Adoption

Change is inevitable, but growth is optional. John Maxwell. Today, we talk about how businesses adapt to change and adopt new practices and technology to better reach their customers. On today’s straight shot marketing podcast.
People don’t like change, but change happens like John Maxwell said change is inevitable, but growth is optional.
So the question is how quickly can your business adapt to change? So Zachary let’s discuss the world is always turning, right? A society is always moving styles, come, and go. Words, slang changes with each passing generation. Our lives. What we do within our lives always changes. So how can the business communities keep up?
Well, um, as you mentioned before, people don’t like change, but businesses even more so now running a business is like sailing a ship through the oceans of commerce. You concentrate on keeping, moving it forward over and over again. Now you make little adjustments as necessary so that you can reach your goal, but turning that ship.
It’s not an easy task. Now the key to reacting to change in the ocean or anywhere starts with observation and acceptance, you have to accept that change is going to happen. When you see it coming, that change must happen or. You’re going to crash right into that iceberg Titanic, and then you’re going to become shipwrecked.
But our job as the companies and the executives and marketing directors that steer the ship for those companies is to keep ourselves in front of our audience forever maintaining awareness and preference while also soliciting new business to keep that ship moving forward. That. Is that the purpose of marketing or business communications to do marketing, right?
You have to keep your business in front of your customer to figure out the best move for your business when change is upon us because usually, change happens to us. We have to understand the history of our society, of businesses, and technology when it comes to the adoption process. So let’s discuss how the world changes or how the world turns.
I don’t know the theme song for that. I would love to insert that
Traditional adoption trends. This is what I’m talking about. So let’s, let’s start with, let’s start with the big picture. Okay. Our society has gone through several shifts over recorded time. Okay. Now society 1.0 is the Hunter-gatherer society. Society 2.0, is the agrarian society. Society 3.0 is the industrial society and society 4.0 is the information society.
You could tell that we’d named these. Or our reporting on these labeled these within the, after the.com era, because everything sounds like an OS system. It’s windows 3.1. It was 8.0. So, uh, each of these big picture shifts often is a direct correlation to the technology innovations of the day. Let me explain to you because this is important.
Okay. Hunter-gatherer society, right? 1.0, we used what we had, what we came with. All right. Our tools were our hands in our feet, the rocks that we found on the ground, the sticks that we found in the forest. Okay. Society 2.0 the agrarian society. By this time we learned how to make hand tools. For farming.
So now we could, you know, use a hoe until the ground and irrigate, and we learned how to make tools with our hands that we could use in farming, the plow. That’s just a big tool that you carried behind the horse. Right? These are tools for farming. Okay. Then we had the industrial society 3.0, okay. We learned machines and machines revolutionized our society and our culture and did the work for us.
And if you watch the Terminator series, the machines will take over. That leads us to our current societal age, which is society 4.0. The information society. Now we have radio-television, internet in the fastest access to information like we’ve never had before. I’m thinking we’re probably headed into the 4.5.
I don’t know what that did. Miss misinformation society makes those, uh, those decisions don’t they don’t know about fake news, a new society. Anyways, this is all very, very high level. Now, within each of these societal divisions, we have things like the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, the Renaissance industrially, and even those.
Can be broken down even further. Usually, we do it by, you know, generation. Do you have the GI generation, the silent generation, the baby boomers, gen X, which I am gen Y which you are gen Y. Then we have the millennials? We have the millennials, gen Z, or if we aren’t specifically talking about people, we’ll refer to them by their decades.
Right. You have the twenties, the thirties, the fifties, the eighties, and speaking of decades, we’ve actually done a podcast kind of about that topic. Uh, I guess it was decades ago. I think it was a couple of years ago, but it was on generational marketing and that was really, really cool. I think you guys should check it out.
So if you haven’t seen that podcast yet, it’s called generational marketing. You can go to straight shot.net and look it up. There’s also a teaser video for that podcast. I was, how am I brag or anything, but in the promotional, a teaser video for that podcast, I was holding a flux capacitor in my lap. It’s pretty rad.
Uh, but, uh, one of the identifiable elements within these subdivisions. It’s still technology. So the larger divisions, Mark, bigger changes in technology. And then once that technology is made, it is often, you know, improved upon different people will invent different, uh, variations of it. But once that big invention hits, that usually marks the end of an era and we move into.
A new division, the next division. Of course, the problem is we never know that until after we’ve gone through it. So then somebody, you know, years later will look back on it and say, Oh, that’s when this started. That’s when millennials happened to tell you when, when we started using, um, When, when I first started working in the marketing industry at an agency, we used to FedEx things to publications overnight.
