Episode 19 of “What is Innovation?” is live! This week, Jared talks with author, consultant, and advisor David A. Fields about how he helps his clients think about innovation. His customer-centric viewpoint makes for unique insights into how your products and services can consistently deliver value. Listen and subscribe today!
David A. Fields, consultant, speaker, and best-selling author, shares his customer-centric viewpoint which makes for unique insights into how your products and services can consistently deliver value.
More about our guest:
Consultant, speaker, and best-selling author David A. Fields helps in building consulting practices that are lucrative and lifestyle-friendly. He’s the author of Amazon’s highest-rated book on the business of consulting and has guided consultancies ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars down to one-person startups.
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Episode Guide:
1:03 - What Is Innovation
1:33 - Innovation as an improvement vs Innovation as breakthrough
4:56 - Different kinds of innovation
5:34 - Four Box Worldview and Consulting Business
8:20 - Innovation as a portfolio
10:20 - Innovation application on product-service industry
13:16 - Evolutionary vs Revolutionary
14:32 - Portfolio vs Product Distinction
15:16 - What isn't innovation
15:57 - Working with Kodak
17:10 - Looking out the window vs Listening inside the walls
17:51 - Patent Offices
20:46 - Developing frameworks and models
23:33 - Stepping back and recalibration
29:27 - Advice to future innovators
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OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management.
/This transcript was automatically generated using AI; please forgive any inconsistencies. We are working to provide the correct and more concise copy of the transcript. For urgent needs, please send us an email.
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Jared Simmons 00:05
Hello, and welcome to what is innovation. The podcast that explores the reality of a word that is in danger of losing its meaning altogether. This podcast is produced by Outlast consulting, LLC, a boutique consultancy that helps companies use innovation principles to solve their toughest business problems. I'm your host, Jared Simmons. And I'm so excited to have David a field. consultant, speaker and best selling author, David de fields helps build consulting practices that are lucrative and lifestyle friendly. He's the author of Amazon's highest rated book on the business of consulting and his guided consultancies ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars down to one person startups. David, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
00:51
Jared, I am thrilled to be on this show with you today.
Jared Simmons 00:54
It's It's always a pleasure to talk with you get your thoughts on innovation. Alright, Lay it on me. All right, here we go. So first question, what is innovation?
01:06
That's kind of a deep question. Okay, so what is innovation? interesting idea. I'll give you I'll give you my obviously my point of view on it, because I'm because you asked me. Sure. And, and I'm going to create a distinction in there. Okay. So first of all, I think there are a couple of important distinctions. There's innovation, which is just new. And then there's innovation, which is actually useful. So I want to talk about useful innovation, right. And I think there's actually another distinction, which is innovation, that is an improvement, versus innovation. That's breakthrough.
Jared Simmons 01:43
Okay.
01:44
And for me, that distinction is important, because I typically will guide people to be evolutionary, more than revolutionary to have innovation, that's an improvement as opposed to innovation. That's a breakthrough. Right. And that's because innovation that's more evolutionary, is more likely to win business, you know, that people want it. But we can talk about that that later. Sure. But I think basically, innovation is anything that allows people to accomplish something they weren't able to before. And I tend to think of that, again, in four categories, they can get more of something that they want more of with the same or less effort, or they can reduce something, they want less up with the same or less effort, they can improve somehow, or they create something or they're able to accomplish something entirely new. So more. So increased, decrease, improve new, those are kind of the four buckets, I think in sure when I think of innovation, and any of those that actually deliver more value to whoever's using your your product or your service. Is there anything else other than products and services? I think that's all we've gotten? Okay, so product and service, then that, then I think you you've created an innovation, right? So you can create a lot that's new, unless it actually helps someone in one of those four buckets. I think it's just new for new it's not not used for innovation. Right now. How does that fit with, with how you think about innovation? You know,
Jared Simmons 03:25
David, I think it's it's spot on with with the way I've been trained, and my personal view on innovation. The industry is full of language and different words for it. I love your framing and your phrasing. Some people will describe innovation in buckets in terms of cost innovation versus product innovation versus services versus marketing, innovation, things like that. But I think the beauty of your your buckets is that it's easy to remember, it's useful. As you know, it your description of innovation fits your description of innovation, actually. It's actually useful. Yeah, exactly. And I think that the the other aspect of it is, it leaves space for people to have different definitions of innovation, but still be making progress. So what I mean by that is, a lot of times, companies and organizations get stuck on well, is this innovation, is this not innovation should speak to this come out of our innovation team. Should this come out of the current business team, where should this fit? And I think that your structure takes that off the table and says, Look, there's all there are different kinds of innovation.
