Hey this is Tony Robbins listen thanks for joining me for this podcast on business innovation my entire passion in life is helping people to create an extraordinary quality of life that means life on your terms and one of my obsessions for the last thirty eight years has been business and the reason is because most of us spend more time in our work in our business than we do with our children even what do we do with a spouse a boyfriend a girlfriend are those that we love a business becomes an extension of a person's identity
and so I found that if you can help someone transform their business to reach that you transform their life because it's the place that causes them to grow and expand and to find a way to add value and my passion for business innovation is really simple I love seeing people take control of their own lives and create the life that they deserve by finding a Way to do more for other people than anyone else does so this podcast has one purpose to truly help you create business breakthroughs the psychological insights that can get you to
go to the next level anything that's usually a chokehold on the growth of your business 80% of that is the psychology of the owner and 20% of the mechanics or the strategies and I'm a strategist and this podcast will have both I'm gonna share with you some of the best insights and strategies that I'm aware of in the field but if you're gonna really make progress it's gonna take more than just information that listening a podcast it's gonna require some real change and everybody wants things to be better but nobody wants to change if you
really want to take control if you want to make real progress then let's begin the journey with this business podcast now Netflix Starbucks Apple Amazon Costco what do These companies all have in common strategic innovation all of these companies rewrote the rules for competition within their industry they found unique ways to provide more value than anyone else and that's why they're dominating but strategic innovation is different than constant never-ending improvement while you can't run a successful business without making improvements its strategic innovation that will help you reshape the landscape of your business innovation and ultimately
take over your entire industry because the market will always be searching for something new and you not your competitor must be the one to give it to them you must always be looking for ways to create something more new or better than what currently exists consumers are no longer impressed with any one new feature or service for very long they expect a constant Evolution of improvement or they will simply go elsewhere that's exactly why Steve Jobs for instance held weekly meetings with his operational heads at Apple that would focus on the latest new products that
the company was developing and envisioned the next steps for each product line Apple was absolutely committed to strategic innovation and they redefined each market they entered by creating brilliant products that put the competition to shame consider Starbucks known for its in-store innovations like the reverse French press clover coffee or handmade sodas Starbucks is constantly finding ways to cater to their clients they're even testing out smaller express stores in high-density areas to reduce wait times and many shops even have smartphone charging stations available for their customers strategic innovation is about standing apart and staying one step
Ahead it's about ensuring sustainability and success in short strategic innovation is power now let's hear more about what Tony has to say about it are you ready to rock and roll well we're excited because this morning what I want to talk to you about briefly is this concept of creating strategic innovation innovation everybody thinks about yeah we got to innovate our product we got to innovate our service but remember I said all business really is not me if Drucker said this is marketing an innovation or innovation in marketing you're creating something innovating something bringing something
at the table that's more new alive a reason for people to do business with you today that gives you a competitive advantage because there's more added value for them to buy your product or service than anybody else then you got to market it those two forces have to be institutionalized in Your organization it used to be you could come up with a killer service you come up with a killer product and you can run or promote or market that product for five 10 15 years as long as a great product you could own the marketplace
especially if you were first today market cycles I mean I remember for example in the early 90s Sony used to have a market cycle where they build a product and they would have about four-and-a-half year market cycle so in the dirt days let's say even the 80s when they're building like a Sony Walkman when they built Sony Walkman in those days their market cycles in the seven-year frame then went in the 90s to four and a half years anybody know what the market cycle is now no there's a creative product before they know they got
to replace it and improve it and sell it in that business six months six months they know that if they are gonna hold on the customer every six months They have to find someone to take it to the next level and by the way Sony used to do that and they own the marketplace who replaced them in the sense of innovation when it comes to technology quick Apple Sony was the Apple but interestingly enough Sony got to the point where they stopped doing the same level of innovation they started coming up with products that look
different but there was no real innovation innovation isn't just looking different innovation by the way can be looking different looks can be an innovation believe it or not but it can't be the only innovation over and over and over again a customer just get used to it it doesn't mean anything there's not enough added value so what is strategic innovation it means training everyone in your organization to think we have two jobs I don't care if you answer the phone or you work in the stockroom or your marketing and sales or your head of accounting
I don't Care who you are we do two things here we innovate and we market anything you can figure out anything you can bring to the table that can help us to innovate make our product or service better in some way for consumers to meet their needs the more we can know about their needs and the more we can find to meet those needs and anything you can tell us they can get us out there to educate people about why ours is better anyway we can get our message out in a unique way we all
need to know you need to reward within your organization now strategic innovation is different than just constant never-ending improvement cani constant improvement is a very very important principle if you're not constantly improving you're definitely gonna be passed up by a competition but if you're thinking about strategic innovation what it really means to me is Rinat rewriting the rules for competition within an industry with an Area when you change how people compete when you change the rules you take over that industry you shift completely the game so in my industry the vast majority people spoke and
