0 (2s):
Lights that spark Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast today, we'll be focusing on how to reverse engineer success to drop these value bombs. I brought Ron Friedman into EOFire studios. Dr. Friedman is a social psychologist who specializes in top performance. He's the author of The Best Place to Work and an amazing new book called Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success. And Fire Nation, we talking all about reverse engineering from Starbucks to the rats, to Chipola and so much more.

0 (42s):
When we get back from thinking our sponsors in today's on demand digital world, our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from every hour. Then they could consume in a lifetime being good as no longer. Good enough. The solution Passion Marketing, download your free Passion Marketing ebook to learn how to become a top priority for your ideal customers. At PassionMarketing.com. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing sales service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back, listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

0 (1m 32s):
Ron say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people simply disagree with.

1 (1m 40s):
What's up. Well, thank you very much for the opportunity. And what I would say is that the thing that I believe and that I've come to discover over doing the research on top performance is that the stories that we've been taught about success are wrong. We've been taught to big stories about how people vault to the top of their profession. One is that greatness comes from talent. This is the idea that we're all born with certain strengths and that the key to finding your greatness is to just find your talent and find a field that allows that talent to shine. The second big story is that greatness comes from practice. This is the Malcolm Gladwell idea, practice, practice, practice. Eventually you'll get to the top, but there's a third story. And it's one that people don't often talk about. But John, I know that this is something that you're familiar with and a lot of entrepreneurs and artists and inventors are familiar with, and that approach is reverse engineer.

0 (2m 29s):
Let's talk about that reverse engineering, because you are a psychologist, you study top performance and you discover something that you really weren't expecting through that process. I'd love to hear more. Yeah, what I discovered is that most of the people who've gone to the top of their profession. They're not relying on talent. They're not relying on practice. In fact, there's a problem with the formula that practice will get you to the top. And that problem is that you can't practice an idea you've never considered. And so the best ideas don't come hours and hours of practice, they come by looking at what the best in the field are doing and then working backwards to figure out how they did it. And that turns out to be a remarkably common approach among top performers.

0 (3m 12s):
So like how would you Ron define reverse engineering? I mean, I think a lot of our listeners kind of understand it as a general term, but like, what is your definition

1 (3m 23s):
Finishing is finding the best in the field and then working backward to figure out how they did it now in Silicon valley, the idea of reverse engineering is very well known. It's how he got the personal computer and laptops and even the iPhone. But what most people don't realize is that reverse engineering is also how Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell learned to write and how painters like Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso learned to paint. And even how Judd Apatow learned to write comedy reverse engineering turns out to be far more common than anyone realized.

0 (3m 55s):
Well, that's kind of what I want to get into next because you wrote a book called decoding greatness. I got a little bit into it during the introduction. And you actually specifically wrote about the way that creative geniuses, reverse engineer different works and you know, you admire it and they admire it. And like people that actually kind of go through that process are like, wow, this is pretty impressive. And I know we're gonna get into some specific examples later about the Ritz and you know about different companies like Starbucks and Chipola, but can you give us some examples about the way that creative genius is reverse engineer?

1 (4m 30s):
First of all, let me just say that there's a wide variety of strategies for reverse engineering. I cover them in a decoding greatness, but let me just give you a taste of some of them, all of them, I would say, have, have to do with looking for clues that reveal how an object was created. So I'm a writer. I can tell you the non-fiction writers often when they get a book, they don't look at the table of contents. You know what they look at first, they go to the bibliography at the end, because that tells them the sources that went into creating that book photographers. When they look at images, they don't just look at the subject at the center of the image. They look for clues like the reflection in the eye of the subject, which tell them that where the light source was placed, or they'll look at the length of the shadows, which tell them the intensity of the light, the light source, or the time of day in which the photo was shot.

1 (5m 17s):
Chefs often ordered dishes to go so they can spread and intricate sauce across a white plate and parse out the ingredients. Sometimes there's a magnifying glass involved, but the critical thing is not just to enjoy an object passively, but to continuously think, how is this constructed? What can I learn from this? And how does this apply to a project I'm working

0 (5m 37s):
On so many fascinating things here at Fire Nation. And believe me, we're going to be talking about some specific examples details. I mean, I already mentioned Chipotle and Starbucks. We're gonna be talking about Barack Obama as well. The Ritz Carlton, some really cool things, but first and foremost, like how can we Fire Nation find the hidden patterns inside like our favorite books or website or different Ted talks, like break that down for us.

