[00:00.5]
Welcome to Inside Personal Growth Podcast. Deep dive with us as we unlock the secrets to personal development, empowering you to thrive here. Growth isn't just a goal, it's a journey. Tune in, transform, and take your life to the next level by listening to just one of our podcasts.

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Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth and joining me from Kansas City. Well, you're in Kansas City, right? Missouri Suburb, of Kansas City. Yes, suburb of Kansas City is Jim Bramlett. And Jim is going to be talking about his new book called Stop the Hassle.

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And I want to let my listeners know a little bit about you. But Jim, good day to you. How are you doing? You doing good? Doing awesome, man. It's a beautiful fall day in the Midwest. That it, that is nice when it turn, when the weather turns and it's not so hot, it's getting a little cooler.

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That's what we all like to see. So for my listeners, you can go to Jim's website. It's just Jim B-R-A-M M-L-E-T-T.com Jim B-R-A-M M-L-E-T dash t.com and on there it'll see, you'll see something that says the no hassle king.

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So, let's talk about this. You're going to be talking with us today about this compelling business book, Stop the Hassle. And you are distinguished big business executive, author, dynamic speaker who's cracked the code and now dominant with dominant companies crush the competition.

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You've been a Vistage chair for how many years now, Jim? I've been a Vistage chair now for three years. Three years. And so for those of you out there that don't know anything about Vistage, look, it up. It's Vistage, dot com. I'm sure that's what it is. V I S T A G E.

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They're all across the United States. Are they international now too? We're in 40 countries now. 40 countries. Okay. So Jim has owned his own businesses. He's had experience with this. He's transformed, his own failures and successes into actual strategies to help CEOs scale their companies exponentially.

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His expertise spans logistics and transportation. But his unconventional thinking approach has universal appeal across all business sectors. In this book, Stop the Hassle Just Jim reveals the market leadership strategies that can take stressed and worried business owners to confident high growth mode, helping them attract the right customers without having to compete on price alone.

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Jim's mission goes beyond the individual company's success. He believes that well scaled, ethically led businesses can be powerful forces for positive change. Globally. Today, we're going to dive into this unconventional business philosophy, explore the insights, and discover this.

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So, Jim, I notice behind there, behind you, a banjo, you know, somebody who plays music is usually very creative, and I can tell you're a creative guy. So how did you get into this gig and give us a little bit of history about your previous businesses, how you got here, and what really lights you up when you're talking to business owners?

[03:39.4]
Well, that's a big loaded question there, Greg, but let's start with how you got here and then we'll. Yeah, so I don't know, somewhere in my early ages, I got this entrepreneurial bug or spirit. My mom had her own company. My dad was a Navy veteran, chief police.

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He ended up, having his own company. I, I, I happened to see other entrepreneurs and, and I thought their lifestyle looked really fascinating. And you don't see all the troubles right when you're seeing from afar. But I thought, boy, anybody can control their own destiny seemed appealing.

[04:16.5]
So, anyway, I started my first company when I was a senior in college. Massive failure. And five years later started my second company, again, a massive failure. And, and, and when I look back in retrospect, it was all because it was companies I want to start with.

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No particular paying attention to what buyers might want. How about me? Big key about me. Well, guess what? It's not about you, the entrepreneur. It's all about the customers. And so I started learning from those lessons.

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And, but it was, you know, probably seven, eight years ago before I put the whole formula together. And I've started seven companies, four for myself over my career, three for large organizations starting new enterprises or divisions or whatever.

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But only seven or eight years ago did I put the entire formula together that caused me to write my first book called the Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies. And then five years later, I decided, well, in that first book, I talked about, well, how did Amazon leap past Walmart?

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How did Uber decimate the cab business? And how did Netflix literally put Blockbuster out of business? What is it they do or did? And, I put the formula together. A lot of research on Amazon, and it is unconventional.