We would print out a hard copy of the ad that we wanted to run in that newspaper magazine, whatever. And we would FedEx it to them, hand delivery. Then the newspapers had something really cool called ad star. For those of you in the industry, you know what I’m talking about? Where we would actually put indirectly, we would like FTP directly into their computer and we would tell it what our ad was that we wanted.
And now nobody uses FedEx unless they’re receiving something from Amazon. Now that’s usual ups, but time is fascinating. Isn’t it? And people, the whole thing, I love to hear about people across time and to Marvel at how they lived in the similarities with today and the differences. I think that’s why people enjoy period dramas and, uh, on TV and movies and stuff like that.
Well that, and just general nostalgia, you know, the stodgy is when you, uh, think on things in your own lifetime, like I just was, I was being nostalgic, but you know, I could sit and listen to older people about their lives for hours and hours on end. Absolutely. I love it too. I was actually just listening to a piece of music or I guess watching a music video today about the nineties.
And I think the name of the song is nineties kid. I have not heard that one. I think, uh, Jordan rev, John, just a little shout out to Jordan. Rev John, he’s the artist. No, I know he’s, he’s, he’s brand new. He’s a baby, but he’s a baby. He listened to me, but he sings a song called nineties kid. And I guess he’s, I guess he’s a 90s kid, but, uh, anyway, so it’s just like a montage of all these things.
If you grew up in the nineties and even some of that stuff is a little bit. The late nineties, where I was like, too cool. For all that. You probably thought about that the same way that we thought about Stacey’s mom. Stacey’s got it going on.
yeah. Okay. Anyway, back to business. When did, when did Ozzy become an actor?
It was such a great song. You became an actor because MTV did stop playing music. No MTV ran a show called cribs, and it was basically the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but it was on MTV. So it was about their houses and cars and stuff. Shout. So the Osborne’s did an episode of cribs and it was so funny.
And so well received by the audience that MTV offered them their own reality show. No, I’m being informative. That’s good stuff right there. That’s a nugget. Yep. Okay. Back to business and. The business community. So tell us how all of this, uh, change over time affects business. Well, the change affects everyone, including the people that are working in businesses and business owners as well.
But there are several keys that business owners use that businesses use to handle change. And I’m not going to go through them. I have six that I’m going to list for you here today. Okay. Number one, number one is acceptance. We have to acknowledge the change. Denial does not help except that. Now, I know that SMA reference for all of you.
Now I know, and we’ve established in this conversation that people don’t like change and businesses are filled. With people, but keeping your heads in the sand, isn’t beneficial for our company. Right. And some people will be going against their very nature. Yes. But owning a business, managing a business, isn’t an easy job, but someone has to be captain of the ship.
And if you are the boss. That’s you, uh, that means more responsibility, more looking beyond our own nature as to be with it. That’s true. And I guess it comes with a territory, a part of the job description when you sign up for the life of a business owner or a high-level executive. Yeah. But you know, to, to back it off a little bit, I was a little bit.
Pushing him a minute ago. Now I’ll back it off a little bit. Uh, people are flawed. We all are. Yeah. So here’s a tip to help you stay ahead of it. Keep your ear to the ground in your eyes, on the horizon. You have to look for change anticipating it so that you can make the best decision that you can. For your company.
This is why we have trade publications and associations, peer groups, keeping up that observation and awareness of what’s going on around. You will make acceptance easier. Once the change happens. Here we go. Again. We’re getting deep. We did that last time. Didn’t we, um, owning a business is serious. It’s not all fun and games as some employees like to think that it is.
Um, that’s one of the reasons owners and executives deserve the perks that they get within a true company. And, you know, just like the way children treat their parents, business leaders are often underappreciated for these types of things. You know, keeping another human alive and well sheltered and fed and safe and educated is a big task.
They don’t know the long nights and the crying and the screaming, or, or the joy that comes when things are going well. With things that are running like a well-oiled machine, all pistons are firing in the right direction. All systems are good. We use a lot of analogy stowing. Yes. Yeah. That’s a way to communicate a clear picture.
Now, another way to ease acceptance is to understand our past. Yeah, let’s talk more about that. We’ve discussed the different societal divisions, but I know you talk more about this in some of your speaking engagements. Yeah. Um, I often talk about the adoption process in a bit more detailed that’s specific to whatever it is that I’m teaching about.
Okay. So let’s have it. We’re not going anywhere. Okay. Uh, one of the ways to understand and accept change is to see our track record. As people. So we’re going to dive into that a little bit. Let’s look at it from a little different perspective, right? So let’s look at it by industry in a way. Okay. Not specific industries like people are used to, but you’ll hang with me.
Storytelling. Okay. This is an activity that people do. This is storytelling is a noun. It’s a thing. It’s not an industry. Yeah, we used to tell stories around campfires. Okay. People would gather around the campfire cause it’s the only thing we had for heat. And they would tell stories and people would listen to campfire stories.
