Wabi Sabi with Biz/Dev | Ep. 167

In this episode of the Biz/Dev Podcast, David and Gary are, well.. David and Gary, being David and Gary. Authenticity at its best…

Links: 

Simon Sinek - The Golden Circle - TedTalks 2009

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

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The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: I met a guy at a schmoozer. He had a 3d printer, three dimensional QR code. It was made up of a bunch of little white sticks that were all sticking up, maybe a quarter inch.

And if you were right above it, it would work as a QR code.

[00:00:14] Gary: The first thing I would do with that is see how hard I had to crush it in my hand before it breaks. 

Like I... 

[00:00:19] David: Wow. 

Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host. I'm joined today by Gary and only Gary. And that makes me sad. Hello.

[00:00:34] Gary: You told me that you were going to introduce me like I was the special guest. Why'd you back down?

[00:00:38] David: Cause you're not special.

[00:00:40] Gary: I just wanted to feel special.

[00:00:42] David: I'll get you a lollipop.

[00:00:44] Gary: We were talking about actors before I thought I'd give you my best acting, which goes to show you why I never pursued acting.

[00:00:50] David: you're on podcasts. There it is. Yeah. Face for radio right there. 

[00:00:54] Gary: Easily editable.

[00:00:56] David: Story of my life right there. Easily replaceable is the story of my life.

[00:01:00] Gary: No, useless overhead is what you just describe yourself as.

[00:01:04] David: That is true. I am useless overhead or my official title is the chief Gary poker. That's what it says on Slack. Chief Gary poker. CGP. That sounds weird. Anyway. I will tell you my most recent thing. That I have I found faster. So I went to coffee with a guy who was on this podcast a long time ago, Tim. And because of that, we've been friends since, and we go to coffee about once a quarter, once every six months or so. And he's a very smart guy.

And he challenged me towards the end of our, we chatted about movies and we tried about everything. And at the end, he got real serious and he starts asking me if I had ever heard of the golden circle. Have you ever heard of the golden circle? 

[00:01:42] Gary: I think you got to be one of those CEOs that sneaks into this exclusive camp of people Transcribed That's in a circle and you went like exchange gold.

[00:01:52] David: Nice. That's exactly right. It's a conspiracy organization. The golden circle, if you ever look up, I think his name is Simon Sinek. It's a really interesting

[00:02:02] Gary: pretty famous

[00:02:03] David: He's pretty famous. See, I'd never heard of him before. And now, yeah, apparently I've been in a rock. So my apologies. He had a Ted talk back when Ted talks were like serious things.

Now everyone has a Ted talk.

[00:02:16] Gary: It seems like every college and community college has their own little TED talk circuit.

[00:02:20] David: Yeah. Version of some sort. And they've, there's so many brands of them, but originally they were probably a hundred. Ted talks that just were amazing and he gave one of them called the golden circle if you it's an it's 20 years old now I mean it is it's funny because I saw a picture of him again.

I didn't know who he was Sorry, but I see a picture of him now. This is a very old video but in it, he talks about why some companies are great and some companies are just good and you've heard that a lot but there's a whole book on it called good great, but this was really interesting because most companies You He draws a circle.

He draws three circles, looks like a target. And on the outside, you have three rings outside is what you do. The second ring is how you do it. And the inner circle is why you do it. Okay. And most companies start from the outside in. So I make cars. That's what I do. And my cars are fancy cars because of Mercedes.

That's how I do it. That's how I separate myself. And that's usually the end of the conversation. Why never gets brought up. You think of Dell computer, you think of almost anything, any main business, even big ones, I'm not talking about even, they don't have to be small. They can be very successful businesses, but then there are some that transcend that and that's like Apple, that's the big example, but he was using, he uses all sorts of examples in his stuff with Martin Luther King and stuff like that.

Cause it's not just necessarily business, even though that's the realm in which I'm putting it. But he uses Apple as the example.

[00:03:50] Gary: I think his point was the way you communicate your purpose to others And how orators and people like Martin Luther King Jr. in that case, they start with their beliefs

[00:04:03] David: Correct.

[00:04:03] Gary: tell you why that's important to them. And then how, since it's important to them this way, maybe it could be important to you.

And then he translates that into how some companies talk about themselves.

[00:04:16] David: And if you think about that, starting with the Y, so Apple is the big example. Their thing is, we're, we think differently. We are making computers for the artists and the rebels of the world. They've been, Steve Jobs was really good at that. And they did many ads around that and they are, Oh, and we also, we do that by selling you a computer.

And so the people who, if you go back now, about a pre iPhone. I think where you're is really where I'm talking before it began, everybody owned an iPhone or everybody owned an Apple product. The original people who were excited about Apple were people who bought into that. Why they were the artists, they were the change makers.

