Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Do Great Work
690 Plays1 year ago
If you’re doing a lot of activity, putting in a lot of hours, but you’re not feeling satisfied that you’re doing anything truly well, this episode is for you.
Today, we’re going to talk about quality.
Based on studying billionaires, craftsmen, obsessed writers, and the world’s most famous sushi chef, we’ll discuss the three steps to produce greater quality work that leaves us proud, successful, and fulfilled.
Timestamps
(00:03:23) Fulfillment and satisfaction in doing quality work
(00:12:13) Three steps to produce greater quality work
(00:13:03) Simplify
(00:25:44) Mind the details that matter
(00:32:50) How the world’s greatest jiu-jitsu coach achieves success
(00:38:07) Who’s in your value chain?
(00:47:36) Build something that can last forever
(00:50:05) Why the world’s greatest sushi restaurant lost its Michelin stars
(00:52:00) Quality over quantity
Links
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi
- Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
- Excellence Wins by Horst Schulze
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
- The Future of the Responsible Company by Vincent Stanley and Yvon Chouinard
- Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
- Raw Craft video series
- Nick and Zak’s Adventures in Capitalism
- The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Music.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey, this is Max Clark. On this podcast, I dive deep into self development and business subjects that can transform our lives. I've spent the past month researching, reading and synthesizing the best information I could find on today's topic. Also, you can achieve more success, create more freedom and be more fulfilled faster. Enjoy.
Bob Kramer: Chef to Knife Maker
00:00:39
Speaker
Bob Kramer worked in kitchens preparing food for years. He'd spend hours preparing food for a meal that would be gone in 45 minutes as his customers quickly devoured his hard work. Then he decided to start making his own chef's knives, specifically to make the best chef's knives in the world.
00:00:58
Speaker
Today, he enjoys making something people will use forever to make memories for their entire lives. To buy one of his handmade knives, you have to sign up for an auction on his website announced through email. The only knife you can buy directly from his website right now is selling for $65,000, slightly more than the price of a brand new Mercedes GLE 350 SUV.
The Pursuit of Quality
00:01:24
Speaker
Today, we're going to talk about quality. Rather than boring you with dictionary definitions of the word, let's talk about a feeling we can all relate to. A sense that you're doing a lot of activity, putting in a lot of hours, but not feeling satisfied that you're doing anything truly well. You lack fulfillment. You're rushing through life without creating anything lasting, anything you're proud of, anything you feel like you can say, yes, I did my absolute best there.
00:01:52
Speaker
The founder of the entrepreneurship program that I attended in college, Bill Sherrill, who had an incredible life. He was on the Federal Reserve Board, built some successful businesses, joined the Marines when he was like 15 years old to go to war. He used to tell us all the time, your only job in life is to do the absolute best you can do at everything that you do.
00:02:13
Speaker
He would repeat this again and again and kind of drilled it into our heads, saying that if you're gonna commit to something, do the best that you can do. And so today, we're gonna talk about how we can make that
Meaningful Work and Its Value
00:02:23
Speaker
happen. Now, my take on quality after doing a lot of research over the past month is really this, to do the best job you can do at something meaningful to you, continually improving at it,
00:02:35
Speaker
while taking periodic reality checks to make sure that you're not diluting yourself, that what you're producing is garbage or not useful to others. There's a combination of doing something that's uniquely meaningful to you, trying to continually get better at it, but also always trying to take a look and see, is this thing actually valuable to other people too? That's the kind of intersection that I believe that we're looking for that creates the best quality of life.
00:03:01
Speaker
So why pursue quality
Why Pursue Quality?
00:03:03
Speaker
at all? Or why even talk about this concept? Well, I believe there are three reasons. The reason number one is greater fulfillment and satisfaction with the work that you do and even what you do outside of work. We get a lot of great satisfaction when we do a job well, especially when other people recognize us for doing something well. I watched an entire series.
00:03:24
Speaker
called Raw Craft. You can watch it on YouTube. It's with Anthony Bourdain. And there's a lot of group of people in there that are the best in the world at what they do. And so one of them
00:03:36
Speaker
Rachel Rosenkrantz, she designs guitars, makes them from scratch. And so she had a nice corporate job doing product design, kind of mass production products, wasn't very fulfilling. And so today when she makes her guitars one by one and sells them for a ton of money, she says, I don't want just a good guitar. I want a great guitar. Otherwise, don't bother.
00:03:59
Speaker
And then there's an author, Robert Persig, who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And he was kind of obsessed with this concept of quality. He says, the drive for quality is a natural drive. Everybody wants to do things better. Everyone wants to have things better.
00:04:14
Speaker
nobody wants anything worse than it was before. So we all want this idea of things to be higher quality in our own lives and for other people and part of this is kind of using what Warren Buffett would call an outer scorecard versus an inner scorecard. So it's like do you measure your success by what you're truly satisfied by or only by
00:04:36
Speaker
external things, such as material success. There's a lot of value in doing work that you're proud of, even if nobody sees it. However, as you're gonna learn here in today's episode, others are much more likely to appreciate and reward you for what you do if you've done the best job you possibly can.
Business Success Through Quality
00:04:53
Speaker
Henry Ford once said, quality means doing it right when nobody is looking. This is something we'll talk about more when we talk about Apple and Steve Jobs. So reason number one to talk about quality, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
00:05:06
Speaker
Reason number two is that it tends to create better success. Steve Jobs once said, our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets. And today, Apple is a $2.6 trillion company known for some of the most loved technology products in the world. And so Tesla, despite its flaws, has achieved phenomenal success with very little traditional marketing.