still do for one to three hours which many of you yesterday wish I was one of those people but that's usually it because what it was is about inspiration right it's inspired people and what happened for me is 90% for an hour or 90 minutes and I was like it's wonderful that's a useful tool but you know inspirations like motivation motivation is nice and it's like a bath you know it doesn't lie ask me you still take a bath every day but my view was how do I get people into immersion how do I put
people experience where their life really changes and so I change the game and people never even considered saying we're gonna do three or four days and nights we gotta go fifty hours no one will sit there they won't sit for a three-hour movie that Someone spent 200 million dollars on but I changed the game I changed the rules because once people got the results even for the beginning it was tough on them by the end the level of transformation was so huge it changed the rules to change the game it changed the size it gave
me a brand let me dominate an industry cuz when people walk up to me throughout my life the number one phrase you can see me anywhere in the world dozen times a day not in December I mean just walking around is oh my god Tony Robbins you changed my life it's like how I say you changed me thanks for the credit I'm glad I helped but they'll say that like clockwork every single time that's different than I like your product that's different than I enjoyed your seminar you changed my life that changes the rules for
competition that created a different way of competing I didn't do it to compete I did it because my person was I love People and I don't want them just to be inspired for the moment I want to make sure they really have the tools the skills the ability the shift that creates a lasting change in their life and I wouldn't settle for anything less so you'll have to do it to compete you strategically innovate because you're obsessed with meeting the needs of your clients that's the difference now who's done this well Sony did it in
a really simple way Sony didn't come and say let's do some research and let's figure out what product people need next because when they came out with a Sony Walkman the entire focus in the music business was on making things what bigger or smaller no when they came out with Sony Walkman the entire industry is about making things bigger bigger speakers bigger woofers bigger everything nobody was asking for smaller bigger equal better bigger equal more money bigger he was More status so what these people did is they innovated strategically that's the ability to reinvent the
basis of competition with an existing industry or invent an entirely new industry that's what Sony did Morita said wouldn't it be wonderful if you could have the same quality music that when you're sitting here and you're chairing these giant speakers when you're walking around he did not get that from a focus group he not get that by someone telling him he just tried to figure out what do people need that they don't even know they need that's a different game that's when you start to reinvent things otherwise you're just an extension of everything else what
do they really need they don't even know they need he really walked around he talked to people and they talked about much they loved music and so forth and he just thought gosh people are traveling more and more people are mobile more and more I'm gonna come up With this idea and so now you think about the Walkman it's like this ancient dinosaur right there's giant thing in your hand you know compared to this little tiny you know the newest iPod they've got that you know it's like the size of your fingertip but the point
of the matter is he reinvented he created industry now Sony eventually lost out to Apple for a lot of reasons and most of them are strategic innovations that Apple didn't so he stopped doing it's that simple so they're a perfect example of that process so think of this way if you are gonna really be effective the secret is don't just improve change the rules of the game change the rules of the game you do that the game changes overnight and I'll give you an example most of you probably make you stuff Starbucks did Starbucks change
the rules of what a coffee shop was yes or no a little or completely what was a coffee shop before Starbucks it was a place That you got coffee and what else what else yeah you got bacon and eggs and sausage I mean you need pancakes that was a coffee shop true and people got their coffee what they did is they came along and they said you know what people I notice the world's changing people used to go out to work to the bar and they don't go to the bar before work it's like people
need a place to go between work and home to decompress before they deal with what's at home and they said you know they want to be social sometimes sometimes gonna be by themselves and then this man didn't even create this right how did he have it Howard find or come up with Starbucks he went overseas he was in Italy and he saw these little coffee shops these little Bistro seems like wow I think that could work all he did was model it and come bring it here but he changed the game of competition he wasn't
competing with Dany's he Wasn't competing with these normal coffee shops he was this high-end super expensive you got an identity by going there you got a social experience by going there you had a place to be able to go between your life to decompress they changed the entire rules of competition and by the way he was first the first one not to ever make one the first one to get in consumers hearts and minds and once he was first there a bunch of people who tried to copy it they might even have better coffee but
once their first as a brand he innovated first and he branded first and they own market and by the way how much have they grown how many stores that they have in 1998 100 stores how many I have now last year the end it was 15,000 stores in 10 years that's what happens when you strategically innovate he could never have made a coffee and like made his product better and then sold and grown like that the easily grew Like that as he created a whole new category that he was the leader at that's what you
have to be able to look at that's what I mean when I talk about strategic innovation Nike we gave the example of yesterday also about what Nike really did along the way first he sold you know somebody else's shoes meaning sale night then he lost the contract which looked like the worst thing in his life I'm losing my product but what did it make him do it mean creating a product of his own to total what a sugar must come on guys a sugar a must by the way that's what the value is of the