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And when you look at Uber and you look at Netflix and you look at these companies who've gone online now, let's face it, the Internet has done a lot to propel Amazon and all these companies, Airbnb, you name it, the list goes on and on and on. But, you know, you spent, like you said, these four decades in business discovering what you refer to in the book as the big mystery, that buyers become sellers and forget what they wanted as buyers.

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Can you kind of walk us, through a specific moment when you're talking about right now? Your revolution revelation hit you. You got hit by this revelation. It's like, hey, I was doing this all wrong. And then you started doing it right.

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And obviously you've had two failures. You said miserable failures, but you've had four successes, so that's a good batting average. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, when you look at it that way. And I guess there, wasn't a single aha moment, but, a series of moments.

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And I think probably the biggest aha moment was I got the opportunity to interview for a job, with Amazon. And in preparation for that interview, they sent me their 16 leadership principles. And the number one principle was we obsess over the customer.

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We put the customer at the center of our universe and work everything backward. Okay? And that just. Wow. Over 40 years, going into various meetings, we always started not about the customer. It was always about us.

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Oh, what's our revenue? What's our budget? Where are we over on our budget? What. What are our IT? What are our KPIs? What are. How are we doing? Yeah. And I said, well, Gus, they. Our meetings, we're in a room full of mirrors.

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We're looking at ourselves. And then when we decide to launch a new product, what can we do? What can we do to generate more revenue? It, very rarely. So what do the customers really need? What do they really want? And most of the companies, at least in transportation logistics that I work for, they weren't using salespeople as a source of intel.

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It was all, hey, did you get your numbers? You get your numbers? Okay, you got to get More numbers. More. And it wasn't the intel. What are they really looking for? Why did we lose that contract? Even more important, why did we win that deal? And what is it they really, really want?

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And the other one that I find interesting when I hear entrepreneurs, a lot of them will use, the disruption. We're disrupting an industry which I don't care for. I don't. That doesn't. That doesn't resonate with me.

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But we're creating value or we're solving an unmet need, but they don't go in and break out. What is that need? What do we buyers need? And what is it we value? When you break it down and really put it under a microscope.

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I believe there are four things we need and we value. And when you dig deep and start isolating each one and improving upon each one, you'll find success in there. Well, you said in the book that the four buyer criteria, convenience, price, product experience and trust.

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Yep. Which of these four do most businesses get wrong and why? Now I personally like everybody else there listening. The reason Walmart and the other places do not get my online business is because Amazon's experience is just so phenomenal.

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You get something, you don't like it, you send it back, you get the money within two hours of taking it back to the UPS store or whatever, right? Convenience, amazingly convenience to deliver to your door. Right. You start looking at all the things that they've done right, which is why they're, I don't know how big a company they are, I have no idea what the volume is at this point.

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But what are these four do you think businesses get wrong and then why? I think the one they get wrong the most often is they assume if we are the price leader we will win. And that is not at all true.

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I have a theory that we all have our own personal value systems. Now mine is convenience. I will pay money to save time because I think time's our most precious commodity. I have a sister in law who lives in a small town of 15,000.

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She visits the two grocery stores in Walmart every week. She clips coupons, takes her a couple hours and she might save $20. My time's more valuable than that to me. But her value proposition, hey, price, price. And so I think too many companies just automatically say we gotta be the price leader.

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Where me, I've got a friend who, you know, he's all about experience. He doesn't go to Walmart, he flies first class. It's all about the experience, it's all about the convenience. How much time and effort can I save? How much, how much simpler can you make my life, how much easier can you make a task?

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That is what drives me others. It's all about trust. I'm only going to buy from a seller that I heard about that somebody told me about, a neighbor or a family member or they've got the free returns like Amazon, they've got multiple ways I can trust that because if I don't like it I can give it back or a real solid guarantee or warranties.

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So it varies based on us personally. But I think all too many businesses think they have to be the price leader. And that's not at all the case because the customer has all these varying values. Right. But if you get all those values right, then you win.

