Podcast Ep 164 | Using the sandbox to stop dumb decisions in the leadership team

With­out effec­tive dis­ci­pline around deci­sion mak­ing we can end up mak­ing deci­sions we lat­er might call dumb. To avoid this one of the tools we use is the sand­box. Where we play.

Our sand­box is where we have proven that we can win and earn the right to be a viable option for our cus­tomers. And the prin­ci­ple helps us to keep sand in the box…

What we sell, Who we sell it to and where we sell it.

Like any prin­ci­ple cre­ates focus and guardrails for our think­ing and decisions.

When going out­side of these guardrails, we need to do it with extreme cau­tion and this takes a lot of humil­i­ty at times — espe­cial­ly when a busi­ness is doing real­ly well.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Brad (00:00:13) — Hi there. Wel­come to the Growth Whis­per­ers, where every­thing that we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Com­pa­nies that last, com­pa­nies that you actu­al­ly enjoy work­ing in and the team enjoys work­ing in where we make a good prof­it and we’re doing the best work that we can, liv­ing reward­ing lives. My name is Brad Giles , and today, as always, joined by my co-host Kevin Lawrence in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da. Kevin, hel­lo. How are things today?

Kevin (00:00:41) — Things are great. I like what you said, it’s kin­da like the dream, maybe , ide­al­ly, you know, you know, with this, you’re, you’re build­ing a com­pa­ny and you feel like you’re liv­ing a dream, a notable amount of the time until you hit, hit the inevitable rush. Rough patch­es. Awesome.

Brad (00:00:57) — Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I, fun­ny you should say that. Uh, I met with a leader today this morn­ing, uh, and he said, Brad, it’s like, I’ve been, it’s, it’s like all of a sud­den I’m just going to work every day. I’m just hang­ing out with all my best mates and just doing amaz­ing work. It’s so good.

Kevin (00:01:20) — And that is, peo­ple don’t real­ize that’s what it’s sup­posed to be. There’s sup­posed to be ten­sion and things like that, but you’re sup­posed to be spend­ing time with peo­ple you enjoy work­ing with. We had a, a retreat last week down in the US for one of the com­pa­nies I work with. We had, we worked incred­i­bly hard, solved major stuff, and we had an awe­some time together.

Brad (00:01:43) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:01:43) — You talk to some peo­ple, that’s not their expe­ri­ence. Um, unfortunately,

Brad (00:01:48) — And that’s like, we talk about core val­ues and behav­iors, and we talk about all of the bits and peo­ple and bits and pieces and the way that peo­ple are focused. And it all comes back to l like that, that’s a, a sense of the out­put. So it’s good. It

Kevin (00:02:04) — Is. And you got­ta make a bunch of tough deci­sions to get there.

Brad (00:02:07) — Mm.

Kevin (00:02:07) — Okay. No mat­ter what, if you don’t make the tough deci­sions, it’s like a gar­den that you don’t pull the weeds, it becomes a mess

Brad (00:02:14) — And it becomes hard­er to bring back to a good state. So with all of that, what, uh, what’s sort of a word or phrase that might be on your mind today?

Kevin (00:02:24) — Mm-hmm. today. It’s con­nec­tion and, um, and con­nec­tion. Root­ed con­nec­tion is, you know, get­ting to know peo­ple. And with this com­pa­ny I was with last week in the US and worked with ​‘em for a while, I’d say this about a lot of peo­ple are peo­ple. They’re awe­some peo­ple. And, but, but we spent, uh, we had a whole bunch of time togeth­er the night before and we had a whole bunch of times hav­ing pas­sion­ate dis­cus­sions and, you know, the, the CEO is the mas­ter of ques­tions and ask­ing us dif­fer­ent ques­tions where peo­ple are open­ing up and shar­ing and get­ting to know each oth­er way beyond work, like deeply under­stand­ing each oth­er per­son­al­ly, and build­ing an incred­i­ble con­nec­tion before we start­ed the first tiny bit of work. And it just makes every­thing else eas­i­er. So con­nec­tion, the pow­er of it, and it feels great too. Like, it’s fun, it’s won­der­ful to get to know accom­plished people.