marketplace right now for many of you your worst nightmare is if you find the way to use the demand to strategically innovate if you do that it could be the greatest day of your life even if right now you're scared out of your mind take that fear as energy and there's not a big difference train fear and excitement Same kind of drive one just has a sick feeling to it the other has a little excitement attached to it alright but if you get that thing you just go this the meaning is this is the gift
and I gotta figure I'm gonna use this gift this is demanding a change so what does he do he innovates he comes up with a product like nobody's ever done before and it creates him on this explosive growth now as he wasn't supposed to growth other people start to copy what he's doing and now I need to innovate again and he doesn't really come up with much innovation for the while until suddenly his innovation is the way marketing it he changed the game he no longer sold shoes he made Nike first of all a sports
company he was the first one to sell $50 shoes but he was able to do that because he was also selling you clothing it was an integrated look and feel and that evolved into selling were a lifestyle just what right and all of a sudden this Lifestyle the lifestyle had all these members of the community Michael Jordan right Tiger Woods now he started building that and gradually they built from a sports company that sponsored events everything else too now there are community how many of you use Nike Plus some of you run and use Nike
Plus I'm curious Nike Plus if you've not seen it you go online you type in you get this little device in your shoe and now when you go running you can hear your music it tells you how far you've been running you can have Lance Armstrong hey nice job you broke your record yeah that's happens at the end total reinforcement you plug it into your computer and boom attracts everything and you can compete with other people or you can track yourself you want to play three on three basketball they've all community you want anywhere in
the world click on you'll find people who want to go play with you that day what they're Now doing is they're in your life every day they're no longer a product you're no longer a service or a community that you're a part of that we invents the way they compete so guess what Nike doesn't spend these ads they got millions of people to log on every single day because it's part of the ritual of their life that's reinventing the rules of competition business innovation try that now come out a little company called scooby-doo shoes and
see well you do know maybe if you well by finding a niche but you're not gonna take over Nike all right they've constantly found a way to strategically innovate not just you know make something a bit better that's the difference I'm talking about harley-davidson harley-davidson after you know before World War two after World War two rather became his giant incredible you know arm of marketing cuz all these guys you know that where GIS Came back for two they through living these Harley's and they wanted a Harley and a lot of them wanted an identity for
themselves that they were still a badass and they were coming back to just being a normal person and they built the culture and that culture became very loyal and the culture was promoted in movies and it was an identity right all right born to be wild this crazy outrageous person is totally independent owns himself as tough as nails totally masculine now they went through this tremendous growth period and then all of a sudden in the 80s the Japanese started building much better bikes lighter faster cheaper stronger and Harley started just dropped through the absolute floor
Harley was on the verge of bankruptcy after being around since the earliest days of motorcycles and what turned him around strategic innovation somebody came in the new management team leadership team the CEO Gets a lot of credit but was really a team they say you know what if we're gonna innovate we gotta say what business are we really in that's another way you can find how to innovate you keep thinking you know what business you're in you think you're the person that builds casinos that's only one way to look at your business there's a much
broader version of what business you're at and I start looking around and saying who our customers really what do our customers really buy from us are they buying a motorcycle no they're buying an icon they're buying an identity they're buying legacy I mean these are not just bikes these are legends and gradually they began to realize what we really sell at this stage we've been around so long we're really selling a heritage we're selling a legacy we're selling a lifestyle we're selling a way to live we're really selling nostalgia a mindset because baby boomers they
found guess Who buys the most number of motorcycles what age today 38 to 50 it's somebody about to have or in the middle of their midlife crisis who says I'm still badass even though I'm all and they begin to realize that's where 80% of these motorcycles are sold assisted here's what we're gonna do we're gonna sell this identity not only to these people if we want to expand the market between 38 to 50 year olds we're so nostalgia some people are gonna ride a bike but they want the identity and guess how they grew their
business like crazy and explain all their marketing started selling all the clothing like crazy the market became create identity so I can remember I I never rode a motorcycle growing up mine one of my cousin's you know was on a motorcycle we had no money so I couldn't afford one but also he actually crushed his leg and that stunted growth one leg shorter and Longer than the other fine every one of the motorcycles I learned to fly helicopters later on in life and things like that that's my idea of really kick-ass flying and then I
meet sage and she says do you ride a motorcycle I go no she goes oh rip the doors off we're gonna be the helicopter surfing a little screaming down on the water just as the curls coming and pull up as the wave goes underneath it but of course she got motion sickness and threw up so that worked real well so I decided I got this woman on the LOB with her you know she likes motorcycles and her dad always had our Lee's so I reluctantly go to Harley store thinking what the hell am I gonna
do cuz I didn't have those iconic images in my mind trying to be a badass with leather and all these good things so I get on this motorcycle and it's like wow wow it's like flying I mean this is really cool it's a lot like fly is incredible feel so I don't have a License I Drive a motorcycle for 20 minutes and a guy I said if I want to see the best motorcycles all at once because I always want you know the very best how do they do it he said well you'd go on
this incredible rally they do this rally and South Dakota North Dakota what's it called Sturgis and he said it's it's happening this weekend so this weekend they go yeah they're gonna be like you know 400,000 bikes there so I said can you get me a ticket he goes you need a ticket you just drive in that's to burn up a motorcycle man on the license seems that's the problem I said listen can you arrange for someone who can rat me a bike he goes well if you don't have a license they go come on man
