What happens when a business is successful on paper but becomes increasingly difficult to scale?
In this episode, Mason sits down with entrepreneur and CruiseCompete CEO Bob Levinstein to discuss one of the toughest decisions a business owner will ever face: knowing when the problem isn't execution, but the business model itself.
Bob shares the hard-earned lessons he learned after building one of the early online job platforms in America, growing it into a company serving hundreds of thousands of users, only to discover that operational complexity, expensive sales processes, customer churn, and misaligned incentives were creating challenges that couldn't simply be solved by working harder.
Instead of continuing to push uphill, Bob took what he learned and built CruiseCompete, a marketplace business designed to eliminate friction, align incentives, and scale more efficiently.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
✅ How to recognize when your business model is working against you
✅ The difference between temporary operational problems and structural business problems
✅ Why complexity often increases faster than revenue
✅ The hidden costs of sales teams, customer service, and manual processes
✅ How successful marketplace businesses create value for both buyers and sellers
✅ Why customer feedback can save you from costly mistakes
✅ How entrepreneurs get trapped chasing ideas that no longer work
✅ The poker lesson every business owner should understand about knowing when to fold
✅ Why simplicity is often the ultimate competitive advantage
✅ How to identify opportunities hidden inside everyday frustrations
One of the biggest takeaways from this episode is that persistence is valuable, but there comes a point where continuing to "fix" a broken system costs more than rebuilding something better.
Whether you're a business owner, CEO, entrepreneur, executive, sales leader, or operations professional, this episode offers practical insights for building a company that scales without becoming dependent on constant firefighting.
👇 Let us know in the comments:
Have you ever reached a point where you realized your business needed a pivot instead of another fix?
🎙 Connect with Workforce Alchemy
Website:
https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X:
https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist
Rumble:
https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy
Dailymotion:
https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy
👤 Connect with Mason Duchatschek
Website:
https://masonduchatschek.com/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/
🚢 Connect with Bob Levinstein
CruiseCompete:
https://www.cruisecompete.com/
#BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #CEO #BusinessOwner #ScalingABusiness #OperationalExcellence #BusinessSystems #GrowthStrategy #MarketplaceBusiness
In this episode, Mason sits down with entrepreneur and CruiseCompete CEO Bob Levinstein to discuss one of the toughest decisions a business owner will ever face: knowing when the problem isn't execution, but the business model itself.
Bob shares the hard-earned lessons he learned after building one of the early online job platforms in America, growing it into a company serving hundreds of thousands of users, only to discover that operational complexity, expensive sales processes, customer churn, and misaligned incentives were creating challenges that couldn't simply be solved by working harder.
Instead of continuing to push uphill, Bob took what he learned and built CruiseCompete, a marketplace business designed to eliminate friction, align incentives, and scale more efficiently.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
✅ How to recognize when your business model is working against you
✅ The difference between temporary operational problems and structural business problems
✅ Why complexity often increases faster than revenue
✅ The hidden costs of sales teams, customer service, and manual processes
✅ How successful marketplace businesses create value for both buyers and sellers
✅ Why customer feedback can save you from costly mistakes
✅ How entrepreneurs get trapped chasing ideas that no longer work
✅ The poker lesson every business owner should understand about knowing when to fold
✅ Why simplicity is often the ultimate competitive advantage
✅ How to identify opportunities hidden inside everyday frustrations
One of the biggest takeaways from this episode is that persistence is valuable, but there comes a point where continuing to "fix" a broken system costs more than rebuilding something better.
Whether you're a business owner, CEO, entrepreneur, executive, sales leader, or operations professional, this episode offers practical insights for building a company that scales without becoming dependent on constant firefighting.
👇 Let us know in the comments:
Have you ever reached a point where you realized your business needed a pivot instead of another fix?
🎙 Connect with Workforce Alchemy
Website:
https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X:
https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist
Rumble:
https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy
Dailymotion:
https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy
👤 Connect with Mason Duchatschek
Website:
https://masonduchatschek.com/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/
🚢 Connect with Bob Levinstein
CruiseCompete:
https://www.cruisecompete.com/
#BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #CEO #BusinessOwner #ScalingABusiness #OperationalExcellence #BusinessSystems #GrowthStrategy #MarketplaceBusiness
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00:05welcome to the mason duketech show and before we jump in this episode is brought to you by
00:00:12workforcealchemy.com helping leaders uncover hidden profit leaks inside their business
00:00:18operations bob levinstein is a stanford educated and street smart battle-tested entrepreneur who
00:00:26has built and scaled high traffic online platforms serving millions and millions of users after
00:00:34experiencing firsthand the operational strain of managing sales fulfillment and customer service
00:00:40at scale in one industry he made a pivotal shift instead of optimizing the model he reinvented it
00:00:48and took on a whole new industry today as ceo of cruisecompete.com he runs a marketplace that
00:00:57connects cruise buyers and sellers in a way that removes friction and creates value on both sides
00:01:05what makes bob different is his ability to see what breaks as companies grow and design smarter
00:01:12systems that fix it bob welcome to the show thank you good to be here
00:01:18when your earlier platform in an entirely different industry than the one you serve now was at its
00:01:24peak roughly how many visitors were you getting each month and how many of those were repeat users
00:01:30well that company was called nation job it was one of the first uh online uh job listing services
00:01:35on the internet we actually started that one in um boy what year was that 1988 we started that even
00:01:42before the the internet was really that problem um and i think at a peak we were seeing somewhere
00:01:49between half a million and 750 000 individual users coming to the site looking for jobs so that gives
00:01:56people an idea of of size and if i recall if it was before the internet weren't you even doing
00:02:01it like
00:02:01with when you first started like floppy disks and stuff weren't you yeah um when this started we talk
00:02:08about friction this started with me going into the career center at stanford and trying to look for a
00:02:13job uh there were just binders of possible jobs they were all completely out of date and it was just
00:02:21a
00:02:21fairly useless place and it just seemed obvious to me that this should all be computerized not the most
00:02:27original thought in the world and the most revolutionary thought in the world but that's
00:02:31what we we tried to do and so what we would do is we would put actual um boy i
00:02:36think we started out
00:02:37with like 386 machines pcs that um you know probably the computing power you'd have a hundred of them
00:02:45uh just in your phone right now but uh 386 pcs and originally we tried updating via modem
00:02:51like a 2400 bottom moto to call in and and send the updates and that largely did not work very
00:02:59well
00:02:59we ended up switching to mailing floppy disks to uh and at one point i think we had
00:03:06like about 350 locations that we were mailing disks to so it was quite the operation to get that done
00:03:13so when the internet came how did you shift
00:03:17um you know it was somewhat gradual because you know we were we started doing you know we had an
00:03:26online system that we built that was sort of next to the other system and then just over time as
00:03:32it
00:03:32became more and more obvious that this was the way everyone was going with we would have the access
00:03:37people would have the access to it online we we phased out the uh the standalone systems that was a