04:47
If you take all of that politics, right to the table, where's the fun? I'm just kidding. Of course. You're right. The it's so interesting, right? different perspectives cost innovative. Marketing innovation. To me Those are all house. Right, that's thinking about well, you know, how do we accomplish them innovation? Or what sort of bucket as opposed to end benefit? Right? customer focus market focused? What does the market want more of? What does the market one less up?
Jared Simmons 05:19
Right? Right?
05:20
What is the market missing? What does the market have now, but could be improved? Because there's some element? That's not quite right.
Jared Simmons 05:28
That's Well said. And it sparks the thought about the way you design your organization. And I know you, you consult with giant companies and, you know, small companies, to me, the way you construct your organization around improvement, whether it's, you know, incremental, or breakthrough, almost structures, your thinking around innovation. Yeah, almost biases, your perspective on it. And I can imagine, it might hinder, you know, your four box kind of view of the world, it might hinder you from being able to play in all four boxes?
06:06
Well, I'm not sure you can play in all four. I, you know, that in itself would be an interesting sort of rabbit hole to scurry down. Because anytime you try to do everything, right, every time you say, Oh, look, there's four boxes, let's do all four boxes, you're setting yourself up for trouble. As opposed to saying, Let's take one box. If we think about our market, if we think about our customers, what do they want less up, and you focus on that just that one area, you can come up with a lot of innovations, you can come up with a lot of ways to make your customers happier, create value for them by reducing something I want less of, well, they want to fuel their cars less, or they want less weight in something, they want less wait times, they want that there's and then you start to say, Okay, now how can we create that end result? To me that works better than saying, Okay, let's
Jared Simmons 07:02
do one in each box. Let's make sure we've got one in each bucket. And that's the corporate approach to innovation. So your approach makes perfect sense. And I'm sure the more progress inducing approach, what and what's the corporate version, what typically happens is the corporate version is we've got these four buckets, these four boxes, this department takes this box, this department takes this box, this team takes that box, and we work out for it the same time on the same product. And sometimes, you know, have conversations with companies just simply saying, Look, you're This is one, one product on the shelf. Yeah. And you've got eight different projects, improving it or changing it in some way from eight different perspectives. And I think, to your point, a more sequential approach, you know, saying you're playing in this box, doesn't mean you're not gonna play in the other three at some point. Yeah. And it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't get
08:03
you don't get extra points for completing every box. Right? Right. You get extra points for satisfying your customers more for making them happier for meeting a need.
Jared Simmons 08:14
Exactly.
08:14
Can I Can I throw in one other idea? Maybe take us down a, again, a slightly different direction?
Jared Simmons 08:19
Yeah, please.
08:20
The is this idea of kind of having things in different buckets. One place where I do think that's valid, and useful is in the portfolio. Thinking about your innovation as a portfolio. Now, this is obviously an area where you know, much more than I do. My understanding of this, and my thinking about this is very much shaped by Brad Casper, who used to be the CEO of dial dial during years when they had a lot of innovation, a lot of product innovation. Yeah. And we had conversations about that. He's, he's just a lovely human being, by the way. And we had conversations about his thinking around it. And he said, he always tried to keep a portfolio where some of his projects, some of the innovation, if you will, that they were working on was truly evolutionary, little incremental changes, we'll have a raspberry flavor, right? Well, well, we'll have great that kind of thing, right? And then some projects that were revolutionary. And those were things that we're reading, you're more of a big change. And then some projects that were market making. Oh, interesting, right? Meaning so so those were his three buckets, maybe think about it, you say really what you want is you want about 70% of your effort to be on evolutionary, right, because that's the more is what most likely to succeed. Right. That's gonna keep the lights on. Yeah. It's not going to win accolades, right. However, it will win customers and keep you ahead of competition, right? You have maybe 20% to 25% of your effort on some sort of revolutionary kind of breakthrough. ideas for your category. And then maybe 5% is in a skunkworks, somewhere, right? Where they're just trying to create something utterly new, right? Non improvement, something utterly new, right. And that idea of keeping a balanced portfolio all the time, I think it's a really interesting one.
