243 – 2 Unusual Examples Of Business Restrictions

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been in an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership, what makes the best leaders so good after running companies small and large over the last 20 years. Today, I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name’s John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. Welcome to tomorrow’s leader! 

John All right. Welcome to today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader, where we dove deep on all things leader-related to leading yourself and leading others, I am John Laurito your host on this beautiful Saturday in February. I love it. We get good weather. Come in here. Oh, I love the weather. Love springtime. Love it. Love it. Even though we’re nowhere near springtime, it’s beginning in February. But so is it feels like spring. Then I feel good. 

John So I want to talk about and give you two examples of two situations that I came across recently that I thought were worth sharing, and they’re really unique business restrictions. And I talk about this a lot. You know, what’s the biggest restriction in your business as a leader? It’s your job to figure that out. I talk about leverage a lot of the time, one of the best ways you can get leverage and leverage is the concept that one small step creates massive results. And sometimes it’s we think about, OK, what’s a new thing that we’re going to do or something we’re going to add that’s going to create this big impact and leverage? It’s going to be a great leverage point. 

John But oftentimes it’s the opposite. It’s removing a small obstacle that’s really a small thing that’s creating a big backup in your process and your business flow and your revenue stream everything. So I want to give you two great examples of this that I came across recently. One just this week and then the other one actually a little bit ago. So those of you who golf and even if you don’t know golf, you might know top golf, which is become really popular at different spots in the country. If you haven’t done it, it is fantastic. It’s basically you’re playing it. You’re playing golf in a whole different way. You’ve got these bays that are three or four levels of bays. 

John It’s like basically, you’re teeing off, you know, maybe 50 feet above the ground or 30 feet above the ground in many cases. And it’s a game you can go and just it’s like a driving range, but you’ve got these targets out there. You’re having fun, you can eat, you can drink, they’ve got servers there. It’s just it’s a blast. So they came out in this area where I live in Raleigh with a competitor. They don’t have top golf, but they have something called Golf Shack. I think it’s called Golf Shack. I feel like I messed up the name. But in any event, somebody is going to correct me because I don’t think that’s the name. 

John But maybe it’s better. I don’t give the name. But in any event, when you go there. Now, in fairness, this was back. I haven’t been there this season, so we’re in February. So this was the end of last year, in September, October timeframe. But one of the craziest things was that everybody flocked to the place because it was like, Wow, this new place is open. We’ve heard about top golf, awesome drive Shaq. That’s what it’s called Drive Shack. So we um, the I know everybody was like, John, come on. They’re texting me as they are hearing this, and little did they know it’s not live. I recorded it already. So anyway, I’m going to get all these future texts when people are listening to this. 

John So anyway, you go to this place, they’ve got I think I counted it something like 300 and something different bass. So now each bay can hold. I think it’s eight people. So I mean, you literally have the potential to get a couple thousand, maybe 2500 people in there at one time paying money. I mean, that’s a major rip. Now, this thing is huge. I’m sure it comes with a massive price tag to build this thing. I mean, it’s just, you know, the upkeep of it, everything like that. But here’s the wacky thing is when you go there now, they had opened a year or so ago, a year and a half ago every time I’ve been there and I’m not exaggerating it at all. 

John People in the Raleigh area, you’ll know what I’m talking about. You’ll agree there is a four-hour wait. Not 40 minutes, not an hour, four hours, to wait to go and play golf. And the worst part about it is you cannot make a reservation. You cannot call ahead and put your name on a line or something like that. You literally have to go there and they tell you, OK, great, we got your name on a list. We’ll call you in roughly four hours. And when I’ve done it, it truly is four hours. It’s not like four hours and it suddenly turns into an hour. It is four hours. 

John So needless to say, I haven’t been there too many times. Crazy, wacky system right, what? But now they’ve still been mobbed with business. Somehow, this still works. But here’s the thing that’s really weird when you go there. Part of the reason for this is they’re never using all three hundred and something bays. They’re only using something like IV. And I might be exaggerating on this, but I’m just saying they’re using a portion of them. I think one day I counted it was like 50 or 70 bays that they were using and they were not using the other ones. So, so like 70 percent of the place was not being utilized. 

John Now you’ve seen this when you’ve gone to a restaurant and you’ve seen like, OK, there’s a weight, but then you look and you see all these empty tables and you’re like, Well, why can’t you just put me at that table? Well, what’s the biggest restriction? The biggest restriction is not the fact they don’t have an empty table. Not the fact that they don’t have food. Not the fact that they don’t have people cooking the food. It’s certainly not because they don’t have customers wanting to purchase it. It’s because they don’t have a server, so they can’t fill that section. That’s the biggest restriction in this case with Drive Shack. It’s the same thing. It’s the same exact thing. They had no servers. 