00:03:42very happy day when there were no more books after because there are always issues with you know
00:03:47computers breaking and going down and somebody unplugged it so it didn't update and they forgot
00:03:53to put in the desk and all sorts of things like that it was it was quite frustrating so i
00:03:59know that when
00:04:00you finally hit your stride marketed you were one of the top five online job boards in the country i
00:04:06guess
00:04:06there was like monster and hot job yeah and what did it actually take behind the scenes to sell deliver
00:04:13and support that volume of business day-to-day because i know your strategy was different than
00:04:18how you marketed and provided service would that take day-to-day well you know it's it's it's when
00:04:24you have a marketplace there's always going to be a chicken or egg problem right you need the jobs to
00:04:28get the users to the job seekers you need the job seekers to get their jobs and so we had
00:04:32a uh we had a
00:04:34method of what was called community sponsorship so we would work with chambers of commerce
00:04:39to have them get their key employers together and we would have a one price kind of program
00:04:47various iterations of this but the basic idea was everybody who's a chamber member could list their
00:04:52jobs on the website the other problem the other issue we had with that was back you know back in
00:04:56the day it was not that easy for people to get their information online so and to take it from
00:05:02one
00:05:02system to another system so we had a lot we had people faxing us jobs that we that people would
00:05:08retype we had a whole data entry department that it's that it was basically necessary for a lot of
00:05:12these smaller employers and um you know or people who were just they just were kind of too lazy to
00:05:19do
00:05:19it themselves and so there was a whole i don't know we probably had at one point 20 people doing
00:05:25data entry so it was uh it was quite the uh quite the operation there's a lot there was a
00:05:31lot of
00:05:32pain and then of course you have a lot of the sales which was quite uh it's difficult to manage
00:05:38uh and the problem with that is when we had customers who would stay long for a lot around for
00:05:42a long
00:05:43time there were also customers who had needs you know this month and then they weren't hiring so
00:05:48why should they be paying for this so that was also a problem so as far as pain points selling
00:05:52providing service providing updates providing staff to cover the issues that were coming up
00:06:00were there any other particular pain points that were really making it stressful for you to continue
00:06:04trying to grow this thing well at the core the core problem with which i can only see with hindsight
00:06:09i
00:06:09would uh would be nice to tell you that you know i saw it going in but really we learn
00:06:14things through
00:06:15our mistakes the core problem with this business is that the value delivered was not aligned with what
00:06:20people were paying and the reason and what i mean by it is this let's say you have a hospital
00:06:25that always has a hundred job openings because they're a big hospital we're charging them a flat
00:06:30fee and if they got lots and lots of extra value because they had so many job listings
00:06:36we weren't capturing that upside all we're capturing is that i think it was yeah probably about five grand
00:06:41a year they're paying us right then you have smaller guys that yeah we can provide value
00:06:46but the cost of selling to them especially when they aren't constantly reading you know yeah i need
00:06:53this you know i have this important search now i've got to fill this position that okay we find you
00:06:58this
00:06:58guy and hey it's worth you know 15 grand to you because you found this one guy tomorrow you don't
00:07:04need
00:07:04that guy and so it was a lot of so sales is extremely expensive it's probably the most expensive
00:07:13thing in most businesses you have to have sales force i don't think people realize just how expensive
00:07:18sales is and when the life cycle of that customer is not you know hey i made the sale i
00:07:25have this big
00:07:25upfront cost to make it but now i've got a customer for life you can be wonderful at what you
00:07:30do but if
00:07:31they don't have a need they're not going to keep paying for it and that's what would happen you know
00:07:36there's a lot it's obviously employment's very cyclical and once you lose all those customers
00:07:42going back in to get them again you may be dealing with different uh different management
00:07:47somebody wants to try something different this time there are other opportunities
00:07:50so it was very sisyphusian there was a lot of you know we're pushing the rock up the hill the
00:07:55rock
00:07:55rolls down and so that was a big problem with that business yeah they were playing repeat customer
00:08:02they were repeat customers but not enough and it was it became very difficult to grow so how do you
00:08:07know when operational complexity is a temporary issue versus a sign that the model itself is broken
00:08:14when things come easy it's usually a good sign you're doing something right when things come hard
00:08:19you've got to take a hard look at yourself and what's going on one thing i found in general the
00:08:25hardest some of the heart the hardest lessons to learn especially as we get older you'll see this
00:08:29more and more in your life the hardest lessons to learn are unlearning things that were for you in
00:08:34the past you know when you were a high school athlete and when it hurt the answer was push harder
00:08:40keep
00:08:40going do more push through it when you're not so young anymore like you and me something starts to
00:08:48hurt you stop because if you don't you're going to have six weeks of trying to recover from pushing
00:08:54too hard you know back then it was hey i'm training for this game or this race or this whatever
00:09:00now
00:09:00it's i'm not in a hurry i don't have a deadline i don't have an iron man coming up you
00:09:05know that i
00:09:06got to make you know try to get ready for i just want to be fit want to improve i
00:09:10want to you know
00:09:11i want to make improvements but there's no timeline so you got to be smart smart smart and
00:09:18you know always being taught growing up it's you can if you work harder if you work harder
00:09:23there's got to be a time when you go this ain't working let's do something else it took me way
00:09:29too long to learn that lesson i stuck with what i was doing for and with nation's job for much
00:09:33longer than i should have well and one of the reasons you did is you were successful at it and
00:09:39you made what many of other people consider a fantastic living you employed a lot of people
00:09:43and like you by many folks watching listening's definition you succeeded but i know you well
00:09:51enough to know that you weren't getting happiness from it was a frustration and there's a lot of
00:09:56people watching and listening that i'm sure are sitting there going they can relate because they've
00:10:02got all this time energy skills talent context invested in this one venture or this one business
00:10:09that has been part of who they are for so long and the fear of pivoting or shifting or doing
00:10:16something
00:10:16different keeps them where they are and one of the reasons that i want to invite you on is because
00:10:21i
00:10:21think you're an inspiration for those people that are there to say hey good good gets in the way of
00:10:27great but you'll never grow no greatest possible unless you're willing to give up on the and pivot from
00:10:32the good and you're a living breathing example of someone who's done that can you walk us through
00:10:37maybe the moment or period when you just decided i'm not going to fix the model but i'm going to
00:10:43replace it entirely and take on an entirely different industry where you could use what you already learned
00:10:48and just get a fresh start sure i didn't go cold turkey from one to the other i had been
00:10:54on a couple
00:10:55of cruises and i just realized it dawned on me that in order to get the best deal i had
00:11:01to call around
00:11:02to a number of different travel agencies because the prices are not and the offers are not
00:11:07exactly the same agency to agency the agents have flexibility to close business that's the way
00:11:13the cruise lines want it they have some rules what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed
00:11:18to do but ultimately shopping around makes a difference but you can't just the other thing but
00:11:24the other thing i learned about it was you can't just randomly shop around you have to know which
00:11:28agencies are likely to have the best delivery and that just seemed to me a very very similar idea
00:11:35you know matching a job seeker with the job is very very similar to matching a travel agent with
