The Driving Eureka! Podcast - Find, Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas to Innovate

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

Doug Hall Newsletter #10

This is the tenth episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: Data Capture: A Secret to Agile Innovation Success; Segment 2: How Could They Know?; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy.

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 [00:00:34] Driving Eureka! Episode #10 - Data Capture - How Could They Know? - Brain Brew Whiskey Academy

[00:01:21] Data Capture: The Secret to Innovation Success

[00:01:40] Two Parts: (1) Data for Improving the Innovation Process and (2) Data Generated by the Ideas You are Working On

[00:03:28] Best Practice and Innovation

[00:04:46] Leadership as Reactive vs. Proactive

[00:05:08] Data are Lost in Departments

[00:05:35] Front End of Innovation Isn't the Problem - Development Is

[00:06:15] Department Silos Create Problems

[00:10:06] 97% Error and Knowing You Have a Problem

[00:12:53] What Do You Really Need for Innovation

[00:13:21] Redundancy in Data

[00:16:13] The Lean Mistake

[00:17:39] Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt - How Could They Know?

[00:20:49] If It Ain't Broke - Don't Fix It -It's Always Been Broken

[00:21:54] Mistake of Not Innovating in Cincinnati

[00:23:30] Disruption is Coming to Your Industry - Always

[00:25:02] Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy Segment

[00:25:24] Data Capture in a Whiskey Distillery

[00:25:48] Must Have Data Not to Go to Jail

[00:27:59] Data Requires Discipline

[00:29:44] More Volume - More Data Chaos

[00:33:13] Craft Cocktail Recipe - The Solstice Sling

[00:33:54] Solstice Sling - Step 1

[00:33:57] Step 2

[00:34:00] Step 3

[00:34:57] Hardware Matters

[00:35:14] The Martini Disaster

[00:36:43] Boston Shaker and the "Throw"

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and. Fast Track. Big Ideas

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:22] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the driving Eureka book.

Tripp: [00:00:34] This is episode number 10 of the driving Eureka podcast. This episode is a deeper discussion on Doug Hall's Driving Eureka! newsletter from December 20th 2018. This week's featured story is titled Data Capture: A secret to agile innovation success the Driving Eureka! book segment discusses Dr. Deming famous quote How could they know and in the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment we'll talk about the need for data in a distillery and the craft cocktail recipe The solstice sling. All right Doug so data capture this is near and dear to my heart. You talked quite a bit about data capture in this segment.

Tripp: [00:01:21] You say it's the secret to agile innovation success and as we've talked in previous discussions you know it's still very fuzzy in my brain around how you get data out of something so foreign and nebulous as as innovation.

Doug: [00:01:40] Well there's two parts to that. One part is data with regards to how to improve your innovation process so that your system gets smarter and more effective. And the other is data that you generate as a result of the ideas that you're working on. OK. So in the first case the data is important because we don't know that we're getting it. I mean I see companies that you know maybe it's been 10 or 15 years since I've worked with them management changes etc. I come back around and they're are no different than they were 15 years ago. It's like they haven't gotten any smarter. They just keep doing the same what they consider best practice which is actually not even close to a best practice because they have no measurement and they can't track you know whether it's cycle time. How fast does it take them to create and run tests run it run the quantitative research study as we've talked about whether it's how many ideas they generate per per brainstorming session that they have whether it's how many customer contacts they're having when when they work on an idea. In other words some ideas I've seen they've gone through and they've been working on it for six months they say have you ever talked to a customer about this. They go well no not yet. We're not ready to yet. I said How do you even know what you're doing. I mean and just simply measuring learning cycles tests number of people. To some simple metrics will start to get you a sense as to where you're moving. And on top of that is the results of the test are your meaningful uniqueness scores. We've talked. Are they going up going down or staying same it's simple as that. That's it. And so you can measure these things by by just taking some time and thinking about it. What is the outcome that you're looking at. And what are the things that could cause that outcome.

Tripp: [00:03:28] Ok. So let's go back to a couple of these things you talked about this this concept of a best practice. And I know as a consultant what you're talking about because you seem to go into you know any organization out there and you kind of see the same patterns of thinking that are going on and I know they're taught in business schools or whether they're just logical outcomes of what organizations do but what are that what do you see that they're doing that you've labeled it at a kind of their best practice and maybe it may maybe a series of things associated with it.

Tripp: [00:04:04] What's in their brain about how they're going about innovation. Are they trying to protect their idea and that's the reason they don't want to go out to customers or kind of what is it that you see.

Doug: [00:04:17] I think it's even worse than that. Oh. I think it starts off with leadership. Leadership hasn't set a direction to say how they're going to win. They haven't picked a direction. They've set an outcome metric but they haven't said By what method Dr. Deming would say. They've not made a choice to say we're going to go right or we're going to go left or what we're going to do. And then in the absence of that what they've tended to do is to become reactive sale says Well competition is doing this. Customers asking for this let's do this.

Doug: [00:04:46] And so they're always behind they're always behind as opposed to the alternative which is proactive leadership leading into the future picking where they're going setting a direction to it. And the simple simple measure is are you smarter than you were six months ago or twelve months ago. Is your system faster. Is it more efficient.

Doug: [00:05:07] And the fact of the matter it isn't.

Doug: [00:05:08] And one of the root causes of that is the second part of data capture that I mentioned which is the data generated as you start to work on projects. When you start to run experiments when you start to run a test I mean people will run a series of maybe taste tests in the spirits business or whatever and then you go back to them you say can you summarize them for you. So well there actually a whole bunch of different files I mean they don't even have them in a simple way to go get them or.

Doug: [00:05:35] And as you start to go into development which let's face it the front end of innovation is not the problem. It's all development. That's where half the value is lost as we've talked. And in development the amount of data that gets generated whether it's specifications whether it's regulatory stuff whether it's Bill a materials whether it's costing information the need to get that data right. And when teams start going faster they usually start missing some of that. And one of the key reasons why they miss it is now just follow me for a second. This is what I've seen in companies I've seen in companies as much as a 97 percent error.

Doug: [00:06:15] Critical errors when they get to the end of the process and they're ready to go and they're gonna fire this off into their SPSS SAS blast whatever it is system and that's going to get procurement to start buying and the factory to start building and there's a critical error. Ninety seven percent of the time in that final data package. And the reason for it when we've traced it back and we've mapped the system when we've looked at it what we found is that parts don't work together. In other words in a corporation especially in larger companies but it happens in small ones too. Is. Each department has their own forms their own information and they'll have their own. Sometimes it can be huge stacks of these. Jeff to fill out issue as you walk through the process of creating something new and the problem is is those parts are all interrelated they're an interrelated system but they're worked on as individual silos. And so what happens is you get working on the project. People are filling in their numbers just like Henry Ford's production line they're doing their job and then suddenly something comes up where we have to make a change. Oh that's not going to work. We're gonna have to change the cost or we're going to change his vendor or we're gonna have to change the net weight or we're gonna have to change the percent alcohol in the case of our whiskey business.

Doug: [00:07:38] Well if you're not careful what happens is that change has a ripple effect into other departments in those other forms that are in the silos and it gets missed and it's a train wreck. It's an absolute train wreck because what you have to do then is you have to go back through all of those forums to check.

Doug: [00:07:58] So this is a nightmare. So as a result what we've done is the Eureka ranch team has actually built in the new TrailBlazer platform a data capture system and this data capture system with no custom programming. None of that big huge bills allows every or department to have their form in one place in the same place and all interrelated with others so that when a change happens you know that there's a change in you can see the connection to the strategic mission. We call it the blue card the customer offering the yellow card and the business model the math because people make a change and don't realize they're having an impact on others. And this data capture what I found is in development it is the data flow you know how and the money well where they say Follow the money. No no no. I'm talking about follow the data. Follow the data. If you follow the data you'll find that's where most of your speed problems and your errors are. It's in the data.

Tripp: [00:09:03] Ok. So you've said quite a bit there.

Doug: [00:09:06] Sorry I I today. It's good. Thanks. With Tripp it literally was one of these things where the scales came from my eyes and when I realized because because I'm you know I'm I'm I like to create. So I'm kind of not into it like the attention to detail stuff but when I realized that that was the flaw I got religion on this one brother I got religion on the importance of documenting this process as you go along because otherwise you end up with rework or worse yet massive mistakes.

Tripp: [00:09:38] Okay. So so let's look I've got a few questions here but I want to start with this 97 percent error because it as an executive sitting in an organization it's going to be hard for me.

Tripp: [00:09:51] You know I've used like you said they're all silos. I may be the senior vice president over a particular silo you know and then I've got my sales guy but I've got to be concerned with my pile of people and processes and things of that sort.

Tripp: [00:10:06] So how am I. What are the 97 percent errors. What does that made up of. I mean is is it just the communication between the departments. Is it. You know when I'm looking how would I know I've got the problem.

Doug: [00:10:20] Well what you're gonna do is is. So first off look at your organization and follow your data stream that goes into your automated purchasing conglomerate that goes into the fancy software and look at the end at the person who releases it and which you'll usually find is a Department of people whose job it is to inspect and try to find the flaws. They'll be a whole team of them. And when you go down in the bowels it's like going down into the engine room and you get out and you talk to them. These people are sitting there saying I'm dying man. This stuff's coming through and it's exactly what you said. It's a non interaction between the departments. It's person making a change not realizing not even knowing that it has an influence on something else that's going on.

Doug: [00:11:06] I mean there's a whole lot of if-then things to happen and and and you can't with innovation you know people say well you should just program it so that it would automatically know it. Well the problem is is it's innovation and innovation means it's new it means we haven't done it before. And so you know people will look at and say well that's just like the way we normally do it. And this one isn't. But they don't know it. And so they acted appropriately and they put the wrong numbers in.

Tripp: [00:11:29] Ok. So so now you've also then talked about the Trail Blazer software and I've still in my head it's still not clear as to all right now I've got it all coming into one place but I had it coming into one place before in this department or in this area. You know where it's being collected. What's the difference.

Doug: [00:11:55] Well the difference is that too. Well so the difference is is that there's usually separate systems there's a data capture system somebody is running Microsoft project they've got a project management system they've got briefs to creative groups that they're doing. They've got a purchasing procurement. They've got a financial spreadsheet. All of those things are different. What the ranch team has done is with the trailblazer it's project management for innovations for when this variance in it. And so you manage your whole project and all of your data in one central place. In other words one place I know this is a miraculous idea one place.

Tripp: [00:12:34] Ok. And so the trailblazer software I mean it still doesn't seem like are there things. All right. Back up a little bit trip. When I when I look at this there's all these different pieces coming in.

Tripp: [00:12:53] Now I've got to believe that when you're going through this process of putting this information as software are you almost going through is it almost like cleaning a room and you're saying why do we have this. We don't need that you know coming into the system. I don't know what that might be. You might have a better idea. But is there are there things where you sit there and say well you don't even need that why is that why why does somebody have to fill out a form or do something associated with that. Or do you not challenge that and just goes into system.

Doug: [00:13:21] Those that those are the exact things that happen. So a little simple example OK. You have to enter in a. So you've got a project number that the SCA you number or whatever it is if it's a product company or if it's a software or whatever it might be. And and you have to enter in maybe a key piece of information maybe call it a retailer. It might be a UPC code. Okay. Well you end up entering that number or net weights and percentages. You'll have to enter multiple times in these systems usually you enter it over here you enter over here you enrolled here and the problem is is that you slip a number and nobody knows that you slipped a number with this process. You enter a piece of data once and then it replicates itself in the other places where the other forms have. So if I've got seven departments I'm working with when I enter information I've pre filled the templates for all the other departments the same OK. Always the same and I always have the most recent version there and I've got non-destructive editing and that I can go back and see what the past one was and who changed it and how it got changed. OK. OK. So. So you've got some intelligence. Not so much that it becomes stupidly expensive because the normal thing on this is what I'm talking about isn't is this is you know this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know just to do the programming nine to 12 months to do it. No. This literally you can start this thing up next week and it's painless because of the way the thing's been built.

Tripp: [00:14:53] I got it. OK. So is there anything else that you want the audience to know about the Trailblazer software as far as data capture or anything else for that matter.

Doug: [00:15:04] Well I mean the big thing is this you've got to think about your projects. So there's a love right now to bring in project management people and I love project management people. The challenge is is we have to get the project management people and all of us to think that there's a difference between projects with low variance that we've done many times before and innovations that have a high variance and high uncertainty to them. And when you have uncertainty you can still do project management but you have to build it in a way that you while you have task completion conformance to requirements as they say at the same time you've got to have a system a disciplined system for managing plan to study act or fail fast fail cheap cycles of learning. And and it has to be both. It's sort of like freedom within a framework is what we're talking about. And so we need project management desperately because the creatives create their ideas and they love their ideas and they don't happen. But we need to figure out a way to work together.

Doug: [00:16:13] We need to bring those right brains with those left brains. But in a way that we managed that I had a guy once who does lean product development. He came to me and a big client brought him to mean and he said they want to integrate this with you. And I said OK fine.

Doug: [00:16:30] He says OK sort so do lean product development what you need to do is you need to give me your absolute specs as to what you're going to make and then I'll lean out the way we design it. I said well if if I knew exactly what I was going to do I don't need you. It's already got its new Damn it. He said Well that doesn't make any sense. You have to be enough to make your decisions. Before I start development I said but I can't even figure it out until I start the development. And therein lies the absolute insanity insanity that's going on right now. Everybody is spending time on the front end. Wrong place. That's not where the barriers are. The problem is in development it's in our project management. It's in our data capture. These are boring ugly things. But you do those. That's how you'll see your 6 x 600 percent increase in speeds. That's the problems that's the barriers to you. And that's what we're working on fixing. Okay I got it

Tripp: [00:17:39] It's time now for the Driving Eureka! Book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:17:53] All right well let's move to our Driving Eureka! book segment and discuss Dr. Deming famous quote.

Tripp: [00:18:02] How could they know know?

Doug: [00:18:06] You got me all wound up. Now this could get worse. It's going to get worse because you know when you've seen I mean I've been doing this stuff for forever. Okay. and and I love it. I so love it but it frustrates me so much that we can't make it happen. And and Dr. Deming of course the famous statistician I went to Japan reinvented Japan and basically changed the world of business probably more than any other single person. Everything that happens with Lean Six Sigma quality that's done in the world was really sparked by him building on the work of others. But this is the man that did it. And in the 80s as we've talked my dad worked with him when he first came back to the U.S. at national corporation and he was in his 80s when he came back and he was he would get very frustrated with people and and people would say well academics shouldn't they know this shouldn't they know these things that you're telling them about reducing variation and enabling workers and and all the such things and thinking about it as a system of interconnected parts. And he would rant and I'm not going to do it justice maybe we can get the audio where we can stick it in here. Do you have the audio of this.

Tripp: [00:19:22] I don't but I'm sure that it could be supplied.

Doug: [00:19:26] Well I'll read it and then if you can use it I'll do it both ways. OK.

Doug: [00:19:31] So let's listen to how Dr. Deming says this so Dr. Deming would say when asked Shouldn't they know about it.

Doug: [00:19:41] He'd say managers don't know about it. How could they know. How could they know how could they know there was anything to learn. How could they how could they how could they know there was any other way to manage the fact is he's got a point. If you've never learned any other way of doing it. If you learn in school and then what up through the organization and became successful with a certain way working how would you even know there was another way to do it. And if most of your time is spent managing the existing business and now you're in charge of innovation which is different. How would you ever know that that was possible.

Doug: [00:20:22] And the truth of the matter is is that you there are systems and there are methods that we can use but we have to take the time to learn them. And that's the whole focus of the Driving Eureka! book is providing you with data driven methods using the innovation entering system to help you increase innovation speed while decreasing risk. But it's learning a whole new language. It's a whole new way of thinking.

Tripp: [00:20:49] Ok. There's another quote in here that I people that I've worked with me past present and I can safely say in the future I hear all the time or I'll re say what they're saying with this phrase which is if it ain't broke don't fix it. And that's one of the common things that you hear quite a bit within organizations as you know why are you messing around with this because you know it's always worked this way and it works. You know for me and the problem is and the challenge I think even as a consultant is to get people to see that it's always been broken and that there is always and in your case that the thing that you brought to life for me is Well that's right. There's always a better way to do it and there's always a better way to do something. Meaning that you've got this kind of mindset and the system around that whatever you're doing today that's working great can still be better.

Doug: [00:21:54] Well famously you know the folks in Cincinnati you know twice made this mistake you know that all the horse and buggies were made in Cincinnati. It was there was a capital all of them you know. And this guy Ford and Dodge came down and said dudes would like to put an engine in one of those things. You got some good patents on the horse and buggy. You know what I would like to. No no no. We're going to stay prudent proper practical. No it ain't broke. We're gonna stay with horses OK. Mm hmm.

Doug: [00:22:25] Missed it by that much and it happened again it happened again twice it happened and I may not have the order here right.

Doug: [00:22:33] The federal government came and said Cincinnati you're the Queen city of the West. You're the queen city of the West. You are the nexus. This is where all of you know. That's why Cincinnati I love making whiskey in Cincinnati because it was the marketplace for whiskey from Kentucky Indiana Ohio 70 distilleries in Cincinnati alone. The riverboats were that where the market was made for whiskey and then it was shipped down your Ohio to the Mississippi and beyond. And so it was the place and because of all of that rail traffic and equipment in there there I mean their ability to load the boats and all the stuff in the marketplace and the buyers and sellers that the government came and said you know jeez you know we want to put a rail yard out here and where all of the rail stuff would come in as opposed to you know the boats and the city fathers and proper practical said no no we're going to stay we're going to stay with the riverboats we think they're going to last a lot longer.

Doug: [00:23:30] And of course that ended up going to Chicago. One of the biggest cities in the country. But. Other than that you know. And you know we just kind of missed it. So the fact of the matter is if it isn't broke you better be careful because somebody is gonna break it just like we're doing with whiskey making it with time compression now instead of making it last for 18 years in a in a warehouse there's somebody out there somewhere who's gonna say you know I understand that's the way it's done but you know I think I can do it better than that. I think I can find a better way to make a product make it taste better whatever it might be.

Tripp: [00:24:09] Okay. All right. I just I wanted to throw that in there because you know that is a common thing whether it's a process you know somebody says what works really well today you know it's well it can always be better.

Tripp: [00:24:22] And from from your standpoint it can completely change moving forward and if you're not constantly and as you stated earlier proactively going after those things you're going to wind up being left in the dust. And in one of the previous episodes you know we talked about the speed of change increasing and and people are just going to be left behind very quickly.

Doug: [00:24:44] Right. Lead or follow. I mean those are your choices. You can lead or you gonna follow and lead is a is a lot more profitable.

Tripp: [00:25:02] This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcasts were going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business Eureka ranch. Team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft whiskey kelpie like has never been done before.

Tripp: [00:25:24] Ok well let's move to our Brain Brew Whiskey Academy segment and we're going to talk about the need for data in a distillery and then our craft craft cocktail recipe. But you know we've talked about data before quite a bit coming about data being used in a whiskey distillery or a spirits distillery.

Doug: [00:25:48] Ok. So if you're thinking about creating a distillery. Let me just tell you data and precision with managing your data is critically important and the reason it's important is so that you don't go to jail.

Doug: [00:26:04] I'm really really serious. Okay.

Doug: [00:26:07] The fact of the matter is is you got all your selling you know when you sell spirits. The government has a very vested interest. They're your partner whether you like it or not. Okay. And they want their taxes and they've got regulations. And so you've got to follow the rules. I was with the leader of one of the states and he said he was shaking his head because we were talking about our systems and data capture and all that takes things we're doing so Oh my God he says would you please teach the others. And we're working on it. This is one of the ways we're doing that because he says 80 percent of the distilleries in my state are probably making a seed breaking the law in a significant way. And they don't even know it. And one of the biggest issues is they're not tracking their data. I mean when you have a distillery and you make spirits or you bring spirits in you have to track that liquid. You've got to track all of that liquid because now you can do our candy and you can have wasted manufacturing that's fine. But you know when it leaves the distillery the tax man in your province in Canada your state and the feds they want their money. That's just the way it is. And so you've got to be meticulous with it. And it's the same thing when it comes to doing your research. I mean I understand you're an artisan but you need to be an artisan who writes down the recipes.

Tripp: [00:27:40] And because you you've worked with a couple of different distilleries before. What data seems to be missing from these. Well you know as as you mentioned that they could go to jail and they're probably breaking the laws or something in particular that they seem to be missing.

Doug: [00:27:59] I think the biggest thing they're missing is a mindset towards it. I mean they think that they're they're basically you know if they if their homebrew or something they think they're more like a chef just kind of winging it. And the fact of the matter is is with when you're now in business and you've got you know whether it's the government your shareholders or whatever it might be you've got to develop a mindset. And that's what comes from the plan do study act mindset which is and you need a platform whether you're gonna use the trailblazer platform that we've got and we're gonna make available to Kraft people at a scholarship price or whether you're using some other software you've got to be capturing this data and you've got to get a mindset of running tests and documenting and documenting and documenting what you're doing your sales system your CRM system for managing your customer relationships that you're doing.

Doug: [00:28:52] You've got to get this discipline in early okay. We're in the process of doing a massive expansion and and we did we did very well with this but now as we've grown literally 10 x this year we grew literally 10 fold. And and the year coming up we're about to grow another 10 fold. You know that created put tensions on us and while we were really great at it at the beginning of the year by the end of the year as far as business went up 10 actually tend to get sloppy on it.

Doug: [00:29:27] And so we're making a new statement as we've done this new expansion so to run the do the next run of growth is we've got to get even more disciplined with our data because the bigger you get the more missing something in data Cassia and it can cost you a lot.

Doug: [00:29:43] So in time energy and money.

Tripp: [00:29:44] So Doug is that because you've got new people coming in to help with the volume or what. What seems to drive the chaos.

Doug: [00:29:53] The volume of what's going through. In other words just the throughput in our case the throughput of bottles and that that's going on. You know before if you made a little mistake on your ordering or your numbers it didn't have huge consequences you could just run over to a warehouse and get some more. Now all of a sudden you need to bring pallets and if you miss it or you know the labels that you need are just bigger volumes that the whiskey that you need is just much much bigger volumes that you have to go through.

Doug: [00:30:23] And so the attention to those details you know if it's a little if you're smiling in this mistake costs you know 500 bucks that's regrettable. But you live with it. But when you get bigger that mistake that same mistake instead of 500 dollars can be now five thousand or ten thousand dollars and now it's Ouch.

Doug: [00:30:42] You know the consequences are just much bigger estimating your costs. You got to get them really good. You've got to get so many people I talked to I say what's the cost to make whiskey and they say number I go Well first off I know you're wrong because there's no way on earth that you can do that. And even the biggest companies in the world can't do it for what you just said because you haven't put in all the rest of the math you haven't done all the rest. Thanks. Now there are some good systems in distilling. There's some wonderful distilling systems that we use that integrate with our project management stuff in our accounting systems. But you've got to have some systems Inc. But it's got to be in the people. It has to be in your people. But that's just I don't do math. I don't write stuff down. Sorry you don't work for me. End of story. Not interested.

Doug: [00:31:30] It's the only way we can work together Tripp. Yeah. If it's not written down it's not. I mean we have a guy that does R&D who's who's very artistic.

Doug: [00:31:40] Philip is incredible. He's incredible. OK incredible palette. And we got him writing down all of his experiments in the Trailblazer software and he would put down what he learned and he brought his plan to study cycles and he was a little hesitant at first but now he does it and he says Oh man it's so helpful to me because it forces me to think through what I just did. Now as a bonus it also comes to me. Who's the CEO of the company.

Doug: [00:32:06] And wherever in the world I might be three times a day I get a notification with all of the updates and so on and I can comment on them. So what allows us to keep going faster to pivot to adjust and adapt because of that collaboration. But we can't read minds. So we have to read words you know that's the best way we found that.

Tripp: [00:32:26] That's that's great. That's. But a guy like you said it is a discipline that we seem to have especially whether it's R&D people or marketing people they don't really. They resist it. And yet when they adopt it they seem to like it which is there's great irony there associated with with kind of that mindset.

Doug: [00:32:52] Well it gets back to is this about creativity or is this about innovation which is productive imagination. Are we here to try to ship something make a difference in the world or are we doing art for art's sake I love art but that's not what we're doing here. You know we're trying to make a business out of these things.

Tripp: [00:33:13] Absolutely. Well let's move to your craft cocktail recipe. The Solstice Sling and it looks like this may be one of your early inventions for four for craft cocktails.

Doug: [00:33:30] Yeah. So this is this is actually from Philip who's who's the magician at our place who leads R&D and I challenged him to come up with a winter cocktail.

[00:33:40] This was originally built for the Eureka! Ranch holiday party and the distillery party and it's a it's it's kind of a neat twist on a gin cocktail that it's the same time classy and elegant.

Doug: [00:33:54] And so in a shaker what you're gonna do is you're gonna put together an ounce.

Doug: [00:33:57] And a half of gin one.

Doug: [00:34:00] And half tablespoons of pear puree which you make by just cooking some pears with a little water and then putting them in a blender. So it's gonna be a little bit chunky for you just to soften them up a tablespoon of Rosemary sir. Some simple syrup that you've let some rosemary soak in it half teaspoon of lemon juice fresh lemon juice and half teaspoon of white balsamic and you top it with some sparkling water and garnish with Rosemary and lemon.

Doug: [00:34:29] So this is this is a real craft concoction. This this is this is out there. This is not some of the simple ones that we've been doing. This is the kind of thing that you'd you'd pay extras for and it's just got the likeness of the pear with the Rosemary. Now brings out some of the notes in the gin. Some of the spice notes of the gin start to come out and it's just magical. It's a magical taste.

Tripp: [00:34:57] So let me ask you this Doug because you're so specific about some of the items that are being used. Is the shaker matter. Is it the Boston shaker. Is it going to be any shaker or you got seconds. You got me. I know it's like it's like you've been smacked in the face six times.

Tripp: [00:35:14] You know you start to ask these questions go ahead and fess up what happened to you on the martini recipe.

Tripp: [00:35:20] I didn't have one I didn't have the right shaker to begin with. So that was that was the first disaster that I had didn't take his name down. No it didn't. And I have to admit it did not. I once I got the Boston shaker and was able to describe it to people so they know what we're talking well. OK. So so in an earlier episode we talked about a martini and and Doug took me through a.

Doug: [00:35:42] Not a martini. THE Martini

Tripp: [00:35:44] THE martini  Yes absolutely. So I'm already being corrected. He's very. Doug is very prudent about this when he is prudent about nothing that I have ever I've ever noticed before. But you had to have the Beefeaters Gin because you know now you've got me. So I'm remembering these things like I said get smacked across the face a few times and you start to say OK. Now why am I doing this so. So we got the Beefeaters Gin because it has less sugar in it. The other gins. I remember that. And then you had the Dolan vermouth driver removed. They put in you got to put in a cab full and I used the wrong cab. The first time that was another disaster. And I used the Beefeater cap by accident. They were both sitting there and I missed it by that much. And it's not that you know there's these are small differences. And then I had I forget what the type of Shaker that I has but it's a strainer in the top but. But regardless.

Doug: [00:36:43] Two part one right. That's the last. And the silver one. You'll see that you I put together and then you shake it and it creates a greater flow throw for it.

Doug: [00:36:53] And so the ice in that you get to the proper dilution when you do it that way when you use the little shakers you just don't get the movement. And so you don't get the right dilution and you don't get the. The ice interaction that you need it's just not nearly as good.

Tripp: [00:37:09] No. And it was there was there is a it's an interesting difference between I mean people I'm just going to suggest that they try it. You know it's worth the entertainment effort for nothing else to get the Boston Shaker and the to have it shaken for the 12 seconds or whatever. But let me get back to the Solstice Sling. Does it require a Boston Shaker number one.

Doug: [00:37:34] Oh I don't even explain after that. It's always Oh it's always going to be the Boston shaker. Never very stirred or shaken and if it's shaken it's always a positive shaker. OK.

Doug: [00:37:46] And and it's stirred which you know you know Bond shaken not stirred.

Doug: [00:37:51] You can stir as well you can try it that way and try it and see what you see the difference. See the difference which is which. Which you do. Oh come on it's a cheap thrill And besides after you taste it four or five of them it's gonna be more fun.

Tripp: [00:38:08] Oh yeah. And then you got the guests out there doing the 12 second countdown with you two. That's right. So. And then also on this drink the gin is it.

Tripp: [00:38:18] Does it matter which gin for this drink for the salsa.

Doug: [00:38:22] Less so let's. So this one but I would keep it to a I would keep it to a London dry or a Plymouth. I wouldn't go to some of the boutique ones because a lot of those have too much sugar and it's going to take it over the top. So I would tend to keep it to a dry. I tend to use the dry stuff all the time.

[00:38:43] It is just. And then I add my sugar back into the syrup so I can control it more. But the gin. So just so listeners know gin and rum has sugar added you can legally add sugar. I mean just like sugar it is what it is.

Doug: [00:38:58] No it doesn't come in from the cane sugar. No it's added sugar. You add sugar to gin and rum that's legal do a London dry it's not supposed to have it it actually can have I think point half of 1 percent or something like that so to soften it there's a tiny tiny amount in it but that's the reason why some gins taste good and some genes don't. The idea of a gin was you would add the remove that even the driver mood has sweetness to it and that's what brings the sweetness in as opposed to when I have craft gins I'll usually just have them over ice. Most of the time just because they've already got the sweetness in it's not removed. It's a different taste but they've already put the sweetness in it.

Tripp: [00:39:42] Ok. All right. Well that ends are brain brew whiskey Academy segment and we'll look forward to the next drink that you have for us and probably next time we'll give it get an update on how the distilleries coming to.

Doug: [00:39:58] Sounds good. OK. Thank you Tripp.

Tripp: [00:40:00] Thank you

Tripp: [00:40:15] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time. For things a 1 hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas. And the newsletter. Has other offers that are not paid public. The driving Eureka prescription for success. You answer questions and we'll help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas. And. You get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash Podcast. And don't forget to subscribe. To the Driving Eureka! podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/how-to-stop-innovation-project-waste-driving-eureka-9

This is the ninth episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: Innovation Project Waste; Segment 2: Increasing Pace of Change in Business; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy.

Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas.

[00:00:34] Episode 9 Overview

[00:00:55] Project Innovation Waste

[00:08:35] Risk/Reward Drives Project Diligence

[00:09:16] Innovation Engineering Trailblazer

[00:10:15] Ways Trailblazer Helps You - #1 Alignment

[00:10:47] #2 PDSA

[00:10:48] #3 - Being Connected

[00:12:00] Prerequisite Must Own the Work

[00:13:27] Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt

[00:14:09] Increasing Speed of Change

[00:17:21] The Problem and Answer for Baby Boomers

[00:27:14] Growing the Size of the Whiskey Pie

[00:29:13] Ice in Scotch/Whiskey?!

[00:32:34] Craft Cocktail Recipe - The Sazerac

[00:33:22] The Sazerac and The Dixieland Band

[00:35:00] The Sazerac Recipe

[00:35:02] The Sazerac - Step 1

[00:35:32] Step 2

[00:35:53] Step 3

[00:36:18] Step 4

[00:36:27] Step 5

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:22] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the Driving Eureka! book.

Tripp: [00:00:34] This is episode 9 of the Driving Eureka! podcast. This weeks feature article is about Innovation Project Waste. Our Driving Eureka! book segment is about the Increasing Speed off Change in Business. And the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment reveals some key secrets and the craft cocktail recipe is The Sazerac.

Tripp: [00:00:34] So this week Doug we're going to talk in Segment one about how to stop innovation project waste. We've touched on this on and off over a few of the episodes but what 50 percent of value is wasted and lost on the front end of innovation. How does that happen?

Doug: [00:00:55] First off let me just say I specifically said stopping project waste because we have a fixation on planet Earth in the corporate suite that if we just cut costs a miracle will occur and so because we we want to get rid of waste and I agree with waste but if we're gonna get rid of waste let's get rid of the real waste the stuff that is really wasting our time in energy and the number one thing that's doing that is our development process. Yes we've talked about it most waste where the companies lose things is in their development their project management system that they use to manage projects is causing them to lose value they're just losing value they lose profitability because of the way their system of project management works when it comes to innovations that classic approach to managing projects is a process where you define the idea and you define the requirements and the tasks that you have to complete and then you assign them to people you check on conformance to requirements and that's how you manage your project.

Tripp: [00:02:18] So this is a software development process.

Doug: [00:02:20] Basically it was software development or project management. It's all the same. And and the latest hot thing now is to have project managers that's going to help it. It doesn't help. It doesn't help it at all.

Tripp: [00:02:35] No it doesn't. Because the project managers only wind up asking you what's the date for your task.

Doug: [00:02:41] That's right. And then they'd send out reports. Yeah and they generate their very good report generators and they're critical path. That's right. And they brought charts. Yep Gantt charts now to be fair.

Doug: [00:02:53] A bunch of these folks are awesome. And when I spent I have spent time with them they're very very frustrated because they know the system doesn't work on innovation and in fact I a number of them have said to me let me tell you the secret to my success as a project manager. Don't get on innovation projects get on deployment projects get on rebuilds get on things where there isn't high uncertainty manage projects that have been done before and you'll be fine when you're managing and innovation.

Doug: [00:03:24] There's uncertainty associated with it. And so the project management conformance to requirements blows up.

Tripp: [00:03:32] Well yeah. And then this is exactly this is what you see in software development right. Like you said you want to be the project manager that has one. That's a kind of a predictable something that's happened before because otherwise the thing that management pays attention to is the date that it's do. So in uncertainty how can you give a date. That's right.

Doug: [00:03:56] That's right. And so when it and when you don't have the date the software turns you down from green to red. Yep. And and an alert I mean that software they really like alerts go to your boss and your boss's boss that you're off schedule and you are the cause of it and. And so what happens is is that when these red flags come up the person who's on a bind they go can't do it yes can't do it we're gonna have to compromise.

Doug: [00:04:30] So rather than go for that three to one product win now we go to a 60 40 and then next thing you go we go too well we're 52 48. Well actually we're no different than anybody else. Our big new idea is no much better than anybody else's it used to be but we couldn't hit the timetables so we had to compromise and then the thing fails and ninety five percent of the time we fail and we don't understand why it happened.

Doug: [00:04:57] It's in the damn system for crying out loud.

Tripp: [00:05:02] So what. So you guys have looked at this and said this just doesn't work for especially innovation. And so you've come up with an alternative approach.

Doug: [00:05:12] Yes. So. So getting frustrated by this I mean I mean I'm talking really frustrated.

Doug: [00:05:20] We decided to start to look at and as I said I spent a bunch of time with project management people some really good people and talked to them about it and we started to track the data on projects in labs because we've got like 17 billion dollars worth of projects and active development we can follow them week by week and so we started to look at where these things happen what are that what's going on and what we found was that on the high uncertainty tasks at the front end of innovation people ran rapid cycles of learning plan to study actor feel fast fail cheap or whatever you want to call it. OK. Up at the front. But once they got into development they assumed they knew all the answers. It's what's called the waterfall approach. Now just execute and so what we did is we took those cycles of learning from the front and we applied them all the way to market and so we built a human work system as well as a digital software project management system that we call trailblazer and designed it so that when you got to a cycle that had an uncertainty you ran plan to study X cycles of learning to dissolve the barrier.

Doug: [00:06:32] In other words we built into it a flexibility. So we had accountability but we still had flexibility built into the work system in doing it. So when somebody said I don't know we're gonna have to figure it out. Nobody flipped out and said well what if we can't you do your job then what we found is instead of a 50 percent decline in ideas through development we were seeing a growth of 28 percent or basically 50 plus 28 78 percent growth in ideas during development.

Tripp: [00:07:01] So why is that.

Doug: [00:07:03] Because they're able to do the cycles of learning. In other words we're accepting the fact that innovations are innovations we haven't done it before.

Doug: [00:07:12] They're new to the world. We're gonna have to try some things. And if you don't have that if it's not just do your job get it done. And you can't experiment anymore then you compromise because people are going to keep that red flag on there with their name beside it without doing something about it.

Tripp: [00:07:34] That makes sense. So. So you've built in in essence saying hey we're going to have to go through some cycles. But but I still think that the difficulty Doug would be that you don't know how many cycles you're going to go through. When do you stop when you say well that's that's good enough or does the schedule dictate that or what.

Doug: [00:07:53] Well what's happened is you have to do is you have to work the whole. So that's why you have to have a project leader. And again this gets back to that changing the cycle. It's moving to the Toyota chief engineer or the Procter Gamble brand manager whether it's a person in the middle. When we say OK Fred's having troubles on this thing it's not working. It's not working for Fred. The technology is not working. The medal won't do what we wanted to do. The chemistry is not working. OK. What else can we do. And then they work together to adapt and they might change the offering or make adjustments in other areas to make the whole thing come together or sometimes you decide it's not going to work. We've got to kill the project.

Doug: [00:08:30] I mean that is something that should and and it should happen probably more than it does.

Tripp: [00:08:35] So to win to win is that point me. Could you. You know is there a rule of thumb associated with that when you say enough's enough.

Doug: [00:08:43] Well now it's a benefit reward when the benefit reward is this know if if the thing can make me a billion dollars I can take a lot of time to get to a billion dollars.

Doug: [00:08:53] If it's going to make me a dollar ninety five and I got maybe five minutes.

Tripp: [00:09:00] Ok. So it's the economics of it basically the financial risk reward the risk reward.

Tripp: [00:09:05] Ok. So will tell us about the software that you that the the team has put together this AI the innovation engineering trailblazer what does it do.

Doug: [00:09:16] Well what's cool about it is is it's it's both a flat file you know you've seen your typical you know like spreadsheet type list with names who's assigned what time do they do it and you click a button and it drives an automatic Gantt chart pretty classical project management type platform only in addition to having that it has to have the tasks it all says what we call the yellow card. It says who's the customer what's the problem with the promise. What's the proof. And then on top of that has the blue card. Strategically why does the company want to do it. Because one of the things we found is that people working on projects we go why you doing it. I don't know. Why does the customer care. I don't know. Why is it important to the company. I don't know. We can't do your job if you don't know what that's going to be. I mean Dr. Deming said famously with a bunch of Ford employees he said an employee can't do their job if they don't know to what purpose the customer is going to put the product.

Doug: [00:10:15] And so we connect you vertically to the companies why it's important strategically why it's important to the customer. And now what are we doing. And then on top of that we allow you the flexibility that when an idea comes up that doesn't have certainty to it that you can run plan to study X cycles very quickly and we've put all embedded all of the tools right there in the software. You can do it right there sometimes you can do it right there at the team meeting makes team meetings incredibly fun. And and then lastly So what is the alignment.

Doug: [00:10:47] Second is the PDSA.

Doug: [00:10:48] The third thing it does is it has a really really simple system to keep everybody connected. So whenever you run those PDSA as you click a button and it goes to the news feed or if you have a task you've got a challenge you put a note in a news feed and then the other people in the team can get it once a day twice a day whatever they want.

Doug: [00:11:09] They get one Newsfeed they've got an email that says everything associated with the project what's going on and what things.

Doug: [00:11:15] So there's no typing up notes there's no memos there's none of that junk is gone move we've just gotten rid of all of that wasted energy that goes on because we're seeing it on a real time basis enter it once and it takes care of everything for you.

Tripp: [00:11:31] Okay. And so what does that think Stormer do in association with that then.

Doug: [00:11:36] Well that's what's all been built into Thinkstormer that's all things.

Tripp: [00:11:39] Ok. All right. I still think storm is built. OK.

Tripp: [00:11:42] And then the project manager which it was just take a common project manager when you think of today what type of skill set do they need to bring to the table in order to become an innovation project manager using the software I mean is it a is it a big leap for them as well.

Doug: [00:12:00] In our case what happens is is that we've got to have people that own the work. OK. So distant third party project managers. Yeah. You know they are not helpful to me guys. Yeah I mean they're just basically people who spank people and do charts. Yeah and ask for.

Doug: [00:12:16] What we we these project leaders who are the project leader who are close to the work who understand the customer they understand the tradeoffs to understand the technology they understand the economics to understand the patent potential and they're trading off these dimensions. That's why small businesses can do well in startups do well is because the founder or the leader has keeps all of those things. They're playing whack a mole with all those components.

Tripp: [00:12:43] So is this a skill set then that you have to make or is this this one that.

Doug: [00:12:49] You can teach it you can't teach it.

Doug: [00:12:50] Okay. That's why we have courses and you take the classes and you can do it. I mean you know you got to care and if you care you can make this work. Okay. All right.

Tripp: [00:13:03] Any other comments associated with the project waste innovations electric way.

Doug: [00:13:09] Okay. It's just you got to change your mindset. You've just got to change your mindset on how you're approaching it and conformance to requirements and beating people up for not getting things on time when it has uncertainty they don't know. That's not fair it's not right and it's not productive okay.

Tripp: [00:13:25] Very good.

Tripp: [00:13:27] All right well let's move on to segment two here. It's time now for the driving Eureka book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall. The driving Eureka book excerpt it's not a theory. The pace of business has really changed. What would Deming say about that Doug.

Tripp: [00:14:03] Well about theory right. I mean it's you know theory is ever proven right. Yes.

Doug: [00:14:09] So you know in the past there was a little urgency to change on what we did. I mean you could take time and I think part of our problem as a as a culture is whether it's in our universities and how we teach whether it's in government but whether it's in business is it these new digital things or making connections for people and making things happen much faster than they ever did before. And in the past you could create an idea and you can say OK I guess I got to innovate.

Tripp: [00:14:41] Ok I got that. Thank God I don't think you may have to excuse yourself.

Doug: [00:14:49] And over the careers of many of the senior leaders it was not on common life cycles to last long times years generations but the fact of the matter is today the world is truly going faster. And this is the best of times as I'm prone to say the best of times because it means that old farts who don't change die because that's what happens and should happen to all people what maybe not should happen. But you know what I mean. Oh yeah.

Doug: [00:15:21] There is opportunity to reinvent everything today. If you're willing to change the rules to change the game and innovate you know you got to do something that is as we've said meaningfully unique. Go back a couple episodes and we talked about how to measure it. If you're not unique you've got to be Chief and business doesn't last forever anymore. And this is a good thing for those people who have the mindset to truly as the title says drive Eureka in their lives in their non-profits and the for profits or however they're making a career and you can't just you know put us you know there's a big design so I love design I love great design. But sometimes people say well if we just make it look pretty or maybe that'll make him do it. No it's the Internet. We'll call you out on it. People are going to know they know when you have a difference it makes a difference and when you don't have a difference. And this is a good thing for innovators. And if you're not an innovator it's horrific.