Jared Simmons 10:20
It is interesting. And it works. I've seen it work in multiple industries and categories product service, it works well, with two caveats. And you would assume these yourself kind of going in. But the first is, these are discrete activities operating in discrete basis. And the failure mode on that one is, you know, I worked at Coca Cola, so I'll use a pick on Coke, if you take a 20 ounce or 16.9 ounce Coca Cola bottle that's on the shelf, you cannot do evolutionary revolutionary and market making work on that skew at the same time. Because the people that are working on the label and the bottle and the formulation, and the cap, and all in the route to market, their efforts are nullified because they are all trying to operate on the same product. Now imagine the CEO dial did not have that point of view, you're not just saying the same skew, you're saying the same skew by the same people, right? Well, what the problem in most corporations, the p&l, the the dollars come from certain places. And so the focus goes to the places where the money flows from and to. And so when you have the evolutionary, keep the lights on, stay a step ahead of the competition stuff, not getting the same sort of focus as the, you know, get on right cover of Forbes or fortune for this revolutionary or market making stuff. The talent gets out of balance, the focus gets out of balance. And you have these big homerun swings, obviating right the the small singles and doubles. Yeah, that you need to keep the lights on. And suddenly you miss with your home run swing, and you fall behind in, right?
12:12
Well, I think that's why you say you always need to keep that balance. Right? Right. They all need to be rewarded, they all needed to be need to be funded, and protected and nurtured right at the appropriate levels.
Jared Simmons 12:24
Correct. And it's, and it needs to be portfolio driven. So if it sounds like it was a poor at the portfolio level, the challenge comes when it's a brand manager in charge of one brand in charge of Pampers or in charge of Coca Cola or in charge of x, you know, insert any brand here, even a service line at a consulting firm. When you try to do all three things to one product, it makes the strategic intent of each of those individual items difficult to achieve at the same time, because you're operating at cross purposes. Yeah.
13:02
I think that's interesting, actually. I mean, to me, that would be something worth exploring whether I think you're right, especially if it's an individual who's in charge of it, do all of those at once is challenging. It creates a really interesting tension, though. Right? And does that stretch? This the same person in different ways? If someone's working on and I don't know the answer to this, by the way, if someone's working on evolutionary projects, and you say, also tackle some revolutionary, I want you to do both. I want you to evolutionary, I want you to revolutionary on your particular line of business. Does the revolutionary energy and say, here's what I want you to do. I want you spend one day a week on your revolutionary stuff. And I want you to spend four days a week on your evolutionary. Yeah, just to make things easy. This isn't how real world works. Right, right. I wonder whether the time spent on the revolutionary projects would color and improve and somehow lift the evolutionary project? I have absolutely no idea. I have no evidence to support that. It's just a. So hopefully one of your listeners has done this. And will say great. Yeah, hey, Jared, we that's exactly what we did. And it was hugely successful, or we tried it and David's out of his mind. Right. Either one of those would be awesome to hear. So hopefully some little feedback
Jared Simmons 14:23
now. So that was a great, a great rabbit hole to go down for a number of reasons. But you know, if nothing else, I think the the portfolio versus product distinction around innovation is an important thing for people to wrap their heads around because, yeah, you know, in Fortune magazine and Forbes and things, they're having a portfolio conversation. And if you as a startup, try to apply that to your one product. You're going to burn yourself out. Oh yeah. Trying to take homerun swings and singles and doubles and you've got two skews or you've got one service that you provide to One customer or one type of customer, you're going to bring the customer out the the, you know the audience out and you're gonna burn yourself out in the process. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's good advice. Thank you, David. let's shift gears. So that's what innovation is. Okay. What isn't innovation?
15:18
I would imagine if you asked a lot of people this question, you get mostly the same answers, which is, when innovation isn't, is doing a bunch of new stuff that doesn't actually add value? Yeah. Right. I mean, I think that would be kind of the classic answer. The I'll show you exactly how smart I am. Okay, this is a demonstration. So for anybody who's listening, who is thinking, God, maybe I was thinking of working with David, this will convince you otherwise. Okay. So one of our clients years ago, before I was working with consulting firms, so when my work was with corporations, whatever the clients was Kodak, and I'm also going to date myself here. And so I was working with Kodak, and they're starting to say, you know, I wonder if we could put a camera on a phone. And I, of course, raised my hand and say, What a stupid idea. Who the hell wants a camera? on their phone? I use my phone to talk. Right? I don't take pictures all the time. Right. So again, I'm just showing you know how much I missed that one. Yeah. Right. Kind of extraordinary. Now, your mobile phone is really just a mobile camera that happens have a phone attached to it. Yes,
Jared Simmons 16:29
exactly. Exactly.
