Bob Moesta: Understanding Your Customer Jobs-to-be-Done

If you don’t understand your customers, you cannot build the best products to meet your needs. Jobs-to-be-Done is a framework adopted by companies including Apple, Intercom and Gitlab to rethink the way that you design and build profitable, scalable, repeatable products. If JTBD is new to you, start here.

Bob Moesta, working with Professor Clayton Christensen, were the original thinkers behind the concept. In this session, Bob explains how you can use the framework in practice and will conduct a live customer interview that will demonstrate how you can uncover the motivations that make your customers switch to, or from, your product. You will learn how to unearth new customer insights and find a new source of inspiration for product strategy and your marketing messages.

Slides

Transcript

Bob Moesta 
60 minutes on the clock. I hope everybody had a coffee or Red Bull. This will be a lot. How many people have seen my video from 10 years ago doing an interview on jobs to be done? Okay, but half?

Mark Littlewood 
Who was there? Who was actually there in the room?

Bob Moesta 
Oh, who was there? One, two, maybe couple. All right, this is a revisit a refresh, from after 10 years of doing it. And I felt like this is Mark said, this was one of the most popular videos that have been going for a long time, I figured it’s time to redo it. Because I looked a lot larger, I was a lot larger back then. And I’ve now a little healthier, which is good. So here’s the thing is, it’s very timed. I’m not good at timing. So I have people helping me get this but I’m gonna do a quick intro, we’re gonna go through the foundations. And then I’m going to pull up nope, a dog to come interview him about his new car.

Bob Moesta 
He’s very afraid.

Bob Moesta 
He’s a little nervous. He knows, he knows. He knows he doesn’t need to actually know why he got it yet. So it’s gonna be interesting. And then I’m gonna go through two case studies. One is intercom how many people here use intercom?

Bob Moesta 
Few. Okay, we’re gonna talk about the the origin story of it and how they used it, and basically how they’ve grown to a billion dollar business in less than 10 years, if you will on it. And then basically, I’m gonna do a wrap up and q&a. Okay, so a little bit about me. First of all, I’m an engineer. I’m from Detroit.

Bob Moesta 
I’ve worked on over 3500 different products and services ranging from Pokemon mac and cheese to the guidance system for the Patriot missile, a whole bunch of different things. And I’m basically been doing jobs to be done for almost 30 years. It’s something that I’ve been passionate about. And to be honest, I couldn’t get it out of my head. And I’ve been perfecting it or using it for that long period of time. The other thing to know is that my mom would tell you that I was an engineer out of the womb, I was breaking things. By the time I was two, I was fixing things by the time I was four, because I wanted to get out of trouble not because I really wanted to fix things. And ultimately, I’ve been working on so many different things. But I love to build. I’m a builder at heart. It’s what I do. It’s what I it’s what, what’s what’s inside me, right? Things I’ve worked on. I’ve worked at Basecamp. I worked on Basecamp. I worked on QuickBooks. I’ve worked on MailChimp, huddle.

Bob Moesta 
I build houses for a period of time I’ve done all these different things. And the interesting part is they’re all the same to me. Right? So technologically, though, I’m an engineer. The fact is, is to me, they all have very similar mechanisms. The other thing is I’ve had three or four really important mentors through the ages. So as a dyslexic I’m illiterate. I can’t read I can’t write at 18 years old. I meet a gentleman by the name of Dr. Deming. Does anybody know who Dr Deming is? Who is Dr. Deming?

Bob Moesta 
WV Deming, who is he?

Audience Member 
he was the guy who invented Toyota.

Bob Moesta 
Here. We had Toyota Production System. He’s the father of quality. I met him he was 85. I was 18 years old. And to be honest, it was one of those things where I sat down next to him someplace that I didn’t I thought he was somebody’s grandfather. Turns out I asked him 52 questions and 22 minutes. And he looked at me said, Boy, are you a curious kid? How would you like to be my intern for the summer? Sure. Guess what? I had to go to Japan.

Didn’t know that. But I worked for Ford out of school and ended up kind of I’ve had another mentor I had was Clay Christensen. So Clay Christensen was amazing. He died three years ago, I am still missing just dearly. I had four hours a quarter for 27 years, with no agenda. Almost like what we did out there. I was just talking, thinking, whatever he was working on, or whatever I was working on. He kept like, I kept thinking like, this is the last time and he got no How will you come back? Come back in the next week, another quarter. And so ultimately, he helped me frame a lot of this by this one, quote, questions create spaces in the brain for solutions to fall into. It’s so important to me, because at some point in time, I realised I was told a very big lie about how to build product, which was build it and they will.

Wrong, it’s a lie. It’s not true. They have to have a question first. And so that’s actually the foundation of all jobs to be done is what question to somebody asked themselves to say today’s the day they’re going to download and instal your software or to buy a new car. The interesting part is that most times we think about it as probability theory. It’s random people just randomly do stuff. And what I will tell you is, Dr. Deming would always say, Nothing is random, everything is caused, we’re just not smart enough. Right. And so part of this is that that is the thing that’s driven me this entire time was what’s going on in people’s heads, when they decide today’s the day they’re going to buy something new, or do something new, get a new job. Same thing, it’s not random, that we all say, Oh, God, I got so lucky. Luck didn’t have a lot to do with it, it’s actually causation. And we have to uncover it.

And so having done all these products, and all these different things, if you take one thing away from my talk, it should be this the struggling moment is the seed for all innovation.

Bob Moesta 

The struggling moment is the seed for all innovation. And that’s important because your customer has to struggle to find you. Their head is full, they can’t see you, because they’ve got all this other stuff they have to do until they struggle, which creates the space in the brain where they asked a question, and now they can finally see you. So what you need to understand is what do people struggle with? And how do I help them make progress. And so that’s what the story is about.

Jobs to be done is a very simple concept. It’s the fact that people don’t buy things, they hire them to do a job in real life and make progress. Think of it this way is this is the old old way, the old product. At some point, if it’s working, and it’s and they’re using it, they actually can’t even see anything new. But the moment they have a struggling moment, they struggle, they start to think about, yeah, I gotta do something new. And here’s the thing is, if they don’t actually have an idea on the other side over here, this is where people just bitch about something and do nothing. But the moment that they see the idea and the other side, it creates the equation of like, okay, what do I got to do to get to the other side? Right. And so one of the things I learned in Japan very early on was this aspect of things. They talked about technology agnostic requirements for them, the consumer.

I said, What the heck does that mean? They said, I want you to tell me what the customer wants without telling me without telling me the solution. Like what? Like, tell me the context that somebody’s in that says that they actually need something new and tell me the outcome they want. And the point there is that this?

How many ways can I get across that river?

Audience Member 
Loads.

Bob Moesta 
Loads. I can get a boat, I can dig a tunnel, I can build a bridge and get a helicopter, I can teach them to swim i The it’s endless. And so what they would say is I don’t want to know the solution. I want to know why they want it, and what is the outcome they really want from it. So then I can figure out the best thing that I can go build to actually help them get across that river. Right. And so part of this is that this is what we’re calling the demand side, how do we understand the demand for progress? Right.