00:05:30
Speaker
Much of its success is due to focusing on creating the best, most innovative products possible. In 2023, Tesla spent $6.4 million in advertising, which is tiny compared to its 1.8 million cars sold. That's $3.56 in advertising per car sold. In contrast, Ford spent $2.5
00:05:52
Speaker
billion in advertising in 2023 with 4.4 million cars sold, which is $568 in advertising per car sold. That's 160 times what Tesla spent. Elon Musk once said, great companies are built on great products.
Quality vs. Advertising
00:06:10
Speaker
He says, I'd stay very focused on the quality of the product, just become maniacally focused on building it better. I think most people get distracted from that.
00:06:19
Speaker
So when you focus on creating the highest quality thing possible, this could be a business that you're building, products that you're creating, it could be the job that you're doing as an employee for somebody else, or it could be even a hobby that you're pursuing. When you focus on doing the highest quality thing possible for yourself, it tends to create greater external rewards as well.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so if you create the best of something others want, people are going to find you. People are always looking for the best of something. You may not even have to advertise at all, or if you do advertise, your money will get far more impact than if you have a mediocre product with nothing unique to say about it.
00:06:58
Speaker
In the e-commerce world and consumer products, I tell people this all the time. The first thing I ever want to know when somebody's like, how do I grow sales in an e-commerce or consumer product businesses? I'm like, tell me about your product. How is it different, better, and more unique than the other options available? Because if they have nothing to say there, it's going to be a hard battle. You're going to have to be
00:07:19
Speaker
Find some loophole in marketing, find some little corner of the market you can kind of live in. But if you have a product in especially a big market that's truly better than what other people have to sell, the marketing is easier. The copywriting is easier, the advertising is easier. And like I said, you may not even have to do any of that, but when you do want to do that to get the word out faster, it's so much easier when you have a higher quality thing that you're selling.
00:07:43
Speaker
And the same thing applies if you're providing a service working on your career or anything else. You're going to do much better and go much further if you try to do the best job possible while continually improving at your pursuit. So reason number two, we're here talking about quality, is greater external success in addition to the fulfillment and satisfaction, which is reason number one.
Environmental and Social Benefits of Quality
00:08:05
Speaker
The third and final reason is a contribution to others, meaning that this is kind of tied in with our own personal fulfillment, but it is somewhat separate. This is something you're doing for other people, which provides our lives meaning doing quality work often means creating stuff that's going to last a lot longer.
Craftsmanship and Lifelong Dedication
00:08:23
Speaker
So in physical goods, that means less waste. So Patagonia is huge on this is they a whole mission of the business. I believe their tagline is to save the home planet.
00:08:34
Speaker
or their mission statement and so environmental preservation and protection regeneration is sort of built into the DNA of their business and so they're very big on building products that will last as long as possible because it creates less physical waste and many of the craftsmen in the raw craft series really seek to build products that are going to last as long
00:08:57
Speaker
as possible or longer than the owners of those products. For example, the Rachel Rosencrans, she wants to make guitars that'll potentially outlast the people that buy them from her. That level of quality. And beyond the environmental benefits, earlier this month my wife and I watched the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi about the famous sushi chef from Japan, Jiro Ono.
00:09:21
Speaker
He left his home at 9
Steps to Achieve Quality
00:09:22
Speaker
years old and had to raise himself and eventually fell in love with the art of making sushi. He opened his famous sushi restaurant in 1965. He just kept improving and people kept coming to his restaurant and in 2007, 42 years after opening,
00:09:42
Speaker
It became the first sushi restaurant to receive three stars from the Michelin guide. And in the documentary that we watched about him, he refers to himself as a shokunin. The literal translation of this Japanese word is craftsman or artisan, but the true meaning is deeper. According to the sculptor and woodworker to Sayo Odate, the Japanese apprentice is taught that shokunin means not only to have technical skills, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness.
00:10:11
Speaker
The Shokunin has a social obligation to work his or her best for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material. Jiro, the sushi chef, hasn't been trying to perfect the craft of making sushi for almost his entire life.
00:10:28
Speaker
solely to become famous to make money or earn Michelin stars. A large part of his motivation has been to do the best job he can for other people, which are the customers of his restaurant. Quoting the author Robert Persig again, he said the purpose of each person's life
00:10:44
Speaker
is not just self-gratification. A person should contribute to the quality of the world. So by creating the highest quality work we can, we're more fulfilled, likely to achieve greater external success, and create a better higher quality world for other people. So with all that sort of context set of why I believe this is so important for all of us, here's how to get started.
00:11:09
Speaker
So right now, you're likely going through the motions in your business, your career, or in your life outside of work. You're doing lots of activity, but you're not really feeling fulfilled. Something is missing. Now a life spent doing stuff without anything you're truly proud of is one that can be very disenchanting.
The Power of Focus and Simplification
00:11:28
Speaker
We can and often do spend years or even decades like this with very little to show for all the time afterward. Instead,
00:11:36
Speaker
You can create something great. You can do something you love, feel a deep sense of satisfaction with what you produce, and build something you and others admire and value. You can feel like what you've produced could last a lifetime and likely produce better material or external success in your life at the same time.
00:11:54
Speaker
So in my first huge success as an entrepreneur, we had the highest quality product in our market. Our e-commerce training program produced more real results for our members than any other program I could possibly find at the time and probably since then. People literally built multi-million dollar businesses from scratch after implementing what we taught and using the resources we provided as part of the program people signed up for.
00:12:19
Speaker
This created huge fulfillment and great financial success for me and my business partner. Then, like a lot of people who have achieved success, I got very distracted by all the quote unquote opportunities around me. I started producing a bunch of low quality stuff that didn't really work because I was trying to do too many things at once. Today, however, I'm refocusing on more quality, on doing less but better.
00:12:43
Speaker
So based on studying billionaires, craftsmen, obsessed writers, and the world's most famous sushi chef and other people, here are the three steps I've distilled to produce greater quality work that leaves us proud, successful, and fulfilled.