let's make a deal so sure enough he arranges so I fly in my private jet so I can get on a Harley so I can feel cool right yeah so I fly to Sturgis a big stage I've only drew when These things for 20 minutes I never had anybody on the back of it I have no license but I'm going to Sturgis baby and I got my leather jacket and my chaps ready to rock so I get there the guy gives me this thing I'm trying out orienting line come on hug it on the back
and she's looking at me like can you really do this and we did this drive unbelievable drive and with Mount Rushmore and it was just incredible and then we got there that night and he said they're gonna be all these bikes and we got there and they're probably 15,000 bikes which sounds like a lot but that's not 400,000 and by the way Sturgis this little tiny town I think will there's a lot of bikes but it's not terribly exciting your third evening in the only place that's the nicest place in town is the Best Western
so I took in the best Western which is probably normally $99 at night and it's $600 a night that week and so I wake up the next morning and There's a half a million bikes on the road they all arrived that morning you can't move and I'm out of my mind then I bought everything you can imagine you know it was the first time I like people going out with me with a camera going excuse me sir I'm like shows like like know can we take a picture of your lady it's a different world but
what Harley did they got a half million people now that are showing up for these things I mean they transform their business the business exploded because they innovated they said we're not in a motorcycle business right we're in the business of nostalgia so that's the reinvention that I'm really talking about and you can do this in a smaller mind there's a game think maybe even a company right honestly it's not a big name you would recognize many but I met a guy in New Jersey kept telling me about which his wife loved Shopping at this
place but what blew me away as I was his house and a car showed up to pick her up from the store there what happens is they don't compete on price they know everything about their customers and they don't even just send this stuff to your house they send a limo to pick people up and bring them shopping I mean they have no problem with price competition they're not worried about you know recession/depression not at all cuz they've just reinvented the entire way of competing if you look over here out of the Wynn Hotel see
Steve Wynn's interesting the nos get building these hotels and they sold him all the MGM and he would built the wind and the wind was supposed to be the highest and than what she did two point three billion was the first one there on course 2.7 billion and he changed the entire way of competing he decided what kind of service is what he was gonna do And he wanted to own the high-end you know what I found out one of his trip with him and I found out something interesting he began to realize that all
the money 80% of the money is made in Bacharach and there are 50,000 players in the world that'll make 80% of his profit all those other things you do are minor tiny compared to the sales that they make from 50,000 big whales that they take care of and he won't have the richest most exclusive most extraordinary place on earth for them to go you will do this Madeline Bacharach has the best ratio best advantage you know the house has the events but it's tiny it's the smallest so as Ayden as a gambler you've got the
best opportunity but that's if you play once if I have the advantage even by 1/10 of a percent you keep playing the wrong you play the odds are on my side see so he innovated you wait you know what we're gonna build the most Incredible place even when everything else is down we'll get those tonight where else to come here cuz we're the place to be reinvented the way of competing you don't have to go volcanoes and things like that no something really cool really magnificent but really made for a different market he said not
only who is my customer who do I want my customer to be that's the question you need to able to answer if you're gonna really be effective as many of you looking at your current customers your current customers not buying is oh my god what do I do well maybe I need to get them to buy more maybe I need to get more customers or maybe I need to get a different kind of customer this is when we start to strategically innovate as opposed to just improve what we have right now to make something happen
so let me very quickly give you this there are three points I want you to know I think about when you think about Strategic innovation the first one is you really ideally want to be in a position where it's at all possible I don't care you know what your approach is you put yourself in a place where you want to be ahead of the curve you want to be slightly out of the trend you want to at least be on trend but if you really want to be the innovator there's gonna be at the front
of a trend the initiator if you can of a trend because when you're first and you create a trend you become branded and that branding if you do your job is hard to get rid of I'll give you an example what was the first University that was ever built in the United States Harvard what was the first for example rental car company in the United States Cret Hertz what was the first soft drink in the United States Coke by the way I guess who's still number one in each of those categories all three of those
so that's Been more than 100 years 150 years 200 years simple situations see when you step in and you become the innovator and you create the category everybody else has to fight for second place or third in fact Ava's finally figured away the vacant strategically compete they said we're never gonna be number one so they said we're number we're not number one we're what we're number two but we try harder they create a new category to try harder category one number one in to try harder category they may be number one cuz I've been around
forever but we're gonna please you we're gonna do something in a different way that's the way that you differentiate and produce something you know you also if you're there first like another example friend of mine the gentleman Knight financial persons like coach the last 17 years here this middle man and we're having lunch when daddy goes here's my friend we start talking I said what business She and he said bottled water but I'm about to get out of it I said oh that's in sting it was this is like Annie I think early 90s if