1 (6m 1s):
The first thing you want to do, and this is something that you can do in any profession. Doesn't matter what field you're in. First step is become a collector. Now, when we think about collections, we think about physical objects. We think about wine or artwork or stamps. That definition is too narrow. The best designers collect logos, the best copywriters collect headlines. I'm a writer. I collect academic articles. I collect stories. I collect powerful words. The more you have in your collection, the more you can start to play a game called spot the difference. Remember spot the difference you played as a kid where you had two images side by side, and you look for discrepancies. That's what you want to do in your collection is you want to compare what's in your collection against what did it make your collection, and then think about what's different about these examples and by playing spot, the difference by continuing to collect great ideas.

1 (6m 54s):
Number one, you're much better at figuring out what it is that makes things resonate. But number two is you now have a museum you can visit for inspiration the next time you need to create. So if you're a marketer, start collecting websites, start collecting emails that are resonant for you. If you're a presenter, start collecting Ted talks or presentation decks, you can do this for anything is just compare. What is unique about the items in your collection? Start identifying what it is that's standing out. And then this is the critical piece. John is you want to templatize it. In other words, take what you have found, figure out what's working there and then create a template for yourself so that when you need to create something, you can start by looking at that template. And you can do this for Facebook ads too.

1 (7m 35s):
I mean, really the opportunities are limited limits,

0 (7m 39s):
Less Fire Nation. And one thing I love about you, Ron, is that you really do your research. I mean, I did share a little bit in the introduction about your first book, the best place to work. And of course, you know, now we're going to be diving into more details with what you were doing research on to write decoding greatness, but in your research, like you found that copying actually makes us more creative, not less creative, which I think is interesting on a lot of different levels. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. So

1 (8m 7s):
This was really, this is the moment where I figured, okay, this is a real book here. There's research showing that when you copy somebody else's work that opens your eyes up to new opportunities. Now that's very counterintuitive, right? This is the problem with reverse engineering. I think this is why so many people don't talk about the fact that this is how they actually learned. And I can tell you when I was working on this book, I'd share the idea with some of my friends, some entrepreneurs and some creative professionals. And invariably, the reaction I'd get is man, I do that all the time. I've never read about it and I'd love to hear more. And this is why I wrote the book. So I think this is why this has gone under flown under the radar is people don't want to talk about it. They feel like they're doing something wrong if they're reverse engineering.

1 (8m 47s):
But in fact, not only are you learning more quickly, you're actually elevating your creativity. So here's the study. This is a study conducted at the university of by creative experts. And what they did was they had amateur artists come into the lab and they divided them into two groups. One group was asked to create a draw original drawings for three days or three original paintings. Three days in a row. Second group was asked to create original artwork. But then on the second day, they were asked to copy the work of an established artist. And then the third day they had to resume creating their original work. And what the experimenters looked at was who was most creative on the third day, was it the group that had just done creative, original works the entire time or the group that had paused to copy.

1 (9m 29s):
And by now the answer should be obvious. You know, that the people who PO, who pause to copy the established artist were more creative. And the question is, why is that? And it's because when you pause to compare somebody else's work to the work that you recreate. When you copy them, you are forced to consider their choices against your instinctive inclinations, and that process of comparing what you want to do versus what they actually did, opens your eyes up to new opportunities that lie within your work. And so the folks who went, who became more creative on day three, they didn't just do it by copying the established artists. They want off completely different directions. So if you're worried that reverse engineering or studying somebody else's work is going to reduce you to a hack on the contrary, it's going to make you more

0 (10m 17s):
Fire Nation. Wow. This is fascinating stuff. And again, I just love the out side of the box, thinking that Ron's putting us through. And he's actually showing is very beneficial for all the reasons you just talked about. And we have so much more to talk about. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors with 3,600 hours of content on Netflix, 850,000 active podcasts with 48 million episodes, 350 million products available just on Amazon and 30,000 hours of new content published on YouTube every hour. Our ideal customers have more good content of products to choose from than they could ever consume in a lifetime, but being good is no longer good enough.

