Disruptive Innovation Part 1

0:00 Today, we're going to begin a five-part podcast series for small businesses on how to be a disruptor. Now, for anyone who doesn't know, when you start a small business, one of the biggest problems that you as a small business operator have is finding your niche, finding something that other people are going to latch onto, and being a disruptor is going to scale you and going to accelerate you. Now, being a disruptor is risky, but the payoff is much more than just trying to copy someone else's scheme or trying to release a product or trying to release something that's casual that's not disruptive.

1:01 apps and web design and all those kinds of things in a new platform and a new service that I've been creating for quite some time. But I'm following this disruptive. In fact, the face of what that's going to look like has changed many, many times over. And so we're going to do this five-part series and record it all once, and I'm going to drop it periodically as part of this podcast, and I hope that you enjoy it. Again, if you haven't had the opportunity to like, comment, share, do all that.

2:04 And this series is going to kind of teach you and train you to be a disruptor, to be able to go into any industry, transform it, and become known. Some big disruptors that you may or may not know, biggest one, Netflix, Dropbox, Airbnb, and all of those are going to be examples that we're going to cover in this five podcast series. So stay tuned, share this with a friend, you know they need it. If nothing else, hey, encourage yourself, uplift yourself with this content. So stay tuned, don't go anywhere, subscribe.

3:09 a purpose, a driving reason for getting up in the morning, then you're not going to be able to be a disruptor. So I encourage you, encourage you to discover that why and encourage you to also begin to challenge the status quo. So are you ready to challenge the status quo and shake up your industry? In this episode, we'll lay the groundwork for what it means to be a disruptor business. Being a disruptor isn't just a buzzword. It's a mindset and strategy that can propel a small business to a new heights or leave complacent competitors in the dust.

4:10 those changes. So today we'll explore why embracing disruptor mindset is crucial for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and larger businesses, especially if you feel your business is stagnant or your business is receding because of the recession or all those kinds of things. Maybe you're getting hit by the tariffs a lot. I don't know. Maybe this is a podcast that you can use this next five series to disrupt your concept of how you run your business. And this is going to change everything.

5:15 By the end, you'll see why challenging the status quo isn't just risky, but it's also necessary. So let's define disruptor and disruptive innovation. First, let's clarify what a business disruptor is. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who coined the theory of disruptive innovation, described it as a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. In practical terms, a disruptor is an upstart that finds a new or better way to serve customers, often starting small, but eventually shaking up and overtaking existing players.

6:17 offer. Think of early Netflix only offering older movies by mail, which initially appealed only to movie buffs who didn't care about new releases. But over time, disruptors improve their offerings, move up market, and add the features mainstream customers want. Eventually, the encumbered businesses find that the one inferior alternative has become the preferred choice. As Christensen vividly illustrated, all of a sudden, there is no reason to have Blockbuster anymore. Once Netflix perfected online streaming, in fact, Netflix so thoroughly disrupted Blockbuster's video rental business that Blockbuster and Family Video all went bankrupt.

7:20 build a business and it's solid, it'll be there for years to come. And that might be true for some businesses, but with the disruptive powers of artificial intelligence and neural networking, we're discovering that pretty much any industry's foundation is going to be abruptly shaken. And that means that no company, no solid company that doesn't adopt a similar ideology that we're talking about in this podcast, is going to be safe from losing profit and safe from eventual decline into nothingness.

8:20 You can't, you literally can't run a business without technology. You can't have accept credit cards without technology. You can't run a business banking account without technology. I mean, you could, you could be archaic and you could, you know, I don't know, I'm saying archaic, but you could be old school and you could have, you know, your journal entries and you can have different books of entry and you could actually have their physical books that you're marking up. And you're, you know, that's how you're doing your research, but you're going to find that technology is a fundamental concept from producing a product, designing it to manufacturing it to delivering it.

9:22 to be able to reason and be able to do scientific research and be able to learn from scientists. You'll be able to, scientists are going to be able to make this larger, larger, larger leaps. And we're eventually going to have homemade fusion reactors, all those kinds of things, because it may seem so far-fetched, but look at Tesla. They're very, very close to perfecting driving unsupervised with an AI model. And it's all powered by AI. And it's just training and training and hours of training and hours of training.

10:24 yet adopted real-time processing, like say the Apple Vision Pro, which has two chips. One chip is the normal traditional processor, but they changed the status quo and introduced a real-time processor, a dedicated chip to process all of those sensory inputs to make it real-time or within 10 milliseconds. And that technology, if that moved over to a Tesla, you'd be able to have faster-reacting artificial intelligence. And I mean, it would probably make Teslas a little bit more expensive because you'd probably have to have multiple chips and all those kinds of things.

11:29 down because they're fundamentally changing the industry. Or other smarter ones will buy a small business, a disruptor business, pay a little bit upfront for it, and then incorporate into their business strategy, or even buy the entire leadership and everyone involved and make them a part of the company as a separate line of business challenging another line of business. I'm very excited to talk all about that in these podcasts. So not every innovative business is a disruptor in the strictest sense.

