Experience Action

CX Pulse Check - October 2024

Jeannie Walters, CCXP Episode 90

This is your October CX Pulse Check. Once a month, we check in to find out what's happening in the world of customer experience and discuss ideas and insights customer experience leaders can learn from.

In this episode, Jeannie Walters is joined by special co-host Rohit Bhargava, Founder & Chief Trend Curator at Non-Obvious Company.

We dissect the evolving retail landscape and examine why major players like Walmart are pushing holiday shopping earlier each year. We also delve into language tactics businesses employ, such as using terms like "inflation-free options" to entice shoppers.

Exploring beyond the aisles, we touch on how technology is redefining the art world and reshaping luxury preferences. We also have fun comparing everyday items like the cult-favorite Scrub Daddy to traditional brands, showing how consumer culture influences even the most mundane products. The conversation expands to the power of understanding people and media narratives, with discussions on trends like "FridgeScaping" and viral challenges.

About Rohit Bhargava:

Rohit Bhargava is on a mission to inspire more non-obvious thinking in the world. He is the 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on trends, innovation and marketing in the world. Rohit has been invited to deliver “non-boring” keynotes and workshops in 32 countries around the world to change the way teams and leaders think at the World Bank, NASA, Intel, LinkedIn, MetLife, Under Armour, Univision, Disney and hundreds of other well-known organizations. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur and founding the Non-Obvious Company and Ideapress Publishing, he spent 15 years leading marketing strategy at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett where he advised global brands on human behavior, marketing and storytelling. Outside his speaking and consulting, Rohit has taught persuasive speaking and global marketing as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, is frequently quoted in the global media and writes a monthly column on non-obvious ideas for Inc magazine. Rohit lives in the Washington DC area with his wife and is a proud dad of two boys. He loves the Olympics (he’s been to five!) and actively hates cauliflower.

Follow Rohit on...
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohitbhargava
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/rohitbhargava
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rohitmarketingauthor

Articles Mentioned:
Walmart kicks holiday season off early (Retail Customer Experience)
The Art Market Is Tanking. Sotheby’s Has Even Bigger Problems. (The Wall Street Journal)
The Scrub Daddy Sponge Has a Cult Following. But Is It Better Than This Wirecutter Favorite? (The New York Times: Wirecutter)
Fridgescaping is everywhere. But is it safe? (The Washington Post)

Resources Mentioned:
Experience Investigators Website -- experienceinvestigators.com

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)

Jeannie Walters:

Hello and welcome to the Experience Action Podcast. I'm Jeannie Walters and it's one of my favorite episodes where it's our monthly CX Pulse Check. This is where I invite a special co-host to help me look at what's happening in the world around customer experience and what that means for you as leaders in this space. Now I'm so excited to bring on my special co-host here. This month, we are so fortunate to have with us Rohit Bhargava, the author of the newest book, Non-Obvious Thinking. So, Rohit, welcome to the Experience Action Podcast and please let us know our listeners and viewers who you are and why it's so great that you're here.

Rohit Bhargava:

Oh well, thank you so much. It is great that I'm here, and I think it's because of you. I love the concept of this and I'm really excited to jump into it. So, for those people who haven't seen any of my work before, I'm the founder of the Non-Obvious Company and I spent many years working in marketing and advertising at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett and I wrote about consumer behavior and trends and customer experience oftentimes too, and now this latest book is all about how to be a non-obvious thinker, so it gives you like habits and tips and tricks to be able to bring more non-obvious thinking to your day, so you can be more creative, more innovative, find more solutions and things like that, and I'm super excited to chat with you.

Jeannie Walters:

Excellent, well. And the other thing is that this is kind of based on something you've been doing for a long time. You've been producing the I think it's called Non-Obvious Trends Report, right? and

Rohit Bhargava:

that's right.

Jeannie Walters:

For about 15 years, is that right?

Rohit Bhargava:

Yeah, it went for. So I was been writing about trends for a long time, but the there was a book series that actually went for 10 years and every year there was a new version of that book and it was all about trends. And then the last version of that came out in 2020, and that was called Non-Obvious Megatrends and it was all about, like, the trends over the past decade.

Jeannie Walters:

Wow. Well, one of the things I've always appreciated about your perspective is that you know people talk about trends and kind of these big macro ways and they kind of decide on what they're studying based on just you know what goes by them in a day, and you really have a unique approach about really kind of paying attention to what are the conversations that are happening in business and marketing and everyday life and how do those overlap, and it really gives us perspective, I think. So if people are not following your work, I highly recommend that they do, because it really is helpful, no matter what your job is, no matter how you're trying to lead. And I think in customer experience work, what I see a lot is that you know we as customer experience leaders have to constantly pay attention to how the world is changing, not just how our products are rolling out or things like that. We have to really understand not just our current customers but the customers of the future, and so this type of kind of trend, paying attention it really does help in everything that we do. So thank you for that and I'm excited to have you here, because that's what this whole episode is about. Once a month, we really look at what's happening in the world and where customer experience might be being influenced or influencing some of the decisions that organizations are making, that customers are facing, all of those things. So I picked out a few fun topics that I'm excited to get into and we're sitting here.