[00:04:53] Gary: yeah. And their breakthrough commercial was like the scene of the guy throwing the computer through the screen. Like basically not just think different, but change the world.

[00:05:03] David: we're

[00:05:03] Gary: want you to change the world and we want you to think differently of how you can do that. And by the way. Here's a computer to help you

[00:05:09] David: Here's a computer and we also, yeah. And here's an iPod or whatever. As opposed to gateway or Dell or IBM or whatever it's a computer. Here's a computer. Do you want Ram? Do you want some megahertz? Do you want some gigahertz? Whatever you want. I got a good processor. Here it is. That's every company that sells computers.

Honestly, Microsoft's trying a little bit, but they don't have it. And I think

[00:05:31] Gary: The other thing is with this scenario if companies have been pushing the, what we do for so long, and then they try to switch just randomly, the inauthentic voice is like immediately apparent.

[00:05:46] David: You get a few chances, I think. to do that. If you change your CEO, I think you open the door to, Hey, we're going to, we're going to change things up. This is, we've been selling you widgets forever, but this is why we sell you, which you can do that at major shifts in your company. But yeah, if

[00:06:02] Gary: lot of companies do that in like a rebranding effort.

[00:06:06] David: So the golden circle is reversing the way you do your messaging. So instead of what high let's try that again. Instead of what and how you start with why, then how, then what? So in apple's cases, we build We, we build things for the rebel, the artist, the creator, right?

The changers, change makers, all those people. There's their why we do this by bringing in design. And we would do this by doing, using the top quality materials. And

[00:06:36] Gary: keeping the software and hardware together as.

[00:06:40] David: this as if there's your, how, and the, what is, oh, we happen to make computers and we also do iPods.

And at the time, a few products, they didn't have a ton back then, and it was like the, so the people who bought them were buying into the, why now it does it, this all falls apart. If you're what is bad. Let me be very clear. If Apple made cruddy computers, none of this would matter. If Martin Luther King didn't give a great speech, none of this is his beliefs die on the vine.

And there's still great beliefs. There's still great things, but if he hadn't done the, I have a dream speech and just knocked it out of the park, no one would be talking about him right now. It's just the way the, so the product matters. I don't want to, so the baseline have a good product, but. Once you have that good product showing why you did it is it's always strange.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was funny. I was a little behind the scenes. So right after I'd seen this video, I sent actually, I was still watching it. I sent it to Gary. I'm like, dude, check this out. And I'm sure I'm the last person. Everyone who's listened to this, I've probably already seen this video, but if you haven't seen it in 10 years, go watch it again. And so I started thinking, but what is our, why? Cause I talk about it all the time internally, why I started this company, why I built the company the way I did build it. But I never, we've never said it in like a promotional way. We've never said it out loud except internally we do when we're hiring.

Interestingly enough, what

[00:08:10] Gary: say talking about it in a promotional way is really accurate. I think sometimes companies, I know we did, we'll fall into this idea that if they're going to be promoting, the default is to promote what. Not why so it's not so much that we're talking about why we do this or why you started the company in a promotional way It's just more of oh it's actually the authentic real reason that we didn't think to share because it was almost default to Sharing what we do rather than why as the major part Of,

[00:08:47] David: I find interesting

[00:08:48] Gary: pushing a

[00:08:49] David: many

[00:08:49] Gary: makes people think they have to push the product instead of,

[00:08:53] David: it's just think about it. So this is, Behind the scenes. I tell Gary's building our new website right now. It's been going on for six years 

[00:09:01] Gary: really slow.

[00:09:02] David: and not talented at all. But I say to him, Hey, I want to lead with this. Why this is speaking to me.

I wanna lead with the why. And he challenges me like everyone else. He's saying, you only have a few seconds to capture the person's attention, right? Cause this is what we've all been told. And so we got to lead with, we build websites or mobile web apps and all that stuff, or they're going to think, Oh, I'm in the wrong place.

And they're going to leave, right? That's what we've all been trained. And we relegate the why this is, that's not, we argued about this because I agreed with him, right? We're changing the way we're building our website completely. Eventually it'll be live and you'll see it. But but most people with their why in the about page.

[00:09:44] Gary: Yeah.

[00:09:44] David: that crazy? I think I'm

[00:09:45] Gary: And I wouldn't say,

[00:09:47] David: page of a website, honestly, but that's where people's heart lives.

[00:09:51] Gary: I didn't disagree with you about leading with the why I just tried to like, also make you understand it seems like we had to almost include some of what we did as well. And that was more of the, how do we do that

[00:10:06] David: It's tricky, right? Cause

[00:10:07] Gary: But then, yeah, we ended up going completely in your direction, which to me feels like exactly what we should do.