00:12:59
Speaker
So how do you produce quality so that you can achieve more while feeling more fulfilled? Well, there are three parts. So first is to simplify. So the first thing you have to decide is what am I actually gonna focus on with this idea of quality? Where am I going to put my heart and soul into to provide greater fulfillment for myself, potentially greater external success and do something good in the world? Well, I call this choose your craft. So high quality, almost,
00:13:28
Speaker
always is going to require simplifying because producing high quality work requires a lot of time and effort which means that you just can't pursue too many things or otherwise you have to sacrifice on quality. In a recent book by the author Cal Newport who wrote a great book one of my favorites called Deep Work he created one that just came out not long ago called Slow Productivity and he kind of breaks it down into three steps in this concept of slow productivity and the first thing is do fewer things.
00:13:57
Speaker
We can't do so much stuff if we want to maintain our sanity, but for our discussion here, to have the highest quality life possible. So areas you may consider as far as where to focus, potentially your work. If you're a employee of a company, if you wanna really perfect your craft as working for other businesses, that's great in your career. If you own a business, focusing on your business is gonna be probably the thing that's most top of mind for you, or it even could be a hobby.
00:14:27
Speaker
Examples that I've come across that all seem to provide the same opportunities for producing really high quality work and all the benefits we've talked about. I mentioned sushi chef, knife maker, writer, business owner, computer programmer, investor, gardener, you name it. Almost anything can allow us to feel the same level of satisfaction. And believe it or not, all of these things can also help us contribute to the world, to contribute to the greater quality of the world, as Robert Persick said.
00:14:54
Speaker
And so what we have to do to be able to focus on that level of quality in a certain area is to get rid of or reduce as much other stuff as possible. That means other hobbies, businesses, jobs, et cetera. Now you may have a relatively simple life now. You may have one business or one job or one hobby, all that's good, but it's gonna be tough for us to get really good and produce really high quality work if we have six of each of those things.
00:15:19
Speaker
And so we kind of have to pick. So for me, for example, I'm heavily focused on this podcast from a content production standpoint. And so right now I basically have two businesses. One of those businesses really has kind of one main product, we sell coffee. Another one has a software business and a mastermind. And that's kind of my business life right now. I've kind of simplified my investments as well.
00:15:45
Speaker
And then as far as content production or me sort of teaching other people stuff, really focused on this podcast. I've kind of simplified everything else. If you go to my personal website, mattaclark.com, you'll see what I mean. If you go to my Instagram, mattclarktx, you'll see what I mean there. I've deleted my LinkedIn. It was never really much of a thing for me anyways. Kind of removed the ability to comment on almost all my social medias, at least I think I have.
00:16:07
Speaker
Remove the ability to message. This is all just me trying to focus my social media life Exclusively on the podcast which I kind of lump into that category So that's kind of my effort at simplification and John made a who's a famous designer says when in doubt just remove he says but be careful what you remove but the big lesson for me is when in doubt just remove stuff so you can focus on doing
00:16:30
Speaker
likely just one thing, one or two things, really high quality.
Benefits of Reducing Complexity
00:16:34
Speaker
So once you've kind of narrowed down that area that you want to focus on, that you want to become really good at, the next part is to do less. And so even within that area, we can't do everything we possibly want to do. So Jason Fried, who's the founder of 37signals, the creator of Basecamp and other businesses, he has a quote that I think is very interesting. He says, build half of a product, not half-assed.
00:16:54
Speaker
And so to me, that means basically doing less but better. Steve Jobs said, innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying no to all but the most crucial features. So within the area you decide to pursue, you have to make some choices about stuff you're not going to worry about, stuff you're not going to focus on, such as extra products.
00:17:14
Speaker
extra skills and really narrow down on the one or two things that you want to do extremely well. In Jiro Ono's sushi restaurant, he doesn't have any sashimi, he doesn't have any appetizers, no side dishes, no saucer of soy sauce. It's kind of already pasted on the actual pieces of sushi. There's only 10 counter seats.
00:17:33
Speaker
There's no rolls offered. There's no wine pairings. And the recommended beverage for the best flavor and experience is green tea. So he's really simplified within his craft. And so he doesn't have a million different restaurants, all different sort of menu options.
00:17:49
Speaker
very simple and within those limitations or restrictions he has the best quality experience and the best quality he can possibly provide anything that's kind of what we have to do if we want to do something really well to give you another example there was
00:18:06
Speaker
an investment partnership that I've read a lot about because I dove real deep into value investing for three years, basically. And if you go deep enough in that world, you end up finding an investment partnership called Nomad Partners. It's spoken of very highly because it's very unique. It was founded by two guys, Nick Sleep and Kay Zakaria. And so they achieved a ton of success and you can kind of see their evolution. You can read all their annual shareholder letters.
00:18:30
Speaker
you'll see that they kind of gravitated more and more towards simplicity. And so their entire partnership structure, which they drove incredible results, was a single partnership with long-term investments. And this is a quote from one of the shareholder letters, a single partnership with long-term investments in 10 companies all paid for with cash. And they were basically at one point closed incremental subscriptions, meaning they weren't allowing new investors to just come on anytime they wanted.
00:18:57
Speaker
which meant they were free from all marketing obligations. They didn't have to go chasing people to join and put more money in their fund because they had already made a good amount of money themselves. They already had the investors that they want. So they could focus 100% on the 10 companies that they had and deciding if at any point they wanted to replace one of those companies with a new one, which was a high bar for entry because the level of quality and the companies they were already invested in was already so high.
00:19:23
Speaker
And so they would say, I believe Nick and his letters use a primary author. Most of the letters says, buy shares in great businesses at a reasonable price and let the business grow. He says almost no one does this in part because it requires patience. And so that was one element of simplicity.
