1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000 So David, tell me about your vision. 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:10,300 Well, about 35% of all new products and services that are introduced each year fail in the 3 00:00:10,300 --> 00:00:16,200 marketplace, representing a waste of human resources of well over a trillion dollars 4 00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:17,480 a year. 5 00:00:17,480 --> 00:00:25,780 So my vision is to help products and services be more successful and to succeed. 6 00:00:25,780 --> 00:00:27,280 Tell me more about that. 7 00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:34,520 Well, the keys to that success is embodied in the name of my company, Spice Catalyst. 8 00:00:34,520 --> 00:00:40,800 The word spice is a mnemonic for those five keys, where the S stands for you've got to 9 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:43,080 have a product market strategy. 10 00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:49,120 The P stands for processes need to become mature and repeatable. 11 00:00:49,120 --> 00:00:54,160 The I stands for having the information necessary to make informed decisions. 12 00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:58,880 The C discusses what it is that your customer wants to do. 13 00:00:58,880 --> 00:01:01,800 The C is for the customer. 14 00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:03,080 When do they want to do it? 15 00:01:03,080 --> 00:01:04,160 Why do they want to do it? 16 00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:05,160 How they want to do it? 17 00:01:05,160 --> 00:01:06,760 Where do they want to do it? 18 00:01:06,760 --> 00:01:09,600 How important is it for them to get that thing done? 19 00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:14,960 And how satisfied are they with the current way of getting that thing done? 20 00:01:14,960 --> 00:01:23,200 And lastly, the E stands for the 130 employee competencies necessary to be in an organization 21 00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:27,680 in order to have a successful product or a successful service. 22 00:01:27,680 --> 00:01:28,680 Awesome. 23 00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:29,680 Wow. 24 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:30,680 Thank you for sharing that. 25 00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:34,280 I actually resonate with what you shared today. 26 00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:38,280 Similar to you, how you deal in products, we deal in companies. 27 00:01:38,280 --> 00:01:42,800 And I don't know if you've read the book, E-Myth or Not, 96% of businesses fail within 28 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:44,640 the first 10 years. 29 00:01:44,640 --> 00:01:49,760 That's also a huge waste of human resources there and then. 30 00:01:49,760 --> 00:01:56,920 These staggering numbers and 30% in the products market. 31 00:01:56,920 --> 00:02:04,440 Overall company cannot be successful unless it has the foundational successful products 32 00:02:04,440 --> 00:02:06,720 and or successful services. 33 00:02:06,720 --> 00:02:12,400 If their products fail or their services fail, the company will ultimately fail. 34 00:02:12,400 --> 00:02:13,880 Correct. 35 00:02:13,880 --> 00:02:18,920 And your expertise, is it both in service and products or is it just related to products 36 00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:24,480 that consumers probably consume or use tangible goods? 37 00:02:24,480 --> 00:02:32,720 No, I've been consulting and bringing to market and dealing with both products and services 38 00:02:32,720 --> 00:02:41,920 across telecommunications, the web, internet, e-commerce, hardware, software, video, and 39 00:02:41,920 --> 00:02:42,920 so forth. 40 00:02:42,920 --> 00:02:45,640 Thank you for sharing that. 41 00:02:45,640 --> 00:02:51,040 David, you mentioned that 35% of businesses fail. 42 00:02:51,040 --> 00:02:54,280 I understand that part of the story. 43 00:02:54,280 --> 00:03:00,280 But where did your vision come from in recognizing, hey, this is something getting wasted, maybe 44 00:03:00,280 --> 00:03:03,160 something I want to build towards or work towards? 45 00:03:03,160 --> 00:03:08,720 Well, I was classically trained as a product manager at Hewlett Packard. 46 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:12,960 Then Apple recruited me to bring the first hard disk drive to market. 47 00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:18,640 And then they noticed I knew how to manage, so they asked me to take over as the Apple 48 00:03:18,640 --> 00:03:24,320 3 Group product manager, which was one of the two profitable product lines at the time. 49 00:03:24,320 --> 00:03:30,080 And then after Steve Jobs convinced the executive committee to cancel the Apple 3, then the 50 00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:33,720 president called me into his office and said, Dave, what are we going to do? 51 00:03:33,720 --> 00:03:40,960 We got $30 million in piece parts for the manufacturing of Apple 3s spread amongst our 52 00:03:40,960 --> 00:03:46,560 manufacturing facilities in Cork, Ireland, Dallas, Texas, and in Singapore. 