I remember late 80s probably early 9:00 we have this conversation he was yeah I said wow what a trend the idea that people could get us to pay for these bottles of water you know two dollars three dollars everybody used to drink for three I mean that's the ultimate marketing fact coca-cola be like that were making more money some of them were charging more per ounce for water than for coke more than for beer or Borden's milk it was just water that's amazing marketing he was yeah I was really lucky though he said I got
in a mineral water business right as a trend happen I said what was that he said when people started saying it was okay not to drink and he even started promoting designated driver I thought this is a trend that I think is gonna Stick you know I think people are gonna take advantage that you only have to drink you're not to feel pressured to drink I think they're gonna be look for an alternative alter in the bar and he said I thought the alternative was this little company I bought for $500,000 called pair yet he
bought it for $500,000 it was making a hundred thousand a year he kept that company for 15 years and sold it for 2.2 billion dollars because he was ahead of a trend alright he was there by the way you don't say give me a middle water most the time they'd say give me a period in fact Pepsi hates that people still often say can I have a coke cuz they're first all right and so in any industry you can do that you know in my industry the greatest pop I got a speaker's come up and
say to me and I'll gosh you know guess what I had these people tell me you know you remind me of Tony Robbins I think wow I'm really complimented I'm Also going great I want you to be like Tony Robbins that's a great compliment for me a great compliment for you but it also comes because I was your first baby and I did my job I delivered to the category no.1 never done thing like that's how you strategically innovate and own something see you got two choices trying to go sell everybody or have people when
they think of the best they think of something they want and they think of the best they think of you very very different game very very different approach now you want to be first ideally but if you can avoid it you don't want to be the ultimate pioneer in some distances against the pioneer the Indians usually put arrows in their back so it's nice to know the trend is real as possible it's not always possible but ideally new to leave the other thing you wanna do ideally is get in the game with infinite upside getting
a game with Infinite upside if you're going to strategically innovate and create this new product this new service this new approach to things you don't want to be in a situation where you spend all this time and energy create something new that has a limited upside it's gonna have a three month outside a six month upside or people gonna do so much now I didn't do this because I didn't enter business and go where can I go get the largest margin possible as a business owner this is my mission so I didn't do that I
mean business that I can go sell for 10 times 20 times 30 times women get the largest multiple I didn't do that I didn't look for internet outside in my case it was just driven by wanting to serve but today is a businessman entering the business is like going what's a trend that's just beginning that I think has real legs is there a place is there a way to partner where we're the leader in that trend but also When that trends not gonna be short-lived it's got infinite growth an upside but there's a real opportunity
then you start to think in a more strategic way is this making sense okay so now you might say okay Tony this is all cool but how do I do it here's what I'm gonna make just so damn easy five little areas that if you go into these areas you will automatically get the ideas for strategic innovation in other words if innovation needs to be a part of your life and you're saying okay Tony I want to innovate how do I do it if you do these five things or even a couple these five things
you're gonna find yourself in a position immediately where innovation will start to happen because your goal is not to be the innovator your goal is to have an organization they constantly innovate because if you're the innovator then the entire business innovation is still dependent upon you but if you're the person that's creating Innovation you know by a system you've created then the people can change the environment can change and the innovation is going to keep occurring so here is the first of the five I want you to drop these down and then afterwards I'm gonna
have you jot down how you can use these five so the first one is you need to get new voices you need to get new voices no what does this mean well I know companies one of my friends is a guy that's with about six and a half billion dollars he's a private manatees in New York City most people don't even know his name because everything he does he's he's in the background up I have enormous respect for him cuz he gives away about a hundred million dollars a year anonymously each year to organizations that
he thinks makes the largest difference in the quality of human beings live like master he did one for a mentoring organization it's just a Wonderful guy totally private man how does this guy who's very quiet he frankly when you're in a room you don't know he's there at the end of the meeting when everybody's talked he might say something he says it real quietly people kind of lean in like EF Hutton in the old days glisten but he has this incredible ability to take companies to another level and the reason is he just told me
so Tony were the first things I do take over an organization is I figure out what that organization is what the trends are and then I go find somebody else a group of leaders to bring they're not to run it but because I know they're gonna bring a completely different voice to the organization and one example I'll give you that I know about that he told me about from a friend of his is remember when IBM grew like crazy they managed to give away the most valuable thing and their entire life the software to the
IBM PC to Windows I mean think About it here's the man you know runs Microsoft this little company this young boy who's creative and gutsy he leaves college Bill Gates and he calls the guys throughout the Altair computer and says you got this computer you got no software I've written software for it which by the way he hadn't written one line of code and he didn't even have access to an alter computer he just believed he could and he sold them and he got together start writing code writing code and he figured how to do
it and got the thing going and then what was his big breakthrough did he write ms-dos know how they get em estas someone tell me and his thoughts which is the basis of making all his money but before he copied Apple's Windows it was in the stars he bought it how much anybody know fifty thousand dollars he bought ms-dos then went to IBM and licensed with IBM to have to be the exclusive software for All their computers and then for when everybody knocked off IBM pcs clones became the basis of that just think about that