00:19:39
Speaker
And they would also say that they would prefer to add money to existing holdings, which is another element of simplicity because every new company you would add to an investment partnership means another company you kind of have to intensely monitor because your money is invested in it versus if they just add more money to an existing business that they already know extremely well, the mental load and time is going to be lower.
00:20:02
Speaker
and you'll find this theme and a lot of people that are produced really high quality products and services again and again so Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard talks a lot about simplicity he said that studying simplicity is taught me to simplify and to simplify yields a richer result and so they would try to produce the highest quality product not by adding a bunch of stuff on but by taking more stuff away.
00:20:24
Speaker
So if you're a business owner, this likely means less businesses, which we've kind of talked about, but also within any individual business, this means less products, less marketing channels, less initiatives. Even Warren Buffett, I've heard very anecdotally, you won't find this kind of thing just because I dug so deep into that space. He mentioned before, he doesn't like small stock positions. So even if the company was bought an incredible discount and it's still not a bad investment, he doesn't want some little tiny position he has to think about.
Minimalism and Quality
00:20:53
Speaker
He wants less
00:20:54
Speaker
but better. And if you're an employee, aim to become the best in the world at a narrow niche. One example kind of also from the Warren Buffett world is Ajit Jain, who runs the insurance operations for Berkshire Hathaway, which is an $800 billion company. And he's been doing it for a long time. He's probably the best person in the world at certain types of insurance, especially one that they call Supercat, which are these huge policies that basically nobody else can write.
00:21:21
Speaker
And he's the one who kinda comes up with, okay, what are we willing to price this at? And so that's an example of basically an employee becoming the best in the world and incredibly wealthy in the process. So this doesn't just apply to business owners creating products, but it could be an employee getting better at a skill or trying to become really good and a narrow niche. You have to do less stuff. You can't be the best at everything. You kind of have to pick and choose here.
00:21:45
Speaker
Then we have to start removing and cutting out stuff that's less important, kind of like minimalism. All the big concepts from there is declutter before organizing. If you want to clean up your house, it's going to be easier to start throwing stuff away and donating stuff before you start worrying about the best organization structure.
00:22:04
Speaker
this is kind of another layer deeper. And so if you're talking about a business and you've kind of really limited your scope to a handful of products, maybe even one product would be ideal, but that's not always possible, then start removing stuff, even within that product. A lot of times people don't want
00:22:20
Speaker
a ton of extra features, they just want one thing done extremely well. And so removing stuff within products, same thing with services, removing services rather than adding more services is potentially going to produce a better result because you can get really good at that one thing. There was a book that I read that I don't exactly remember the title, but it was a book on creating a subscription business and they kind of gave the fictional story, but I think it proves a good point.
00:22:45
Speaker
of a graph of a business that was kind of struggling, their money was in and out, not doing so well, and they ended up focusing only on creating logos. And so there's literally people out there that their entire business, probably just a one-person company, just creates logos. But they're the best in the world at doing that. So that's great. That is probably going to be too specific for most of us, but the idea of getting really good at one thing
00:23:10
Speaker
Whether it's a service or whether it's a product is likely going to be the way to go. And we've all heard it from the martial arts world about, you know, the person who knows 10,000 different kicks versus who has done one kick 10,000 times. That applies in our hobbies as well. There's a guy in jujitsu called Roger Gracie and he was
00:23:44
Speaker
a lot of
00:23:49
Speaker
it's literally the most basic moves that you learn probably in the first month as a white belt but he would spend hours every single day just practicing those and he would use them on the best people in the world who knew exactly what he was doing but he became so proficient at those few things that he was able to become one of the best jujitsu competitors of all time so the idea of removing all the extra stuff
00:24:12
Speaker
that doesn't really matter on a macro level. That means deciding what area we want to become really good at or produce a high quality effort at. And then also within that area, such as like, okay, I'm gonna focus on my business. Within there, limiting the number of products that we focus on. And then within there, limiting the number of things that we do.
Choosing Better Initiatives
00:24:32
Speaker
I mean, there's a, to give you an example on the service side,
00:24:35
Speaker
the facebook advertiser that i recommend to anybody you have to be at a certain level because he can't take on like tiny clients but forever he could go and start running ads on tiktok on google ads and everything but he focuses on his one thing which is just facebook ads
00:24:51
Speaker
and really now he started narrowing down to primarily e-commerce clients but he doesn't run any of those other channels which every other agency will be like oh yeah we'll run this we'll run that we'll run this and they end up doing everything at a very mediocre level versus him he focuses on just one channel and in my opinion is one of the best in the world at that one channel and he's built a great business that's relatively simple because of that and so to kind of close this idea of first
00:25:16
Speaker
Choosing where you're going to focus and most importantly simplifying, there's a French aviator who said, whatever man builds, all the nights spent working, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity.
Detail Orientation and Customer Satisfaction
00:25:32
Speaker
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained, not when there's no longer anything to add, but when there's no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness. And so the first step for us to produce higher quality work is to simplify.
00:25:51
Speaker
So once you've simplified, step two is to mind the details. Specifically, mind the details that matter to you and those that you serve. So Steve Jobs said, it takes a lot of hard work to make something simple. Just because you're simplifying doesn't mean the work becomes less. Sometimes it can become even more. So I read a book called Excellence Wins by the co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel chain.
00:26:18
Speaker
And he was maniacal about the details of the business, especially on the customer service side. And a big part of that, as he realized, was that he's not the one face-to-face dealing with the customers every day, even though he wants to provide exceptional customer service. It has to be done through the employees, because those are the people that are interacting with the customers all day long.