If you ever wonder where the, uh, the idea of you going to summer camp and telling ghost stories around the campfire comes from this is it. This is where it comes from. Okay. It’s how we used to tell stories. Then we build buildings and people would gather in theaters to tell stories, right? We had William Shakespeare plays, right.
Then we had the printing press. Hm. So the printing press was invented and we had books that people could read in that was storytelling. Then it moved to soap operas on the radio. Remember the radio used to be furniture that was in your house that we had film moving pictures. Then those moving pictures went to the small screen, which was television.
Television went from broadcast to cable, which means it reached more people. Didn’t we have the advent of the VCR see and I remember this, we didn’t have cable growing up? So that’s, that’s where I fell in this line, but we did have a VCR when VCRs first came out. So we had home video, people brought their movies home to, uh, to enjoy their storytelling from the comfort of their home.
Now we have streaming, so people don’t even go out and buy a video from the store. They buy it from their phone or directly from their TV. They just stream it. So you could kind of see how through storytelling it’s. We changed how we do this. Technology will always be able to know when people stopped watching DVDs and started streaming because our DVD collection stops.
That’s very true stops. You know, like all of us had a toy story and then it just stopped. Well, let’s look at, um, let’s look at another one. Let’s look at music. Okay. When music first, um, started for, you know, for the society for masses, society would gather at the opera house at the theater, right? Just like storytelling.
They would gather at the theater and they would listen to, uh, you know, operas were the albums from, uh, back in. Beethoven and Bach they in Mozart. Um, if you watch the movie Amadeus, great movie, it’s his favorite movie. He’s writing a collection. That is what modern-day we call it an album, but he played it for a season at the theater in front of people.
After that, we played music on the radio with the advent of the radio. Then we, he had home entertainment now, home entertainment. W it gets broken down even further. We had records. I don’t know, people, kids that do not even know what a record is. It’s like a giant CD. What’s a CD. We have 45, 33, and 78 for you.
Uh, older folks. That just sounds like a bunch of numbers. You’re just making it up. And then we had. Tapes now tapes were smaller. You could fit them in your pocket record. You couldn’t fit in your bucket. So we went from records to tapes. Now tapes came in several forms. We had real to real, a track for all you truckers.
And then, you know, the cassette tape that we’re, that we’re all those of us that are genetics are used to. Then we had MTV, MTV was aware of sharing music. Over the television. Okay. Back in the day, back in the day, when they actually played music on MTV, another story, uh, then after that we had home video, we would buy artists would release their videos on.
Home release because they weren’t on MTV anymore. So, but they still making them so you can buy them, in the store. Then we had CDs, which you’ve had. I think you mentioned. Yes, I was a CD well, I mean, I had tapes, but yeah, I think my generation is defined by the CDs. Collins was the very first artist that decided they were not going to release their album on tape.
It was only going to be on CD and, it rocked the world. People are like, what is there? What are they doing? Well, after CDs came MP3s. Okay. Now MP3s, this is all under the line of home entertainment. MP3s are downloaded. You don’t have physical. No, you don’t have a physical copy at all. And if you bought it on iTunes and you lose your Apple ID, you lost that song waste of money by him individually.
So moving on from that, then we had YouTube. So YouTube, a lot of people listen even still today, listen to music on YouTube, but we also have, we’ve moved beyond that and we have streaming, we have Spotify and Apple music and all of these things where people don’t, I mean, you don’t buy music hardly at all anymore.
Napster kind of killed the entire. Industry, but I won’t go into that. Killed the radio star and Napster killed everybody. Yes. But my point is, even in listening to music, um, you can see technology has changed the way that we live our lives. It changed the careers of some people because being a rock star no longer exists, sorry.
Oh, you people that are still playing, like it exists in the music. I like my lighters full-flowing in the air for you. Yeah. It’s just not the same as it was. Okay. Uh, no, uh, I talked about this in, in one more way. News, how people get their news. Okay. It started as they had what was called a town crier.
Do you know what a town crier is? I do know what a town crier is. I would love to, okay. A town crier was a person that stood in the middle of town. And they usually were accompanied by a little bell, like a dinner bell, kind of, well, a little bigger than dinner bell. And they ring the bell, they get everybody’s attention and they would shout headlines for people.
Shut the news, shout the gossip of the day at people walking by in the town. So if you ever look at old. Uh, movies, you might be able to see us or so-and-so comes into town from out of town. And then everybody gathers around to hear about what’s going on wherever he came from. So he is telling the news, tell me what’s happening.