Tripp: [00:16:27] So when you look at this just kind of the landscape of people and I know you consider yourself kind of the innovation one percenter if you will. I'll be my my word for it. But when you look do you see I mean you think of Steve Jobs right. I mean as far as you know an innovator somebody out there if you thought differently about things. But but it's the exception not the rule. So and that's a huge problem for even the pace of change.

Tripp: [00:17:00] Certainly younger generation like what I reference as the digital natives the people have always had computers that you know that are out there and they're able to to make adjustments and change faster. I'm sure that's been true for every generation you know in the past oh you know there were cars and then there were you know something else airplanes and so you're going through that.

Tripp: [00:17:21] So how how you've got this whole population of people and I know you've talked in the past about you know the old the old baby boomers are dying off and they're the ones drinking the whiskey and that's why you got to do new ones. But how you make it great.

Doug: [00:17:37] Tripp I'm . . . So I'm going to give them some some space here. OK. I actually I actually think because I really really think if we're going to really thrive as a society and as a culture because we a lot of big problems we've got to solve we're going to have to work together. And that includes we need the wisdom of the elders. We truly do.

Doug: [00:18:07] And I'm not going to beat them up to say Hey you idiot why don't you believe in innovating why aren't you proactive why you're just reactive why you just worrying about your retirement wait I'm going to I'm going to suspend that aside and say that deep down inside all of those people they never started out in business wanting to be that way.

Doug: [00:18:23] They became that way. Maybe it's a way for the public company maybe Wall Street that's causing them to be that way. You know it may be their business school taught them things that are not relevant today well they've had the curiosity beaten beaten out of them over the years.

Tripp: [00:18:43] I mean through education through.

Doug: [00:18:46] But maybe maybe you know if you know it's funny now having a Whiskey Company and working on corporate stuff because I tend to have my whiskey with me it's so we end up we may end up what we taste because we have to taste. And so when you're sitting there you know taking a sip of whiskey that you made you know with time compression very very fast. That tastes amazing. It opens people up to conversations and dreams and that kind of stuff. And what I find is that is a probably a good amount of curiosity but the bigger issue is okay I can come up with ideas. But if our system can't do them why bother.

Doug: [00:19:33] And so if you know your system is broken. Now the bigger issue then maybe not that they don't have curiosity but that they don't believe that their organization can do anything with with those ideas. I think that's the root cause I think they don't have a method you know. You know member Deming would always rant by what method by what method you know he was he wouldn't. He wasn't big on lofty thoughts. You know some of these management by objective people who saw our numbers he would say oh what method.

Tripp: [00:20:07] You know that's my favorite quote is one of it is my favorite Demning quote By what method. It struck me.

Doug: [00:20:12] And the x rays know what I've just ask you for as I need 20 percent are a lie and I need to achieve this within 18 months. And there I've done my job go and I'll bribe you 50 percent bonus if you achieve it. And if not I'll fire you. Go. I've done my job.

Doug: [00:20:31] Congratulations congratulations. Numb nuts. It's not helpful to anybody you know. By what method you were looking you got the view where do you want us to go where do you want us to focus our time and energy. That's you know what are we betting on in my case I believe custom whiskey is gonna be the future. I believe that organizations while rental guru with you reconvening is popular today it still is. I think in the future people are going to want to put it inside. Which is why we invest in education and tools. They're gonna want to have their own people. It's gonna be hard enough to get people you're gonna want to get your best return. People are gonna want custom whiskey instead of Johnny. Jimmy's and Jack's whiskey you know well this is yeah. This is the Yeah. Jack Yeah yeah.

Tripp: [00:21:13] Hey. But this is the reason why you're investing so much in education. I mean as far as the online fundamentals course and in some of things here is because you're making more you're making others that can think and and develop and actually tap into their own curiosity and know how to do something.

Doug: [00:21:35] And I bet. And me and Maggie Nichols is now the CEOs I'm the chairman now. We've bet that that's the future. That's where future growth is. It's to do that. That's what leaders do. They make choices they make choices. And so.

Doug: [00:21:54] But if you don't believe in your system listen close. If you don't believe your system can execute it.

Doug: [00:22:01] I said system not people because they'll say people and they change the people and it's just as bad it's the system it's the thinking system.

Doug: [00:22:07] If you don't believe your cultural system can execute it then you sub optimize your strategic choices because you're only practical and prudent and proper when you do it. But you you just realistic.

Tripp: [00:22:24] Yeah but it was safe. I mean that that's what most people in you know Wall Street has a tendency to push executives to be safe. Okay. All right. Any other final comments on on the how the pace of business has really changed.

Doug: [00:22:45] No. Just recognize that folks it is different. It is different. It is faster it's not just your imagination. It truly is. And this is a good thing. This is a good thing. But if what you're doing today is the same as it was a year ago you're dying you just don't know it so let's get going. What are you waiting for. Let's go.

Tripp: [00:23:13] This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcasts where we're going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business. The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft Whiskey Company like has never been done before

Tripp: [00:23:35] Doug you. We've talked about different things associated with the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y and what's talked a little bit about some of the key secrets that you've learned.

Doug: [00:23:49] Well so we've talked about the research quite a bit the last couple of weeks we've talked about some of our you know single product tests looking to get a seven and meaningful uniqueness.

Doug: [00:24:00] We've talked about paired comparison tests an important separate comparison test one of the things that's important is you do that research especially in the early cycles when you get to big decisions you want to have independent people doing it but in the beginning it's valuable if you run the tests. If you go up to people at bars if you do it at your distillery and you're asking them the questions because there is a feel feedback loop that you get and one of the things that we've learned as we've been doing this and this applies to the craft whiskey business. But it would also apply to many other industries.

Doug: [00:24:33] Only 18 percent of the population we know from good data drink whiskey.

Doug: [00:24:39] People who drink alcohol only 18 percent drink drink whiskey however what we found qualitatively first I remember John Muldoon and I we went up to a table and we asked the people would you like to try our whiskey. We've got a Whiskey Company. And one guy said yes absolutely.

Doug: [00:24:59] And the others you could see them kind of like go. They kind of like pulled back. And of course the loud mouth said yes taste for everybody you know like like he's paying or something you know crazy.

Doug: [00:25:17] And. And so so so we we're doing samples with them just having a little tiny taste and tasting the product. And there were different products one of which was a real classic you know pretty strong tasting one and one was a very easy drinking product. And sure enough you know loud mouth loves the big tasting and thinks the other one's kind of wimpy and all of a sudden the eyes light up around the table and the other people go and there's like five other guys there and they go Damn that's pretty good. I like that whiskey. That's the first whiskey I've had I liked. And there were five of them now instead of one to him. So they started to then take over the conversation and I realized John and I talked right after we said it. We said let's go look in the data and sure enough we find in the data that of people that have had whiskey in the past month sort of a hardcore group. But then there's another segment of people who have whiskey once or twice a year. And then you get the people who haven't had it in the past year. So let's say we've got the people who drink it. People who don't drink it and then there's this big group of people in the middle who once or twice a year try it and we call them kind of whiskey wannabes. They want to drink whiskey But they don't like it.

Doug: [00:26:37] It's just too hard to drink.

Doug: [00:26:39] And so we started to focus on those people to see what would happen. And sure enough it's a wonderful group of people that when you light them up with the right cues from a product and a packaging and from the way you're talking about the products and the products that you design they like them. And so these are new whiskey drinkers and that's kind of cool that in this old old category called Whiskey you could find a growth market not just in higher prices but in New customers that you could bring to whiskey.

Tripp: [00:27:14] Mm hmm. So this is your kind of your thinking behind growing this 18 percent of the whiskey drinkers into a larger piece of the pie by using these craft cocktails as that's part of the strategy anyway as I write.

Doug: [00:27:30] That's right that's right. So so related to this is cocktails so I can make a whiskey they can do but the easier onramp even easier that gets the masses of the people is if I do cocktails. And so we're really focusing on developing a cocktail. But the problem is is that your hard core people you watch too many John Wayne movies.

Doug: [00:27:56] Why haven't the Westerns they go into the bar. They might say they apologize for the fact that they want to put ice in the product or water and I'm like I've for crying out loud when I'm in Scotland everybody adds water or ice. Everybody does. It's a North American craziness thing. Oh yeah. It's a manly thing. It's a manly thing to take alcohol at too high of an APB percent alcohol and burn out our throats. Yeah. That's a cool thing to do.

Doug: [00:28:22] I mean that's nuts it's nuts.

Doug: [00:28:25] Now the problem is this for many whiskies the minute you add ice to it or water to it the flavor drops off especially the bourbon the bourbons do this really badly. They'll fall off fairly quickly. So when we use our time compression we use 22 percent more wood square inches of wood per bottle of liquid. It's basically the ratio it's basically more wood and then we change the compression cycles and the net result is when you taste the brain brew. Is what happens is they actually get better as time goes on for about seven minutes. If you just keep tasting it they get better and then they start down and about 15 minutes is when they start to fall and after 15 minutes if you had a nice glass of whiskey you should be drunk have drank it. You know frankly I mean you know I mean I'm just saying I'm just saying so.

Tripp: [00:29:13] So yeah. And I am just curious Doug about this whole ice thing. Where did it come from. I mean I I I definitely remember this being a topic conversation you don't put your you know ice in your whiskey at all or that type of thing and you're saying in Scotland that they do.

Doug: [00:29:31] Yeah mostly they'll have wanted water and ice will come on the side and and you'll add your own and they do in fact when they make whiskeys that they'll deluded down because you can't taste it at that high percent alcohol. It's just this it's just crazy. Only old people whose taste buds are burnt out. You know I'm exaggerating for effect this is younger people like to do it too.

Doug: [00:29:54] But but the fact is is that it is a much more pleasurable drink and people mess up the fact that they've had a couple of drinks and then they have another one they go they keep tasting because they're getting stronger and stronger because their taste buds are numb.

Doug: [00:30:06] But the truth of the matter is is I virtually never will drink it straight virtually never. Now there's a little trick that you can do though if you're if you're with a crowd and I learned this from the Highland Park Ambassador excuse me I learned this from Jerry was a Highland Park ambassador.

Tripp: [00:30:27] So what is that. What is an ambassador. Does that mean.

Doug: [00:30:30] Brand Ambassador for Highland Park whiskey which is my favorite scotch. Okay. It's also made by our partner. Full disclosure Ed Rincon which has Macallan and that distribute our products such as full disclosure. But I still I love the product before I started to work with them and I said Well what do you do if it's as well he says in America when I'm in America and they want to do it and it doesn't seem right. And then with some some people this is what you do is this you take a little sip of whiskey and then you kind of chew it in your mouth. You led the kind of saliva go and that dilutes it down.

Doug: [00:31:01] So now it makes it tricky. So in fact that's what we do is when we're tasting whiskey sometimes when we're going quickly what we'll do is we'll take a little sip and we'll chew it in our mouth to get a sense of the taste of the body and then and then of course we we spit out because you just can't keep consuming because your judgment goes quickly. And so we do it that way but. But generally I wouldn't. I always have it with ice. That's how I drink whiskey.

Doug: [00:31:33] And so I designed Brain Brew products to be particularly great with ice because that's why I like it damn it. So you have a craft company we make what we like.

Tripp: [00:31:43] So yeah. So. So in the eighth episode you talked about the martini and you were very very particular about how to make it. Is it the same thing for the same thing.

Doug: [00:32:00] Ok. So how was the martini. It was it's very careful how you shake it. You asked Shaker amount of time and because what you're doing is you're getting to the proper dilution it's the exact same thing.

Tripp: [00:32:12] Ok. So what is the proper.

Doug: [00:32:14] I've got to tell you it's seven minutes with ice with whiskey in it at seven minutes with our whiskey in particular. They're spectacular this week at 7:00. That's the best. That's the best taste. Okay. And then it starts to deteriorate after seven minutes I would guess a little bit.

Doug: [00:32:30] Yeah. It goes down a little bit but it really is you want to have it with ice.

Tripp: [00:32:34] When I've got ice all right that I keep learning something new every time for you. So what's what's move on to our craft cocktail recipe that you have this week. The Sazerac doing it they pronounce that correctly the Sazerac.

Doug: [00:32:49] Yes. And so this is one. And I'm just going to tell you upfront you're either going to love it a lot or not. OK. And when we talk about great cocktails with bartenders the Sazerac is one of those really high end cocktails. That is it's thought to be one of the originals.

Doug: [00:33:09] Sometimes it's made with brandy and whiskey. It started originally created with cognac. Today it's made with whiskey. It's a big sipping cocktail and is from New Orleans.

Doug: [00:33:22] And best enjoyed listening to Dixieland jazz Louis Armstrong Pete found or B.B. which is the prism skip river bottom voice.

Doug: [00:33:34] And as a special bonus my dad helped find that band and they were up in Maine. And we've got there's be a link to their second album that you can download. The MP 3s says you can hear this music and I think trip I gave you the link to that.

Tripp: [00:33:53] Yeah and see you drink a Sazerac and you listen to this music. Let's listen. See it live that required is that part of the formula. So. So what you can do is you're gonna you're gonna drink the Sazerac.

Doug: [00:34:05] You going to put the music on and it's gonna take you to Preservation Hall down in New Orleans and where you're sitting there on the benches and listening to some of the greatest music Dixieland jazz is one of those great music forms and that there is a basic theme. But each one of the musicians when they take the lead is playing riffs and playing different things and it's never the same. It is it is got a discipline and a creativity at the same time which to me is just it's just magical music.

Doug: [00:34:40] And I grew up with it because my dad played trumpet. And so I grew up with this. And so this is one I have sat in New Orleans by the way at Pete Fountain's place with a clarinet player. And and and drank maybe a couple extra Sazeracs enjoying it. So it is something.

Tripp: [00:35:00] Okay. So tell us about the drink then.

Doug: [00:35:02] Ok. So first off it's gone. It's got absinthe in it which is a licorice type taste. Pernod is one and Herbsaint is one which is sort of the official one from down there which sometimes you can find some you can't porno is what you can find easily. You're going to pour a little bit in a rocks glass and you're going to tilt the glass to really cover the whole insides of the glass and then you're gonna dump it out.

Doug: [00:35:32] Then you're gonna add ice and a teaspoon of simple slurp and this is a basically a 50/50 mixture of sugar and water that you've made.

Tripp: [00:35:42] Ok. So you're making the simple simple syrup because I mean here sir. I think of maple syrup.

Doug: [00:35:47] Yes simple syrup. It's a mixture of sugar and water. OK. All right. Should you put one teaspoon in OK.

Doug: [00:35:53] And then you're going to add an ounce and a half to two ounces of. In our case my noble oak rye whiskey or your local craft whiskey. But I like Noble oak right now.

Doug: [00:36:02] For this we also have another product which is a Deckhand working man's five wood rye that'll be out soon. That is particularly amazing with this as well.

Doug: [00:36:18] And then you're going to added a lemon twist and two drops of Peychaud bitters and the Peychaud bitters or a unique type of bitters that comes from New Orleans.

Doug: [00:36:27] And then stir a lucky 13 times and enjoy 13 times the 13 30s like on third.

Tripp: [00:36:35] You don't shake it.

Doug: [00:36:36] No you don't shake it. Only the martini shake the party.

Doug: [00:36:41] And and when we when we get into some of the tropical drinks the tiki drinks then we're gonna shake those because we want to have the foam and stuff in them.

Tripp: [00:36:49] Oh okay. I'm sure there's chemical reasons why we want to do that to.

Doug: [00:36:54] Culinary reasons.

Tripp: [00:36:55] Culinary reasons. OK well we go that now you're going to raise this to another level and speaking of the culinary reasons. What are the snacks that you have with these things so we can really expand this Doug.

Doug: [00:37:08] We could but this is something where I don't want any other taste in my mouth when I'm having my Sazerac. I'm Earl is not. This is not something that I'm going to have with food. I'm going to enjoy this and savor it just like the martini. I'm going to savor insipid. I'm not I'm not going to put other stuff in because I want to enjoy this has got amazing complexity to it and there's a lot of magic in this taste. And when you get a proper Sazerac it is a work right. Interestingly at a craft bar when you order a Sazerac your odds of getting a good one are pretty high. Now if you say Sazerac and the bartender says What's that you know the answer is stop. Okay. But if you say Sazerac and they go. Got it and they kind of smile what you know is it's one of their favorites. So they've got really good ingredients with it because it's one of the drinks they have at the end of the night.

Tripp: [00:37:59] Mm hmm.

Doug: [00:38:01] And so it's a pretty good odds that you're going to get a good Sazerac at a decent bar because it's likely that the other ones the Negroni which is a gin drink which we'll talk about another time but the Negroni Sazerac these are ones that oftentimes bartenders really like and so they'll tend it nurture them and they'll take extra care and they'll make it the way they like it and it'll tend to be pretty good.

Tripp: [00:38:27] Ok great. Well that's. I've you definitely given me a whole list of drinks that either I've had and now I have to make them quote unquote the Dougway or four new ones I did Sazerac and I had never even heard of it and I may be in the minority but that was certainly one that I'm not familiar with so I'll definitely have to give that one to try.

Tripp: [00:38:52] I'm still looking for the Linie. I can't find it around here anyway I off to keep looking to see if I can find that you said I'd have to brush the dust off of it anyway so I got a four or five.

Doug: [00:39:07] Okay I got it a party source just over in Kentucky so it's sometimes only down here to Cincinnati we can do it.

Tripp: [00:39:14] All right. Very good. All right. Well that concludes our Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment and we will look forward to talking to you the next time I find folks

Tripp: [00:39:34] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things a one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter has other offers that are not paid public. The driving Eureka prescription for success. You answer questions and we'll help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas and you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate and the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend to get these offers.

Tripp: [00:40:27] Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash podcast. And don't forget to subscribe

Tripp: [00:40:36] To the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/the-end-of-big-bang-innovation-driving-eureka-8

This is the eighth episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: The End of Big Bang Innovation; Segment 2: Why Do Patents Matter?; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy.

Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas.

[00:00:33] Episode #8 Overview

[00:01:27] What the Big Bang Theory of Innovation is

[00:01:57] The Idea is Only 10% - Don't Miss the 90%

[00:02:51] Half the Value of an Idea is Lost During the Development  of the Idea

[00:03:32] The Problem with Trends in Innovation

[00:04:11] The Leader into the Market Leads Profits - This Counters Business Lore

[00:05:12] You Need a System to Innovate

[00:06:13] The Story of Stage Gate

[00:09:10] Innovation is More Thank Just a Better Idea

[00:10:39] How Companies Kill a Good Idea

[00:11:38] Your System is Killing Your People and Ideas

[00:12:48] The Driving Eureka! Book Segment

[00:12:58] Why Patents Should Matter to You

[00:13:42] Patents are Going to Other Countries - The US is NO Longer the Leader

[00:14:27] Patents Lead to Higher Margins and Paid Employees

[00:14:46] Universities are Missing Patents from Curriculum

[00:16:01] 70-80% of A Company's Valuation is Intellectual Property (IP)

[00:16:53] What Makes Something Patentable

[00:17:21] Whiskey Business and Patents

[00:18:52] Patents Force You to Think Differently

[00:20:40] Amazon Files Lots of Patents

[00:21:27] Patent Literacy Test

[00:25:43] Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy Segment

[00:25:54] The "Proper" Martini

[00:28:26] The Martini - Step 1

[00:28:52] Step 2 - The Boston Shaker

[00:29:58] Step #3 - Fill Boston Shaker with Ice

[00:29:59] Step #4 - Add 2 oz of Beefeater Gin

[00:31:06] Step #5 - Dolin Dry Vermouth

[00:31:53] Step #6 - Shake in Boston Shaker for 12 seconds

[00:32:29] Step #7 - Dump Ice from Martini Glass

[00:32:33] Step #8 - Use the Hawthorne Strainer to Pour from Boston Shaker to Martini Glass

[00:32:45] Step #9 - Garnish

[00:33:08] Step #10 - Sit Down and Drink

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:22] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the driving Eureka book.

Tripp: [00:00:33] This is episode number eight of the Driving Eureka! podcast. The podcast is structured around Doug Hall's newsletter at DougHall.com and you can find all the archived newsletters under the heading "newsletters" from the main menu. This week's feature story is the end of Big Bang innovation that Driving Eureka! book segment answers the question why do patents matter and in the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy. We'll discuss the classic cocktail the martini.

Tripp: [00:01:11] Well let's talk about our featured story for this week the big bang theory it's a show that I love Big Bang Theory is very popular for people with Sheldon and Leonard and the gang. But I don't think that's what you're talking about here.

Doug: [00:01:27] No it's a fine TV show but the thing that doesn't work for me is corporations have this view that innovation is about a big bang and in 40 years of doing this I've never seen it happen. The premise is if we just come up with this big bang idea you know we go on the roof of our office sit in a lotus position wait for the lightning to strike us and we get this big idea and tell people to do it.

Doug: [00:01:57] Then a miracle occurs and the truth of the matter is as far as I'm concerned at best 10 percent of the initial idea is is what you're going to realize at the end of the day. The idea is worth just 10 percent 90 percent of it lies in the hard work you put in during the journey from idea to reality and the consultants speakers and authors who I ran again who preach but have never practiced innovation perpetuate this they say the front end you've got to invest in the front end you need to do all of this stuff at the beginning and insights and design and all of this stuff.

Doug: [00:02:36] And then they claim victory that they've got this magical idea and then you're stuck with it you try to figure out how to actually ship it.

Tripp: [00:02:43] So is this the is is the The Big Idea Hunt that you talk about it well it's related to that. OK.

Doug: [00:02:51] It's after you've gotten it and you say oh look miracles occur we got it the gurus gave us this magical idea and but the fact of the matter is is that's not what you got to do more than that. You've got to do more than that. You it's taking it from there. Because two separate studies show that companies lose half the value of an idea is lost during the development because people end up compromising they compromise. This is what we can't do this we can't do this. And next thing you know the idea is and worth doing but they've got so much time into it. They just go ahead anyways which is just madness it's madness.

Tripp: [00:03:32] You know this kind of brings up. It's somewhat related. It's maybe a touch off of the subject but you know I constantly read about people tracking trends for innovation. You know that's the way to innovate is to track trends what what you're kind of what's your stand on now what what you're thinking with regards to the things that are trending in certain industries.

Doug: [00:04:00] Well trends are fine if we call it future mining. My my problem with some trends is is that they're rearview mirror looking.

Doug: [00:04:11] In other words look to other companies are making a lot of money in this. That's a trend. Let's go do it now. Now we're the third went in with the same old crap as everybody else. No place left is cheap as opposed to taking those things and doing future mining and building scenarios as to what could happen in the future if you're not careful with trends you just become a follower. And the research is clear. You're gonna make a fraction of the profits of the leader. I mean that's the data. I mean you can say you don't like it. You can say well there was this example yeah sure. That was an example just like when the weatherman says there's a 90 percent chance of rain well 10 percent of the time you have to get the reverse because that's what 90 percent means it doesn't mean 100 percent. The fact of the matter is is that you want to be anticipating the future and driving it.

Doug: [00:05:03] And so future mining is good but it's not enough because the marketplace changes ideas change and you've got to be able to pivot and adjust.

Doug: [00:05:12] But it all gets back to your system your system for going from idea to reality.

Doug: [00:05:18] And you've got to get that built into the DNA of your organization.

Tripp: [00:05:24] And is it because organizations don't have something in place or it's it's it's informal.

Doug: [00:05:34] There is no system there's no system. System is get its management by by metric to get through the gate you have to have these numbers. You have to navigate you have to have these. Wow OK. But that doesn't tell you how to do it. There's no mindset for doing it. And in fact you've got three quarters of the organization and support groups whose job it is is to prevent risk it all all causes Tripp.

Doug: [00:05:59] I just I just got a request from a big academic book to write a chapter on innovation and product development which is you know I don't know if I'm probably going to do I don't know. We'll see.

Doug: [00:06:13] But I mean and but it was interesting their questions they said Can you give me the arc of the story of what's gone on in innovation and I'll tell you what happened is that there was everything was fine the world got going faster people had to go faster people started to come up with ideas they had to failure. They then put in a system. The aim of the system was to prevent a failure from ever happening. And that system tends to be a gated system it came from Nassau originally. Then a professor named it Stage Gate. And the idea was gates of inspection.

Doug: [00:06:50] You see where I'm going. Yeah we're gonna. We're going to measure the quality we're gonna inspect the quality as we produce the man in the car. 1950s Ford and Chevy and what did that do. It didn't create quality. No. It creates gaming of the system. Guess what happens with the Stage Gate system. You game the set.

Doug: [00:07:09] It's madness. Madness is guaranteed to not work. That's why you have a ninety five percent failure rate at corporations because the system stupid is not designed to do it. And you say oh well we were being made to be objective.

Doug: [00:07:28] No it's not when Drucker set up management by objective it was not to be. No it was management by strategic goal that you were doing not numerology you know it's interesting read.

Tripp: [00:07:42] Well no it does and that's OK because well even even with the you know that was the thing with Deming Deming really came down on management by objectives with Drucker and Drucker clarified himself and said the way it's being practiced is not what I intended. It's it's completely gone to you know to the Milky Way. So. So there's a very wide misconception and unfortunately it seems like everybody's doing the wrong thing when they're using the management by objectives that Drucker intended when he wrote it and it's all and it's perpetuated by business schools. So they're in essence perpetuating this thinking that's very Tayloristic. So if Frederick Taylor you know in the early nineteen hundreds it's a different it's a different world now. It's you know it's basically going from Newton to Einstein. So. So we're we're we're in a we're in a different we're in a different universe and companies are still operating in the old one. Now I'm not I'm not real familiar with the stage the Stage Gate portion is it's something that's widely used in corporations.

Doug: [00:08:55] Yeah. About 85 percent of companies.

Tripp: [00:08:58] So these will be large companies I assume.

Doug: [00:09:00] Yeah yeah. Large companies. Eighty five percent use it. And by the way there were two Robert Coopers who worked on it. One was a business person one was a professor the Robert E. and Robert C or something like that.

Doug: [00:09:10] And I met the business person and it was supposed to increase being decrease risk but because the were not the systems were in place and how to do the work then you know it's worse now than what they've done is see when you put these systems in what happens happened is as people have turned around and blamed the front end. Well if we had a better idea our system for development is fine. We just had a better idea. Okay. And so they're now focusing on what they call stage zero at the beginning. You know the fuzzy front end and and and I was part of that. I was part of that for a long time with you reconvening but I am telling you it's the wrong place. You know it that's not where the problem is the problem is when you try to take that wicked cool idea and make it into reality. That's where the problem is. That's where all the messes.

Tripp: [00:10:03] So. So let me ask you this. You guys for years did kind of the big idea piece at the Eureka Ranch! and you're saying you know that's only 10 percent of it. What what got you what was the trigger that made you realize that you know we're not really getting anywhere here because the companies aren't because they're taking the ideas and killing them off with their. We talked about this before the bureaucracy or you know other things that are involved in their culture or system. What was it. What was the trigger that that single for me path.

Doug: [00:10:39] Yeah yeah for me what drove me crazy was wasting my life you know. Yes. Great money. We'd invent this big idea. I kid you not we'd invent this. They give us a ridiculous objective.

Doug: [00:10:54] That was impossible to do we invent patentable breakthroughs miracle has occurred and then they f it up and not because the people want to but because the system screws it up the system kills it and then they get to the end and they come back and the worst part of this for me was they never blamed us. They said yeah we messed it up here.

Doug: [00:11:19] Can you give me some more when you've been doing this for 40 years you go. I've seen this movie. OK.

Tripp: [00:11:26] I poked my eye. Can you poke my other eye.

Doug: [00:11:29] Do it again. This companies that I've done 20 and 30 projects for. This is amazing. It is amazing.

Doug: [00:11:38] And you tell people it's your system it's bad they go we're no we're no we're no worse than anybody else. I go That's right. You're no stupider than all the other stupid people fix the system that people want to do quality work. They want to do something good they want to do something amazing and we've just we robbed them of the pride of work to be able to do something. We've taken all of this effort and you know what it's like we have an impossible mission. And then you accomplish it and then you see it just get flushed that really really is horrific. It just is terrible. It's terrible.

Tripp: [00:12:10] Was it across the board. Doug. I mean was it. I mean you worked with a lot of big companies. I mean you know we've talked about Disney and Nike and different ceremonies like that.

Doug: [00:12:19] It's everywhere it was. OK. So was it was it just you.

Doug: [00:12:22] It's mostly big companies. It's smaller companies it's not as bad it's not as bad with smaller companies but with with with these others it's just a mess. It's just a mess.

Tripp: [00:12:34] Very interesting. Ok.

Tripp: [00:12:48] It's time now for the Driving Eureka! Book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:12:58] Why do patents matter and this is kind of.

Tripp: [00:13:01] This is a kind of a big deal.

Tripp: [00:13:04] And you know I have never really thought about it until I've started working with you guys about the patents and how important that they really are. And now we're seeing a whole I think the awareness level I think in the US now is is piqued. I mean we've got this whole thing going on with China and IP and those types of things. Any commentary on that because now often people are interested in intellectual property and what does that mean and what do you mean Micron Technology last you know eight point six billion dollars because they had their IP stolen would it.

Doug: [00:13:42] Yeah yeah I'd like to think I'd like to think that they actually cared about it. But the reality is they don't. These are all reactionary examples so forget everything you're hearing in the news. It's just it's a whole pile of bunk because the reality is is that the patent laws have been changed to make them more powerful and more helpful to us and patents should be expanding. But there are more patents going to companies and to people from outside the U.S. than in the U.S. In other words born in the USA invented in the USA is going continues to go down as a percentage of the patents filed. So we have a serious problem of patent illiteracy going on right now. And we have a true false test on basic patent knowledge.

Doug: [00:14:27] 50 percent would be guessing and the average executive gets 60 percent and they'll give you every story in the world what patents aren't worthwhile in our category they don't matter. Well here's the reality. The reality is is that what research shows is is that companies where they file patents make higher margin and the employees get paid more money.

Doug: [00:14:46] But other than that they don't really matter because a patent is a government supported monopoly. Now is it the giant wall that ends all things. No. But you got to understand. But I talked to executives and I ask what are your opinion. Well yeah we have a patent on that and I'm like on what on that. What part of that. Well no it's just you can't make that. I said What part can I. They don't even understand it. I then go out and I'm sitting in front of twenty four engineering deans and I say who teaches your engineering students what's patentable. Not a single hand goes up. Now I can tell you that trip you can maybe guess by the tone of my voice. I then went ballistically crazy.

Tripp: [00:15:28] Not you Doug.

Doug: [00:15:30] And they said they said and one person said the accreditation bodies don't require it. I said in the accreditation bodies are crap crap I go to business school. I said Are you interested in how we make more money. Oh yes money is important. Yes money is important. Yes. Want to make higher margins. Oh yes I want to do that finance. Yes finance support. Okay. Do you understand what is patentable and what is not. And be able to evaluate a patent. What are you talking about. No that's not a job. That's engineering job. No I already talked to them.

Doug: [00:16:01] They said it's not their job either I mean for crying out loud we're doing all of this work to do strategic thinking strategic thinking on how to get an advantage. And the one thing that matters more than anything else is intellectual property. It's 70 percent to 80 percent of the valuation a company's intellectual property. The factories are easy I can rent those I can borrow those I can find those all over the world. It's the thinking where all the value is. Patents are critical. My view is if you work with me on a project you hire us doing can investing if I'm helping out with it the right role is reasonable.

Doug: [00:16:41] No patent no project no patent no project because a patent means your idea.

Doug: [00:16:50] Here's a simple definition.

Doug: [00:16:53] A patent is when you have a an element of it a claim that is something that you're going to do that is not obvious to somebody with ordinary skill in the industry so let me say it the reverse way. If what your new idea is is obvious to somebody with ordinary skill then your idea is not patentable and it doesn't sound like much of an innovation to me.

Tripp: [00:17:21] So Doug what about the whiskey business and patents.

Doug: [00:17:24] Well a fair point. So you check in on me at your trip. I can see this is a tribute to make sure that I'm following. I'm doing this rant but am I doing it myself.

Doug: [00:17:37] The Whiskey business as it turns out. Until very recently had very very few patents because you've got an industry that is basically the three big conglomerates that own most of the Bourbons and most of the scotch and they all kind of work together. I'm not saying they illegally work together but they cooperate. They buy barrels back and forth from each other in some of this is very good and some of it is less good. In my mind for innovation and so they don't file a lot of patents and but with the whiskey business because I'm putting my money into it because I put my money on the table for it my time energy money no patent no project and so patents have been a major piece of the work here. And for the first year we're now getting into our third year here now for the first year I would probably say 70 percent of our time was on perfecting the technology and the patents doing it. And so and a future episode we go into that more depth because we've got some of the and some that are not public and I recently talked about the ones that are not public that are still secret but that are in the process so we can talk about it. But it is it's a critical thing.

Doug: [00:18:52] And what I like about working on patents is it forces the team to think differently you can't just do the same old stuff and get a patent. You have to think differently. You've got to break the rules. They only give patents to crazy people. And in fact at one point I you know because if you're normal if you're adult immature it's obvious it's no good. I tell my guys I took the old apple thing I said some call us the crazy ones and we're OK with that because that's the only people that get paid.

Tripp: [00:19:24] So they made the prudent and the prudent ones aren't allowed that right. What's that the prudent ones aren't allowed.

Doug: [00:19:30] Being prudent will not get you a patent.

Tripp: [00:19:35] Well nice that you have had you touch upon this and I don't want to go too deep into it but are they not they been these distilleries the large ones. Are they not patenting things because they're just trade secrets that they have. Or how what's the . . .

Doug: [00:19:51] To be perfectly honest I don't know that they're even actually trade secrets in most cases because most of the people in the industry know pretty much everything that's going on. Just ask a few folks. No I think part of it is is that the big companies in all industries not just whisky tend to get to a recipe for a product.

Doug: [00:20:11] And they make the same product that way all the time. And so they make little tweaks on it but they don't really invent original stuff. You know I mean what was the last time you had a remarkably different whiskey. You know I mean you may get an expensive one or a cheap one a smooth one or a harsh one. But how many times do you taste something we go Oh my God that's like nothing else.

Doug: [00:20:36] It's not often. No it's often no.

Tripp: [00:20:40] So it's this kind of situation. You know what. Let's just shift a little bit into talking about service industry here now where you've seen this. I mean the biggest tidal wave I've seen is obviously Amazon. I mean they've completely changed the way that they've done and my understanding is and maybe you know more about this than me Doug. But as the they've they filed a ton of patents on stuff called Yeah.

Doug: [00:21:06] Well they're very aggressive with it.

Doug: [00:21:07] I mean most most Internet companies most of these things are in it now whether or not you want to enforce without you complete that's a separate. These are separate questions but filing for them is done very aggressively on some future episodes will give some more hints on on ways ways to work this and driving you Rebekah Brooks got a whole bunch more concepts in it.

Doug: [00:21:27] In fact the the the price of the book alone it's worth it to get the quiz in there for the patent literacy test because it'll really it's going to shake up when you realize what you didn't know you didn't know.

Tripp: [00:21:44] Yeah well yeah. We want to put that into the show notes on the website so people have access to that. I think we've we definitely want to be able to do that so they can kind of know you got to know what you don't know. So and I don't know that people are aware. And again just what I said at the beginning that despite whatever politics you're in this whole fight with China over intellectual property I think it's got people's attention about patents and things that things they never really thought about before. Wow.

Doug: [00:22:15] But there was we have to be careful what we ask for.

Doug: [00:22:21] There is a very very good chance that you know China's view is that they are developing nation. You know there's so many people in poverty and that kind of stuff it that they can't afford to do it but if they were to start they've gone on a rampage filing patents remember patents are by country and a lot of U.S. companies have ignored filing in China. And if you haven't filed in China you can't complain about them copying them.

Doug: [00:22:54] Okay. So because that's the way the rules are and there's a lot of I've seen that before people so I can't believe what they did in China. So did you file in China. No I said well then they're not breaking the law.

Doug: [00:23:04] Yeah but the patents are no good there. Well without me you can't have it both ways and so we're going to end up in a situation where freedom to practice in China.

Doug: [00:23:14] Companies are going to get their products manufactured there because they're gonna be violating a Chinese patent. So this is not as simple a story as you hear. I suppose examples. Absolutely positively.

Doug: [00:23:26] But if you start to track these things down and you start to track some of the stuff that the people are doing it it it's a more complex story. And I I I am not an expert at this but this is gonna be more complex than you think because you're going to end up wandering over to China. You're going to say what do you mean I can't manufacture my product. Well let's say well you're going to violate Chinese patent they said.

Doug: [00:23:49] But but but that's not that's not reasonable. And it's like well it is because you know they were filing. Now how good they are how good the examination is. Lots more issues to this there's a lot more to this conversation than the simple soundbites that you're hearing that they're stealing stuff. It's probably fair to say that the vast majority of the stuff that they're quote stealing is they're just reading the patent literature and the companies were smart enough to file over there or didn't care enough to do it because management was illiterate on it and so they lost it.

Tripp: [00:24:23] Interesting. Okay. Well yeah. Well it is what it is. It's just. But it has drawn more attention. My my broader point was it's drawn more attention to this particular piece and I'll be honest with you. Before I met you I patents were not at the front of my mind. I never really thought about it. And then you know once you start introducing how important it is. And you know being able to figure out how to get make something patentable as far as a product or a service it you know you read just the awareness of it changes how you how you think about it. And I think that's that's the issue that we're fighting here whether you're a dead man or whether you're an engineer or something else.

Tripp: [00:25:10] So. Doing Polaroids there.

Doug: [00:25:14] Sorry about that.

Tripp: [00:25:16] Ok let's move out of patents for now. I mean I'm sure we're going to revisit that a number of times as as time goes by. This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcasts we're going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business

Tripp: [00:25:43] The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft whiskey company. Life has never been done before

Tripp: [00:25:54] The Brain Brew Whiskey Academy. A martini worth worthy of celebrating eighty five years since prohibition. And I got. You know Doug that's my drink so I and I'm not quite as probably detailed as you are around.

Doug: [00:26:12] Now this is one where I am I am prudent and proper.

Tripp: [00:26:15] Oh no. Oh no. Oh I'm very prudent and proper but I you know the thing I like Doug and you don't know this may may make your eyes roll but I and I got it for the first time out at Sullivan's restaurant here in Indy. But they had a dirty martini with blue cheese stuffed alos and they ever since then I will not drink a martini without blue cheese stuff. So I'll let you take it from here.

Doug: [00:26:42] And that's fine. That's that's that's nice.

Doug: [00:26:47] No I mean I would say and and dirty martinis. You know it was eighty five years ago on December 5th 1933 prohibition ended and FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Well he ran that he was gonna get rid of it and he loved martinis and he he preferred a dirty martini like you do. Okay. But I am in this case even though I love all these different things when it comes to martinis. I am an absolute fanatic about martinis actually all cocktails. It doesn't help that I'm a chemical engineer and I'm into rapid psych tests and and I've got some friends of I manage the newsletter I mentioned Tim Jon and Sheldon who know who they are that fortunately are just as compulsive as I. With regards to making martinis and I have gone through a ridiculous I mean it would be hundreds of tests on this and in fact just the other night I found another gin and I said Well let me try this one. And I tried it three ways and I nope nope didn't beat my classic didn't be the classic. So now. So this is in the shout outs if you're driving. Don't worry about that you can get it there. And this is precision. So here's the way this works. You've got to do it exactly precisely as I say. I mean and I'm talking precision here now after that you can do your riffs but if you want to learn jazz you've got to learn to play the scales first. You hear me here now. You've got to do it precise. And once you can play the scales well then you can start doing your riffs on it.

Doug: [00:28:26] Ok. So here we go. There's a little bit of details to this OK. So step one you're going to fill a martini glass with water and ice to chill it while you make the drink. OK. And this is important because otherwise when you put the cold martini in that the thermodynamic side of the cold goes into the glass so you're going to let that sip. I put it together.

Doug: [00:28:52] Step two. You're gonna get a classic Boston shaker. That's the type that has the you know the cup and the two cups that go together like you tend to not what's called the cobbler type where you have the little strainer thing on the top. OK. The difference is is that with the Boston shaker you get a longer throw. Okay so the ice bangs around more and it gets to the perfect dilution and all of my recipe is built around doing it out of that shaker.

Tripp: [00:29:22] And there's the shaker me have to be made out of something in particular.

Doug: [00:29:25] I'm sure there's developed hugely. It's usually metal and glass is what you usually use. OK. This is what they normally are. All right. So now I know that there are I am a shaken not stirred martini drinker. And there are people that are of the stirred camp not me. I like the cold and I like the ice crystals. I think it gives it a zing versus the clear which I call practical imprudent stirred version of martinis. I don't want to do that. OK so you got your Boston shaking you.

Doug: [00:29:58] Fill it with ice.

Doug: [00:29:59] Now to the ice you're going to add two ounces of Beefeater gin. Now don't be arguing with me here do it. You've got to get the Beefeater. I know it doesn't cost like a stupid amount of money but it is that world standard. I talk with a guy once who got his PHD and his thesis was around gin and he told me he said Beefeater is the standard that everything is measured against and it is truly dry. Sadly today many of the gins. The reason why people liked them is they keep you can legally add sugar to them and they've got sugar added to them. You know it's it's nuts. You know they had one and two percent sugar. I mean we measure it. You can you can pick it up and that's what the that's what the vermouth is for is to add a little sweetness. So if you add remove on top of some of these modern gins it's just stupid. Then work and work. So you've added two ounces of Beefeater and I'm not going to give you an option for an ounce half on this one Tripp. You've got to do two outs. I'm just telling you how to make it right.

Doug: [00:31:06] Then you're gonna get Dolin Dry Vermouth. It's the green bottle and you're gonna get Dolan you're not going to use the others. You're going to use Dolan because that's the best. And then you're gonna take the cap off it. You're going to buy the half sized bottle the three seventy five and you're going to keep it in the refrigerator because it goes bad. You go to these bars and they've got to remove sitting there is frickin oxidized. It's horrible. And so you only want to buy a half sized bottle and if you get the little ones that's even better. Mm hmm. It's fresh. This is gonna matter here. You're gonna take the cap off and you're gonna pour the Vermouth into the cap the screw cap comes off it and that's how much removed you're gonna use huh. OK. OK. I learnt that from Harry's Bar now in Venice Florida. Venice Italy capful.