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So the point then becomes is, you know, I'll, point back to Amazon. I think they get most of them right. I think Apple gets most of them right. Even though Apple's not the cheapest, right? They do. So you mentioned that time is more valuable than money for many buyers.

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I would say you kind of take the middle road. That's true. You don't want the cheapest, but you want it to be convenient. What should businesses rethink or how should they rethink their operations around this principle? In other words, it's like, hey, I see Amazon now saying, well, you have prescriptions.

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Give us all the prescriptions you got. Put it in a little pill packet. We, we'll send it to you. Or even if it's vitamins, right? It's like such a hassle to buy all these damn vitamins and put them in the packets and then do it. So they seem to constantly be innovating something that I think users want.

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I, I'll use another example and then I want you to tell some. I listened to Apple's big release yesterday. They came out with AirPods 3, $250.

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They'll release on the 19th. Now get this, the AirPods translate every language and then it puts it on your phone and then you hand it, put it in front of the person. I would buy that alone just to be able to go to a foreign country and say I want to buy some apples or something to stick it up.

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Because I don't understand the language. But you look at the innovation and what the they've developed and you're thinking to yourself, it's not only a hearing aid, it's not only something you can listen to music on, it's something that can translate the language. And I'm sitting here and just awe, listening to this going, I can't believe it.

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Yeah, they got it right. I think they got it right. Apple is a constant innovative machine. And I make this distinction. I think some people may confuse invention and innovation. Invention happens pretty infrequently.

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Innovation happens every day. Well, what is innovation? So I claim, look, if you make something just a little bit more convenient, you cut time out, effort, you make something a little easier or a little simpler. That's innovation. If you can cut your costs in some fashion, maybe you use AI and I'm going to cut some costs.

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That's Innovation. When you can improve the experience of a buyer, some fashion, that's innovation. It's not this. It doesn't have to be a monumental leap, but you constantly have to be evaluating and doing it.

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Therefore, you have to map your own processes with how you engage customers. You have to constantly be evaluating your own business. Say, where can we be more convenient, Cut cost, give a better user experience, or even provide more trust.

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Right. And I claim if you aren't doing that, it opens a window for a competitor to come in and say, I see a weakness. Customers are looking for this. We're going to provide it. And you're going to invite competitors if you're not trying to hit on, all four of those.

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Constantly improving. And it's all about innovation. Yeah, I, I love what you say because, look, I'm going to pull something off the counter here. We all know what this is. It's an iPhone. Right? Right. They're on model 17 of the same phone until yesterday, and now they have a much thinner one called an Apple Air.

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Okay, well, but the point is, it's still the same damn phone and it still does most of the things you want. All they did was add more features to what it could do. Right. But yet people are going to buy it, I think, in groves, because they're going to want new features.

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Oh, wow. It does this. It takes better pictures. It does whatever the hell it's supposed to do. Right. And so how do you get smaller businesses to think like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and all these other companies who've truly just made things better?

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I remember as going down to Blockbuster to buy videos. And I did hear the CEO of Blockbuster at a recent conference, and he said, you know, Netflix, offered us, I don't know, 80 billion, 8 billion, whatever the number was, to buy the company, and they refused.

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They refused to sell it. That was stupid, fateful decisions. You look back on and go, boy, was I an idiot. We should have sold. Right. So you're the king. And you're not saying of innovation in particular, or I should say, of invention.

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You are of innovation. How do you get the mindsets of the individuals to think this way, to continue to improve their products, their services, their businesses, and the way the consumers are treated for customer service?

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I think that's another one we could talk about, because I think customer service, for the most part, has gone in the toilet. Most of these companies. Yep, I agree. Well, here's what I profess. Obviously, you stated my formula. I believe the formula is if you, if you Know, I buy my psychology, I'm buying based on convenience, I'm buying based on price, not necessarily the lowest price, but the one thing I really want is transparency.

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I want to know up front what I'm spending. And that's why I don't like dealing with the airlines and their little, you know, lawyers. I know what you charge per hour. I don't know how many hours I go to a doctor. I have no idea what I'm going to be charged. Hospitals, we don't like that experience. So pricing transparency number three is user experience.

