Ron and Ed once again took the show on the road. For the third time, they were honored to appear at the Meeting of the Minds. Aside from taking questions from the attendees, they had a conversation about an Harvard Business Review article from Joe Pine et al entitled, The “New You” Business.

Use these notes to follow along with the show:

Segment one:

The “New You” Business is a recent article from Joe Pine et al. We spend the first part of the show talking about it. Link is here: https://hbr.org/2022/01/the-new-you-business
So what is the “New You”? It’s about a hierarchy of value from products to services to experiences to transformations.
1/4 When you sell things, you have a commodity business. How do you de-commoditize a commodity?
2/4 What happens when your product becomes a commodity? You wrap some services around your product.
3/4 What happens when your service becomes a commodity? If you can throw in an experience which is memorable…now you are in the experience business.
4/4 What happens when your experience becomes commodity? Then you provide transformations because you are guiding the customer from where they are to a desired future state. That makes the customer the product.
“All too often fitness centers, medical providers, colleges, and organizations in many other industries seek to distinguish themselves only on the quality, convenience, and experience of what they sell.” From The “New You” Business by Joe Pine et al. Link is here: https://hbr.org/2022/01/the-new-you-business
“A professional is someone who is responsible for creating a result instead of doing a task.” Ron Baker

Segment two:

Sponsored by @90Minds, our Patreon channel at Patreon.com/TSOE provides commercial free and bonus episodes to our members. Need a mind? Find one at 90Minds.com!
“The person has to want to be transformed.” —Ron Baker. So simple, kinda funny, and is at the heart of how you can guide a customer towards transformation.
“How many times have you completed 80% of the work but only 20% of the value was realized because you didn’t get to do the stuff at the end?” —Ed Kless
“Such business models [those focused on transformations] will be much harder to imitate than those that offer only goods, services, or experiences. And they promise to generate handsome rewards” — More here: https://hbr.org/2022/01/the-new-you-business
Ed Kless told the landscaper story again today from Tim Williams (@timwilliamsicg) and it NEVER GETS OLD. An archived video of the story is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5wzlVplZ34
Referenced by Ron Baker today, here is a link to the “Willy Wonka” of coffee — Starbucks Reserve https://www.starbucksreserve.com

Segment three:

It’s time for questions from the audience! The first one is from Gary Feldman of IBN: What is the end goal beyond the profitability when you are talking about transformations?
The result of your business is profit. The PURPOSE is not profit. John Mackey from Whole Foods says profit in a business is like red blood cells in your body. Nobody wakes up in the morning with the PURPOSE of producing red blood cells.
Another audience question: What is the nature of companies that are interested in a true transformation?
An audience question from Wayne Schulz: How, as consultants, do we start to convince our customer that it is a good idea to pay us to project manage a transformation when we’ve never done so in the past?
Ron referenced the Direct Primary Care business model today and we’ve had a GREAT guest on the show several times. Dr. Paul runs a DPC and wrote the book on how to do it. More here: https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/269

Segment four:

In a previous show, Ed asked ChatGPT to produce an “ABOUT” page on a website for an accounting firm. It was eerily accurate because it was plain, boring, and pretty vanilla.
A few weeks ago, we had Chris Vanover on the show to talk about his audit subscription services. More here: https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/423
“People that have more money than time will pay for a level of convenience.” —Ron Baker
And that’s a wrap! Thank you VERY MUCH to our great audience at The Meeting of the Minds!

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