Doug: [00:31:53] OK now you're gonna shake the martini for twelve seconds. You can use your watch account one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi and yes I'm twelve of that gets it's not 13 seconds it's got to be consistent down seconds Oh I told you. Twelve seconds. I know it's different but that's the way it is. And what that does is the the ice starts to chill and it and the liquid hits the maximum cold in twelve seconds after that it starts to just dilute and you're not you're not going to get any colder.

Doug: [00:32:29] Then you're going to dump the ice water for a martini glass.

Doug: [00:32:33] And you're gonna use what's called a Hawthorn strainer. And the Hawthorn strainer makes it so that you can get strain it out and it's got a little curly things on it.

Doug: [00:32:45] You can look it up you'll see what it is. And you got to strain that in and I got three choices You can add two olives a thin piece of lemon peel wiping it on the rim or go crazy and do both. Now I switch it up like in the summertime sometimes I'll do the lemon but most of the time it's two olives and then you then you need to sit down you don't stand to drink this drink.

Doug: [00:33:08] This is a sitting drink. You sit there and you hold the martini glass and you look at the Little Ice sheds that are there because you shook it and then you slowly take it and you take a sip and hold it in your mouth for a second and then it's like oh. My God is Sarah you know it's spectacular. It's spectacular.

Tripp: [00:33:31] So so my only question Doug is where's the Kettle One Vodka that you do in the martini.

Doug: [00:33:37] Well not in my mind.

Doug: [00:33:44] Actually I told you how to make the best martini and I do vibe can not go there I'm going to go after those people up there. They'd like to have their vodka.

Doug: [00:33:55] I'm talking about a truly proper truly proper martini. That is just. Magnificent.

Doug: [00:34:03] I'm telling you all all my buddy's Tim. John and Sheldon they go.

Doug: [00:34:09] I like my I like martinis gin and tonic sake say gin and tonic for cans soda when you have a rum and coke for crying out loud. It's just it's a sugar pill with it was a little Virginia he came taste a gin anymore. Well I like Let don't drink gin you know. You know just drink vodka or something.

Tripp: [00:34:27] So who damaged you with this formula. Well what we're so stuck on this thing.

Doug: [00:34:34] Well because I got into it and I started doing it and I and I ordered them and I would love them and hate them and now I'm at the point where I just I can't even order them at bars. I can't even order bars because they're just horrific. But the Vermouth is usually cheaper smooth. That's oxidized. That's horrific to begin with. And a sugar pill craft. What. Gin. That's got sugar. And they put it and it's just concoctions and it just worthless. So it's it's it is just it's just not worth getting. Harry's Bar in Venice right round from the big cathedral there on the square St. Marks is a spectacular spectacular spectacular. There they make a proper martini and that's where some of this recipe came from spending maybe some time with the bartender.

Tripp: [00:35:26] Ok. All right. Well that's.

Tripp: [00:35:30] I've never heard you so adamant about you have to follow this step by step. I'm just looking through here.

Doug: [00:35:36] Usually there's a lot of flexibility to it you know make it to your taste. I'm just telling you make it this way. Exactly. And I think you'll become a convert. I think you'll become a convert then after that do whatever you want. Makes exactly this way. I will be amazed and those people who don't like a martini are going to say My God I have now I have seen the light.

Tripp: [00:36:01] Brothers it's and they may be saying that after three anyway.

Doug: [00:36:05] So this is I can't imagine in the 50s they would make a pitcher of martinis. I can't even imagine the concept.

Tripp: [00:36:12] Oh my God. Joe you can sense to me. All right. Well that concludes our bring boom whiskey Academy for for this week

Tripp: [00:36:29] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things a 1 hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter. Has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka prescription for success you answer questions and will help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas and you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash podcast.

Tripp: [00:37:29] And don't forget to subscribe to the Driving Eureka! podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/will-it-be-the-best-or-worst-of-times-driving-eureka-7

This is the seventh episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: Will It Be the Best or Worst of Times in 2019; Segment 2: It's a Dickens of a Time; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy.

Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas.

[00:00:34] Episode 7 Overview

[00:04:02] Historically - What Happened to The Eureka! Ranch When They Didn't Innovate

[00:06:57] Investing in Innovation Makes You Stronger

[00:09:10] Eureka! Inventing and Innovation Engineering - What are They?

[00:14:30] Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt

[00:16:33] The Increasing Speed of Change the Internet is Driving

[00:16:51] The Data on Innovators and Non-Innovators - How Did They Fare?

[00:19:45] New Offerings Bring New Customers

[00:20:26] The Time to Act is Before Things Get Bad

[00:24:20] Paired Comparison Testing

[00:24:44] The Secret to Winning Whiskey Competitions

[00:25:50] Win by 2 to 1

[00:29:29] Craft Cocktail Recipe - Spanish Manhattan

[00:33:41] The State of the Brain Brew Distillery

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcast where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:23] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka! Ranch and author of the driving Eureka book.

Tripp: [00:00:34] This is episode number seven of the driving Eureka podcast. This podcast corresponds with Doug Hall's weekly newsletter at Doug Hall dot com. Just look for newsletters this week or feature story is titled will be the best or worst of times in 2019. The driving Eureka book segment is called It's a dickens of a time in the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment discusses paired comparison testing and the craft cocktail recipe is the Spanish Manhattan your newsletter.

Tripp: [00:01:12] Doug talks about will 2019 be the best or worst of times for you and it's interesting to me just as much as you like Ben Franklin and you've kind of got all his stuff and and know kind of his history. Charles Dickens my guy I love I love Charles Dickens and therefore when I went to London I did a little Fleet Street tour going by Ye Old Cheshire Cheese and some of the pubs that he frequented. You know on your way up to St. Paul's but I really like his stuff and in fact I just watched The Man Who Invented Christmas last night. So it's a good movie about him writing a Christmas Carole.

Doug: [00:01:51] I oh you've seen it. Yeah I just saw it. I was. I wish it was. You know we just stumbled into it but it's well worth watching. It's really well worth watching.

Tripp: [00:02:00] Oh absolutely. Oh it was. It's a great movie. So what's pivot over to Will 2019 be the best or the worst of times for you. You're talking here quite a bit about kind of looking ahead as far as things that are happening so I almost got the feeling when I when I read this segment that you're starting to feel like we may be headed into a recession or something that you kind of there's some words in there that you're using that make me a little nervous.

Doug: [00:02:30] Well yeah it this is a bit of a rant about OK this is this is where you know being an old fart I guess I've been doing this for 40 years.

Doug: [00:02:40] I mean I guess I guess I well it's a rant. There's there's no way around it. The feature story was will it be the best or the worst of times for you in 2019. And what happened is as I was sitting there sipping a little bit of our fine whiskey and on the news this was the day that General Motors announced a shut down. And and it was one story after the other and I watched the U.S. networks and then I turned to the CBC The National who  tend to be quite balanced very balanced in my view not Canada. They think they're extreme but I think it's very balanced every year to what we see. Okay. I mean they're not the BBC but they're in that direction. And as they laid out and then they brought experts on to talk about things and they talked about and I don't care what you want to talk about if you want to talk about that it's because of the trade rules things going on the banking stupidity whatever you want to talk about it of you know the tax credit thing that put a one time bump in that they don't care. What would you want to talk about it. There is a definite undercurrent that things are going to go down. What goes up goes down. And it just doesn't go up can perpetually it goes up and go down. And I have lived through this over 40 years I have lived through this many times you know as it's gone up and gone down.

Doug: [00:04:02] And so I was reminded of Dickens 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities where he said it was the best of times it was the worst of times. And and what I've learned from this is that when you reinvent yourself and you have technology and you have something that is meaningful unique it is truly the best of times when it goes down because everybody else huddles becomes the huddled masses. And when I first started the Eureka! Ranch it was a time of recession and we jolted because we had new news new things we were brand new company and we caught a big win got got to work for Walt Disney and Pepsi-Cola back when Pepsi Cola was the Apple of the day you know Michael Jackson and all other early dating myself now back in time you know. And it was it was really cool. And when the next time it came we didn't have something and we suffered the next time there was a recession was when we really started into Innovation Engineering back in 0 8.

Doug: [00:05:08] And and we really started to push into that. And as I'm sitting here now looking at the potential for it you know as where we just announced that Innovation Engineering has you know the systems approach to innovation has gone from a beta to ready to go. I'm excited. I mean I'm excited about the potentials for doing this and then.

Doug: [00:05:33] And the reason I bring that up is because most people who write books as I do and who speak and who do stuff they preach but don't practice they they talk a lot of stuff they tell you to do things but they don't limit themselves. And I'm a great believer in learn from people that actually do what they're they're talking about. And so now really is the time now is the time to invest in big ideas the big bold patentable breakthroughs I mean get going now don't wait. It's also the time to invest in yourself. You've got to get yourself prepared in this crazy free agent economy that we're in now so that you can think and work faster and smarter. And lastly it's important to invest in your team. You've got to get your team really ready so that whatever happens you're ready to pivot adjust and take advantage of the opportunities because there's going to be tremendous opportunities coming tremendous opportunities coming. And so it's just as we get to the end of the year as we start to think about things as we hear the chaos of the global economy whether it's Brexit or the craziness in us whatever it is. And I'm not taking any political sides on this. But there is definitely high uncertainty going on right now.

Doug: [00:06:57] Get yourself ready invest in innovation if you're meaningful unique that's going to make the difference. When the economy goes tough because then you've got something to pull yourself through and you come out stronger is what I've learned. You come out stronger out the other end when you have it. Then when you don't have when you don't have it you struggle for some time.

Tripp: [00:07:16] So Doug what do you. What do you see when you made the comment there that you know good things are coming.

Tripp: [00:07:24] So so what what do you see. I mean why do you why would you say that. Because you know if everybody else is retreating why why is Doug. Because you have it. You have an interesting perspective anyway. But why do you say that.

Doug: [00:07:38] Well because we've we have spent in our case and in some some folks that we're working with have made investments in technologies that dramatically increase speed in our case and decrease risk. I mean we've got a whole new project management platform that's based for accelerating innovations that is absolutely ridiculous.

Doug: [00:08:00] In how much faster makes teams new education courses or new online courses that are just a mind leap forward. When you have something that is a point of difference and customers just sitting there and they're struggling they're looking for people who can help them work faster and smarter.

Doug: [00:08:19] And whether it's software I was just just today I was looking at some software that can help us with the whiskey business with our marketing making it even more effective. Well when times are tough people are out looking for something that can help them break out of it because they don't want to just sit there. They get to a point where you know the class then they're mad as hell and I can't take anymore. They're like Well we've got to do something. We can't just be a victim. I've got to do something. And they're looking for things. And I think and we happen to be on the right side of the curve here in the way that we have. It's amazing you say oh we just introduced this thing. The world doesn't even know about it. And so with these last changes that have gone through since the first of the year we're really set up to go do it we've got that portfolio and with other stuff coming that are going to just do amazing things.

Tripp: [00:09:10] Okay. Well what's let's just take a minute and kind of cover off you know we do want to make this a big advertising type of thing. But why. Just because we haven't really let the audience know what are the offerings of the Eureka! Ranch and Innovation Engineering and all those types of things. Can you kind of just yeah. She's got a big deep thing but just kind of what they are.

Doug: [00:09:31] And so you can I mean people have look online but in the simplest sense we have Eureka Inventing and we have Innovation Engineering Eureka! Inventing we find filter and fast track big ideas for you see if you want patentable breakthroughs with you reinventing we can very quickly get you some some big ideas and get you going to restart the curve and get you on the path towards profitability.

Tripp: [00:09:55] So is that does that mean that you're kind of doing it for them.

Doug: [00:09:59] Well we're taking the left we're doing the heavy lifting but we're doing it with them but we're taking on probably 70 percent of the responsibility 70 80 percent. OK. So we're it's collaborative because we don't want that invented here but it is we're taking the heavy lifting. OK. At the and it's a it's a bit of a jolt if you would like to get things going.

Doug: [00:10:22] I mean we say my books have been called Jumpstart and they really are a jumpstart on the other side for most people today. Now the New Economy is gonna be different this if this happens they're going to want that jolt then Eureka! Inventing is going to go flying because it's it's very fast. We compressed nine months into into it like a week. I mean it's very very intense. And so that's why it's been so popular for so many years. But on the other side that gives you an idea and that's nice for a couple ideas or a portfolio or whatever but it gets you basic some ideas what people are looking for more and more is sustainability. They're looking for the ability to do it themselves.

Doug: [00:11:02] And so that's where Innovation Engineering is where what we do is we teach you how to find filter and fast track big ideas. In other words we enable you to be able to do that now that you can be the organization. It can be your team or it can be an individual in their own career.

Doug: [00:11:21] So we have offerings for people for teams and for companies because sometimes the person's ready but the team or the company is and sometimes the team's ready but the corporation isn't. And so if we start we work with the willing is the way we work and we've go online and we've got live and we've got software tools we've got all kinds of stuff that people can use. But the basic idea is do you need to basically get the thing turned around and get going. That's Eureka! Inventing or you really want to bring this into your culture and do it. And that's what Innovation Engineering is about.

Tripp: [00:11:59] OK. All right. And it's it's it's primarily those two broad categories of things. You've got the Eureka! Inventing and then the Innovation Engineering system. And is it a natural flow then for people too. Would you say most people would then. Well I guess it would depend but would start with Eureka! Inventing and who is who is the customer for that. I mean is it somebody that they're desperate because their revenues are starting to go down or maybe they're they're trying to get to the next level and they need something to happen right away. Who are the types of people that are using Eureka! Inventing today.

Doug: [00:12:36] Well when the economy is good we're seeing a lot more invest. Now we've been in in a beta test so we haven't been we've been very selective on who can get innovation engineering. But in general when the economy is good people are more interested in investing in the people in their systems. When the economy is bad and they need something quick they jump on Eureka Inventing got and then they'll transition. So you'll see both and it really depends on where it is the general people who are who will bring in Eureka! Inventing will be people who are responsible for the business. So it might be a director of marketing and might be head of our indeed it might be a new business development. It could be various stakeholders it could be the CEO. Can we bring in it it really it's somebody who basically wants to make more money. They want to. My friend Sergio Zemin said this is some more stuff to more people for more money. And that's that's the primary thing that we're doing.

Doug: [00:13:30] Although I will tell you probably 40 percent of our business now is not working on products or services but it's on systems how to reinvent systems and so there's a lot more work on systems because people are getting used to the fact that they got to reinvent their systems whether it's a system for go to market whether it's a system of operations customer service you know whatever it might remember years ago we worked on the American Express Black card this insurance card the high end 2000 dollar card. And the idea was the Card was going to sell for $2000 all throughout the rest of it so we did that and then have we did that next thing you know we had the customer service group and we ran a couple sessions with them projects to figure out how to support the people that were paying two thousand dollars for a credit card. And so it was systems work which is which is common these days. OK

Tripp: [00:14:30] It's time now for the Driving Eureka! book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:14:42] All right well let's move to our second segment here. Our book excerpt I've been practicing saying that Doug it's got a hard word for me to say for some reason that Driving Eureka! Book excerpt you keep on this Dickens theme in it and it looks like it as I remember from the newsletter that you'd done a speech in the UK to a marketing group of some sort. And you kind of made a joke about that and it kind of for some people laughed and most like a lead balloon.

Tripp: [00:15:22] I don't know. It's hard for me to imagine I still get the picture my mind from a speech I went to that you did with the baby and you said no whining you know that's just it. It's forever embedded in my head. But anyway.

Doug: [00:15:37] Uk Marketing Society has been very kind to me over the years I've done a number of different events I may be doing another one next year with them and it was their annual conference and it was December and I got up and I said it's the best that I literally quoted Dickens I'm going to give you now more of it. From the opening segment I just figured I had to do this as a book in pair because it's just too fun. I said it is the best of times it is the worst to time it is the age of wisdom is the age of foolishness. It is the season of light it is the season of darkness. We have everything before us. We have nothing before us. We are going direct to Heaven. We are all going direct the other way. And as you mentioned a few laughs but most hidden they think it's the other way. And the the point here in this book excerpt from driving your ego is is that the lifecycle from monopoly to commodity used to take decades.

Doug: [00:16:33] Today because of the Internet it's often measured in less than a year and so this is Joseph Schumpeter as creative destruction that those that don't innovate are destroyed by those that have embraced a mindset of never ending continuous innovation.

Doug: [00:16:51] And I go on to explain in here so just to put some meat to the conversation that we just had associated with my rant we did a survey in 2011 for the US Department of Commerce now so 0 8 things go to crap and things went bad and so we went in three years later and we asked people. We asked CEOs what it was done on where they were you know versus three years before and we separated them into companies that were innovators and non innovators based on their self thing they said Are you an innovator or are you not an innovator. OK. We asked them some questions and we got that answer. And on sales growth those that were innovators from 0 8 to eleven and eleven their sales were up 84 percent versus where they were in 0 8. And non innovators rep only 4 percent profits had gone up 96 percent for innovators and only 13 percent for non innovators.

Doug: [00:18:01] So it's not like the non-innovators days weren't better but it was a struggling better. And then lastly employee growth innovators and increased employment by 64 percent versus plus 1 percent for 9 areas. These are primarily small and mid-sized companies so very sensitive to these kind of things. And what's interesting is this after we did that survey we've done some others and whether qualitative interviews and I've done some quantitative interviews over in the UK and with some given companies finding very similar patterns that they did this and the most interesting thing about this is we went in deeper and asked people how much of your sales were in products or services that they didn't offer three years before OK OK. So they're up but I wanted to figure out why and sure enough those people that were innovators 37 percent of their sales were in products or services they did not for three years before versus 19 percent almost double. So they what had happened is they hadn't just stayed there they had changed they didn't sit there and whine waiting for it to come back. They changed. They did something different.

Doug: [00:19:20] And when it came to the number of customers you know we've talked about new customers on this podcast number of times about the whiskey testing. Make sure you go after new customers not just existing customers. And sure enough when we asked where did you get your sales from innovators. 43 percent of their sales came from new customers versus just 23 percent from non innovators.

Doug: [00:19:45] So what it says is if the economy goes bad and frankly even if it doesn't go bad you gotta do something man. You got to get some new offerings that are meaningful unique and you've got to go take them to new customers. If you do that three years from now you can be twice the size you are now in profits and up 84 percent and sales growth. That's what we're talking about here folks grow or die. That's what it's about. So Tripp I really think is at the best of times the worst of times is a decision we make inside ourselves as to what are we gonna do about it.

Doug: [00:20:26] Are we going to do something or are we going to just sit there and say woe is me. I mean if there's one thing I hate about a lot of the talking head news things is is there isn't a lot of talk about you know optimism and what are you going to do about it. There's a lot of blame game that goes on.

Doug: [00:20:48] Well the people that are passing the blame they got to look at themselves. Are you leading your organization. Are you leading yourself new things. Same goes for your career. Are you leading your career to new places or not.

Tripp: [00:21:04] Makes sense. I know one of the things as you're talking there and you as you did the survey of the sales and the profit and employee growth is so what would be a trait you know. How would you how do you assess a company. In other words I mean I'm sure it's not as clear a pile as innovators versus not innovators but you know and some it has to do with self reporting. But how would you if you went into a company what are the things that you're looking for to see if they're really an innovator(s) or right mindset. Because we go back to the time you admittedly said when you first started Eureka! Ranch you know they either had to have the right culture or you wouldn't work with them. That type of thing. So. So what would some traits be of a company that innovates.

Doug: [00:21:59] Well I mean you're right. But so here's the difference. If I if I go back 30 40 years ago when I started the ranch it made it was you. We basically sold to people who got it. Now if we who had the culture to go do it now if we did have we'd have hope it's because they've it's gotten tough. I mean it's just not the same. It's just not the same. We know and so we've had to build systems to adapt to it. And so if I go back into the data of the kind of traits because one of the beauties is we have all of this data now over over decades and so we've been able to Greg Lemon at our place. Our statistician has done some amazing research on it and we found a number of things. One of the things we found is we ask people the simple question How do you spend your time. And there's some words there but there's basically three options one of which is proactive one of which is reactive responding to client needs and that kind of stuff versus you know doing leading and then there's a neutral thing in between and what we do is we look at the ratio between percent in your ads 200 percent how you spend your time and we look at the ratio of time you're spent doing proactive things versus reactive things and that is amazingly predictive of what kind of culture you've got when people are in a firefighting reactive mode then great things aren't going to happen. And and so that's a key determinant. OK.

Tripp: [00:23:43] This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcast where were going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes To build a whiskey distillery business. The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft Whiskey Company like has never been done before.

Tripp: [00:24:06] All right. Well what's let's move to our segment three the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy. I think we had tossed around a few ideas before about what we might talk about here other than the craft cocktail. I think we kind of landed on that.

Tripp: [00:24:20] We wanted to do the importance of of paired comparison testing. So you'll Why don't you share a little bit about kind of what that is and and how you're using it at Brain Brew and I think you both mentioned that it's kind of a secret weapon for winning competitions. So if so how does it all fit together.

Doug: [00:24:44] Yeah if you want to win competitions folks this is the answer. I guess that's all we've got to do. How to Win double golds in San Francisco and at the North American championship and get a ninety five. You know the ultimate spirit Challenge Yep this is how we do it. I'm going to tell you the secret right now. And it's actually the secret to making amazing products or services. It's called the parrot comparison test. So last week we talked about single product tests. We asked people how likely I'd buy it how new and different it is with paired comparison. We don't ask in the absolute. We ask relative to another offering. So say I have two products. The simplest example is the old Pepsi challenge. For those of you who are old enough to remember that we have product P and product Q Which one do you like better. You like P or do you like you better Pepsi's preferred over coke or whatever. That's the same thing we do here and it is our bread and butter Take Two whiskeys set them side by side in glasses taster one which one would you be more likely to buy which one is more new and different.

Doug: [00:25:50] Same kind of way that we talked before then we'll ask other questions you know which one is easier drinking which one tastes like it's been aged longer which one tastes like it would be more expensive a number of other traits smoothness after taste whatever things that we want to ask and that test tells you where you're standing up and what you're looking to get is in our case we like to get a two to one win which means 67 percent to 33 percent so one third like this one in two thirds like us that's the standard we're trying to get to is is to be preferred. And usually when you start out you lose or you're a tie you know you're just as good as which means you're a commodity for all intents and purposes what you want to do is then you start to do these cycles over and over again until you start to get to a win and that's when you really learn it and this is something that no one in the damn industry does.

Doug: [00:26:43] I mean I'd think I don't think I've never heard in 30 years I've been doing this 40 years 30 years in the spirits industry I've never heard of another company do a paired comparison test ever and I've worked with the big names never seen them never heard of them doing them and definitely not in our case where we do them in the hundreds of tests on things to optimize products and and to make it right. And you can do them overnight you do it fast quick they're pretty easy to do you just go to some bars or different venues different places that you can do them at the distillery or brewery work or the buddy at a brewery and do over there you can do them real fast and it is amazing.

Doug: [00:27:25] And that is how our we have a product called Noble oak that we do with one of our partners with enteric and folks and it's one all the big awards and as well as many of our others big city whiskey and others have won you know huge scores and huge rewards and it's because instead of us saying my opinion is we run the paired comparisons we've run the paired comparison test to get right. And it truly is a zero. I don't know how you do product development if you don't have a paired comparison test.

Doug: [00:27:58] So I just I just don't know how you can do it.

Tripp: [00:28:00] So so do this are you like let's start with beer then I'll go to whiskey. But you know Vin Where are you comparing it against other IPA or you just pick one IPA that you you know if you're in that category is that we could use that kind of the way that you're looking at it or how are you even taking the whiskey or is it you know a you know smoke smoky one versus a spice it you know how do you. So you're comparing right.

Doug: [00:28:28] It depends on what you're trying to do. Sometimes you're doing it against yourself. Like the way we are products our products are getting better every time every couple of months. Our products are better. And that's because we continue to test against ourself. Find a way to make it better and better and better. And so it's never ending improvement. Sometimes we usually will take a product that cost twice what we are. We are you know we might you know price normally sell for about thirty five dollars. So in the whiskey business we might be taking against seventy five or 100 dollar. You know there's a bunch of hundred dollar products that are kind of excessive from a price standpoint in my mind. I mean they're wonderful products but they're just expensive. And so what we want to do is to take one of those luxury products. You know we'll take a product that's 18 years 10 years 12 years go against our time compression stuff. That is you know I mean for all intensive purposes it's it's it's you know it's just weeks or a few months old not years old. And then compare it against that see how we do.

Tripp: [00:29:29] Ok. All right well let's move to our Brain Brew Whiskey Academy craft spirit craft cocktail recipe and you've chosen the Spanish Manhattan sweet luxury something I have had one Manhattan in my life and I don't even remember what it tastes like. So what's the story behind the Spanish Manhattan.

Doug: [00:29:54] Well as I said in the newsletter I hope we don't have a recession but if we're gonna have one let's enjoy a bit of luxury taste in the process let's have a good time we're doing it.

Doug: [00:30:04] So the classic Manhattan is made with bourbon rye and some sweet Vermouth. And you can do different ratios we tend to do a two to one of the whiskey to the other. And so what I found is in playing around with different things other rich things like sweet Vermouth one of the things there is this is a sherry called or heaviness or PX Sherry and you can usually get a bottle for about 30 dollars a pretty decent one and I suggest you keep it in the fridge because it's a wine based things you want to keep it cold.

Doug: [00:30:42] Because because because it'll it'll oxidize on you. And the classic would be of a Manhattan style would be one ounce of PX Sherry and two ounces of a good rye. Now we have a noble oak rye or you use one of your local craft whiskeys rise as a lot of good rise out there nowadays in Rye is pretty big rye is remember is is the IPA of whiskey. It's that's the bigger taste. But in this case here you need it to stand up to the sherry and it's pretty it's a pretty amazing drink. I mean it's really quite nice. In fact now I sometimes push it a little bit more because I like mine a little bit more whiskey forward and so on this I'll do a half ounce of the PX Sherry in two ounces of of the noble oak Rye and I got to tell you the PX Sherry is really intense and so it just balances out take some ice in and stir it.

Doug: [00:31:37] My lucky 13 times and it's it's an amazing drink. It's an amazing drink.

Doug: [00:31:42] If you want a nice sipping at the end of the night you want to sit there and have something pretty luxurious or you've got somebody special coming in fact as I'm thinking about this we're going over a friend's house on Friday night and I think I'm going to bring the PX (Sherry) with me to make for them and I'll bring the rye with me because it is just got just incredible richness to it. And part of it is is our Rye is a huge it's a double oak rye so it's it's pretty amazing to begin with but there's a lot of good ryes out there that you can use.

Tripp: [00:32:16] So. So the taste of it is it is it sweeter tastes. Is that a how would you describe it.

Doug: [00:32:22] I mean if there are other drinks there's a touch of sweetness to it but it's really rich. It's got layers and layers of flavor. I mean it's just it washes over you with with just layers of flavor. And what happens is is the sherry with the Rye. It's it's rounded it's not harsh it doesn't bite. I mean and you know it's put it with some good ice to it because it's just got us the smoothness and elegance luxurious decadent. I mean these would be the kinds of words I would I would give to it it is it is not a refreshing cocktail it's a big mind opening drink.

Tripp: [00:33:07] I will definitely have to to try that. Is there a PX Sherry that you recommend or a couple of them that you recommend.

Doug: [00:33:14] No there's a bunch of different ones. Alvarez is what we use if you look at the show notes see a picture of it that that we use a lot but there's others that you can use and find the one that's like with all of the cocktails you know it's find what you like. You know here I'm saying do a two to one and I'm also saying you know do two ounces of right half ounce of sherry I mean find what what is yours. You know this is not about following rules it's about making what works for you.

Tripp: [00:33:41] Ok. And just just one final question before we close out this this podcast episode and maybe you should be a not maybe every time we do an episode but kind of an update on because I know you got approvals coming through in Ohio and this type of thing is kind of the state of the distillery type of thing maybe as far as kind of kind of where you're at.

Doug: [00:34:05] Well I've mentioned on here before that if you want to create a distillery the number one thing you have to have is patience have to have patience because we've been a week from opening now four months of doing. And part of it is is the people doing permits and inspections and that there just aren't a lot of distilleries. So it's the first time they're doing one and they go well maybe this thing you need to do the scene you need to do and we've been operating partnership with somebody else. But the good news is is that the distillery has the electric because we need a lot of electric for our time compression machine to. I mean it's not back to the future but it's a pretty significant amount of power we have to put in. So the electric panels are in which are ridiculous in size.

Doug: [00:34:55] The ceilings in the installations in the heating cooling in the drainage systems are in. We've got one inspection done we've got two more to come this week hopefully this week we will get our occupancy. We're also within days from the state of Ohio. So all goes well again a week or two. Okay. It is by.

Tripp: [00:35:21] A week or two or five months whatever somewhere. Okay. That's right.

Doug: [00:35:25] So what you have to do is just be productive at the other side and work through we're getting bottles we got bottles on order coming in.

Doug: [00:35:36] We've got our labels. We got some of the labels approved. You can work TTB. You have to. You can't do this linearly. You got to keep working all of the different parts at the same time. And that's that's about how you gonna do it. I mean it's we're close we're close. Our big thing well for us the big thing will be the Craft Whiskey show in Minneapolis.

Doug: [00:35:57] That's when we're gonna open it up and we're gonna start to get some beta testers who want to get into the ad this is a new business model to help them make more money. Oh

Tripp: [00:36:09] Good. And we'll we'll look forward to future episodes of finding out the trials and tribulations and the patience game that you have to play in order to build this distillery so well.

Doug: [00:36:22] And we have set a date because you have to set a date at some point. So Martin Luther King weekend on January 19 and 20 is gonna be the grand opening of the distillery. And so we will be we've got some bands coming we're gonna have and will be broadcasted on Facebook Live parts of it.

Doug: [00:36:42] And we've got folks coming our partner from over in England is coming over. And so it should be quite a quite quite a spectacle actually. So trip you're gonna have to come down and maybe do some interviews with people as they're doing because we'll be unveiling our Riverboat line of whiskeys and all of that stuff too.

Tripp: [00:37:01] So should we get. I'll probably do that because of my wife my took my daughter's 21st birthdays that weekend but my wife is taking her and some of her friends to Disney World for it. So I wasn't invited.

Doug: [00:37:13] Oh wow girl time I got that. I have a guy's time to just drink too much whiskey. I don't know. No problem here. You're not saying excessive. We can't say excessive. I didn't say that. No drinks proper about healthy whiskey. That's the way we have to do it.

Tripp: [00:37:31] There's only so much I can drink anyway so self regulated.

Doug: [00:37:36] We do. I do too. I I've just found that it's just it's just not fun when you drink too much. It really isn't.

Tripp: [00:37:44] Yeah. That was only in college so.

Doug: [00:37:47] When you were stupid.

Tripp: [00:37:49] Exactly. OK.

Tripp: [00:37:51] That concludes the seventh episode of the driving Eureka podcast.

Tripp: [00:38:06] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things. A one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka prescription for success you answer questions and will help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas. And you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend to get these offers. Go to W W.. Doug haul dot com forward slash. Podcast. And don't forget to subscribe. To the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/trust-in-your-instincts-driving-eureka-6

This is the sixth episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: Anthony Bourdain Taught Me to Think for Myself; Segment 2: A Conversation with Bill Conway (Nashua Corporation); Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy. Subscribe to learn to Find, Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas!

[00:00:34] Overview Of the 6th Driving Eureka! Podcast

[00:01:21] Featured Article: Anthony Bourdain Taught Me to Think for Myself

[00:03:36] How to Follow Anthony Bourdain

[00:04:34] The Story of the Forest

[00:12:43] Lesson from Anthony Bourdain Adventure

[00:15:10] Bill Conway , Nashua Corporation and W. Edwards Deming

[00:19:10] The Closing on Driving Eureka!

[00:22:57] Are Baby Boomers Checking Out?

[00:27:29] Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy

[00:28:17] The Interaction of the Parts

[00:34:41] The Crazy Cocktail Recipe - The Peace Treaty

[00:38:41] The Peace Treaty - Step 1

[00:38:48] Step 2

[00:38:52] Step 3

[00:38:56] Step 4

[00:39:04] Step 5

[00:39:24] Step 6

Tripp: [00:00:02] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:23] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the driving Eureka book

Tripp: [00:00:34] This is episode six of the driving Eureka podcast that corresponds with Doug's November 21st newsletter which you can sign up for the newsletter Doug's newsletter at Doug Hall dot com forward slash newsletters. This week our feature story is titled Anthony Bourdain taught me to think for myself in Singapore. The driving Eureka book segment covers a conversation with Bill Conway and in the third segment Doug and I talk about the interaction of the parts in making whiskey and the craft cocktail recipe The Peace Treaty.

Tripp: [00:01:21] Doug It looks like you went as you do your travels you go and eat a lot of interesting places. Looking at that newsletter I don't even know what that food here you have to explain what the picture as we'll put that in. And with the notes too if they don't have their newsletter handy but you've got two huge plates of food and yet in this particular section type out Anthony Bourdain taught me to think for myself in Singapore. Do tell.

Doug: [00:01:53] Well OK so I'm an Anthony Bourdain fan. He's obviously the author of Kitchen Confidential Show big hit kind of eclectic guy exposed a lot of things going on in kitchens and then sadly took his own life back this past summer.

Tripp: [00:02:14] Doug did you know him personally.

Doug: [00:02:16] No I didn't. OK.

Doug: [00:02:17] I know a number of people who did do a number of people did. And in fact it's interesting. He died on a Friday on that Mundy.

Doug: [00:02:28] I was speaking to 300 chefs which was a bit of a challenge. I mean because he was a major hero to these folks. And and so a lot of conversation and a lot of them knew him personally and so we had a lot of conversations.

Doug: [00:02:45] So I really it just I loved you know his his take on the world his sense of authenticity his genuine ness. And and so we're going to Singapore where I'd seen the Singapore episode he'd done in a couple of nights for a different series that he'd done and I watched the show and as it turned over the Internet there's somebody that's written down the places he went to in the food he eat48. And the rest of this stuff. And so I had found a couple of them in Singapore and I thought I'd be neat I'll go where Anthony Bourdain went that would be cool.

Doug: [00:03:19] And so on my way to Singapore I'm you know I'm on the iPad flipping around looking at different things and one of the airports I think I stopped in Paris on the way over something and and I read this article what would Bourdain do how to honor his legacy.

Doug: [00:03:36] And it said instead of following in his exact foot steps find your own path a new table to set out in a town or country you haven't yet explored. And this made a bunch of sense to me you know why cloning my cloning I mean following was not the spirit of what led me to him you know. And you know what I embrace was his ability to be in the moment and connecting with real people and stuff. So the first night we got there the team from the ranch was there. They said so we're going where everybody out. No we're not going to that change.

Doug: [00:04:11] And so we went down the street we found this eclectic restaurant that you know had local foods a little bit off the beaten path eccentric kind of place.

Doug: [00:04:22] They had spirits that were like they said homemade they were homemade. I wouldn't say they were great but it was a new experience. OK. And and we just had some cool food and it was fun.

Doug: [00:04:34] And then the next day a David Lafkas gets to the ranch who who works here who went to the National Museum Singapore and it tells the story of Singapore which is a fascinating story actually costing sorry the city state that exists there and they have a thing called the story of the forest which is this amazing three story digital projection of flowers coming down around all sides and you walk out in the middle of it on this walkway and then you get down to the bottom and they have like beanbags and you can lay down and just see these flowers come around it's really a cool experience.

Doug: [00:05:12] And as I'm sitting there thinking about it and I was thinking about Anthony Bourdain and I said you know I don't think he would care what a blogger thought.

Doug: [00:05:23] So you can see where I'm going. Oh yeah. Like what. What do you listen to some cheese ball blogger. Does it make sense. So so now I'm really messed up. And so so then I go outside and I see David and I said Would you be interested in going.

Doug: [00:05:45] He says yes sure I'm good with it. You know he's like I'm trying to tell him this story is like you know whatever.

Doug: [00:05:51] And we go outside and it starts to rain and it's like we weren't really set for rain we didn't think was going to rain. And it's raining and I go David I got it kind of on the phone but you know I've got like two places it's not real clear. I'm not really sure if it's even going to be there. He says How far is it. I said I know. Somewhere between half hour to an hour.

Doug: [00:06:13] Oh yeah let's go. And he's like game for this. I'm like oh yes let's go. So we go in the rain we get drenched. I mean absolutely drenched.

Tripp: [00:06:20] So you're walking to this place. Yeah walking folks.

Doug: [00:06:25] And we get to this and then we get to the neighborhood. OK. Now let me just say Singapore is in one study it said it was the most expensive city in the world. Well let me tell you the neighborhood we were in.

Doug: [00:06:38] Now after walking 45 minutes from the center to what's not the most if you were out there it was a bit rustic. It was where the working people are.

Doug: [00:06:50] Ok. It was definitely in a working place and the Singapore story is a lot of diversity melting pot of cultures. That's a lot of its successes because of that. And so we get to the kind of neighborhood. But you know how the G.P.S. is it's kind of the kind.

Doug: [00:07:08] So going up and down blocks looking for it.

Doug: [00:07:12] And David keeps asking for the name. I thought wow you know I didn't really even say it. And finally we take the picture for you know we look it up on the phone and we're holding the picture OK. But down the street and finally sees it across the street. So we it well well this is not a place where tourists are coming. I can tell you this you know this is classic Anthony Bourdain now to be fair. He had they call him the fixers. They had people in town that would find him the place to go to. So it's. Not like he went wandering. It's.

Tripp: [00:07:40] Not like you anyway will not have it.

Doug: [00:07:43] So I'm figuring I'm using his local knowledge to get there. And so we get in the place and we go up to the counter. It's a place There's no menu and there's just a bunch of food on the counter and yet you have to kind of order at.

Doug: [00:07:56] And I can't even I You don't even have any idea what you're doing. You know David I know what you do now. I know. And so I held up the phone and lady behind the counter. So she came around and she looked at it and I pointed to the names of the two things that he did and she said Oh yeah I got That's right. And so she puts it together.

Doug: [00:08:13] Now remember it's the most expensive city most expensive city in the world. I go over to pay and the cost for two meals for the two of us and two soft drinks. OK. I mean I had just paid like 15 dollars for a soft drink. OK. Forty five minutes from here down in town and it actually was actually it was more than that because the town would have been. Let's see where we are at the Museum the Museum mystery man who was probably an hour and 15 minute walk from from from downtown and it was seven dollars.

Doug: [00:08:55] So the most expensive city in the world and we pay seven dollars for two soft drinks and two meals.

Doug: [00:09:01] OK so you can see it. It's kind of for the working people. And as we're sitting there you know we're talking about the blankets is the place. And he'd did this wonderful interview on it. And you just look it up and you can find it. And I came to understand at the moment that the heart of his message was not do weird stuff but be true to yourself live in this moment literally live in this moment. Think for yourself for damn sake you know do what you want to do. If you want to follow Anthony Bourdain to go to that place. Go to it. If you don't want to. Don't do it. Don't worry about what other people are thinking. And you know it's I thought about it. It's the same thing with books.

Doug: [00:09:44] When I write books for my soul I write books that are what I really care about and the writing is as much fun because I'm learning as I'm doing it. Then readers find the same thing.

Doug: [00:09:56] And this book is one of those Driving Eureka! is one of those books which why I'm doing this because it is truly heart and soul. I love this book and I still love the book. There's been other books that come out when you get it in print.

Doug: [00:10:06] You look at it you go oh wow I got that. Do you have a look. I got this book for marketing.

Doug: [00:10:15] It's got 2000 academic articles. It's really frickin boring and it's not worth reading. But unless you're really geeky you know it was a challenge to do it but there was not a lot of love shall we say. His books got love in it. And and when you do that it's great. When I try to write I try to impress other people when I wrote Meaningingful Marketing and I did people that don't matter.

Doug: [00:10:39] It was great in the everyday folks found it got that interesting. Now it's helped but that's the key. You got to commit yourself to respecting it inside all of us as a little voice a little voice that tells us what we should do and must do. We've got to respect that inner voice live in the here and now be who you are.

Doug: [00:11:01] Don't worry about what other people think. So that's my foolish story of following Anthony Bourdain not following Anthony Bourdain following Anthony Bourdain and then saying how would Anthony Bourdain just be you right now and live it just live it.

Tripp: [00:11:16] Now can I go for some food then because I'm still looking at these two bowls of food.

Doug: [00:11:24] I cannot tell ya. I don't know. There's noodles there's egg in it. This chili paste it. There's some other unidentifiable things. They both tasted really good.

Doug: [00:11:39] I didn't get sick.

Tripp: [00:11:42] Those are all bonuses when you travel overseas.

Doug: [00:11:45] Yeah you get it!

Tripp: [00:11:46] You get great food in Vietnam and then you know it sometimes it can be a little hard on our prissy digestive system.

Doug: [00:11:54] So I get it all a victory but it was. It's about living and you know and it's interesting Tripp.

Doug: [00:12:01] They just did the last episode of Anthony Bourdain and he is the very last episode and he was in East Side of Laurie's side of New York and talking about the grunge movement and Blondie and all all different things that happened back that way back then. And he talked to people about the great times in the 70s and 80s.

Doug: [00:12:22] And over and over again they said no no there wasn't a great time. It was just a time the greatest time is right now at this moment. And I thought because I had already written this piece and I thought that is it. That is it live this moment.

Doug: [00:12:43] Do something that matters right now to worry about yesterday. Don't worry about tomorrow. Worry about today. Do something that matters today. That is the message.

Doug: [00:12:53] And I say truth. Say what you feel.

Doug: [00:13:00] Do what you mean. I mean that's. I mean when I say meaningfully unique I mean meaningful to you. It doesn't have to be meaningful to anybody else I don't care.

Doug: [00:13:09] You gotta be meaningful to enough people to have a business but that's it. You know if you want to be a Gazeta then you've got to be meaningful to a lot of people you know. But you don't have to be a good senior do something. That's what the craft movement's about the reason craft beers restaurants garments whiskeys whatever it is exists is because the people care they care. And what we've got to do is in our social systems whether it be our educational institutions whether it be in our governments or in our corporations. We've got to get more caring into it. Do we care about doing the right thing and that's what this revolution is about. This whole movement that we describe and in our courses.

Doug: [00:13:51] And I write in the book Driving Eureka is about doing stuff that matters.