00:11:41a it was the consumer who wants to buy cruise and when i and really i just started uh cruise
00:11:48compete
00:11:48for fun now the other business was going we had some some prospects of some uh some pretty big deal
00:11:55government deals spoiler alert they never came through despite all sorts of promises
00:12:00uh and i had some extra time my hands waiting for some of these things to happen
00:12:05and just thought you know this could be fun something different to do maybe it brings a few
00:12:10dollars a month it's great but i just saw something that uh i thought could be done better uh and
00:12:16so
00:12:16we built a we built a system to do that so the way cruise compete works you know as a
00:12:21consumer
00:12:22you come in you pick you have uh all the cruise itineraries are in there for about 50 different
00:12:28cruise lines uh you pick the cruise that you want to go on the ship the sale date you put
00:12:32in a little
00:12:32extra information who you are um you know what type of cabin you want passenger ages and then that's
00:12:39like a little mini rfp so it's like lending tree for cruises how you put in your information and then
00:12:44we have a couple hundred travel agencies that can come in they can see your request and then they
00:12:49offer their they can come back for their best price as a consumer you're anonymous until or unless you
00:12:55decide to contact somebody and you can compare the various offers uh some may be equal in price but
00:13:00have you know different benefits uh cabin upgrade who knows you can read about the agencies you can see
00:13:06their uh the agency's ratings from other other consumers and then you decide if you're interested
00:13:12you want more information or order book you contact the agent directly so it's just basically
00:13:18here's what i want um you know give me offers to compare i pick it and then i can get
00:13:23a book and
00:13:24the agencies come back to us and they report that information uh and we charge them a fee based on
00:13:29the
00:13:29value of the trial and what this did was it eliminated a lot of this model eliminated a lot of
00:13:36the problems
00:13:36that we had in the uh uh in the first model particularly um it was very easy the way we
00:13:45do this is since
00:13:46since the the agents are only paying us based on success we're capturing all the upside so one
00:13:53agency you know does 100 bookings we're getting paid on every one another agency only does two
00:13:58bookings because maybe they don't have very much time to spend on the system we're still capturing that
00:14:05and what they're paying is relative to the value that they're getting and i think just as a general
00:14:10principle people don't really understand that when people talk about oh minimum wages should be higher
00:14:16no they've got to be relative you know to the value that people are creating now my salary should be
00:14:22higher it's relative to your replacement value and exactly because if it isn't if your replacement value
00:14:29is lower than what you're being paid you're out of here it might be a computer doing your job you
00:14:35know
00:14:35it might be two young people they can pay half i mean whatever it is but those things have to
00:14:42be in
00:14:43sync or the system doesn't work in this way had largely eliminate we eliminated the need for sales
00:14:50because the pitch to travel agencies was very simple it's like look it's free to sign up you come in
00:14:57you can see these quote requests you only pay me if it works and even then you don't pay me
00:15:03until
00:15:03the first of the month after the ship sails so cruises often are booked you know 18 months in
00:15:08advance two years in advance our average dollar is probably seven months out and one of the problems
00:15:16in the job was budgets right well my you know yeah we need these people but my hr budget is
00:15:22x
00:15:22i only have this much money to spend you know and when it comes time for renewal oh yeah my
00:15:28budget got
00:15:28sorry i can't rent it all right again there's a disconnect between value i need the people but
00:15:33i don't have the right to advertise for here that's never an issue because as a travel agent you come
00:15:38to
00:15:38cruise compete you can quote to your heart's content by the time you're paying us the first of the month
00:15:44after the ship sails you pay us on a credit card by the time that credit card comes to you
00:15:48you already
00:15:48have your commission so it eliminates that cash flow problem it eliminates budgets so it was became it was
00:15:55very very easy to sign up to agencies and several of my top agencies are sometimes just not the same
00:16:02agency name sometimes things have changed but they're the same people that i signed up in 2003
00:16:07before we launch are still there with me wow yeah so we have this very very long term uh on
00:16:15our
00:16:15customers there and we have something like 1.5 million consumer accounts on the system
00:16:24uh um you know we're doing about 250 000 uh actual cruise quotes go through each year
00:16:31uh so it's um you know it's the scale the scales there but because i don't have to you know
00:16:38we don't
00:16:38have to have sales force you know once a about once about three times a year i do a seminar
00:16:44where
00:16:45you know webinar where we email out to uh travel agencies and say hey look do you want to come
00:16:50and
00:16:50you know we'll tell you about what this is um and that's it we have we have no lack of
00:16:56travel
00:16:56agencies you know the the offer itself is so good it's like look as a travel agent you got one
00:17:03thing
00:17:03to sell it's your time right and here's a way that you can access customers that you wouldn't have
00:17:08access to otherwise you can use it when you want to use it because it's not it's not a sledgehammer
00:17:13it's more like a swiss army does i only want to quote high-end uh high-end cruises you can
00:17:18do that
00:17:18you can have there's a filter in there you filter out everything you only see the high-end i only
00:17:23do these two cruise lines you can do that i only want to quote when things are flowing the phone's
00:17:27not ringing you can do that okay so it it's it's flexible enough to fit for the um for the
00:17:35agents
00:17:35themselves and the other nice thing about it is it's very self um self-managing and self-selecting
00:17:42the agents who are good at this who can quote a lot who can get better offers because their
00:17:47relationship with cruise lines they're going to survive and hang around the ones that don't
00:17:52they go away and that's funny you know um our goal is bring people in let them try it
00:17:59uh requiring them to do 300 quotes uh uh you know or or they pay a membership fee
00:18:06so i give them that choice hold their feet to the fire so they can find out if it's going
00:18:09to work
00:18:09for them uh you know we in the early days we had people come in they would quote they do
00:18:14three
00:18:14quotes oh i didn't get a booking this doesn't work in it so it's hey if you're going to waste
00:18:18my time you know you're going to pay so it's really and really the the benefit of that is
00:18:25not the membership fees that we get uh because often people who you know who don't do it their
00:18:30credit cards are bad etc um the idea is i get rid of people who are not serious professional
00:18:38good travel agents and that that helps keep the quality high so a lot of these things work to
00:18:45self-regulate and and there's kind of a harmony to it of how that works the consumers that we get
00:18:51you know the more likely the more cruises you've been on the more likely you've heard of us
00:18:56and so the easier it is for the agents to work with you because you don't have 50 questions i
00:19:03mean
00:19:03look first time i took a cruise i knew nothing the agent had to spend a lot of time with
00:19:08me
00:19:08explaining this explaining that well this is better that's better once you've been on a few cruises you
00:19:13know those things so it's just a much quicker transaction for the agent so even if they're
00:19:18not making quite as much money because they're paying us um you know because maybe they had they
00:19:22are they're giving back an onboard credit they're spending way less time and as a travel agent you
00:19:29have one thing to sell and that's your time so um so that worked well for them because you know
00:19:33because it sorts out it starts to sort out for people who are not you know customer so i know
00:19:39when you had nation job that let's just contrast that for those people that are listening or watching
00:19:44let's contrast that with nation job you had to sales you had to have support to key in all the
00:19:49response for people that were as you said were too lazy to type stuff in or didn't have the time
00:19:54you had i'm sure customer service calls some of that that yeah okay
00:20:05so you're talking sales you're talking customer service you're talking like operations that's a