16:31
But you know, be that as it may in Kodak, one of the challenges that they had for years and years and years being an engineering run kind of company is they would add features that nobody wanted. Yeah, they were famous for just adding features. Nobody cared. Right. And that's not innovation.
Jared Simmons 16:53
Got it? Got it. Yeah, features for features sake. That's a great example of what what is an innovation? And I think the challenge is, it's well intentioned. It's just missed, it's not guided, it's not misguided. It's guided by the wrong thing.
17:10
Exactly. But the wrong Northstar, if you will, by the by the, you're listening to the wrong thing, right, that's looking around the room, as opposed to looking out the window. Out the window is the real world out the window where your customers? Hmm, those are the people you need to listen to, those are the people you need to look at. And what happens is we tend to listen to the people inside our walls. Or we look in the mirror and say, well, that person has got a smart idea. Right? Right, maybe. But who cares? It only matters if someone on the other side of the window, someone from the outside thinks your ideas smart.
Jared Simmons 17:49
Yes, well said. And I think the other place technical folks tend to look is at the patent office. Oh, yeah. And if the patent office says it's innovative, and here's your here's your stamp of approval, your patent, then, you know, the consumer can say whatever they want. The marketing folks can say whatever they want, I've got a I've got a patent on my wall and a plaque that says this was innovation
18:17
Damn straight. You know, and I get that I really do I and you know, it's impressive that you brought that out to you that I wouldn't have thought of that. And you're but you're absolutely right. You know, if you can get a patent that shows I've done something, I've created something for something new. Was it useful? I don't know, who cares. But I got to create something. And so therefore, I have a legacy. Right? I can understand that motivation. And from an individual standpoint, from a human standpoint, I really get that. And I respect that, right. from a business standpoint, I don't care. Right? You know, it doesn't matter whether you've got a legacy as a individual, it just matters. How are you able to satisfy customer needs better than any other alternative?
Jared Simmons 19:05
Right? That's exactly right. And that's what keeps the lights on. That's what pays the salary of the technician who's in the lab, coming up with the thing to get the pen. Yeah. And that that value, chain, that value loop when you don't understand how it actually works? That's when things start to start to break down. But yeah, I was that engineer trying to find a way to get a patent. Did you get any? No, I was involved in a lot of applications. But I did not stay at practice long enough to see if they panned out or not. Alright, it's a very long process, line four and receiving a patent. Yeah, it is not easy. And like he said, I respect that effort. It's just dangerous when that becomes the pursuit.
19:50
Right. And a lot of engineers, a lot of inventors become overly enamored of their own inventions, right, because Has it but they see is the benefit, the difference somehow of what's better in their version of better some metric better than the existing as opposed to what the market wants?
Jared Simmons 20:14
Right? All about the market. Right. David, do you think we've talked a bit about technologists and this sort of concrete inventions? All right. Talk to me about frameworks, I would imagine for consultants, frameworks can have the same kind of lore, as you know, patents and technical novelty. Yeah.
20:34
I mean, you know, I'm a huge fan of frameworks. I think framing and reframing are extraordinarily powerful techniques for winning businesses, for winning business and for helping your clients. Right? Is it possible to develop frameworks that are innovative and useless, I'm pretty sure I demonstrate that every day. The amount of work that ends up on the cutting room floor, when it comes to ideas about framing, right and helping people think through their business. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's my office, my ceiling used to be 14 feet, it's down to about eight feet, because it's all just piled up like a floor risen with all the nonsense. I was on a call with a consulting firm last week, we're trying to work through how to communicate their service. And the way they're communicating, it did not work, right. And so we went through it and I said, Let's, let's try this, let's give this a try. Put put a circle, that's the core of your idea. And then when I see is I see the kind of these five arrows coming in, these are the big things, and then you've got this environment around. So we built that out and looked at and said, okay, that doesn't work at all. Right. And, and a lot of that happens. I think, and this may be true for any kind of innovation, certainly for for thinking for thought based, just frameworks, intellectual products, there's a lot of experimentation, you have to use to throw, try a lot of ideas. And what I do see is, is folks try to few,
Jared Simmons 22:10
Okay, that's good perspective. Because when you look at your blog posts or read your book, it feels like, Oh, this guy just gets it. Like he rolls out of bed and creates these simple, elegant, useful frameworks. And in you know, and I'm sure that was his, you know, that's exactly what he intended. And that was the first thing that popped in his head.