Tripp: [00:13:58] Very cool. Very good. I've really liked the reading this this particular section but it was a journey in itself. Whether that's not a particularly long segment but it was meaningful had a lot of good pieces I recommend people take the time to read that section I am curious about this story of the forest though I'm gonna have to look that up on the Internet. We'll put a link to that out there.

Doug: [00:14:24] This got to be video of it but it wouldn't do it. It's a three dimensional thing but it really is it really is cool. Total surprise. History Museum. Total surprise. Didn't see it coming. Didn't see it coming at all

Tripp: [00:14:45] It's time now for the Driving Eureka!. Book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

[00:14:59] So segment two Driving Eureka!

Tripp: [00:15:03] Is the Excerpt from the book on why I have such a hard time saying that word excerpt doesn't roll off the tongue very easily.

Tripp: [00:15:10] But in this section you talk about Bill Conway and that was my original really foray when I very first started reading about W. Edwards Deming was Bill Conway a Nashua corporation and their story and having to compete against that you know Japanese firms that were buying the same raw materials from Maine for their trees for their paper as Nashua Corp. was for for their paper but they were over in Japan. Same source of paper. They were cheaper meaning the Japanese competitor.

Doug: [00:15:52] It was. And the quality was better.

Tripp: [00:15:53] I remember that was kind of the impetus for him to reach out and led him to start questioning and how he ran into the name of W. Edwards Deming. So both before the 1980 white paper for for anybody in the Deming community listening of If Japan Can Why Can't We? That made Dr. Deming famous in the U.S. in 1980 did national corporation was already using the Dr. Deming to help them be more competitive and more effective was featured in the White Paper itself. So maybe just a quick summary because I know we've covered it off before in the introduction in the episode 0 that we have where your father worked for Nashua corporation but this kind of a brief summary of that story I think might be fitting here.

Doug: [00:16:48] I was born in Maine and then we moved to Nashua New Hampshire southern New Hampshire just outside of Boston and my dad worked in the paper industry all his life and he worked for Nash corporation as director of central engineering and he was there when Dr. Deming came in and he's the one who taught me about Deming and taught me about this amazing guy I never had the opportunity to meet him which is sad because he was in Cincinnati for and things he was in Nashua I was in the same city as a multiple times and I never did get CMI a blizzard watch now hours of course the Deming library of videos but and talked to a lot of people who did but I never never had the honor of being with them but I've been with his grandson and daughter both daughters actually. I've spent some time with.

Doug: [00:17:32] Bill was quite a guy. I mean this was a guy that was the first Fortune 500 company to embrace Deming approach to quality as he said. I had an opportunity sit down with him about a year before he died and had a wonderful wonderful time. He was so gracious and firm Oh my God was he firm really was was clear on it and about what had to be done and the problems that existed. I said well people don't get it. He says well let a idiots don't get it.

Doug: [00:18:03] I said What do you do if they don't buy he sits down with them. I mean a guy with like no tolerance really stern.

Tripp: [00:18:12] Sounds like an East Coast guy.

Doug: [00:18:15] This is the guy that that he had your father the big the big three automakers were in the boardroom and he came out and my dad was outside and he came out and talked to my dad and he says they don't get it. They think the problems the employees they don't understand it's them it's the systems and only they can change the systems. I mean it pretty brutal stuff pretty brutal stuff but visionary at the same time. I mean I sat and talked to him and he was really clear with me. Tim Hogan a very good friend of mine from high school and his wife Sue knew Bill Conway's daughter real well. And he set up the connection for us. And it was just glorious. As we talked about stuff and he asked me questions and gave me ideas and and I've written about this in the book I have a big section on it from him. But I thought I would this week last week I did the opening of the book.

Doug: [00:19:10] This week we'll do the end of the book and then maybe you'll find something in the middle that you want to read. So this is I closed the book I'm going to paraphrase I'm going to jump a couple of sections but just give you a basic sort. So closing thoughts.

Doug: [00:19:21] Well my time with Bill Conway was over I asked him what advice what advice he had for me as I embarked on the journey to create an innovation revolution he put his hand on my shoulder looked me straight in the eye and said You have to do it.

Doug: [00:19:39] America needs it now the country is failing because bosses are not doing the right things. Do it now do it faster.

Doug: [00:19:50] Have no tolerance for excuses I mean just reading those lines gives me a chill the chill that I felt when he did it to me.

Tripp: [00:20:00] How old are you at this point Doug.

Doug: [00:20:03] Is this how recently though it's maybe four or five years ago.

Doug: [00:20:07] Oh mid 50s mid 50s. Interestingly Deming was 50 when he first went to Japan. Bill Conway was 50 when he met Dr. Deming and I was 50 when I started in innovation engineering so which is kind of ironic and I go on to write at the end I said Bill said America. But frankly my friends in Canada Mexico Europe Asia South America everybody is feeling same urgency and now is the time to reinvent our community our company our country and the world the process starts with you taking personal responsibility. You won't do it right. You won't be perfect but you'll get smarter and smarter with each cycle learning and that's how you can and will change your world. Now when he feels I'm discouraged my mentor Walter Werner often quotes with Dr Nelson taught him years ago Dr Nelson was one to Dr Deming. Chief statisticians he would say to Walter when he didn't feel like he was ready he would say you are the best we have no go do it friends so too is it the time for you to just do it. And by doing I mean applying what you've learned any more importantly making a personal commitment to never ending continuous learning. So what are you waiting for. Get up get out. Get going. As Ben Franklin said over 200 years ago up slugger and waste not life in the grave.

Doug: [00:21:44] We'll be sleeping enough up slugger waste not life in the grave. We'll be sleeping enough.

Tripp: [00:21:52] Prophetic words a lot of history and they're associated with some names that I hadn't. Well one name I hadn't heard in a while which was Dr. Lloyd Nelson and I'd forgotten that he had worked at Nashua Corporation.

Tripp: [00:22:06] But the message there is very very profound. Was this one a year. I assume that you must have developed a relationship with Bill Conway when he was talking to you at that point you had known him for a few years.

Doug: [00:22:22] Yeah. It is amazing. I am been so blessed so blessed to get to spend time with Barry Bruno's Walter Werner Bill Conway Kevin Cahill Dr. Deming's grandson. The folks from the Deming Institute meeting with you and your approach to this it is amazing folks if you just go and say I need help. There's so many people. And if there's anything that gets me really mad really mad at baby boomers I'm being a baby boomer.

Doug: [00:22:57] One of the things that gets me really mad at baby boomers is so many of them frickin check out and they go I'm too old to keep doing this. Get over yourself. OK. There was a time when older people would mentor and help younger people and a whole lot of my generation I think you're being pretty selfish when they're not willing to give back what was given to them and to spend that time teaching them and I I try to do what I still am. I'm not good at it because I'm so driven forward trying to change the world but to stop and help those people which is part of the reason trip that I'm doing this podcast is because it gives us a way to reach people that you can't reach otherwise. I mean not everything we're saying is of any significance of value but if you get one little thing this Internet allows us to multiply. This stuff's amazingly amazingly you know it's a great medium no doubt.

Tripp: [00:23:53] And you know it's interesting. I don't know. You know are the Baby Boomers the selfish generation. I don't know. It seems like it's like you. Like you said so many who are and maybe it's because of all the commercials who knows that you've saved enough for retirement.

Tripp: [00:24:11] Now get and go and retire move off to do something else and yet we're living a lot longer now. So do you know what just makes sense to me that you'd want to do something more with that other than sit on a beach. I guess I don't quite got that mentality.

Doug: [00:24:31] But to be fair the world has changed. This digital world. It can be hard to get to see you feel like your fish out of water. I got all of that and used to be master of your destiny. Now you're not and that's changed more than has changed for any generation. But I can tell you that if you ask for help whether it's Gen Xers millennials or whatever the next one's called they're generally open to doing it.

Doug: [00:24:57] And to those that are younger go find a old fart like like me and go ask people ask them for help. Ask them for their thoughts you don't have to do it don't get in a fight but ask their perspective how they would approach it. I think you'll be amazed. I think you'll be amazed at how much wisdom there is. And when we start to change the culture of an organization sometimes the old people say to me. Well I guess it's not for me anymore. I guess I'm out of here.

Doug: [00:25:25] I'm like No we need that wisdom you've got you have insights ideas your brain is full of stimulus we need your brain don't check out but let's learn to use it in a more effective way and make it fun again. Let's make it fun again. And sometimes you win sometimes you know but but they we need all of it. We need the young people we need the old people we need the black brown in purple yellow whatever people we need everyone. We need everyone.

Tripp: [00:25:58] You know it's interesting that you say that because you know when you present presented and a previous episode about you know the power of diversity in organizational cultures helping to get you more robust ideas out you mostly have a tendency to think in terms of nationality you know as opposed to age you know. But it's the same thing. I mean there's diversity of having lived for 50 60 years as there is diversity and somebody who's 20 versus 30.

Tripp: [00:26:37] And it's not just nationality. I think some of the and I think you're right. I think some of the organizations are probably missing that that piece too. They've got a lot of younger cultures because of those reasons that you just said that you know they're not as up to date on some of the Internet's things that are out there. So but they do have perspective and they have a very different one than the generations that are kind of moving things right now which would be more millennials than the one that you didn't mentioned is what was referenced in futurist. His name escapes me at the moment but "digital natives" which because they've always had computers you know their entire life They're digital natives.

Tripp: [00:27:29] This is the Brain Brew Whisky Academy podcasts where we're going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business Eureka Ranch! team led by Doug Hall creating a craft Whiskey Company like has never been done before.

Tripp: [00:27:52] Ok. This is the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy and we didn't leave you with a cliffhanger last time but I did have a bit of a discussion with Doug. So is privy to information that you as a listener weren't which Doug wants to talk about the inner action of the parts. Now he didn't tell me what that meant with regards to making whiskey but I think he's going to share that with us now.

Doug: [00:28:17] Yeah. So here's how you have to think about it. Okay. And whiskey is really a great great example of this. And whether it's any idea you're working with a product or service you're not creating art. We're creating a product or something. OK. So I'm not going to do art. What I'm talking about is doing new product a new service or new system or whatever it might be. And the way you have to think about it is as a system. And Dr. Deming defined a system is independent parts that work together to accomplish a comedy independent parts that work together to accomplish a comedy. And so basically the parts come together to create something bigger than themselves individually with regards to a product. This means product package positioning name production pricing all of these elements have to work together and you have to think about it as a whole. OK. So let me give you some examples. We may be working on a whiskey and we may be able to make this whiskey an amazing whiskey but it doesn't have. There isn't a good marketing story with it. I mean they just you know it's just we've just done a good job and it doesn't have something edgy something to work with here. I turned around and I used Japanese wood or I use 200 year wood or or Merola wood from South Africa or I find to make a bottle that's really unique that can give me some element.

Doug: [00:29:59] But the minute I do that that creates a chain reaction of other aspects it's like it's like playing the you know the carnival game Whack a Mole with the moles keep bringing the heads up and you have to keep hitting him down. That's what innovation is about. It's juggling all of those pieces to make them all fit together and you start the effort on an idea and you might start from a technology might start from a package you might start from a concept might start from a vision of what you want to do and then you have to keep juggling all those parts to make them all fit together. And and that's where the fun is. That's where the fun is is how do you make this whole thing work. Sometimes you put the whole thing together and you go. The math doesn't work. We can't afford to do this know and it just doesn't work. It's just the math doesn't work it's too expensive and the media started throwing you off Start all over again. So we have a tendency to be silo mentality because in universities we have marketing people and engineering people and we're in our silos on campuses.

Doug: [00:30:57] You've got to get over that and you have to be everybody is in it for the same comedy and you have to trade off these aspects and think about it as a whole. All of interactive part the idea can start from marketing. It can start from product the interest. Yes I talked to Pete craft who still is and I said Well I'm a marketing driven guy. I do pasting with them and you can tell they don't get the products at all. They don't stand them. They're just into selling and that's what I call mindless marketing and all a whole cheap but eventually the world will catch up with it. Then I talk to other people they're all into the product. There's no marketing with it. Well it might be nice usage of that but nobody is going to know it. No math is going to work. We need to have a healthy tension of these pieces working together with the interaction of the parts is greater than the sum of the parts it creates something amazing one plus one equals seventeen That's what we're looking for and that's the magic of it is making all of these pieces come together to get to a whole.

Tripp: [00:31:59] Yeah. That's good and I think I think you think of the analogy that they use with regards to whiskey. You know and I know you know Deming used the piano you know people would try and copy parts and do things of that sort and try and put it together and of course the piano wouldn't play and I imagine that's kind of the same process of oh we got all these great ingredients that have all the best ingredients in the world but if it's not the right combination of ingredients that you're putting into your whiskey it's going to taste awful. And I think that in the nature of your process of you know learning through PDSA and through your cycles then allows you to get to the point to perfect that and and get all of those individual pieces to sing together as opposed to the one prima donna that that's trying to sing a solo.

Tripp: [00:32:52] And you're right. I mean no matter what business they are and that that that's always the challenge just trying to get all of the pieces together. Talking about bureaucracy is as the same view of that. I mean because there's so many different pieces. And if they're not constructed right then you're not going to provide a good product or service an association with that.

Doug: [00:33:16] Mm hmm. Oh yeah. And you could see it if you take people and they hand it off from department to department you have no chance of getting it.

Doug: [00:33:23] You have to truly work together. You have to truly work together to make this happen. And so you know when you're small it's easier. The challenge is as you get bigger and bigger and you start to lose some of that but that spirit of keeping it together which is why you know Apple famously has a very small design team that does all of these amazing things. The core team the same thing here with Bremer. We've got a very small team of us to do the creation and we've got respect from one another and we'll push and poke and you know when I'm making a whiskey I can make it so many different ways I can use more wood and lower pressure less wood higher pressure I can do more cycles I can ramp them faster slower I've got twenty two variables I can play with to try to make that per product do the thing I wanted to do so that it speaks to the consumer creating the experience and I'm trying to create. It's amazing what you can do and but you have to be willing to let go of where you are you've got to be willing to let go of. Well you know what I've got it. Okay. Yeah we made it and it's great but now we're going to make it better and that's what we're looking to do that that.

Tripp: [00:34:33] Well now I know what the interaction of parts meant that you talked about before this particular section. Okay well I knew that.

Tripp: [00:34:41] Okay what's what's moved to your craft cocktail recipe. The Peace Treaty its trademark picture cocktail whose trademark is that yeah.

Doug: [00:34:53] This is a trademark. You know there's cocktails that have trademarks on them. I will put it out to the industry a lot. But the peace treaty remember I just said they got all work together. Oh yeah. It has to be a peace treaty. You have to work together. We sign a treaty for the common good.

Doug: [00:35:12] You get it.

Tripp: [00:35:14] No I didn't. You got me on that one.

Doug: [00:35:18] It's also a Peace Treaty because we move this up. Normally when this first release normally you release on Thursdays and we released it on Wednesday before U.S. Thanksgiving because with the political debate that goes on I figured there needed to be some peace treaty at the Thanksgiving table here given the state of U.S.  You didn't see that one government did you know.

Tripp: [00:35:44] You got you you got me at the U.S. Thanksgiving because I always forget there's a Canadian one. So okay. But you're right. All right. You're Canadian. I forgive you.

Doug: [00:35:55] I'm just as much 50 percent Canadian as my mom would say.

Tripp: [00:35:59] So so this cocktail is a craft cocktail and I don't even know where it originally began but it's gone through a lot of evolutions and and my drinking buddies I guess you shouldn't say drinking buddies. My good friends Tim and Sue Hogan were on Prince Edward Island this summer for a week and we just had a glorious time kayaking and sailing and eating seafood and stuff. And we did a lot of fun with cocktails and we stumbled into this cocktail that we've kept working on. And it's it's the first cocktail that we've done that is I'm calling it's a pitcher cocktail. It's the kind of cocktail you make a picture of you know you see in the movies they make a pitcher of martinis which I can't even imagine. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know it's a different time go.

Tripp: [00:36:46] All the garnish and all the stuff.

Doug: [00:36:50] A whole pitcher of martinis you know. I mean that's basically just gin a little bit of booze.

Doug: [00:36:57] You know it's a it's like pure alcohol. And so but this is a pitcher drink and it's it's a great example of independent parts coming together to create something magical. So this is exactly on line with what we just talked about. That was the purpose. And in this case orange and cranberry balance out the earthiness of maple syrup and whiskey so you've got this kind of cool tension between the earthy notes and the fruit notes that is just it's magical. And in fact I'm gonna give it to you in two recipes. One is the pitcher and one is the one great. And in the pitcher recipe I went to the one and a half ounce per serving and you can probably cut it to one ounce per serving for the alcohol because they're going to drink so many things you want to get it down unless you got a stupid brother in law that you just need to get him to go to bread because he's gonna drink too much in this case just haven't given to him or whatever.

Tripp: [00:37:56] That's me.

Doug: [00:37:57] So I got my father in law. Oh wonderful. So in fact when I did a radio show he did a wonderful section we're gonna play some of those some of that was a Brain Brew radio show that ran and marketed some wonderful only and main segments it was just wonderful.

Doug: [00:38:16] So anyway so it's called peace treaty and it is designed to be one for everybody to come together. It is a drink that you can make and everybody can see. People say I'm not into whiskey I'm not into this I meant to be. No no I wanted to make a drink. And Tim Sue Debbie and I we wanted to drink that everybody would say I love that. That's great. And we could share it together. The communal kind of thing that we could do.

Doug: [00:38:41] And so to make a pitcher you know what you're gonna do is half cup of maple syrup.

Doug: [00:38:48] Two thirds of a cup of orange juice.

Doug: [00:38:50] Again the recipes in the Show Notes it's.

Doug: [00:38:52] Two thirds of a cup of cranberry juice.

Doug: [00:38:56] A cup of Relativity whiskey or other craft bourbon or rye and Relativity is our product it's up in the Boston area. And that's gonna give you about one and a half ounces per serving.

Doug: [00:39:04] And then add some 7-up to taste and don't use sprite you 7-Up I've done tests it works better in these cocktails and then start gently and Tripp how many times do we stir it.

Tripp: [00:39:15] Thirteen times. And that's right. Yeah lucky 13 not twelve not or pirates a dozen as some people would call it.

[00:39:24] Yeah. And then add some ice to the pitcher or poured over glasses with ice and garnish with lemon and orange slices sort of make you a nice pitcher and you'll have some fun you got to start a little bit.

Doug: [00:39:35] It it really. There's something magical that happens with the maple syrup you can use the lighter syrup or the darker serve a bit depending upon how robust you want it but there's just a wonderful tension that goes on here between the orange and cranberry and the Maple which it does give you a holiday dimension to it. And so it's a it's a real festive drink. I can tell you at the at the ranch holiday party we have it. These will be making pictures. So these if you want to make one drink just take a large eyeball all or large rocks glass. Yes be pretty good size three quarters of an ounce of maple syrup one ounce of OJ one ounce of cranberry juice and then announced a half or two ounces of whiskey with a splash of seven up again garnish at the same.

Doug: [00:40:25] So just a fun drink. And I really would push for you to do a picture because we had some friends over on Saturday night and I made a drink and then I made another drink and then I know how make a picture. And so we only make pitchers of this stuff now because it is one of those. There is a certain set of drinks. The Hemingway Daquiri is one of them the Peace Treaty is one of those there's certain drinks that are just fun for people to have.

Doug: [00:40:58] And in fact this went out and I immediately got a note from somebody I'm getting a couple of notes as it's amazing how this thing the feedback loop that you get is just amazing these days.

Doug: [00:41:10] And hold on one second they said these guys wrote Doug the peace treaty may be your greatest inspiration yet Doug. The peace treaty may be your greatest inspiration yet just in time for the holidays. So, Tripp I've got all this research. I've gotten honorary doctorates for Attorney innovation into a science. I've read books I've read plays. I've got all these things and I'm going to be well known because he makes a cool guy.

Tripp: [00:41:43] You're only redeeming quality huh. I got it. Your audience can always bring you up or down isn't that. Isn't that the truth. So so Doug. This this drink is it. It sounds very sweet.

Doug: [00:41:59] No it's not too bad. It isn't. OK. Maple syrup Isn't it and you've got a whole lot of that orange and cranberry in there but it's not it's really balanced. It's really really balance. You know cranberry juice is very tart. So you know it's not it's not. I mean if you want if it's too much it you know you could take the Serb down and you could add some more lemon juice to it I guess. But it's pretty balanced.

Doug: [00:42:25] It's pretty balanced OK. Very good.

Tripp: [00:42:28] I'll have to give that one a shot I'm missing a few things there and I'm at this late date. I'm not going to the grocery store stay away from that place. OK. Well I. This is an interesting. I like the way you were weaving in the interaction of the parts with the drink that you pick. You did. You did. You did throw the curve ball at me on that one. So very good. All right.

Doug: [00:42:54] Any cliffhangers for our next one. Next week I'm going to talk about paired comparison tests. I'm going to get geeky because you know people say I don't like to do math. I said well then you don't wanna do math. OK. How about if I don't do the math and figure out how much to pay you. Well I want you do the math on that. Do you want to make money. Get over yourself. You've got to do math. No math no project no innovation. That's kind of key to this stuff and these singular most important test is the paired comparison test the paired comparison test. And I'm going to take you through just like I took you through back a while ago I took you through how to find out if you meaning fleeting. I really want to take you through was that in this episode that did that. No no with the interaction the parts. Yeah. So. So just. Yes I did in a recent episode. Right took you through how to do a single product test to see if you meaningfully unique. I'm going to walk you through how to do paired comparison tests and we'll show you how to do that. Talk it through. And I'm also at the same time we have three paired comparison tests out tonight just tonight. And so I'll have the results and and and some of that I have to keep secret but in general I'm going to walk you through what we learned from those three tests and how we use this because this is the nitty gritty folks. This is the stuff you need to do to make it great. You don't. If you want to make a business and if you want to build a business you're going to have to do some stuff because it takes a lot of work to get your whiskey registered to get your label done to get all of that stuff done.

Doug: [00:44:35] And you got to reduce your chances of failure and you do that through some testing before you make those decisions. And so I'm going to show you how to do that and to get you going.

Tripp: [00:44:45] Ok. Well I'll give everyone the opportunity to prepare for some interesting information especially on doing paired comparison tests. Well for the audience and for you Doug I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and I know what.

Tripp: [00:45:03] Well obviously Canada has a different date but and for the international crowd they're probably going What the heck is Thanksgiving. OK. I thought I saw I heard I heard a sound guy there and I just want to wish him right there. Happy Thanksgiving. I know this is gonna come out after the Thanksgiving time but it's the holiday season.

Doug: [00:45:20] Yes it is. And Tripp I'm a little concerned about this because of a post just came through on social media. We'd put out about the fact that we're going to be doing this podcast. And oh until he got it. No he said and I'm not sure how. First I thought it was good and then I said Hmm I'm not sure. Oh and said This is relating the fact that the new podcast is coming out and he said and the world will never be quite the same. Anyway dot dot dot dot. Fill in the blank of that. I don't know.

Tripp: [00:46:09] Well we're changing the world. How's that.

Doug: [00:46:12] I guess we'll find out in a good way or bad way. Hey you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and everybody out there have a wonderful holiday season and we'll see you next week

Tripp: [00:46:26] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things. A one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas And the newsletter has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka prescription for success you answer questions and will help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas And you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate and the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w Dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash podcast.

[00:47:27] And don't forget to subscribe To the Driving Eureka! podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/2-things-that-matter-in-life-driving-eureka-5

This is the Fifth Episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: It's Time to Do 1 of 2 Things that Matter in Life; Segment 2: Driving Eureka! Book Release; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy. Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas!

[00:00:34] Overview of the Fifth Driving Eureka! Episode

[00:02:59] "Write Something Worth Reading" Ben Franklin

[00:04:30] "Do Something Worth Writing" Ben Franklin

[00:06:23] Arts vs. Business

[00:08:01] How to Get Started with Doing Something Worth Writing or Writing Something Worth Reading

[00:09:00] Writing One True Sentence

[00:12:49] Driving Eureka! Book Segment

[00:18:00] Driving Eureka! Book Introduction

[00:21:17] Finding Meaning in Life

[00:22:22] Critical Mass and Changing Organizations

[00:26:12] Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy

[00:27:21] The Importance of the Tasting Room

[00:31:44] Warehouse Space

[00:32:08] You Need More Room!

[00:36:09] History of the Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel

[00:38:42] Singapore Sling - Step 1

[00:38:45] Step 2

[00:39:01] Step 3

[00:39:07] Step 4

[00:39:13] Step 5

[00:39:17] Step 6

[00:39:22] Step 7

[00:39:28] Step 8

[00:39:32] Step 9

[00:39:35] Step 10

[00:39:39] Step 11

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:22] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the Driving Eureka! book.

Tripp: [00:00:34] This is the fifth episode of the driving Eureka podcast in the first segment our feature story. It's time to do one of two things that matter in life are driving you book segment is about the release of the book Drive in Eureka and a little bit about the book introduction and our Brain Brew Whisky Academy is about having a tasting room for your whiskey business and also enough space and of course our craft cocktail recipe. The Singapore Sling.

Tripp: [00:01:14] Ok this is Driving Eureka! where we're going to cover off the fifth news letter that Dad put out on November 15th 2018 and I really like this.

Tripp: [00:01:30] This newsletter especially because you talk about this and I want you to talk Doug too about your appreciation for Ben Franklin because I know that's that's kind of a it's a big thing with you.

Tripp: [00:01:44] But this first section It's Time to Do 1 of 2 Things that Matter in Life and it's a great quote from Ben Franklin. Doug I'd like to take it from there.

Doug: [00:01:56] Yes. So this week is that was the release of my seventh book Driving Eureka!. And. The Franklin quote. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. Has me really thinking.

Doug: [00:02:14] I saw it up on the wall in a building and either write something worth reading or do something worth writing in it. And it kept me thinking about it. And the more and more I thought about it and I am a Franklin nut. Okay. He was America's first great inventor first great entrepreneur. I you know he he's just somebody that as a young child I got his biography and read it like there's many people who this has happened to and I've just really relate to him as an inventor and as a writer and as entrepreneur. And so I thought about this quote quite a bit and I finally. I came to an observation on one plane flying over somewhere

Doug: [00:02:59] And I decided I think what Franklin speaking to us about is two things when he says write something worth reading. It's about creating something that really stirs the heart and soul.

Doug: [00:03:14] And this art can be the written word it can be painted art. It can be performed theater or even craft food or or whiskey. It's about doing something for the sake of. It. Where it's an artistic expression. And my book North Pole tenderfoot comes the closest to this of all things I've written because it's not generally what I do. It is as close to poetry in a book. Ernest Hemingway said famously You know his first trip to Africa he really saw it. And after that he didn't. And so having read that I did meticulous notes even at 40 below zero. And and took very good notes and had recordings from it to truly try to make you feel what it was like to be there and that the trip itself is not worth doing. I mean it's a ridiculous thing for a person to do and there's no. Greater good that's done by this. It just is the book though hope fully stirs the soul and does something for you. It matters. The book. Writing and in fact it's that and that in driving Eureka in the back it's first time ever I put an excerpt from. The North Pole tenderfoot book because I thought it bookended nicely with this. So that's right something worth reading.

Doug: [00:04:30] The other one is do something worth writing is about doing something that stirs the head and the soul and then writing about it so it's about doing something and that somebody can be. Is this a nonprofit a product service system. It can be anything but you're doing something and then you're telling the world about it. And Driving Eureka! is my absolute best example of this of doing something worth writing. It's a new academic field. It's a it's a supplying system thinking from Dr. Deming to innovation. It's about how to unleash the talent in your organization by enabling innovation by everyone everywhere every day. And it really makes it come to life. And so this is less of a book. Written with poetry though one tries but it's really more to be descriptive to tell you how to do this to report on it. Where write something worth reading. The writing is in itself the end output. To stir the soul. And I came to the conclusion that when he says write something worth reading or do something worth writing this is what he's doing and that both of these approaches are very worthy missions and both bring meaning to life.

Doug: [00:05:36] It's kind of an interesting way to look at the quote Don't you think.

Tripp: [00:05:39] Oh absolutely.

Tripp: [00:05:40] When I first heard the quote I was thinking in terms of Ben Franklin challenging us to do something either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. You've obviously taken it to another level saying that to write something worth reading is an end to output and to do something worth writing is a how to do something. So yeah. No I think it's a it's a good and interpretation you've obviously internalized that a lot and thought about what this quote means to you and how it played out in writing Driving Eureka!

Doug: [00:06:23] You know we have to be. We tend to be a culture that tends to believe in the arts or we believe in business. But there's something to be said for having a little bit of both of these. I mean it's interesting I remember as research I reported in one book where they did surveys of scientists and the number of top top notch scientists that also do art. Is disproportionately high. And I'm wondering if they're just basically tapping into the left and right brains if it's if it's a whole brain dimension that's making this happen.

Tripp: [00:06:58] You know I went in and I wonder and especially since it's a quote that came from Ben Franklin was there a setting for that or was that just in like Poor Richard's Almanac. Where was that quote taken from.

Doug: [00:07:10] Well historically would have been Poor Richard's Almanac and he also was a liberal plagiarize or Twister. OK you probably saw something like this. And oftentimes he would take a quote just twisted a little bit more. But he he used liberally from others of things that he'd seen so I don't know this specific one have any basis for it.

Tripp: [00:07:34] But I was just curious in the history of that if it showed up and some writing some context of a political writing or just general life almost that's almost like a theory or you know a challenge maybe would be a better word.

Tripp: [00:07:53] So the question Doug is is how I mean how do you get started writing something worth reading or doing something worth writing.

Doug: [00:08:01] Yeah the getting started is quite difficult for many people. Ernest Hemingway the author who was one of my favorite authors I think gives us a pathway to find this way to get started in his book A Moveable Feast. He writes It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working or in this case writing. I always worked until I had something done. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going I would sit in front of the fireplace and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think Do not worry. You've always written before and you will write now all you have to do is write one true sentence write the truest sentence that you know.

Doug: [00:09:00] So finally I would write one true sentence and then go on from there. I mean this is kind of cool. He says Stop boiling the ocean. Write one true sentence if you want to write something worth reading. Write one true sentence if you want to do something worth writing. Then take the first step. Make the first meaningful act towards it and then take the next step in the next step. I guess he's basically saying just get started. Just get started.

Tripp: [00:09:36] So it's just this kind of like an object at rest stays at rest and one in motion stays in motion type of a base and analogy.

Doug: [00:09:45] Yeah basic physics that's what we're talking in basic physics.

Doug: [00:09:49] You know you've got it. And so just try to take what's a first significant step a meaningful step a tangible thing that you could do.

Doug: [00:09:59] Write the word and I'll tell you I find same thing when I write books I write almost every single morning and when I sit there and sometimes I don't know what to write.

Doug: [00:10:05] I just start writing and writing and writing we call it free writing and then eventually I write something meaningful and and then I'm off from there. But so many people worry that they can't do the whole thing that they never start. They never start.

Tripp: [00:10:20] That's that's interesting. So it is then the equivalent a you've kind of applied that from a writing standpoint is then the equivalent in innovation coming up with ideas is that using kind of Innovation Engineering or that system that you outline in Driving Eureka! Is that kind of the first step from an innovation standpoint.

Doug: [00:10:46] No I mean it can be but it could be just taking the time to learn. I mean listening to these podcasts reading one of the newsletters getting subscribed to it could be any step where you start to prepare your brain. It could be organizing a team. It could be it could be creating an idea but do something. It does it. It's just a sentence it's just a step. It doesn't have to be that big as inventing the idea.

Doug: [00:11:15] I mean that that may be too much for people it's like telling somebody that wants to get in better shape. Okay let's run Boston Marathon this weekend and it's like dude I can't do that. Man and I got to just. Can I walk around the block first you know you just gotta get started

Doug: [00:11:31] You gotta get started. And I think we overthink this stuff now we don't give virtue to the artistic side as much as the more commercial side. I think it's probably a fair statement.

Doug: [00:11:46] Okay. And I just want to go put this into the podcast. What what what you've always kind of like Ben Franklin what's what's the story behind that.

Doug: [00:11:58] I just always believed I got his book at a young age. His biography as many people did that really inspired me. And there's something about Franklin being an inventor and author scientist entrepreneur a real renaissance person and myself I find that the same. I mean I like that eclectic collection of different things whether it's making pizza whiskey or or the bagpipes which are a big supporter of our beloved prince Edward Island Canada where we where we have a home.

Tripp: [00:12:37] I didn't know about the bagpipe thing until until this newsletter. That's interesting.

Tripp: [00:12:49] It's time now for the Driving Eureka! book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:13:00] The book is out. And here we go full speed ahead. What are you going to be doing as far as the book opening and celebrating. How is that all going to happen.

Doug: [00:13:15] Driving Eureka! is out now is my seventh book and it is amazing how much since the 90s early 90s when my first book came out how much the world of books has changed. I mean you know it's just different. I mean it used to be book reviewers and used to do book tours and now I mean it's just different now it's bloggers and podcasts and digital packages and it's exciting.

Doug: [00:13:44] It's exciting. It's a totally different world. And so we're doing some unique things this time. We've got video workbooks that you can use it as a part of a book club sort of a guided book club.

Doug: [00:13:55] You read a chapter or you watch a little video you do some exercises you talk about him where a team can go through a bunch. People really love this audio book the full 10 hours it's out on all the major platforms driving Eureka. We also have a one hour bridge summary for people short attention spans that you can go through and and so that's just going to be a lot. The podcast is new driving a lot of this stuff together so it's part of building a community.

Doug: [00:14:27] I mean we've talked about 35000 people Innovation Engineering right now and it's really a community that we're growing it and it really is it is a Robin Hood type thing.

Doug: [00:14:38] I mean we charge large corporations fair prices and we use that to subsidize students on campus and people working with non-profits et cetera.

Tripp: [00:14:53] So what is this. Pat's pizza. Curious I thought this pizza on there and and and I have to say I'm hungry. Pizza looks pretty good.

Doug: [00:15:04] Yes. So the photo up on the show notes I've taken pictures of the book now in different places just to give it a little bit of fun because again that's one of them social media things you do that you know you need the good pictures. And so I'm trying to do so have some fun with it.

Doug: [00:15:19] In this case here there's a place I went to the arrestee of Maine and Arno as did much of my family back three generations. And so Pat's pizza is kind of legendary. And so the picture here is of Pat's pizza and people that have been to the ranch. Now we have like three pizza ovens and we do a wonderful pizza experience for people and and it's. And it's just fun. It just makes it fun.

Tripp: [00:15:42] That's good. Now I didn't know about this fascination with the bagpipes I have to tell me about that because I I knew the pizza. I mean you've you've done the pizza thing we've talked about the whiskey because it's part of what we're doing now but what's what's with the bagpipes.

Doug: [00:15:55] Well my mom's family came from Thurso Scotland Prince Edward Island is where my wife and I have a home where we spend large parts of the year which is in Canada Eastern Canada made famous by Anne of Green Gables.

Doug: [00:16:10] People may know that it also happens to be the place outside of Scotland and Ireland with the highest concentration of Celtic heritage anywhere in the world was heavily settled by the Celts. And it happens to be the home of the College of Piping and Celtic performing arts of Canada. And so it is a mean amazing institution with my wife but I support it. She's actually on the board of the college. We've done any Island child age 8-18 can take back piping or drumming at no cost. We've done some 50000 lessons that we've paid for over the years and so it's just amazing and these kids who you know I don't visit it because you wouldn't know it to visit it's just beautiful it's amazing place. But per capita the income is pretty rough. It's not a wealthy place. A lot of farmers kids fishermen's kids etc. and you know have to struggle day to day oftentimes with the weather and the rest of it and the markets that go up and down and prices. And despite that these amazing kids competing at the World Championship have won the World Championship. Just recently they did and which is amazing. And the newspaper was great it said you know college of bypassing World Championships UK wins seven Scotland wins seven Canada won and it was glorious here these kids competing against adults it took the world championship which is we're very proud of them very proud of them.

Tripp: [00:17:47] Very good. Wonderful. That's cool. I didn't. I didn't know that story. So that that's just another interesting tidbit about Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:17:58] Well let's talk a little bit about this book opening.

Doug: [00:18:00] We've talked about the book because we were talking about a prerelease but I thought it would be good to just. I'm going to paraphrase a little bit from the opening of the book the introduction and that opening is is a big thing for me. And I thought I'd book ended I'd do the opening this week and next week I'll do the closing. So you've got the start and can out if you want to learn the parts in the middle and the book opens with me writing the aim of this book is to teach you how to create a meaningful difference with your career team company and community.

Doug: [00:18:37] This is accomplished through the Innovation Engineering system for thinking faster smarter and more creatively. Now the need to think smarter faster more creatively is broadly accepted in today's fast changing world. What is not understood is how to do it. Innovation engineering teaches you and everyone you work with a reliable system for creating fresh ideas and even more importantly how to turn them into reality more successfully. And as you'll learn in chapter 13 when just 10 percent of your team 10 percent of your team company your community has unshakeable belief unshakable belief in their ability to innovate a culture of innovation is created. Innovation engineering defines innovation in two words "meaningfully unique" when a product service work system or job candidate is meaningful unique. Customers are willing to invest their time and energy and money into it. The never ending quest for meaningful uniqueness is at the heart of this book my life and the Innovation Engineering movement made of our students defines meaningfulness differently some find meaning in improving manufacturing government or even high school junior high school teaching systems others find meaning from creating smarter methods for rehabilitating prison inmates caring for nursing home residents or growing the impact of a nonprofit. Some students find meaning in the invention of amazing new food products medical devices Internet services financial services or industrial equipment. The breadth and depth of application we are observing from application of innovation and sharing mindset and methods is both amazing and humbling.

Doug: [00:20:27] So that's the opening few paragraphs and and as you can see we're not thinking small with this movement. I mean we truly are thinking about how can we change the world. How can we make a difference that matter so A way to think of what it is is that you're going to learn from somebody who's doing exactly what they're saying. I mean people want to believe I truly believe people want to believe they they don't there's they're not happy.

Doug: [00:21:00] People are not happy.

Doug: [00:21:03] They're not doing things that are bringing them true and Dr. Deming said what's the purpose of this stuff to help people find joy in work and joy and work is not about you know having cool gimmicks and pool tables and ping pong games around.

Doug: [00:21:17] It's about finding meaning in the stuff you're doing. And every single thing we do whether it be in our courses whether it be in our methods of testing whether it means our ways of creating we're looking to create meaningful uniqueness we're looking to write meaningful may make this develop it. That's the seat that is the North Star that is our destination and it is the singular destination that this is about. And so if you want to find more meaning if you want to do something more meaningful. That's what this is about. And you know it's funny as I'm as I'm on the cusp of turning over that next decade to age 60. You know you reflect on these things and you start to think about why am I here.

Doug: [00:22:02] And and I truly think it is about helping people get to meaningfully unique doing something that matters whether it's a whiskey business or it's a school mean it does matter whatever is your world whatever floats your boat. That's the amazing thing. Whatever turns you on. That's what we're here to help you do it faster cheaper and more effectively.

Tripp: [00:22:22] Okay. And there's a there's one quuote in there that I think is significant and I don't want to go by without a little bit of conversation about it. Is that to achieve a critical mass.

Tripp: [00:22:35] Now I remember you and I having a conversation some time back about Dr. Deming saying that you know the square root of organizations how many people you need in order to change the culture in an organization to to to challenge existing norms.

Tripp: [00:22:57] Those types of things. And then you found some research and I and that's why I don't want to go by this 10 percent that that you can get that 10 percent who I talk to that a little bit aspire first where the 10 percent came from and and in it significant because most people think gosh there's no way I'm ever gonna get the whole organization to change.

Doug: [00:23:17] Right yeah. This came out of some some research and it's a little bit spooky because it was funded by military so I'm not sure if they're using this to figure out what it would take to take over a country or you never know.

Doug: [00:23:31] But the research found that when you get 10 percent with unshakable belief then the change happens end before 10 percent. It looks like nothing's happened it would take longer than the time of the universe for change to happen. It just it just doesn't happen.

Doug: [00:23:48] And it gives you hope that not only can you change if you can't get the leader to lead say that one more time if you can't get your leader to lead no whining take responsibility for your sphere events once just start.

Doug: [00:24:07] And how about now. Right now you know let's get started. Read the damn book. Listen to the audio. You have to. Although I got to tell you listening to 10 hours and we talking I mean I can't even imagine anything more painful.

Doug: [00:24:24] But I know people love them people love them. I'm not an audiobook person I'm a written book person. But whatever whatever works for you. Awesome. Want to get a group of people do it as a group as a book club get together every Saturday morning and do three chapters together do it do it but do something do something and get going and then when you get it then other people get it and then another and another and another and that's how revolutions happen.

Doug: [00:24:54] It doesn't take much. It doesn't take much. But if you're trying to get them all forget it they're not going to happen.

Tripp: [00:25:02] I think it's such a tradeoff force. Yeah I think that's an important point for people to understand and make and you know it's not changing everybody's mind is it's changing. You know a significant really few that can really change things.

Doug: [00:25:18] Well the other thing the other thing Tripp that you find is it's not like we're asking them to do something difficult. We're asking them to do more meaningful things to become focused on learning collaborating with others and experimenting. Is this something in there that sounds like it's going to be painful. This is fun. This is more fun. I mean it's not like we're saying you need to lose 30 pounds.

Doug: [00:25:43] That's not fun.

Doug: [00:25:46] That's not but it is fun to when you learn stuff when you're on a team and collaborating with others and when you're running experiments and you're interested that's fun. And so it's not like it's a difficult thing that works. We're not asking for any magical stuff here okay. I'm not going to tell you that some magic silver bullet. It's about rewiring the brain and you think thinking system. That's all it is.

Tripp: [00:26:12] This is the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy podcast where we're going to take you behind the scenes and what it takes To build a whiskey distillery business Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft whisky company. Life has never been done before

Tripp: [00:26:32] Let's start the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy with the cliffhanger. You left us with in the last episode which is giving us the distillery logistics and also this craft cocktail recipe. The Singapore Sling. And based on the fact that you just visited there and I'm sure we'll hear a little bit about your travels there too.

Doug: [00:26:53] Yeah. So. So I thought this week you'd be good to get you into some stuff that nobody taught you because I know as we were getting our distillery we're only a couple of years in here. And as we were putting things together we operated under another person's DSP first.

Doug: [00:27:09] We got it registered and we did it there. So we're literally just about to open up our own physical space. So we've been operating on somebody else's space. When you file with the TGV you can do that for those of you involved in it.