The hard part is how do you ask people what they want? Is my favourite is my hometown hero. So I’m from Detroit, right? He said, If I asked people what they wanted, they want faster horses. my follow up question would be as what would you do with faster horses? What could you do that you can’t do today without faster with faster horses, because ultimately, I can come up with a car. But they they have no idea car even exists, they don’t know you exist. And so if you ask them or tell them about your product, they actually have no idea what you’re talking about. You need to frame it and understand it. Second part is if you ask people what they want, they lie.

They lie for a lot of reasons. They lie because they don’t know they lie. Because they they want to protect their integrity, they lie because they don’t want to hurt you. Right? And you start to realise that at some point, how do I figure out how to get past the line. I went and learn criminal and intelligence interrogation, not market research.

I learned how to actually understand what people really meant by things. And I and I literally was relentless at it. So poor and open, Don is actually going to set up where I’m going to interrogate him in front of all of you about why he bought a car, right? But here’s the thing. Drucker really said it best. Right? The whole notion of that what what companies think they why people buy their product, and why customers really buy the product they actually don’t know. And I can tell you after 30 years of doing this, it’s more true than not. Why you think your customers buying is actually not really why they’re buying. And that’s why you need to talk to them, but you can’t ask them. You have to interrogate them. Right? So three key frameworks to understand the notion of jobs to be done.

Is this clock right? Holy moly, only says 55 I’m only taking five minutes to get to this slide. I’m we’re golden. This is a great for frameworks. Here we go.

Supply side versus demand side. So this is where I was told the lie in engineering school, first of all engineering school taught me and they I felt like they inbred into me the arrogance that I know the answer, and I’m supposed to know the answer. And the other thing they told me was the greatest lie of all which is build it and they will come. That’s just not true. And so there’s really two sides of this world. There’s the supply side of the world, right? That’s what Ryan was talking about. And then there’s the demand side of the world, which is what Matt was talking about. And ultimately, there’s this big wall in between, I call it it’s, it’s the, it’s the gap between the product market fit. And as as an engineer or as a as a marketing person. Um, now it’s down to 50. Okay, so jumping in five minute increments. Okay.

I, it’s gonna be hard for me to handle. No, no, no, we’re good. We’re good. So here’s the thing is, we have a business system, this is where we all live, right? A business, a system, it produces a product that has features and benefits and those features and benefits. You know, we talked to consumers. And so for example, I worked with a mattress firm, right? And and Casper, you start to go here, and you say like, well, we make mattresses, what are the features and benefits of the mattress? Ooh, it’s got a hybrid foam, it’s got cooling, it’s, it’s got inner springs, it’s got all these things to it, right.

And ultimately, the fact is, what they do is once say, say I build this for who needs mattresses, right? They climb up that wall, 100 feet high, 10 feet thick concrete, they climb up to the top, and they look down. And they see markets and segments, and all these different things. But the reality is in who do they sell to they sell to mat or they sell to furniture companies, they sell the colleges, they sell the hotels, they said all these different people. But the reality is, when you jump over that wall and you go to the very bottom, it’s very different.

It turns out what causes somebody to buy a new mattress, and you start to look at the individual. And so if they’re not struggling there, you have a current product. And there’s some context that wraps around that current product that causes them to have a struggling moment. Right, without the struggling moment, they don’t even look for a mattress, right, and then ultimately say, oh, I need a new mattress, they have to figure out what they want from a new mattress.

And then ultimately, they have candidates, oh, I could buy this one, I could buy that one, I could get this one. And ultimately, they have hire and fire criteria. And they have trade offs. Nobody can buy the ideal thing they want. Because it doesn’t exist. There are always trade offs in every purchase. And what they do though, is they climb up and look over that wall. And they just see companies and brands, you know, Sealy inserta, and Simmons. And guess what, I now have to educate the crap out of myself about what is a mattress, what’s a good mattress, I have to go to websites and do all this research. And I still don’t know what I should buy. So I wait till the struggle gets bigger.

Right? Here’s the thing. The greatest competitor to a new mattress is a bottle of zee quill. Right? Think about it. Most people don’t even know they needed a mattress, they buy a topper, they actually turn on fans, they get different blankets, they get different sheets they get. They do all these other things until they realise like, oh, maybe it’s the mattress. Right? And so ultimately, the fact is, is that we end up engineering, building the best mattress in the world. And people don’t know how to buy it. But the reality is, if I actually understand here is the hardest part about buying a mattress is what?

One getting rid of the old one, what else choosing it? How do you choose? Like the way the retail market worked at the time when they had started was literally simple. You walked into a store, there were at least 50 to 100 mattresses in the store. There’s nobody in the store, but the salespeople and you don’t want to be sold. So you have to be pretty desperate walking in that door to actually buy a mattress. So eventually you walk out with them because you didn’t want to walk with them in the first place. What did they do? They made it simple, good, better, best will ship it to your door. Right? And we’ll help you get rid of the old one. They literally went into a market where there were we didn’t need another Mattress Company. It’s a billion dollar business now. Right? And the whole thing is you start to realise that they were more interested in helping people sleep than talking about buying a mattress. Everybody was so focused on the mattress side that they all competed with each other on features and benefits. And literally they confuse the crap out of the customers. But we we understood the real competition because the real competition wasn’t certain or Simmons or anybody else what it was was, it was equal. We ran an ad that said, How many bottles of Zeke will do you need before you realise you need a new mattress 18% increase in sales. Right? So it’s the context people are in. It’s that struggling moment they’re in and it’s understanding the outcome that they want. And so it’s not about the mattress, it’s about sleep.

And so part of this is to realise you sometimes you’re so close, you can’t see what your product is really doing. You got to take a step back and understand what context are they in what outcome do they want. So here’s the thing. So I’ve worked at QuickBooks. How many people here use QuickBooks? Do you love QuickBooks? I get this. Most people were like ah Got a QuickBooks. Here’s the thing. Why do people buy QuickBooks? It says accounting, right? Who wants to do accounting? But accountants. But the fact is, is why do you buy a new accounting package? Two reasons. You need to get paid. You start a small business and all of a sudden you send an invoice you didn’t word, you send it out, right? I’ll suddenly come back and say, Oh, we can’t find your invoice, you’re like, holy crap, where did I put that invoice and you can’t make sense of it. You know what I need to get an accounting system, or you’re trying to pay people and understand how to pay people, two main reasons. But guess what QuickBooks can do? It can do everything. But if you look at their advertising, they only advertise two reasons to buy it. Because once you’re in, you actually create new struggling moments. Oh, you can do my payroll. Oh, you know what, we bought MailChimp. We can do marketing for you. And so you start to realise understanding how people buy in the progress they’re trying to make, ultimately is how they’ve done the whole business. Here’s the best part, though is, is it the best accounting package in the world? Nope. Do people love it? Nope.

They have more market share, I think there’s, they’re like 14% market share is the next closest competitor is half their market share. They’re almost 8 billion in size. And the reality is, is you start to look at it do they need to love the product to actually do the job. And the product is no, nobody really likes to do accounting. It’s not that they hate QuickBooks, it’s that they hate accounting. And this is the best solution to do it. And so part of this is to understand these requirements, which are so important as we end up over engineering, right? Because if I just make it better on all dimensions, people will buy more. And that’s a lie. By understanding what this is, this is where a kick ass half can beat a half asshole. Right? So part of this is understanding. And so for me, I start all innovation on this demand side. I might have an idea. But I really put it to the side. So who am I trying to help if I can’t talk about who, when, where and why. I don’t know what I’m doing. Right?