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You know what, I want to be treated like they're the only customer they have, even though they might have millions of customers. I want to be treated specially and I want answers to my questions. And again, I'm not patient so I want them quickly. And I want you, if you make a commitment, either through your brand promise or otherwise, you're going to deliver my washer dryer tomorrow between 10 and noon.

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I need you to live up to that commitment or that's a bad experience. And then like, and the experience is broad. Like if you're in retail, I'm looking for, you know, clean, well lit, well stocked, well staffed stores, modern.

[18:46.3]
I want to feel safe. All of that boils into the experience. And finally trust. How do I trust when I'm about to buy something? I have a perception in my head of what I'm going to get. If I drive through McDonald's for coffee, my perception is I'm going to get hot coffee.

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So but if I don't, what's my recourse? Do I have a recourse? And that's very important, especially if I've never bought from somebody before. When you hit on all four of those, I, the buyer don't really have an excuse not to buy from you.

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Well if you look at all four of those, there's no world standard for convenience, price, experience or trust. It's all about who's your competitor or who's the buyer's alternative. Because sometimes the buyers can do it themselves, right, depending on what you're offering.

[19:37.3]
And so then you take those four and you evaluate how do you stack up on convenience against those major competitors. And this is where in my book I highlight the culture is a really big part, I believe, of the success.

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Because you the owner or you the CEO, you can't do this alone. You need your whole organization behind. Hey, we're all about innovating. We're all about providing the customer what they're looking For. So find out. You'll get a lot of good ideas from those customers.

[20:12.2]
But study the competitors. Where are they weak? What can you do? What can you innovate to beat that competitor? And you constantly have to do that. I have this crazy notion of that. I believe all companies should have an R and D function. Now people look at me and go, wait a minute, we're not a scientific or a pharmaceutical company.

[20:31.4]
No, your research is you're researching your competitors and you're researching new technologies. What can AI do that will help you improve your costs, help you improve your user experience or convenience? There's lots of different ways. But somebody's constantly got to be working at that, looking at that, and that's how the small company should be, taking advantage of what buyers are really seeking.

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Yeah. And you know, in a sense this is the marketing because what happens is word of mouth starts and people need to understand how valuable that is not to spend billions of dollars on, you know, ads.

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I mean, the reality is you don't see Apple really advertising that much. They've got a brand that sells itself, for the most part. And you use this cheese analogy, which I think is kind of fascinating, right? It says you offer options like block cheese slices and shredded cheese.

[21:33.2]
Okay. When I go into Costco, I get all three options, right? Am I buy block and buy shredded, to different buyers, values. Some people want it all pre prepared and in a bag, some people want to slice it, some people want to do over.

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Can you give an example of a B2B of how this works? Because this is something that you discussed in the book. Yeah, so I again, because we all have our own value systems, everybody has different value systems.

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So if you go in a store, you want the very last lowest cost cheese, you go buy a block and you can grate it, you can slice it, you can chop it, but that's going to take you a lot of time, take you a lot of effort, not very good experience. So, when I was in the transportation, industry, I worked for a company and we were called a one trick pony.

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We were moving pallet quantities. And for example, if you want to ship from Chicago to la, it was five days, no other option. Well, wait a minute, some shipper may want it there in two days or three days or even overnight.

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And so what I helped stimulate and was a catalyst for is okay, let's offer them variable speed. Sure, there's going to be a little higher cost if you want it there overnight or in two days. But give them the option. And so I encourage even small businesses, you know.

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And this, is this a great example. During COVID what did the enterprising restaurants do at least around delivery when they put together their own meal kits? Yeah. Okay, so they say, hey, we know the recipes, we can put together the meal kits and they can be delivered to your house.

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I don't, I know you're not coming into my restaurant, but I'm still going to give you a choice. And so giving buyers as many choices as you can is going to help you succeed in in growth. It just will.