Tell him the news about somewhere away from that. That was the town crier. Now, after that, we had the printing press, as I mentioned before. And then we had newspapers. Now I’ll talk about this a little later, but there’s always a transition period between the two and you don’t just, you know, throw one away when something new comes out.
So the town crier changed from being the person that told stories to be the person that’s sold newspapers. That’s where the extra, extra read all about it comes from. Right. They would run around and yell headlines. As you mentioned, they would yell headlines to sell the newspapers. So that’s, you can kind of see where that came from.
Well, that person used to just be the one that told the story, right. And now there was a printed form. So that person sold the newspapers then came radio and we got our news through. Radio and then television, then we had websites. So it would go to, you know, Fox news.com or cnn.com to get their news that way so that they weren’t chained to there.
Six o’clock, 11 o’clock. Right. Now, people don’t even use websites. They use social media or apps. Um, well Facebook is a lot of people get their news through Facebook, through Twitter. A lot of people make up their news through Facebook. Well, we’re not talking about fake news right now. The sand. I think we mentioned that already.
You put a meme next to it. It must be true. Uh, but, uh, there are also apps on your phone too, but my point is, again, you can see how it is moved. Uh, as technology happens, the way that we live, our society changes. Now let’s look at, let’s look at one more. This is a little more business-focused. Okay. For those of you that are in retail, we used to sell things to people.
By festivals, you had these travel, this traveling group that came to towns. Gypsies. Yeah. Basically, uh, traveling sales shows that happened. Okay. And so this, this festival would come, um, that’s where the, if you see the County fair, Very, this is kind of how all that started things don’t just happen for no reason.
Guys, people would come together at these festivals to sell things which included their cows or their livestock. For those of you that, that is thinking about Southern Southern festivals in four H clubs, all that happened because that’s how we did retail. That’s how we sold things. Okay. Then we went to brick and mortar.
That’s what everybody’s familiar with. It’s where you actually have stores in towns. Uh, so we went from stores and towns used to be, there was one store per town. We no longer had to have people running around. Then we moved to the age of Sears and Roebuck, Sears and Roebuck started as a catalog and mail-order company that took the world by storm because you could order something out of the catalog.
We set these. Printed pieces of collateral around that did the sales for us. And then when I grew up the mall exploded and we had these giant shopping malls with lots of stores that are in them. And then today, so we have Amazon Walmart, right? You can go to Walmart part now, which is a department store was a very popular department store.
You could walk in there, they won’t have it. And you know what they’ll tell you to do. No online. And they’re like, well, we could order it. I’m like I could order it. Yeah. Sometimes you need it like right now. But my point is things keep changing based on technology. Now, as we get more detailed, as we look closer, kind of like a microcosm.
We see even more. Okay. So those were, those were those weren’t as big as societal changes, but, um, now we’re going to talk about the smaller picture. Okay. So before I talked about music in general, how people enjoyed music now we’ll talk specifically about the delivery of music. Okay. Okay. So it started with the personal delivery of music started with the radio.
Okay. People had, uh, again, the furniture in there, the house, or they had the little bitty one that they, you know, they would try to listen to the baseball game on am, stereo, whatever, um, him stereo a am radio. Wasn’t a stereo. Uh, so we went from that to the boombox, which was stereo. It had two speakers and you could carry it around with you and listen to it huge in the early eighties.
Um, yeah, that’s what it was after that. We had the Walkman, which was a little size, has a lot to do with why technology changes to do that today. Um, so we went from, uh, the boombox to the Walkman cassettes gave way to, we had the disc man, uh, and then. After that, there was a period when people were in love with their car stereos.
So car stereos were a big thing. Before everybody just kept their standard thing, but then now, you know, everybody’s started enjoying the dome. You would hear it going down the street. We like that
after that came the iPod, which was a thousand songs in your pocket. Ooh, sorry. It was very impressive. They did. We had moved to their phones. Apple doesn’t even make the iPod anymore. Yeah, because now you have the iPhone and you can put songs on seriously. You can do everything on your phone. And then now.
We have Bluetooth. So your phone can connect to your car so you don’t need a car stereo. So the point is, even with things that, you know, how we do things like personal delivery of music has changed. Let’s look at another one. Let’s look at personal individual communications in general. Okay. Started.
We had letters, people were pen pals to each other. They will smoke signals. Yeah, well, I guess that’s true. Smoke signals may have been first. And then we had, uh, yes, carrier pigeons and then letters through a postal system, which I thought was where I was going to start. But you’re absolutely right. Uh, so we had letters, letters were a big deal when you received them.
So, when the mailman came, we were like, Oh, the mail they gave me, it’s a big deal. Right. Somebody wrote a letter and you would, you would pour over these letters, right? Then we had the Telegraph where we could talk over wires using Morse code, and then we had the telephone. Okay. Now the the telephone huge invention, right?