Framework one or good framework. Again, this is the key struggling moment. If you don’t know your customer struggling moment, then you actually don’t know what you’re doing. Not new 1960 Ted love it. People don’t want to pour. They don’t want a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole in Japan. What they taught me was something called the Five why’s Why do you want to Why do you want to drill I want a hole Why do I want a hole? I want to plug? Why do I want to plug I want a lamp? Why do I want a lamp I want to read better? Perfect. I’m gonna go work on the Kindle. Right? It sounds like it’s like crazy. But the thing is, is we’re so that we listen to them and say oh boy, I want to drill. Do you know the average drill only works an hour and 30 minutes in its lifetime? So part of this is to actually start asking your questions your customers why they want it what’s going on and what else is happening around it right?

Framework 2

Framework Two. This one is actually probably the most powerful one. I use it every single day. I think most people who learn this process learn this what it’s basically about, we call it the forces of progress. And then ultimately, it’s understanding the causation. The dominoes that have to fall in people’s lives to say today’s the day and there’s two types of forces: there’s fuel and there’s friction.

Force 1: Fuel

Fuel. Fuel push push of the situation. So one of the things I did is I built houses in Detroit built 1000 homes. first time homebuyers divorce family with kids and downsizers think of your parents right and so part of this is to say like what would cause your parents to say today’s the day they’re going to move from their house that you were raised in to basically my condo. What’s an example of a push that would say that would get them to start to think about it. the it’s too in Detroit too much snow got to clean the gutters. I don’t really want to do that anymore. What else? What? an injury basically if there’s something that happened I can’t go up and down the stairs anymore, what else? Emptiness everybody’s gone I got this big house and I gotta be. What am I supposed to do with all this room what else? change of job? oh they’re retired Yeah, so now I have free time.

What else? No, that’s not what I’ve heard before. Nice try. Could be a death but here but here’s the thing is the push has nothing to do with my condo. It has everything to do with their life. What is going on in their life? And the other thing is, we keep thinking there’s one reason why they buy it’s not one reason it’s sets of reasons. And they come in patterns. And this is the pattern matching income to write, now that they, if they if they just have the push, and they don’t have any idea, this is where they complain. Oh God, the house is too big. Oh my gosh, it’s gonna snow, Mama. And then what you do is you show them a light bulb, they see my beautiful ranch condo, 16 154 square feet, two bedroom, two and a half bath. First floor laundry, they look at and go, Oh my gosh. And that creates a pull force. The pull of oh, you know what, it’s the gourmet kitchen. I always wanted that. I don’t want to redo the kitchen at the house. We have, oh, we could travel more. Right? So that’s the fuel is basically push and pull. But the thing is, and to be honest, you hear pains and gains, you hear all these different words. But this is about context and outcome. Context outcome. Now, the trick here is this.

Force 2: Friction

The friction, two sets of friction, the friction is the anxiety of the new, what are some of the things your parents would say? That said? Like why they’re not going to go? To expensive? What else? Don’t know who the neighbours are? I’m sorry. There’s so that’s what I call the habit of the present as I love I love the house. The thing is, where’s the grocery store? How are we going to sell the house? What do we do with all the stuff? Right? And so what happens is, is you start to realise there’s there’s tension in the system, there’s push and pull, but the anxiety and habits are greater. Right. So one of the things I did is I realised I wasn’t about adding features. But I realised that two things. One is that moving was very hard for them because they had 20 to 30 years of stuff in a basement they hadn’t been into probably in about 10 years. And they didn’t know how to get rid of it. Right. So one of the things I did is I included moving and two years of storage to basically help them move 22% increase in sales, has nothing to do about my condo has everything to do about the process to help them get there. Right. And so part of this thing is, is the other thing I found is one was a trade off, they kept saying I don’t want a dining room table, I don’t want a dining room table, I want a big bass a second bath bedroom so my kids can come to visit. But what I found out as if they didn’t actually know what the dining room table was gonna go, they would not move. So I cut the second bedroom down smaller, I actually made a space for the dining room table, you could never eat at it, it was so tight, it was literally a place just a showpiece for as like a trophy, right. But the reality is almost 15% increase in sales. I did exactly the opposite of what they told me. Because it’s the sets of things the trade offs are willing to make. And like I said, if they don’t know where the dining room tables gonna go, they’re not going to move. And so all this comes from doing interviews. This is the thing is that most people think you need very large sample sizes. And the thing is, is they think it’s random people randomly buy my houses. Nobody randomly buys anything. They might not be able to tell you, but if you can interrogate them, well, you can see this happened. And then that happened. And that happened. And they were hoping for that every single purchase everything why people volunteer have forces of progress, not random. Third framework. I’m a little behind now, because this dang clock isn’t right. If I need to count down more next time Kirk, I need I need to count down on minutes. So here’s the thing is this. This is this is the part that I didn’t see early on, but it’s almost blatantly obvious. But buying something is a process. And it follows very specific patterns. There’s something called the first thought, where this is where you ask them a question, they see something new, they do something. And then what happens is they start to passively look 93% of my customers ended up thinking about moving between thanks, US Thanksgiving, and New Year’s 93%. Nobody bought a house then. But the process always started there. So what I did is I actually started to advertise like time to move. What can you do next year? What’s going on? And it would seed people to come look at my thing passively looking is where people see they’re my favourite one is the house down the street goes up for sale, and they go look at it, only to say what can we get for ours? Right? So I would work with realtors to actually say like who’s walking in from down the street that’s actually looking for a condo. They go look at their friends. They’re not really thinking about it. And then they move there’s an event something that pushes them to say like, Oh, I gotta do something.