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Yeah. So one of the things that in, in most retail today you find self checkout as prioritizing seller convenience over buyer experience. Now look, I, I have to admit I'm going to raise my hand.

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At Costco, I always use self checkout. I never use it because in my estimation it's more streamlined and I'm out of there before the other people that are waiting in the longer lines. Right. So I get, hey, I say to myself, that's going to save me time if I go in that line because I'm going to do this myself, I'm going to do it quicker and I'm going to get the hell out.

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So what other common business practices are actually creating hassles for customers in your estimation? Oh, well, again I will go back to my industry that I grew up in, which is transportation and logistics.

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One of the things that I found too many transportation companies do. If you want to say, oh hey ig, I'd like to get a quote from them, you go out to their website and they make you fill out this big long form. Who are you? Let's ship them away. It takes forever to get a single quote.

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And I go, no, I'm not doing that. It's just not going to happen. I value my time. You've got to make it simpler and easier. Good example, good example. I've done that many times and I'll just actually shut the page down.

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I won't even finish it. I'll just say I don't care. Well, and if you go to the post office, for example, talk about lines and they'll have one machine that is a self service machine, but it's pretty darn complicated.

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And now I'm looking for simple, and easy. And I don't want to wait in line. And so I think the post office has a lot of room to say, hey, we're going to make ourselves simpler and easier, more convenient and save time. And when you do that. Like you said, it'll become viral. Everybody say, hey, have you been to the post office lately, man, I was in there and I could drop my package off and get it paid for in a, lickety split.

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So they've gotten better. They've gotten, I want to say they've gotten better. A little better. It's incremental. Now look, one of the things you call this your hassle score. You've developed the Hassle score survey as an alternative to the Net Promoter score.

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Now I think you're going to need to define Net Promoter Score for our listeners. But why do you think the NPS is insufficient? And how does your approach provide better insights with relation to this thing as far as your hassle score survey?

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Yep. So in its simplest terms, I, I boiled Net promoter score down to, asking a question. Would you recommend this vendor based on your, you know, experience? Yes. No. Kind of, evaluate it that way.

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My, I think that's way too easy. And unless you're really upset, unless you really had a terrible experience, you're probably just going to go, oh yeah, they're fine. Now my score, my hassle quotient is much deeper.

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I'm asking to evaluate based on the convenience, both in the product itself, the offering and the buying experience. Because those are kind of two separate opportunities to be convenient. Is the product convenient? Does the product save me time? And what about the buying experience?

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And then the price and how do I compare? So it's a very, very in depth audit on how any company compares to their competitors. Well, guess who should be giving you that score? Your consumers.

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And even better, your prospects. Those that don't buy you, why did they buy from the other guy? If you can, you can get that information. It's gold. But you want to get it from your customers. Why'd you buy it from us? Oh, because that, the alternative was going to take too much time or, you know, they don't treat me very well, it's too big a hassle or it was too expensive or they have all these hidden fees and surcharges.

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Fine print. Yeah, the fine print. So it's a very, it's a very deep, very intensive analysis across those four criteria and how you stack up. And so it's much deeper than, hey, would you recommend them? You know, can people get the hassle score survey from your website?

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Yes, they can get it from my website. Now what I do recommend, so we'll put a link there for people to, you'll see it in the show notes Below, Yeah, you can go to Jimbram.com and find that, audit. But it's, I also even recommend because a lot of companies don't have the resources to go out and do this.

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So sometimes you might have to hire a third party, unbiased third party, and say, here are my three competitors. I, I need to know how I stack up against them from a convenience standpoint, a price standpoint, a user experience standpoint, and a trust. Now, I'm not going to mention names, but, in the last couple years, I worked for, I did a consulting job for a Fortune 100 company, Consumer Electronics.

[29:00.9]
And they had me buy, something from their competitor. And when I went to, return it, their competitor offered me an incentive to keep it at the very end of the process. Right.