Jeannie Walters:

This is the October episode, and the first thing that I want to share is a headline from Retail Customer Experience, and the headline is Walmart kicks holiday season off early. But of course, Walmart isn't the only one doing this, they're just the ones kind of being highlighted here. But I'm curious, you know what are you seeing around this trend? Because some of the stats from this article were pretty interesting. They talked about how 50%, close to 50%, really start their holiday shopping in August. They want to really have things done, and more and more people are reporting earlier shopping. So what do you think about this trend and what do you think that business leaders should think about this trend?

Rohit Bhargava:

You know, I think it's a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, you have sales earlier so you get people shopping earlier, so then the holiday comes earlier and it's like this chicken and egg sort of situation. But I think it's funny because at the end of the day, somebody having a sale in August, I mean you could call it a holiday sale, you could call it a back to school sale, you could call it a Memorial Day sale. I mean, you know, it's all lingo, right, it's marketing lingo.

Rohit Bhargava:

And, at the end of the day, I think that the behavior is that people are maybe looking for deals a little earlier and maybe choosing to save them, but I don't know. I mean, I grew up in an Indian household, so like the idea of like buying something on sale and saving it for multiple months and then giving it to someone for their birthday or whatever, like that's not a foreign concept, like we had that for decades. You know, like that's just getting a deal, so is it new? I don't know. I mean, I think that there were always people who did that.

Jeannie Walters:

That's right, that's right. And I think that there's something here that I am thinking is both kind of a short-term and a long-term shift. And the short-term is one of the things that I'm seeing is that, instead of saying well, it's a sale, they're using terms like well, it's an inflation-free option. So what they're really doing is providing a discount, but they're they're showing some short-term language that really appeals to people. But I think I agree with you that. I think that some families this is very normal, right. This is just how people handle it. My mother-in-law is notorious for shopping well in advance and then having things kind of squirreled away in her house, and you know, we had to say, like, well, grandkids grow pretty quickly, so you can't you can't shop too fast for that or too early for that.

Jeannie Walters:

But I think that part of the longer term trend that I'm looking at is I I personally have noticed how leaders, business leaders right now there's a lot of anxiety about the unknown right, like we do not know what to expect. In so many ways, around the politics, around the economy, there were certain patterns that kind of all got blown up in the last decade, and so I think part of that is in order to gain some control,

Jeannie Walters:

we want to feel like okay, we checked things off our list right, like we're ahead, and so I think there is something long-term here about people are planning a little more ahead, looking for that kind of reassurance as shoppers. So I think that this is going to be something that we continue to see, and it won't just be for holiday, it will be for you know. I mean, we've already commented how people start decorating for Halloween earlier and earlier and that type of thing is getting earlier and earlier. I think there's going to be more of that as we move forward, so I'll be watching this one. So this next one is pretty different from Walmart.

Jeannie Walters:

We're going to talk about Sotheby's, which is, of course, one of the very high end art auction houses, and this is from The Wall Street Journal. It's a headline, the art market is tanking, Sotheby's has even bigger problems. The article itself is really about some of the issues with kind of financing fine art now and how they used to be able to rely on certain patterns that, again, aren't really consistent anymore. They used to be able to rely on, kind of having a big show, and that would float them for a while, and now some of those big shows just aren't getting the response that they used to. And I see this in a couple of different ways, and I'm really curious on your take on this, because one of the things that and I think you've actually written about this is you know, generations change with our expectations about what we want in our homes and how we live. So like collectibles, the whole idea of collectibles. Our parents' generation, they all had collectibles. Now they're like look at all your heirlooms and their kids, our generation, are kind of like meh, we really don't need that, you know, whole cabinet full.

Rohit Bhargava:

Let's check eBay and see if there's a demand for some of this stuff.

Jeannie Walters:

That's right. There's just not that sentimentality around it.

Rohit Bhargava:

Uh huh.

Jeannie Walters:

I'm connecting that with this a little bit, like maybe there's this kind of movement towards do we need more things that are necessary and utilitarian and beautiful, or do we just have art for art's sake, and I don't know where that's going. So any thoughts on this one?

Rohit Bhargava:

Yeah, I do think I mean this does fit into a couple of more macro trends.

Rohit Bhargava:

Um, there is certainly the idea that, um, as the older generation gets older and starts to downsize and starts to think about, like, what are we going to do with all this stuff, these collectibles?

Rohit Bhargava:

Um, there's some things that are not really seen as family treasures in the way that maybe they once were, and so now there's whole generations of stuff that need to be kind of offloaded.

Rohit Bhargava:

I do think that the other thing that's interesting about art is that the nature of art itself, in terms of what we assign value to or who a quote unquote famous artist is, is also also shifting, and so this idea that used to be the case that, whether you loved art or not, it was a great investment in the future, um, is also starting to thin out, because you just don't know, like, is this one really a great, uh, investment, or is it going to be? You know, this artist was famous, but then it was uncovered that the artist did something bad in the past, and now they're, they're canceled, and and now you're stuck with this art that was supposedly worth all this money and now it's not. And I think that that level of skepticism and also just uh, uh, more, uh, more artists like more work out there is causing this challenge of we don't know exactly what's worth that much, and so maybe it's not the greatest investment anymore.