Brad (00:03:18) — Mm-hmm. Mine would be run to the fire in the work that we do. Often­times we can see lit­tle things pop up in our inter­ac­tions with peo­ple. Uh, and there’s, I think it comes from the, the pro­fes­sion­al fire men, fire women, the peo­ple who mm-hmm. ,

Kevin (00:03:34) — Yeah.

Brad (00:03:34) — Put out fires. Uh, are you run­ning to the fire or are you stand­ing still or you’re ru or are you walk­ing away from the fire? Well, I had a sit­u­a­tion on Fri­day where, uh, one of the exec­u­tives had men­tioned some­thing twice dur­ing our annu­al work­shop, um, and our annu­al strat­e­gy work­shop. And you could see it was eat­ing him up. And I just said, okay, let’s stop and let’s go into this. Why is this an issue? Took us off course for 45 min­utes, which does­n’t sound like much, but he’s a lot when you’ve got a lot to do over two days. Um, but he was so appre­cia­tive, he said, like, it was just, it was just get­ting me stuck. Um, so yeah, some­times us as coach­es or us as lead­ers, we need to run to the fire and sort out those prob­lems as they pop up.

Kevin (00:04:26) — Yep. Yep. Until the, and before they become mas­sive things that engulf a whole for­est or a whole city. Beau­ti­ful. Won­der­ful. Well, let’s jump into today mm-hmm. today we’re not talk­ing about run­ning from fires and we’re not talk­ing about con­nec­tion and we’re not talk­ing about a play­ers, actu­al­ly, we’re talk­ing about some­thing nor­mal­ly dif­fer­ent. Actu­al­ly, you know, you could use some of what we’re talk­ing about today to put out a fire. Um, but we’re, today we’re talk­ing about sand and in par­tic­u­lar stuff, sand in a sand­box, which is real­ly, um, a metaphor for where we do busi­ness, right? It’s kind of putting the rails around a sand­box. You know, back when I was in school, there were, there was, you know, pieces of wood that framed the sand­box to keep the sand in the box. And, and for us as lead­ers and exec­u­tives in our strate­gic plan­ning, we nor­mal­ly have a, a, a sec­tion called the sand­box, which is real­ly defin­ing what we sell, who we sell it to, and where we sell it. It’s kind of like our mar­ket­place and the place that we’re play­ing you almost to take the metaphor of kids. So today we’re talk­ing about the sand­box and, and first of all why it’s impor­tant, and then two, what hap­pens when peo­ple get real­ly excit­ed about stuff that’s out­side the sand­box and they want to take some of the sand and go some­where else.

Brad (00:05:51) — Yeah. It’s a, it’s two parts. We spoke for quite a long time about how do we make this effec­tive? And it was­n’t just what is the sand­box, because we can set the sand­box and say what we sell, who we sell it to and where we sell it. But what then hap­pens is there will always be exec­u­tives or, uh, good old cre­ative CEOs who will, who will say, uh, okay, if, but we’ve got­ta try this cuz it’s such an excit­ing opportunity.

Kevin (00:06:19) — What do you do?

Brad (00:06:20) — That’s the case.

Kevin (00:06:22) — There’s a lot of that. And the idea in busi­ness, you know, you know, roads, road­ways have lines paint­ed on them and there’s this frame­work of stay in your lane, right? There’s anoth­er say­ing in some cul­tures, which is stick to your knitting.

Brad (00:06:36) — Yep.