12:32 rate. For entrepreneurs and small businesses, the key takeaway is that disruption is about creating significant change that resets customer expectations. It's doing something in a way that makes people say, why wasn't it always done this way? One of the fundamental concepts of The Universe platform is that any business, any business can have technology that used to be far out of their range. For instance, it is my goal to give every single person that's on our platform the ability to have a luxury brand experience.

13:39 The coding work to add account management across multiple systems is just extranomical. And The Universe platform does this. It has its own accounts API and it has all these features in it that are designed to solve all of these pain points in such a way to give small business entrepreneurs, new businesses, and even medium-sized businesses, even corporations, the ability to take this multi-million dollar spend in application development, toss it out the window and use something like this.

14:41 store, you wouldn't see purchases being done on Microsoft surfaces. You'd see them being done on Apple, iMacs, and iPads. And it's like, wait a second, you offer Microsoft PCs and Microsoft surfaces and Microsoft branded stuff, but your store is using Apple products? There was a car company, and I wish I could remember the car company's name. But the consultants walked into the building, and he made a note of all the cars parked in the parking lot. There were Fords, there were Volkswagens, there were, you know, BMWs, there were, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, was at the time, right?

15:43 No, no, no. It's a gauge if your employees trust your product, if your employees value your product. If your employees don't use your product, it's a telltale sign that your product, it doesn't resonate with them, isn't meaningful to them, and they can't be invested into it because they can find something cheaper or better somewhere else. And that's a telltale sign that a company, a corporation, et cetera, nonprofit, whatever it is, is dying is because their employees can't buy into it.

16:47 If you're stagnant, if you're standing still in that area, you're becoming contented. And if you just don't move, don't grow, don't expand, you're falling behind. The hard truth is that if you don't disrupt, if you cling to your business as usual, someone else will come along and do it for you. I've seen this many, many, many, many times. I have a lot of helpful friends and people that offer advice and I've worked for some corporations and I work for some large nonprofits and I've learned and gleaned a lot.

17:49 a revolutionary life, but offering you products and services that change your life. And to do so, to be that disruptive influence, and don't think disruption is a bad thing. Okay? Disruption is about here's your normal procedures, here's a normal way things are done, and finding, well, it can be much faster, better, more efficient if you skip that. And maybe new technology has happened, which is the whole case of The Universe, is new technology has happened that hasn't been adopted anywhere.

18:51 and build their own apps in the ecosystem. But that's where I'm going. Like, all of my apps are built modularly and generically. And so, like, I build this system that helps me build the app, and then I use the common system to build my variation of that app. And that's not always perfect because some of my apps are in different variations of the framework and ecosystem, and they're going to be all brought together over the next couple of weeks to launch this product and service.

19:56 areas. And this was at the time. The stack may have changed and may have been improved. And so I did some research, and I was like, well, everyone's using this thing, and they say it's faster and better. And so I started to build The Universe framework in this component, and then I discovered that it was really bad. Really bad. And I discovered that it was just all over the place, and the information available, and there was no consistency. This isn't an experience as a developer that I want, because it's making my development, every time I look at change, I have to rewrite large segments of code, and it takes months.

20:56 make these changes, and it really promotes an upgraded experience. If I didn't disrupt those concepts, didn't change how they were, I wouldn't be able to design or develop and release something that's literally, I believe, game-changing. Not that it's new technology, but it's a new way to think about technology, a new way to adapt to technology. And I can provide it so that everyday people can build their own applications and all those kinds of things with just a minimal amount of understanding of code.

21:59 It would take months before I'd have a feature update or something, a bug fix, those kinds of things, depending on what it is, you know, it just, in comparison to this new framework I designed, which I can, you know, fix something fast. Just because it's just all, it's just a whole new way of thinking for my industry that, you know, disrupts the ability for me to have to do things a standard business procedural way into a way where I'm, okay, I disrupted it, and I'm still doing some cool modern things, but I'm also taking lessons from older business.

22:59 It's not that you're ignoring business standards. You're finding out why they happen, and you're figuring out how to make them better, and you're figuring out the pain points customers have and why they exist, and you're being able to propel and accelerate things just because you're disrupting that concept. CEO John Chambers put it bluntly. If you're not a disruptor, you will be disrupted. In other words, complacency can be fatal. History is littered with examples of giants that failed to adapt.

24:02 We either dare to disrupt or we will eventually be disrupted by others. If you're a small business, you can be disrupted out of existence. Like that. Being a disruptor keeps your business relevant and resilient in a world of constant changes. It means proactively finding better ways to serve your customers rather than waiting until a competitor forces you to change. As one article noticed, while being a disruptor can be risky, being disrupted by new business is even worse. It's like you're successful here and then all of a sudden a small business outperforms you and they get known and you lose out on all that potential.