The interesting part about event one is interviewing a couple around buying the house. Like, yeah, we we, we talked about it at the end of the year, like we probably should move next year and they started to look at it looked at the house down the street and then all of a sudden it’s like, and then we got a real estate agent. Hmm. We need to get a real estate agent. Well, you know, it’s just was time. Tell me what’s going on. I can’t remember. It was just time who was the real estate agent Judy, how long have you known Judy? Oh, we’ve known Judy forever. Like, to Judy, come to you? Well, no, we went to Judy and like, why? I wouldn’t let it go. This is the tenacious part. Right? You keep going. And finally, it’s like, when did you sign the contract? I was February, when in February. I wasn’t that direct, but it’s more like being being very direct. saying no, like, middle of the month, weekend or weekday. Holy crap. Ah, weekday. I’m like, did you go there? Did she come here? Oh, they came here. Here’s the question. What were you wearing? Weirdest question you can imagine. And they kind of go like, Oh, we were wearing I was in my suit. We just came from a funeral. You came from a funerals like Oh, yeah. One of our friends had passed away. And we had this conversation. Right about basically, what are we going to do? It’s like, all of a sudden, our friend has to now move because one of them dies or like, we don’t want that to happen to us. We had that conversation. The next day we call Judy. I heard it once. I heard it twice. I heard it five times. I’m like, holy crap. This is got semana. So what I do I moved my advertising to the obituaries. Yep, I actually had the, the editor of The Detroit News come to my office, because they want to know why I cut my advertising so much. And how I decided to advertise in the obituaries. He literally was saying like, This is crazy. Like, if they’re already looking, they already know we exist. I don’t need to advertise there. Because I’m everywhere. It’s really the fact is what causes them to think about it. And to be honest, that’s what helped me it literally increased my traffic by 37%. And decreased my cost by 70%. I had to get in their way as they make this thing. And then they actively look, when they actively look, this is when they’re spending time coming to the condo, they’re looking at other people, they’re actually we’re going to set Friday or Saturday aside to go look, they call somebody to talk about moving. Right, they actually invest time to do things. And then there’s some event too, which says like, it’s time, and there’s two really big times springtime, we I gotta move before spring because I don’t want to cut the grass. We got to move in fall, because I don’t want to actually struggle with snow. And you start to realise that they’re very specific things that caused them to make that decision. And then they decide and they move into my condo. And this happens over and over. And over every day. If you think about how you bought something, and you slow it down, you can see yourself in that timeline. And those people who basically how many people have been looking for something for a long time and just haven’t made the decision. What is it? Mattress, a mattress, right? Here’s the thing is, you don’t know how to make the trade offs. So if you think about first thought, it’s about making space in the brain for you. Passive looking, that’s where you’re talking to people about it, you might not even be able to talk to people about it, you don’t even know if it’s a problem. And you don’t even know how to talk to anybody about well how to buy the next mattress. And then when you start to look, it’s like oh my god, there’s 300 options. And I don’t know what any of this means, and how do I do it. And ultimately, you can’t make the trade offs to make the decision to move forward. This deciding is about trade offs. And most of the time, we only give people one option, buy my product or do nothing. As opposed to hey, what if we bet a topper? What if we actually do this, a lot of times you have to actually help your customer figure out how to make these trade offs and make the decisions. And I’ll give you some examples as we go. Last framework. three sources of motivation, social, emotional and functional. Most people think of jobs to be done, it’s very functional. The bed has to be soft, it has to be firm, it has to be this it has to be that it’s got to be this thick, it’s got to hold these sheets, it’s got to do these things. But the emotional part is like I want to feel rested. The social part is like I want to make sure my wife doesn’t complain about it. Right. And so part of this is to understand that every every motivation has three components to it, and you have to be able to understand it. And I think we’re talking about it in the in the group session over there is like somebody was selling payroll systems, right? Who wants to change their payroll system. Nobody. Unless it’s not working, and it’s emotional, somebody screwed up somewhere. And that causes them to look bad. And so as much as it sounds like a very functional buy, it’s actually a very emotional buy. And you have to be able to understand it and see it.

Alright, we’re going to do this quick. I’m a little bit behind, but we’re gonna do well, I’m having Ryan come up, and I’m gonna have it open on come up. And the basic premise of this is I’m going to show you that just the beginnings of how to do this, right. First of all, I never interview alone, ever, ever should always have two people for one person.

Audience Member 

He doesn’t need the help. He’s just trying to set a good example.

Bob Moesta 

I do need to help. But part of this is to get to see the role that Ryan plays in this So Ryan, Ryan and I are going to interview Nopadon. and so part of this His us understanding kind of what caused him to say today’s the day he buy a new car? And can I have hypotheses going in? Of course, but I’ve learned never to have a hypothesis. I have no idea why he bought a new car. All I know is he did it. Right. So this is the hardest part is you have to almost step start with an empty mind around this. Right? And so part of this is is the process we follow is this. We set up a question, right? And let’s pretend we’re a dealership. And we’re literally getting in the business of basically selling cars. And we want to figure out what causes people to buy a car and what causes it today. So he’s framed the question, we set up interviews, we set up interviews, we only talk to people who have already bought a freaking car, or a bottle mattress or bought something else. Because if if they don’t, they’re going to lie, and they actually haven’t made the trade off decisions you need. We’re trying to learn the patterns. This is not about oh, what they did in the past. I’m just trying to find the variables that are part of their situation and their condition, and their outcomes that then helped me see how to do it for for for every one person who did it. There’s 100 behind them who didn’t do it. And it’s gonna give me all the clues. Right? So that’s right. So we’re going to do this, we’re going to start the interview. Right? He’s going to take notes on his pad, we all have different methods. Yeah, so there’s not one right method. The important part is this, we’re going to capture this interview, I’m going to do it on a pad. I’m very old school, I have a very large pad of paper. I like large pads. So I had to literally bring this all the way in my luggage that the customs people were like, what is that? Like? All right here, we’re gonna go. All starts the same thing. I’m gonna do something. Are you ready? You’re already here, the size

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I’m submitting to the process.

Bob Moesta 

Partially why I invited him because he knows the process. But the thing is, is it happens all the time, I’m gonna do something called game on game off. But we’re going to do the same. In every interview, every single interview starts exactly the same. Thank you, Dan, for taking the time today to tell me about your purchase of your new car. Right. And you bought a new car recently? A couple months back a couple of months back. Okay. How much time do you have?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

As much as you need? Okay.

Bob Moesta

Well, we’ll take about 20 minutes most came off. Most interviews take about an hour. We’re gonna do a quick just so you can see that how it works. Okay. So here’s what we’re gonna do is, I don’t really have a long list of questions. I don’t, I don’t actually, you know, it’s simply there’s no right or wrong answers. At some point, it’s gonna get a little weird. And at some point, I might ask a question. And if you if you don’t feel comfortable answering it, especially in front of all these people just say, pass.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I’ll push myself, I got it.

Bob Moesta 

Okay. The best way to think about this is that I’m shooting a documentary about you, and your life and what was going on? And so sometimes, I’m gonna ask you questions like, well, if I had somebody playing you, how did you feel at this point in time and what was going on? Okay. In the end, though, I just thought I’m gonna play the story back, make sure I got it. And you just tell me if I got the story, right, wrong. Great, very simple. Tell me a little bit about you where you live. Kind of like set the scene for me.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I live in central London. been living there for about 14-15 years. Or urban. I live in golborne Row Notting Hill area of work from home. Got a great business partner. sitting in the audience. We run business together. It’s going well.

Bob Moesta 

Do you have a life partner?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I do. Name Danielle she and I have been together close to being grandma. 14 This is before it was 14 14-15 years.

And what car did you have? before, What car did you buy?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I had a Lexus UX 250 UX? What is the I don’t know what that is? What is that? It’s a more compact sort of crossover as what they call it. Okay. hybrid vehicle. Because London they have this Ulez which is like combustion sort of issues. And then I ended up buying a Porsche Cayenne

Bob Moesta 

Alright

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Why are you laughing?

Bob Moesta 

So is it compact crossover/hybrid? What does that mean?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So it is a it’s got like a tailgate and it’s not necessarily an SUV. It’s a smaller sort of footprint. Better for in the city better for like parking.

Bob Moesta 

Got it and how old was the car?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

It was a 2019.

Bob Moesta 

2019 and how they offer.

Audience Member 

So Bob, why did you ask him? What is a compact cross? Over hybrid you don’t know?

Bob Moesta 

Yes, I do know, but I want to know his definition of it. So part of this is playing dumb. I want to hear his language of it because I am from the automotive business. I know what all that is. And but I’m like, I know. And I said, I didn’t know the car. I do know the car. I know. Do you have the hybrid version? So It’s electric.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Yep, it’s the gas and got it

Bob Moesta 

And you have two cars are just? Way back. I’m sorry. One

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

one car one. I sold the Lexus. Yeah.