Kevin (00:06:37) — Right? And anoth­er one is stay in, keep the sand in the sand­box. Metaphors all for the same thing, but with many of the very expe­ri­enced CEOs or real­ly strate­gi­cal­ly smart ones, they know, stay in your lane, stay in your sand­box, stick to your knit­ting, stick to what you’re good at. And, and, and they’ve done that because as com­pa­nies scale, all these new ideas and frag­ments tend to dis­tract the lead­ers from the things that mat­ter most. Mm-hmm. So, but there is times to move from it. So that’s what we’re get­ting down to. And sand­box is a great prin­ci­ple of a prin­ci­ple of, uh, that used in busi­ness to help us make bet­ter deci­sions so that our cre­ativ­i­ty can be chan­neled to high val­ue points or points that are proven and we know we can win ver­sus, you know, what we get excit­ed about and, you know, our idea of the day mm-hmm. . So our kind of, our point of this is one, know your sandbox,

Kevin (00:07:36) — Who you sell, what two, and where you sell it. Like to real­ly be crys­tal clear on that. And then when you wan­na go out­side of it, just know that it’s actu­al­ly a, you’re vio­lat­ing a core prin­ci­ple. It’s like, believe it or not, it’s a high risk deci­sion because you’re going from being a mas­ter per­son on a pogo stick, a lit­tle boun­cy pogo stick that, you know, we had as kids to, you’re rid­ing a uni­cy­cle, it does­n’t look like it, but you are notably chang­ing. And odds are you’re cre­at­ing a notable risk and poten­tial­ly oppor­tu­ni­ty for a busi­ness. So when you change a prin­ci­ple or go against one of your core prin­ci­ples, it just needs to be tak­en real­ly seri­ous­ly and rig­or­ous­ly debated.

Brad (00:08:24) — Because if we don’t do that, we chase the oppor­tu­ni­ties that present them­selves. Yeah. And like many of the oth­er tools that we use to build these strong guardrails around us, such as the hedge­hog or the smack recipe, or even to a less­er degree, our val­ues, all of these tools that we put into place help us to make the deci­sions that are gonna give us the right impact, the right return on mm-hmm. invest­ed cap­i­tal that we spoke about a few episodes ago, uh, and is gonna help us to exe­cute our strat­e­gy more effec­tive­ly. And that’s, so let’s,

Kevin (00:09:05) — Yeah. So let’s give an exam­ple. So I have had many, many clients. I remem­ber one client I worked with, uh, that was in a brand­ed retail and we sold a whole bunch of oth­er peo­ple’s prod­ucts. And the team’s like, we sell so much of oth­er peo­ple’s prod­ucts, we should just make our own. It can’t be that hard.

Kevin (00:09:27) — And I know, and the, and the c e o was­n’t in a room. I’m like, this is not gonna fly. The c e o is a big believ­er in the sand­box prin­ci­ple. Stick to what you’re good at. We are retail­ers, we are not brands that cre­ate prod­ucts. We’re good at build­ing the loca­tion online, in, in per­son where peo­ple will want to buy from and cre­at­ing a buy­er’s expe­ri­ence. We are not prod­uct cre­ators. And they got ex any­way, long sto­ry short, they went off and start­ed doing some stuff and, and you know, the sto­ry is gen­er­al­ly about the same, is that it’s high risk. And they, and they went and did a whole bunch of stuff and we got stuck with a lot of bad inven­to­ry we could­n’t sell. And, and, and again, it’s not that, it’s not say­ing don’t try things, just know that there’s a rea­son why we we stick to it. So that’s the doing a dif­fer­ent prod­uct. Um, anoth­er one in that same coun­try. Hang

Brad (00:10:23) — On, hang on. I’ve got a, that sto­ry about a re it’s like you’re rat­ing this sto­ry that’s in my head back to me. We had a, uh, we’ve got a retail­er that we work with. They had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring on a new brand, uh, excit­ing. And they had the oppor­tu­ni­ty for full coun­try dis­trib­u­tor­ship, but the only way, uh, and, and that meant much high­er mar­gins, which is very attrac­tive to a retailer.

Kevin (00:10:49) — Sure. Of course.

Brad (00:10:50) — The only way that the man­u­fac­tur­er would do that deal is if they also, uh, uh, led a whole­sale charge. So this is a retail­er with all of their core com­pe­ten­cies Yeah. Around, around own­ing, uh, stores, sell­ing direct­ly b2c.