[29:16.2]
They didn't let you know, hey, you're returning it, you're going. Happens a lot. Yeah. Okay, well, this Fortune 100 company didn't do that. And I told them, hey, your competitor is offering me an incentive not to return it. I get a discount on, keeping the product.

[29:32.5]
And they were totally blown away. And It's a Fortune 100 company that you would think, shouldn't they know the competitive landscape and all the features. But that's what happened a lot of times, Jim. They're caught in the minutiae and they're so big that they don't see those things.

[29:48.4]
And take somebody like you to point it out. Now, I like what you advocate. You advocate for a simple but powerful mission statement. He said, we seek to eliminate buyers. Excuses not to purchase from us. That's the statement. So we've been talking about the what.

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Now we got to talk about the how. How do you get an entire organization aligned around these ideas? Because your job now is to get the troops to say, yeah, we got a problem, we need to fix it. We have these things that could fix it.

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We need to start doing a B testing maybe or something to see how this is going to work. How do you get these people aligned around it and, you know, what's in it for them when they do? Well, I'm a big, believer, especially since I'm a vista's chair.

[30:43.0]
I work with leaders all the time. And I said, one of the most important jobs you have, you have to communicate the vision to everybody. What is the vision? What's your purpose? Okay, why are you even in existence? What is the purpose of every individual underneath there?

[30:58.7]
And then let's talk about our mission. Okay? But it takes everybody, everybody. And so from A cultural standpoint. I'm a big fan of culture wise, where you spell out exactly in great detail of the behaviors we want.

[31:16.7]
And those behaviors should be here's how we treat customers, here's how we go get information from customers, how we serve customers. And it's very detailed. But I think it takes the entire team to say, we're here to serve the customer. That's our purpose.

[31:32.4]
We're helping them solve X problem. And we're going to be doing everything we can to help them improve upon the problem they experience today. And so it's a culture. So you help them see it. You then help them build a plan to initiate it, and then you help them with executing it effectively so that.

[31:54.5]
And then measuring the results of what it is that they've done. So, you know, you said this very early on in this interview that Amazon's number one leadership principle is customer obsession. I get it.

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I believe that they are two. A big degree. And you've seen companies that claim customer centric, but they're not. Okay, I, I've encountered probably as many as you, in that, that they're not customer centric.

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What's the difference between talking about customers and truly obsessing over those customers? I know Ken Blanchard lives out here. He's been on my show a lot. And he talks about raving fans. Right. We've all seen the book Raving Fans or who Moved My Cheese.

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That's another one. Right. But the reality is, is, you know, when you go back that people who bought from Blanchard, learning Ken Blanchard, they realized that he was customer obsessed.

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All he wanted was the best possible experience. So how do you get them to differentiate between them just saying, oh, we are or we truly are? Oh, they're all going to say they are.

[33:23.9]
You can see it on that mission statement on the wall. We care about our shareholders, our employees, and our customers. Yeah. Nobody lives by it. And so I think the real test, the acid test, is let's talk about your KPIs.

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Okay. Do you measure the. Hey. Do you measure how many customers you gained and do you measure how many you lost? Do you measure lifetime value of a customer? Do you measure and share with your employees the cost of acquiring a new customer so they appreciate all of that?

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Do you talk to your sales people? Do you talk to your customer service people? Tell me what the customers are saying. It's not, you know, and again, I grew up in transportation logistics. Oh, yeah, the CEO. Every now and then we'll go out on a Tour and talk to customers. They're not getting the straight skinny.

[34:22.6]
They're being told what they want to hear. It's that front line. But you got to listen to them and you got to act upon what they're telling you. They're the ones getting the great intel of what the customers are really seeking. And the customers aren't always saying, oh, I want a lower price.

[34:40.8]
I want a lower. No, that's not what they're always saying. They're saying, I want better customer service. I want more proactive communication. I want to be. And here's another great one, Greg, that I love. Have you ever heard the stories about salespeople?

[34:56.8]
They go into the customer, Mr. Customer, tell me what I can do to grow my share of business with you. That is absolutely the wrong thing to ask. You should be going into your customer, Mr. Customer, how can I take time out of your life?