John They had no people that could wait on those bays. So because of that, they’re paying for the upkeep of all this stuff, all this overhead. Yet they’re only generating revenue on 30 percent or 40 percent, and they’re pissing people off to tell them they’ve got a four-hour wait. What Topgolf doesn’t do that? Why would you do that? Why now? I think they’ve come up with a reservation system, which is better. So to their credit, they’ve evolved past that, you know, ridiculously dumb decision, but it’s still limiting. And I think this is still the case that they’re still not using the whole thing. Now I get it, it’s tough to find help. So I’m not, and especially this time, I’m not arguing this. This is a very real problem. Maybe it’s not solvable, but I’m pretty certain it is. I’m pretty certain they could come up with something some way that they can change and utilize the rest of that. And maybe it’s even, I don’t know, some degree of self-service. 

John Or, Hey, if you want food and drinks, you can only do certain bays if you don’t want because there’s a lot of people that golf, they don’t want food and drinks. That’s OK. They just really want to up. There are some people like that, so why not give them an option? Hey, do you want a server now? Or Hey, you know what? We’re really short-staffed, so we’re going to give you a server, but it’s going to be really slow. We’re going to tell you right away. I mean, that even would be better. So maybe instead of each server using working with six days at a time, maybe they work with 12, but they tell the people at the time, Hey, here’s the deal we are really stretched. 

John I don’t know. I’m just I’m brainstorming here, but there’s got to be a solution to that other than just suck it up and lose in all kinds of money on that end. You know, affecting your brand because you’re telling people for hours, I mean, people might do that once, maybe twice you figure out something else to do, but they won’t be coming back. That’s a problem that’s got to be solved. So that in itself is the biggest restriction. It doesn’t matter how much they improve the facilities or come up with new games that you can play, which they do. It doesn’t matter if they drop their prices, it doesn’t matter if they come up with new parking spots. It doesn’t matter if they advertise better. It doesn’t matter if they change the lobby. When you walk in, it doesn’t matter if they give you free golf balls. When you come in, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. 

John The only thing that mattered, and it doesn’t matter because they still have that problem with not being able to get enough people using the facility. I mean, they got more demand than they have supplied. That’s a problem that needs to get fixed, and it’s fixable. So I’m open to your ideas, Lisa, honestly. This is just my opinion, my thoughts. I’m interested if people who may know more about that or people from Drive Shack will say, it’s a great business, it really is. I’m not here to. I truly think it’s a great place with one big restriction that needs to be fixed. And again, if you’ve already fixed it, I’d love to know about it. 

John And that’d be great. So that’s story number two. Number one, let’s go on to story number two. Story number two is I was working with a business, a company that’s based in India, and they’ve come. Out with a lot of different apps and whatnot. And great, great organization, great company, and one of their newest apps was an app that was kind of a really cool receipt reader basically is what he put a receipt in and it would read everything about it. You wouldn’t have to go through the cumbersome task of on a plug, you know, typing things about the receipt. I mean, it pretty much took more manual process and made it more and more automatic, which was really cool. 

John And I was going through it and kind of looking at a demo and stuff like that and walking me through it. And I’m going to change a little bit about this, about the numbers, but it would kind of get the gist of this. So there was a subscription fee to this we were talking about, OK, how does somebody do this if a company is going to use this and it’s a subscription which normally things like this are subscription per person. And so if you do something like, you know, LinkedIn or you do these different programs like constant contact, all this kind of stuff, it’s a per-user subscription fee that you’re paying and they’re usually pretty nominal. 

John THey’re not crazy. And that was really the direction that this conversation was heading is that there’s a subscription fee that was pretty nominal. Let’s say it’s 50 bucks a month. Whatever it is, it was actually cheaper than that. But for the purposes of this and I said, OK, well, how about with so does that per-user fee go down, obviously, as you can, if you got an organization as a thousand people on it, are you equipped to do that first of all? And the answer is yes. And what’s the fee for that? And their response was it’s the same. So what do you mean? It’s the same, I said. 