Kevin (00:11:08) — Got it. They didn’t

Brad (00:11:09) — Know noth­ing. They did­n’t the, the, they did­n’t know noth­ing about whole­sal­ing and b2, b2b. Did I say B2B before I meant b2c. They did­n’t know any­thing about B2B and how to sell to oth­er retail­ers and they, it was a dis­as­ter. It was messy. That’s

Kevin (00:11:25) — Cause the retail­ers try­ing to get into the whole­sale trade.

Brad (00:11:28) — Yeah. And it was so it was out­side of their sand­box, but they were so enam­ored with the deal to begin with, um, that they took it on and they did a crap­py job of it. Now the good thing but is that in retail, the mid­dle man is col­laps­ing. So it’s not only in this envi­ron­ment, uh, it’s a, the key

Kevin (00:11:48) — With that sto­ry is tak­en on the dis­tri­b­u­tion. Nation­al retail­er could be high risk unless it’s a brand they know already sells well in the coun­try. Yeah. If they already know it sells well then that’s not risky and it fits into their exist­ing strat­e­gy get­ting into whole­sale. We’re not say­ing that get­ting into whole­sale is a bad idea. No, we’re just say­ing you don’t know any­thing about it. Is there a way you can do a test? Is there a way you can build capa­bil­i­ty? Is there a way you can joint ven­ture to learn? So for exam­ple, uh, one com­pa­ny that I work with that’s, um, uh, in the real estate devel­op­ment busi­ness, they do a cer­tain type of prod­uct. They build and sell a cer­tain type of prod­uct. They know like the back of their hand. They’ve done it so many times, it’s not fun­ny. They know every­thing to know about it in their region.

Kevin (00:12:37) — They’re con­sid­er­ing a dif­fer­ent type of prod­uct, a dif­fer­ent type of build­ing that they’re gonna con­sid­er build­ing That is, there’s a lot of things that are dif­fer­ent, although from, from a a lay­man’s per­spec­tive, they would­n’t think that it is. But what they’re say­ing is, okay, we’re going out into some­thing new. We are gonna then go joint ven­ture with some­one so we can learn, we will make less mon­ey and we will learn and do it a few times as we build our capa­bil­i­ty and then we’ll do it on our own as, as a, as an alter­na­tive. But I wan­na give you anoth­er exam­ple. Go ahead.

Brad (00:13:11) — It’s like they’re earn­ing the right Yes. To Yes. To, to uh, expand their sandbox.

Kevin (00:13:19) — Cor­rect. And some­times you can do it through acqui­si­tions that can be dan­ger­ous cuz there’s a whole oth­er set of vari­ables at play. But d know­ing, acknowl­edg­ing that you’re step­ping out­side the sand­box and doing it con­scious­ly. So anoth­er, um, retail, I got one,

Brad (00:13:34) — Oh, sor­ry. Told me the Yeah, okay.

Kevin (00:13:36) — Oth­er retail one, just to fin­ish the retail theme. And the sim­ple thing is, is that they, um, in anoth­er part of the world and then they expand it into anoth­er comp coun­try rapid­ly and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. Uh, and many, many mil­lions of dol­lars lat­er they had to retreat because the dynam­ics in the coun­try were so much dif­fer­ent. They under­es­ti­mat­ed, it looked like sand over there and they fig­ured it was gonna behave the same, but it behaved so dif­fer­ent­ly they had to retreat and close almost all the stores.

Brad (00:14:07) — Yeah. Yeah. And that makes me think about episode 84 that we did, which is the sev­en com­mon strat­e­gy mis­takes from Michael Porter. One of our most pop­u­lar episodes inci­den­tal­ly, Uhhuh . But that speaks to one of those strat­e­gy mis­takes that are made. You know, all of these pod­casts that are, we, we, we, we talk about so many dif­fer­ent sub­jects dur­ing these pod­casts. So much of it is born of pain. And for me, get­ting out­side of one’s sand­box is, uh, some­thing that I learned in a quite painful man­ner. So, uh, going back about 20 years ago in my firm, we, uh, had hired an advi­so­ry firm. Um, this was before coach­es were real­ly estab­lished in the way that we do it, um, strate­gic coach­ing. Uh, and so we had this firm and they, they decid­ed to ask us, uh, let’s meet with your cus­tomers and they’ll ask us about the things that they would trust us with, uh, so that we could look to expand our market.