00:20:10lot of different moving parts and and and headaches and from what i can gather you decided that i
00:20:17don't want to do this again but i'm going to put i'm going to apply my knowledge and experience in
00:20:23a
00:20:23different way and instead of saying i'm going to build a business for an industry you created a
00:20:29marketplace instead where you don't have to do any of that stuff you don't have to sell it because
00:20:34you got the you got the agents doing it you don't have to provide service because the agents are doing
00:20:38it you're only providing value as a fraction of the additional revenue that you're only generating
00:20:44revenue the fraction of additional revenue and value you bring to others right that they wouldn't
00:20:48have gotten otherwise and that you're saving your and more than that more than that that's clear to
00:20:54them because that's that's that's something well i'll give you a good illustration of that
00:20:59so in the early days before we launched one of the ideas was all right well different cruise lines
00:21:08have you know our our uh costs uh you know are have or more expensive than others so commissions are
00:21:15higher and we'll charge people per quote and we'll make the quotes you know well and i came up with
00:21:20a whole schema of how much we're going to charge for you know this cruise line and you know based
00:21:25on
00:21:25how many days it is and this and it was complicated and then one of my then partners said let's
00:21:31survey
00:21:31the agencies and find out how much they think they are spending for leads and the short answer was they
00:21:39had absolutely no idea how much they were spending what it was costing them to get a lead because they
00:21:44didn't track
00:21:45so they had absolutely no idea you know they weren't going through where okay if i spend you know
00:21:51five grand on advertising how many leads am i getting what percentage am i closing they have no idea so
00:21:58it
00:21:58becomes very difficult to charge somebody for something when they have no idea the value
00:22:04um and that was again that was the problem with nation job was you know what's the value of getting
00:22:10an
00:22:10engine you know getting one engineer really the value was there from what we did but they didn't track
00:22:15stuff they had no idea what was going on and we were also dealing at a level of hr or
00:22:21hr does not
00:22:23get much respect in most industries to see you know and they can't go to the ceo and go look
00:22:28at the
00:22:28value of this and there's a big disconnect there so it's not just that you have to deliver the value
00:22:33but the customer has to understand that value and this way we avoid that conversation completely
00:22:37like look it's free the downside of it is yeah we have a way to get paid but that was
00:22:43okay um i'd
00:22:44actually implemented that model uh very successfully with a network of um of headhunters headhunter network
00:22:55right where basically we took their all their jobs and we put them on nation job and then we would
00:23:01just
00:23:02get if they you know we would get a percentage of that that those big old headhunter fees if they
00:23:07made the placement and i think we did we did a quarter million dollars one year but there just
00:23:12became lots of other options for them that were cheaper people wanted to do this for less do that
00:23:16for less which was silly because obviously you know if you get a candidate from somebody else great
00:23:22but if you don't you know it is it's it's it's an opportunity cost right that eventually that went
00:23:27away after a couple but to trust them and go all right we're going to do this on an honor
00:23:32system
00:23:33and you're going to tell me and you're going to pay me if it come you know if it comes
00:23:36through and
00:23:36that was something people looked at as you're nuts to do that we have come up with a number of
00:23:41ways to
00:23:43keep people honest but mostly it's doing business with lots of people you know it's the way that
00:23:49uh it's the way that works and the ones who are not you'll see it pretty quickly um you know
00:23:55we have
00:23:55all kinds of fairly sophisticated mathematical things to look at and what's this ratio to that
00:24:00ratio but mostly we you know we feed them back to the people it's like how many of your bookings
00:24:05came
00:24:06in because the user reported to us and how many came in because you reported to us first let's keep
00:24:12that number high and they take it very they take it seriously you know they when you show them the
00:24:18stuff because most people almost all people i think are basically honest and they want to do a good
00:24:24job and they want to be fair with you our agents appreciate what we do for them the ones that
00:24:28are
00:24:28successful on the platform once we're not we're not doing any form they're not doing anything for us
00:24:33it's okay that they go away it's best for everybody right and so it's it's um there are just a
00:24:38lot of
00:24:38self-regulating things so how do you know when a market is ready for a buyer seller marketplace
00:24:44versus a traditional service model it really comes down to i guess there are a number of factors
00:24:50the most important one is can you buy the same thing roughly the same thing from different people
00:24:56and pay different prices or get different value that's one so airline tickets for example it doesn't
00:25:03matter where you go you're going to pay the same price so that doesn't make any sense the other thing
00:25:08too is the buyer really has to understand exactly what they're buying they have to be able to communicate
00:25:15that exactly to the seller so that's a that's a second that's a second issue because you know we
00:25:21talk about all sorts of different markets diamonds beauty salon products search a bunch of different
00:25:28things but it's really got to be an apples to apples because if it isn't um great i've got two
00:25:35different proposals but i don't know which is better third issue is geography this becomes a lot more
00:25:43difficult to do if you if it matters how close you are to uh you know uh talk to a
00:25:50guy in a bar in
00:25:51washington dc who does um junk removal from people's houses has trucks you go in and you know i think
00:26:00we
00:26:01actually probably used him after my mom passed away to clean the house out right and you know he's got
00:26:06different competitors who do that probably makes a lot of sense because you can go look how big is how
00:26:11many square feet of the house you know where are you located but you would still have to do it
00:26:17regionally because you're not going to drive the truck you know eight hours to go do this it no
00:26:21longer makes sense so there are things that the model fits there things that it doesn't you know
00:26:25we talked about doing it for a fractional airfare kind of stuff for share jet share type things you
00:26:32know i've got a private jet that's going from one place to another i got empty seats probably work for
00:26:38that maybe but again you got the problem of well how many people really want to do this and how
00:26:43do
00:26:43you get to scale and how many are willing to pay and you know that extra so it's uh it
00:26:48depends on
00:26:48the market there are a lot of factors so that that go into it what are some of the biggest
00:26:52mistake
00:26:52leaders make when trying to build a marketplace that serves both sides well because you you serve you
00:26:58serve cruise users and you serve cruise sellers very well where do you think uh where do you think
00:27:03some of the mistakes uh leaders make i think you really have to understand what people want and
00:27:10what they're doing and what their concerns are uh for example i talked about how a big mistake we
00:27:15almost made was going out with a model of you know payable quote you know each time you put it
00:27:20you
00:27:21quote somebody you're going to pay us a dollar or three dollars or ten dollars again the big problem
00:27:24with that is they had no idea what the value of that they had no idea what they're paying for
00:27:29lead
00:27:29if we didn't understand the uh um the travel agent you know as far as that goes we um we
00:27:38would have
00:27:38failed and the other thing about that it really comes down to feedback you have to make it very
00:27:44very easy for your customers to tell you what they don't like that first year we made so many software
00:27:52changes really adding features of hey you know i want and because when we started i don't think we even
00:27:58had a you know filters to filter out certain cruise lines that i think was a was a travel agent
00:28:04request
00:28:04suggestion uh and even recently in the last three three years maybe four years because we've been at
00:28:12this since 2003 so we said look can we have a cabin hold form where if somebody wants to hold
00:28:18the cabin
00:28:18they give us all that information that we're right now taking over the phone which is you know