Doug: [00:27:21] But one of the things that we learned we've learned a number of things is we've put this together and we've talked with all kinds of people about it. But somehow they missed some certain things. So if you're going into the going to create a craft spirits company you're going to whether you're gonna do gin or whiskey or whatever it is and whether you're gonna do it the classic way of distilling or are you going to work on stuff that we're doing. Which gets you up and going lot faster and cheaper whatever it is. A couple of things that you got to think about really think hard about your tasting room because anywheres from 20 to 50 percent of your sales and profits may come right from that spot. It depends on state laws or provincial laws or you know country laws if you're in other parts of the world.

Doug: [00:28:10] I forget now we're doing a podcast.

Doug: [00:28:12] There's no boundaries to this planet Earth.

Doug: [00:28:16] It's a whole new world. Boy isn't that exciting. And and so depending upon the rules on how it works you know you make money selling bottles but you make a lot more money selling drinks. You know you make a drink. It'll be probably 80 85 percent profit margin gross profit make bottles. You know you probably make 50 percent is what you're going to shoot for sometimes a little bit better. But you know on average it'll average out at the end of the day maybe about 50 percent by the time you do taxes and all the rest of this craziness that you have to pay. And so that tasting room is really important and really think about it and it's for that reason that you know we were operating. We're operating out of Kentucky in a place and we looked at a lot of different places for it and we decided to put it come over the Ohio River just a few miles over and from Kentucky and put it in at the Eureka ranch because when we have a large property here but also we've got this magnificent ranch building that has this huge bar and this huge you know 30 foot tall stone fireplace and this huge great room on the side of a lake and I'm like Oh my God you know it's a multi-million dollar facility. And on Friday nights and Saturdays I can use it as a tasting room and it's already paid for. You know I mean that works. The math works. And so we renovated buildings here on the property and we're building some new buildings on the property. And so but getting that space right is really really important. It's really important that that you can make that work as a commercial space.

Tripp: [00:29:57] So is this something Doug you found from from the distilleries that you've worked with to this point as far as the tasting room that that that's where the profitability comes from and I guess it helps then the demand obviously for more than the product itself but it's in some states it's really huge depending upon the way the state laws are.

Doug: [00:30:20] But breweries are the same way. I mean very high amount of sales and profits are made on location. I mean it really is hyper local.

Doug: [00:30:27] And so you've got to have that as your base to make money on. I mean you know some some restaurants that are complaining that you know breweries and distilleries are competing unfairly you know because they're basically competing with them as restaurants or bars. And then if they had to deal with the taxes that we have to deal with whether it's federal or state and three tier distribution systems and all the craziness that you have to deal with I don't think it's a bad thing at all. We've got to do things like this because you've got to be able to sell it by the drink if you want to make money. I mean it's just it's really important and you also sell tchotchkes shirts and all that kind of junk.

Doug: [00:31:08] People want cause they want to be at the place and all that stuff. But you know you've got to have a business there and you've got to want to be in the restaurant business. You've got to want to be in the restaurant or bar business if you don't want to be in the restaurant you just want to make whiskey and go do it. It's gonna be really tough to make your math work. It's gonna be extremely tough. You better have a whole lot of money to get into this business it's going to take a long time for you to be able to build awareness and distribution.

Tripp: [00:31:37] Now are you seeing that. Are you saying that Doug would Bay from a Kraft whiskey standpoint or Kraft spirit standpoint.

Doug: [00:31:44] I'm saying it for any spirit OK. Period. OK. You know but primarily the Kraft guys you know you've got to have it even if you wanted to be a you know say you you wanted to make something big you know doing something with a hotel chain or you're gonna have to have some retail business as a backbone to get it going. I just think I just don't know of another way to do it realistically. OK. All right.

[00:32:08] The second thing that you're going to find out is if you were at all successful you're not going to have anywhere near enough room. So make sure you're thinking about how you're going to expand the space and what you don't need is more space for distilling. That's like no space. And people spend all the time around the shiny copper stills and that's the key thing that is not what the problem is. The problem you're gonna find is the warehouse space the bonded warehouse space which is where you've got alcohol before it's the tax paid on it and where you have to troll it and the unbounded space it's for it because I mean when you get a little bit of flow the empty bottles are sitting there the empty bottles go into cartons go get liquid and get a label on it go into a carton.

Doug: [00:33:01] Now you've got full cases that are waiting to be shipped out. You've got in many cases that you've got whiskey aging so you you've got work. I mean you know we talk about in lean they talk about work and process. My god the amount of stuff you've gotten process and if you're small you get killed because the price of buying a small amount of bottles and stuff kills you. So you have to buy more. And next thing you know you've just got warehouses full of junk. I mean just huge volumes. I mean this stuff takes up in thank God it's whiskey it's better than beer. I can't even imagine what the beer guys have to go through. I mean you see these places where they've got the cans stacked up to the ceiling. I mean the volumes that a beer guy has to do are even worse. But it just surprises you because you tend to think about the whiskey making in that kind of stuff. But if you've got to have a rock house you've got to store barrels then you've got to dump the barrels. You have bottles. I mean that same product is taking up you know it's a bomb because I know we've gone we've gone up X in sales this year and next year we're going up 5 x again and you just do a little bit of paper to put pencil to paper and you quickly go all my frickin Lord.

Doug: [00:34:19] How many pallets do I have to have and what kind of floor am I going to get. And so we're working on systems for that. So really think about that you're going to underestimate the amount of space that you're gonna get. And related to that I know a group I know a couple of groups that have been looking to buy me we're not for sale or anything but who are looking to buy craft distillers. And one of the things that they've told me that has held them back from certain purchases is that they said they had no capacity even if they wanted to make them big. They were either landlocked in a city and there was no space I mean for intents and purposes they had to start a new place in order to make the math work. I mean they had a brand maybe a recipe but that was about it. There's just no stock there's no no volume for it. So I'm not talking about building it big but you got to think through the plan for how you're going to do that.

Tripp: [00:35:21] Okay. There is some of the interesting things that you've found as far as the distillery piece.

Tripp: [00:35:29] Well what's let's move to the last section here on your craft cocktail recipes since you had been too long since you've been back from Singapore. And I've actually had a Singapore Sling before. I don't know what was in it because I only drink it so I am not familiar with Raffles Long Bar in Singapore. Why don't we start there.

Doug: [00:35:54] So so Raffles Hotel named after Raffles who was who came. I think he was an Englishman who came to Singapore in the area and helped develop it.

Doug: [00:36:09] There's the Raffles Hotel very famous and there's a at the end of it there's a bar called the long bar it's I'm on the second floor and I've been to Singapore a couple of times and the first time I was there it was rustic. I think it would be a name of a rickety staircase you went up there you know charmingly rustic I guess is what you would say OK. And this time when I was there I was a little bit unsure because I'd heard that the hotel was under construction. I thought I was there but they knew enough to open up the long bar first because the tourist is coming through all Monaco to get the place where the Singapore Sling was originally invented. And so they make Singapore Slings and they make a lot of them there and back they have a mixing machine. I'll send you the video on it we put it up on the website. They have automated mixing machine for shaking the Singapore Slings it's an hilarious. And I took some video of it and so we stopped in and we might have had a couple a couple of these things. And so the new building is a bit disappointing I said it was sort of like it'd been dignified. It was it was just very prim and proper. How they've made it up it just you know it looks like Walt Disney's view of what an old Singapore bar would be like.

Doug: [00:37:39] You know it's just.

Tripp: [00:37:41] It's like a movie set or a ride or something.

Doug: [00:37:44] Yeah I mean I mean they got they got like they got like you know you know like the palms that you know Breeze they've got some of those on a metal bar that automatically goes back and forth like it's like it's a bit cheesy OK now it's like a lot cheesy and I had pictures of the last time I was there and I looked at the bar and the new bar is made to look like the old bar but it's not the old bar. And the whole place is I mean it's fine but it's just doesn't have the the grip that it had before. But the cocktails are still good although I would point Buckham a little bit because they aren't squeezing the juices and but the volume they're doing I guess is pretty big.

Doug: [00:38:33] And so here here's the drink. And again the brand in the case here the brand names really matter. They really do matter.

Doug: [00:38:42] And so to a tall glass of ice.

Doug: [00:38:45] And add one And a half ounces again what ten add one and a half at one and a half ounces of gin. The Gin is a little bit open but I would tend to use Beefeaters or Gordon's a classic London dry I would tend to use one of those. OK.

Doug: [00:39:01] A half ounce of Cherry Herring which is a cherry liqueur.

Doug: [00:39:07] A quarter ounce of Cointreau which is an orange liqueur.

Doug: [00:39:13] Quarter ounce a Benedictine.

Doug: [00:39:17] Half ounce fresh squeezed lime juice.

Doug: [00:39:22] Two ounces of fresh squeezed pineapple juice.

Doug: [00:39:28] A dash of Angostura bitters and.

Doug: [00:39:32] Then you stir it gently.

Doug: [00:39:35] And add a splash of 7 Up.

Doug: [00:39:39] And garnish it. She'll take it like a toothpick and take some cherry and pineapple to add to it and and add that to it and it's it's a wonderful refreshing long drink.

Doug: [00:39:55] That's quite fun.

Tripp: [00:39:57] Yeah they're tasty. But there's a lot going on inside those drinks obviously that I didn't have any idea of what or what the ingredients were at the time.

Tripp: [00:40:08] You know I've got and I got to ask this and maybe it's going to be in one of the upcoming upcoming craft cocktail recipes but I gotta believe there's a Doug Hall something Doug Hall one may you know maybe it's on Doug Hall 62 now. I don't know.

Doug: [00:40:25] I think that's a good one. You know maybe we're good. We're gonna have a bit of a party here.

Doug: [00:40:30] Martin Luther King weekend is gonna be the official opening of the distillery here in Cincinnati. And that's our official opening and we've got some wonderful musicians from Prince Edward Island coming down and might have a little bit of a birthday party we're going to release a new special bottling for my birthday. I'm going to do. But you've got me going now though there will be a special cocktail too. I think I'm going to have to start on that.

Doug: [00:40:56] Oh good. Doing do that. Funny think about this stuff folks. I mean the fun thing about these things is make a cocktail for family and friends make it and enjoy it invent your own play with it. I mean it's simple it's easy.

Tripp: [00:41:09] And send it to us. Yeah. I mean I know I haven't I haven't sent it over and you know well if it's something worth mixing well we'll put it out there.

Doug: [00:41:22] Send us a send us a cool one we'll send you a T-shirt. Elvis said that the guys and I go wow that's cool we'll send you a T-shirt and that's the recipe that's meaningfully unique.

Tripp: [00:41:35] Very good. Hopefully we'll get some participants in that I've made me do it just to come up with something to try and get a T-shirt although your voice rejected my pizzas so I'm not sure I'll do a mixed drink.

Tripp: [00:41:51] I'm still I'm still looking up at a 4 Doug on near meaningful unique scale so I got some work to do. All right very good. Well that concludes this portion. Any cliffhangers for us for the next Brain Brew Whisky Academy.

Doug: [00:42:11] No but I'm going to end you with a quote this week and it was a quote.

Doug: [00:42:15] I've met a friend in Singapore who said this to me and we had a wonderful 4 hour dinner just a glorious Asian dinner with a tasting menu and had lots of laughs and talks and he said this quote to me and I put it down and I just think it would I'd like to end the show this week with this he said no one ever changed the world because their boss assigned the project to them.

Doug: [00:42:43] "No one ever changed the world because their boss assigned the project to them.".

Doug: [00:42:50] So what are you waiting for. Folks let's get started.

Tripp: [00:43:02] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things. A one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka prescription for success you answer questions and will help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas and you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash podcast. And don't forget to subscribe. To the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter:

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/change-your-destiny-driving-eureka-4

This is the fourth episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: Change Your Destiny; Segment 2: Doug Hall and Radio Legend interview; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy. Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas.

[00:01:23] Changing Our Destiny

[00:02:03] Measure the People for Insight into Culture

[00:04:24] Jump Start Your Business Brain - Book

[00:06:30] Changing a Culture - Real Customer Story

[00:08:45] Culture Survey

[00:12:13] 3 Things that Changed the Destiny of the Group

[00:12:47] #1

[00:13:22] #2

[00:14:11] #3

[00:16:08] The Problem with Fear

[00:17:22] Formula for Big Ideas

[00:19:52] Dan O' Day Interview

[00:21:52] Five False Cures of Innovation

[00:22:57] #1 False Cure - More Inspection, Metrics and Bigger Rewards

[00:27:55] #2 False Innovation Cure

[00:32:23] #3 False Cure for Innovation

[00:34:24] #4 False Innovation Cure

[00:37:51] #5 False Innovation Cure

[00:40:47] Brain Brew Whiskey Academy

[00:41:01] Step by Step to Meaningful Uniqueness

[00:44:02] The Two Questions to Achieve Meaningful Uniqueness

[00:44:09] #1 - How Likely are You to Buy?

[00:44:47] #2 - How New and Different?

[00:45:21] Using the Two Questions to Measure Meaningful Uniqueness

[00:46:54] Looking for a "7" on the Meaningful Uniqueness Scale

[00:48:21] Who to Survey for Meaningful Uniqueness

[00:52:56] Craft Cocktail Recipe - Jalapeno Julep Cocktail

[00:54:53] Relativity

[00:56:29] Step 1 - Make the Jalapeño syrup

[00:57:06] Step 2 - Muddle some Mint Leaves

[00:57:26] Step 3 - Muddle together the Mint Leaves and Jalapeño syrup

[00:57:50] Step 4 - Add 2oz of Whiskey - Preferably Relativity

[00:57:59] Step 5 - Add Crushed Ice

[00:58:02] Step 5 - Stir 13 Times

[01:02:14] Listener Offer

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:23] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the driving Eureka book.

Tripp: [00:00:34] This is the Driving Eureka! podcast episode for this week in Segment 1 our feature story is how to change your destiny In segment two. The driving Eureka book excerpt is about Doug's interview with Dan O'Day about the five false innovation cures and finally the brain brew whiskey Academy segment. Is Doug's promise to take us through the step by step process to achieving meaningful uniqueness and also in that segment. We'll talk about the craft cocktail recipe and this week's recipe is the Jalapeño Julep cocktail.

Tripp: [00:01:23] Doug let's start with how do we change our destiny.

Doug: [00:01:28] Well so this happen. This is real world stuff that happened and sometimes just the stimulus of these things they get into my head and I can't stop and let me just set the scene. The scene was what's called a Eureka! Accelerator and this is a format that we've grown to over nearly 40 years here where you spend a day inventing and then three days doing very rapid cycles of development. So to resolve a lot of the early death threats and so it's a very very intense it compresses nine months into four days. So it's very very intense.

Doug: [00:02:03] And before we begin these sessions we measure the raw material the people that we're working with and of course we're not measuring how strong they are or how healthy they are. We're measuring their mindset you know how urgent do they see it to do innovation how much courage to take action do they have and and and what is their How much do they collaborate. Quality of work.

Doug: [00:02:31] I mean some pretty straightforward questions but pretty direct questions and we don't do this to be mean and we don't do this to beat people up and we tell people it's not a measure of these people it's a measure of the culture they're within this is how they're feeling because what we have found over 40 years is that the mindset of the people coming into the effort to innovate is one of the biggest determinants of what happens now.

Doug: [00:02:57] For a long time our rule was if your culture was not right we wouldn't work with you. Basically I'm gonna sorry I'm going to reject this raw material. I can't help you.

Tripp: [00:03:07] That's a lot of rejection.

Doug: [00:03:09] pWell it wasn't really OK. In 1993 I wasn't bad. Ninety five it wasn't bad.

Doug: [00:03:16] Oh but it's gotten worse and worse and with each drop of the stock market it takes another leap downward basically. And so two thousand drop 2008 dropped and it's gotten pretty ugly. And so we got in after two thousand in there. I look at it I said whoa wait a minute. Everybody left work with. And besides you know what kind of doc what kind of emergency room only deals with healthy people.

Doug: [00:03:50] I mean for crying out loud I to see him because they've got a problem.

Tripp: [00:03:54] And the pipelines' drying up.

Doug: [00:03:58] It's your job dammit. You know don't complain. You're supposed to be a damn expert at this stuff. No Whinning. That's right. Absolutely no way. I've got a problem I can't innovate and you're telling me new unit good enough for me to work with you. We do a whole like stupid. So that's what really set off a lot of the quantitative research that that ended up in.

Doug: [00:04:24] And in particular it was Jump Start Your Business Brain that really did a surge of data surge of data measurement because we had to reinvent ourselves quickly so that we could work with whatever organization was coming in. Whatever organization and whatever the state of mind we had to make our system robust enough to handle variances in raw material. That's that's the job that's the past. Get over it. You know when do that retire. And so we did. And the key metric for this.

Doug: [00:04:59] Dr. Chris Stormann And I did the fundamental research on this is we took 6000 teams and measured them in the act of creating and we looked at it against the pre data and post data and built up a lot of the stuff that is in now driving Eureka in the book about. And so but one of the things that we learned was when you measure their results you have to benchmark and you make it very simple because you know it's not math. A lot of people aren't math people so you make it red yellow green everybody gets red yellow green and and the results have gotten worse and worse. Now somebody said Well Doug just wreak calibrate for today's people you know which will then make some of the good advice. But they're all horrible. I think you're just being severe. I said. But we've got to get back to this world exists. And with small companies I still see that world. So it's not like it's an impossible world. It's just how far down things are.

Doug: [00:05:56] I mean people your old guys are worse now. I got data I got data that shows I've got the same big Fortune 50 companies 15 years ago and today totally different companies totally different companies so it is different. Factually that's the data so what we do is we share this data with the leadership first and talk them through and in years years since the early 90s of doing this. No leader ever says Oh I'm. That's not my team. You're wrong. They always say. You're right you're right. That's why we're here. Pretty much the very positive about it.

Doug: [00:06:30] And so we were in Asia. And Maggie Nichols is running the session I was just I was chief inventor. My job was just to think and do ideas I've talked wicked cool job. By the way greatest job in the world as far as I'm concerned and the state of mind it showed it was really bad. I mean the courage to take action a state of mind. It was really really really horrible. And then Maggie Nichols laid out the data and she said. Then she started a very constructive conversation to get people to express their frustrations and challenge and she wasn't gonna let it get into a pity party. Okay. And then she accelerated the session and got them going and generated a momentum that before they knew what they were rocking and the result was they engaged and the people went big and bold they really went big and bold it was amazing it was amazing the transformation.

Doug: [00:07:31] And usually you don't see it. And one of our measures of doing it is at the end of the first day they have to pick some ideas to send out for testing. And usually the team talks big ideas but at the end of the day they all become conservative and boring. And the first night usually the ideas fail and then they're a little bit but the next day and next day. they really really pushed it.

Doug: [00:07:52] And so you know needless to say at the end of this you know they come out of the end really embrace talking about this new culture they're going to keep going to have to go. We're supposed to be a week before we go back. Next thing you know literally the next morning as we're flying back they're sending e-mails. How can we go faster. I mean amazing truly amazing transformation and so I sat back I said What the heck happened what took a group that over many years would have been just a struggle to go do this and made this difference happen.

Tripp: [00:08:30] So Doug you talk about this the survey in there. Can you give it. Give us a little bit more detail on what the survey is and what kind of what it's measuring. I was a little little cryptic for me to try and piece through that.

Doug: [00:08:45] We've got we've got a set of maybe I don't know I guess it's like 30 or 40 questions that we ask and the questions have we've got huge databases hundreds of thousands of respondents and so we get really good bead on it. And we spend a bunch of time in the beginning making sure the questions couldn't be gamed. I mean we designed them so they couldn't be gamed and some of them actually have academic basis for them psychological measures of where people are. But it sings about agreement to innovate urgency to innovate.

Doug: [00:09:20] Are they more logical left brain or more artistic right brain as a group or dual brain.

Doug: [00:09:27] It's courage to take action sufficient resources to get the job done. Confidence in you know how much time they spend proactive versus reactive firefighting versus leading confidence in their ability to create communicate commercialize.

Doug: [00:09:45] I mean a really pretty in-depth profile and in fact if listeners want trip how about if we do this in this episode we'll set up a special link that they can go to because we set up in our RX prescription that uses a lot of the questions uses a lot of the questions where listeners can go and answer the questions and it's just for you it's all confidential and you can sort of see where you stack up against hundreds of thousands of others out there and you can get to see where you are. And then it has some automated coaching that comes with it that literally gives you some advice and it's all oriented in a positive way. There's no beating you up on where you should focus on what you could do to really it's basically your prescription for success how you can make that better so we'll set up that link for people OK. So they can do that for free.

Tripp: [00:10:41] Not free website said not free.

Doug: [00:10:48] Yes we'll be free.

Tripp: [00:10:50] OK. All right.

Tripp: [00:10:54] And then so they're going to be compared against a bunch of other companies. Are there other there. Is there anything you're real about other companies that have taken this test or have taken this in the past and how they compared and it kind of was a pre-empt or to their future success or failure.

Doug: [00:11:15] Well today almost everybody unless you're a small business it's owned by the founder it's almost guaranteed it's not good. But you already know that. I mean have read a survey to tell you that you know the frustrations but it does point you to places I can tell you that when we institute training and and we take a methodical approach of diffusion of innovation to change the culture within six months so you can see significant improvement across the board and within 18 months you can have a pretty remarkable culture that can change but you can't change it in a day and beating people up isn't going to do it. You've got to change the way people are working changed the way people collaborate etc..

Tripp: [00:11:59] Ok. And so you you go on in this particular section from Driving Eureka! about you know what changed the destiny of the group and you outlined these three areas.

Doug: [00:12:13] Yeah. So my hypothesis I can't know for sure this was one event. So let's just be clear about that. OK. I am no mathematician. And so you know observing something qualitative is not quantitative and I'm pretty firm on that. So qualitative gives us hypotheses that then you have to run experiments to prove and sometimes we can do it with the data because we can look in the data for it. I think three things made this transition from fear to courage and literally change the culture of these people which was truly remarkable.

Doug: [00:12:47] And the first was leadership the leader of the group was fully present. Sometimes we have leaders in the group and they spend half their time on their phone or they spend half the time texting. But this leader was right there. And when the data came out he I happened to be sitting at the table with him with small tables people working. And he didn't dodge it. He didn't make any excuses. He didn't start asking questions Could it be. He just said OK it is now how can how can we work this. He just went he just went. And that set the tone.

Doug: [00:13:22] Second thing was patience Maggie Nichols who leads the Ranch did just an absolutely amazing job better than I would ever do. Managing the emotional state of the group I would normally have tried to just charge forward with energy. She let it go easy. Let people get some space and get them going. And then she came to me and she said OK now I need you to do a little rant I need you to charge them up to charge them up. And by holding on and letting the people do it I think in the past I jump in too quick because I'm like Let's go. She let them go let them feel it let them build. And so she had some patients with it which was quite amazing.

Doug: [00:14:11] And then the third thing was there was real diversity. So this was an international project. There was no culture. No country came close to being 25 percent of the group. So it's truly a United Nations type thing. I mean it was or a Toronto school where you want to think about it an amazing amount of different people. And so people didn't have a sense of belonging to classically with international projects you'll have the Europeans against North Americans against Asians or you know kind of grant me there was none of that.

Doug: [00:14:42] They were from all these different countries and so the group became a group and it became a sense of belonging that you know we can be better than this. We are better than this. And so that's what I think I think was I think we could do some analysis to figure out we could check in particularly the diversity in the leadership the leader accepting it and saying let's go patience by Maggie Nichols. She managed the group psychology understood it felt the pulse of it and had me push a couple of times and then as the week went on she turned me from an idea person into a teacher. And so a number of times she said I want you to teach them this. Teach them this. And so whether weather was doing the math doing research interpreting research. She had me give lectures like we give. You know I I've given on campus cause she says they've not known these ways of doing it. And so I want you to just teach don't preach teach and and I think you know that helped. And lastly it was the diversity.

Doug: [00:15:50] It was an amazing diversity and I think you know we are equations model when we model it we say diversity is an exponential impact on the number of big ideas you create. And we had it we had it. And it showed that school.

Tripp: [00:16:08] I you know a we're only a few episodes obviously into this podcast but there is a recurring theme that keeps coming up and I see it in your writing is you really hit this idea of fear pretty hot pretty hard. You've mentioned it in this this particular article. Why do you why are you gravitating two to that in your writing. Do you think.

Doug: [00:16:31] Well when we modeled so we took a set of six thousand teams that we had really good data on and we measured them every 40 minutes and asked them question was a ridiculous amount of course we talked about.

Doug: [00:16:45] They didn't answer the questions that could screw up the project and call scared so they answered every question. The university now tells me you couldn't ask those kinds of questions.

Doug: [00:16:56] But and so and so we asked people how much they liked. There's a whole pile of things that we did long and the short of it what we found is the number of meaningful you need ideas that really stuck not just right at the moment but a week later etc.. Real solid things. The the equation that defined it was stimulus which was how much stimulus you had. In other words ideas are feats of association.

Doug: [00:17:22] So we bring in what's called Spark decks and we have unrelated mining patent mining can Insight mining future mining that's like six mines you fill your brain with that that is raised exponentially to the level of diversity is what I just mentioned. The more diverse our city the more ideas you get so that's the numerator. That's the top the equation. Stimulus raised exponentially the diversity however that's the potential to the level that you and the the denominator is fear because as fear goes up the number of ideas goes down. And so when you see a team that has high fear low courage to take action then you know it's gonna be brutal because they may come up with them. But their ability to kill it will be immense. And so fear is the constraint it is the key constraint. That's why we do data. That's why we do documented systems that's why we use data driven decisions. That's why we do the math early. All of those things you know telling people to howl at the moon and be a design creative that's cute. But that's not going to stick except for the few weirdos. And I'm counting myself as one of those who's really out there on the edge. The majority of the people 85 percent left brain and we need those people. They're critical because if you're going to make something if you're going to design something you're gonna build something you're going to need those people to stop giving him lectures do it the way they need to do it help them

Tripp: [00:19:08] Well let's move on to segment two the excerpt from the Driving Eureka! book in a previous episode actually it was episode one we had talked about one of the five false cures.

Tripp: [00:19:27] And then later you did an interview with Dan O'Dea and once you talk a little bit about that interview and then I'll put that recording in after you've talked about the Dan O'Day a little bit.

Doug: [00:19:44] Well in an earlier episode we talked about the false cures five false cures about innovation.

Doug: [00:19:52] I talked about the first one and I thought it'd be fun for people to get the whole set and and so it's kind of a neat way of doing it. This is Guy Dano. Many years ago and he's kind of legendary in radio business as a teacher. He's taught when he used to be deejays before they were computerized stations. He taught many of them in particular comedy interviewing voice presence just a true expert. And and he saw read some of my early books really found them useful in particular jumps such a range of such a business brain really found them useful. And over the years we would just show up I'd be I didn't place I'd be asked to speak and next thing you know he'd come around the corner you see I thought it'd be good for you to speak here. And he had contacted and heard that I was doing a new book. And so I'd send him one of the early galleys and he said D I'd like to do something for you. You've helped me a lot. I'd love to do a recording with you that you can use however you see fit. And I thought would Jesus get interviewed by him and would be pretty cool.

Doug: [00:20:59] And and it was it was really it was different. He was different than than many interviews these days because I mean here was a throwback guy.

Doug: [00:21:07] He makes it so effortless. In the recording and he's the one that picked out from the book The Five false innovation cures. And he said this is really this is important stuff. This is really important stuff because people can always dish this and say hey I don't really need this innovation stuff. We're doing that. We're doing that. And so the interviews but about an hour it's got all he covered an amazing amount of ground. So it's well worth listening to while you're exercising driving or whatever. But the the false cures we thought we'd still have been here because it's just it's just something different. And it's. It fulfills exactly what we're talking about.

Tripp: [00:21:52] Well let's listen to Dan and Doug talk about the five false cures for innovation.

Dan O'Day: [00:21:59] Let's start with what are the five false innovation cures.

Dan O'Day: [00:22:04] Can you explain those please.

Doug: [00:22:07] Yeah. So the driving Eureka book really deals with the innovation during system and and it's about not just the ideas but ideas and shipping going and you know against this we know that you have to innovate people agree with that.

Doug: [00:22:22] CEOs agree with it but the issue is they don't know how. The challenge we face is oftentimes they are grabbing at straws that they think to do it.

[00:22:32] And I call them the five false innovation cures and it's interesting that you ask about that because literally today I get three different notes from people who've gotten early editions of the book and they were quoting different ones of these of these are the pains that they are feeling in their organization. So so as we go through them I think people may we may hit a hot button where people go Oh my God. That's me. That's my problem.

Dan O'Day: [00:22:55] So the first one is.

Doug: [00:22:57] The first one is if we put in more inspection metrics and bigger rewards then all will be good. In other words if all we got to do is if we measure the outcome and we bribe people to do the job then they'll innovate and and that's just totally against. I mean I could stand in a court of law and extrinsic and metrics will not create enables somebody to go do great things. It has to come from within. It has to be intrinsic motivation.

Doug: [00:23:27] And the more they measure it in that way where they're measuring the output as opposed to helping them use metrics as a means to improve the system then the more they fail.

Dan O'Day: [00:23:39] The idea of measuring outcomes is not new in terms of measuring outcomes of innovation how can a veteran manager who has a b school mindset. And I don't mean that as an insult but a veteran manager with a b school mindset. How can that person be expected to evaluate an innovation or even to distinguish it from a new idea or proposal that is just stupid.

Doug: [00:24:09] I mean you're catching the nuance here. The output is an innovation pipeline of a lot of ideas. But we want to use is the metrics to help people improve their method of doing it improve their ability to evaluate ideas and what we have found in tracking tens of thousands of ideas.

Doug: [00:24:27] Is that the way you evaluate the idea on how innovative it is is by measuring what we call meaningful uniqueness and specifically you show it to potential customers and you get how likely they are to buy it and how new and different they think it is and you wait them 60 40 purchase a new and different. And this metric will tell you how likely they are to try it how likely they are to repeat purchase. All things being equal the awareness that you'll get the distribution that you'll get and your ability to get more money for it. I mean because one of things we know is meaningful uniqueness correlates with profit margin. People want to pay extra.

Doug: [00:25:12] But if the thing does something they can't get anywhere else they'll pay more.

Dan O'Day: [00:25:19] And you determine that purely from self predictive behavior from asking your customer base or do you predict it by putting that product out in the market at that higher price and seeing how the market reacts.

Doug: [00:25:32] Well you have a lot of ideas and you have to filter them. So. So we have back we talk in the book about I talk in the book. I talk in the book about five different methods for measuring it from artificial intelligence systems we have which will the computer will read you write it written description and the computer reads it to the systems that you test with a panel of people inside the company of experts against standardized standards as well as consumer testing or business to business or whatever it might be testing out where you can use stuff you did with the Internet or direct intercept to do it. So that body in all of these systems it's a quantitative measure that you get.

Doug: [00:26:14] That is an objective measure that says how meaningfully unique your idea is.

Dan O'Day: [00:26:20] Perhaps this is the contrarian nature that people accuse me of having. It leads me to wonder does most innovation come from a determined desire to innovate. Or does most of it come from an iconoclastic mindset that simply follows what seems natural. Or better versus the way things always have been I think.

Doug: [00:26:45] I think it comes from an entrenched the big ideas the people come up with big ideas it comes from within. There's something out there that's bugging them. There is something out there. There's there's a wrong that they want to write there's a need that they have to make a difference in a category and and so that mission drives them to go beyond where most people are. Which is why one of the things that we've done in the new book versus some of the older books is we talk about using what we call commander's intent which is a form the military uses for your project missions where the leader writes a narrative that's designed to inspire people to do great things because you've got to get to them emotionally. They've got to want it. You've got to love it. You've got to love it to innovate. It's all too hard. You get beat up along the way and if you don't love it it's just not going to happen. And so we try to get the leaders to write that narrative that inspires the people to do great things so the first of the five falls innovation cures.

Dan O'Day: [00:27:55] Is that more inspection and more metrics and bigger rewards will do the trick. What's the second false innovation cure.

Doug: [00:28:05] The second one is what I call the big idea. If we just get a bigger idea all will be good. We just need a bigger idea. The problem is what we're finding and I I followed this for some time that if we would just give you a bigger Eureka at the front than it would be good. The problem is the development system in most organizations is the killing zone two separate studies show that when idea goes into development if you do a quantitative sales forecast on what it is the objective forecast using customer data when it goes into development and when it comes out two separate studies show that on average companies lose half the value during development. I mean basically the development process is not developing it into something better. It's like hospice it's managing the death of ideas and so ideas are frankly and that's tried to say it but it's not hard to get ideas.

Doug: [00:29:05] What is hard is to take those ideas and in development actually make them better.

Doug: [00:29:10] In a case what we're finding is is instead of a loss of 50 percent we're getting a gain of 28 percent and make them better at the other end.

Dan O'Day: [00:29:18] So what would be the loss of that 50 percent of the value or the effectiveness of the idea.

Doug: [00:29:25] The silos.

Doug: [00:29:26] So what happens is is that the team the small team that worked on the idea of the front. They were fully engaged. Now as we move it into the silos in our organization all of these separate departments they they're more loyal to their silo than they are to the mission of the idea.

Doug: [00:29:39] And so they're going to optimize it to make it easy for merchandising for packaging for manufacturing for finance. They optimize for their silo as opposed to for the good of the whole and they're not to be blamed because it is their mission. And the metrics are evaluated on their job at the factory is running efficiently and you bring me something that's going to mess up my factory will do. I hate doing that. That's going to mess up my my bonus. So they're doing the job that management gave them to do and and measured them on. And that job destroys the ideas.

Doug: [00:30:10] And until management understands that they're going to continue to get the 5 to 10 percent success rate and declining profit margins that we're seeing globally now for most large companies.

Dan O'Day: [00:30:21] I would think that a common problem would be large successful companies being presented with genuinely innovative ideas recognizing the values of those ideas saying Oh that sounds great. And then insisting that the bold new ideas be forced to fit into the company's existing culture or belief system.

Doug: [00:30:45] That. So they get done they think they have a pile of ideas. So we got a whole stack. We call them yellow cards. They they sort the cards and then the right hand they put. OK. This idea never done that before. OK. This idea I haven't done it they put it right. Oh this idea that's like something we can do already. Put it in left pile dollar that idea. That's easy enough. OK.

Doug: [00:31:04] So our next big idea let's take the ones in the left pile the ones that are the exact same stuff as what we're doing. That's what we're going to go do and until they fail before they begin to fail before they begin.

Dan O'Day: [00:31:18] So they're naturally drawn to the most innovative of the ideas that they've already done.

Doug: [00:31:25] That's right. And the ones that they already know how to do. In other words imagine if you were in Boston back in 17 whenever and you decided to go to California and you said I'm not going until I can see exactly how to get there. That's what we're talking about. There's no adventure there's no spirit adventure there's no team signing on to saying well I don't really know how to do it but we'll run some experiments and we'll figure it out. That's just like not a lot you have to know the answer. In most organizations before you begin. This is insanity. It's insanity. And the problem is is that the media makes these heroes of the original idea they make that the big idea as opposed to understanding what does it take to get the idea out into the market. And that's what we're doing with system driven innovation is we get all of the teams engaged on the mission and we teach them because how could they know to do anything other than what they've already done which is make it fit into that square hole that they've always had.

Dan O'Day: [00:32:23] So the first two of the five false innovation cures are more inspection and metrics and bigger rewards followed by what you call the big idea Hunt What is the number three false innovation here.

Doug: [00:32:38] Well this one I'm embarrassed on. It's the skunkworks teams and I'm embarrassed on it because for many years I did these and would lead them and would encourage people. All we gotta do is just take the team and separate them and we can do it. And and sometimes you know we had pirate flags they were called Looney Tunes we were the crazy ones and we would take a small team and we'd work in a weird place and we would drive them to market very fast. We had a typically we do it in a biblical 40 days and 40 nights you know get get get through a test and it works. Of course it works. If they when they the minute they don't have to work on the crappy systems that exist in the organization anybody can do it. It doesn't take much to do it. These are smart people in these companies by the way the smart people but inside that system is Dennis says 94 percent of the problems the system. Only 6 percent of worker. The problem with this is is when the idea then goes into the real world adults into the corporate system that idea that you shuck and jive with an ID you put together with bubble gum and strings and you had made it work. All of us someone has to scale up and you have to use the infrastructure. Well it's the killing zone again. And what makes it worse is the CEO oftentimes will brag about how brilliant that team was at work there. We need you to be like that to well everybody said the same. Yeah right. So guess what they're going to do. I mean they got the Gatling gun out. You're over. It's done. You have to get the whole to do it. We have to change the culture. We have to enable innovation by everyone everywhere every day as we say. That's what we've got to do. And besides why should only a few people have fun. Can't everybody have the fun of creating something new. I mean I don't get it.

Dan O'Day: [00:34:24] So we have two more false innovation cures. What would number four be well this is this is very popular today which is to buy an innovation culture.

Doug: [00:34:34] Well we'll just buy a group that's very innovative and do it. And a company I talked with recently was talking with a senior person and he said the bed they'd bought this company. I said Well how big is it now. He says Oh it's it's about 100 million. So that's very interesting. I said What are you going to learn. Oh he says they've been very innovative. I said well what's the founder doing. Well the founder well the founder's gone so well the brains just laughed. Isn't that easy. He's drinking umbrella drinks down in Tahiti now I said so how much do you think you're going to learn when it's now at the size that it's at all. Oh, there's a lot to learn.

Doug: [00:35:09] I said you learn from zero to a million dollars and then to 10 million dollars that's where the learning is is is. As you go through that process by now they've hit such a stage that it's just not going to happen in anybody that does a startup. You know their desire to go in and and change a corporate culture is like a root canal without Novocain. I mean they're just not going to do it. This is oil and water.

Doug: [00:35:37] And so it's just not I don't understand what they're thinking. I mean it's just words said by people who've never done it as best I can tell.

Dan O'Day: [00:35:46] Has there ever been an instance in which company bought an innovation culture and it succeeded.

Doug: [00:35:55] Not a culture. There have been some companies that buy it. I mean Apple buying Beats. They kept the founders there and they integrated them together and that seems to have worked OK. But that's really the exception most. Now then you know you had an innovative group going to an innovative group so I guess it's not even a fair campus comparison. Actually I'm thinking about that's a stupid thing to say but no not that I know of. And if somebody knows when send me an email I mean let me know. I posted above to know but I can't imagine that it's ever happened. And Dan I got to tell you I think also part of what happens here is that they have a short attention span you know by the time they bought it.

Doug: [00:36:37] You know it's probably been 10 years eight years of struggling and then they were an instant success. And so the company comes in and do it and they want to have the whole thing happen in six months or a year and they just don't have the patience even if they did.

Doug: [00:36:52] I mean we work with companies now and I've taken a hard stance on I mean you know we can help them find filter on fast track or we'll teach them how to do it. And they say well I want a culture.

Doug: [00:37:00] I said okay you to sign a three year agreement what mean mean at least three years and they're like Well I don't want to do it three years.

Doug: [00:37:09] I said OK well once you work with whoever it says they can do it sooner but it was never work. I said That's right part of why you need to have a three year commitment so employees know because otherwise what they do is you start you know this works. You start these things and the employees are going. Here they go again. Just a matter of time. But when you publicly say this is a three year commitment and there's no other option we're not going back Different story different message.

Dan O'Day: [00:37:35] So that's different than the boss just came back from a conference all excited about this new idea of the week and next week there'll be another new idea of the week. What's the point.

[00:37:49] That's right. That's right.

[00:37:51] The final of the five false innovation cures is to be a fast follower.

Doug: [00:37:58] There are people who have a they have the thought that maybe if we just don't innovate too much if we're not like the first one if we just follow the problem with that is the money doesn't show and there's about seven or eight studies and in my book meaningful marketing I say to them that show that the first gets the lion's share of the profits and the profits drop radically because what the copier can do copy has two problems. The first problem they got is is that they're late getting there and the person that was out there first is already going through the experience curve and they're already starting to save money and become more and more efficient.

Doug: [00:38:33] And you're coming in inefficient at the startup because the startups are always inefficient. So you're behind on that curve and then the second thing is you don't have a point of difference.

Doug: [00:38:42] And once customers they will give a reward to that to the leader unless you have a meaningful uniqueness versus them. People like okay that's fine. But you know the other guys you know I mean they're the pioneer that they did it. They're the best at it. They're just a copy. Besides you know if you're an employee what you want to do well let's work you know the Xerox company we copy other people. We don't do anything original here.

Dan O'Day: [00:39:06] What about all those people who warned that pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs.

Doug: [00:39:12] Well the data doesn't show that. So let me give you example. Big ideas versus small ideas. We call them leap versus core he put different names disruptive whatever the data shows that both fail at the exact same amount. The differences is when they're big ones. Emotionally it feels like a bigger deal to us. But the reality is as little ideas are dying just as fast it's just not real. The data doesn't show that.

Dan O'Day: [00:39:44] So this is another manifestation of the psychological principle of I remember a football player once expressing this when he said that the joy of winning is nowhere as strong as the pain of losing. And so the losses are the mistakes or the missteps. Stay with us longer. Even if they were they had no more of an impact than the correct new steps in.

Doug: [00:40:18] I write about the fact this a lot of studies on this that show exactly what you're saying in the academic literature is called prevention of a negative that's the reason why political advertisements are so obnoxious to watch. It is four times more powerful to say Vote for me so that we don't get that thing than it is to say this is what I'm going to do. That loss aversion is literally for X more powerful.

Tripp: [00:40:47] This concludes the Dan O'Day interview with dog and it also concludes the second segment. And now we move to the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy's segment

Tripp: [00:41:01] Doug you teased us a little bit last week about giving us a step by step process for meaningful uniqueness. So Doug let's start there.

Doug: [00:41:17] So one of the keys to success with anything that you do whether it's a new product news service is you meaningful uniqueness. And the question is how do you measure it and you really have to measure it. You've got to measure it from the basis of what potential customers perceive to be your meaning for uniqueness not we use think issue meaning for uniqueness. And the biggest problem most folks make is they overestimate how spectacular their offering is. They think it's much more unique than it truly is. And so this is critical to making decisions with regards to if you're going to go or not. You know people think it's very risky to start a new business or to do a new product or service well it is if you're just doing it by judgment but if you measure it and you quantify it you make a data driven decision that's going to change all of that. Now when it comes to evaluating let's take the example of the product that's the simplest you can do the same thing with services but we can talk about that in a future episode.