Brad (00:15:23) — Now we are already grow­ing it 80% per year, so we did­n’t real­ly, and we did­n’t own a hun­dred per­cent of our mar­ket, we did­n’t own more than 10% of our mar­ket. Okay. So there’s no rea­son for us to step into dif­fer­ent areas. But we went with their advice and then we ran a ses­sion with our major clients all in the room. And what came out of that is that we would trust you with, uh, uh, mov­ing into this oth­er mar­ket, which was at the time com­put­ers and tele­phone sys­tems. And so we took that on board and with our, you know, head full of steam and ener­gy and ego and all of the oth­er stuff, and no dis­ci­pline in the sense of a sand­box. Uh, we start­ed up a new divi­sion, a new area, a new com­pa­ny, um, that was sup­posed to be com­pli­men­ta­ry to what we were doing, but we did­n’t earn the right to do that. It was so dif­fer­ent Yeah. From what we were doing. So yeah, it, my point is this is these lessons that we’re shar­ing are often born of pain. And yes, that was a dumbs dumb deci­sion on our part because we,

Kevin (00:16:29) — Mov­ing out­ta your sand­box is a high risk deci­sion and often leads to pain. And it does­n’t look like it. It’s like you’re step­ping out­ta the sand­box into acidic waters and you don’t even, or acidic sand and you don’t even know it. Yeah.

Brad (00:16:42) — You

Kevin (00:16:43) — Know, and that’s, and that’s the hard thing about this is that espe­cial­ly in, so an exam­ple of anoth­er client that worked with, they had incred­i­ble momen­tum now, and I’ve got anoth­er client in the same sit­u­a­tion right now. And, and we had sort of the be care­ful you’re step­ping out­side of your sand­box con­ver­sa­tion last week. And it was almost like it was a warn­ing because when com­pa­nies are doing so well, we have so much con­fi­dence and momen­tum, which is won­der­ful. We have that belief and it’s incred­i­bly pow­er­ful in the sand­box. So this client unfor­tu­nate­ly had incred­i­ble, incred­i­ble momen­tum with­in Cana­da in their sand­box. And they were set­ting records, and I don’t wan­na give the details, but they were set­ting records inter­nal­ly and even with­in, uh, the mar­ket that they were oper­at­ing in, like, it was the poster tri­al of suc­cess. And it was just spec­tac­u­lar growth was spectacular.

Kevin(00:17:37) — Prof­its were spec­tac­u­lar, every­thing was amaz­ing. And then they decid­ed to take that amaz­ing momen­tum and trans trans­fer it into the US and then did a big bold open­ing in the us. And a long sto­ry short, in their excite­ment and their con­fi­dence from win­ning and win­ning and win­ning, they, they, they for­got that this thing called the bor­der is a dif­fer­ent sand­box. And even though it’s the same busi­ness, and not only did they not, um, did the mar­ket uptake was it slow­er than they expect­ed because they had no momen­tum there, but they also did­n’t have strong enough peo­ple and it hurt them dear­ly and wiped out their prof­its for a few years. And it was a very prof­itable busi­ness. It was, it was incred­i­bly painful. And you know, they’re work­ing it through, but it’s unfor­tu­nate because if they had done it with eyes wide open and you know, they would have to have real­ly, um, hum­bled them­selves before they did it and for­get about the Cana­di­an momen­tum going into the US as an exam­ple. Yeah. And so it’s not, we’re not say­ing don’t do it, but just real­ize it does­n’t look like high risk when it real­ly is. And there’s a, you got­ta be real­ly smart about it.