because most of you of him you think of this incredible coding genius which he has but he made all his money basically just by finding a way to reinvent the rules for competition either IBM cell everybody razors and he sold the razor blades and so IBM to make much money in fact IBM at one point you remember they were in deep deep deep trouble they brought in a series of new CEOs to turn things around and they brought in what pronounce his name was cuz that nerd the gentleman who came in it was like the
major turnaround guy what's it Gertner thank you and Gartner comes in and sure enough a gardener came in the first thing Gartner did was brilliant as he realized that for IBM to change somebody interviewed him in an article that's what I saw and they said will IBM be able turn things Around will they be able to come back will they be able to become a force in computers or computer services or any of that nature he said I have the same question when I came on board they said here's how I address that I asked
the question of our executive team our leadership team our management team our marketing team I said this how many people do we have under the age of 40 who are based on the west coast in Northern California on our core teams that was the only question else and he went none he said the answer is we will fail he said because 85% of the innovation that's happening in the world is coming from the location called Silicon Valley in Northern California and it's my people under the age of 40 what we have to do right now
if we're going to transform this company and innovate is we need new voices we need people have a completely different voice they have a Completely different life experience they will naturally cause us to what innovate but we can't do this if we're like going to visit them once in a while proximity is power whenever you're around something day in and day out it's gonna have an impact on you and you need to go get new voices so my friend I told you about from New York what he's consciously doing is each year even in companies
he owns he deliberately brings in some new key executives constantly if for no other reason but make sure he gets new voices new voices will cause innovation to occur it will happen very very rapidly for you here's the second way or place you can get innovation new questions new questions give you new what my friends answers you see a lot of times you're starting out with a presupposition like last night when the gentleman raised his hand again and you know will came over to me initially and Said well you know how do I do this
when it's impossible how do I do this when no one is buying right now casinos you know not building casinos how do I presuppositions his question guaranteed he couldn't come up with an answer the quality big question creates the quality your answer so I'll give you one example that's real fast then you can think of some your own ideas here new questions would be Bill Gates sockless would be about new Bill Gates and I'm trying to dig underneath and some of you've been to my programs and he who's been to date with destiny buddy you're
gonna date with destiny Wow quite a few so I've been a date with destiny you know all of us as human beings are controlled by what we focus on whenever you focus on your gonna feel it even if it's not true so if you focus on the world's ending you imagine the whole world's gonna come to an end we're never gonna ever be you know happy times again You see it you imagine you focus aren't you to feel it but what controls our focus more than anything else is questions because if somebody asks you a
question even if you don't wanna answer it if you keep asking that person just to understand what you're saying they have to imagine it they have to go in their head they have to change what they focus on well the human beings tend to have what I call a primary question one question you ask more often than anything else on earth and you ask it subconsciously all the time and be blue today with Si discover it and it's why some people for example might go out in life and they make all these great changes in
a never last cuz the primary question they have is you know why do I always screw things up that's an unconscious question why can't I have succeed or sustain success or how do I make everybody happy all the time ain't gonna happen but see they're Constantly asking a question that's unanswerable or moves them in a negative location you change that question and you change what they focus on their whole life changes so things change the question - how can I appreciate even more all the gifts God's giving me right now and that becomes a primary
question they walk around in gratitude all the time subconsciously so since control the way we think whenever you see someone successful they come up with a new answer is because they asked a new question what question Bill Gates asked that was different than other people building software he did not ask the question of himself and his team how can we build better software here's the question he asked the exact question he asked his repeated me again and gave my people on his core partnership and team he said how can I become the intelligence that runs
all computers worldwide how can I become the Intelligence that runs all computers worldwide and when he asked that he realized all computers have one thing in common and that is if we're gonna have a computers me will communicate to each other we're gonna have to have common software hardware maybe difference the software and that's why I got that by the way that question is also why he was late to the internet because the Internet is not about controlling computers it's a different question with a different answer about networking so you gotta ask yourself what are
some new questions because new questions by the way will start new conversations and if you do with new people new voices innovation is gonna go crazy it's gonna be institutionalized through a question a third new thing for you as new perspectives new perspectives only happen if you get yourself in a new environment you know there's a company called Nokia many of you know who's got A Nokia phone in this room I'm curious now look at those hands Nokia was dominating the market place prior to the iPhone complete domination of the market place for many many
years Nokia was not a dominant source where's Nokia based who knows yeah it's in a very very cold dark place and Scandinavia on the edge of the Adriatic Sea and they were trying to figure out what customers wanted by working with engineers who are working there in Finland and guess what they weren't doing so well but somebody the group got smart and said you know what we keep making more and more technical phones and we keep innovating the technology like they used to do with VCRs when almost for kids and they made so much innovation