[35:13.5]
How can I make your job simpler and easier? How can I make your experience better? Okay, so don't ask, how can I increase my share? And I'm not going to tell you. You know, when you say, let's talk about our process, how, how you buy from us, look, how do you receive from.

[35:34.2]
What can we do to make that simpler and easier in your life better? You'll get meaningful conversation and probably pretty good, ideas on what you can start implementing and that will build some real loyalty in market share when you ask those kind of questions.

[35:50.2]
But that's again, kind of culture. Let's go with KPIs, how you engage the customers in a real fashion. That's what's important. Well, and it's a good question. I remember working with a, gentleman. He's still a deeply good friend. Mark Nielsen with Vistage in San Diego.

[36:07.3]
And he, he used to say this and I think you would probably agree, having built your own businesses, couple failures, four wins. He would say, you know, when you have a vendor, so let's say you're buying supplies from somebody, you're depending on the vendor, and you see it's affecting your ability to, your costs because it's either gone up.

[36:28.8]
He said, here's one question to ask and I want my listeners to really hear this and you too, and I use it to this day. He said, when you go to that person who's establishing the discounts for the various levels, you're buying in volume.

[36:44.4]
Right? Did this. He said, what am I not doing that your a customers are doing that I, that I need to do to be able to get my Prices reduced to the A customers.

[36:59.9]
And he said they're astounded. They look at you like, where did he come up with that question? Because the reality is they're not doing anything. They're just not doing the volume. But he says it gets them to really think about, well, okay, now this guy wants a discount.

[37:17.1]
I'm going to just tell him what he has to do. Right? And I've done that so many times and it's worked so effectively and end up with the A customer discount. I, love it. You know, it's, it's just asking the right question.

[37:32.7]
It is. What am I not doing that the A customers aren't doing? Right? Absolutely. Look at you discuss AI's potential to help businesses better serve. The four criteria. I agree. I think AI is phenomenal.

[37:48.8]
What's one specific way you think AI will transform the buyer experience in the next five years? I'm working with, an absolute AI genius in my, in my group and he's in the supply chain.

[38:06.2]
And it's amazing to me how you can optimize the supply chain using AI to do forecasting, better inventory control, better promotions, bundling, laying out your retail space.

[38:24.4]
There is so much there that the human brain only can do so much and so fast. Where AI can tell you you need to be, you know, combining peanut butter and jelly and putting it at the front of the store.

[38:42.0]
And here's the price elasticity based on your past experience. And by the way, you should be purchasing that from China, that you should be purchasing this from Mexico. You should be purchasing this domestically. And here's the average, you know, order cycle times and things that the human brain just absolutely cannot process fast enough to optimize.

[39:04.0]
Right. So it's going to be. That's a great, that's a great example. One, that I heard that you may have heard is people, want to build a new plant someplace, put something in, it will tell them exactly where to do that, why they should, and the cost reasons for putting the plant there.

[39:26.3]
From a transportation standpoint, so logistics, everything, it's like, hey, you're gonna put this plant in Kentucky and here's why. And the reason is, and it really just gives em all the reasons to actually move forward. So I think the analytics are there.

[39:43.5]
So look, looking at your own entrepreneurial journey, including the failures of your trucking company, what would you do differently if you were starting a business today with all of this amazing technology we've talked about, especially the AI, if you were to start over today.

[40:06.3]
Well, if I were to start over today, I wouldn't ever start a business because of, me. You know, I do tell people, hey, look, don't start a restaurant because you like to cook, because that's just about you. So, you know, I learned the formula pretty late in my career.

[40:25.9]
If I were starting today, I'd want to know the formula, what buyers are really looking for. I'd love to have AI to help me optimize the processes. However, I would caution on this, I am not a big fan of customer service chatbots.