Doug: [00:42:21] But let's just keep it simple and say in products in use for example the whiskey business as an example for it because there's a lot of craft distillers and want to be craft distillers that are listening to the podcast obviously. So what you have to do is is there's two elements that you're going to measure you're going to measure the idea or the the basic concept that you're talking about in the case of a whiskey. The idea the packaging the the words that you might say or the pitch you might say with the whiskey and then this and then second you're going to measure the product itself is the product is the product is good is what the promises were not as good or as the product better is the product works whereas. So the way you might do this is the first thing you do is you have to create a concept of the idea. And this can be just a piece of paper or it can be an actual bottle something that explains what the idea is.

Tripp: [00:43:16] So for your whiskey business what was what was the idea. Because to me I'm getting mixed up in my head between idea and the product itself if that makes sense.

Doug: [00:43:26] Good good point good point. Thank you. It was in our case we would show them a picture that would show the packaging and then it would have the words that would be the back maybe the back of the package.

[00:43:40] So you know in one case it might be an extra smooth easy drinking whiskey you know might be the idea for the whiskey and then they'd be the product right there and you could see what it looks like.

Tripp: [00:43:51] Ok. OK.

Doug: [00:43:53] Then what are you gonna do. And there's a lot of different ways we can do this and we've got a lot of digital ways to make it faster and easier but let's just keep it very simple we'll do it with paper and pencil.

Doug: [00:44:02] You're going to put together a sheet we're going to ask two questions two primary questions.

Doug: [00:44:09] One question is how likely are you to buy this product and the scale runs from zero to 10 and what I do is I put on the piece of paper zero one two three up to 10 and over the zero I put definitely not by and over the ten definitely would by so I'm going to ask you basically on a scale of zero to 10 where zero is definitely not buy in tennis definitely would buy. How likely would you be to buy this product. And people tell you a number four five six seven eight whatever it might be.

[00:44:47] Then the second question you're going to ask is how new and different is this idea. Again on a scale of zero to 10 zero not at all new and different.

Doug: [00:44:56] Ten extremely new and different what those two questions give me the purchase question in the new and different is basically meaningful uniqueness following you.

Tripp: [00:45:11] So that so the first part of it is how likely I'm in to buy is that that is that that's the meaningful part right. Yeah. And the unique part would then be how new and different.

Doug: [00:45:21] That's right. OK. Now to use those scores now you've got a number and you've got a bunch of people that have given you numbers. Then what you're going to do is you're going to average their numbers for each of the questions independently seal average up all the people that responded on the purchase score you've got threes and eights and sevens sixes and you just do that the average you do the same on new and different than what the research shows. So we did tracking research people and what the research shows were we asked people questions and then we found out what happened to the marketplace is that the most predictive measure of what's going to happen in the marketplace is a 60 40 waiting basically 60 percent on purchase 40 percent on new and different the way you do that is you take your number from purchase multiply times point six and you multiply your number on new and different and you multiply times point for you add them together. OK. So 60 40. So now you've got a number and number ranges anywhere from zero to 10. So the question is what's that worth. Well I mean we've run literally thousands upon thousands of tests and so we've got norms for all kinds of categories and industries.

Doug: [00:46:37] But as a rule of thumb a 5 is OK 5.0 for the for the Meaningful Uniqueness score the blended number a six is good that's very good.

Doug: [00:46:51] And a seven is spectacular.

Doug: [00:46:54] And in fact a seven versus a five is like two hundred fifty times 20 50 percent more likely to generate word of mouth it's an exponential kick when it goes up like that with our whiskey business we're looking for a 7 is our basically go position and that's a 7 not only for the idea but it's 7 for after they taste it. So we might ask people how likely they are to buy it. Now we say now taste the product and now scored again and sometimes it goes up sometimes it goes down and we're looking for a seven. In both of them. And if we got that we've got it.

Doug: [00:47:33] And the reason we want to do that is because as a craft Whiskey Company what we don't have the money that the big corporations have you know all the big conglomerates that own most of the Bourbons and scotches of the world and they're all owned by giant companies from Japan and all this stuff.

Doug: [00:47:50] They got tons of money. We don't have money. So we've got to be more innovative which means more meaningfully unique. And so while their idea might be the same old stuff they've always done and it's really not that exciting. It's a five ideas a seven that helps equalize the fact that they got more money than us. With regards to getting word of mouth social media and all the rest of that.

Tripp: [00:48:10] Ok. All right. And so you know as I'm sitting here and I'm thinking this is one thing I you know I'm more of an operational background type of guy and not the marketing piece but I.

Tripp: [00:48:21] But I'm thinking Who are you going to to test these things because you know if I just walked into a bar and I started people there's going to be people there don't want to don't like whiskey at all let's say and then there's going to be people that have drank it for you know 50 years. So. So how you how you figuring out what your frame is for people that you're you're asking this question too.

Doug: [00:48:47] So it's it's a it's a really good question.

Doug: [00:48:51] And let me tell you the mistake that people make people at big companies who do this all the time they will recruit people who already like their brand and ask them if they're likely to buy the new one they just trying to raise the score is that idea. So they can market the answer is that so that they feel better about it. It's to make them feel good. My what I teach and what we teach and driving Eureka and what we teach in our courses that people can take.

Doug: [00:49:20] And by the way we just Tripp I want to let you know we just upgraded all of the online course of this online fundamentals course which is cool. So we'll talk about that another episode but it's a really cool what the folks have done. But in the course is what we teach is we teach people to take a more. You know let's take it as a whiskey as an example. Basically the general population of people who drink alcohol and they raise it but you're going to ask them how frequently they buy they drink whiskey because you're going to look inside the data. And this is where the automated tools help because it allows you to sort it easily but you can do it in a spreadsheet too is you want to see what people who drink whiskey a lot are like and what people who don't drink whiskey are like because in a perfect world like the easy drinking whiskey I was talking to you about that product actually brings new customers to whiskey. People go Oh my God. That's the first time I've had a whiskey I actually like.

Doug: [00:50:17] And so if you only test amongst the existing you're not going to grow the business and you really want to grow the business not just swap off share. So you want to look at people beyond just the people that always buy whiskey because you want to see if can you get some new customers. I mean we're only 18 percent of people who drink alcohol in the United States drink whiskey in the last 12 months 18 percent. That's it that's all it is for all the hype of the rest of the stuff. This is a relatively small amount of people that drink whiskey. And so one of the great opportunities and in fact with our brain brew custom whiskey one of the great opportunities is is you open people up whether it's through the cocktail experience or whether through custom whiskey where they can finally get a whiskey that matches them because what people in the industry do is they keep making whiskey for the hard cores as opposed to making it accessible to the new person.

Tripp: [00:51:12] Ok. Well this is this is very Deming. This is because Ford and General Motors and Chrysler all fought over market share for such a long period of time. Meanwhile the Japanese came in with not only better quality products but better cars for purpose. But they started in with the smaller car. So your mindset is let's expand the pie rather than fight over the pie.

Doug: [00:51:36] Yeah I mean you can call it the famous red ocean versus blue ocean. I mean it's the same thing it's how can you grow the business.

Doug: [00:51:43] And it's that's what is sort of the key to this whole thing is what you're looking for. But it really gives you a sense now. I'll tell you the killer on this is it is really hard to get those scores up there so. So don't like lose your mind when you get a four point two. Because it's gonna happen. The key is you've got to find a way to very rapidly do this because you have to do a lot of cycles to make it great. And ninety five percent of the innovations that are done fail. OK from big companies. Less so with small companies. But you know and the reason they fail is because they weren't that good to begin with you know they were a variation a hair splitting difference if you want to make a difference you got to make a difference you've got to do something that's really different and that's why I'm frankly so excited about our whole time compression system because we can use different woods. We we can change the pressure cycles. We can create taste you can't create you can't create them in a typical barrel aging. That's a benefit. Oh yes it's cheaper. Yes it's fast. Yes. So what the exciting thing is the amazing new taste stitcher able to create which frankly is craftsmanship. Even though we're using science in a craftsmanship way.

Tripp: [00:52:56] Ok. OK. Very good OK. Well let's let's go to the drink here that you talk about or that you give us the ingredients and how to mix it and everything which is the Jalapeño Julep cocktail and it looks like there's quite a story behind that. Why don't you give us a little bit on the story behind this particular cocktail

Doug: [00:53:22] Okay on Netflix there's a series called The Mind Of A Chef. And it was on that show that I met a guy named Edward Lee who's the chef and owner of Magnolia 610 of Louisville just down in Kentucky just down the river from us. And he has a bunch of other restaurants and he there's a number of sequences in there that he does shows and by the way just as an aside his you can Google it. It's in YouTube. His fried chicken and waffles recipe will kill. I mean just make it and make it exactly as he says. Watch the YouTube video and then it's amazing. It's amazing. It is truly amazing the greatest fried chicken. I mean the ranch staff doesn't know it but for the Christmas party this year I'm making Edward Lee's fried chicken and waffles and everybody says they've got the greatest chicken in the world. Let me tell you. It's especially good to watch the YouTube clip. It's about three or four minutes because he really explains why he's doing it and he is a fanatic about fried chicken. Now as it turns out so some Tim and Sue Hogan - good friends of ours we were doing the distillery tours and so we went to Magnolia and we got his cookbook down there and we also do the tasting menu which is a blow away I mean blow away and I'm and I'm tough on all food and beverage and that kind of thing. And so I don't say anything amazing like this about the list it's like blows your brains out. And Edward Lee is one of those guys who's who's doing it and his cocktails were amazing.

Doug: [00:54:53] And so this summer we made a bunch of his cocktails and then I did some riffs on it because what he likes in spice and or what he likes in sweetness is a little bit different so the happy new julep cocktail that I'm going to recommend is the one that I like. It's a little different than his but it was clearly it was inspired by him and it gives a real kick to the menu of mint juleps. I've been to the Derby you know sometimes they're just these sugary concoctions that are just not very good. Not very good. It is a difficult. I think it's a very difficult drink to get the right balance of the mint and the sweetness and get the right bourbon and people tend to use cheap bourbon which makes for a crappy cocktail to make that right. And and so in fact I Relativity whiskey that we've got up in the Boston area is really perfect for this cocktail. It really nails it. So so my way of making it makes it more stable makes it more robust. You have a better chance of getting it right. OK so before you begin what you're gonna do is you're going to make a Halloween your serve in the way you're gonna do this and this is again a spin off Edward Lee's version is you're gonna take a half cup of water and a half cup of sugar. Now before that before I get in the recipe I want to remind folks that in the show notes is a recipe so while you're driving I don't want you writing this down or drinking it.

Doug: [00:56:29] So what we're gonna do is before you began what you can do is you get. Make the jalapeno syrup and you can do this by mixing together a half cup of water and a half cup of sugar and one Jalapeño that you've chopped seeds and all because we want the heat out of the seeds. Ok so you got to put all of that in a in a source band you're gonna bring it to a boil and then turn off the heat and let it steep for about 20 minutes then you're going to strain it put it in a little plastic container or a glass jar and put it in the fridge so to chill it out or if you in a rush just use it whatever.

Doug: [00:57:06] Now to make the cocktail you're going to take a rocks glass and you muddle together some mint and if the leaves are small I would use nine leaves and if they're big ones I'd use six. So it's in the six to nine and I'm sorry for the variance but I'm explaining it to you. It's a good hefty amount of mint.

Doug: [00:57:26] And you're going to add one teaspoon of the Jalapeño syrup. One teaspoon of Jalapeño syrup. And then you're gonna. It's called muddle it. And the special muddlers that have grips on it. But you can also just take a wooden spoon or something and you really want to mash it good you want to mash it Good you want to get the oils out of the mint and the stems you really want when you get that out.

Doug: [00:57:50] Then you add two ounces of. In my case I use our relativity. The new American whiskey. And if you don't have that use a local craft brand.

Doug: [00:57:59] Add crushed ice if you have it. If you don't some ice cubes.

Doug: [00:58:02] And I stir it a lucky. My thing is a lucky 13 times I start and enjoy and it's amazing because you get this wonderful tension between the sweet mint the heat the the the whiskey. They just worked together such that the sum of the parts is much greater than they are individually. It really is. It is amazing. If you want more heat putting more Jalapeño. I originally made it with two which is was way too much for people. I loved it but I didn't get it.

Doug: [00:58:39] And if you want a little less you can you can take it down to you want a little sweet add more. I tend to like my cocktails to have a touch a sweet not to be thickly sweet. I'm a little bit on the drier side on all of mine. So if but it's easy to make it with one and if you think that's not enough add another half a teaspoon or add a full teaspoon and two you get to what your thing things the key with cocktails is is make it how you like the taste and in fact when I'm sitting there and I'm making cocktails for people I will make my base one which tends to be drier and then people say would you like would you like a little bit more sweetness and if it's like a old fashioned I might add another half teaspoon of simple syrup or Jalapeño syrup to it just to sweeten it up a little bit. It's easy to add it's impossible to take away obviously.

Tripp: [00:59:29] Really. Go ahead. You know and I like sweet. And for whatever reason. But I do like the hot idea the hot and you know the balance I guess is the key according to what you're saying of the three and then it's the individual taste.

Doug: [00:59:48] The main thing I want listeners to take and embrace is the whiskey world is has been built under a lot of rules.

Doug: [01:00:01] How are you supposed to drink it. How you have to make it and traditions and we've got to blow that up. I mean this is about what you enjoy. Take control over don't let anybody tell you how to do it. That's why with all of my recipes I'm going to talk to you at two ounces or an ounce and a half use rye if you want it whiskey forward use bourbon if you want to soften it up a little bit. I mean I'm going to give you those options because you want to get to your tastes because life's meant to be enjoyed and these is supposed to be fun.

Doug: [01:00:32] You should not never ever drink something that doesn't taste good. I am. I've become vicious about it. You know at restaurants I always ask for a taste of wines because I'm not going to drink bad wine. I don't drink bad whiskey. I don't drink eat bad food. Maybe it's I become an old crusty fart. But you know we can demand in today's world that that we get quality products and so you should make it as you like. And if you're at a at a at a craft bar and you say they make your cocktail and you don't like it tell them they want to know that I can tell you that they want to know that because they'll bring you something else because they want you to be happy. And and the more people speak out then the better quality we're going to get on these things.

Tripp: [01:01:17] And I just kind of want to tie this back in to something that you said earlier which is you know getting to a 7 is really hard. And you know I've just as you were talking there is thinking in terms of you know if somebody is not going to like that that whiskey or that bourbon just right off the bat they're going to get about three or four. So now I can kind of understand why it's so hard to get to a seven never mind a nine on that particular scale because you're you you're in essence testing these whiskeys with a variety of different with different tastes and people. Is that is that kind of how it goes.

Doug: [01:01:58] Yeah I mean yes and yes you get a feel for it but when you start to push the edges you got to test them. You got to test.

Tripp: [01:02:08] This concludes episode four of the driving Eureka podcast

Tripp: [01:02:14] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things. A 1 hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka prescription for success you answer questions and will help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas. And you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash. Podcast. Subscribe To the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.

Corresponding Doug Hall Newsletter: 

https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/3-steps-for-taking-your-idea-from-mediocre-to-wow-driving-eureka-3

This is the third episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: 3 Steps for Taking Your Idea from Mediocre to WOW!; Segment 2: Bureaucracy and How It Kills Innovation; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy. Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas!

[00:00:34] Episode 3 Overview

[00:01:26] Cervelo - A Story of Innovation

[00:04:55] Step 1 - Going from Mediocre to WOW!

[00:08:03] Step #2 - Going from Mediocre to WOW!

[00:11:14] Step 3 - Going from Mediocre to WOW!

[00:12:47] You have to Work on Something that Will Make a Difference

[00:14:49] Getting Clarity on the Mission

[00:16:25] Book - To Make Riders Faster

[00:18:38] Six Books written by Doug

[00:22:09] A New Book Coming: Busting Bureaucracy

[00:23:46] Bureaucracy

[00:24:35] #1 Bureaucracy Comes from Protectionism

[00:26:36] #2 Bureaucracy Comes from Overreaction

[00:28:04] #3 Bureaucracy Comes from Subversion

[00:33:16] The One Thing You Need to Start a Distillery

[00:37:53] The Magic of Making Whiskey

[00:40:39] You Need Systems to Create Good Whiskey

[00:43:43] Challenges to Making Distilled Spirits

[00:48:56] Italian Manhattan

[00:49:33] Step 1

[00:49:36] Step 2

[00:49:47] Step 4

[00:49:51] Step 5

[00:50:15] Next on Brain Brew Whiskey Academy

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:23] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the driving Eureka book.

[00:00:34] This is episode three of the Driving Eureka! newsletter and this week in Segment 1 are feature story is the Three Steps for Taking Your Idea from Mediocre to WOW!. In Segment 2 the driving Eureka book excerpt is about bureaucracy and how it kills innovation and in the final Brain Brew Whisky Academy segment. We will reveal the one thing you need to have to create a distillery. And this week's craft cocktail recipe. The Italian Manhattan. So Doug let's start by talking about the three steps for taking your idea from mediocre to Wow. What was the inspiration behind writing about this this week.

Doug: [00:01:26] Well it came from a conversation with a guy named Phil White and he is the co-founder of the performance by company Cervelo which really made history out of nowhere. These guys made bikes that went faster than anybody else.

Doug: [00:01:39] And he has since sold the company and I was sitting with him drinking a little bit of whiskey and he said Why would you waste your time commercializing a mediocre product. And it just hit me you know how many times do we spend time trying to better execute something that frankly at the end of the day is the same old same old as everybody else. I mean it just it pulls the guts out of you. I mean it doesn't give you energy. It sucks the energy from it's just just an energy drain. And and that's the advantage that craft companies have because companies that are craft whether it's craft beer craft spirits craft restaurants you know craft clothing companies I don't care. They are the essence so craft is we care we care and we're doing something that matters something that really matters and makes a difference. And so I started to think about this and say you know why is it that big companies do it but more importantly how. What could I give them. Could I give them three simple steps where they could move from mediocre to wow so they could not be doing mediocre but really push them. And so that was the whole basis of this thought and it's one of these things right. I sat with him. We were in Toronto I saw him and I was flying back to Cincinnati and it's just like you know you get something you had and it just bugs you. And so a my way of doing it when I get bugged about something is I write about it because in the writing it forces me to think and anyway is it just because people aren't passionate enough I know we talk a little bit about passion.

Tripp: [00:03:21] Previous episodes is is that have to be in the calculus of of what you're building when you're when you're thinking about in terms of a new product.

Doug: [00:03:33] Well I think it's I don't know which comes first the chicken or the egg. I don't know if it's like you've got to love it or the idea has to be meaningful that it's really going to make a difference for people. So you love it. So I'm not sure where it comes from but it's about doing meaningful stuff. And and frankly and I apologize for those who are offended but innovation engineering which we teach now in 20 campuses going to 100 next year the students we say what it is they have many Reverend definition of it which is you know it's like Austin. The city has keep Austin weird which is like an unofficial slogan Austin Texas that they were the city fathers say what do you think about that they say we hate it.

Doug: [00:04:15] I said but it really works. They said Yeah I know but you know we're Texas you know and here it is we're here. And so I I excites work at it. But the students definition is you know we talk about all this lofty stuff of enabling people with innovation all this stuff they got. Now that's not what it's about. I go what's it about this. Doug it's it's about doing cool shit that matters. That's what you're really talking about. That's what the driving record books about that. That's what it's about is doing something that matters because when you do that it gives you energy.

Tripp: [00:04:47] Ok. So let's talk about these three steps that you've written down for taking your idea from mediocre to wow.

Doug: [00:04:55] Step one. You've got to confront reality. You've got to get a sense of are you really great or not. And the way to do that if it's a product or service you can do it with a service as well with a description of the different services is you got to run what's called a paired comparison test. People would know it by like the Pepsi Challenge product T and product X. Which one do you like better. You compare yours against the other. Stripping the names off them and just say what is you do for people. What's the competition do for people you know simple description on it. And then there's something called Sensation transfer where you put a bunch of different traits so you know if we're doing whiskey we would say which one would you be more likely to buy which is more new and different. And then what we might ask which one's easier to drink which one tastes more expensive which one has a richer flavor. Which one would go better in cocktails. And you're asking these things and you end up with scores that are like well we're the same or we're a 60 40 60 percent prefer us 40 percent them or two to one or three to one or four to one you know whatever it might be. And then in the traits you get to understand where are you winning and where you losing you know you could ask which is a better value for the money and etc. But the idea is head to head straight up test your idea against the competitor and what's the competitor offer and what are you offering.

Doug: [00:06:28] Go head to head and you can do it with brand name. I like to do it without brand name I like the blind so that so that I don't have that noise in it. But there's reasons to do it both ways. That test tells you straight up where you stood with the Whiskey Company that we talked about at the end of each episode. The key thing for us was when we were able to take products that cost 70 to one hundred and fifty dollars and be preferred two to one in taste tests and we're selling for 35 bucks. OK. So basically half the price twice as good as a craft person that rocks that really rocks and that gives you a lot of confidence that you can make something amazing but to go from mediocre fresh you've got to accept where you really are. And so many times we have these delusions in our head. And so confronting reality with some quantitative research is the first thing that you have to do.

Tripp: [00:07:23] Ok. And so so this guy also gets back then to going through your PDSA cycles and near improving it each time getting to where you want it to be. And you mention the meaningfully unique in there as far as the way to to measure against these others. Is it. Is it still using the meaningfully unique definition then to do these comparisons.

Doug: [00:07:50] Yeah it's still doing that. You're asking purchase intent. You're asking new and different you're waiting it to see where you stand up. Same. Same basis. You know it's straight up you are you aren't.

Doug: [00:08:03] And then the second step is if you're not and you probably aren't is you reinvented to win. In other words you you take the mindset of a craft whiskey beer or you know you know in the case of Phil White a bike company and you've got no money or time and you've got to turn around and beat the competition because outspending them on marketing is not gonna be an option. The only way you win as a craft company is you win by making a better product or service so you have to look at it and say OK how can we win. Look at the data and if you don't know what to do then you can run we call it a create session or brainstorming to come up with ideas and and you can run surveys and we have various tools that we teach and that I teach in the driving Yreka book about running a problem survey or an idea start a survey to find out what things are hot buttons for customers and the whole process right quantity of tests basically takes about an hour and a customer in a box. If you have the systems right which we talked about and that we do in our classes and I write about in the book and so you gotta figure out how to win because if you're not going to win you're a commodity and you're gonna be always having troubles with profitability.

Tripp: [00:09:21] So let me ask you this Doug and especially on this and this is something I guess has burned in my mind for a while you know for me it's probably because I've worked primarily with service industry but you know whenever I see a product I say okay. Well that's very tangible you and I get that you know you want to make that product a little bit better whether it's an automobile or something like that. How does this play out from a service perspective. Because it seems like that would be so much harder to kind of OK you know I want to beat him and serve it. How do you can you throw an example or a story or something we're in a service industry where you've kind of used this methodology.

Doug: [00:10:02] Well the key is you've got to quantify the benefit of what it is that you're giving people. I mean people in service of what I tend to think is I'm nicer and the other guys are jerks. That's why you should hire me.

Doug: [00:10:13] Well that's a tiebreaker at the end of the day the question is what are you doing for me. You know if in the case of you know a Indy pit crew they can change your tires in under a minute but they've got different equipment and different systems for doing that where the local guy at the corner garages are going to do that. They're both services their services with different purposes and different benefits. In the case of innovation engineering our promise to you for this service that you're going to get is that you will increase innovation speed up your factory six and decrease risk up to 80 percent. That's pretty specific. That's pretty tangible. And so you've got to make the intangible tangible and ideally the best way. In fact it increases your odds 52 percent is to put a number to quantify the advantage customers you're gonna get by using your service versus somebody else.

Tripp: [00:11:14] Ok. All right well let's move to step three.

Doug: [00:11:17] Step three prototype rapid research and repeat. So we've confronted reality. Now we're reinventing it to win. So now you make it real in some sort of a prototype you run it another test on it just like you did before and then you do it again and again and again until you win that's it. That's the whole deal and you keep pushing it and you do not go forward until you've got a product. In my case with the Whiskey Company we have to have a statistical win you know at the 95 percent confidence level. And my preference. And sometimes 60 40 will give you that depending upon the distribution. But my preference is to have a 2 to 1 win because I'm competing against mega international corporations with more money than sense.

Doug: [00:12:08] You know some of these giant companies in Japan that who own you know a third of the Bourbon that's made and they a lot of money and I can't compete against them unless I have a better product and that's what I'm going for.

Tripp: [00:12:24] Do. I mean you run into a problem when you're working with with different companies where people you know they start to these cycles and they basically start to say geez. You know I'm done. I'm tired of you know going through these cycles that that we have to do and just kind of give up or is or do you guys have methodology stick to have them propel themselves forward.

Doug: [00:12:47] Well that's where it gets back to mission. I mean it's it's got to be a mission that's a worthy mission. If your mission is just to make more money for the shareholders. Screw that but if you're going to make a difference in people's lives if you're going to enable people if you're going to make them healthier better what is it that you're doing that's going to make the world a better place. A little tiny part of it that you're part of. How are you going to help them do this. I mean the company they work with you know they make anchoring systems for oil rigs like up in the North Sea and that and it's a really difficult thing they float these rigs out and they have to hold them very tight to a very tight tolerance. Well I mean there's safety issues that are associated with this. This financial issues associated with this. It's it is a very challenging stressful thing and if you can reduce people's stress in the process of doing this and you can make it happen faster I mean you get a sense of pride that you're you're making something that's going to make a difference for people whether it's a piece of art or a oil rig anchoring system.

Tripp: [00:13:52] Ok. Well we have and we haven't really touched on this but I just want to bring it up and I want to spend a lot of time on it. But you know you also this system that you're going through in Driving Eureka! is the you're you're building it in early in some of the actions you take from the very beginning would you can you can you just touch upon kind of how you start.

Tripp: [00:14:20] You know when you've got before you even really start generating ideas as far as you know the narrative that type of thing because if you had been all that kind of precedes this and I don't want people to get the impression that you know oh well I just start prototyping these things you know these products there's a whole series of things that are happening when they when they read the book that they have to understand that kind of build in that thing that keeps you going. And if you will.

Doug: [00:14:49] Yeah. The thing before anything else is education. You've got to educate people that there's a whole nother way of working. It's not about beating you up I mean famously Dr. Demi said 94 percent of the problem is the system 6 percent to worker and it's the same thing with quality as it is with innovation and it's the thinking system because you were never taught how to do it. So you've got to educate them. But having educated people and getting them to understand some fundamentals then the next step where they take an online course or in-person course doesn't matter. The next step is you have what's called the blue card which is the and the military calls a commander's intent which sets out clearly the mission of what you're doing.

Doug: [00:15:32] It sets up the narrative as to why is this very important. What are we looking for ideas for and then importantly the boundaries the strategic and tactical boundaries. It says these are the rules of engagement. The military has gone to this in replacement of before that they had command to control where they would tell people what to do. Now they give them the big picture and give me an understanding because the goal is without further order. You would know exactly what to go do.

Doug: [00:16:00] You're trying to help get it into people's heads so they really understand where it is. Because when the folks are out there whether they're wandering through cities or towns or whatever it might be in the military you know there isn't time there isn't time to go back and say can I do this. They need to be able to act in the moment. OK. Same thing with innovation. We need to have the clarity as to what the mission is and that mission is what gives us our motivation.

Tripp: [00:16:25] Ok very good. Now the last thing you mentioned in here on these going from mediocre to WoW is is Phil's book To Make Riders Faster.

Doug: [00:16:36] And it Yeah it to make writers faster if you want to hear the real story. Anna his wife wrote this book to make writers faster. Go online you can get it. It's it's one of the best books I've read this year and it really goes behind the scenes to give you an example. I mean you know we make innovation really flashy and fancy but you know film tells the story of they're out in Vegas for one of the bike shows had no money. They were dirt ball poor and they're trying to hustle to break into this market and the bike they had to do a bunch of work on the thing. He goes over to the hardware store and all they had for paint was flat black grill paint so he sprays the bike with that and they set it up in the booth and people come by and people were saying my God I love that paint job. Can can I get that paint job. Can I get that flat. I was like Oh yeah yeah do what you gotta do.

Doug: [00:17:35] And that's the real world. I you know there this is the good the bad and the ugly. It's just it just has an authenticity to it as a book that I think and it did just a beautiful job with it so much To Make Riders Faster faster you get the idea faster. That's it. Do one thing great. And Phil is he's become a very good friend and just a really smart guy

Tripp: [00:18:12] It's time now for the Driving Eureka! book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:18:26] Ok so we want to start segment two and the topic is "Bureaucracy" and how it kills innovation. But before we do that I just want to.

Tripp: [00:18:38] We talked about it. We've touched on it off and on but you this is your seventh book Driving Eureka. Can we talk just a minute about you know your six previous books as far as what you've some of the other things you've written.

Doug: [00:18:53] Yeah so. So my books I basically write about two things I write about innovation and courage. And of course the two things are related because fear shuts us down. And so that that's basically what all of my books are about. Some of the books like jumpstart your brain. My first book was really about fresh ideas and how to create ideas then jumpstart your business brain dealt with not only finding ideas but finding and filtering ideas to go do that and now you're driving Eureka is fine filtering fast track. I mean if you wanted to deal with the sequence of how those have gone along the way I've written books the one called Maverick mindset called North Pole tenderfoot where I went to the North Pole neophyte who had no business doing it. It's kind of a very fun outrageous story. There's an excerpt for it in the back of the driving Eureka book. It's just a great story of what's it like to be a newbie in a place we you know with people that have done Everest and all of these things and you know everybody has jobs on it.

Doug: [00:20:06] My job was I wasn't even the cook I was the pot washer for the cook. And Ed it's a carnival of of things that happen and nobody dies. One guy almost does a toe is lost but it is it's a fun book. It was it became a play that I've performed and it really speaks to courage. Jim what's it take. And Faith you see those realities to it. And then I along the way I wrote a book called meaningful marketing which was a deep dive 2000 academic articles a deep deep review of the academic literature and you know the reviewers for market research societies thought it was an epic work. Nobody in the world wanted it because it was just too dense.

Doug: [00:20:58] However it served its purpose because it became the academic foundation for innovation engineering because I had done basically AP HD worth of academic literature review. They became the basis for it. So it didn't sell a lot but it it became a very very it's a foundation for everything that we do now. So so maverick mindset North Pole tenderfoot on courage the rest of them all on innovation someone finds funding and find filters some fine filter and fast track and the essence of my business books is just get Driving Eureka because Jumpstart Your Brain has collapsed into a chapter with the latest information on it and then communicate you get the piece from Jumpstart your Business Brain that you don't have. So this really is this is the book that brings it all together.

Tripp: [00:21:50] Okay. And just because I'm curious Doug I I. You keep teasing me with this eighth book. Is there any insight that you can give us on what that might be or what that's going to be about.

Doug: [00:22:02] Well actually it's it's funny because the segment this week is on that very subject.

Doug: [00:22:09] It's it's called the new book's gonna be called Busting Bureaucracy Busting Bureaucracy. The fourth step antidote because what you find is when you do innovation innovation equals Change. Change means uncertainty and uncertainty means fear. And so the best way to prevent change or these disruptions is by implementing bureaucratic systems - rules regulations reporting things that prevent people from doing anything that could be a little bit different.

Doug: [00:22:45] Ok. And so bureaucracy is was not designed to be an evil thing. It was about organizing people to do things. But it's become a control system as opposed to an enabling system. And so the new book is about how can we bust the bureaucracy and we'll go through more of it in in future segments. But by applying the Deming system with profound knowledge a four step process to take in that bureaucracy diagnosing it and getting on the path to relieving yourself of those stresses.

Tripp: [00:23:24] Ok well that is a good front for your book excerpt which is bureaucracy. The easiest way to kill innovation. Let's talk about that a little bit why you chose it what and how maybe that fits into your new book. Was that the inspiration for the new book or are you already kind of thinking in those terms.

Doug: [00:23:46] Yeah. So when I was writing driving Eureka you could quickly get caught that people want to do cool stuff. I mean they wanted to cool things but the system won't allow them to do it. And so I put a chapter in driving Eureka about bureaucracy as a small chapter and that's what. And then I kept writing writing writing and I went Oh my God I'm supposed to keep this book Small I can't do that in this book. It's out of scope. It's out of the boundaries so all of that got cut out and it's being used in the new book. I just put in a section to do it. And so the excerpt this week is talking about this importance of bureaucracy. I mean we know it. And Tom Peters said it was a friend he said after you get a dozen people you have a hopeless bureaucracy. So even in small companies we break into our silos and do it.

Doug: [00:24:35] And so there are three bad systems which are what we call a negative bureaucracy. I generally created for one of three reasons. The first is protectionism you know one department is if the organization has set up KPI eyes on the department level instead of the company level or weighted them 80 percent on your departmental performance and 20 percent on company performance then what is a human to do but to optimize their department even if it costs other departments money.

Doug: [00:25:13] And you see this you see this all over the place where it's like dude I'm sorry that I'm screwing your department but man I got to make my numbers you know I mean my bonus I just heard a situation just yesterday I heard a story of a because it's nearing the end of the year that a company made a decision a a dumb decision but they did it because the KPI eyes they will get a bigger bonus because they did that even though it's literally going to cost it's wasted money and it's going to cost the company money. But that's how management set the rules. And if management's going to set stupid rules they're going to get stupid stuff. That's just the way it is.

Tripp: [00:25:58] Oh then there's so many stories on that. I mean I could definitely tell you I know them all but one of the most prominent ones is in I.T. departments of organizations you know especially with project management now.

Tripp: [00:26:13] They check the box of completed the project and they all have a big party and yes they get bonuses and things of that sort. Software don't work but hey we. We finished it on time. So that's right. It just it's that kind of functional separation of work where I live we did our job you know even though it wasn't anything of quality.

Doug: [00:26:36] So yeah it's number two is overreaction. So bureaucracies get created sometimes because of the the locus to the local control versus the whole different missions. But it also by overreaction in other words a random event what we call a special cause event occurs somebody makes a mistake. And so because of that there's a search for the guilty and rather than saying hey this is a random event this is unlikely to happen again we institute more rules so to prevent this random event from happening and the net result is we've made everything harder. And an example of this is a Walt Disney contract. I've done a number of projects for Walt Disney and the contract is epic in size and you start down through it and it's like ridiculous and you go you know I remember pulling out one page and asking the person we were talking to said Why do you have this. And they said oh well 30 years ago Walt had a problem and he said I don't wanna ever see that happen again. It's now new rules are put in and that creates a hopeless bureaucracy. And when you start to ask people why do you have this rule. I don't know. And you go probably not helpful. Probably not helpful.

Tripp: [00:27:57] They're knee jerk reactions for people to protect themselves. It's just that it's human nature.

Doug: [00:28:04] That's right. So you get protection and you got overreaction and sometimes it's just plain subversion. And you've got a diffusion curve you've got somebody that's a late adopter or a laggard who literally their mission in life is to get retired or what it is. And so they're going to use rules and regulations to slow down or kill the ideas and they do it in a very passive aggressive way. They say well let's. We need to make sure we're careful for the thing and the greatest one for that is brand. Well you know this could hurt the brand name like like it's a thing you know. And while you know we wouldn't want to take a risk that could be a risk of this. Yeah. There's a there's a risk of that. But you know there's also a risk if you don't do anything you're gonna die. Let's talk about that risk. Well no no no. Let's let's be prudent and practical. Let's not let's not do something crazy. And so that's also a thing that's gone and and in in the case of all of these we have to have an honest conversation with people and say OK what is the purpose of this bureaucracy. Why is it here. What is the aim of it. What are we trying to do now we're trying to do that. How can we. Is this the bright process for us to do it. So for example I had a situation that's going by where we had old wood that we wanted to use one to use 200 year wood. This is wood from Virgin forests in the U.S. and it would be an old barn.

Doug: [00:29:41] It may have come down in Kentucky and we couldn't use the wood because the rules were you have to have a letter from where the tree was cut. And what's happened to that wood since the tree was cut. Well of course this is 20 years. So it's like how do I know you know this is old stuff you know.

Doug: [00:30:01] And and I went back to. So what is the aim. Well the aim is we want to make sure the people are safe. There's no pollutants like that. I agree with that a now by what method can we do it. One is this to have a person testify to it but the other is maybe we can have a lab tested they agreed we had the lab test it and sure enough the product was actually cleaner than current wood because it was less pollutants when that tree grew so you have to go back to the aim and start just a reasonable conversation with people.

Doug: [00:30:33] But you can't ignore these things and it going around them you're just going to get slapped later. So you've got to confront these realities have an open conversation about the aim and then start the process to improve it.

Tripp: [00:30:46] So it's this kind of upfront death threat work then is that the way it seems to be a different category but kind of the same thing.

Doug: [00:30:54] It's actually more so as you get into it it's really more in development that this comes up that you end up in these issues associated with regulatory production manufacturing et cetera et cetera et cetera. That's really more where these things come up.

Tripp: [00:31:13] Ok you just do as I was listening to you talk it just it sounded to me like you know that you know a death threat associate with the product. Because I can almost see somebody sitting you know as part of a team and raising their hand and saying Yeah. Biggest death threat that we have here is you know our bureaucracy or our management or whatever.

Doug: [00:31:36] It pretty much does all the time. But and that's life. But so now we do with it you know and we make it better and we make a step better and then we make another step better. And soon you have a real fun place to work.

Tripp: [00:31:50]  So this is in driving Eureka you mentioned even the detail of this is in the pages 74 to 84. For those of you that are going to buy that book Driving Eureka!

Doug: [00:32:03] That's right. So there's a quick outline there on how to do it. And it's also covered in the online innovation sharing fundamentals course if you want to take that there's a section in there on it and it'll all be blown out. Much greater detail this is actually a college course. This is the the 5th course that students take on campus the entire college courses on nothing but we call it system driven leadership which is because leaders job a primary job is to help improve systems. This is the brain through whisky Academy podcasts where we're going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business

Tripp: [00:32:53] Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft whiskey campaign. Like has never been done before.

Tripp: [00:33:02] Doug you teased us the last episode about revealing the one thing you need to have to create a distillery for this week's episode. I've been waiting. Tell me.

Doug: [00:33:16] So if you if you're going to create a distillery the one thing you have to have which I am learning because I don't have it is you have to have massive patients massive patients. It is absolutely mind numbing you know to sell distilled spirits even beer is easier wine is easier but to sell distilled spirits whether it's in the U.K. Canada or in the U.S. there is a massive flow of paperwork that you have to deal with and rules and regulations. Now it's an incredibly it can be an incredibly good business. It can be incredibly profitable business but recognize you are going into one of the most difficult it's probably one of the only industries in the world that has federal regulations state and provincial regulations and sometimes even city regulations that can vary with regards to hours you can sell etc.. I mean it is it is ridiculous. Usually you've got to deal with you know a federal set of rules. It's rare that you have federal regional and local that you'll have to deal with and the rules in one province versus an extra one state versus next can be totally different and so you've got to have patience and you've got to work your way through these rules. And so there is software you can get for this word distillery to do it. There are systems you have to put in place and so very early on. I mean we just talked about systems and bureaucracy.

Doug: [00:34:54] You've got to build your systems so to enable people in fact when you know we're setting up there we're going to coach people who want to start the distillery or they want to convert from brewery and distillery or whatever. And one of the big things we're putting together is training courses and systems to help them get there the easy way because every mistake you can imagine we're pretty much been making it with brain brew distilling as we've been going on this stuff. Things that you take for granted like we were getting wood and then come to find out you know you know you'd call somebody to buy a barrel or something and they'd sell t. I think that was great. Then come to find out you find out that oh no there's very big differences you can get your oak from the Ohio Valley which right near the Ohio River you can get it nor then you can get it Southern you can get it kiln dried you can get it air dried you know you got all of these and then how long was it air dried and all of these traits or it had something else in it. And how long was that when you did it.

Doug: [00:35:58] All of those traits have a huge impact on your taste and so we had to build. For example we make product and all of us on the product was horrible for a week. We couldn't make product it was good and we weren't thinking anything of it. And then when we chase down in what we figured out was we had some wood that had a totally different character than what we thought it was for various reasons. And so we have to have a whole system our wood quality system to manage the wood that's coming into the distillery is probably the most important thing for driving our quality is making sure that you've got that right wood because 70 percent of the flavor comes from the wood and and this stuff becomes mind numbing you know you want to do the flashy stuff the brands you want to do the tasting events you want to do the tours and you want to have the fun.

Doug: [00:36:47] Well it's fundamental discipline on legal rules and production systems that you really have to have.

Tripp: [00:36:56] And you know it's interesting as I'm listening to you talk and you're talking about the wood I I think of how tough it must be to get a consistent product. You know this is the thing to heart had trouble with right at the Bell Telephone labs which was you know getting consistent phones out the door but with wood I would think the variation would be so great. How do you get a consistent taste from that.

Doug: [00:37:20] Well and it's something that I mean in some of the big distillers have really started to get into this because that is the secret. See that's the big difference. People think beer and distilling think it's the same with beer.

Doug: [00:37:33] The brewer is really important because you brew the product and you drink it with whiskey the distilling is really not that important. I mean it's mostly computer to run it anyways and but it just filling it it's such a high alcohol pretty much is corn it's wheat it's riots primarily and as long as you don't do it badly there isn't a whole lot of difference.

Doug: [00:37:53] There's not a lot of upside in being a better distiller. I mean you can be a bad distiller that's no good. You can have a dirty product but if you make a decently product and if you're using some of the computer girl stuff it's fine. It's just not a big deal to make whiskey to make the raw spirit the magic at a distillery. It's not the distiller the magic is what's called the whiskey maker OK.

Doug: [00:38:16] Our top person in the distillery is the Wiz chief whiskey maker the master whiskey maker Joe I mean he's the most important guy because he's the guy that really makes the whiskey now in our case we do different things but at a at a classic distillery what they would do is there is such variance in this would end in how it changes depending upon where it's in the warehouse is it near a window is it at the top of the wreck is it at the bottom of the wreck. All of that product is different. So what they do is they make a bunch of this product and then somebody sits in a room and takes little samples and puts them together and crafts the whiskey you know that's how it's created that's how the stuff's stuff's created and they mix it to a certain taste and that's why when the bourbon guys did single barrel and pick barrels one of the great challenges for them for capacity was to have stuff that was in the neighborhood of the same taste because it can have a pretty high variance I mean there basically is no quality process if quality is defined as hitting a certain standard in the whiskey business because it's random with the wood it's random with where the barrel is what are the seasons like it's just a dynamic thing.