00:26:40
Speaker
That means he had to mine the details extremely well on the employee side. And so that includes employee selection, even down to running profiles on people that were just going to be doorman. They're going to stand outside and open doors for people. He wanted to find people that really enjoyed that job. And so he.
00:26:59
Speaker
surveyed and polled the existing doorman that were successful happy with the job and found that they liked the outdoors which kind of makes sense logically but not something you would have think of it's like okay somebody just wants this job you know they're willing to do it and so let's pay him for it and so he found people that you know a lot of them like to garden and hike and that sort of thing so he went out and in his employee recruiting
00:27:21
Speaker
found people with those same kind of characteristics.
Balancing Pride and Satisfaction
00:27:24
Speaker
And then this also applies to the initial training on the job. For the first week or two, even regardless of the position in the company, the employees would go through some intensive onboarding and training. So they really were bought into the brand and the philosophy, but it didn't stop there. It kept going with ongoing reinforcement for the employees. Very systemized.
00:27:43
Speaker
He even went down to the level of how employees talk amongst each other and to customers, meaning the specific language that they use. And I kind of experienced this in a roundabout way. So I, for better or worse, sometimes when I would get done with jujitsu training, I would not want to eat healthy. And so I would go to Chick-fil-A, which is probably not that healthy.
00:28:04
Speaker
And so I would go there, but it was very interesting because as I would drive through the drive through, I would notice that the employees are always impeccably dressed. They have their shirts tucked in. They're very professional. And these are, you know, a lot of times, you know, 16, 17 year old kids.
00:28:19
Speaker
and I would notice something with the language that they use is anytime I would ask for something or say thank you they would say my pleasure and I was like that's very specific and it kept happening again and again and so what I found out reading the book about Ritz Carlton is they use similar kind of language in their own business on purpose and at one point
00:28:38
Speaker
the Ritz Carlton executives were running a training for Chick-fil-A's sort of top team and they were kind of working on this concept of what language to use and one of the founders of Chick-fil-A, maybe the founder, was kind of sitting in the back of the room and people were like okay what kind of language could we use you know it's a fast food restaurant so we don't want to be too formal or too stuffy and so maybe we were to say yes thank you we'll take care of that or something like that and he was like I like this my pleasure thing and so he kept sort of saying that and they're like okay so then that's the route that they win which is much more
00:29:05
Speaker
professional, but he liked how it felt for his business. So very intentional use of language. And Chick-fil-A has been another one that's been extremely successful, minding these sort of details. So being able to focus on these tiny details is really what ends up creating a high level of quality, whether we're talking about products or services or anything else. Now, this is the stuff that matters to you and those that you serve.
00:29:28
Speaker
And so kind of counter example is stuff that doesn't matter, which is Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company that's worth something like $800 billion, $900 billion. He focuses on what really matters and kind of ignores what doesn't matter. So if you were to go to their corporate website, BerkshireHathaway.com, it looks like it was built in like 1996. It's just literally text links on the page. And this is one of the biggest companies in the world. So that's not the thing that matters. They provide the information necessary on there, such as annual reports.
00:29:58
Speaker
and things like that. But they don't really focus on having fantasy design or trying to put on a front there. And same thing with PR interviews, writing books. They don't do a lot of any of that kind of stuff. What they do focus on is the details that do matter for them, which is the businesses that they select to invest in. Buffet's continual learning, monitoring the businesses that they own or are considering owning.
00:30:20
Speaker
keeping tons of cash on hand for when either bad things happen or opportunities pop up and communicating with shareholders that are bought into the business, not trying to recruit new shareholders, but communicating with the ones that are already there to sort of keep them invested in the business.
00:30:36
Speaker
So I think what we want to look for is the intersection of what matters to you and what matters to those that you serve. And so one of the people in the RockCraft series said that I will know, meaning that if there's certain quality elements that their customers may not even notice, these are things that they want to build in there because it's going to eat them alive if they know that they've kind of cut corners on something that they're trying to be the best in the world.
00:31:00
Speaker
And so there's going to be some things that the customer or person you're serving may not even see, but you will know, and that's part of your own pride in what you're doing.
Feedback and Quality Enhancement
00:31:08
Speaker
Then there's also on the other side, which is Ritz Carlton, the co-founder talked about working from the customer backwards.
00:31:16
Speaker
taking these details into account but thinking about like what are the details the customer is actually going to care about and what seems to be the best is the intersection of the two and so on the physical product business this includes the materials used the packaging for the products the manufacturing processes trying to learn as much about every single one of those details as possible so that you can be confident you have the best quality product possible
00:31:42
Speaker
And so Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, his son wanted to build some sort of business or he was advising his son and they wanted to build surfboards. And so Yvon Chouinard kept pushing him to build the best quality surfboards possible. And that meant looking at all the details
00:31:59
Speaker
of how the boards are made, all the current available ones, how the manufacturing process and literally making these things by hand. And so that's the kind of focus that Patagonia took early on before it was even known as Patagonia and building climbing equipment, which we'll talk about shortly. And so same thing on the services side, know literally every single detail or if we're talking about a sport or a hobby.
00:32:19
Speaker
knowing every single detail of your craft there is also incredibly important. There's probably the most famous and what seems to be the most successful jiu-jitsu coach on the planet, John Danaher. If you hear him go through some of his instructional and going through techniques, he looks at every single tiny little detail of the sport. And so when he's teaching something like
00:32:44
Speaker
choking somebody from the back, which is very common. It's one of the most common sort of submission techniques in jujitsu. He'll literally go down to the detail of how your fingers are placed on the collar and whether to use three fingers, two fingers, four fingers. And it goes to that level of detail. And so he's kind of broken his craft down into the most minute detail that matters to him and his students and ultimately the success of everything that he's doing.