[00:10:17] David: It feels nice once we decided to do it, but it did, it goes against everything about building websites. We have been taught you have SEO optimization. You need all the buzzwords. If you want to show up doing mobile apps, you have to show up mobile apps. You got to put that all over your homepage or no, one's going to find you.

And we're just throwing that out because. If you're going to find, I have always said that in, in a consulting business, like ours agency, a firm or whatever, our, no one SEOs us. We do get some, but generally

[00:10:49] Gary: talked to on this podcast, when it comes to giving three pieces of advice or talking about how they've grown their business or how they're marketing themselves, one of the main ways that everybody goes from like startup, no one knew about to gaining some gravity is always, it's going to be like networking referrals over SEO, because unless you're selling a product at a price point, trying to, outpace your competitors with either a lower price or a higher quality product that, yeah, you're going to push that as much as possible and you're going to try to optimize SEO if you're on Shopify or Amazon or whatever.

But for what we do, it's, yeah, all that's really going to give us if we optimize for SEO is just put us in more listicles. That's it. 

[00:11:38] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:12:05] David: So after I handed my business card, the website, Was the first thing that you saw that was proof.

Is this a guy full of crap or is Kenny backing up? I have a nice business card. I hand it to you. You're like, okay, cool I enjoy talking to this guy or gal is whoever i'm now going to put i'm going to give them a little test I'm going to go to their website to see If they do quality work. Now, in my case, when I build mobile apps and web apps and all that stuff, my website becomes incredibly powerful, important.

If I have a bad website, I'm done. That guy is done with me. This guy can't do his job. Why would he do me a good website? So it's

[00:12:41] Gary: though, a lot of the companies that do what we do.

[00:12:45] David: Oh, they have horrible websites. That is the irony of it. Every way you can go and Google custom software development, any city. I don't care what city you're in.

[00:12:54] Gary: You'll find the same

[00:12:55] David: the first 10. They look exactly the same.

[00:12:59] Gary: and they use mismatched icons from different clip art packs. Oh, it's great.

[00:13:03] David: They're just, and you can usually tell if they're built offshore and they're trying to attack a us market that was usually just screamed through. I it's, there's a million things. If one thing I hate, and one thing we push really hard against on our own site, it's not, we're not perfect at it. I hate stock imagery.

If I'm going to show people, I want those people to be my employees or my customers. When I have the beautiful people, touching, touching the air. And it's it's a bright, everybody's got that image or they're on the space whiteboard that they're drawing in front of them.

Or there's a million of these and everybody's

[00:13:40] Gary: You're speaking of the images that are specifically talking about the company though.

[00:13:44] David: Yeah. Yeah. We use screenshots and

[00:13:47] Gary: I was going to say cause you're just, Describing a lot of our blog images, which are different,

[00:13:52] David: that's fine. No that's different. And a lot of those you're making anyways, but

[00:13:55] Gary: Yeah,

[00:13:56] David: I just can't stand when you say you click on the about us page.

[00:14:00] Gary: And it's just a stock photo of some yeah. Glass building.

[00:14:04] David: in a glass building, smiling at you. None of those people work there. That drives me crazy.

[00:14:10] Gary: I love the whiteboard with the 9, 000 post its and everybody's smiling and pointing

[00:14:16] David: Yeah. Or they're all looking at the whiteboard. That's never, and they're all perfectly dressed and like

[00:14:21] Gary: or the 14 people gathered around the one computer. All pointing at the screen and then the designer, whoever like smiling, no,

[00:14:30] David: No, it's just

[00:14:31] Gary: You get anybody over your shoulder,

[00:14:33] David: the rules, but I'm just Authenticity. If I could boil it down, I think the golden circle, I think in the world of AI and the world of everything that we're doing, authenticity is the last bit of currency we have because the world is exploding in a monumental explosion of C plus content that AI is generating by the metric, ton every LinkedIn posts, every this, every that.

Is AI generated or at least AI influenced? Maybe that's a better way of saying it. Every blog post, not every, but those few that was written by a human, they still shine through. They just do you read the New York times. Because there's a human being behind every single article they make. They will die on that Hill.

They have a vibe. They have everything. Every good website should be with people. And I think that is still, if not still true, it's even more true. Authenticity is so critical.

[00:15:38] Gary: And to add to that in the sea of AI generated marketing and sales content. When you're speaking from, if you're speaking about your business from a standpoint of why and authenticity and you're honest with yourself about what you're doing and why, or why you're doing it and how you're doing it, like there is no way that you're going to mess up or, I'm going to say anything that's going to be cheesy, scammy, or sound like inauthentically salesy.

You know what I mean? It just immediately will break down that sales barrier for the person reading it. If they can. Connect some sort of emotion to it instead of just trying to get through the pitch and find the price.