25:06 pieces and the other person is disrupting the game by taking your pieces and they have more material points, you're going to discover that game is going to quickly not end up in your favor because defense alone is not the way to go. A combination of defending your pieces as they advance and move forward, that's how you win major chess games. That and disruptive moves that nobody thought about. But if you're playing against chess masters, well, you might always lose because they know they're aware of all the disruptive moves because there's only so many possible moves on the board.

26:08 They don't just take market share, they can grow the market or create entirely new markets by reaching people previously overlooked. Think of how Airbnb opened up a new market for home sharing or how Tesla spurred demand on electrical vehicles. Being a disruptor can mean changing the game and reaping the rewards of being first. Rather than fighting over scraps in an old game. If you find someone that is first and you can do something better and customers will love and something that customers, like pain point customers have, and you can solve that and do the business, you'll be more successful than the first business.

27:11 Disruptors question everything. They're the people who ask, what if and why not? When everyone else is comfortable with the way things are, you don't get disruption. Author Travis Bradbury said it well. Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They're the ones who constantly ask, what if and why not? They're not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don't disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive. They do it to make things better. This mindset, a mix of curiosity and courage and optimism that things can be better, is the starting point for any disruptive innovation.

28:16 The drive is to solve a problem or serve a need in a way that's dramatically better than before, even if it means upending how things have always been done. Cultivating a disruptor mindset means embracing change and rejecting fear of the unknown. It requires a level of comfort with risk and uncertainty. As entrepreneurs, many of you already have that spark. After all, starting a business in itself is a break from the status quo of a stable paycheck. To go further and actively disrupt an industry, you double down on the daring spirit.

29:16 where hailing a ride is as easy as tapping your phone, and despite not fitting Christensen's strict model, Uber undeniably changed consumer expectations. Disruptions often have a vision that others initially find crazy or unrealistic, until they succeed. Another aspect of the disruptor mindset is resilience and confidence in your own path. Disruptors inevitably face doubters. You might be told your idea won't work, or isn't what customers are used to. But as one disruptor or CEO advised, sometimes competition is in the mirror when you wake up every day.

30:23 True disruptors follow their convictions rather than copying what others are doing. David vs. Goliath story. Netflix vs. Blockbuster. In the late 1900s, Blockbuster was the Goliath of video rental, and thousands of stores, Netflix was a tiny startup mailing DVDs to a niche group of customers. It would have been easy for Netflix founders to think, we can't possibly challenge Blockbuster. But they had a disruptive vision. A subscription model with no late fees. And later, streaming video on demand.

31:28 a partnership. And this is when Blockbuster could have purchased Netflix for a mere $50 million. We know how that turned out. Netflix's new model completely reinvented how we consume entertainment. They started the streaming wars. And Blockbuster literally became a relic of the past. Blockbusters, family videos, etc. The story drives home that no incumbent business, built business, is too big to fail when faced with a well-executed, disruptive idea. It also shares that disruptors often start by doing what incumbents want, like Netflix focusing on mail delivery and older titles, which Blockbuster didn't value, and then relentlessly pushing forward.

32:32 those who disrupt their industries change consumer behavior, alter economics, and transform lives. A whole goal of The Universe to transform your life. That's a powerful legacy to aim for. The upshot, embrace the challenge of being a disruptor, isn't easy. It requires vision, courage, and a dash of contrarian thinking. But it's also immensely rewarding. Disruptors redefine what's possible and often build intensely loyal customer bases because they offer something genuinely better.

33:33 And not just that, sometimes it leads to invention on its own. In other words, you can disrupt by tweaking and reimagining what's already out there. And that is what I've been doing for the past 14 years. I'm so excited. Remember, this introduction to disruption series, it's not going to be a one-time overnight change, but it's a continuous mindset of challenging yourself and your business to improve. We'll talk later in the series about sustaining innovation and how to start that innovation process, how to start the disruptor process, how to sustain it, all those kinds of things, because even disruptors can themselves get disrupted if they become complacent.

34:35 be the change you wish to see in the world. And in business, be the change before someone else changes things for you. Stay tuned, episode two, where we'll dive into how to spot disruptive opportunities and generate game-changing ideas. If episode one was about the why of disruption, episode two is more about the how. Remember, we start with why and how to find that golden idea that could transform your business and maybe your life. So get ready to think differently and scout the opportunities hiding in plain sight.

35:37 Before we close this podcast, I want to say a prayer for you. Lord, I thank you for everyone's opportunity to be creative. That spark of life that you gave all of us to do and that purpose, that vision that you've inspired all of us to accomplish. I thank you for that, Lord. And I pray right now for everyone tuning in, Lord God, that you give them peace as they move forward in faith and take that next step, Lord God, to pursue that vision, that purpose that you put in their heart, Lord God.

36:42 Share this with an entrepreneur, small business, someone who knows exploring alternative options and trying to break out of the status quo. Okay, great. Give them the ability to use this mindset. Send them this podcast. We'll release this as a five-part series, so look forward to it. Send them part one, and sky's the limit. I look forward to seeing what you disrupt, and I also look forward to sharing you what I'm doing to disrupt. This is exciting.