00:33:11
Speaker
In Jiro's sushi business, he would make sure that the place is incredibly clean all the time, that the food is the highest quality possible. He would focus on the details of the presentation of the food, including the order of the sushi in the meal, so which pieces are presented in which order. And then he would even go down to the details of giving smaller pieces for women,
00:33:30
Speaker
because they tend to have less of an appetite and so he wanted to make sure that everyone would be in the same pace throughout the meal and so if one group of people is taking forever to eat the food and the other group of people is moving faster, it kind of messes up the flow of the dinner and so he would adjust the size of the pieces based on who it is that's eating them. These are things that people wouldn't even notice
00:33:51
Speaker
but those are the details that he focused on and also even if he would have somebody come into his restaurant because he doesn't necessarily know who these people are ahead of time but if he sees somebody is left-handed when he presents the next piece of sushi to them he'll literally move the piece of sushi to the left side of the plate so it's easier for them to grab so these are the tiny little details that has created the best sushi restaurant in the world
00:34:14
Speaker
Patagonia similar kind of things so the founder said that you know he basically had to create high quality products early on or people would die because he was creating technical climbing equipment for climbing you know hundreds of feet up in the air on rock faces and he says those people that would probably die if the equipment was no good would probably be him and his friends because they were using this equipment all day long and
00:34:35
Speaker
That's how he originally built the business, was making climbing equipment for him and a few friends. Then some friends of friends of one of them and he kind of went from there. And this allowed him to charge quite a bit more because of the higher level of quality. So he was selling some climbing gear pitons for $1.50 each versus the ones that everyone else was using from Europe were 20 cents. And so far more expensive, but he almost couldn't keep up with demand because people wanted that higher level of quality because he was focusing on the details.
00:35:04
Speaker
And so in their business, they're very focused on what matters to them and what matters to the customer. And so for them, environmental protection is a big part of that. So he says, we've always defined quality as durability, functionality and as much versatility as possible. But quality in our age also means going beyond doing less harm to mother nature and actually returning the favor of her abundance. This means ultimately no pollution, no waste, no extraction and service to the pockets of the few at the expense of the many.
00:35:33
Speaker
So for them, that is incredibly important. So those are details that maybe their customers don't care about yet, but it's important to them. So they're monitoring those details as well.
Choosing Quality Partners
00:35:43
Speaker
And the way that they kind of decide to build products is they want to make products that are the best in class, the best climbing jacket, the best ski pants, et cetera. And so they ask themselves a few questions about every product.
00:35:56
Speaker
Is it functional? Is it multifunctional? Is it durable, meaning is it going to last? Can it be repaired? Is it repairability, part of their environmental protection? Does it fit our customers? And is it as simple as possible among some other questions? So these are kind of a series of questions that they ask themselves that they've built over time to know if they're making the highest quality products possible and are mining every single detail that they can think of.
00:36:20
Speaker
And another way to make sure that you're minding the details that matter to you and the people that you're serving is to get feedback. And so Jiro, the sushi chef, is literally sitting in front of his customers so he can see how they're receiving the food, how they're experiencing the food, and getting that feedback sort of one-to-one.
00:36:41
Speaker
Now there's other businesses such as LL Bean, which has about one and a half billion dollars in revenue and it was founded in 1912. It's a clothing company, which is 112 years ago, which is insane. It does regular surveys, it tracks complaints daily and does field tests of its outdoor equipment. That's how it maintains high quality. Caterpillar, maker of big sort of farm equipment, does two surveys post-purchase at 300 hours and 500 hours, maintains a centrally managed list of
00:37:09
Speaker
product problems, analyzes warranty and service reports submitted by dealers to improve products. This is how it sort of maintains that high level of quality by getting feedback and Ritz Carlton does tons of customer feedback, even uses third-party services to do this and it's really big on tracking trends and so it understands which is kind of
00:37:27
Speaker
refreshing for me because this is a business that's built everything on customer service and part of my issue with customer service is like there's always some lunatics and I'm like ah customer service it's just annoying because there's these crazy people out there and so he said that like he calls it the jerk factor he's like look there's gonna be 2% of people that you're just never gonna be able to make happy
00:37:46
Speaker
And that's okay. That doesn't mean you don't stop trying on the 98% that you can make happy. And another tip that he uses is to avoid a focus group of one. Meaning that if you get one person who's really upset about something or one person who has a strong recommendation of something, you don't start changing the whole business based on that, which can be tempting.
00:38:05
Speaker
because it feels very personal. And so he calls that a focus group of one. So it's a matter of still getting this active feedback, still seeking this active feedback, but tracking trends over time and not basing everything on a few upset customers or one person's strong recommendation. So I think that's an important insight, especially for us, whether we're selling products or doing services or anything else.
00:38:28
Speaker
Another big part of minding the details is looking up and down the value chain. So I found this again and again with these businesses that I've studied that have super high quality operations and have produced great results. So Warren Buffett, if you're an employee, he recommends working for somebody you admire and respect.
00:38:46
Speaker
almost more important than anything. Do something you love and then go work for somebody that you admire and respect. That's a person that's kind of in your value chain because you're going to be interacting with this person on a regular basis. So I found this from a lot of the most successful investors that have had the best careers is when they went into the investment world, they didn't go for the best job on their resume. They went to work for somebody, a person that they really aligned with and respected and then worked for him or her for a long time and then eventually went out and did their own thing.