John Hey said it’s that one user’s price. So I said, wait a sec, meaning it’s no different. If one person subscribes, a subscription is per company and if it’s one person using it or a thousand people using it, it’s still the same fee. And their answer was yes. Now, if I was a CEO of a company that has a thousand employees and I loved everything, I heard about this, everything I heard about this and it really solved the big problem that I had streamlined our business and I heard the fee was $50 a month for my enterprise, my organization with a thousand employees and a thousand users and all that stuff. That’s pretty much where the conversation would end, right? And the reason is I would naturally be thinking, OK, there’s no way the economics of that work. 

John There’s no way you’re going to be able that this is really, truly going to be set up to really work in an organization that’s that big with that many users and that many potential problems and that much service. And it just I there’s no way it’s way too underpriced, way too underpriced. So I think about it since I haven’t seen that before, really. But the biggest restriction in that was not the product, it was not the service. The people were great. The company was great. The product itself was great. The price was just way too low way, way, way too low. Sometimes people think the biggest restriction is the fact that something’s too expensive. 

John And yes, sometimes that’s the case. You can outprice yourself out of the market. But in this case, it was too low way, way too low. I don’t. I kind of scratch my head. I’m like, I don’t get it. And in any event, that’s a follow-up conversation. But that was just a great example of where, again, you’ve got to think about as the leader of your organization, what are the potential issues, what in a situation like that when it comes to pricing? And that’s a tough one. 

John It’s really tough because you’ve got competition, you’ve got, you know, costs that you’re trying to you’re keeping in mind fixed costs, variable costs. You’ve got different, you know, periods of time which affect pricing, all kinds of stuff. You got, you know, global issues, everything. But in a situation like that, a big part of it is making a decision. There’s perceived value with your pricing. And if I go in and I see, you know, a shirt that I’ve liked and it’s 100 bucks and then suddenly I see it’s on sale. See the same shirt and it was 15 dollars. 

John My immediate thought is, OK, what’s wrong with it? Or It’s not the same shirt. It’s a knockoff guy. I’m assuming it’s not as good if I hire somebody to help me with something and their price is 10 percent of everybody else’s, I’m naturally thinking, OK, water might not get him. I’m not getting something. There is value perceived with a price. So in that case, there’s just no. There’s no way that works out way, way underpriced. And if that’s a market they’re trying to get into, if it’s truly a one or two-person organization, that’s there. 

John Target, OK. Again, it makes sense, but if their target is to move upmarket or be upmarket in larger organizations and bring this great solution, which it really was to the masses and larger companies, it just that’s the biggest restriction. So in any event, though I bring that to you as an example. I think any time you can put a concept to a specific example, then it helps you understand. 

John So my challenge to you as a leader and I don’t care if you’re coaching a soccer team or you’re CEO of a multibillion-dollar organization or the head of distribution or a senior VP of your organization. What is the biggest restriction? What’s the one thing that is either an obstacle that’s causing this something not to happen as quickly or it’s something that is one thing that’s creating the wrong perception, or it’s one thing extra step in a process that doesn’t need to be there, that slowing everything down. So all different ways, something can be a restriction. What’s the one biggest restriction to your organization? 

John You figured that out. You’re really close to tapping into huge, huge levels of growth, huge levels of growth. Hey, I’m coaching a soccer team. What’s the one thing that is holding us back from winning more games? What’s the one thing if we’re going to pinpoint it? Why are we not performing better during game time? What is it? Is it that we’re running out of steam and we don’t have the endurance? Is it that the players don’t know the players? Is it that we’re everybody’s trying to be on offense, as you know, are we’re not sticking to our positions? I don’t know what’s the one biggest restriction figure that out again, and you’re on the cusp of opening up massive levels of growth for you and your organization. 

John So great stuff comes from that. If I can help, let me know. Reach out to me. All right. In any event, thank you for listening. As always, I appreciate your likes, your subscribes, your shares, all that kind of good stuff. Give me your ideas for future guests and content issues and problems that you’re having unique situations. Whatever it may be, there’s no such thing as a dumb problem. I’ve had so many people come to me and say, Hey, I got some. That’s kind of a silly thing, and I’m almost embarrassed to ask this. And some of them have been great questions. Now there’s no I believe me. I was there. I was. I was the one asking the dumb questions, and I still do. I mean, there’s nothing. 

John There’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t know something, ask somebody. And that’s what we’re all here for. We’re just trying to learn. We’re trying to get better as leaders. And when you as a leader, get better, you help other people make that become better. OK, keep that in mind. 

John All right. Thanks for listening. As always, go down below. Get a five-star review and we’ll see you next time. Bye. 

John Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader for suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching, reach me at John@johnlaurito.com. Thanks, lead on!