People talk to each other via the telephone. Interestingly enough, you know who designed the telephone Alexander Graham bell. He also invented. The microphone. Oh, yep. Wow. Thank you for everything that we’re using today. After telephones, we had shortwave radio where we could talk over radio waves. Then we had the CB radio for all you truckers.
Breaker break 1–9 This is a little dipper to big skinny. Are you? We had beepers pagers. Yeah. Um, we talked a little bit about how much people don’t like change when it came to beepers, there was a huge pushback against beepers and this big negative stigma that came along with it. If you weren’t a doctor.
You must be a drug dealer if you there’s. No, in-between, there’s no bus. There’s no, you’re either a heart surgeon or a crack head. Oh yeah, totally. That makes perfect sense. Very, very much. I had one and I was neither a heart surgeon or a crackhead bucking trends. Right. So after the pager came cell phones, car phones, bags, phones, brick phones.
Those were all cell phones. Yup. Then came. The smartphone, which technically isn’t a cell phone. If you look at the technology, uh, but now we all have this in our pocket. So personal communication, again, completely changed. So just like we did before, let’s talk about one of these that is more business-focused.
Okay. How would a business owner thinking back as far as you can still go to smoke signals again, how would, a business owner tell people, let people know. Where their business was. That was the primary reason that signage was invented old Tavern. Yes. So people would put a sign in their window, they would hang, uh, something outside there.
They’re there. Yes. So people would know, uh, where it was, where the blacksmith was when you were walking down the street. This is after the Romans made paved roads and all of that. So could everybody read back then? No. Well, they, you know, they did, they put pictures on the head. They had hanging signs and they would put a picture of a prancing pony on it.
That’s where graphic design comes from, which we’ve come full circle. Actually, we did another episode about signage. If y’all want to look it up, we talked about, we talked about it. Yup. So after signage, there was another big one, which was. Yellow page directory. Let Your Fingers Do the walking yellow page directories.
We’re huge. And people love it because, because you wanted something, you went to the obvious retreat. It was like a catalog for your entire life. All in one place. Right after that, we used, uh, direct mail. And then now we have search engines. Well, we had, we had Yahoo, we had Yahoo and ask Jeeves then came.
Google and Bing as still here. Yeah. But the point is that things always change through invention, through technology. That’s true. That was an enjoyable little walk through history there. Well, bet. Now, listeners, I want you to look at your own lives within these examples. Where do you fall? What are your experiences?
What do you remember? Now, as we said, people don’t like change. And some of those took a long time to become normal in our system. That’s very true. Um, but if you study history again, uh, study history, we can see that the adoption process started long and now it’s begun to run its course quicker and quicker.
As time moves forward. I have a chart. Matter of fact, I’ll throw the chart up on the screen. Uh, for those of you that are watching us on video on Apple podcast or YouTube or wherever it is that you see video versions of the show, uh, up on the screen, you’ll see a chart now in the 19 hundreds. The telephone took over 40 years to become the majority adopted.
Now you, those of you looking you’ll see the line goes farther because it goes to 100% adoption, but 50% majority adoption took about 40 years. Okay. Electricity took around 25 years. Okay. All right. Then in the 1910s cars took about 10 years to reach 50%. Adoption. So half of the people in the world were using cars, right?
10 years radio in the 1920s. Seven years then in the thirties, you see I’m doing what we talked about. We reclassify things for decades. Uh, in the thirties, we had the refrigerator, the refrigerator took 10 years to become the majority adopted, but we had a great depression guys. Yeah, it gets, it gets a little bit let’s jump, jump forward.
We don’t need to go through every single decade. Uh, in the eighties we had the microwave was a new invention. So eight years to become majority adopted in the nineties, we had the internet took six years. Does it become the majority adopted in the 2000s introduced HDTV less than four years to become adopted?
In the 2010s we had social media, right? I told you guys, I lived through that adoption period, about three years for people to 50% of the world to become adjusted and adapt to social media. Smartphones took less than that. The iPad tablets. Even less, but when you line it all up like that, you can really see how the adoption rates have gotten to acceptance faster and faster.
Now here’s where it gets super interesting. Lay it on me. If we break down the adoption process, regardless of how long it takes, we see some traits. So I’m going to pull up a clip from my tik-tok IG reels for the business webinar that I did recently, that kind of talks about this and talks through the specifics of the adoption process so that we can kind of recognize what those traits are, regardless of how long it takes.
If it takes 40 years, if it takes 50 years, if it takes four months, the process within that timeframe is always the same. Let’s watch. Now, if we want to look at it as a whole business adoption process, we have the innovators, the people that develop whatever this piece of technology is in our case, we’re talking about tik-tok right.