22:30
Yeah, well, no. So I mean, there's some truth to it, right? I mean, my everybody has particular talent, right? I'm a framing person. So one of my best friends, they said, you know, you wake up in the morning and kind of just like vomit out frameworks. Yeah, models. Right. And that's true. And some just don't work. Right. The, the framework that anchored my first book, which is not the book that you probably know, as well, but the one that anchored my first book, I use that in a sample chapter when I was shopping the book around or my agent, my shopping the book around and and McGraw Hill ended up publishing that book, that entire model, and that chapter never made it into the book.
Jared Simmons 23:12
Wow. Wow. So between between the pitch, and the book actually being written, right, the fundamental, the fundamental framework for the pitch
23:22
fell out exactly the one for the pitch, I could not get it to work in a way that to me, actually, was clear enough and helpful enough for readers? Hmm. How were you able to sort of step back from your framework to ask yourself,
Jared Simmons 23:38
ask yourself that question?
23:40
Well, there's two answers to that. One is, you always have to, to return to the root question, what question Am I trying to answer? Okay, does this get them there? Because the same thing happens in my weekly article, by the way, I'll start off with an idea. And sometimes it'll go wandering around, like, we've gone down a couple of little tangents, and I go wandering around my writing, and I have to return and say, What question Am I trying to answer? Or what useful piece of information Am I trying to impart to the reader? is this doing that? Okay? And then I start stripping away everything that's not attached. So that's one answer is you have to you do have to step aside and remember, what's the point here, right? The other is I don't do it myself.
Jared Simmons 24:29
I figure
24:31
I have a I have an editor and I go out to other people, right. The reason that chapter got cut is I tried it. I kept I wrote rewrote it three times. I kept sending it to beta readers. They were like, I don't get it. Okay, well, if you don't get it, then it's not good. Right matter how much I like it doesn't matter that I sold the book based on it. It's not good,
Jared Simmons 24:51
right? Like cut it. So for people who, this for whom their stock and trade is there, now. knowledge, their expertise in a certain field. Yes, what they know and how they can apply it. I can imagine for your clients, it's hard for them to be able to sort of step back from what they know and how they think about it to ask that broader question of does this meet my, my client where they are?
25:21
Yeah, I would probably put that difficulty at about the same level as holding your breath overnight. Wow, it's nigh on impossible. Yeah, yeah. To get people to truly let go of their, in some ways, their current identity. Mm hmm. When you develop an intellectual product, you're putting yourself you're putting your thoughts and who you are into that idea. Those are your ideas, right? to completely drop them or drop all of your experience you've were 25 years in industry to walk away from that is, I rarely see it almost never. Right? It's just extraordinarily difficult. And it's, that's unfortunate, because that's what holds most people back. What holds people back isn't the opportunity, what holds people back is they're anchored to their past, right? They're anchored to whatever their own identity is that they've created around themselves. This is what I do. This is how I do it. This is what I know, this is how I think. And if you are able to let go of that, which I think is a somewhat trainable skill. You open yourself up as a individual and you open up your business for huge opportunity. Right?
Jared Simmons 26:36
Sorry, I went waxing fillers, no, no, no, it just it just created so many more rabbit holes just popped up all over all over. But the but the main thing that that brings me back to is the role of a coach or consultant or some sort of external could be, you know, a trusted friend or whomever but the role of someone to kind of play that external view back to you to help you sort of process that because it can be an anchor, or it can be a foundation. And I think the past that is in your experience, or both. Yeah, or both. And so I think helping people think in an innovative way, bring an innovation mindset to that mode of thinking, their past their experiences, those sorts of things. How do I how do I look at that in a way that's new? And is the way I'm looking at it useful? Those sorts of things? That's hard thing to do for yourself? Yeah,
27:37
almost impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very hard. Do I think it is trainable? I think your facility with it, your ability to make progress is multiplied is is improved exponentially by getting help. Right, I am extraordinarily Reliant. On help. I'm extraordinarily reliant on my editor, to look and what I write and say, I don't get it. Which by the way, is the worst job in the world. Because it was clear to me, so I'm saying What do you mean, you don't get it? Right? This is obvious as the day is long, right? But my editor says, Well, maybe to you, then I have to step back and say, Oh, I guess I wasn't clear. And 100 times out of 100. My editor was right. And I can improve what I did, by letting go of what I think and reacting to what someone else thinks.
Jared Simmons 28:36
I'm hearing humility, and, you know, an openness to feedback and a willingness to see things from a different perspective.
