that’s the thing I want to do very, very well. And it very much breaks from the pack, like There are programs for consultants and freelancers out there that espouse a very different approach to marketing to your list, or building to your list, or promoting your services, or educating people, or entertaining people. And I’m saying, well, it’s great that there are these alternative options out there. I’m going to do it this way and see what happens. And as an independent business owner, my skin in the game is pretty low. It’s sometimes writing emails. And that’s been paying off so far. And, well, my business probably isn’t going to fail overnight because I decided to write a daily email or break against the majority decision and focus on daily email instead of something else.
Yeah. I completely agree with all of those things. Like you’re just trying to be clear and intentional about what it is you do, and you’re going to screw it up. You’re going to figure it out. And that’s going to be what gives you more character and personality in the long run. Yes.
Yeah. And really, I think, as independent business owners, as freelancers, as consultants, That’s what we want to be shooting for. Like, that’s a very, very good. I’m going to use key performance indicator KPI metric here, but like. On an emotional level, like you want to be satisfied with what you’re doing. You want to look at your business and be like, yeah, it’s quirky. Yeah, it’s different. Yeah, I’m not doing A and B, but I’m doing C, D, and E really, really well, and be proud of it. And be proud of the fact that you say no to some opportunities, or some strategies, or some systems, or some tactics, because. Well, it’s your business. And at the end of the day, you get to decide where you’re going to focus that time and attention. And if that time and attention suddenly decides to be focused elsewhere, good, break from the pack. Do your own thing. Test that thing. But within that philosophy of testing, I think it’s important to realize that not every test succeeds. And It’s the journey, not the destination. I might end my daily email experiment with, well, that was fun and it produced none of the results I was hoping for. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to try something else. But I’m going to take away from that lessons on what went well. And lessons on what I should have done differently, and use that experiment as a means to educate myself and not take a failure state as failure itself. I’m going to take it instead as validation that I tried a thing. I learned some things. These are my takeaways. This is my next step.
And there you go.