53 00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:52,000 And I told him that I was given all the responsibility for the product line, but none of the authority. 54 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:56,400 So he said, make me a proposal, which I did with the help of about 80 other people at 55 00:03:56,400 --> 00:03:58,960 the company, a business plan. 56 00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:04,600 And he allowed us to take the product line off as an independent business unit. 57 00:04:04,600 --> 00:04:10,920 And we then sold 25,000 Apple 3s, earned I think it was about $600 million in profits, 58 00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:17,880 kept about 1,000 to 1,500 highly paid Apple people employed at the company, and helped 59 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:22,520 provide funds for the Macintosh research and development. 60 00:04:22,520 --> 00:04:25,280 That's amazing. 61 00:04:25,280 --> 00:04:27,320 You have more to say, I think I cut you off. 62 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:29,320 No, that's it. 63 00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:30,320 That's awesome. 64 00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:31,320 Thank you for sharing that. 65 00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:34,720 That's amazing. 66 00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:44,280 So leaving Apple and starting your own thing, how did that come about? 67 00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:50,520 How did your company and the spice catalyst, how did that come about? 68 00:04:50,520 --> 00:04:57,720 Well one of the things that came up during the presentation to the Apple Executive Committee 69 00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:06,280 to set up the Apple 3 was the issue of Apple values, and I found in my book Building and 70 00:05:06,280 --> 00:05:13,440 Sailing Great Products that I went out and I researched the 500 companies that were the 71 00:05:13,440 --> 00:05:15,880 first Fortune 500 list. 72 00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:21,680 And I found that about 300 of them have failed and are no longer in business, and that the 73 00:05:21,680 --> 00:05:27,200 primary reason is that either did not have values, or if they did have values, they didn't 74 00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:29,280 follow those values. 75 00:05:29,280 --> 00:05:33,720 So I thought, I wonder if that pertains to me in terms of my career. 76 00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:40,620 So I made a list of the 25 organizations I've been associated with over my career, and whether 77 00:05:40,620 --> 00:05:44,100 or not they had values, whether or not they followed the values, and whether or not those 78 00:05:44,100 --> 00:05:46,560 values attracted to mine. 79 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:51,600 And almost without exception, in those places where the company either had no values or 80 00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:58,280 didn't follow those values, I was very unhappy, and eventually either I would get fired, and 81 00:05:58,280 --> 00:06:04,060 that was a mercy killing, and I would feel better the next day, or I would quit. 82 00:06:04,060 --> 00:06:09,280 But in those organizations that had values and followed values, like Hewlett Packard, 83 00:06:09,280 --> 00:06:17,880 like Apple, I thrived, I was happy, and I got promoted to senior management levels. 84 00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:22,520 So that's one of the key things that I look at. 85 00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:25,760 Thank you for sharing that. 86 00:06:25,760 --> 00:06:29,080 We have our five core values, too. 87 00:06:29,080 --> 00:06:30,240 I don't know what is it for you. 88 00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:32,400 I'd love to hear yours, too. 89 00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:38,880 We thrive with love, patience, consistency, persistence, and reliability. 90 00:06:38,880 --> 00:06:45,800 These are our five core values, our company we are building towards and building through. 91 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:49,400 I like your thoughts on yours, and if you have any feedback. 92 00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:53,200 Yeah, my values are much more extensive than that. 93 00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:57,840 And in fact, they're on my website, SpiceCannalyst.com. 94 00:06:57,840 --> 00:07:04,840 And it's a combination of the HP way, which was the Hewlett Packard values up until 1998, 95 00:07:04,840 --> 00:07:11,920 and was principally responsible for why HP, from its founding 50 years earlier, grew in 96 00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:15,720 sales 20% a year every year for 50 years. 