And then we have the early adopters. Those are the people that first used scent technology. For whatever reason, personal entertainment business, we’re talking about business today. So these are early adopters. So people that have jumped on board, the, in this case, Tik ToK bandwagon already. Okay. Several companies have done that.
Uh, guests were one of the first ones. Uh, Levi’s was one of the first ones. They are early adopters from a business standpoint too, uh, to tik tok. Those people, uh, take on the risks. They have high hopes for what it could be. They have curiosity in there, generally speaking, they’re pretty savvy folks. They move on, they learn how to use it appropriately, and then they become strategic users of the technology.
They become the professionals they’re responsible for, they’re invested. They’re smart folks. Okay. These are the early adopters. Then we have. General awareness people that aren’t early to the adoption process and that divides into two parts. You have the skeptics, and then you have those people that are just simply unaware, right?
So the skeptics are the ones that look at whatever the new technology is and they were like, yeah, but no, no. Yeah. I know it’s there. I know you say it’s great. I know people are jumping out. I’m not going to do it. Those people are skeptics. Okay. And then you have the people that are unaware that are just clues what they have no idea.
They have no idea what’s going on. Uh, they’re completely oblivious. Well, what’s media hype in general awareness, catch up to those people, things change. Then we have those that deny its existence. Denied that it’s going to be there, that it’s going to help businesses or whatever those people into now grow out of touch or out of business as the world decides to move past where they are.
Then we have the mature few, which are the ones that catch on earlier than others. They team up with the early adopters, they learn from them and they become strategic users of the technology, a little. Faster than, than others, but not as fast as the early adopters. How many of you wish that you had figured out what Google ads were back in the early years when it was first developed and super, super cheap, right.
You’d be ruling the world right now. So then we have the majority of folks, the majority adoption. Okay. These are people that usually they’re like, okay, fine. I’ll do it. Right. They usually have inflated expectations. They, they jump on board with everybody else and they usually make mistakes because they haven’t done a lot of the research.
They’re just reacting to the hype. Now, when that happens, it doesn’t go well. They become disillusioned. This happens a lot with social media and Facebook, when it was brand new, I tried Facebook. It didn’t work well. The truth of the matter is it didn’t work for you. It works overall. The question is, why didn’t it work for you, but it doesn’t matter cause you’re disillusioned and, uh, you don’t want to be involved.
So you abandon the whole idea and technology marches right along past you, or you can adapt, make changes to whatever you did that didn’t work. Get serious about it and become a strategic user. This is what we see time and time again when it comes to. Adopting processes and specifically businesses adopting processes.
So something to kind of understand right now we are in the middle of media, hype, and awareness for tick time. You’ve already an early adopter. Okay. You were either a skeptic or you were unaware at this point, we’re looking at, are you going to be. One of the mature few, or are you going to be part of the majority when they decide to adopt it?
Are you just going to deny that it is viability for your business, your choice, whichever one you’re going to be, but from a study standpoint, this is the road that people go through? Now, guys, a lot of Zachary speaking engagements in webinars like this one are available on-demand in the member video library for Patreon supporters.
So just go to patrion.com forward slash straight shot to gain access to that library. It’s part of the standard membership level. If you enjoy his teachings and you want to learn a little, yeah, right now there’s about nine hours worth of content in it. Well, it’s growing every time I do a talk or a webinar, I also do live rebroadcast on my Facebook from time to time.
Oh yeah. So be sure that you follow his Facebook account as well. That’s facebook.com/b.ZacharyBennett. Yeah. So, uh, the next key I’ve only talked about one so far, but before we do that, let’s just take a little break, a little one. We have to take some time out to show some love to our sponsors, but when we get back key number two, see you in about two minutes.

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Okay, so we’re back. Let’s get back to it. Okay. So number one was acceptance using the wealth of history to ease in comfort us during the acceptance.
Step number two respects RESP E C T. Find out what it means to me. CIC secretary sector. Respect, where do we see chains coming? We always need to respect what has come before us disrespect can upset those that haven’t accepted the change just because I gave you some tools to use. That doesn’t mean everybody else has those same tools.
Right? Um, it can also mean a difference between us making a sound decision. Or making a rest decision that may not be, you know, what’s best for the company. So we have to keep grounded, don’t go chasing everything. I said, don’t go chasing waterfalls, just stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.
Yeah, I’m sorry. That was another nineties reference. So don’t disrespect. What came before, because likely you will continue doing it. While you’re trying out this new thing. So, uh, and like I said, with the town crier, there’s usually some sort of crossover there too. Uh, anyway, number three, self-education.
So you’ve kept your ear to the ground. You’re not acting rash or disrespectful. Now you need to dive in and see what this, whatever it is is. Yeah. So they can do things like, you know, internet searching, attending seminars and webinars. Like the one, you did on tic-tok as you mentioned, and that’s precise, why did that one?