00:39:15
Speaker
and so that's a great tip for careers also on the investment side he make sure that he's investing in high quality companies run by high quality managers that's part of his value chain and you know with the nomad investment partnership they would look for same thing high quality managers high quality company models
00:39:34
Speaker
They like one that they called Scaled Economy Shared, which is kind of the Amazon business model. The bigger Amazon gets, the cheaper it can get stuff, and it passes those savings on to customers. Costco is another example, so they like high-quality models. And then they also like high-quality investors in their fund. If they have high-pressure investors that are constantly wanting to juice earnings over the next quarter for their investment partnership, that's not going to work out for them and let them do the thing that they need to do. So the investors are kind of funding them,
00:40:02
Speaker
they're looking for high quality investors they're trying to run a high quality operation and then they're trying to turn that money into greater money by investing in high quality businesses with high quality models and high quality company managers so this up and down value stream i found again and again patagonia similar sort of thing they at one point started really looking into the raw ingredients
00:40:24
Speaker
of their products, so rather than just being like, oh, we're just a brand that sells clothes, they wanted to know where are these ingredients coming from, how are they being made, and are they as high quality as possible? And they really started looking for ones that are recycled, regenerative, and are from non-toxic sources, such as organic cotton. They even developed a nylon substitute for rain jackets and hat-brims that was harvested and from discarded fishing nets.
00:40:49
Speaker
off the coast of South America which is kind of cool they're called ghost fishing nets and they said that they've helped keep more than 884 metric tons of plastic waste out of the world's oceans and also this sort of recycling of these fishing nets provides supplemental income for a coastal community so that's the level of detail that they're going into on the ingredient side to support their mission.
00:41:10
Speaker
They also make sure they're working with the best suppliers possible because that's a big part of their business. And the suppliers, you know, early on, they found that regular cotton was very toxic. One of the ingredients because I think I believe when I was looking at this, it was only like 70% is actual cotton and 30% is all kinds of other stuff, including formaldehyde, which is used to preserve frogs and that sort of thing.
00:41:32
Speaker
And so they started realizing this and they're like, okay, we don't want to do that. So they started looking for organic cotton, but they realized that a lot of suppliers, especially at the time, didn't like organic cotton because it was full of leaves and stems. So they said that their most creative partner located in Thailand solved the problem by freezing the cotton before spinning it. And they said that due to the resourcefulness and open-mindedness of our partners, we succeeded. Our Cotton Odyssey taught us our responsibility for what happens in Patagonia's name at every step of the supply chain. So they're looking up and down the value chain.
Collaborating for Excellence
00:42:02
Speaker
as well and one of the most interesting things to me about watching the Giro dreams of sushi documentary was his tuna guy and so this is the guy that you know the big open sort of auction market for fish every day and so they need tuna for their sushi business
00:42:19
Speaker
and so they have a single guy that they've worked with for many years that is kind of their expert in tuna and so this is a guy that doesn't work for them directly but they buy tuna from this guy who buys tuna from the open market and that guy said that on any given day there may be 20 tuna and only one is the best in the market and he says that if he can't get the best he's not buying anything so the
00:42:40
Speaker
For them, for Jiro to run the highest quality sushi restaurant possible, he needs the highest quality fish possible, so they make sure they work with the highest quality partner possible in that area. So this is what I'm talking about up and down the value chain. Similar thing on the person that supplies them rice. They said that something like the hotel chain was Hyatt, they couldn't cook their rice well enough.
00:43:00
Speaker
And so they sell it to Jiro instead because it's I guess apparently a harder rice to cook well and Jiro has that attention to detail so he gets the highest quality rice for his high quality sushi operation. So he couldn't do what he's done if he didn't have high quality partners up and down the value chain. And so for you to do quality work you have to work with quality people.
00:43:23
Speaker
If you're a business owner, that means your suppliers, your partners in business, your employees, and your customers all have to be the highest quality people possible for you to do your job. If you're an employee, the company you work for, if you're trying to do a really good job but the company you work for is not aligned, maybe they think too short term or they're
00:43:44
Speaker
willing to cut corners on things that you care about, that's not going to work. Your boss, the same thing, and your co-workers. So you may consider that how do I get into a higher quality environment if I'm committed to this idea of producing something that lasts and is meaningful and is valuable to other people. If it's a hobby you're pursuing or a sport, having a really good coach has been sort of seen again and again and again training partners
00:44:07
Speaker
These things help produce greater success. So to wrap up this second step of producing high quality work, Frank Shattuck, who's a suit tailor and who's in the Raw Crafts series, he says that I'm making this suit for myself first, second, and third. And so he wants to produce the highest quality work for himself. But if you watch the video and you can sort of see his mannerisms and how he talks and his commitment to the craft, he spent 10 years
00:44:34
Speaker
just to learn how to tailor a suit, then another five years to learn how to tailor a suit to a specific person, and then he sort of started doing his own thing, and you can see his pride and his commitment in creating the best quality suit for another person. And so that is part of it, despite his saying that it is very important that he's doing it for himself.
Investing in Long-Term Quality
00:44:53
Speaker
He, like all of these people, businesses, employees, craftsmen, they're focused on these details that matter as much as possible to themselves
00:45:04
Speaker
and to other people, and that's how they produce the highest quality work possible. So the third step is to build what lasts. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said, if everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people because very few companies are willing to do that.
00:45:29
Speaker
Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you can never otherwise pursue. At Amazon, we like things to work in five to seven years. We're willing to plant seeds, let them grow, and we're very stubborn. We say we're stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details.
Building Lasting Value
00:45:47
Speaker
So in building what lasts, one of the ways to do that is to focus on the inputs. One of Warren Buffett's golf buddies once offered him a bet on whether or not he'd shoot a hole in one on the next hole. $10,000 would be paid to him if he gets it and only has to pay $10 if he doesn't hit it. Buffett declined because he didn't like the odds. He says if you're not disciplined in the little things, you won't be disciplined in the big things.
00:46:12
Speaker
So Nick sleep, the founder of the investment partnership nomad that we talked about would say, watch out for drift when you start slipping on things that are focused too much on the short, short term and not on the longterm. And so he would say that him and his partner would concentrate on the price to value of the partnership and ignore its performance as much as practical.