Bob Moesta 

But when you had the Lexus, you only had one. You didn’t buy a second car to add?

Bob Moesta 

So you replace the 2019?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

No.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Correct.

Bob Moesta 

Got it. Okay. And did you drive it or to Danielle drive it? Or was it split between the two of you or

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I exclusively drive and she isn’t comfortable driving? In London. Okay.

Bob Moesta 

 So this is this is your choice. Really good. Well, that’s the thing like, What do you mean?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So I think after the pandemic, Danielle started getting into golf. And a friend of hers took her golf and she loved it, and took some lessons and said, You should come try golf. I said

Bob Moesta 

Are you good in golf.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

No, no, no. I said no way. Because I know what’s going to happen if I have a new expensive hobby in my life. I don’t want to do it.

Bob Moesta 

So she but she was playing. She was playing. So I need to go back one second for like, When did you buy the car?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Probably about four months after starting golfing lessons.

Bob Moesta 

Have you started? So if I’m drawing a timeline, when is that?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So started golfing and February. So February. So May, June, May, June. Got us the purchase.

Bob Moesta 

So back up here. Your your wife is basically in his she? Are you driving her to the golf? How is she going to the golf course? Uber’s.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

City like Zip Car? Yeah, because we don’t know.

Bob Moesta 

Okay. And so all of a sudden, the fact is, is is you have this car, and you start golfing in February. So

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

We start golfing first no car. And she she eventually we went on a holiday where I was going to go surfing, there was no waves. So I said I’ll come with you to the lesson. And the instructor was like, why don’t you hit some balls, and I’ll work you know. But then now I started hitting some balls. And I was like, wow, this is super fun. And so I hit a couple and they went really well. And I was like, wow, this is very cool. And so fast forward, we start going to lessons to the driving range. And I do the sort of budgeting and financing. And I remember looking at our bills, and I was like I think we spent 700 pounds on Uber and car rental in a month to get to the course to go playing to go to lessons to go to the driving range all of these things. And I was like, this is obscene. This is ridiculous.

Bob Moesta 

Why don’t you just stop playing golf

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

wasn’t an option. It’s something that we both enjoy,

Bob Moesta 

and you do it together.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Yeah.

Bob Moesta 

Did you do other things together? Is this like the first time?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

No, no, we didn’t. We didn’t. So weekend, I would go to the gym and she would go to yoga class or whatever. Wow. So now every weekend every Saturday and Sunday we got together.

Bob Moesta 

Yeah, got it. So. So part of it. So this is where it seems strange. We’re talking about golf. But we’re talking about buying a car. So how does buying a car? Sorry. When does buying a car coming to the thing. So this is between February and May. So when does that come in?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So I said this is crazy. We need to we need to get a car because this is costing us too much in higher cars. And

Bob Moesta 

Did you have the Lexus or you already sold the Lexus didn’t have a car at all? Oh, so So you bought the Lexus first I bought the Lexus first. Oh, so there’s two hires here. Ah, even better. So alright, so come so so this is even better. Sorry. So all right. So you’re looking at the overthink. So when did you start looking for a car? When did you what was that? If I was shooting the scene where were you when you started talking about the car?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I would have been I would have been in front of my spreadsheet and my laptop in my living room, poring over the soda stupidity of like, spending the money on Uber and got it. And so I probably, if I remember was like, right, okay, gonna get a car, like, but I’m gonna be reasonable. Did you

Bob Moesta 

Did you decide to buy car did you ask Danielle and go like, Hey, I think we should buy a car a little bit more like I’m gonna get because she she’s not gonna she doesn’t like to drive so it wasn’t really. So

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

She’s sort of like I trust you get us a good car. Okay,

Bob Moesta 

So she was in? Yeah.

Audience Member 

Golden question though, what is the stupid about paying $700 a month on Uber when you don’t have any of the cost of owning a car,

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I think when I was thinking strew, but I when I was thinking about their stress of when you so the golf course we play, by the time we finish, it’s out of the way, and it’s hard to get an Uber. So there was one occasion where I probably stood there for like 30 or 40 minutes of them cancelling as the weather’s changing. And so I felt really, that’s not gonna happen again. And then. So that was Uber waiting for Uber, oh, and then the Zipcar they charge you by the hour. And so if anything deviates from you getting back at the five o’clock when you said, because there could be traffic or there could be anything, there was this added stress of like, Come on, we need to hurry up because we have to like return the car, they’re gonna find us type sort of stress, which I absolutely,

Bob Moesta 

If you’re trying to play golf at the same time that you’re, if that’s not stressful enough, right, you’re literally now worried about, can I get back? Well, I get fine. Can I get an Uber back? Am I waiting? 30 minutes, it’s all these kinds of things. And so part of this is is it’s like, okay, we need to get control of this. Yes. All right. So you buy the Lexus. So tell me about buying the Lexus. So

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

It’s a car that I had always sort of admired and respected. And when I mean, admired and respected.

Bob Moesta 

I got a lot of questions about that. But you’re on me on that one.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Lexus is like, it’s like people who aren’t into cars. Okay.

Bob Moesta 

Are you not into cars?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I didn’t think I was. So it’s got like loads of bells and whistles and tech in it’s bulletproof. Right? Like the engines lasts forever. And it’s when you look at the sort of ratings and reviews from a reliability standpoint. It is the sort of highest reliability rating and I was like, yes.

Bob Moesta 

Did you ever own a car in the past in your life?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Back when I lived in San Francisco for a short period? It’s been a while

Bob Moesta 

and your whole thing is is like I want reliable what? Why? Why is reliable is so important.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So I had a an old so my old car that I had some friends in San Francisco, if there’s something something went wrong with it. If something went wrong with it, and I had to take it into the garage, it was it was expensive, was always expensive. And so with the Lexus. I was like, nothing’s going to happen in this car. It’s bulletproof. And so

Bob Moesta 

so it’s about being consistent in time. You don’t have to take anywhere it’s not going to break down. It’s gonna be there a little bit.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

It’s like kind of nerdy, right? It’s not like a sexy car. Like people in the No, no, it’s a good car. Yeah. And it’s it’s sort of says like, transportation. I want. I like quality. Got it. Yeah. So you bought it. When did you buy that? Me? Yeah, Major.

Bob Moesta 

How long did you have? Where did you get it from?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Well, I scoured the internet Sorry, no car. Wow. scoured the internet looking for an auto trader I was like sport spent loads of time just setting up searches for what I was looking for certain mileage certain year had loads of things that needed to have does your price. Yeah, so I ceiling for it. And I wanted definitely to buy used.

Bob Moesta 

Why used which is more reliable, if was new.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Was just the depreciation that you take like buying a new car is like it’s a luxury that I can’t really

Bob Moesta 

game off. I’m trying to find the trade offs he’s willing to make he likes reliable, reliable Wi Fi bought a brand new car that’s gonna be more reliable than anything, but he’s willing to buy us because he’s trading off the depreciation for the ultimate liability, but he’s willing to say like, I’m willing to give up a little reliability for something where I don’t have to lose so much money. So this is where I’m trying to prototype as we go.

Audience Member 

It’s it’s more like, Is this more like? The money isn’t in the budget for this This thing or is it like, I’m not going to feel good with myself if we spend more than this amount on the car

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

now, like I had budgeted an amount, but the idea of buying a new car is to me, it’s like you’re a sucker. If you buy a new car, like it’s a feels financially irresponsible.