00:28:22your name your address your age your birth date all these things that the cruise line needs to hold the
00:28:27cabin can you give them a form they can fill out send it to us uh and that i mean
00:28:32that's that's
00:28:33made it a lot easier for agents has made it easier for for people i hate having to give my
00:28:38info over the phone when i know i can type it a lot faster or even as soon as the
00:28:42form comes up my
00:28:42computer fills it in for me it's looking at those points and i think that's true in any business
00:28:50you've got to put yourself in the customer's shoes it reminds me of when we were in in that hotel
00:28:55in
00:28:55columbia when you came down for my wedding and you know but the executives there had never spent any
00:29:00time in their own hotel rooms and there were just so many problems little things not big things but
00:29:08you know something as simple as the bed is this height the nightstand is this height it's a little
00:29:14tiny round table and there's no way in the dark you're going to get your phone on it on the
00:29:20first
00:29:20try you know there and there was no outlet right next to the nightstand and that was a five-star
00:29:26hotel yeah so this is a five-star hotel um you know at breakfast there isn't salt and pepper on
00:29:34the table by the time you know i i can get the waitress over get me so it's a buffet
00:29:39so by the time
00:29:40i can get the waitress's attention she's busy uh i asked her to bring me salt and pepper i've already
00:29:46eaten my meal now to their credit the next morning i came out and there was salt and pepper on
00:29:51every
00:29:51table so they listened at least to that but you've got to go through this as your customer don't assume
00:29:56you know what your customer wants don't assume that you um you know uh that that uh uh that you
00:30:04know
00:30:05better or assume that oh well you know they'll do this and i see these friction points just so often
00:30:10i've got a site that i go to to read my my comics online you know like the old newspaper
00:30:15comics
00:30:16i like to do that every day when i look at when i go to it it takes me directly
00:30:21to the home page not
00:30:22to my list of the ones i want to read now i think there's a way around that i was
00:30:26just thinking about
00:30:26that this morning i think i can probably link directly to that page depending on how their site
00:30:31works but i have to go through you know i go to the main page then i gotta select this
00:30:35then i gotta go to
00:30:35the menu and then i gotta select that and then it puts up my wallet i'm doing this every day
00:30:40so here's
00:30:41the thing here's here's the interesting thing that i hope people watching and listening are tuning into
00:30:46because you said something very very important hey we thought this paper paper quote thing was
00:30:54going to be great that one decision by itself one decision could have made the difference between
00:31:00success and failure absolutely we absolutely would have failed there's no question about it
00:31:05in my life and to have everything else you've got a brilliant idea you have and and you've proven
00:31:10it you have a very very successful company that you have proven that it is a very and it could
00:31:15have
00:31:15been a disaster because of one simple decision and you chose to listen to your customers and let
00:31:22them tell you it's like find the customer's itch and scratch it but you got to ask them where they
00:31:27itch yeah and part of the issue on that i think that that goes deeper that just kind of talk
00:31:34this goes more to a real life philosophical thing is i've always i've always noticed that people's
00:31:41greatest strengths tend to be their greatest weaknesses at the same time and kind of a quarrel and that's
00:31:46one you know mull on in your own life and you'll see it and see it and people you know
00:31:51but another one is
00:31:53it's really important to know what gets you excited personally what gets you jazz what do you um you know
00:32:01what where what are you passionate about there are two things one that plays into you know what
00:32:07you're great what you're good your strengths are but it also plays into be careful you're probably
00:32:13doing too much of it you're probably chasing that too much so i'll give you an example and make that
00:32:18a little more concrete for me it's taken years to realize but what really gets me excited what i
00:32:23really love to do is find a problem solve that problem and then have that problem solve it going
00:32:29forward right not a thing i have to continually solve and fix and that's what gets me excited i
00:32:35mean what did cruise compete do it took the hassle of okay i know i can get a better price
00:32:39but i got
00:32:39to talk to 16 different agents and compete you know etc whereas oh i can just go to one spot
00:32:44and the
00:32:45agents were already getting me their best offers because they know they're competing i can compare
00:32:49all on one page i can save some money and i can save a bunch of time and i can
00:32:53save the hassle of
00:32:54wait for somebody to get back to me again so it all it just makes it nice in me the
00:32:59thing about that
00:32:59is gonna you know i'm always chasing that high right so for example at one point i thought well
00:33:07wouldn't it be neat if when you went in okay well here's my cruise but you know with one click
00:33:12i can
00:33:13see the flights that are going uh and i can buy you know buy my flights there with one click
00:33:19i can see
00:33:19you know hotels that are you know before and after uh because they're in the port city and
00:33:25they already have my dates and you know where spend a bunch of time chasing that and the reality is
00:33:32people don't people want to buy flights the way they're used to buying flights they want to buy
00:33:37hotels the way they used to buy a hotel maybe they're you know hilton honors or marriott
00:33:43bonboy or whatever it's called and they're going to go to the hilton site and they're going to buy there
00:33:46maybe they like to go through xpedia for their flights or they are you know for me i you know
00:33:51i'll buy some stuff through xpedia because and i'll tell you why in a minute and um you know or
00:33:57for my
00:33:58american where i have a lot of status i buy through um you know i buy through the apple american
00:34:03they
00:34:04don't want this not useful to them spend a lot of time trying to make you know make that work
00:34:09but
00:34:10it doesn't i'm solving a problem that didn't exist it kind of goes back to what you were saying
00:34:16earlier that it should be if you're doing it right it should be easy exactly and that was you know
00:34:22we
00:34:22yeah we know we made we sold some hotels but not that many you know and it just was not
00:34:28it was not
00:34:29worth the hassle of doing it it just didn't work insurance that was another thing you know cruise
00:34:33insurance people buy this stuff travel insurance yes but people don't buy it you know they're if
00:34:38they're going to buy it they'll buy it while they're talking to the agent they're not going to buy
00:34:42it online we went through several different iterations oh group you know groups and you know
00:34:47large convention type things um tried that too we went through several different iterations
00:34:54just not the right way to sell it not the right platform to sell it on it's not something that
00:34:59you
00:34:59want people bidding on it's something where you really need to talk to somebody who knows what
00:35:03they're doing who can walk you through all the alternatives you know it's yeah just people
00:35:07sometimes buy a group of 20 cabins through us sure it happens but it's real we're not we're not
00:35:13it's we're not set up for corporate it's just not if the model does not work for it so how
00:35:19long did
00:35:19you typically try these different ideas before you came to the conclusion of like hey i because there's
00:35:24a lot of folks listening and think i've got a brilliant idea i can make this work and they persist
00:35:29and they persist and they persist which i respect but you have the ability to a unique ability
00:35:36to be able to say this is a long enough test to decide this doesn't work where a lot of
00:35:40people
00:35:40would persist on trying to prove their hypothesis how do you i don't have a unique ability i have
00:35:48that of stars because i i certainly wasted a lot of years on something with uh uh trying to make
00:35:54something work that was not going to work um and you know it's a i think everybody everybody should
00:35:59be required to play poker and learn how to play poker you know because you'll find when you're
00:36:05personal life and whatever because when you get a hand that starts to look you know looks good on
00:36:09the deal and the flop comes and those cards don't match your hand people do what's called chasing
00:36:15you know oh well you know i think it may be and and they lose a lot of money that