you can use any of it so he said you know we gotta do if we're gonna really today we got to know what our customers want but the customers we want who we Want our customers to be we want our customers to be leading-edge people we want the kind of people that influence other people there's people today don't just want to phone they want an identity they want to feel different so they sent their engineers these guys that are not marketing guys because they knew they kept telling them change this but they couldn't do it
they sent them to three places in the world King's Cross Australia the east of London in Venice California and they said go live there for six months interact with as many human beings and customers as you can and then come back and we're gonna redesign our phones and you know what they all did they all came back and they found the most important changes they could possibly make to the phone guess what it was collar same thing that they did with Apple originally they came out with the first ones with a red phone and a
purple phone and then a way in which You could print out off of your computer a cover for your phone and then they came up with ringtones so you can have a special unique identity that's what the engineers end up coming with because they were given a new perspective again proximity to the customer in a radically different environment automatically created new answers for them are new innovations for them and then fourthly new passions new passions listen when you're passionate don't you tend to innovate by your own nature as you're doing something you love you're doing
something you're excited about and probably the best example of passion driving a company is virgin with Richard Branson most of what Richard has created his company's was something that he experienced a product service heat experience and disliked immensely and said this is what I want it was totally passionate about it from where you get to stay when you go at the You know to the airport and you're transitioning he's I want a place where I can play pool I want a place where there's a swimming pool I want to be able to have you know
massage I want some great drinks and so he reinvented it you know I would have a bar on the plane I mean that's what he did everything he's done all the business innovation that has set him apart has been because he's thought about something that he's so passionate about that if he had it woulda light him up like a Christmas tree and he felt that he's a representative of a generation he really is and he's not incredibly well and finding who I was when I jog down for you as a new experiments if you're gonna
innovate many of you don't innovate because you go damn what if it doesn't work right I mean I only got so much time well we have so much energy we can invest so much money will you start to work on this and it you Know right now we got a great business right here I don't to mess with my core business you don't have to keep your core business where you're rebuilding you know these casinos but then create for yourself a couple skunk works projects a couple experiments almost all the innovation happens at Apple what
happened the Mac came from a store clerks crew a group of people they said you know what we're building the Lisa all our money's going into the Lisa the computer they're building at that time but we're gonna take this small group of people and they're gonna go work and see if they can reinvent something with scotch on their own if it doesn't work we don't care we're gonna try it at Google many of you know people have about 20 to 25 percent of the time designed for skunkworks to work on some project they think is
worthwhile Google Maps came out of that Twitter came out the company is building these great Resources you know suicides stupid the project called Twitter and now it's drawing at what eight thousand percent you know they've already been offered I think three hundred million bucks or 330 million dollars right Facebook wants to buy them and they're at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning what's happening with Twitter a total innovation you can use these same resources you know Twitter's in this example I thought to myself so much tell me why you gotta do this Twitter
thing and I'm like Twitter I mean get a life what I want to type when I'm doing when I'm doing as I said first of all my wife would kill me cuz we have a private life as I said oh yeah here we are and Sun Valley and all sudden people start showing up right I said but second of all it's like who wants to read what I'm doing or what other people are doing have no interest whatsoever so my buddy goes I use a different way so I said What do you do he goes
I use it to get the answers so what'd he mean he goes watch this he goes Tony Robbins is here with me right now beside me and wants to know I used Twitter and he clicked the button and in the middle second later there were 35 people just one hey Tony and what's your several others here's what you should do or like all these cool ideas it's like wow maybe I'll go to Twitter councilman's gonna get without my name and I did it and I barely ever used it because since my name wasn't on ER
and interact with anybody and I didn't put it on there and it's like what am I broadcasts yes I'm doing a seminar right yeah that's new information for me right but then one day I thought you know there's all these people out there and people kept coming up to me saying you know would you do something to inspire me every day and I'm like you know another product another service you know I don't want to commit to that I thought you know what I'll just put a quote on my Twitter each name for something just
a simple quote not just mine other people's it'll make me look for one each day to that I like not to share it if I find cool clips every now and then I share with my friends I'll share them as well and I did that 10 weeks ago and this morning with 300,000 people there's 8 million people on Twitter we're number 35 it's like wow this blows my mind it's just a fun cool little tool so it wasn't much of a strategic innovation for me somebody else created the innovation but sometimes you can use the
innovation for your core business as well and I use it again to look at okay here's this little experiment I'm doing you know gosh if this continues maybe it won't but it's gonna use half a million people that I could send a message to three months from now four months from them at the Curb growth rate it stays there it takes longer but I like the idea I really am passionate about I want to send a message to people a million people like that that's a great tool and I know there's a business application you're
somewhere for it most people haven't figured out yet I'm sure Twitter will find theirs it'll be advertising or something but yeah it'll be a great tool for keeping people informed and what's great is I actually read them all but I've spawned them off like email oh my god another 300 messages Twitter is like people put clicked in I don't see what they're doing it's a very cool thing so again you want to look at this and say I don't have to change my business maybe there's some experiments I want to do on my business innovation