Bob Moesta 

So this is also like, I’m getting the affiliate. This is also a reflection of like, look, I’m smart. I’m buying used, I’m buying the most reliable car, I’m doing this and I don’t want that. But it’s also is there anything about other people judging you for it? Or is this more about you wanting to make sure you’re doing the right thing?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Oh, no. Like, no one would be able to tell that that’s a used car got like, it’s beautiful. That’s great. But to me, just knowing that as soon as you take it off the lot, yep.

Bob Moesta 

Yeah. So So you find it, you buy it? Yep. How long do you have it for? Before you before you get the

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Next bought it without test driving it without even seeing it? I bought it from a dealer in somewhere in Cornwall. They they trailered it to me the trailer to never even saw it. Were you worried? No. Not even didn’t even worry about it. I knew it was high reliability. It was like under warranty. So it’s like 10, like 100,000 mile warranty if I continue to use?

Bob Moesta 

So it’s like know, how many miles

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

2820?

Audience Member 

All right, were the things that you had to figure out when you were in the shopping process to like, like, how did you know you were going to be happy with the car when you never sat in it? Had you been in a different one before?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

No, I I’ve done some research. I’ve watched a bunch of videos, it had basically all the bells and whistles that I you know why rails and whistles features that I thought I needed. Like

Bob Moesta 

What? Give me an example.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

 Heads up display.

Bob Moesta

You wanted heads up

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Just a heads up. Because I had been I hired a car once that had it. And I thought it was so much better than constantly having to peer down at the speed. When I was on the road, I could see this speed in front of me got it.

Bob Moesta 

Alright, sorry, I wanted to just put for the time wise, I just want to say like helped me understand how the Porsche came in and the Lexus went out. So he’s not happy to tell this part of the story. Since it was so smart to buy that other car.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So as soon as it came, I recognise that to put golf clubs in it, and carts and everything. You couldn’t put everything into the back and have it hidden. You either had to put the seats down, or you would have to the hack was I would have to take the golf clubs out and put them on the floor of the back seat and put the push cart in the back seats as well. And oftentimes, after golfing we’d stopped to get someone to heat or two. And I was always throwing a sweatshirt or something on the floor. or somebody’s got to break into the Yeah, because you can see the golf clubs. So trying to hide them there. So this constant sort of like, is it well lit enough? Should we park in that parking garage, because people could see into it? And so the second thing is, as soon as it came my partner she she was like, this isn’t very high. I don’t like sitting low to the ground. That matter. She says she doesn’t feel as safe. In she because we’ve hired SUVs in the past. She’s like, when we go on road trips, I feel very safe. Because I can see things. You know, I’m higher. But in this car. I don’t like it because it’s it’s low.

Bob Moesta 

So we have a couple of complaints. But what what caused you say like, Okay, this is not good enough. What was the what was the was the trigger that kind of pushed it all over the edge?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I think over time, there was just so much around. We shouldn’t go there. Because you know the clubs will be exposed. Or we should park here. No, no, no, no, we have to park here not there because the lighting is better or something. You know, there’s always a discussion around. We can’t We can’t park there. And so I think at some point, is it fine. We should look at oh one of the one of the guys who I golf with had the same Lexus but bigger. He had what’s called the NX, which is and we saw you open up the back and his golf clubs in the back and everything was hidden and I was like oh wow. I’ve never considered that. But like, yeah, the annex is probably the way to go.

Bob Moesta 

And don’t have an NX No.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

And so it went from the NX to well, we’re gonna go with something bigger. Let’s just go bigger. Right, put everything in. So we looked at the..

Bob Moesta 

All right, when is this? So if this maze when you get the first one when he started looking for this, this one,

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Maybe so maybe six months, November ish

Bob Moesta 

So by November, you’re kind of like you’re doing all this compensation. And finally, fine, I’m just gonna look at something bigger.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

And so we..

Audience Member 

What are you giving up by going bigger?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So, because I live in central London, I don’t have a parking space anyway, and my flat isn’t zoned to have parking. So I was required to rent a parking garage, like a 10 minute walk away from my house. So it didn’t matter if I got something bigger because the parking wasn’t an issue anymore.

Audience Member 

Did you? Did you have the parking garage thing solved before you bought this?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

The Lexus know that? I mean, I didn’t think that through. So I had bought the car only to find out from the counsellor that my flat isn’t zoned for parking. And so I was like, Okay, well, so now I have to find a parking space or garage to hire.

Audience Member 

So is it like I need that car’s got to be small because I’m back in the city and it’s gonna be hard to park it. Absolutely. I ended up unexpectedly needing to get the garage. Now you got the garage and like I don’t need the small car and it doesn’t the smallness isn’t as important.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

It’s not important at all.

Bob Moesta 

So that made it irrelevant. Yep, got it. Okay. So how do we go from the annex to the to the Porsche.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So we go to a dealership and I shortlist, an NX and an otter, like, their big one, the RX or whatever, the full size one. And, you know, I’ve got I’m configuring like my searches to figure out who’s got the car the longest on the lot, so that I can go and sort of like, negotiate. And I find one that’s a good colour, and I take it out. And I didn’t like how drove. It wasn’t like the smaller one and drove like, kind of truck ish. And it felt the cabin was quite expensive, and everything felt far away. And I didn’t feel comfortable driving. And I was like, well, it has all the bells and whistles, but you went and drove this was comfortable.

Audience Member 

Like safer is comfortable. Like I could be in here for a long time.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Comfortable is like all of that. It’s like it’s got lots of like mod car like features. But to drive it. It did not feel comfortable as in it felt unwieldy. It felt bigger than it should have been. You know, it felt like I was driving a very big car.

Bob Moesta 

Is this where you turn the wheel and you got to turn it a little too far to get it to me.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

You know, I’m worried about the curb. I’m worried about like oncoming traffic coming down the lane because it feels very big to me.

Bob Moesta 

So do you eliminate it, then?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

I put it. I shortlist it and then we go Oui. There’s someone down the road who has a Cayenne. And I remember walking past it thinking like fuck that sexy.

Bob Moesta 

First, that the first says right? But I have that what does that mean?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

It just it’s, it’s it was beautiful to look at. Whereas this other car that was like, like, very functional, like my brain was like, it has you know, hybrid and this many miles and it’s got all these safety features. And then I saw this car and all of a sudden like, most of that went out the window. It just fell in love it just looks amazing.

Bob Moesta 

What can you think of one feature like that? I love it. Yeah, when you looked at it you’re like wow, did you see what did you see?

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

For here, so what we like like in the Lexus I thought only looked good in specific colours because of the lines and the shape of it and I don’t like black cars. And then when I saw this one this particular Porsche that was black I mean this thing looks amazing in black and it’s it’s curved But yet somehow sporty but like not Angular and sort of like was it a little it was the opposite to the Lexus.

Bob Moesta 

Okay, so how are we so it goes on the list..