0 (10m 57s):
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0 (11m 42s):
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0 (12m 28s):
And with HubSpot, you do learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at hubspot.com. That's hubspot.com. So, Ron, what I love is that you actually did your own reverse engineering by searching for these hidden patterns in the world's most popular Ted talk. What was that Ted talk and what exactly did you learn?

1 (12m 50s):
Okay, so this is sir, Ken Robinson. If you look up Ted talks and you look at the most popular ones, this is number one in world history is sir Ken Robinson. And he did, he did this talk on how creativity is beaten out of us when we're in elementary school. And it's because we're rewarded as students for getting the right answer. And creativity requires looking for some experimenting with some wrong answers before you find the right one. So what I did in decoding greatness is I reverse engineered for you. I show you exactly what he's doing in every paragraph of his talk. And then on top of that, I look to see what's unique about his talk versus everyone else does. So this is the spot, the difference process that I talked about earlier and what you find when you analyze, sir, Ken Robinson's talk is that, you know how many facts he has in this Ted talk.

1 (13m 36s):
He goes on for almost 20 minutes and he's got a grand total of one persuasive talk at one persuasive fact. Now, if I was writing of Ted talk from scratch, I would assume I've got a pummel, you with a lot of persuasive facts, but on the contrary, he's got one now, what is he doing differently? Well, number one is he's telling you a lot of jokes. He's actually squeezed in 40 jokes in under 20 minutes. That's a rate of more than two to one. And he's got a ton of anecdotes. The anecdotes are relatable, emotional, personal, and that's the thing that makes his talk go viral. Now you discover that when you reverse engineer his work, if you just watch it, you're like, oh, that guy was good. You know, great. But you don't learn anything.

1 (14m 16s):
This is an approach that allows you to take any creative work and then work backward to figure out what it is that makes it unique. And now of course you can also templatize his work. And in fact, in decoding greatness, I show you the template. I say, here's what you do in paragraph one. Here's what you're doing. Paragraph two, you got the whole template, but just by studying the talk in this

0 (14m 35s):
Now Fire Nation, this is all fascinating stuff you can tell. The theme today is reverse engineering for very obvious reasons. And I want to get to some of those things that I've been teasing throughout the interview, which is reverse engineering business strategies. You know, you shared that if you actually work backwards and reverse engineer, both Starbucks in Chipola, which, you know, at face surface, it seemed like completely different companies, complete different stories. They ultimately come down to the exact same strategy. What is that?

1 (15m 2s):
This is one of the things that entrepreneurs do differently. So there's research on the way that entrepreneurs think conducted by the Harvard business school. And what they found was is that when you compare top performing entrepreneurs against average managers, you don't find many differences in terms of intelligence or even risk-taking, you know, where the differences it's in pattern recognition entrepreneurs, the really successful ones are very good at identifying patterns that can be applied to different industries or different timeframes. So you might be reminded of something that worked in the seventies that might be worked that worked today. They're very good at identifying those patterns and then trying to apply them in new ways.

1 (15m 43s):
And an example of an underlying business pattern that you find when you start thinking in blueprints is that Starbucks and Chipola are actually using the same model. Now, as you said, John did, they're both kind of different, right? One it's selling Mexican food, the other one serves coffee, but they were both founded on the same basic principle. And that principle is find something that is successful somewhere else and then import it into your hometown. So in the case of Starbucks, Howard Schultz went off to visit Italy, saw that espresso bars were everywhere and thought, huh? I wonder if that can work in the U S in the case of Chipola Steve ELLs was in San Francisco as working as a chef and he saw burrito bars everywhere.