00:36:20way i mean that's a
00:36:21great point you can see it right now in iran they've lost they've lost big the sooner they admit that
00:36:29to
00:36:29themselves you know everybody is you know well we're gonna we're gonna keep fighting because
00:36:34what's right no you've lost you've already lost the sooner you recognize that the better off you're
00:36:41going to be the better off your children are going to be but we get we get attached to these
00:36:46things we
00:36:47get attached to these ideas and again looking at it as you know what really gets me excited like my
00:36:52my former partner who passed away a couple years ago she loved new ideas and that was her greatest
00:36:58strength she'd always come up with these what if we did this and what if we did that and there
00:37:03was a
00:37:04lot of value we got out of that but at the same time she was so enamored with these things
00:37:09she
00:37:09insists on us you know going down and trying stuff that i could tell was not going to work from
00:37:16the
00:37:16beginning and then some stuff that i couldn't we tried for a while and she'd you know well if we
00:37:21just
00:37:21did this we just did that it's like no this group thing is never going to work we did two
00:37:26different
00:37:26iterations where we designed stuff and in the first one you said oh well it didn't work because
00:37:30we didn't design it right okay we did it again well it still wasn't it's like no the idea was
00:37:36bad
00:37:37you know you get in writing you know as a creative writing they tell you you know if you write
00:37:41something that you really love it just you know i'll throw it away right away because it's probably
00:37:45not gonna work you know you get too enamored and you can't get too enamored at these things and
00:37:51you've just got to know what it is if you can't recognize in yourself what kind of things do i
00:37:56get
00:37:56very excited about you won't recognize when you've gone too far and when you you know you've got to
00:38:00toss it that your analogy of playing poker makes so much sense because like i can look back as i'm
00:38:09listening to you i can reflect on decisions i've made where i have persevered when my hand wasn't that
00:38:15great yeah now i might have learned new skills and and i can rationalize it in hindsight saying i learned
00:38:20new skills and made new contacts etc but hindsight being 2020 i should have pivoted i should have
00:38:26shifted i should have changed and i didn't because and it wasn't the stuff you know oh i had this
00:38:32great
00:38:32idea it makes me feel good because i had this great idea i'm pursuing this idea it makes me feel
00:38:37good
00:38:40you use perspective and it's natural i mean it happens to everybody it's who we are but the more that
00:38:45you know about yourself and what what gets you excited um the more you can you can see those you
00:38:51know those those danger sides see i really love some of the themes that you're hitting on today
00:38:56just as a theme through here like number one doing stuff that you're passionate about what gets you
00:38:59jazzed and what you get you excited and hey if you're doing it right it should be easy it's almost
00:39:04like it's been a while since i've shot a basketball but the last time i shot a basketball and played
00:39:10on a
00:39:10regular basis by the time it goes off my fingers i know what's going in i don't even have to
00:39:15watch
00:39:15it feels perfect it's easy it's a flow it's a rhythm and shit you don't even have to watch it
00:39:22you know
00:39:22it's going in and it's easy it's the ones that are forced and awkward and difficult that that's a prayer
00:39:28and i think a lot of that same what you're just talking about is the same thing business-wise
00:39:33what should a business owner do when they are trying to remove themselves as the bottleneck
00:39:38without losing control of quality okay uh well the important thing here is to understand what a
00:39:46business is and isn't and you know it's not something to give you prestige it's not i feel
00:39:56good about myself because i've got a bunch of people working for me or you know look at how many
00:40:01square
00:40:01feet we have least it's not about any of those things that shouldn't be about any of those things
00:40:05i remember way back from the early days was you know was out in california and it was with
00:40:12some original partners and something in in moxie what became nation john uh it was oh well yeah we've
00:40:18got to get you know it's all about getting funding because it's validation right all these things i guess
00:40:23the common theme is validation should never be about that should always be about bottom line how much
00:40:30profit will be making and it should be about um how little work do i have to do to get
00:40:37them
00:40:37um for me any task that's repetitive either somebody else is doing it we've automated it
00:40:45automated it or we pushed it outside the organization um you know i didn't get a ton
00:40:53frankly out of my stanford experience but i did come out with a number of heuristics and in one of
00:40:58the
00:40:58the things in organizational behavior they talked about are buffering and bridging strategies bridging
00:41:02strategies mean you push it outside your organization so somebody else does it and you can see that
00:41:07obviously in cruise compete where it's the travel agents who are doing the interaction with the
00:41:13people yeah we get an occasional customer who you know the website's designed so there are not a lot
00:41:18of questions in how to do it it's very straightforward it takes you through a b c d um but
00:41:24yeah there's
00:41:24some people have questions fine i've got somebody who does
00:41:28spend a few hours a week total and um you know answering those queries and that's fine
00:41:33but it's not me anything that can be automated you automate it uh none of our stuff is automated
00:41:41with artificial intelligence by the way it's all you know stuff that we've just simplified made it so
00:41:46it's so you don't have to do it and then also it comes down to strategies about you know how
00:41:51do we
00:41:52eliminate and talk about how we eliminated sales another thing i didn't want from the beginning was to
00:41:56have you know we had a department that did collections you know building in collections
00:42:00one of the things that i wanted to do early on this is basically now you know everything's electronic
00:42:04everybody's used to doing everything electronically right but back in the day uh we were used to paying
00:42:11for stuff by check a company check you send us an invoice 30 days we pay the invoice i didn't
00:42:26we now have credit card in ach but credit card was absolutely required and they're showing me
00:42:31to do this and we had pushback from agencies about we pay everything by check i said look
00:42:35you can you know we don't have a company credit card fine put it on your personal credit card
00:42:40get reimbursed but this is the only way to play this is the only way we'll do it and in
00:42:45thinking
00:42:45about that i came across a it was a travel agency called cruise web i don't know if they still
00:42:51exist
00:42:52they had the worst website it was you know this was back 2003 time frame right and it was just
00:42:58like
00:42:58this black screen with these horrible neon colors on it and they said we will not talk to you we
00:43:08will
00:43:08communicate only by email and but we get right back to you on the email and because we can do
00:43:14this
00:43:14we are you know you'll get the best use and they did very well and they were quite well respected
00:43:19but seeing that that gave me the courage to go yeah you know what i'm okay saying no to customers
00:43:24you gotta be willing to say no to customers and that's where things get off track you know i remember
00:43:31discussions debates back at that nation job about we got to get rid of this data entry you know the
00:43:38time has come people have access to the internet they can do this shit themselves it's cost us too much
00:43:43money it's too much of a headache and it makes the company unsaleable which ultimately it was unsaleable
00:43:48even after we got rid of it but there was a lot of pushback oh what if you know they
00:43:52only do this
00:43:53for years and this and that and then we got rid of it and it really didn't have much of
00:43:57an effect
00:43:57but you get married to these things you refer to that as the sacred cow right exactly you know another
00:44:04thing that was we'll see the other way more recently oh yeah i know okay you know for customers we
00:44:11had a
00:44:12uh some of what we do is uh is we have a a mailing list of about uh 400 000
00:44:20people you know cruise lines
00:44:21will do you know email blasts that we you know would charge up for this and some of them are
00:44:26like
00:44:26well you know if you can put together the you know the the html on it and do that do
00:44:33that work for us