and then here's some questions 9 questions for you to consider here's what they are just rolling out for you real quick what business are we what really in That's of course you got to keep asking yourself why are we really successful many of you think you're successful for one reason but you're successful for something completely different it's temir taking the time with your team to ask this question who is our customer or what really or who does our customer really need to be in the next five years if you're gonna start a business today from
scratch and maximize impact leverage and profitability what would you do some of you you may be starting a business within your business to compete in this new world what distribution channels are we not maximizing or using what technology are we not using or maximizing that's why I mentioned Twitter to you what identity do you want people to associate to your business who do they become by doing business with you and if you're going to create another industry from scratch if You were going to create an industry within your industry or somewhere else what would it
be so you're likely to do let's just take five minutes literally to brainstorm how are you gonna get new voices into your business by the way do you have to hire somebody then for them to be your new voice yes or no so if you're a brand new you're an army of one or two or three or ten you could go get people you can do it through a variety of sources you can do focus groups you can sit with a group of friends you can get a group of your customers you can use a
service like Twitter you can do all kinds of things how are you gonna get new voices but be specific what kind of voices do you want to gather who would help you innovate what kind of person could you bring to the table ideally somebody on your team but also workers get new voices what are some new questions that you need to ask I gave You these nine is a sampling but what are some questions you need to ask to innovate in your business where could you get a new perspective maybe after you hear Tony speak
today from Zappos maybe some of you while you're still here in Vegas might see if you might make an arrangement to go tour it take it the our tour and just go get the perspective out a business goes from zero to a billion it really runs if I were you I would do it I took the tour myself incredibly worthwhile um where can I go right now to get tapping the new passions maybe not even my passion maybe on my team I got some really bright people and they are passions I don't even know what
they are maybe their passions are the origination the place that we get a Genesis for a new product a new service or a new way to you know change the rules of competition and what are some new experiments we could do what are one two three four Five max new experiments we could try this program here was a result of an experiment I was watching television listening to all the mock talking to people coming up to me telling me I don't know what to do in their business and I saw the figure I know that
intellectually and back my but it emotionally hit me 70% of all new jobs are created by small businesses I picked up the phone immediately I called my office I said you know we're gonna do I want to coach five I said fifty business innovation people who have small businesses zero 200 million I'm gonna Friday how do you believe all the businesses 50 10 5 just starting your business and I said I want to coach him for 90 days and I said we'll make it really easy will do and I'll do some kind of immersion so
we did a version like this instead of five days we did in a day and a half so I basically killed everyone and I said then we're gonna Work on online twice a month for about an hour and a half then I'll keep taking different pieces of information refine it I'm just a roommate we're gonna transform their lives and we're gonna create a system and once we have that system it won't be limited me and my throat it'll be something that people can do in immersion on their own over and over again so they get
the training effect and I said and we'll find the right partner well market it together we're looking for ways of transforming the business we will just teach him we'll give them tools so I'll team up and partner with the right people and all this came out of being stimulated by something I'm passionate to make a difference in and doing an experiment and then I got some new questions and new voices and now we're laying the foundation here this week for something that we're gonna be launching that I think will be as big as anything we've
Done in a and where other companies well what'd you think listen the purpose of a podcast like this is not just to inform not just to educate you but get you to take some action so one of the most important commitments I've learned is anytime you learn anything and you find it as any form of value the most important thing you want to do is while you're still in state while it's still important while it's still in your mind you want to take some form of action whether that's as simple as saying these are three
principles that I want to really educate the rest of my team on at my company or I want to take action on this today I'm gonna create this format today for my marketing or for my anticipation or for using the strategies that you've learned here so before you turn this off as a final moment just write down two or three key eater principles you want to remember or Action items and ideally do something to share it or do something to act on it today remember so knowledge is not power knowledge is potential power really truly
if you really look at what makes someone successful versus not it all comes down to execution execution Trump's knowledge every day of the week so go out and execute and I'll see on the next podcast you have the right mindset and skills to take your business to the next level business mastery is the only event in the world created by Tony Robbins to prepare you to master the mindset and skills you need in business to elevate your game a one-of-a-kind immersive program business mastery will allow you to understand the critical factors impacting your business then
refocus and realign with the strategy and psychology you need to compete and innovate in any economy remember business success is 80% Psychology and 20% mechanics if you're ready to learn and master the strategies to help you grow your business and stay competitive that don't hesitate apply for the next business mastery program now learn more about the business mastery event at WME robbins comm the Tony Robbins podcast is directed by Tony Robbins hosted by Andy org and produced by Carey song Brooks Lauro is our digital editor Taylor Culbertson is our media coordinator special thanks to Diane
Adcock for her creative review our website is Tony Robbins com forward slash podcast where you can listen to all of our episodes read articles and learn more about upcoming events copyright robbins research international - Business Innovation - Improve Your Business With Strategic Innovation