Tik Tok Is new and it’s taking the world by storm, but I did my research on it and then shared it with the business community because it’s what I do. It is what you do, what you do well. Well, what’d they got? I shared it through my own social media, speaking engagements, or webinars. Now. Thank you.
COVID uh, in my, uh, consultation practice, um, where wherever I can best serve the public. So, wow. Number four, number four. Key number four. Next is to evaluate the risks. Versus the benefits. I don’t believe in making decisions without knowledge. What about wisdom was the mini experiences are important too, but you can’t fly the plane blind for very long ha and there is another analogy always, but it’s important to lead yourself through this.
You need to look at both sides and think of the possibilities. Look at the history of the opportunity. Look into the hype. Why are people excited, make a list of the pros and cons of using the technology or communication method with an open mind that’s important. And then you need to think about it in terms of strategy.
Is this a possible long-term strategy? Is it a possible short-term strategy? Then? Of course, we look at the costs that are associated, you know, a lot of times. The costs are low enough that the risk is somewhat minimized. I mean, why’d not do it. Right. And then other times the cost is higher in the, you know, it’s why would I do that?
Do you know? So, two sides, again, you have to. Evaluate these things. I literally make a list. And then I sit with that list for a while. As I’m making the decision, the man loves his list. He makes so many lists and facts that he actually puts lists on the back of other lists. And he makes lists on napkins and bags.
And yes, the man loves his list. There was a book about writing things on napkins, back of the napkin. It’s a very good book. It’s a very interesting book. It’s about, it’s about branding marketing and the internet and capitalizing on ideas when you have them, right? Absolutely. Write it down. Number five, number five would be to look at the typical reasons or excuses that people have used for delayed adoption.
Again, this is based on our history. Okay. What have people said before? When they have decided to look the other way, when it came to adopting a new processor I do a piece, of technology. Well, why don’t you go through some of those for us, with our listeners? Um, okay. Uh, typical reasons or excuses for delayed adoption.
My favorite of these excuses, uh, which I heard an awful lot during, uh, the, um, social media adoption process. Was I don’t like it. Um, yeah. Well people, so many people, I just don’t like it. And you know, unfortunately, um, when it comes to communicating your business, you not liking, it is not a priority. It’s not if you remember at the beginning of the show and we talked about, you know, the roles of marketing.
The role of marketing is to get in front of your audience, the role of marketing isn’t to make sure the business owner likes it, our job to be in front of your audience. If your audience likes it, then you should do it. If you don’t like it, that’s an excuse. Yeah. I mean, now it’s a bonus if you like it, whatever, whatever it is.
Right. But, uh, again, when you’re deciding for the business, your personal thoughts do not go in front of what’s best for the business and where your public is. So that is an excuse. Another one, another excuse that has been turned into a cliche. You’ll recognize this. Is, Oh, that’ll never take off or, uh, it’s just a fad.
Its flash in the pan rock and roll has rock and roll has got to go and go with the KW. K. Wow. Um, you hear that all the time. Whenever something new happens. Right. Um, so next, which is one that I heard really, really recently. Like a week ago when I was talking to people about the fact that I was doing the webinar on ticktock they said was, Oh, that’s just for kids.
Let me ride you. If something changes in our society often happened with the young. Okay. So it’s for kids doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t look into doing it. That’s right. I mean, kids, usually they move and adapt to things so quickly. So it’s only natural that they would move. So everything is new to them that, and they get bored.
They’re so bored. I’m so bored. Okay. So I have this little show that I do on social media once a week called marketing with the misses. I’ve talked about it before on the show here, but, and it’s basically a quick little, 10 minute sound off of me being weird and talking about things. And I was talking about tuck tick-tock and.
What I had talked about it. What’s your show called marketing with the misses? I, if you saw the lesson, it’s an inside joke. Um, if you know, you know, and if you don’t, you should know marketing with Mrs. Com. Um, anyway, I might show, we talked about Tik TOK and on Tik TOK, I said, you know, it’s funny because.
At first, the kids are all into it and all they do is they talk about tick tock, tick tock, and, you know, as a parent and you’re like, Oh my God, I don’t want to hear about this stupid tick talk anymore. And then you think to yourself, you know, in the true parent form, I have to do my due diligence. I got to see what the tick talks all about.
Make sure my kid isn’t being exposed, anything dangerous, or anything like that. Uh, China anyway. So we go on tick-tock and we take peek and turns out that’s where all the fun is. So one thing that has become a pate apparently clear to us over the years is that kids always steal the F they always start the fun and then the adults come through and steal it back.