Doug: [00:39:31] What we've done with brain brew because we cut the wood into pieces and we inspect it and we're very high quality and we control the heating and cooling cycles is we've dramatically reduced the variance in the process. And in fact just last night I was tasting a new version we have three as I talked about paired comparison tests. We just talked about that. I've got three paired comparison tests running tonight on some things for upgrades to two of our products we're looking to see if can we improve the products and see if we've made them better or not. And one of the upgrades one of its value is is it's a much more there's much less variance in this wood much less variance. And so you know if the product even if the product scored the same I would switch to the new one because I know it's going to dramatically reduce our variance and improve the quality of what we can deliver for people. So it's a different mindset. It's a different mindset. And so interestingly what I found in hiring people is you know you have a distillery it's a cool thing everybody wants to do it you know all the millennials come up you know all the guys got beer statues they all show up. I love them.

Doug: [00:40:39] I love them but you know I'm the old fart in the group. But you know they all want to do it because they think it's a neat thing to go to. What I have found is hiring people from who've worked kitchens and I'm not talking celebrity chefs I'm talking about people they may run the kitchen or they run the line. You do not survive in the restaurant business. If you do not embrace systems you just can't do it. You can't do it. You're never gonna get stuff out. And so there has to be high discipline where things go. I mean the kitchen is the original lean five s everything you know everything in its place systems work systems hand movements. You have to be incredibly efficient because the restaurant sits with nobody in it. And then all of a sudden he shows up at nighttime and it's like game time and you have to run as fast as you possibly can to get the stuff out there and a high quality you've got to have discipline systems with your pre prep that you've done in that. And so what I bring in kitchen guys and I say OK I'm going to have you talk about systems. They come in and we make they'll I'll have to go through the innovation and training classes they gotta go all the way up to the micro classes because I won't you don't work for me if you don't do that.

Doug: [00:41:44] That's it because systems are not to go. I don't care how great you are. Ninety four percent of it's the system. OK now people say well my unimportant No you're critical because you're going to help us make the systems better. You're a system architect. And so we're gonna get systems and work systems down and we're gonna document them and have them and fortunately innovations during they have some cools trailblazer software that makes this painless to do it. And and to document the things and it's those systems the restaurant people don't even blink they go Yeah I get it. What's the big deal. That's how we do it. Where I bring other people and you know marketing people and they go I now I like to feel it. And I'm like I'm not just sitting feeling it dude I'm interested and reproduce stably 52 weeks a year delivering high quality product and making happen.

Doug: [00:42:31] And one of the biggest things trip that we're gonna do as we expand innovation the brain brew offering and we license other distilleries to offer custom whiskey so they can do personal whiskey experiences is we're going to bring them that systems mindset. And part of my hope is that not only do we you know sell some custom whiskeys make them some money but we also help make their lives better. And so you know it and this where we'll put in the piece on it it you know if you're interested in doing this we're going to introduce it in February at the craft spirits show an in in Minneapolis. But it's going to be possible for you to take your distillery up a notch to create your own distillery for you know less than 10 cents on the dollar versus what it would normally cost and to get into the whiskey business in a much smarter and more effective way.

Tripp: [00:43:22] Very cool. Yeah that's awesome. I went one thing that comes up and this is going to be I mean you said a whole bunch of really good things there but it just kind of set in my mind Get me off on this variation you know with the wood and everything. So you kind of talked about gin and vodka and those types of things being different.

Tripp: [00:43:43] What are what are some of the known challenges associated with those things too. I mean not a lot of detail I'm just curious.

Doug: [00:43:52] Yeah it's gin. OK. So. So vodka you basically distill it to a higher level and so that there's no taste to it. And so it's a relatively straightforward thing. There are some things with regards to the water addition and managing P.H. and stuff like that and you can run it through the still multiple times and there's a lot more voodoo and vodka than there is anything else it's pretty much vodka as vodka is vodka. You can have dirty vodka as has a lot of heavy alcohols or you can have a clean vodka because it's more refined. And so it's a pretty straight chemistry experiment now of running the still gin is basically flavored vodka. It's vodka flavored with juniper predominantly Juniper.

Doug: [00:44:38] That's the definition of gin pretty much on the world. Now people are really pushing that pretty hard right now because the classic London dry gin would would have a lot of juniper and be very juniper forward and we're now making these things that are botanical vodkas is what I call them not much of a gin in there.

Doug: [00:45:03] The big problem with gin is generally gin. The combination of some citrus and some spice classically orange because it's more stable but it could be other could be lime and different things and you can do it different ways you can do it with natural ones you can do with chemicals most are with chemicals but that doesn't matter chemical flavorings it is what it is. The problem with those is once you open the bottle A bottle of gin will last you about six months you might make it nine if it's cold. Definitely not going to go over a year all of the fruit will drop out.

Doug: [00:45:48] It's just it's just going to it's just going to drop out of there it's going to get oxidized now. I mean if you overdosed with chemicals you can make it stay if it's staying that I'm scared about something else. But you know now this is my opinion OK. And I know people screaming about it. The thing is is that people have old bottles of gin and they go about my joints. And then I ask OK how do you how do you do that. You make it in a fine dry martini. Oh no I don't. I just drink it with tonic. I said OK. So let me make sure I get this right. You put an ounce and a half of gin in it has a spice note to it. The fruit's gone but then you throw in some some tonic which has got its basically it's a sweet soft drink sweet sparkling water is what tonic is and you've thrown it all at sugar and the tonic spices and you don't it doesn't seem too bad. Well no wonder no wonder you don't know. I'll challenge you to this.

Doug: [00:46:42] Go buy a fresh bottle of whatever it is that you've got. Take that old bottle and taste the two side by side. You know if you need to you know add a third water to it so to take the AP the percent alcohol down and you'll find it's just gone it's just gone and it's for that reason that I'm not doing a gin we're gonna do a vodka because my high school sweetheart and wife loves likes vodka my French martinis that use it. So we'll make a vodka but I'm not going to do a gin. We can make one but if we do we're just gonna offer it to the distillery fresh and it's gonna be you know basically 30 days and after 30 days we dump it is what we're gonna do. Because when you get this citrus and the fruit right it's a magical taste and it creates a magical martini. And so so that's the issue there is managing that that problem. Spice rums. No problem. The spice stays fine. It's the fruit notes that are the problem.

Tripp: [00:47:44] Ok. Thank you for that. I realized I was just curious as to how I mean there's a whole series of questions I have associated with that. But what. Let's let's focus and move on.

Tripp: [00:47:56] So your craft cocktail recipe that you put in to the newsletter this week was the Italian Manhattan. Tell us about the Italian Manhattan.

Doug: [00:48:09] Well it's so classic Manhattan is sweet vermouth and bourbon and Rye some mix some one to one. We like to do and have a two to one two parts bourbon one part rye sometimes and then with a little bit of bitters and maybe in a wipe of orange on the rim. Pretty much a classic Manhattan. It's a pretty heavy drink. And so for this one here took it to a different place to make it a clean and complex state with a 2 to 1 ratio. So it's two ounces of our Noble Oak bourbon and one ounce of Limoncello from Italy which is an Italian lemon liqueur.

Doug: [00:48:56] And it really makes it very fresh and clean still has the complexity of a Manhattan. And my wife Debbie actually makes limoncello a lot of lemons have to give up their skins it's all come from the skins coming out. And she makes it every holiday season and and so this is kind of just a neat twist and it gives us a lightness and a brightness to it which just I think makes it a lot of fun. And in fact as I'm as I'm talking about it here I'm thinking I'm going to have one of those tonight I think I think that's going to have because it really is.

Doug: [00:49:33] It is pretty good so just a rocks glass add some ice.

Doug: [00:49:36] Two ounces of a bourbon our Noble Oak look at nobleoak.com. You can see it it's about half the country right now. It's perfect for this.

Doug: [00:49:47] An ounce of limoncello you get a relatively decent one.

Doug: [00:49:51] And start a bar 13 times and you get yourself a wonderful cocktail.

Tripp: [00:49:57] Very good. So can you tease us again as far as the next step aside as far as what we might expect in either a cocktail recipe or what we might talk about in Brain Brew Whiskey Academy.

Doug: [00:50:15] Well, next month. I'm gonna get into really nitty gritty. OK. So we've talked about meaningful uniqueness. I'm going to literally take you step by step how to do it yourself. So we're going to show you step by step. I'm gonna I'm gonna give you exactly how you can do it yourself so that you can check and make sure that whatever it is whether you're doing a gin or you're doing a vodka or you're doing cocktails or you're you're doing your whiskey. How can you find out if a product. So we've talked about meaningfully unique this lot. I've kind of thrown my quickly on how to do it. I'm going to take it step by step how you do it because the most important thing is meaningful unique.

Doug: [00:50:58] So what I'm finding as I travel around the world and talk to craft distillers and taste their products is the challenge a lot of them have is their product is pretty much the same as everybody else's. You see the beer guys the beer guys won the craft beer market happened because the big brewers had reduced the bitterness units to make these very light drinks that you could pound down a lot and the beer folks came in with bigger taste bigger flavor really unique tastes versus the mass market stuff. And so it was just it was more meaningful unique and it worked. They work they got the business the problem craft spirits have is most of their products are about the same as the others and the big distillers which are mostly owned by big corporations. I mean most of the Bourbons that sound very folksy are really owned by big corporations a Japanese owned a whole bunch of them and Europeans own a whole bunch of them because it's been hot. These folks have gotten they've learned from the beer guys and so they're pushing the edges. They're doing the bigger flavors. They're doing the bigger tastes. And so that means as craft people we have to break the rules even more. We've got to stretch the envelope and do things that are even more unique which is why with brain brew we're doing like five rye. I mean that's like nuts and we're taking and using 200 year old wood and and so to add that incredible richness and depth really pushing the edge as well. That's exactly what they've got to do. And and when we go through this I'm going to show you how to measure that exact thing okay.

Tripp: [00:52:38] And so you're basically seeing a whole trend going on here and you don't believe then that the the big distilleries are going to be able to react to this. Is that because you've mentioned before about the distilleries basically being more craft oriented that we'll see something like we did pre prohibition. What you are predicting is that this void flecked bitter term is going to be filled by these by different craft distilleries.

Doug: [00:53:12] Does that kind of. It's two steps. OK so step one is I think the local distillery pub beer tap house if they're allowed to. If that state allows them to serve cocktails and drinks that local place just because it's local is going to have a business that exist whether or not they become a good sized business and they get some decent volume is going to depend upon how meaningfully unique their product is. It's not enough to just taste good. You have to taste wicked good. I mean it has to be something you can't get anywhere else. And that's going to be the determinant. There's a projection by the craft distillers that shows what size will craft spirits get to. And it shows huge variance on the end under different scenarios. And I think the difference is going to be product and I fully intend the brain Brew Crew and I fully intend to put in the hands of the craft folks the ability to do incredibly cool new tastes and do just like the beer guys did and just stretch the envelope.

Tripp: [00:54:15] Okay. Very cool. I'm looking forward to the rest of of that. Now I'm anxious to get to the next episode.

Doug: [00:54:23] Well thank you much. Hey we'll see you next week.

Tripp: [00:54:38] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things a one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book a subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter. Has other offers that are not paid public. The driving Eureka prescription for success. You answer questions and we'll help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas and you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash podcast. And don't forget to subscribe to the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.

Related to Doug Hall's newsletter at https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/5-reasons-organizations-dont-pursue-big-ideas-driving-eureka-2

This is the second episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: 5 Reasons Organizations Don't Pursue Big Ideas; Segment 2: Meaningful Uniqueness; Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy. Subscribe to learn how to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas.

[00:01:20] Economic Downturns Tend to Make Ideas Smaller Not Bigger

[00:02:48] Backing Off Big Ideas Leaves You with Ideas Not Worth Doing

[00:03:41] Doug's New Role

[00:04:59] Tripp - The Prudent One

[00:05:33] Doug - The Big Idea Guy

[00:09:26] The Courage to Come Up with Big Ideas

[00:10:40] A Whiskey Company is Born

[00:11:43] The Noise of New Products and Ideas - Makes Your Idea Get Lost in the Clutter

[00:11:54] Go Big or Go Home (with Ideas)

[00:13:17] Reason #2 - Organizations Don't Pursue Big Ideas

[00:15:05] Reason #3 - Organizations Don't Pursue Big Ideas

[00:15:34] Reason #4 - Organizations Don't Pursue Big Ideas

[00:16:26] How Bureaucracy and Structure Slow Down the Innovation Process

[00:16:56] Reason #5 - Organizations Don't Pursue Big Ideas

[00:17:30] Summary - 5 Reasons Organizations Don't Pursue Big Ideas

[00:18:19] Should You Review Your  Capabilities Before Pursuing Big Ideas?

[00:19:38] Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt

[00:20:19] History of Meaningfully Unique

[00:21:18] Meaningfully Unique - The Formula

[00:22:02] Tendency for Organizations to Highly Rate their Uniqueness

[00:23:48] Big Ideas Spark Other Ideas

[00:24:27] The Key to Overcoming Self-Doubt about an Idea

[00:28:00] The Driving Eureka! Book - You Need System to Vet Your Ideas

[00:29:36] The Four Levels of Driving Eureka - From Basics to Beyond Mastery

[00:31:09] Driving Eureka! Video Workbook

[00:33:38] State of the Brain Brew  Distillery

[00:35:14] Brain Brew Custom Whiskey because Everybody Deserves Their Own Whiskey

[00:37:19] Using Science to Perfect Whiskey

[00:38:12] How Brain Brew Crafts a Whiskey to Your Taste

[00:42:30] Two Things that Get Doug Excited about Whiskey's Future

[00:43:56] New Program in February

[00:46:56] The Crazy Viking Craft Cocktail

[00:47:53] The Crazy Viking - Step 1

[00:47:59] The Crazy Viking - Step 2 Noble.com

[00:48:12] The Crazy Viking - Step 3

[00:51:30] Next Week: The One Thing You to Create a Distillery

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka!! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:23] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka! ranch and author of the Driving Eureka!! book.

Tripp: [00:00:34] All right so this week in Segment one or feature story is about the five reasons organizations don't pursue big ideas. And in Segment 2 the driving Eureka! book excerpt is about meaningful uniqueness. What it is and really how to evaluate whether you have it or not. And in the Brain Brew Whiskey segment we will discuss the current state of the Brain Brew distillery and the vision of how you can craft your own whiskey using the Brain Brew system. So let's begin our first segment talking about the five reasons organizations don't pursue big ideas.

Tripp: [00:01:20] Doug you talk a little bit in this newsletter about the the pullback in 2008 and that ideas had a tendency to get smaller as opposed to bigger especially during that time period. You want to talk to that a little bit yeah.

Doug: [00:01:39] So so since the 90s we've been measuring teams before we work with them and whether it's teams coming to the Eureka! ranch to invent ideas whether we're at their side or whether it's educational programs and just tracking this index over time and what you find is the courage to take action. Optimism really takes a hit when the stock market takes a hit. We I think sometimes it's just because there when when it when it goes down they all get scared because what are they going to have for a time because they didn't save enough for something. I'm not sure why it is but it really does go.

Doug: [00:02:20] And in 0 8 it really went nuts and that's when we really committed full bore to system driven innovation before that I use systems to invent ideas for companies but we never really talked about it because nobody wanted to do it. They wanted a guru. They wanted rent to guru but in 0 8 it changed and people started to look for. They wanted systems they they wanted something more reliable they wanted to grab on to something that was what was better.

Doug: [00:02:48] And yet despite that what they did is they tended to like you would do if you faced fear is they tended to circle the wagons and get more and more conservative thinking if we just do something small maybe that'll work. And the problem with that is is that when you do that when you do the small stuff you do stuff that isn't worth doing.

Doug: [00:03:07] And so your failure rates skyrocket and it makes it even worse. And so you know it really happened.

Doug: [00:03:16] And what I found is you know recently as I've mentioned I stepped down as CEO of the Eureka! Ranch which I've been running for many many years since I founded it. And Maggie Nichols is now the president and CEO and I'm chairman and then my other role is so sort of a corporate governance role basically not do anything except keep an eye on things I guess and hold meetings and have fun with board members.

Doug: [00:03:41] Much more fun to be the chairman with the board members than it is to be the CEO.

Doug: [00:03:46] It's just a thing to say. But I also took on another role which is really cool which is I'm Chief inventor and you've seen those still a lot of the tech companies where the founder goes on to do R.A. or to work the tech stuff. And in my case it's inventor. So I go to projects and my role at the projects is not to lead it not to manage the clients not to help them through the things but to just be an idea machine. Just coming up with ideas. And so it's it's glorious and it's interesting.

Doug: [00:04:17] If I'd known this was this much fun I would have done it sooner because it is just so much more fun when you can just think you get to think and it's just been a ton of fun. And I talk about this in this feature article from from from the Driving Eureka! newsletter and and it just it's a whole different world and it's like I'm almost thinking like companies need to have somebody that just thinks a thinker because we get we so sub optimized based on all of the stuff all of the politics and the regulatory and the junk that we don't think enough is something that I think goes on.

Tripp: [00:04:59] You know it's interesting that you because I've heard you talk about this before and then watching you during the course of some of the classes you are constantly challenging for bigger bigger ideas and that's where I got the nickname the prudent one. So you know I you know is that kind of the role then that you're playing now is to make sure that people are thinking big enough and pushing them to new levels that kind of this new role is that kind of where you're going.

Doug: [00:05:33] Yeah it's it's some of that. It's it's one part with Chuck Thompson who writes on creativity who's was a good friend. He's he says a balloon expand expand it never goes back to its same dimensions. So part of my job is to expand the sphere that they're looking at so that they are looking at something much bigger than they would normally do. And by stretching them out because it's easier to tame down than it is to build up and make it much easier to do that. The second role that I think I I am playing here and this is still developing as we get into it is you know they say that some of the old ballplayers whether it's hockey or sports or basketball baseball football whatever it is some of the older ones they get good at trickery and guile.

Doug: [00:06:23] You know they've had enough experiences if they can find clever ways around things. And I find myself oftentimes sitting in in when we're inventing ideas and they say we can't do that and I go all how I know a way to get around that corporate problem.

Doug: [00:06:39] Well that's not a big deal. You can kind of do this and run and you can do this. And so you know when you've done twenty six thousand or something like that they counted up ideas created and tested. You either get fairly decent at it or you go crazy and I'm not sure which is exactly happened but maybe both. But it's it's a ton of fun. And and so there is a value to this and staying full contact engaged and it's interesting because it's actually I am more exhausted at the end of the day thinking of ideas than I am doing that you know client management handling. I mean that's tiring from an emotional standpoint but the brain cells you have to do to really think hard about how do you transform an industry and how do you flip it and how do you do something that's amazing that's going to send people into excitement. It really burns you out. It branch out but at the end of the day I'm all fine. I just have a glass of our whiskey and it's all.

Tripp: [00:07:38] Well you know I'd say you know it's interesting I know well that always helps.

Tripp: [00:07:43] Yeah it's an interesting thing I'm reading these books on neuroscience and one of the things that comes out as as we age that supposedly you know the neurons stop in the brain cells disappear and all those types of things but the types of things that you are talking about actually increase the neuron you know and the synapses you know firing and everything in the brain. And so you may be increasing your life Doug by doing that seriously.

Tripp: [00:08:14] I mean it's amazing that.

Doug: [00:08:17] I'll have the booze and then and then I'll make you fire the neurons then kill them and I get it. Oh by the way that's a tradeoff. I can work with that.

Tripp: [00:08:26] You can you can live with that. Okay.

Tripp: [00:08:28] Well it's the unfortunate thing is we're old enough now where you can basically try whiskey and do things like that and know that that's a good thing and makes you feel good. And then also now you have this added benefit of firing the neurons to come up with with bigger bigger ideas or challenge people to. I think that's probably the thing that wears you out Doug as you know you arm wrestle my class anyway and trying to get people to think bigger. I mean it was I think I saw more about more of an emotional toll taken on the class in that fashion than probably you just coming up with ideas. Now there is one story that might be that that almost I think fits here. You talked about at one company can't remember the company and maybe can't say but where you had the best ideas voted the best idea and one that was the the worst idea.

Doug: [00:09:19] Yeah. That's Johnson and Johnson actually. OK I held I hold that record at a lot of places.

Doug: [00:09:26] If we . . . and I'm proud of both because what happens is when it comes to meaningfully unique ideas they're going to change the world that are gonna make a difference. I mean let's face it mostly it is just too small to matter. They just don't matter. People don't change for the sake of just changing to you. You got to be a lot better and and but when you push the edges when you really push the new and different sometimes you can be you know ahead of your time. And it can be really good or really bad you know cause really unique can go both ways. And but the key is to have the courage to do something that's never been done before to really stress and push the system. And and that's that's the key. And interestingly trip as I've been doing this I started to observe the people around me and now recognize my goal is I'm not leaving the project so I don't have to get them there I'm there to just put it out there.

Doug: [00:10:20] If they're not going to take the horse to water but I don't have to make them drink. That's not my job. I'm not managing anyway. It's way better. What's more fun. You know I don't have grandkids but I guess it's the same. You get to play with them and then they go home. It's the same thing here. I just get to think amazing thoughts and and really you know push myself to reinvent it.

Doug: [00:10:40] But as I've been doing it I've been observing as I been talking to executives about wanting to do something outrageous you know. And we're sitting there and you know we got a crazy Whiskey Company where we make whiskey in 40 minutes in a time machine. And so we're sitting there having some. And then like how do you do this. How do you do this. And and so I made a list and let's just go through them real quick. Yes sir. At 5:00 I made a list that I put in the newsletter of the five top reasons I'm hearing and and feeling that people are doing big ideas that holds them back.

[00:11:13] And the first one is the success standards adjust to. I think most corporations standards for what is a good idea are too low by about two standard deviations. I mean it's just too low. What used to be okay in the 80s and 90s. In today's world you've got to be a lot more unique. For anybody to give a darn about you. I mean you just can't have those hair splitting differences anymore. Is that is that you've got to.

Tripp: [00:11:43] Is that is a cause. Doug I'm sorry. Just interjecting is that. Is that because there's so much noise out there now with new products and ideas or what's the reason for that.

Doug: [00:11:54] That's right. That's right. There's so much more stuff so many more things are happening to break through the clutter. You have to do something much more significant much more significant that you do it. But the standards haven't changed for two reasons one is because the people setting the standards aren't resetting them they're not thinking about this. The standard is the standard is the standard. I got one Fortune 20 company. It is a joke. They said all our ideas meet our test is not working and I said Da you don't change your test standards the 30 frickin years. You know it's not the same. It's not the same it's changed. You've got to push bigger you know go big or go home. If you want to break through the clutter the other really is and they don't do it. And I find this accompanies because I go into companies or brick ranch not me anymore. It's been Maggie and the team they go into companies and when they're sitting with companies to go through stuff and we would run and take their existing pipeline and test the ideas and under our standards which are much more market facing much more aware most of the projects aren't worth doing. And they go Well we've got nothing else. We're like oh well they're going to fail and they go Yeah probably. But I got to do something because it's in my KPI for the month.

Doug: [00:13:11] So I hope you know. And so you're working on stuff that you don't care about so first off is success standard. OK.

Doug: [00:13:17] The second is they don't trust their development systems so they look at an idea and this is where as I joke with you practical prudent impacted they they look at an idea and they go Well our team can't do that. So let's let's back off on it. Let's back off. And so the sub optimized their ideas before they even begin they just they're just setting them down at a lower level. So tonight so they're getting what their expectations were which are just not reasonable. I tell teams if you already know how to do the idea why the hell didn't you do it last year. I mean this is ridiculous development means we've got to discover the excitement of innovation. I mean if you want to drive Eureka! you've got to be pushing yourself to discover new things to find new answers to find new ways of doing things. I mean just before I did this I we have a we have a partner down in South Africa we're talking to who wants to take our whiskey aging process and apply it to Brandy. And so just before this I had an opportunity while somebody else to do the job I had to sit and taste a whole collection of luxury brands that we're making so.

Tripp: [00:14:35] So this interview could be a lot more interesting than what I originally planned for your time.

Doug: [00:14:40] Well it's well at least for me it is. OK. Not now. No no no wait. We spit out after yeah. Oh yeah. You know any budding tasting the stuff we don't know anything about how brand works with. This is our first time tasting it.

Doug: [00:14:52] It didn't act the way we expected it to. It went into new things and it immediately opened up our brains to new ideas. That's what we need to do is we need to push people to do stuff. OK. So that's number two.

Doug: [00:15:05] Number three the aim of the system is to control not enable. I think fundamentally big most innovation systems have been put in because somebody had a failure and they've been put in to prevent failure at all costs. And they do that because they prevent any idea at all cost and so not only how are we playing it safe but we're designing the system to prevent bold ideas from getting through.

Doug: [00:15:34] Number four. We have no ability to fail fast and fail cheap in development. In other words it is command to control all the way through and the feedback loops. You know if like I talked I was in Philadelphia. I gave a talk to a big organization soccer team one of the product developers this lady is a big dog at this company big multinational company I said How long does it take you to do a paired comparison test. So say you're working on a product you want to make sure that this product beats this other product you wanted you a paired comparison test performances. How long's it take. Oh she says about three months I said three months. She says Yeah yeah. It's three months. It's a it's a long process. And I go How do you get any work done. How do you do anything bold. So that means you got four cycles a year. She says no I got like two cycles because then after the report I have to do a whole bunch of meetings about it and then get ready and started again.

Doug: [00:16:26] So that's ridiculous. She said well how what's your cycle time on the whiskey business. I said well 24 hours she said Well that's ridiculous.

Doug: [00:16:35] I said what's ridiculous. She says it's ridiculous that you get to do it in 24 hours and it takes me forever. That's not so.

Tripp: [00:16:42] So they're not able to have to fail fast fail cheap just because of their own bureaucracy. Then in essence that that's what's slowing them down. They have to fill out reports and go to meetings and real it. Mm hmm.

Doug: [00:16:53] And the processes are too slow and the systems are too slow.

Doug: [00:16:56] And then the last thing is there's no pride of work. You know the ability for people to be passionate about stuff. We've got analysis paralysis that defined subsegments of subsegments in this thing that in theory in their spreadsheets my guys in labs like you talk about spreadsheet people but the way they do in the spreadsheet to predict this thing and there's no heart and soul in it. And as I said you know last week you got to love it. You got to love it. And if you don't love it.

Doug: [00:17:30] So the top five reasons standards are too low. Don't trust our development. So we play it safe the aim of the system is control not enable you have no ability to fail fast fail cheap and there's no pride to work. And that's what I'm learning.

Tripp: [00:17:47] Ok. And is there one that really stands out more than the other they kind of have equal weight.

Doug: [00:17:53] Pretty much in the order that I said them. OK. So that is OK with the standards. It really does start with the standards if because see what happens is as if I go from an okay score to a great score something is really meaningful unique. You have to cause a lot more disruption. You have to be doing stuff that's really different and people are scared.

Doug: [00:18:19] I just did a call today where somebody said well you know when we're creating ideas should we should we review our manufacturing capabilities and what we can make. And I said no this is why because I said I don't care what we're. But what we want to make sure that we can make it. I said what you can make is what you make now. How are we supposed to be creating something new. The lady and said Well but but what if we can't make it. I said. She says we can't afford to put in new equipment. I said OK start if it does a billion in sales. Could you afford new equipment. She says while yes obviously. I said if it did 900 million in sales could you have. All Yes. Sure. I said. She says I get your point. I said the fact that you have to put in new equipment is irrelevant to this conversation. It's irrelevant what's important to say is can we come up with an idea that can make a meaningful difference in our customers lives. Then we look at the death threat. What's it going to cost to do it and we figure that out yes it's a different mindset.

Tripp: [00:19:23] Yeah. Now that's that that provides a lot of clarity.

Tripp: [00:19:26] That's very cool.

Tripp: [00:19:38] It's time now for the Driving Eureka! Book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.

Tripp: [00:19:51] Well let's go to the next segment which is the book excerpt if I can say that.

Tripp: [00:19:56] And you're talking about and we touched on it and some of our previous conversations but the the operational definition of meaningfully unique and that coming out of the book Driving Eureka! what's just did dig into that and give you baby. Provide us a little bit of history on what meaningfully unique is.

Doug: [00:20:19] So we did a pile of research couple PHD Statistician and I because we had the value of a whole pile of ideas that we had the original scores on how customers perceived they would like them and then what really happened in the marketplace. And so with that you can start to model these things and you start to see what's most predictive and classically people will ask you know the very simple what seems like the simple question which is how likely are you to buy it. And definitely would buy probably would buy etc.. And what we found is that that was an OK measure. But when we did the modelling on it the best predictor was asking them how likely they were to buy it as well as asking them how new and different it was and there was some scale differences. We used the Juster probability scale zero to 10 instead of probably would buy scale in some other D2 technical details which also matter.

Doug: [00:21:18] And then you weight them 60 percent towards the purchase and 40 percent to the new and different and that is far more predictive of not only trial but repeat word of mouth awareness distribution. I mean it's a chain reaction of positives. And you said quite simply I mean we later found we we took that back around to Harvard Business Review article that said you actually when you are when you have high purchase in new and different you have like a 5 x greater chance of profitable success. So it really is it's a it's meaningfulness. It has value to the customer they get it and it's unique. It's an original. It's not been done before.

Doug: [00:22:02] Another way to think about it is our customers willing to pay more money for it because if customers don't spend more money just for the hell of it they only spend more money when they feel like they're getting something that's a value to them that they can't get elsewhere. And you know companies will tell me we're very unique we're a very mean innovative. I said OK so what's your margin versus your competition. Oh heck you know it's terrible we have to fight on price since you're a commodity. The basic definition of a commodity and people hate that you're not being very nice is I'm not being me. You made the decision to sell the same old crap as everybody else. They got one now we got this difference in this difference. And I go you know this is a hair here's a split here. You know forget it. You got nothing.And so you got to really push it.

Tripp: [00:22:53] Well the things that you get out of doing this type of research you mentioned in here that you get word of mouth you get you know if and you just actually gave it to when you were saying you were testing some things for the brandy or know sparking other ideas as you're testing and then I must be one of the benefits of kind of going through the research process anyway and also patentable ideas too. And these are the results then right.

Doug: [00:23:24] Yeah they're the results and they also help you there another way for you to derive that the thing really is meaningfully unique. OK. So I've got a quantitative way that we validated Dr.Lynn Kahle and I in the Journal of Consumer Marketing wrote an article is one of the most cited business articles of all time - on this research. But we've also qualitatively will they pay more money when you hear the idea.

Doug: [00:23:48] Does it spark a bunch of other ideas you know because big ideas do that because they immediately open up our minds to like it's like we've opened up a door to a whole new world and we're seeing things for the first time and is it patentable because patents are a clear measure that you have something that's not been done before because the definition of a patent is it's not obvious to somebody with ordinary skill in the new art or said the other way.

Doug: [00:24:15] If your idea is obvious to somebody with a certain areas not like that's very innovative right. You know it's got to be a leap. It's got to be a disruptive leap.

Tripp: [00:24:27] Well I think that's one of the problems it kind of creates fear. You know all throughout my life and I you know I know a lot of people like this because kinda have a tendency once once you go to your class discuss with this with other people is you think you've got this great idea. And then all of a sudden you ask your wife for your best friend or somebody like that and they're like that's not a good idea and so you just kind of give it up.

Tripp: [00:24:51] Is that pretty prevalent. And how do you mitigate that kind of self-doubt portion that people have is that in essence the process or our ideas just dumb on the surface anyway.

Doug: [00:25:09] I'm try. It's a great question and I'm really thinking to try to do. I've got a lot of flip that.

Tripp: [00:25:15] You can kill me. You can say well your ideas are dumb everybody else has got something and I'm okay with that too.

Doug: [00:25:24] I'm trying to honor it.

Doug: [00:25:25] And to really answer it because for me it's so foreign. But I've got bad breeding or something. I mean it came from my grandmother and our second daughters got the same bad genes because if somebody says you can't do it it just gets me more excited because one of the fundamental definitions of a patent is it's not obvious. And so if an expert tells me it can't be done I go huh could be patentable could be bad. This is sick. By the way this is a sickness because I just get more excited. In other words why is it that when I hear you can't do it I just get more excited and normal people hear I can't do it. Okay that's right. I'll not do that I'm going to stop I mean. I don't I don't know. I don't know. Part of it is is I guess I've done it so many times.

Doug: [00:26:19] And I also have systems and teams and I've got teams of people around me.

Doug: [00:26:27] My wife calls them enablers. She says stop enabling him some of my ideas are many most are bad. But I find it out pretty quickly. And so I I guess if it's worthy and mission focused if it's gonna make a difference and I think that matters. I don't really give a damn what people say. I mean you know I just don't care. And and that's probably not a reasonable answer.

Tripp: [00:26:55] Well I think it's a reasonable answer.

Tripp: [00:26:56] I think that I think the portion is maybe a better question to ask would be how how is driving Eureka! going to get me out of that mode. You know what's in here that's going to take me you know you've got this meaningfully unique component. But if that's my mindset now and you admittedly said you're the unique one you know when it comes to new ideas how do you get those people cause that's really your challenge right. I mean that's what kind of being the chief inventor is getting those people out of that kind of mindset of self-doubt about what maybe a good idea I mean maybe not. Or could spark other ideas.

Tripp: [00:27:36] What's the what's the magic.

Doug: [00:27:40] Well I so. So let's take. I think it's in levels. I think it's a level by the way. That was a really cheesy way to put the book back in by the way. I think that was good.

Doug: [00:27:47] That was awesome by the way. But it is it is a good question.

Doug: [00:27:52] And maybe that's reason why this book took nine years probably 10 to read. Right.

Doug: [00:28:00] I wrote it three times it took nine years to write the damn thing because my publisher pushed me. This book is actually less words than any other book I've done the business books. And by the way that's a lot harder to do with fewer words and still say something important not write a puff piece. I think if the first 150 pages the first of the book really start to lay out the system to do it and so I think those levels I think there's the people who think they can't do it at all which is the majority of population and they have no idea how to do this. And they don't even know that there are tricks. You know we're not geniuses. I mean I made the top half of my chemical engineering class possible I graduated to point something. But the difference was I approach things as a system and I've got systems for doing it I don't just try to make it up each time is a one off thing. There are methods reproducible lessons and laws that when you do them it allows you to create ideas or largely be more persuasive but allows you to find death threats. But if you've never been taught that which is the way it is of most people they've never been taught unless you've had one about innovation entering courses on campuses on the college campuses and universities then if you never knew it you never knew it.

Doug: [00:29:21] And so I think the first level is you can take the people that don't think they can do it and you can make them functional and that's what our fundamentals course which is basically what's in this book that gets you to that fundamentals. Those first hundred fifty pages are basically the fundamentals for doing it.

Doug: [00:29:36] Now the back half of the book is advanced which is the mastery level which is you know it's a black belt thing and then you get a new undergraduate minor or a graduate certificate for it but that advanced courses at a different level. So I think you know let's let's divide it in this four levels is the people who don't think they can do it that the fundamentals which we can make you functional and that we can get everybody to be able to do it. There's the mastery level where you really get to do it and then there's this level that happens after thousands and thousands of hours of doing it that takes you to another space. And then there are people like that Dave Buck was one of those guys that did that and and I've known and John Ruffly was one of those guys. And and I've met people over the years who who have got that ability but they've been doing it for so long they can just quickly come up with ideas because they've just got so much experience and so they're the abnormal ones which which I am now in that in that group probably took.

Tripp: [00:30:38] So so basically Driving Eureka! book is going to give people more like me I guess would be the prudent ones a method to help them get more comfortable then.

Doug: [00:30:49] That's right. And it's gonna get you from denying it to being comfortable with it you know and and then what you'll find is that after you do it because we know building unshakeable belief which is a key concept we'll be talking about in some future episodes this concept of unshakeable belief you can only get it by applying it.

Doug: [00:31:09] And by the way reading the book won't make it happen for you. What you're going to have to do is you're going to have to apply it to your life you're gonna have to take one of the things and try it and if you want help with that we have a video workbook where you read the chapter like a book club you read the chapter and then you watch a short video and then you have an asylum and if something to do an action to do because that's where the real learning happens and you can find out about that on the web and this different information on it. And that's something you can work with. You make a note to put in a direct link to the video workbook with you.

Tripp: [00:31:48] There are people who will do that. This is the Brain Brew whisky Academy podcasts where we're going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business. The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft whisky company like has never been done before

Tripp: [00:32:27] Doug. One of the knocks on people who give advice or consultants is that they don't practice what they preach. And so you've built this whiskey business and we covered off a little bit of it in our first newsletter talking about the purpose and the distillery itself but this concept that you have talked about that really intrigues me and I at least want to have some initial conversations about is this whole concept of craft whisky and getting people to kind of brand their own thing. Where are you in that process. How does that happen? I mean I'm having a hard time understanding if you've got an individual out there and they're interested let's say and their own craft whisky for a wedding you mentioned that in our previous episode or whatever have you taken them through at least you've. Give me a few notes here. You may have I think you said you're still working on it.

Doug: [00:33:35] Yeah. So yeah. So we're we're very close.

Doug: [00:33:38] So where we are with the whiskey business right now is where we have our federal permit but the TDB from the federal government we are about a week from our state of Ohio permit and in the absence of those we've been doing production over in Kentucky at another distillery using their permit filed the paperwork so that we can new products into there. So we were manufacturing it there you have to have a licensed location for it. So that's been able to get us up and running as we're doing it.

Doug: [00:34:10] And so we've been doing a lot of research on figuring out how to do it. And it's built around some simple things so we go back in time for a little bit first. Prior to prohibition when alcohol was made illegal across the US everybody had their own whiskey there were set 70 distilleries in Cincinnati alone. And that doesn't count all of the blenders who would take whiskeys from those 70 and make their own and literally every restaurant every bar every individual would have their own personal blend of whisky with grains and whatever they wanted and it was very common after Prohibition.

Doug: [00:34:48] There were just a few companies that got permits during prohibition to do medicinal alcohol. So they were able to keep spirit in barrels and had product when prohibition ended and they pretty much took over the market and did it the Canadians came down and then Cutty Sark came in from Scotland and and the little guys were basically gone right at that point what.

Doug: [00:35:14] My vision is is when I make a whiskey like our Relativity product that's one that I crafted and I take that product and I serve it to people. It is such a cool thing to tell them the story of why I use the grains I did. Why do you use the compression. I did what I was trying to do. It's just it's awesome. Okay. It's like a piece of art but that you get to drink which makes it even better. And I thought wouldn't it be cool if everybody could do that exact same thing and go through that and our line is basically Brain Brew Custom Whiskey because everybody deserves their own whiskey. Now how does it work. What when you work with whiskey.

Doug: [00:36:00] As I've said before there are tribes we don't have any tribes. We're just about green spirits and how they work. They're typically made for big grains are: corn wheat rye and barley corn is obviously the predominant grain in bourbon. Wheat whiskeys are very popular. They're very small but they can be very luxury and wheat is oftentimes put in the highest end bourbons. They'll use wheat will be the central ingredient after corn rye is the big spicy one it's kind of the IPA of whiskeys rash or it's usually higher alcohol and barley is the product of Scotland. That's what they use in Scotland single malt barley is what they use. And so it's kind of a Scottish so corn is bourbon barley is Scottish rye is are growing they typically were Canadian and wheat is the underappreciated one which is a magnificent grain but it's hard to work with. It's hard to work with but it is magnificent when you make it right. It really creates an elegance to it. I think my mind and so we can take those products and because of our time compression technology where all we do it's 100 percent natural.

Doug: [00:37:19] All we do is we take the spirit and we put pieces of wood in that we've charred and things staves whatever pieces we want to do and then we take it through heating and cooling cycles just like the barrels grow through just like Woodford Reserve in the wintertime they heat their warehouses and then they call them the heat and they call them it's no different no different than what we're doing. We just happen to be doing it with very very high precision super reduction of variance in the process is what we do. And so we're able to make amazing whisky in about 40 minutes. We can mimic what the season's a barrel aging or like in the old world which would be Scotland. We can mimic what's it like to do it in the US where it's a general rule at least through this way that the Ohio River Valley Ohio Kentucky Indiana it's it's obviously a lot warmer than it is in northern Scotland.

Doug: [00:38:12] And so what people do is they come to an artisan whisky experience where they taste the deconstructed whiskeys so corn wheat Ryan barley they'll taste it first New World style then they taste it old world style and they're shocked because they usually you go to a bourbon tasting or scotch tasting you never get them together and so they're going to taste it and then the last set are predominantly corn wheat right barley but now done in a more craft style. And the new craft styles are much more creative than different you know might be multiple Woods could be different things in it. And then we give them a pipette and they literally take a graduated cylinder and they start to make their own blends. They've rated them individually now they put together their own and they go through some fine experiences and some food and different stuff. And then at the end of that they give a secret recipe and we make it for them and they get it the next day.

Tripp: [00:39:10] That's unbelieveable.

Doug: [00:39:10] So this is this is whiskey and you can do and we have them sign the bottle artisan whiskey spirits buy them if they want then use fancy labels printed. But fundamentally this is less about a label and more about the product. And they can get their own personal taste and the looks on their faces are amazing. I mean it's just it's just the coolest experience to make your own bottle.

Doug: [00:39:36] I mean whiskey has a place in society that is different than beer. Different than wine. I mean it is that ultimate end of the night beautiful taste. It's something magnificent about it.

Tripp: [00:39:52] So they're really just trying different things to find out what maybe their real taste is. And then you find the right mixture for them and in essence.

Doug: [00:40:01] Yes well they'll put it together. OK. And we've got we've got some artificial intelligence things that will give them some recommendations and we give them coaching on how to put it together. But here's the amazing thing. So they put it together make their own taste their taste buds I don't know their taste buds they're going to do their own but every time we do it we keep getting more and more data. So eventually we'll be able to also give them a computerized recommendation which and then they'll make it themselves. But what's interesting about it is all the ones they like and we tell them this they'll say Oh I like these three I like old world barley I like new world corn and rye and then they put those together and they got that taste terrible. I go it's the interaction is a system it's an interaction of the parts it's Dr. Deming would say and it can work. And I said now you've got to start to think about think about it like a musical note what's the high note the middle notes the bass notes what are you trying to do.