00:46:31
Speaker
So we have to watch for the things that we're doing on a daily basis that are going to produce those long-term results. Stephen King said, if you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others. Read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of. No shortcut.
00:46:48
Speaker
Ritz Carlton would do daily 15-minute stand-ups, each going over one of the core 25 values. So these are focusing on the little things you can do every day to produce the long-term lasting result. And Buffett would say the best thing you can do is be exceptionally good at something because people are going to give you some of what they produce in exchange for what you deliver. This is kind of his way to deal with inflation and any other sort of issue is be really good at something.
00:47:16
Speaker
because over the long term you're going to create something incredible that our people are going to be willing to pay you for.
Sustainable Business Practices
00:47:23
Speaker
We want to aim to build something that can last forever. Rachel Rosenkranz, the guitar maker, likes that the guitars that she's making can last a lifetime and she says that means they won't end up in an ocean in six months and they might even outlast the owner. With Nomad's investment partnership,
00:47:38
Speaker
they were looking for businesses where they could put in a portfolio and create what they call a terminal portfolio. Basically a portfolio that could last forever. They would never have to touch anything. Now maybe this is an ideal that you can never achieve but that was what they ended up with and they ended up with a situation where they had a handful of companies, Amazon, Costco, Berkshire Hathaway, that
00:48:00
Speaker
comprise the majority of their portfolio and they didn't need to add anything different. They didn't need to change anything. So they wanted to build this portfolio that could essentially last forever. Patagonia would say that you want to think and act long term. He says that any company should behave as though it will be around a hundred years.
00:48:18
Speaker
And there's this idea of Henokins, which are family owned companies that have been in existence for more than 200 years. There's a hotel in Japan that has been in existence since the year 717. Beretta, the Italian arms manufacturer, has been in business since 1526. Berkshire Hathaway, two of its longest term holdings are Coca-Cola, which was founded in 1886, and American Express founded in 1850.
00:48:44
Speaker
So anytime you're making something, you're providing a service or anything like that, aim to build something that can last as long as possible. That's the level of quality that I believe that we're trying to get to. That could just be an impact on somebody that lasts forever. This is why we on the training side and coaching have always tried to steer for, we haven't done this 100% of the time, but have mostly tried to steer clear.
00:49:12
Speaker
of short-term strategies. When we first started teaching people how to build ecommerce businesses, everyone in that space at the time was teaching people how to trick Google and do these little SEO hacks so that they can make an extra few thousand dollars a month. And I thought this was crazy. I was like, if you're going to spend all this time
00:49:27
Speaker
doing all this marketing, building your business, you might as well build something that can last. Now, I didn't think long-term enough at the time, but we at least thought longer term than most people. We're like, okay, at least build a business that can last for three to five years so you can sell it. So you're building equity in something that's really worth something and isn't just a short-term hustle that as soon as something changes,
00:49:49
Speaker
you're gonna have to turn around and do something different and start all back over. So maybe you've made some cash, but you haven't built really any equity in anything.
Conclusion: Focus on Quality
00:49:58
Speaker
So the last and final step of this process is to build something that can last forever.
00:50:05
Speaker
So to conclude, I'd like to start by telling you a little fact about Jiro Sushi restaurant that we haven't covered so far. They actually lost their Michelin stars. Now it's not because they did anything wrong, it's because they became so busy in such high demand that they can no longer take public reservations.
00:50:24
Speaker
This means that they no longer could qualify for the Michelin Guide. The Michelin Guide has said, look, you know, we can't cover a restaurant that doesn't take public reservations. And so that's why they lost their Michelin stars. But the restaurant is better than ever. They've elevated themselves beyond anything almost any other restaurant has ever accomplished. This is what's possible with the commitment to quality.
00:50:48
Speaker
Earlier this year, we and my business at Amazing.com cut out everything except for our software tool and our mastermind. I also decided to stop posting on my social media and focus exclusively on this podcast for my content publishing. Now, Amazing is more profitable than it has been in years, and I believe we're creating more valuable products than ever. In my most recent podcast episode, which is the only other one on this show, other than this one right now, because I removed all the other previous ones that I believe were lower quality,
00:51:18
Speaker
The only other episode in the show, the only other one that I've published since then has more plays than any other episode that I did from the ones I removed in the past 30 days. And so I'm kind of a recovering, you know, throw a bunch of stuff that's low quality against the wall and hopefully something
00:51:33
Speaker
ends up kind of good, kind of a recovering addict in that world. I'm early on in this pursuit of quality but I believe there's no other way if we want the best life possible.
Reflection on Quality Over Quantity
00:51:44
Speaker
And there's a quote that stuck with me that you teach best what you most need to learn. That's why this episode and this concept on quality is so important to me even though it's kind of hard to wrap our heads around
00:51:54
Speaker
It can be not very tangible at times. I believe it's incredibly important. And so that's why I wanted to spend the past month researching this and providing you what I found to benefit yourself. As a reminder, the three steps to produce high quality work and a high quality life are first, simplify. Second, mind the details that matter to you and other people. And third, build what lasts.
00:52:20
Speaker
I believe that you can create great work, and I believe you can do it for yourself and for others, and you have great things to offer the world. So a big takeaway from this episode I'd like to leave you with was stated succinctly by Seneca. It is quality rather than quantity that matters. There's a lot at stake here. It is the meaning and quality of our lives and the impact that we make. We hope to live long lives, but that's not guaranteed. Today, however, is guaranteed.
00:52:49
Speaker
I'd like to close with a quote from someone who created a high quality impact in the world, but whose life was cut far too short. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, the quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important. Thank you for listening.