Brad (00:18:48) — Yeah. I had anoth­er client and they expand­ed across the coun­try, but if they would’ve done it 10 years ago, they would’ve def­i­nite­ly failed. And they acknowl­edged that. So what we’re try­ing to get to here is that lead­er­ship teams, CEOs are often very cre­ative peo­ple mm-hmm. . And they can’t help but want to try new ideas and grow. Yeah. And then the sec­ond part of that is that there’s always oppor­tu­ni­ties that present them­selves when our eyes are open to them. There’s always oppor­tu­ni­ties out there mm-hmm. , but, um, they can many times or often be out­side where we can real­ly win, um, where the bound­ary is that helps us win more often. So there are three key points that we’ve iden­ti­fied or maybe ques­tions that we should ask. If you are in the sit­u­a­tion where an idea comes up and it’s out­side of our sand­box to define, it’s again, what we sell, who we sell it to and where we sell it.

Brad (00:19:55) — So an idea pops up, okay, we want to expand across the bor­der, across the coun­try, start sell­ing this new prod­uct, what­ev­er it is. If you’re con­front­ed with that sit­u­a­tion, either with­in your­self or with­in your team, these are the three ques­tions that we’re encour­ag­ing you to con­sid­er. So the first one is, have we earned the right to expand out­side the sand­box? And that’s what I said about that com­pa­ny expand­ed across the coun­try before. So they had earned the right, they’d built their com­pe­ten­cies to a point where they could han­dle, uh, remote office and they could prof­itably estab­lish a new O office in anoth­er loca­tion because they’d done it local­ly. And it’s,

Kevin (00:20:37) — And it’s not just the­o­ret­i­cal­ly hav­ing it, it’s prov­ing that you have the com­pe­ten­cies. It’s not just hir­ing some­one who has that skillset. It’s, they’ve actu­al­ly been there and done that. And you can eas­i­ly repli­cate that in your business.

Brad (00:20:50) — Yeah. And if you said, have we earned the right to a lead­er­ship team? The brava­do and the con­fi­dence and the ego say yes, would always say yes. Yeah. But what’s the facts ver­sus opin­ions? Right. So what’s the facts around the, what’s the

Kevin (00:21:05) — Tests we’ve done to val­i­date it? How do we know?

Brad (00:21:08) — How do we know if

Kevin (00:21:09) — It’s if, if it’s a real high risk thing? Yes.

Brad (00:21:11) — All right, so ques­tion num­ber one, have we earned the right to expand out, expand out­side the sand­box? Num­ber two, do we need to expand out­side the sand­box at this time? I remem­ber in, uh, again, going back prob­a­bly 15 years ago, some­one asked me, because I was, had a head full of steam, and they said to me, uh, when I asked them, I said, oh, so we’re, we are think­ing, how can we expand across the coun­try to a new city? And they said, why do you need to, what’s your mar­ket share here? What’s your prof­itabil­i­ty? Would you not be bet­ter off work­ing to improve your prof­itabil­i­ty here and get, gain more mar­ket share here by way of strat­e­gy effec­tive­ly? So do we actu­al­ly need to expand out­side the sand­box at this point? Can we just get more out of what we’ve got here or grow with­in our market?

Brad (00:22:07) — Remem­ber what we sell, who we sell it to and where we sell it? And then num­ber three is, oh, and I love this one. I’ve got­ta tell you, what are we will­ing to give up to accom­plish this? What is the trade off? Okay, so we’re gonna get a new prod­uct that’s out­side of our sand­box or a new geog­ra­phy or a new cus­tomer. So what’s the trade off? Because every­thing in life is about trade offs. If we’re gonna spend mon­ey to expand across the coun­try, what’s that gonna do? And, and, and what are the parts of the busi­ness that we are going to be sac­ri­fic­ing or not invest­ing in? Last week I had a work­shop with a team and I said to them, okay, this new excit­ing idea that you’re talk­ing about, let’s just zoom out. We’re gonna spend 2 mil­lion on strat­e­gy in the next 12 months, for exam­ple, or exe­cut­ing our strat­e­gy. Okay. And that was just a ran­dom num­ber if we did­n’t have that doc­u­ment­ed. But if we’re gonna spend that, is it bet­ter spend­ing that mon­ey where we’re real­ly con­fi­dent we can win? Or on this oth­er idea, let’s say that’s out­side of our sandbox.