[40:45.5]
And so I think you got to be careful. Everybody jumps to, oh, we're just going to get rid of customer service and we're going to have chatbots. All too often we humans want to talk to other humans because our conversations can vary and we, you know, we want real answers and, and, and we waste a lot of time on the chatbot things.

[41:07.5]
But, but, you know, the, the other thing, the soft skill that I've really learned in the last few years is the importance of having a, a culture that's definitive, that has got a ritual to it.

[41:25.7]
So everybody's singing off the same hymn book. I didn't do that. I was the culture guy and I kind of spread. But not everybody bought in. And so there are a lot of leadership things. I've learned over the last few years that if I would set the clock back, I would change.

[41:42.1]
And I think I'd be even more successful at the things that, I did back in my early years. Well, you've obviously pointed out so many things for our listeners that are benefits today in starting a business. And I would say one of those would be get really good at learning how to write prompts into the AI because the better you can write a prompt, the better the response is going to be.

[42:08.1]
And use it as your assistant. Use it as a tool. Use it as something that will help you propel the business forward, whether it's forecasting or it's sales or it's whatever it might be. Now, like, in closing this podcast up, I think there's a question that I think will really relate to the listeners.

[42:29.3]
Because my podcasts are about the listeners. They're not about me as the host or you as the guest. It's about the listener. Okay, if someone's listening, runs a business that's currently successful, but he or she has trade offs, maybe great service, but high prices or low cost, but poor experience, what's your advice for taking the leap toward becoming, as you refer to in the company, a dominant company.

[43:01.2]
Yeah. So listen, everyone listening probably doesn't have the purchasing power of a Walmart. So are you going to be able to really, if you're in, in that sector, are you going to be able to go out and try and compete with Walmart on price?

[43:18.7]
No, you can't. But what you better do is take the other three and over compensate. By that I mean you better make yourself the buying process, the product, the offering, extremely, easy, simple, convenient, saving time.

[43:39.7]
You better make the experience right, treating them especially committing and living by your commitments, talking to them personally. And then have guarantees and warranties and things that they can Trust and be 100% transparent on your price even though it may be higher if you're transparent with it.

[44:05.9]
But you'd say I'm going to save you time and effort. I'm going to give you the best experience you've ever got and you can trust me because I stand behind everything we do and keep working on that and sure, keep working on your costs to lower the price. But you know, even if you can hit three out of four, you're going to do pretty darn well.

[44:27.1]
That's great way to wrap this up Jim and I appreciate the time you took today sharing your wisdom with the listeners and again if you're going to want to find out more you're going to go to Jim Bramlett. That's B R A L e t t.com There you can download a free chapter, one free chapter by putting in your name and your email address and I would highly recommend you do it.

[44:54.0]
Or you can push the button there and buy the book for 14.95 or you'll see in our show notes below just click the Amazon link. We talked about Amazon today. They're number one at delivering books. So the reality is you can get it there. You can learn more about Jim, you can schedule a call with him.

[45:11.1]
Coaching call, there's a schedule button at the top. He also, he has another website that he's going to be blending into this one but it's called Strategies to Grow so you can check that one out again. Jim, really just an honor to have you on.

[45:27.5]
I think you're personal experiences combined with your vistage, your three years of Vistage here and your ability to let people know, you know, don't let it be a hassle. The no hassle king, that's what you're calling yourself and I think it's important because you value your time, and I think most people today do.

[45:48.4]
And they want to get it most expeditiously at the best cost, with the least amount of hassle and the highest level of customer service. And if you could blend all of those together, oh, and I'll add in trust in there as well. You've got a winning formula.

[46:05.4]
And the man to teach you how to get this accomplished and create it within your culture and get everybody aligned to do it is Jim. Thanks, Jim, so much, Greg. Thanks, man. You did a great job. And, appreciate you.

[46:21.0]
Appreciate you as well. Thank you for listening to this podcast on Inside Personal Growth. We appreciate your support. And for more information about new podcasts, please go to inside personal growth.com or any of your favorite channels to listen to our podcast.

[46:37.9]
Thanks again and have a wonderful day.