97 00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:17,640 They had a set of values. 98 00:07:17,640 --> 00:07:22,200 And likewise at Apple, we all knew when we went into a meeting that everyone was coming 99 00:07:22,200 --> 00:07:24,160 from the same place. 100 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:29,920 Whereas in other organizations that I was associated with, they would have no values. 101 00:07:29,920 --> 00:07:33,680 And then the name of the game was playing politics to see if you can get the guy above 102 00:07:33,680 --> 00:07:37,560 you screwed and fired so you can get their job. 103 00:07:37,560 --> 00:07:42,360 And it was out of my frustration with working in that kind of environment, which could care 104 00:07:42,360 --> 00:07:47,440 less about the customer rather than making the customer the most important thing and 105 00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:50,440 customer satisfaction the most important thing. 106 00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:57,400 Then I decided back in 1990 to start my own company, which I did called Desktop Video 107 00:07:57,400 --> 00:07:58,400 Products. 108 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:04,640 And it was given credit to be the fastest growing company in Silicon Valley that year. 109 00:08:04,640 --> 00:08:11,760 We were a reseller of the Avid video editing system and a reseller of Apple Macintoshes, 110 00:08:11,760 --> 00:08:18,440 which was a necessary platform for the digital video editing on Avid. 111 00:08:18,440 --> 00:08:23,320 But then I brought in a partner and an investor. 112 00:08:23,320 --> 00:08:28,240 And that person, they decided that the most important thing was to just make a profit 113 00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:30,760 and not take care of our customers. 114 00:08:30,760 --> 00:08:35,600 So we got involved in a buyout. 115 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:41,920 They refused to honor the buy sell agreement, and so we had to sue each other. 116 00:08:41,920 --> 00:08:47,080 And 10 years later, they ended up paying 10 times what they could have paid me if they 117 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:51,840 just followed the buy sell agreement that they had agreed to. 118 00:08:51,840 --> 00:08:58,640 So from there, I started several more companies and have been pretty much an entrepreneur 119 00:08:58,640 --> 00:08:59,640 since then. 120 00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:07,240 And then about 13 years ago, I started Spice Catalyst to teach others how to have successful 121 00:09:07,240 --> 00:09:09,520 products worldwide. 122 00:09:09,520 --> 00:09:12,200 My number one client is Cisco. 123 00:09:12,200 --> 00:09:16,120 Between myself and my other instructors, we have trained about half of all the product 124 00:09:16,120 --> 00:09:20,600 managers at Cisco worldwide over the last 10 years. 125 00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:27,560 And the idea is to train companies and people to have product success and avoid product 126 00:09:27,560 --> 00:09:28,560 failure. 127 00:09:28,560 --> 00:09:30,600 That's awesome. 128 00:09:30,600 --> 00:09:32,000 Thank you for sharing that with us, David. 129 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:36,280 That was a very helpful and very extensive answer. 130 00:09:36,280 --> 00:09:41,000 I really, really, really enjoyed that. 131 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:42,000 What would you say, David? 132 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:46,680 I think that's also be our last question for our segment today. 133 00:09:46,680 --> 00:09:52,080 Where are you going with your vision if you see a future with Spice Catalyst? 134 00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:55,880 Where do you see it going and where do you see your vision thriving? 135 00:09:55,880 --> 00:10:03,880 Trying to get our training into more and more organizations throughout the world and either 136 00:10:03,880 --> 00:10:11,000 with in-person instructors or online instructors or have people buy my courses, which are available 137 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:13,920 online and on demand. 138 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:21,360 You can find links to those and all the course syllabuses on my website, spicecatalyst.com. 139 00:10:21,360 --> 00:10:22,600 Thank you for being here today. 140 00:10:22,600 --> 00:10:25,080 I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. 141 00:10:25,080 --> 00:10:29,840 I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. 142 00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:31,480 This is going to get more and more fun. 143 00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:33,560 We'll have more and more engagement as well. 144 00:10:33,560 --> 00:10:35,880 We'll invite people to participate in the show. 145 00:10:35,880 --> 00:10:38,160 And thank you for giving us your time and attention. 146 00:10:38,160 --> 00:10:55,760 Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.