00:44:35and we lost a person who was employed doing that and now we're just sort of doing it for ourselves
00:44:41and we just started saying look we don't have anybody who can do this no and the answer was
00:44:45okay we'll figure and there's some customers you're going to lose that way but generally
00:44:49you got to keep your organization lean you got to stay in your lane you got to do what you're
00:44:53good at
00:44:54doing and you can't do stuff that um that's a stratum for the mission you can't do stuff that oh
00:44:59i'm
00:44:59going to have to have another person to do this you can't do stuff that's going to add to your
00:45:03weekly
00:45:03calendar to match you know i have very very little the only stuff that i do at this point
00:45:10with maybe one exception is stuff that nobody else can do that i can't automate and i can't have
00:45:17somebody else do and really the only thing on that list is our monthly our most of months we bill
00:45:25our phones and the way we do it is this when when the travel agents enter their enter their bookings
00:45:34they essentially create their own invoices as as they go because we know what the sale date is and
00:45:39we know what the uh the number of the dollar figure is we charge them off and then once we
00:45:43get to um
00:45:45uh you know to the first of the month we just have a list of here all the things we
00:45:50need to charge
00:45:50and it's on one side of the screen is what we need to charge on the other side of the
00:45:54screen is first
00:45:55the credit card thing we copy paste copy paste copy paste and then we just pull up the one for
00:45:59the
00:46:00aca who wants one do aca transactions and copy paste copy paste copy paste and it's 45 minutes
00:46:05through all of it and stuff which brings me to you know another good example of what uh what companies
00:46:09do wrong well i'm in the process of leaving authorized.net the credit card process they're owned by
00:46:15they just had a major software upgrade to make it more modern and it's still terrible i went into so
00:46:24part one of the one of the fields is is the uh email address deal okay and i have some
00:46:32agencies
00:46:33that are dot travel and their email address and when i put that email address in it says
00:46:37this email address is not found so i sent a note to customer service it said hey your system is
00:46:44rejecting dot travel email addresses and you need to fix that and they said oh yes our system only
00:46:51accepts email addresses uh that have a a three-letter domain extension i said perhaps you don't understand
00:46:58the concept of customer service but something doesn't work that's called a bug it's your job to
00:47:04fix that bug oops sorry i thought i had that muted it's your job to fix that bug in other
00:47:09words make it
00:47:10work uh and and there are other things on that that they really are not in the they're just not
00:47:17in
00:47:17the mindset of the of the users another thing on that is you have can you can sort your list
00:47:22of uh of
00:47:24of customers which is great and because you know alphabetically because i have all the stuff
00:47:29alphabetically here and but the problem is if i open if i just click on it to go in and
00:47:34and and do the
00:47:34chart and then i go back it loses my whole sort i gotta go back and do it again the
00:47:38only way to make it work
00:47:39is to open it in a new tab doing the new tab and then remember delete that tab and then
00:47:45go back to
00:47:45the other um they're making it hard work to be a customer yes exactly because i don't think anybody
00:47:52has sat down and went all right i'm going to be a customer and just do this as a customer
00:47:55well it's
00:47:56just like the hotel you were talking about earlier in cartagena it's a five-star hotel and they didn't
00:48:02know the customer experience because none of them had stayed in their own hotel as a guest
00:48:05as a guest exactly what are some the uh to the um you know i'm switching to this new company
00:48:12we're
00:48:13switching to oh another thing in there you know again not listening to customer oh there's there's
00:48:19authorized.net and then behind them there's the bank the actual merchant processor right they were
00:48:24been overcharging us quite a lot i just hadn't noticed because i didn't set it up in the first
00:48:28place and i finally went in and i you know i talked like look you've been a customer for years
00:48:32you've been overcharging the hell out of it you know what can you do like well you know we can
00:48:37cut
00:48:37this much but you have to sign a three-year contract and i said look the fact that you want
00:48:42me to sign
00:48:43a three-year contract tells me you know there are better deals out there so you know give me a
00:48:47really
00:48:47good really you know actual good deal you know or like or i'm going to find one of those and
00:48:51we're
00:48:51going to leave and that was their best offer so and then i found a company called stacks which
00:48:57stack said look you know their whole pitch this whole guy's pitch this whole pitch was this look
00:49:02there are two parts to what you pay there's what the you know visa and mastercard are charging you
00:49:06nobody has any control over that and then there are fees on top of that we charge you a 250
00:49:12a month
00:49:13left fee and that's it the other guys are going to make it really complicated so you don't understand
00:49:18what you're paying them and what you're not and he was 100 correct and so it's like all right i'm
00:49:23moving here and their software's better so we're in the process of moving you know it's going to
00:49:27cost me some money up front uh not too much but i'll be in in better software going forward and
00:49:33it's
00:49:33just it's the the first guys if they had just gone hmm do we want to get a little bit
00:49:37of money from
00:49:38these guys for doing absolutely nothing because they do absolutely nothing once you're a customer
00:49:42right it's all automated uh or do we want to get no money and they decide we prefer to have
00:49:46no much
00:49:46i don't get it certainly not in the mind of the customer uh that one you know the uh
00:49:53authorized.net obviously they don't care it's like yeah we know this is a problem we've been
00:49:57known this is a problem for years we're just not going to fix it is it a complicated fix no
00:50:04there's a software line of code that validates if there's a valid email address or not
00:50:08all you have to do is dump in all the different domains into that
00:50:12and you're done yeah we're not going to bother okay you don't have my business can you conversely
00:50:18can you share a specific specific example of a company that impressed you operationally and
00:50:24what they did that others are missing i can absolutely do that i am not a handy guy i am
00:50:31not
00:50:31a real man when it comes to fixing stuff around the house but i just installed a new thermostat
00:50:36because when i'm in columbia and my child is in and out of the house because he's at college not
00:50:42too
00:50:42far away and he's back and forth a lot he tends to touch that thermostat and make it go you
00:50:46know and
00:50:47and run up my bills you know it's fine he wants to turn up the heat or the ac when
00:50:52he's here but
00:50:53you know he's here and he's not here for three days so i wanted the automated thermostat that i can
00:50:58control from you know from wherever i am usually in columbia right uh this thing it says okay
00:51:05installation first thing you do install our app app comes up what do you want to do i want to
00:51:09install
00:51:09your thermostat okay step one here's a picture of what your current thermostat looks like take it off
00:51:14the wall you know step two go turn off the power step three here are these different wires you know
00:51:20before you do anything we've got labels for those wires to put on those wire step you know which wire
00:51:25you know which ones are connected i rc whatever tells me exactly step by step screen by screen to go
00:51:32through do everything connected to the internet absolutely idiot proof which i need when i'm doing
00:51:37something like this you know color by number color by number exactly and with pictures and it's like
00:51:45look if you don't understand this here's a video but i understood all that it was very clear and just
00:51:50walks you right through the whole thing that was really it's called sensei i think yeah sensei without
00:51:56the without without the yeah sensei and it was just you know whichever one was the most highest rated
00:52:01on amazon is the one i bought i don't need anything really fancy i just want to be able to
00:52:06you know
00:52:06turn off the ac when there's nobody home and it does all that so i was very very impressed with
00:52:11that and i come across example all the time i mean um i wish i could remember the name of
00:52:15the other
00:52:16company white phone i'm with a company called intermedia they're spectacular you know uh they're