Good job parents. Wait, wait, are we clean? The tick-tock that happened with Facebook, Facebook started with college students because it was developed to win. The same generation is still on Facebook. We’re just not in college anymore. And then older people started. Getting on, on Facebook and then younger people, our kids wouldn’t get on Facebook because that’s where the parents were boomer easy.
So you talked about needing to check and see if. Tik TOK was safe for your children. It’s October. I wonder if that’s where inspecting the trick-or-treat candy came from? I would think so. I think I think you’re talking about candy tat a daddy tax daddy, Texas different, but yes, we do that. Candy texts the data.
So I believe, I believe that Zachary sends the children out to trick or treat so that they will bring him candy back. Are you kidding? I tell them, I tell them what to look for. If you see this, get it, but you know why? Because we’re sick of the kids, having all the fun. We’ve gone and we’ve reclaimed the fun, so good for you, dad.
All right. So anyway, back to business, another one that I hear sometimes, and this one is tricky because it’s not necessarily an excuse. It can be, but it can be a reason because it could be plausible. Okay. And that is, this just doesn’t apply to my business right. Where that’s just not where my audience is.
This may be true. You have to look at that only, you really know. So are you using this as an excuse to avoid something new because you haven’t accepted that change is happening or have you evaluated it? And you’ve decided that this is not good for my company right now. So only you need to do that.
So you need to ask yourself, am I feeling or thinking any of these things then evaluate the risks? For your business because your business and business are not going to be the same. Every business is different. So you need to think, will it hurt your business? How much does it cost to participate in a said new thing?
And then you need to think about, okay, this is what I think, but what if I’m wrong? Ah, the thinking roundabout, what if I’m wrong? And then you need to think about, okay, well, what if they’re wrong? Do you know? And then you need to think about it from a time perspective. Could I have been as fit from this right now?
Or is this something that I should put in place so that I can benefit from it later? All of these things are things that you should be, you know, thinking about. And considering this is a very cerebral part of being a business owner, right? Decision-making is, uh, sometimes rough and lastly, Get input from people that you trust that could be your board of directors, your management team, your employees, maybe you have a consultant or an agency.
I know I get inquiries like this all the time. And how you ask for that input. Is going to matter. You don’t want to come across. Like you’re deciding by committee. The decision of the committee is usually a mess. Right. But you do want to get input. So you can say, I am considering and wanted to get your thoughts, or what do you think you can present what you’ve learned in your thoughts?
Or maybe you want a little less. Researched and more of a gut-level response based on their own knowledge. You know, I, I, when I ever something new comes out, because again, sometimes it starts with the kids. I will ask them. My children, you know, what do you think about that? What are your friends saying about this?
Whatever, because I want their unbiased uneducated because Lord knows children are ignorant a lot of times, uh, I want their, their honest, their honest opinion on whatever the thing is. Yeah. In those cases, it’s kind of like a little mini focus group. Very much, very much so, um, That’s what I have for you today.
The six keys for leadership when considering change and your business. Well, that is a lot, but it’s very valuable as always. Now, before I ask you for any straight shot of today’s episode, I would like to remind our audience, if you find straight shot valuable, or even if you just like us a little. Please, please, please hit that subscribe button.
Like this episode, click the bell. If you’re on the YouTubes might not do a lot for you, but it really helps us out with the algorithms on those platforms. And if you’ve already subscribed where you are, maybe go to a different platform and subscribe and like us there tell your friends and colleagues about us.
You don’t have to keep us a secret. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate you. Now, Zachary, back to you, tell us what is the straight shot for today’s episode. The world continues to change. You can’t stop it. The roles of marketing include connecting with the public, where they live in their lifestyle with their emotions, meeting their needs.
And then influencing them to choose your product or service, and then prefer it in the marketplace. Marketing is about people. Marketing is not about products or services, so go to where they are living their lives, make that connection then fulfill their needs with whatever it is that you sell. They’ll buy from you because they’ve connected with you.
They like you, they feel that you understand them and you provide that product or service that they need. And yes, sometimes that will mean using news technology to get in front of them or new processes, new maps. You want to be smart about it, but you also want to be quick. That’s another one. If you are there before too many others make that same decision, you are going to have a larger audience to yourself with little saturation from other businesses or competitors.
That is one way to find a competitive edge. So use these six keys to change for business acceptance, respect. Self-education evaluation of the risk versus the benefits. Look out for common excuses and get outside input, then make your decision commit to it and then measure your company’s success. Good stuff.
All good stuff. Very good. Well guys, let us know what you thought of today’s content in the comments or on our social media. If the platform you’re on doesn’t have comments. I know that some platforms don’t, but on those, you can leave a review. I think I don’t think you should say it like that, but anyway, let us know if you have any questions or a topic you’d like us to look into for a future episode.
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