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

..goes on the list so

Bob Moesta 

Bigger for the golf clubs, but like if I’m gonna go bigger one is I needed to be I need to be feel safe in it. I need to feel like it’s not unwieldy. I need to feel and boy are all of them this way. And then you see this kind of fall in love. Yep. haven’t driven it yet. When did you drive it? So So now you’re going to dealers by the way.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Yeah. So I’ve shortlisted again the same process. It’s more than Lexus, how much was about six 6000 pounds more. And so I have to shortlist based on yours because I’m doing the research again on reliability. So I’m trying to find second or third gen at the end of its life, because I know it’s been through the cycles. I’m looking at mileage. And I got stuck for a long time because I use Waze and Android Auto and to plug in. And it turns out that only the new ones 2019 forward can handle that. And so it was like, oh, okay, I was about to throw the decision away, because I wasn’t going to spend, not, you know, a little bit more, a lot more to get into 2019.

Audience Member 

And then I think there was nothing else competing. Besides, like, once you throw out the Lexus, there was nothing there was just going to the Cayenne started.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

And then I think I Googled, just out of curiosity, like Porsche PCM retrofit Android Auto retrofit. And I found that Oh, shit. They sell kits that you can plug your phone in. So all of a sudden it went from doesn’t have to be 2019. It can be the 2017. Yeah. And I don’t have to spend. It was like, Oh, wow. And so I found a few dealerships. And I went in test drove one. How different was it from the front, it was completely different. And so it’s like, obviously, I don’t work for Porsche. But I no longer felt like I was driving this unwieldy, larger vehicle, but somehow felt like they had shoehorned like a sports car, feeling into a bigger car. Yep. And the Lexus was about being conservative with fuel and things like that. It didn’t go very fast. I thought it wasn’t that important to me. But it was like a running joke that when we would pass cars in the past, we would say, Come on, girl, you can do it, you can do it. We would love my partner. And I would like Will the colour on the pass other cars. And then when I took this one out, and I just remember putting in Sport Plus, stepping on it, and it was..

Bob Moesta 

It was night and day. So not only did you fall in how it looked, but it how it felt in terms of drive.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Absolutely.

Bob Moesta

All right, we got time, I’m just going to do time because it’s it. So I have to ask pushes what pushed him to even buy a car? So he actually had two purchases there two stories. Right? What’s the first push some of the pushes up stone fear of getting his God? Well, first of all, it’s actually that’s the second, the second story. But the first story was literally, we’re spending so much on on Uber. And literally in some way, we’re waiting too long. That’s like we need to get a car. But here’s the thing, he didn’t think it all the way through. Right? And so he needs your very reliable, very, very, you know, so. So the pushes are basically I want to be able to golf, he’s actually getting more and more steps with golf. And he knows he’s gonna be doing it more, especially as they get weather gets better. Like, okay, we really need to get this before May. That’s why it gets it. But then they spend all this time. So pull is look we can golf more often we can get out there. I don’t have to wait. We can go when we want. Right. What are the things that he didn’t anticipate? Parking blind spot? So he has to go out and get parking. Right? Not without it’s not part of your budget, right? No. What was his anxieties about the NX? What were the anxieties had about buying a car reliable? I don’t want to have to take it in. I don’t want to have to be expensive. Right? I want it to be you know, it’s got to be functionally very nice. Right. And he had no habit to he had no car to get rid of. So he’s adding a car to the system right now.

Story number two annex here, Porsche here, what pushed him to basically get rid of the annex to go to the to go to the Porsche getting the fear of getting the clubs. The push was we’re talking more about where to park and what we could stop and where we could stop and what we could do to say like, Why in the world are we like why are we spending so much time talking about this? Right? What was the pole of the of the pole for the Porsche? It was literally beautiful. It made it to be honest. He was like, I didn’t know a car could look like that. And then he drove it. He’s like they shoehorned a sports car into an SUV. So here’s the thing is the push, which is the golf clubs is not the pole. Right? This is where we have to realise that there’s not symmetry. And that’s the important part of this. Okay. And so as you do these interviews, you do sets of them and you start to understand the sets of things that have to go together. Like when when when the car’s not big enough, and I can’t hide. That’s why they go to a bigger car. And you start to find the patterns of all this the patterns is the big thing. Ryan, do you want to make any comment about any of that interview? Oh, very good.

So here’s the thing is, if you notice, Ryan would actually stop and take a word that I didn’t catch. And he would actually basically go like, wait, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by comfortable, he helped unpack this language, which is really, really important.

Audience Member 

Okay, I have one thing, which is that we talk sometimes about price. And we have to figure out what is price really mean, it’s a difference when there’s like, we literally have a certain amount of money that we can put toward this. Versus like with the Uber, it was like less the spending the money on the Uber was wouldn’t have been maybe bad if it was a great experience every time. Right? But because of like all this, like stressing, and then like waiting in the rain, and like not getting the car and like all this stuff, then it’s like, how am I going to be paying this for this experience? Right.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

So can I ask a question? Yes, sir. So there was something that I hadn’t realised that you brought up, which was like, the time I’m spending with my partner. Yeah, we’ve never spent that much time together, quality time playing together. And it only occurred to me that like, oh, yeah, that’s huge.

Bob Moesta 

And so is it like, that’s the job, the job is actually now you’re spending time together and that you want, you’re not only spending time on the golf course, you’re spending time in the car, you’re spending more time together. And so the whole thing is a struggle in that and you’re literally in the car arguing about basically where to park. And what you want to do is have time, like I want to go to a nice place to eat. And the more and more you actually do this is actually building a space for you to together and she didn’t feel safe in the last one because it was too low. So ultimately, this is a this is you bought this to actually make sure that you can be together without arguing. And by the way, you love the car. Here’s the thing. Right, right, right, close. So this is the thing is a lot of times you don’t connect the dots. As a consumer. That’s what our job is, is to actually help them connect the dots. The big part about this thing that the whole interview is you go from this pablum layer. Oh, it’s it’s comfortable. Oh, it’s sexy. Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s practical. What does any of those freakin words mean? You have to unpack it. And then we the first layer is what I call the fantasy layer. Oh, it means this and this. And this. I’m like, give me an example. And what happens is, when you start to do it, that way, you start to realise that there’s causality. And then you can connect the dots. But if you connect the dots before that it’s pablum. It doesn’t make any sense. And there’s, there’s dominoes that had to fall in his life to get there.

The other thing is he had the same job all along. He just the first candidate didn’t do the job. So he didn’t really buy two cars he bought, he actually was in search of one, the first one was actually didn’t do the job he was doing looking for in the first place. He overemphasise, the whole notion of reliability and practicality and all these other things. Nobody’s gonna judge me wrong. It’s like, I’m gonna look smart, because I bought the best car that you know, for that for where we’re going to be. Yet it didn’t allow him to have the relationship with his partner. That’s the crazy part is that this is what cars do. This is how we have to start to realise that these are very emotional decisions. And though they seem like, oh, I searched on the internet, where did you go, everybody’s into how he actually shopped for it. We want to know why he shop for it. Once I know why, then I can actually shape the work. That’s the key. Right? And you saw the emotion. My favourite was when he just pauses and looks down and puts his hand on his head and goes, right. But this is the point is when you interview a lot of times, you end up getting things that even the customer didn’t know at the time why they bought you because they haven’t caught the connect the dots. And those are the subtle, important things about your product and your service. Alright, I’m going to do Sorry, I’m just gonna click ahead. My huge this is my usual BoS thing. I just want to get to a case study so you can see when can we just thank these guys for coming up here?