Doug: [00:40:56] And they start to get into it and people just their minds go because at the beginning they thought I'm never gonna be able to tell the difference in the whiskeys. I can't tell the difference. Well I can tell you ladies and gentlemen these twelve whiskeys are all distinctly different. It's not like sometimes you know you get a Scotch you get bourbon taste five of them they all taste the same. No. These are by design twelve unique tastes you will like them hate them you'll rarely be neutral to them but when you put them together you're going to want to put like we've got a smoked product number twelve. You might want to have five percent smoke in there because it gives it a backbone that's kind of nice or you want to keep the light weed in it because you want the freshness and the lightness to it. And by the time you get done people say well well isn't it Scotch about heritage. I go Yeah that's what it is today. But you know what it is now you're making your heritage when you're crafting your own product.

Tripp: [00:41:54] That's pretty cool.

Tripp: [00:41:57] The other thing this does for us. The other thing this does for us is it enables distilleries to start to craft products just like it was pre Prohibition and eventually every bar every restaurant every hotel is going to have their own whiskey you're not going to have Jimmy and Johnny's you know Johnny Walker and Jimmy Beams. That was nice. I want mine.

Doug: [00:42:30] I want my own whiskey and so that to me is the future. And to me what delights me about this is one the WOW!! for the customer to be able to get their own thing and finding that there are whiskies that they like and it's magnificent. That's just fun. I mean that's just the culinary aspect of serving that. The other part that gets me excited is we're gonna enable folks that are making maybe vodka and gin to be able to do world class because we went double gold medals at competitions in Los Angeles and all that stuff and and we're gonna enable those people to have their own whisky to do whiskies and to do custom whiskeys for people. And so we're gonna help those entrepreneurs make more money. And in the process they're gonna discover things we've already got a rye that's coming out that was discovered because of some work people were doing messing with the rye and where we're gonna find other new ideas as people do this as we look at not the individuals but we start to look at the patterns and we put it in an artificial intelligence computer and we start to look at what is some of the roots and the patterns that people are doing not one person but hundreds and hundreds of people as that data builds up it's going to help us discover new things and new tastes.

Tripp: [00:43:43] So who are you looking for now are these just people that want their own brand or is these four people are reselling is it a combination of the two of them or are you just kind of messing around at this point to see what you come up with what.

Doug: [00:43:56] Well we're we're setting up and we're setting up in in Cincinnati. We'll be running it here and then we're in conversations with people and a bunch of different countries and across the U.S. where we're gonna set up some beta sites doing custom whiskey and we're gonna license them and enable them with the technology to get going. And obviously if they're to still Stella they've already got the permits but if they don't have a permit they can go through the process to become a blender and they can go into whiskey. So rather than spending millions and millions of dollars for a fraction of that you're gonna be able to go into the whiskey business and we're gonna announce that program in February we're going to the craft spirits conference. We've got booth space up there in Minneapolis in February and we're gonna make it so that anybody that wants to go into the whiskey business you can. That's so cool. Easy. All right it's easy.

Tripp: [00:44:52] That's that's amazing.

Tripp: [00:44:53] I'm I'm fascinated by the whole what the capabilities are and what's interesting to me and we really haven't talked about it and the episodes that we've had so far as you know you talk a lot about diversity and you're actually ability then by virtue of having these crafted whiskies these customized whiskeys and you're getting other insights into what could be made.

Tripp: [00:45:17] Yeah it's very interesting.

Doug: [00:45:19] Yeah. And the future I think is all you know there will always be a place for the great brands. I love Macallan. I love Highland Park. I mean before they were even partners with this I was asked I mean what's your favorite whiskey. I said Highland Park and then Macallan and I love them and I drink them and I they're tremendous and they're wonderful products and I love some of the great bourbons as well. But I also really like to have my own and and I really like to when I travel I like to go to local places and this local thing there's going to be a percentage of the market that's going to go to that and I just think it's wonderful to be able to enable that local energy and creativity because with our stuff you can use amazing wood.

Doug: [00:46:09] So when I was tasting just recently when I was tasting the the Brandy's a fella had come to us and he had done it's really amazing that a bunch of them had never done this before but they they bought a piece of land and they developed it with houses they did all the development. I'm like you guys got to be crazy. They said well it seemed like an easy thing to do I said I know I've got into those things before and and they did this. And as it turned out there was an old building on it that they saved that had oak boards in it. And so he he got a board and he said would you try making whiskey with it to see what it comes out with. And I just tasted it and it's pretty amazing it's already pretty amazing yeah.

Tripp: [00:46:56] Yeah. No that's that's that's outside the box there. Okay. Well let's let's talk about this kind of fun section. Your craft cocktail recipe. The Crazy Viking. What is that.

[00:47:11] Yeah. So this is one that actually was last Thanksgiving that this came up I bought a bunch of stuff that I'd never seen before and there was this product called Linie which is a Nordic spirit it's an aquavit. And that is a it's just it's a very unique and taste to it. And so I was just playing with different things and I me this sort of a riff on an Negroni. Now it's really not a riff on Negroni because Negroni uses gin and I'm using bourbon and he uses Campari and I'm using aquavit.

Doug: [00:47:45] The only thing that's the same is that it has sweet vermouth in it. So it's not even close to to that but it.

Doug: [00:47:53] Basically it's to a rock's glass full of ice. And again this is in the show notes did you get it.

Doug: [00:47:59] Put an ounce of bourbon in and I prefer our noble oak bourbon which if you got a noble a dot.com you can you can find find it. It's about half the country right now.

Doug: [00:48:12] And then one ounce of Linie aquavit.

Doug: [00:48:14] And you get this complex creative concoction is the best way I can describe it and I don't know if it's the Norwegian aspect of the aquavit but I particularly like it outside when it's bracing cold. I don't know there's just something about it it's it's like that and when you see the the picture of it in the show notes I've got it. I put it outside on the rocks because it's just it's got a just a robustness to it it it it's got an edginess to it it reminds me a lot of I've been to Orkney the island of Orkney which is north of Scotland my mom's family came from Thurso, Scotland which is on the north shore and Highland Park is made there which is the brother to the Macallan and and it's made on the island of Orkney it's the northernmost distillery in the world and Highland Park has some cocktails that have the same you know it that it tends to have a peatedness to it and it's a ruggedness to it and it's it's definitely not not a wussy drink you know it's but it's not harsh it's not bite your face off it's just Hardy they Highland Park they oftentimes talk about Vikings it's got that Viking this to it.

Doug: [00:49:31] Well this Crazy Viking has that same spirit which is why I gave it the name Viking as a memory of Highland Park.

Doug: [00:49:39] It's just a unique taste and I think I think as we go into the winter time I think some folks should should have some although I I drank them this summer on the beach too but especially late at night. It's particularly good.

Doug: [00:49:52] So it's a Crazy Viking bourbon sweet Vermouth. I used Dolin is what I usually use. And Lenny aquavit an ounce of each go to the liquor store. Lenny you'll find it'll be dusty because nobody buys it and after you get it you're going to just love it. You'll only use it for this one cocktail but you're you'll amaze your friends people who say they love the Manhattan you give them this they go Man that's got a lot more complexity than Manhattan which would basically be the bourbon and the vermouth. This has got a lot more complexity if you like Manhattan you're gonna love this you're gonna to love it.

Tripp: [00:50:25] Very cool. And you said that Noble Oak is available in about half the country right now.

Doug: [00:50:30] Yeah OK. Much room for a population sample in 17 states but those states include New York and California and Texas. So you know it's proportionally it's got a population wise and it's greater. Yeah OK. Yeah. All right very good.

Tripp: [00:50:45] Well this has been really interesting as far as learned a lot from from your experience in working with different organizations and how they beat down big ideas and make them smaller. That's certainly a concept that I can relate to. And then also you know getting a little bit more understanding of meaningfully unique and not only where it came from but how it's applied. And then of course the third segment where basically talked about not only the Crazy Viking VIKING drink but how you're going to be customizing whiskey for entrepreneurs to be able to kind of sell their own brand or for other things that you've mentioned before weddings and things of that sort.

Doug: [00:51:30] People go crazy for ways and just a preview of coming attractions in the Brain Brew Whisky Academy next week I'm going to tell you the one thing you need to have to create a distillery. The one thing you have to have that's coming up next week on the driving Eureka! podcast as well as in the Brain Brew whisky Academy well we'll look forward to hearing about that next week.

Tripp: [00:51:58] Thank you for listening.

Tripp: [00:52:01] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time. For things. A one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka! book. A subscription to the driving Eureka! newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka! prescription for success. You answer questions and we'll help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas. And you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash. Podcast. And don't forget to subscribe. To the driving Eureka! podcast on iTunes.

This podcast episode corresponds with Doug Hall's newsletter. https://blog.doughall.com/newsletters/5-truths-about-innovation-learned-over-40-years-driving-eureka-1

This is the first Episode of the Driving Eureka! Podcast. Segment 1: 5 Truths About Innovation; Segment 2: A False Cure of Innovation: Segment 3: Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy.

Subscribe to learn to Find Filter and Fast Track Big Ideas.

[00:00:35] Introduction and Overview of the Episode

[00:02:00] First Truth about Innovation

[00:04:21] MeaningFul Uniqueness History

[00:05:27] Impact of Being Meaningfully  Unique in Your Product or Service

[00:07:02] Impact of an Innovation Strategy

[00:08:28] The Second Truth of Innovation

[00:10:37] Third Truth of Innovation

[00:11:29] Death Threat Introduction

[00:12:14] Doing the Math

[00:16:04] Definition of Death Threat

[00:16:45] #4 Truth of Innovation

[00:18:40] #5 Truth of Innovation

[00:20:50] 5 Truths of Innovation Summarized

[00:22:14] False Cures - WhyStart Here?

[00:23:08] #1 False Cure - Inspection, Metrics and Bigger Rewards

[00:25:19] The Problems with Stage Gate

[00:26:11] You Can't Innovate Without Changing the System

[00:28:10] The Problem with Rewards

[00:29:10] Brain Brew Whiskey Academy

[00:30:05] Start with the Aim

[00:30:55] Aim - Everyone Can Have Their Own Whiskey

[00:32:19] Meaningful Uniqueness

[00:32:31] The Artisan Whiskey Experience

[00:34:04] Difference of Distilled Spirits

[00:38:21] Craft Cocktail Segment Introduced

[00:39:23] Gold Rush Craft Whiskey Cocktail

[00:39:29] Gold Rush Recipe

[00:39:55] Gold Rush - Step 1

[00:40:23] Gold Rush - Step 2

[00:41:07] Gold Rush - Step 3

[00:41:29] Gold Rush - Step 4

[00:41:47] Operational Definition of a Shot

[00:44:08] Offer to Listener at www.doughall.com/podcast

Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.

Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.

Doug: [00:00:23] And I'm Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I'm also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the driving Eureka book OK.

Tripp: [00:00:35] So this is episode one we have Episode 0 where we've introduced ourself and what the aim and narrative is of the driving Eureka podcast.

Tripp: [00:00:47] And as we mentioned in the introductory piece that this podcast is a conversation about this week's edition of the Driving Eureka! newsletter this week In segment one our feature story is the Five Truths about Innovation Learned Over 40 Years. In Segment 2 the Driving Eureka! book excerpt Doug discusses one of the false cures for innovation and in the final Brain Brew Whisky Academy segment will discuss the Driving Eureka! book and its application to a whiskey distillery.

Tripp: [00:01:29] And we'll also share a craft cocktail recipe Doug let's start down this path on these five trips. Why did you begin with these five truths to start off.

Doug: [00:01:44] I just thought it made sense to start the podcast and newsletter saying it over the last 40 years twenty five thousand ideas $17 billion in an innovation valuation so let's just begin with cut to the chase.

Doug: [00:02:00] What does it take to be critical to success in the first one is alignment on what is an innovation is the start and you really have to have a clear definition of the word innovation is thrown around so much for so many different things and in the process of our work we've really focused on a very specific and clear definition and that is "meaningfully unique" and we ask customers how meaningful it is how much they like it or how likely to buy it and then how new and different or unique it is. And then we we we do a waiting to them and this has been validated in an academic paper with Dr. Lin colleague University of Oregon in marketplace study after study and this meaningful uniqueness measure helps us quantify what is an innovation it drives word of mouth that drives repeat purchase it drives trial and it gives us a number now to quantify our innovations.

Tripp: [00:03:05] Can you give us. I know there's a paper but how did you move into meaningfully unique from the beginning.

Doug: [00:03:13] I love math so which is bizarre. Being a inventor I really really love math. I'm a chemical engineer and I took statistics as a night course for fun. That's crazy. Nobody does this as you don't take statistics for fun. And I really love it. And so I've had for many years at the ranch I've always had a full time statistician who just Kronk's numbers and what happened was many years ago I had a company called Accupoll where we did research and we would test ideas for companies and as well as our own ideas for clients and then we would track them in the marketplace to see how they did. And this database was a huge database. We had all kinds of questions we asked potential customers for these innovations and they were everything from non-profit services to consumer products to industrial products depending upon the country. And and we spent two years at one point I had two PHDs and a statistician that were here on sabbatical some of the PHDs doing nothing but research to try to find truth as to what was what could we find.

Doug: [00:04:21] There would be a dependent variable that could predict and and out of that came meaningful uniqueness and a weighting of 60 percent on purchase 40 percent of new and different or like new and different whatever it is that was the most predictive of success and that's what led to the academic papers so this came from true research and development to try to quantify what is because if you don't know where you're going How the hell do you know if you've gotten there OK.

Tripp: [00:04:48] That makes sense.

Tripp: [00:04:49] And so what's happened to Occupy is that part of Eureka ranch then or what. No I'm just curious.

Doug: [00:04:56] Two people came to buy the company that wasn't for sale and let me tell you a good time to sell a company is when it's not for sale and in fact I sold it and that got me the money to actually build the Eureka Ranch! just outside of Cincinnati to be able to do it and let me just give you some little sense on this. This is the impact I'm talking about. We ask using what's called a Juster scale which is geeky for people but it's the most approved scale zero to 10 scale used to mean and the average score for mega corporations.

Doug: [00:05:27] I'm talking Fortune 20 companies historically has been around a 5.0 when you move that target to a seven point so you don't increase your odds of let's just say word of mouth where somebody tells somebody and they actually buy it from going up 5 percent or 10 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent but you increase your odds some two hundred and fifty percent. So it literally is at exponential kick as you push the me for as you do something that nobody else has done before. You get more successful. The problem isn't why ideas fail we know it they're selling something that everybody in the world already has and nobody cares. Customers don't change for no good reason. They have to see something that's really different.

Tripp: [00:06:17] So let me correct me if I'm getting this wrong but if I if I have a new product out and it scores a five out of 10 let's say on a meaningfully unique scale that you've put together here and then it goes up to a 7 it's 200 plus percent more profitable.

Doug: [00:06:40] No 250 percent more likely to get word of mouth word of mouth.

Doug: [00:06:44] Ok. Yeah. And about that but the probability of success goes up exponentially to all of the factors go up trial repeat awareness. Literally it's a chain reaction of positives that happen. I mean you know in your world how many times do you go to the store. And this for things that are about the same and you just pick the one that's cheaper.

Tripp: [00:07:01] Oh sure all the time.

Doug: [00:07:02] And the research says that it's like a 200 percent increase in profitability when your strategy is innovation when you've got something that nobody else has. I mean you're live in big. You live in big because customers can't get it from anybody else.

Tripp: [00:07:17] So so the movement basically from commodity to stuff put me use my own words a commodity to something meaningfully unique is as really that scale from five to seven is what you're telling me and mathematically you've figured out a way to use data in order to come up with meaningful uniqueness.

Doug: [00:07:38] And I'm going to say it even stronger and in a positive way even though the word is oftentimes thought of as a negative I'm talking about moving from commodity to Monopoly. Oh we're the you're the only one because governments around the world enable patents they enable you to have a legal monopoly for a period of time and that's what we want because people that have legal monopolies make a lot more money than people selling pork bellies Oh absolutely.

Tripp: [00:08:10] Sure makes sense.

Doug: [00:08:12] So so the first thing is you've got to have alignment in what innovation is. If you don't have that then do not pass go do not collect 200 dollars OK.

Tripp: [00:08:20] So these are these are in their chronological order then five thing. Ok. These Five Truths to up.

Doug: [00:08:28] So the first one is you got to know where you go and the second one is and I put the second because it's it's gonna cause stress for people. Failure is fundamental. If you're doing something that's never been done before you're gonna have to try things and you're gonna feel like when you learn to ride a bike you didn't just get on the bike and ride it you had to have a couple of falls along the way. Now the key is to make those failures fast and cheap. That's the key. Not expensive and long. And so you have to learn how to do that with discipline but you've got to embrace the concept that you're going to make mistakes along the way. And if you don't if you have to get it right before you start then you're practical prudent and puckered and it's not gonna work okay. That's the challenge that we've got to face. We've got to be willing to accept failure as a step in the process. And if you do that and don't do it you give it up cause you're never going. One person. He said Doug I can't say the words fail. You say fail fast fail cheap as you said I can't see fail can you say win fast win cheap I go I said I just can't say the word failure. I said Sir you have psychological problems that I can't help with. I mean get over yourself. You've got to be willing to say it. And if people say well we're okay with failure. No you're not.

Doug: [00:09:45] The fact that you're even bringing it up tells me you're not Richard Branson say Screw it let's do it.

Doug: [00:09:52] You know by the way I like podcasts versus public radio. You can say words like that but.

Tripp: [00:10:01] I mean you've got to run into this all the time Doug. I mean for organizations I mean you get canned for failing. I mean that's.

Tripp: [00:10:11] I mean there has to be a huge fear factor within new organizations you're working with.

Doug: [00:10:17] There is and because it's culturally embedded into the culture you know at home on the weekend you know you cook something you put together some food and you mess around or you go out to the workshop or the garden and you do stuff. We get to the office and we have to have it right before we start.

Doug: [00:10:32] I mean it's just inane it's totally inane

Tripp: [00:10:37] And so the third thing no math no innovation.

Doug: [00:10:41] That's right. My problem with a lot of this there's a lot of systems out there Lean Startup design thinking they're wonderful from a right brain perspective. OK. They're fine. OK. They get you going.

Doug: [00:10:54] They get you thinking. Wonderful. No problem with that. But it's only half the problem. You've got to have a left brain and you know I'd love a Ferrari but when I do the math the math doesn't work OK you got to be willing to confront reality.

Doug: [00:11:10] And what we have found is that this has to be done at the start and so you have to do the math. And the minute you do the math you find out as we say I'm originally from Maine the state of Maine and we have a saying that we say you can't get there from here and you do the math it doesn't work.

Doug: [00:11:29] Now you don't give up you don't give up but you then tag that issue as a death threat. This is something that could kill a project.

Doug: [00:11:39] And what we teach in in the courses that we do and what I wrote in Driving Eureka! is that we then take you through a disciplined keyword discipline that works with the logical rational cultures the Deming cycle Plan Do Study Act.

Doug: [00:11:54] You start those rapid cycles of learning documented and disciplined yes. TRIPP I'm going to give it to you. We run practical prudent cycles of Plan Do Study Act and that's how you make a miracle happen but it starts with you in the math. You've got to do the math.

Tripp: [00:12:14] So how do you know what are the basic questions that I always have with this stuff. And you and I have talked about this before but it's the how accurate is this. I mean it sounds so because it's so fluffy when you're talking about ideas and things of that sort. It seems like the accuracy is just so broad that you can't really you know address these things.

Tripp: [00:12:38] How did how does that get addressed okay.

Doug: [00:12:42] I'm going to apologize in advance for those of you who don't like math because this is going to mess with your heads but the fact of the matter is is this that everything can be measured.

Doug: [00:12:53] There are but all estimates have variance with them. OK.

Doug: [00:13:00] We have this false sense of precision in our world. The fact of the matter is every measurement or every estimate has a plus or minus around this is just variance. And so when we do the math what we teach and we have tools that enable you to do risk adjusted forecasts. OK. So to prevent failure and what we do is for every input number you do to do your math you would put your best guess and optimistic and a pessimistic number and then what we use that to do is to draw a probability distribution and it's done automatically with computers these days so it's painless and we run what's called a Monte Carlo simulation. And now we can understand here's our number and here's the range of probabilities of outcomes that we can get. And here's the number that has the greatest variance the greatest risk in this number we're pretty certain on it has very low variance on it.

Doug: [00:13:59] Okay. And so by doing it this way we're able to model the truth of how we're feeling. I'm I'm not making up stuff if right now at the beginning.

Doug: [00:14:11] I don't know how many potential customers there are that it could be a thousand or it could be a million. Well that's a pretty big range. And so I put it in a thousand to a million and then after I've done my first forecast I then run experiments. I go look up data. I run a survey whatever it might be. So that I find out actually the number is somewhere between 50 and 70 thousand and I get it tighter and tighter.

Doug: [00:14:38] That's the process that we use to use the math. So we're going to do the math on a probability basis understanding the variance with it. And you've just gone from math that's impossible to math that works. I mean look at the weather man. Does the weather man say it's going to rain no weatherman says there's a 70 percent chance of rain. And people say but it didn't rain. I said well good 30 percent of the time it shouldn't. It changes how you think when you start to look for a probability it isn't epic epic shift. It is an amazing shift in what happens with it. OK using shift.

Tripp: [00:15:19] So so what's happening is is well just taking your example you said you know anywhere from 1000 customers to a million customers out there. But after you've gone through some additional cycles and of learning basically and using PDSA that you've now got a more accurate forecast. So each cycle you're learning and getting a sense of what that range is going to be a narrowing as that kind of happens. Right.

Doug: [00:15:45] That's right. And that's why our big promise is we're going to increase your speed to market by up to 6 x and decrease risk up to 80 percent. That's how we decrease the risk. And by using data we avoid the mind numbing conversations that go on where people are trying to make a decision on things.

Tripp: [00:16:04] Ok.

Tripp: [00:16:04] And just one other thing on this subject is is can you give me an example of what a death threat is a death threat is something that could kill a project that could cause it to fail. So that could be a regulatory problem. Usually the number one is it's one of two. I don't know that we can actually make this thing that we're thinking about can we actually produce it at a reasonable price. And two will the customer buy it. I mean. We think it's cool. What will the customer buy it. I mean those are probably the two big ones.

Tripp: [00:16:38] Ok. And then through your cycles of learning then you're basically either mitigating those or there you're moving on to another idea.

Doug: [00:16:45] It's that kind of either literally takes innovation and it moves it from the kooks and crazies to everybody logical rational people can practically prudently be part of this journey to turn these ideas into reality. So so the four things I've learned. The first one is is that we we have to have discipline associated with what is innovation. Number two is failure is fundamental three. No math no innovation and no for no patent no innovation and this one kind of gets people angst. But I feel like if you're going to go to all the trouble to create a new idea you may as well own it. And the patent laws have been changed dramatically. They're much easier to use. Much more useful to use and I get here and I can see the thought balloons above race head listening to this why no patents is this is this. Well I tell you what we've got. I wrote in the book a patent literacy exam the average it's a true false test average score by executives is 50 percent 60 percent 50 percent would be guessing and they get 60 percent.

Doug: [00:17:56] So you don't know what you don't know. You want to own it. You want to own it. And when you're really meaningfully unique when you change in the world then you can patent it.

Tripp: [00:18:06] Ok.

Tripp: [00:18:07] And is this this Patent patent test is it something that people can have access to that are listening or is this something that's part of the driving Eureka in the driving Eureka book or what it is.

Doug: [00:18:23] Right right now it's actually it's in the book. So OK if you get the book you get it in there or in the audio book It's also in the audio book you can follow along you're in a future episode. We'll talk about patents and we'll put it up so that listeners to the podcast can access it directly we'll put that in. OK.

Tripp: [00:18:40] Very good. And then this fifth thing as far as these five truths about innovation that you've learned over 40 years.

Tripp: [00:18:47] You gotta love it. And I've heard you say that a lot. And what do you mean by that.

Doug: [00:18:53] Well if you don't love it and I mean really love it then you're not going to invest the time energy and money to make it happen and when you're doing something new it's going to cause some stress. That's going to be things is going gonna be stuff that you have to do. So you gotta love it. You have to have intrinsic motivation.

Doug: [00:19:15] You have to have intrinsic motivation.

Doug: [00:19:18] You can't be doing it to get rich. You have to be doing it because it's something that really really matters to you or else you're just not going to keep doing it.

Doug: [00:19:27] Steve Jobs says you don't keep doing it because you're saying I mean who would put up with this stuff if you didn't really love it. He said and I totally agree.

Tripp: [00:19:36] So how would you mitigate that. And in an organization. So for instance you know everybody's going to have their idea of something on that and they may not you know be bought into somebody else's idea that they've come up with. That's that could you get to him all right. You have to pick at least one and take it through the cycles of learning in order to get to a final product. So. So how are you getting that passion put in to people.

Doug: [00:20:08] So you've got to move it from tactics to mission from ideas to mission. You've got to fall in love with the mission. We're going to make the world easier for people. We're going to make people healthier. We're going to make people better. We're gonna prevent people from dying. We're gonna do something that matters. Okay. And then the method by which you do it the idea you got to be more agnostic on it. We have a tendency to get in love with ideas which are tactical versus the mission. And when you get this right then you you know now you're focused on doing something matters and you enroll other people. If it becomes us all fighting over our individual ideas nothing's going to happen.

Tripp: [00:20:49] Well that makes sense.

Doug: [00:20:50] So the summary the five truths about innovation that I've learned over 40 years is one alignment on what innovation is at the start. You've got to have that number two failure is fundamental. We need to embrace this learning mindset. Number three no math no innovation. Confront the realities front. You're going to have to hit him someday. May as well do him at the front where do you have the time and energy to do something about it. Number four no patent no innovation ideas that are patentable are not obvious. If they're if your idea is obvious it's not patentable and that doesn't sound like a very good innovation. And number five you got to love it. It takes a lot of work to do anything so you may as well love it because otherwise you're not going to keep with it.

Tripp: [00:21:46] It's time now for the driving Eureka. Book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall so let's move on to the second segment now which is the driving Eureka book excerpt and I guess the first question would be why did you choose false cures as opposed to something else in your first newsletter.

Doug: [00:22:14] Well it's interesting you know in the book I wrote this old section on the problem and solution to chapter one is about the innovation problem because I'd always skipped over it and but most people don't understand it.

Doug: [00:22:28] And so there's a tendency for people to especially leaders to turn around and say tick the box oh I got it I got it we got a cure for it and I finally hit the point that I said let's start the newsletter off by dealing with at least the first of the five.

Doug: [00:22:45] There's five of them in total will talk about that in a minute. But but let's talk about the first false cure because it's the one that tends to cause barriers all over the place. And so I just thought it was a fun place because otherwise people said oh yeah innovation I got that already.

Doug: [00:23:02] And by confronting them on these issues it gets them to pay attention and so.

Tripp: [00:23:08] So this first false cure that you have is more inspection metrics and bigger rewards.

Tripp: [00:23:16] What are you seeing. So the thought is is that if I just give them a number they'll all of a sudden get motivated.

Doug: [00:23:25] And if they've just have a number they'll just work harder. And then if I bribe them to do their job they'll work harder and there is no evidence whatsoever of this is that we could if we went to court in this it would just not be there factories if the factories ran under this they would all be shut down like they were close to being in the in the 60s and 70s because of poor quality.

[00:23:51] No you have to just giving people metrics to hit doesn't motivate them. What it results in is people gaming the system to hit the numbers now. Metrics are invaluable as a tool for improving the system but destructive when it comes to motivating metrics of the outcome improvement in the system comes right. Changing the methods and tools that people have a beating work is bribing them only increases fear and decreases internal motivation. So what we're working on is giving people work fun again teaching them enabling everyone everywhere to be able to find filter and fast track ideas. You have to teach them how to do it expecting people to do something. With no method to do it is madness. It's just not going to work.

Tripp: [00:24:48] You know you're right. In my experience in looking at things for a Deming lens you know one of things that's talked about in Dr. Deming 14 points is more inspection so you know you can't inspect in quality into a product that you aren't able to accomplish that. And I'm having a little bit of difficulty here and maybe help me with this Doug is the more inspection component when it comes to innovation. How does that play.

Doug: [00:25:19] Well people will tend to have. It's a great question because a lot of companies and it's it's sad because there were two inventors of a system called stage gate. One was very business focused one was more academic focused and sadly the system was designed to increase speed decrease risk and that's not what it's become. And and it's it's because what management is done is they've tended to make it into the gates of hell where they've just put up numbers that you have to hit that are random numbers and you have to sell at least 50 million or 20 million or 10 million or whatever it might be. And then people just game the system to do it and there's no integrity to the system. And so they tend to run the business by a metric that isn't necessarily connected to the reality of the success potential of of the idea.

Doug: [00:26:11] And this just causes amazing frustration. I mean the real reason you know you know executives really want when it comes to ideas they want a real big idea that doesn't require them to change anything that they're doing right now.

Doug: [00:26:30] Say manufacturing same sales same route to market. If I can do the exact same thing I'm doing now and get a totally different result. Well get over yourself.

Doug: [00:26:37] I tell people frankly if your idea as a screw up at least three departments it's not worth doing. Think about that for a second that messes with your head.

Doug: [00:26:49] You know well we want our ideas to be you know so that they fit our exact existing system. That's just where the company last week and they said well we need the ideas to fit our existing ways of working our existing route to market our existing manufacturing our existing capabilities.

Doug: [00:27:05] And I said and what do you want to do. All we want to be more successful. I think we've done the last 10 years. No. This is what I mean. I said no that would be madness. I'm out. So what you mean you're out. I said you're not confronting reality here. We're going to have to change something. Well or do or Oh eventually they've started to see the light.

Doug: [00:27:30] Now we'll see that coming to the ranch in a couple of weeks so we'll see what happens.

Tripp: [00:27:33] Yeah and the. The last two companies here as far as metrics and bigger rewards you know I see that and really every organization there's so such short term thinking associated usually with these things so you know you'll see a measure. And as you and I both well know in the silos in which measures are done everybody could be reaching their their goals and the measurements associated with them and the company could be going to crap basically. And then there's rewards associated. I hit my goal. You know everybody is hitting their goals but the company is going under metaphor.

Tripp: [00:28:10] That's yeah. You know it's interesting it's one of those things that in the Deming podcast talked about with Paula Marshall at Bama companies. I mean she in essence said hey we're all. Everybody was hitting their goals and they were getting their rewards. But but the company McDonald's was ready to dump them because they make the apple pies for McDonald's. So you know it's it's just one of those scenarios I see that playing out almost in every way.

Doug: [00:28:38] So. So your bottom line is inspection metrics rewards. That doesn't solve the problem.

Doug: [00:28:45] You've got to build quality and you've got to give them education. You've got to learn. I mean that's what it takes. That's the first of the five false cures. We've got a special audio interview I did on just this on all five of them. And that's gonna be made available to listeners.

Tripp: [00:29:10] This is the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy podcast where we're going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business. The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft Whiskey Company like has never been done before

Tripp: [00:29:33] Doug I'm really looking forward to this Brain Brew Whisky Academy because I think it's going to be a whole lot of fun.

Tripp: [00:29:42] You have the Driving Eureka! book and the Innovation Engineering system within it centers are a lot around practicing what you preach. So so in doing this you've created this whiskey distillery.

Tripp: [00:29:58] Share with me a little bit about how you've applied and what you're doing with the whiskey distillery.

Doug: [00:30:05] The beginning of anything whether it's a whiskey distillery or a new business or a new nonprofit or anything that you're going to do it starts with the aim which is a famous thing that Dr. Deming if Kevin Cahill of the Deming Institute when he spoke at our conference at the Eureka ranch he spoke for 45 minutes about aim you really need to have the purpose why are you doing this. And it's got it. It can't be to get rich forget it. It's never going to happen. You've got to have something that really becomes your rallying point as to what you're gonna do.

Doug: [00:30:39] And ours is built around two things. It's built around a premise that everybody deserves their own whiskey and that there is a great power in enabling local entrepreneurs around the world.

Doug: [00:30:55] And so our business is going to be unique in that we're using we have a time compression technology that allows us to make whiskey very very quickly in 40 minutes we can make amazing luxury spirits but that nobody cares about that. What we're doing is enabling you so that every individual can make their own whiskey every bar every restaurant every wedding can have it. And instead of us building an empire we're gonna do it through partnering with local distilleries and breweries and entrepreneurs who want to start their own whiskey company all over the planet. And so I believe that the future is local. And I get a lot of excitement out of enabling that entrepreneurial spirit. And the joy that I feel when I've made my own whiskey and I share my whiskey with people. It rocks man it rocks and I want to bring that same joy to everybody. You don't need to get Jimmy and Johnny you know Johnny Walker and Jimmy Beam's whiskey anymore. You can have your own whiskey and I think everybody deserves their own whiskey. Whatever you're trying to do whether it's a whiskey distillery or something else you have to figure out first why are you doing it. What's the aim. What are you trying to do. What's the thing that's going to generate your excitement.

Doug: [00:32:13] And and that's really the beginning for for any thing that you're gonna create.

Tripp: [00:32:19] So one of the things that you talk about in measuring new products that are coming out is this concept of meaningful uniqueness. And so how does that play in this Brain Brew business.

Doug: [00:32:31] Once you've got your aim now your question is is you're gonna have to develop this idea and you're going to have to take it to whoever are your customers and make sure that they see it as meaningful unique that it makes a difference in their lives and in our case what we did is we took people through a personal whiskey experience called The artisan whiskey experience where you taste wheat corn Ryan barley old world new world and craft style. So twelve whiskeys then you put together your own and we teach you we take you through a process. So it's not hard to do. You can do this and you find the one you like. And then we ask as you people a week later after we gave him a bottle they get the bottle the next day and we check to see what do they think of it. And in our testing we use zero to 10 scale and meaningful and uniqueness and we wait them five is the corporate norm. Six is good seven is outstanding. We got an eight point nine the highest score ever in nearly 40 years of testing that I've ever seen on an after use product. And people say Yeah they liked it because it was theirs. I said Da that was the whole idea. So the second thing after you've got your aim you've got to quantify that you're things right and we're gonna talk about that a lot in this podcast of ways to do this but you've got to make sure that you're not delusional that your idea is is real and that people can do it and that's gonna be something that's going to be never ending by the way it's going to be never ending work to keep making that bigger and bolder and more meaningfully unique.

Tripp: [00:34:03] Okay. Very good.

Tripp: [00:34:04] And so just maybe a little fun thing but but something from my perspective which is I would not consider myself an expert on whiskey at all. You know I know the difference. Let's say you know I know scotch now you know probably five years ago I probably didn't that scotch is made in Scotland.

Tripp: [00:34:23] There is also this difference between whiskey with an E and whiskey without maybe you can talk about that a little bit but then also what's the difference between you know is there is there a major difference between us a Scotch versus an American whiskey and is there you know and how does bourbon fit in there is that a whole separate family. These are all things that I think are basic questions.

Doug: [00:34:47] Yeah so real simple whiskey is spirits of 40 percent alcohol or 80 proof that are made from grains: wheat, corn, rye, barley and others rum is spirits made from sugar cane Brandy is spirits made from a fruit based oftentimes wine and tequila is spirits made from agave.

Doug: [00:35:13] Ok so so they're all spirits and whiskey is like the higher name.

Doug: [00:35:18] And then from that you've got territories or I say sometimes tribes if it's made in Scotland according to Scotland's rules it's scotch if it's made in America according to bourbon rules it's bourbon.

Doug: [00:35:33] No it doesn't have to be made in Kentucky.

Doug: [00:35:36] Kentucky likes to say that.

Tripp: [00:35:39] Really. OK all right.

Doug: [00:35:41] If it's Canadian whiskey it's made it. Let me give you that. You think where you think he was falling.

Tripp: [00:35:47] Oh yeah I got you.

Doug: [00:35:48] If it's and if it's Irish whiskey it's made and if it's Japanese whiskey it's made OK so those are just some things what's happened in the industry is there's been a lot of a breakup into tribes of I'm this and I'm that our brain brew custom whiskey logo uses the "e" we put parentheses around it to be agnostic to it because in Scotland they spell it without an "e" in the USA spell it with any and in Ireland really I mean it's all different. And the minute you say that it says what you're going to what tribe you're gonna be part of. And we just don't care.

Doug: [00:36:22] I'm talking about grain based Wood aged spirits that can taste amazing that are this ultimate thing to sit with friends and enjoy in amazing cocktails which is sacrilegious to some but it make it you know what can a cocktail.

Doug: [00:36:40] I mean why the freak bother. I mean intrinsic you can't taste anything whiskey on the other hand in the varieties of whisky make amazing depth to cocktails and just take them up a notch or enjoy it on the rocks or or enjoy it neat and and so that's what we are is is we're open to all of those things and that gets to the second part of one of these decisions you have to make at the front is what once you defined your aim the next thing you're going to have to do is to set some boundaries on those boundaries will shift but you've got to decide are you going to be a distiller or are you going to be a blender. Most whisky that you get in the world is distilled in different places and people put it together that that's the case for more brands than you would imagine that do that. And there's nothing wrong with that. OK. Your crafting a product and putting that together at the distillery they have a whole bunch of barrels and somebody puts them together that's no different whether they come from the same place or for places that you put together. You're still the whisky maker you've got to decide are you going to be local or are you going to try to be national. I mean you've got to set some sense of boundaries around it to give you a little bit of discipline or else you'll be spending forever you don't have to keep them there. You can change them but setting up your aim and the boundaries strategic and tactical we're gonna spend a maximum of X amount of money you know etc. You got to set some of those and with that you can start to get going.

Tripp: [00:38:17] Well let's move on to the next segment.

Tripp: [00:38:21] Now we've reached a lighter portion of this podcast where Doug picks a particular cocktail that he wants to feature. And so Doug wants you to a little bit about not only this week's cocktail but a little bit about the thinking in this segment.

Doug: [00:38:37] Yeah. So for each of these podcasts and in the newsletter we share a cocktail and cocktails are experiencing a massive resurgence and some of them are historic such as this one which came from New York's Lower East Side at a bar called milk and honey and it's a it's a modern more complex twist on a whiskey sour which which is a which is a classic drink. And so we're going to share each week we're gonna share with you a new cocktail don't stress. You can look at the show notes you can get the recipe there so you don't have to write it down while you're driving. And so we've got that there and there'll be some of them will be simple and some of them will be more complex but the world needs more cocktails I think because it's five o'clock somewhere.

Doug: [00:39:23] So the gold rush I learned about it actually because in the competition.

Doug: [00:39:29] So we go into a lot of competitions with our brain brew whiskey and we've been we've been very fortunate. They've been extremely nice to us because our products are meaningful unique and so we get very very high ratings most recently the cocktail for testing whiskeys was the Gold Rush and I go Geez I envy you know a Gold Rush. So I contacted the competition and they gave me the recipe and then we've played with it. Got it to where we want it. And so this is how you make it.

Doug: [00:39:55] First thing I have to do is you don't have to make up what's called honey water and this is kind of cool because there's so many craft honeys of so many different taste characters. It's kind of endless permutations you can do but you basically mix a 50/50 blend of honey and water. Ok so take a half cup of each and put them together. Stir that up. Sometimes you have to heat it a little bit for it to go into solution but it doesn't take much. And then I keep it in the fridge. And so it's what I've got it.

Doug: [00:40:23] So then to make the cocktail you take a glass. I usually will use like a rocks glass put some ice in it. Add three quarters of an ounce of the honey water three quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice. And that's key. Don't be using the bottled stuff. I've tried. It doesn't work. You've got to use fresh lemon juice. OK. Don't be messing with me I'll come get you if you start to use that bottled reconstituted crap. This is craft spirit. You use fresh juices. That's what killed the cocktail scene quite frankly in America where corporations use crap. They used to make it from real stuff. They went to crap and people stopped drinking them. So cocktails are living today because of fresh ingredients so fresh lemon juice.

Doug: [00:41:07] And then two ounces of whiskey. Now I use our Relativity American whiskey which is available in the Boston area. I would suggest that you go find a whiskey you can use a bourbon but find a local craft spirit that you like. I'm just I'm gonna support the craft world because that's that's that's what we're into. But find a craft one that you like.

Doug: [00:41:29] And then stir it about a dozen times or so and then enjoy it. Now if you want sometimes depending upon where you are. I'm just gonna bring this up right now because there's a tendency for cocktails to get bigger and bigger. And I said two ounces of whiskey which is how I drink it.

Doug: [00:41:47] In truth a shot is an ounce and a half. But the industry has moved to two ounces and sometimes even higher creating more whiskey forward cocktails. So you've got to find out on all the recipes we do. Do you like it in an ounce and a half do you like it. Two ounces. We're also working on session cocktails which are gonna be three quarters to one ounce. So basically kind of like half cocktails that were there we're putting together you just got to get the mouth feel up in that to go do it. So that's all it is. And it's refreshing. I think you're gonna to find it an amazing people that don't like whiskey. Love this cocktail it's a great way to bring friends in and you never think of whiskey as refreshing but there's something about the honey water plus the lemon and the whiskey they together create this a chord that is just absolutely amazing. I mean if you showed up at the Eureka ranch at our distillery and you walked in and you say certainly whatever you want it's much more often than not it's going to be that I'm going to the cocktail that I'm going to make you will be Gold Rush.

Tripp: [00:42:57] Okay. Very cool. That's interesting. I'll have to try that to mix something together and then see how that how that tastes and be sure to use all the fresh ingredients of course. All right. Well that could make that entire first episode. Doug I if we get claps and cheers or something for completing our first one.

Doug: [00:43:20] Yeah. This is fun. This is this is gonna be a ton of fun.

Doug: [00:43:23] It's an adventure of a journey having done some radio shows and that over time. It's just wonderful. It's wonderful. It's gonna be a neat thing and I really love the idea of being able to take the thoughts and go deeper on them because while I love writing I hate the fact that the world is becoming so tiny in the amount of words you can do.

Doug: [00:43:47] So this is just a wonderful forum I think to bringing it up and thank you for your your questions to help. You're forcing me to think. And it's always a good day when you think.

Tripp: [00:43:57] Well you always make me think so. Back at you. Very good. Well that concludes this episode 1

Tripp: [00:44:08] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time four things. (1) A 1 hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. (2) A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas. And the newsletter has other offers that are not paid public. (3)The Driving Eureka! prescription for success. You answer questions and we'll help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas. And you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. (4) And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend. To get these offers. Go to w w w dot Doug Hall dot com forward slash podcast. And don't forget to subscribe. To the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.