[00:16:23] David: I think a lot of people get into the AI stuff because I don't know how to write. And so they're making their about page where they're putting their heart for the first time. Yeah. on the page. And I don't know how to write this. This is uncomfortable. So I'm going to use AI to do it, but I promise you people will respond to, obviously you got to be grammatically correct, but come on, there's grammarly now 

[00:16:43] Gary: there's a difference between assistance and writing. Yeah, for sure.

[00:16:46] David: if you write it down and you're writing from your heart, why you started this company, why you do what you do, And the answer to that is not to make a buck. If the answer to that is to make a buck, might as well have AI write it. But if you started this business, and I would say 80 plus percent of the startups that I've worked with, which has been a lot now gotta be 50 plus 80 percent of them are starting something that they believe in. Either it's a really cool idea that they had.

It is something they've wanted to fix in the world, whatever it is, they believe in this thing. They're not trying to make a buck. Obviously the bucks come right. Profit should take care of itself. That's always the rule. If you do what you're supposed to be doing, profit will take care of itself to a point.

But I think that I would challenge you though, I guess if I'm speaking to you and you're someone who's, you've been using AI to write your about page or about write the post that you're really exposed, exposing what you believe, I would challenge you to do it for real, even if it's not, I just, it'll come across way better.

And you're in your audience, whatever that audience is, whether it's clients or employees or whatever is going to respond better than drivel from an AI bot. 

[00:18:02] Gary: Wabi sabi..

[00:18:03] David: What did you just say?

[00:18:06] Gary: It's the Japanese expression for the beauty of imperfection.

[00:18:10] David: Seriously? Wabi Sabi.

[00:18:13] Gary: Look it up.

I don't, I believe you because I know you're all into the whole, but that's so silly sounding for such a profound idea that it's so silly sounding. Wabi sabi. 

So we came into the podcast without a guest, but we were going to talk about things that we're doing in our business that might be of value to you guys listening. And one of the recent changes we've made is starting to talk about our company leading with the why instead of the what. And then, so we've explained why we want to lead with the why and where we got the idea from.

[00:18:47] David: Why? It's. It's funny that it seems so common. Like it doesn't, this is not a revelation. I'm being blinded. Wow. I'm gonna have to move. Hold on.

[00:18:58] Gary: No, but I think it's just enough outside of the practice that you see every day that it's almost wait, that's. I'm afraid of doing that. I'm just going to do what everybody else in

[00:19:10] David: I'm telling you, dude, every website, you can see this in practice, go to any website that's selling any sort of service. And it's all about how. And the idea of leading with your why is so redonkulously different. Again, Google, you can take our industry and every single website looks the exact same.

Even our current one, if you go to it now, follows that same script. It looks amazing, but it's still that same script. And so we are taking a risk. We both recognize by doing this, we are absolutely taking a risk on potentially shooting ourselves right in the face. I don't know. It might not work.

It might be.

[00:19:53] Gary: it's weird though, because after me and you went through our 900 variations of, the words we're going to use and how we're going to describe this or whatever, where we ended, we were both like, you know what, that's just it, that feels.

[00:20:05] David: feels

[00:20:05] Gary: us that feels right. And that makes sense. And why didn't we do this earlier?

Like this just feels like the direction to go. Yeah, it might not fit the,

[00:20:15] David: about page.

[00:20:16] Gary: might not fit the bullet points of the best SEOs for your, or the other posts that I see nonstop when you're designing, you follow the designers. Here's how a landing page converts. Follow these simple steps.

[00:20:28] David: Oh gosh. How do you

[00:20:29] Gary: This value statement, explain this quick proof of con or proof, social proof, blah, blah, blah. Everybody's got the 10 step program to make your website, convert and be SEO friendly. But again, like you said, that comes off, you're just a cookie cutter and authentic website. Like everybody else,

[00:20:46] David: There's the challenge. I'd be very curious if anybody actually takes it up, but let us know.

[00:20:51] Gary: all of you, a lot of our guests talk about the one main thing that you need is passion. And then if you. Take the chance of actually describing what that passion was and why you're doing what you're doing. Maybe it'll pay off.

[00:21:04] David: We're going to find out.

[00:21:05] Gary: Hopefully.

[00:21:06] David: All right. On that note, we're going to round this guy right back around

[00:21:09] Gary: Round this guy home.

[00:21:11] David: round him home to second base. Thank you for listening to our drivel and hopefully our editors who will work extra hard and make this somewhat cohesive.

[00:21:19] Gary: You only miss the shots you don't take. Wait, no, that's not

[00:21:23] David: There's a, there's only,

[00:21:25] Gary: miss 100 percent of the shots that you don't

[00:21:30] David: That's right.

[00:21:30] Gary: I'm got that

[00:21:31] David: 110 percent

[00:21:33] Gary: Shoot like you're the guy from Turkey in the Olympics.