00:52:2235 bucks a month and their price never goes up once you're on once you're with them they have all
00:52:30the
00:52:30features that i want i don't mess with it very often but you know when i needed to put on
00:52:36the
00:52:36uh an auto attendant and all that stuff which has been wonderful because it gets very well in my
00:52:42my spam calls they used to get a ton of spam calls um you know it's a little a little
00:52:48bit complicated
00:52:48they got somebody right there to walk you through it and once it's done it works you know they've been
00:52:53the guys i had before see the uh shoot i wish i could remember their name because i want other
00:52:59people
00:52:59to avoid them but i just had all kinds of problems and then they wanted to raise the price on
00:53:03me
00:53:03immediately and it was worth throwing away the 200 bucks i spent on their phone to make the switch
00:53:08because it's it's just these guys make my life so much easier so much better so how do you train
00:53:14yourself to recognize opportunities that are hiding inside of operational frustration i mean that's
00:53:19another theme that i've i've noticed through here like when you talked about your your i was a college
00:53:24student at stanford and i saw these binders and the job listings were outdated i mean that was a
00:53:29source of operational frustration for you and hey when you're at nation job you when you're looking
00:53:33at your cruises like oh i just want to be able to do get deals faster like you have a
00:53:38you have for
00:53:39recognizing opportunities that are hiding inside of operational frustration any thoughts as i just it
00:53:46just i have a very thin skin for things that i don't like stupidity and when things could have been
00:53:51done smarter especially easier and i say i see waste you know um that's gee why do i have to
00:54:00go
00:54:00through opening a new tab for you know 100 different charges each time when that could just be automatic
00:54:06you know keeping in a managing state is in software is not that difficult and it's you know that
00:54:12technology's been around for 25 years but so things things things that uh um that annoy me it's like
00:54:19this could be easier this could be quicker where am i spending my time you know and i'll give you
00:54:24an
00:54:24example of how how you can get caught up and stuff back in the day we're much better now but
00:54:28we used to
00:54:29have have gaps where we wouldn't have a we wouldn't have a certain cruise itinerary you'd have a what
00:54:34we wouldn't have a certain cruise itinerary on the site so somebody would come to the site and we'd have
00:54:40a
00:54:40link say you know that said hey you know can't find what you're looking for click here they'd send an
00:54:45email it was really it was really missing it would take i would you know send him a note back
00:54:50that
00:54:50said hey uh i've sent your stuff to you know this agent we're working on getting this itinerary on
00:54:56the site but in the meantime you know you can um uh you know you can get at least one
00:55:03quote from
00:55:03these guys and i was doing that myself and going oh you know i have these relationships with these
00:55:08individual agencies and they get they get these for me and i give them to different people and i'm
00:55:14building trust and whatever that was all bullshit we just automated it they just went off saved me
00:55:19time probably made zero changes um another thing we used to do we used to have annual awards
00:55:25we used to do in september on the anniversary of uh um you know when we launched and you know
00:55:31we
00:55:31send out gift baskets to agents who did this and that and eventually realized it was a hassle
00:55:37the rest of us were wrong this didn't show up you know whatever i eventually realized people don't
00:55:44really care about that stuff it wasn't do you want to say anything other than we're spending money and
00:55:49we were creating work for it and we just stopped doing it and nobody said anything okay now uh if
00:55:56there
00:55:56had been 15 people going oh i really love that why don't you do it and i felt appreciated
00:56:02now honestly they didn't care so okay why should i right but part of that was i was kind of
00:56:10in love
00:56:10with that idea it was my idea we're showing these people how much we appreciate and we do depend on
00:56:15them to you know to report stuff accurately tell the stuff i want them to love us and all that
00:56:21but
00:56:22at the end of the day it wasn't a good idea and you've just got to be able to get
00:56:27got to be able
00:56:28to recognize those things and it's hard people who are entrepreneurs we're idea people we do fall in
00:56:33love with ideas if we didn't we wouldn't be entrepreneurs right well we wouldn't go oh i have
00:56:39better i believe i have a better way of doing this that's who we are it's in our you know
00:56:43in our dna as
00:56:44they say but you've got to recognize when it's not serving you can't you can't fall too in love with
00:56:49an idea and you just got to go look all right this didn't work i'll have another idea tomorrow
00:56:53i've always felt that frustration is your friend yeah that's a that's a call to action to pivot or
00:56:59to make something better and if it's not within your power to make something better or the juice
00:57:04isn't worth the squeeze that it's going to take too much time energy and resources to make it better
00:57:08that's when you pivot yeah and honestly you know it's so much easier now than it used to be
00:57:12it's oh you know i have this issue in the house that i want to do x oh i'll look
00:57:18on amazon and
00:57:18there's probably somebody who solved that most of the time that's true but if nobody has there you
00:57:24go there's your next business you know it's not um it makes it it's really very easy in this day
00:57:32and
00:57:32age to know what's out there and to be able to you know be able to jump on things and
00:57:37it just it
00:57:38just started it all comes back to that pain point you know what's frustrating so looking ahead how do
00:57:44you see marketplaces evolving and what will separate the winners from everyone else well i
00:57:48think it you know it just really comes back down to those basics how easy is it to use stuff
00:57:52i mean
00:57:53amazon makes my life a hell of a lot easier you know i don't have to you know people oh
00:57:58jeff bezos
00:57:59shouldn't have all this money i bless jeff bezos every goddamn day because there's stuff that i need
00:58:06and i can get it i mean i'm in columbia now as much as i'm in the u.s and
00:58:11it's not so easy down
00:58:13there and you really see the difference of yeah i want this well you know you can order it's going
00:58:19to take six weeks or you got to go around shopping or it just doesn't exist down there i'm going
00:58:24to
00:58:24import it from here i'm going to pay probably some stuff's not so bad some stuff i'm paying triple
00:58:29depends on the value of it i had my certain weight set you know the power block yes want to
00:58:35get one
00:58:35of those you know well i found the dealer in chile it was the closest one and it's like yeah
00:58:41we
00:58:42can get it to you but the cost of getting it to you with the shipping and taxes the import
00:58:47taxes it's
00:58:48going to be triple what it would be just fine so i look at other ways of baby important but
00:58:53you you
00:58:53appreciate how much easier so many people's lives he's made my life is just way way better i want
00:59:02something i just three clicks okay it's there i don't have to remember it i don't have to keep it
00:59:07on the list you know and i know i'm getting a good deal on it because if there were a
00:59:11better if people
00:59:12could make money selling it for less they would be on amazon it's a very competitive marketplace
00:59:16sure there's probably a little bit of graph going on in there but in general you know it's a good
00:59:21deal
00:59:21and that's really what it comes down to it's is it easy to use you know are you solving a
00:59:27problem or
00:59:27solving a real problem not just what you think might be there um you know again and i've stumbled
00:59:33down these roads of i think this is a problem and it turned out not to be you know people
00:59:39didn't care
00:59:39so so if people want to know more about you cruisecompete.com or what you do what are the
00:59:46best ways for them to connect and learn more um certainly uh they can get to me through cruise
00:59:52compete uh absolutely the contact us will uh will get to me that's if you're looking at taking a
00:59:59cruise absolutely we can uh we can save you some time and save you some money system very self
01:00:05explanatory thank you so much the wisdom that you shared today and the time you shared today
01:00:10is very much appreciated and i hope those listening and watching learned as much and appreciated as much
01:00:16as i do thanks so much for taking the time i enjoy it my friends all righty take care
01:00:22um
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