1 (16m 25s):
And he took that idea and he brought it to Denver and that's how Chipola was born, where it was able to take off. And there was a, just became a massive, obviously very successful company. And so in both of those cases, what ultimately is the, is the powerful takeaway here is don't just study another business and think, man, I wish I could own that. Or I wish I was as lucky as them, but start thinking about the blueprint. What are they doing here? And what can I learn from this? And how do I apply it to the thing I'm

0 (16m 54s):
Working on? Okay. This is something that I've really wanted to get the answer to because to me, it could go in so many different directions, but what can Perak Obama teach us about finding winning ideas? This is one of

1 (17m 7s):
My favorite stories in the book. And so not a lot of people know this, but Barack Obama was not a great speaker at when he first started, he was actually quite terrible and he got trounced in his first race for Congress. He lost by a margin of more than two to one. And for awhile, he was broke. He thought about leaving politics. Wasn't sure what his next step was going to be until someone on his campaign staff said, Hey, why don't you go take a look to see what pastors are doing in churches? And when he did that, he came back a few years later and he was transformed. His speaking style was completely different. And then all of a sudden he was using storytelling. He was using repetition. He was modulating his tone.

1 (17m 47s):
And it all came by observing how effectively pastors were communicating at the church. And what I love about that story is that Barack Obama didn't go and find his talent. He didn't go practice for 10,000 hours. He figured out what was working in a different industry and he included it into his approach. And that's the that's the power of reverse engineering is to figure out what it is that's working so that you can identify the ingredients and apply them in new ways to your future.

0 (18m 16s):
Okay. Like I mentioned, I was not sure where that was going to go, but I did not think it was gonna go in that direction. So very fascinating stuff. I hope this is really opening and expanding your mind and getting your thinking outside of the box. Now, a couple other things that I was teasing pre-interview one specifically was about the Ritz-Carlton. So you actually wrote that the Ritz Carlton hotel chain knows the secrets to improving, not just something but anything. What do they know that most people just seem not to pick up?

1 (18m 46s):
The first thing I would say is that this comes out of a chapter in my book called the scoreboard principle and the scoreboard principle, simply states that anything you measure you will likely improve on. And the scoreboard principle is simply defined as measurement begets improvement. Anything you measure you are likely to improve on. And we know this from the research. We know that if you want to drink more water, keep score of your daily water intake. That is likely to help you. If you want to lose weight, keep score of your daily caloric consumption. If you want to increase your focus at work, keep score of your uninterrupted minutes. Anything you score, you are likely to improve on. And we know that from all of these studies and the Ritz Carlton knows it too. And they have locked in on a particular metric that has empowered them to just transform their business.

1 (19m 32s):
And that metric is net promoter scores. It meaning when a customer leaves the Ritz-Carlton, how likely are they to recommend the Ritz Carlton experience to a friend or a colleague? And the reason they focus on this is because they know that when you score high on this metrics, you haven't just identified a happy customer. You've created a raving fan, someone who's going to talk about it and gush about your hotel to everyone in their social circle. And they measure this consistently, every single customer who leaves within 24 hours, they have to rate their net promoter, but critically, they don't just rate it the team at the hotel in which they stayed, review those numbers on a daily basis and collecting the numbers. Hasn't just improved their performance.

1 (20m 12s):
It's also led them some to some fascinating insights, including the fact that the biggest driver of net promotion, net promoter scores. Isn't how well the customer, the people in the hotel respond to expressed requests. Meaning if I ask you, Hey, does, does your hotel have a cafe? You might say, yeah, they have a cafe. That's responding to my express requests at the Ritz Carlton. They focused on unexpressed needs. Meaning what's the reason he asked that question. So now, instead of saying, yes, we have a cafe. They might say, yes, we have a cafe. Would you like me to text you the menu? There's thinking one step ahead. And that insight to focus on unexpressed needs rather than expressed request pain, because they're dialed in to their net promoter score.

1 (20m 59s):
So the key takeaway here is anything you want to improve, start collecting metrics because that is likely to improve your performance. So, one

0 (21m 6s):
Thing that we've all heard before, and by the way, we've heard people recommend this on entrepreneurs on fire is the benefits of visualizing success. See yourself there. And it will become, you know, see the, the Lamborghini in your driveway and it will appear. But your research shows, this simply does not work. It actually makes you less likely to succeed. Why is this? And what should we do instead, I can hear the sadness in your voice as you're asking this question,

2 (21m 33s):
Because, cause this is, we don't want to hear this. We

1 (21m 35s):
Don't want to hear that the vision board doesn't help us, but it actually hurts us. And here's why, okay. It's because when you visualize success, that feels good and you are temporarily sated. You feel like, okay, I've kind of, I've got the thing I want to get. And that leads you to work less hard than if you hadn't visualized it. And this comes out of research that was conducted at UCLA, where they had introductory to psychology students. They took a hundred of them and they divided them into three groups, group number one had to visualize themselves getting a hundred on the test group. Number two had to visualize themselves studying for the test and group number three, just had to track how long they studied for the exam.