Kevin (00:23:21) — Yeah. And those, and those, um, all those three. So can we, do we, are, are we proven that we can, should we actu­al­ly, do we need to, or are we, is it that we’re lack­ing dis­ci­pline or we’d rather be cre­ative and do some­thing else? Uh, are three, is it, what are we gonna give up to accom­plish this? Because all busi­ness­es have scarce resources and, and that is humans as well as cash. And the humans are nor­mal­ly the big­ger risks, not the mon­ey. Cuz you need peo­ple to focus on it. Mm-hmm. So I’ll give an exam­ple of some­one who’s done it, right? So, um, uh, one of the best strate­gies for mov­ing out­side of your sand­box is to fol­low cus­tomer demand. So I’ve got a client that’s suc­cess­ful­ly gone from the US and mov­ing into Europe, but their biggest cus­tomer is pulling them there. Their cus­tomer’s like, look, if you come here, we’re gonna, you know, give you this much busi­ness, a notable amount of business.

Kevin (00:24:19) — So they’ve got a cus­tomer in exist­ing demand, they have a great rela­tion­ship with, they can go there and build their base off their base, then they can expand. So there are strate­gies, like fol­low­ing a cus­tomer is a great strat­e­gy. Um, you know, bul­lets ver­sus can­ni­bals and Jim Collins like doing tests, like doing lit­tle micro tests, joint ven­tures can be strate­gies. There’s all kinds of dif­fer­ent ways to do it. Um, there’s lots of ways to do it suc­cess­ful­ly. The key thing is you got­ta respect it know­ing that you’re step­ping out and you need to do it eyes wide open ver­sus with con­fi­dence and brava­do, which tends to get us into trouble,

Brad (00:24:57) — Does­n’t, it just, does­n’t it just, what a great, what a great episode. Sand­box is such a sim­ple con­cept, what we sell, who we sell it to and where we sell it. But if you’re com­ing up with an idea, use this method. And one last quick point, I always like to, uh, use a sil­ly extreme to reit­er­ate this point. For exam­ple, uh, Kevin in your firm, you are talk­ing about, uh, what, uh, what if instead what if we were to start sell­ing alco­hol in Bali? Now that’s, that’s extreme. That’s extreme on two of those three points. Num­ber one, you’ve got no, I, uh, no com­pe­ten­cies around sell­ing prod­ucts because your firm is a ser­vice firm. Cer­tain­ly noth­ing around alco­hol. And you don’t know the bar­ley mar­ket what­so­ev­er. So, so using an extreme to illus­trate, uh, that we need to stick to our knit­ting to your ear­li­er point. Good.

Kevin (00:25:59) — Yeah. And where, and those ones are a bit eas­i­er. The, the hard one is when some­one’s in ser­vices and they think they could nat­u­ral­ly extend into soft­ware mm-hmm. Or they could nat­u­ral­ly extend into a prod­uct they sell with their ser­vices now. And that’s where it gets dicey is where it’s a a seems inno­cent and it seems like not that much of a stretch.

Brad (00:26:22) — Yes, indeed. But

Kevin (00:26:22) — That’s the, that’s the chal­lenge and that’s why we have pr again, prin­ci­ples are guides. We have core val­ues as a prin­ci­ple to guide behav­iors. Sand­box is a prin­ci­ple to guide where we put our cre­ativ­i­ty in terms of what we’re sell­ing into.

Brad (00:26:36) — All right. Awe­some. So

Kevin (00:26:37) — Thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the Growth Whis­pers with Brad and Kevin, uh, Brad down in Perth, Aus­tralia, Kevin in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da. Uh, if you haven’t sub­scribed, just sub­scribe wher­ev­er you lis­ten and please give it a rat­ing. Also, if you have ideas for the show, please sug­gest those ques­tions, ideas, when­ev­er it hap­pens to me. The video is always on YouTube, just the growth whis­pers and search for that. You’ll find it. Uh, both Brad and I have a week­ly newslet­ter with just some of our best think­ing and ideas and resources that we find. Um, and you can get ahold of Brad and get his newslet­ter at evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au. And for my firm, Lawrence and co, uh, same thing. Get ahold of me or my team, uh, lawrence​and​co​.com. Hope you have an awe­some week.