Bob Moesta 

Like Alfa Marie death, okay, five minutes, okay. Intercom does? Does anybody know who uses intercom here? What is intercom? Communication, a communication tool, right? So this is this is Dez. Trainer 2010 They started a company called intercom. And the basic premise is that every time he this is his third startup every time he started something, whenever he had to start, he had to buy all these different tools, right? Live Chat, customer database marketing automation, like these are all separate tools is 2010. Nobody had a complete set. And he goes, You know what, I just want to have one set because every time they scale, they then had all these problems trying to integrate the data later. He’s like, I want to create it. So there’s one place for all this information doesn’t have to be great, but let’s let’s have it all in one place. And so the very first version of intercom in 2012 Two years later It was this, manage your customers cradle to grave that was their that was their positioning, because they thought the most important thing was having the data all in one place. And they started to grow. And by the end of 2013, they hit this plateau. And Dez came over and said, You know, I’m not sure we’re doing the right things like, Would you mind interviewing a few customers? So we interview to 12 customers? Right? 12 people who basically bought intercom and said, Why in the world did you buy intercom? Right? Turns out, we found four different really different patterns.

One, acquire people, we’re seeing people come to website, but they’re not actually converting helped me acquire and convert people. Right? There was another group of people said, no, no, no, I got I’ve got people coming in converting but they’re when they come back, they’re not actually engaging on a regular basis. So we use intercom to communicate with them to help them interact with us and basically onboard them faster. And we had another one is like, Oh, we had some product and some product, people using it to basically learn about features. And then we had this anomaly of people going like, yeah, we use it to manage support. And they’re like, what? It’s not a support tool. Right. And so you start to realise that as they started to look at it, we saw these four different, we call them jobs for different reasons why people bought, here’s the interesting part. Who does who who, who’s the competitor for acquire HubSpot? Right, who’s the competitor for support? Zendesk, turns out, they were competing with all those people. And by the way, you got one price to have it all. And guess what? Nobody used it all. They only used it for the one reason they needed it for because this was bought by support. And no, and they’d go, Oh, hey, marketing, I got a tool for you like, yeah, no need that in the market mule? Oh, I got a tool for you. And they say no, I don’t want that. And so the moment we started, actually pull it apart, we basically started to realise there’s four different jobs. So they actually broke apart this into four different things. And so the interesting part is, the first thing we did is we started to talk about the conditions, the problems that people had, when they actually could use intercom for really different problems. And then we talked about four different outcomes you’d get based on that, that situation. So instead of being one product, with one price, they ended up taking the product. And to be honest, all they did was turn off all these features for this product. And all it is turn off this feature for that product. Here’s the crazy part. Right, so they did this at the end of end of 13, beginning of 14. So by Q2 of 14, they, they put this up, and they insisted there was a fifth job of people wanting to see. So I think that first one up there to observe. But nobody’s willing to pay money to observe their only pay willing to pay money to do something, which was the other four by 2014. They basically had these four jobs, and they were like, this way, this way, this way this, we can help you in these four ways. What’s What’s your problem? Right, here’s the crazy part. 18 months 5x growth. On top of that, they actually had on top of that another 3x growth and revenue because people would buy multiple products. So they went from 5 million to 75 million in 18 months. Right? Here’s the thing that so this is 15. What they did is they raised money. And what they raised money to do is then become the experts. They went around and run conferences, around each of these jobs. They were good at they wrote books, they didn’t actually invest just in the technology, they invested in the marketing to become the experts in those things. By 18, they basically had the same thing. They started they had competition. So they started to do some different different marketing around it. But the fact is they it’s somewhat when they changed the marketing, they kind of stalled again, by by 19, they went back to the same thing, acquire, engage and support, they dropped the Learn tool. At this point, by 18, they were valued at 1.2 billion. They’re over 2 billion now. And they’re constantly looking at basically all the struggling moments, their whole philosophy of doing it is struggling moments. Right. So that ultimately is what intercom did with jobs. And to be honest, they only did one set of interviews. And then basically they do interviews now every quarter and just learn the language and find the new struggling moments and what they have to do next. And so their engine has nothing to do with their roadmap. It’s where the customer struggle next, because every innovation solves one problem and almost always creates a new one. Always right.

So I’m gonna I’m gonna have to correct through this one that this is a salesman. We’ll do this one at the course later. Sorry. Just close your eyes. That’s really good, but I can’t do it yeah, Gotta get it you know, you know me, you know me, that’s all right. I’m gonna leave it this three tips this is my Mo Mo, come on, find the struggling moments. They’re freaking every once you have this lens, you can see them everywhere. By the way, as a consumer, you all of a sudden start to realise you struggle all the time, and you don’t even know what to do. But now I gave you the process to solve your own struggling moments. But find the source. This is my favourite colour that looks so beautiful. But if you wear contacts and glasses you get in the shower, which ones the shampoo, right? Think about the progress that people are trying to make. Right? And this is the other thing, identify the trade offs. Choose what to suck at. Okay, I’m gonna leave you leave you with one thing. Clay. Clay was so magical to spend time with him. But he’d asked me very strange questions. So one day we’re sitting, I’m sitting in his office and I’m just getting ready to leave he goes, What’s the greatest innovation you’ve ever worked on? I know, I know, I’m coming. You know this, you know the story, right? And I went back and I like thinking, Ah, and I’d like to see how it goes. No, no, I’m gonna give you context, you’re dead. You’re on the pearly gates, there’s a list. What is the top of your list that’s gonna get you into heaven. Holy crap. Well, Pokemon mac and cheese is delicious. But that ain’t gonna get me in heaven. And I’m pretty sure the guidance system for the Patriot missile is going to send me to hell. Alright, but then I come back to this thing is like, almost 30 years ago. And it turns out that I was driving Dr. Deming around. And one of the things we do is we go to plants, we’re in the middle of launching cars, right? And so I was driving plants and do these different plant things. And it turns out that I would have this huge anxiety attack having to refill the car, the rental cars I’m driving in, and I literally drive I’d go like, Oh, no, and I look in the rearview mirror. Like, where is it? Where is the filler cap? Right, and I pull up in to be on the wrong side and have to pull around the other side. And eventually I just pull it over the other side. And damning in the front seat. This is a problem. We need to fix this problem like oh my god, can we just get to the airport. And so this is the thing that’s gonna get me in heaven. This is a 1987 the Ford Taurus gas gauge. And and the thing that’s gonna get me into heaven is basically five years it took me to come up with this, but the little arrow on the gas tank gauge that basically tells you which side the filler cap is. That is the greatest innovation that I will get into heaven.

Bob Moesta 

I’m sorry, Mark. I’m always optimistic. However, I’ll be around your rooms.

Nopadon Wongpakdee 

Hey. So a little bit of housekeeping. Couple people have asked me a couple of people have asked Bob. But yesterday, was that scripted was that rehearsed? was absolutely not scripted. It was absolutely not rehearsed. There were no scripts. I wasn’t looking anything I was looking down. So that’s one. Absolutely real, too. I was excited to call my missus and tell her the great news. Try to get some credit. And she was like, I’ve been planning that for years. She’s like, do you think you’re golfing by accident? Do you think we have a car by accident? like Inception? Oh. Yeah. So Bob, you said my response to her is then you should be more direct. That way. She won’t have to languish when frustration and not making progress.

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