28:44
Yeah, not always right away. No, I have to first I have to kick scream, yell and curse and say, What are you thinking? Right? all my stuff is perfect. Right? How dare you? How dare you insinuate I got something wrong. After I've had my temper tantrum. Right, then I'll go okay. You were right. Yeah. So I don't want to give any impression that I'm, you know, it have this, you know, huge amount of humility and willingness to take feedback graciously. Sure. No,
Jared Simmons 29:11
I'm just glad that's part of your process to my part of my process with you. That's a relief. It's not where you start. It's where you end up. Right. There you go. David, one one last question. Yeah. What advice and we've kind of blended you've been offering, you know, thoughts and perspective on things along the way, but what advice would you have for for innovators and in particular, I'm thinking a lot a lot about your unique view on innovation and value and the kind of customer backer client and that view of things, right. What What advice would you have for innovators?
29:52
What advice do I have Casey, you know, that my number one rule on consulting Principle number one, well, Principle number one is it Don't let principles get in the way of business. But principle that principle number two, is for consulting, I always say consulting is not about you. consulting is about the client. And my guess is that applies to most business. And certainly most innovation. It's not about you, it's not about the patent on the wall. It's not about your product, it's not about what you want to do. It's just not about you, it's about the customer. So if you make it about the customer, you're more likely to succeed. That means listen to the customer, watch the customer, don't edit the customer, you know, at least at first, just just taking the raw data and understand. So that that would be the that would be one piece of advice. There's a caveat in here. Well, it's not his said my caveat. We talked I think back in the beginning, kinda like evolutionary versus total market making, making Yep. And market following. There, there's certainly some validity in the concern or the complaint that if I am just listening to my market, my innovations are not going to be particularly innovative. They're they're not going to be groundbreaking. It's the Henry Ford, if I asked customers what they wanted, they'd say a faster horse. Right. So there's some validity to that. However, I would also suggest that folks who are are using that as an excuse not to pay attention to the market, or misguiding themselves. Because it's not about listening to customers and saying, What do you want? And they say, I want a faster horse. It's what are you trying to achieve? I'm trying to get from A to B, I'm trying to get trying to get from here to Milwaukee. Okay, what would you want more of? What would you want less of? What would you like to improve? What would be totally new for you? Well, what I would like more is I'd like more comfort on my way to Milwaukee, I would like to I would like it to take less time, I would like it to be faster. I'd like to be able to do it with my whole family. When I started say Okay, so what are some innovations that I can come up with which solve those problems? And you may end up with an automobile. Right? Right. So it's still listening to the market, but under but it's listening not to the what the market says they want that is extremely important. It's what are they trying to achieve? What are their aspirations, and what problems are they trying to solve? And if you hone in on that, hone in on that, then I think you have a chance to truly be innovative, brilliant. No, that's,
Jared Simmons 32:29
that's a that's a great, great call is a piece of advice. Because Because you're right, that is a spot where people tend to back away from the consumer and say, Oh, I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to make a vacuum cleaner. So I'm going to go look at grain silos like like Dyson did, or, you know, a minute, I'm not going to talk to people are using vacuums, because that's, that's gonna get me a different, you know, another thing. And it's the difference, I think, between listening and hearing, if you Yeah, listen to people at certain levels. And, you know, there's all kinds of technical terminology around listening, that I'm not an expert in. But but there's it's a different depth of listening, that gets you to the problems that they they articulated and unarticulated needs of a consumer versus what they're what they're asking for. Right. Right. Well said, let them ask for a faster horse. And hear what the what's behind that. Yeah. Our ask why. Ask Why get where you want to go.
33:33
Excellent. David, this
Jared Simmons 33:35
has been, as usual, enlightening, encouraging, educational. And I thank you for your time and your mentorship and your willingness to join us today.
33:50
Yeah, it's my pleasure. And I just want to call out for your listeners, that if I sound intelligent throughout this, that's because Jared has cut out all the dumb things that were said along the way.
Jared Simmons 34:03
That is brilliant. And I am truly appreciative of that. So thank you, Jerry. This has been a it's been a lot of fun. My pleasure. I'll just, you know, sweep aside all the clippings from from my errors on the cutting room floor here. Have a great day, David. Thank you. All right. Take care. We'd love to hear your thoughts about this week's show. You can drop us a line on Twitter at OUTLAST LLC, or follow us on LinkedIn where we're OUTLAST Consulting. Until next time, keep innovating. Whatever that means.