1 (22m 16s):
And what they found was that the group that had visualized themselves studying did the best out of any group. And why is that? It's because when you visualize process, now you're front-loading decisions you have to think about where am I going to study? What books am I going to need? How much time I'm going to need, but do I bring up my bottle of water when I put my phone? And the more you front load those decisions, the more present you can be when the time comes for studying in contrast the group that had visualized success, the one that thought about getting that hundred on the exam, they did the worst and of any group. And it's because again, temporarily say that they feel like, all right, I've done. I've got it. Great. I don't have to do the work. So if you want to succeed, don't visualize outcome visualize process.

0 (22m 59s):
So I'm actually not that disappointed to be honest, because this is something that I also agree and believe in. I mean, it's one thing that I've always seen people that joined the gym and they're just like, oh, I just joined a gym. And I'm like, okay, like, you're, you're acting like, you're proud of yourself right now. Like you're not just automatically in better shape because you joined the gym. But that's what people actually think that it's like, oh, I joined the gym. That means, you know, hypothetically, I'm going to get into better shape. So I already feel like I'm in a better shape, but that's just not the case. You've got to put in that work Fire Nation. So Ron, you have a way with words, you are concise, you are clear. We went through a lot today in a very reasonable amount of time. So give us one key takeaway that you really want to make sure that Fire Nation walks away with, from our chats, as well as give us a call to action, to your amazing book decoding.

0 (23m 46s):
And then we'll say goodbye. If you take

1 (23m 48s):
Nothing else from this book is that I want you to stop believing that if you don't have the talent or you don't have 10 years to put into practice that you can't do it because that's not actually how it's done. You know, I think that we have become convinced as a, just as a people. That greatness is for someone else it's for someone else. Who's got, you know, who's born with it like a, like a Simone Biles or, you know, whoever the athlete is, Michael Jordan, and that you need the talent or that you need to have the energy and the discipline to do the 10 years of practice. The reality is that the best in the world, aren't relying on just those two.

1 (24m 28s):
What they're doing is they're learning from their contemporaries and they're learning from the masters and their mentors. And if you have a system for decoding greatness for understanding what it is that makes the work that you find resonant unique, you're going to accelerate your success. You're going to elevate your creativity and your succeed a lot faster. So that for me is the takeaway is stop trying to work as hard as you're working and wishing that you had the talents of someone else and start decoding greatness, figure out what's working and make it your own. How are we

0 (24m 57s):
Going to get this book? Where do we go? Give us a call to action. And then we'll say goodbye. Best place to go is decodinggreatnessbook.com. And the reason I say that is because you can get the book anywhere, send us your receipt, and we will send you a free course on how to apply the strategies as well as some cliff notes to the book. So that's the best place to go decodinggreatnessbook.com. And you can find out more about me at ronfriedmanphd.com.

1 (25m 21s):
Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with RF and JLD today. So keep up that heat and head over to EOFire.com type Ron in the search bar and his shows page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. Best show notes in the biz. And of course, checkout decodinggreatnessbook.com. Ron, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that, we salute your brother and we will catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Ron and Fire Nation. If you've ever, I mean ever thought about creating a podcast of your own, The Podcast Journal is for you.

0 (26m 1s):
It is a gorgeous, full other journal that will guide you. Step-by-step in the creation and launch of your podcast. In 50 days, visits the podcastjournal.com use promo code podcast for a $15 discounts. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I will catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side in today's on demand digital world. Our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from every hour. Then they could consume in a lifetime being good as no longer. Good enough. The solution Passion Marketing, download your free passion marketing ebook to learn how to become a top priority for your ideal customers. At PassionMarketing.com.

0 (26m 42s):
The HubSpot Podcast Network is the destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing sales, service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts, have your back, listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.