Jeannie Walters:

I really appreciate what you're saying there, because when you think about the definition of art, it really is so subjective in so many ways, and yet it's influenced by, like, the community, by the society you live in. And now, like, is Sotheby's going to have an auction for maybe some really amazing sneakers that some graffiti artist you know designed, or are they going to do things that are different? You think about what Banksy has done with, like even just the whole idea of flipping value around. So there, there are so many big questions here. And then the other thing that struck me from this article was, you know, we talked to a lot of organizations that simply don't want to keep up, right, like they, they simply think, well, this has always worked, so we're just going to keep doing what's always worked.

Jeannie Walters:

And one of the things that this article talked about was, like they have to start appealing to high tech buyers. They don't want to go and have their little paddle, they don't want to go through the kind of traditional routes of getting some of this. And so how can we keep up with not just kind of the products that we're selling, but the very experience of how we're selling them? And that really struck me in this too, because they're saying that younger buyers are actually looking for more private experiences. They don't want to showcase that they're there buying all this. They want to do things through their mobile phone. They want to. You know, they know what they want, they know their limit and it's not about like the excitement of the auction anymore, it's about something different for them. So I just think it's a great example of like. If you're not paying attention to the behavior of your shoppers and to what they're looking for next, then it's so easy to fall behind. It's so easy to keep doing what has worked and suddenly one day it will not work, and it's really easy to fall into that trap. But the world changes so fast these days. You just have to pay attention.

Rohit Bhargava:

Well, I think it's also the idea that, um, you know what was luxury for one generation, or at least considered luxury isn't always luxury. Right! And I think that when you are in the position of a group like Sotheby's that's used to basically deciding what luxury is, or at least following closely behind what the trendsetters say luxury is, as soon as that starts to shift or the people who are deciding start to shift, it's easy to get left behind.

Jeannie Walters:

It sure is. It sure is, and I think that some of these brands it worked for literally like a century, right. So all of a sudden, things that everybody banked on and to your point, like that assigned value, like we assigned value to certain things for decades or a century, and now all of a sudden we're shifting the very meaning of that. That's a pretty seismic shift for some of these organizations and when you're a legacy organization like that, maybe you think you shouldn't follow trends. But it isn't about following trends, it's about paying attention to what people are really expecting.

Rohit Bhargava:

Right

Jeannie Walters:

Yeah. That one is going to be interesting too because I think if Sotheby's is struggling people will start to really sit up and take notice of these bigger conversations about what does art mean? How? How are we assigning value? What is the next wave of all of those things? And um, Steve Martin actually wrote a. He's written a couple of fiction books, and one of them was about art and his whole

Rohit Bhargava:

The Picasso at Lapin Agile, is that one you're talking about?

Jeannie Walters:

I think this one I'm trying to remember the name of it and I'm blanking on it now, but it was basically it was about a young woman who's an art dealer, and part of what is so fascinating about her character is that she, like, takes a Picasso home just to hang in her bathroom for a day, because she just loves the art.

Jeannie Walters:

And I think part of it was that there aren't many people like that in that world and she just really loved the art. So that's, if you love it, you love it and that has value and you can't discount that either. So well, speaking of art, we're going all over the place. So when we talk about kind of the most basic utilitarian objects in our homes, I don't think anything can be argued as like more humble than the kitchen sponge right that we've all had for a zillion decades now. We buy the one in the little saran wrap, we use it for a while, we throw it out. It's a whole thing.

Jeannie Walters:

And it was probably a couple of years ago now that there became a viral sponge and of course you know I'm talking about sponge daddy, and now there's sponge baby and they've got a whole line. But this is from Wirecutter and the headline is the Scrub Daddy Sponge has a cult following, but is it better than this Wirecutter favorite? And they really put it head to head with the more traditional Scotch-Brite, you know, the green on one side, the yellow on the other, and they did a honest to goodness review where they had like a pan that they purposely burned things on and they tested both of them and they basically came out pretty pretty much the same in some cases, in most cases. So it got me thinking like why did this become so viral? Why did this become a thing? And I you know I have my theories, but before I do, I would love to hear your perspective on this and why do you think this worked? This little sponge with a face.

Rohit Bhargava:

I think it worked for a few reasons. I mean one is because it has a personality. It looks like a smiley face, so it brought some personality to something that you know people consider, like you said, a utility like not really that useful. I think it also broke, uh, gender norms a little bit, because it was the scrub daddy, not the scrub mommy.

Jeannie Walters:

Nice.

Rohit Bhargava:

And so I think there was like a little bit of element of that like.

Rohit Bhargava:

And the guy who, I mean it, broke out because of Shark Tank, I think that was like a main thing. And when the guy came and presented it, you know, he kind of came in and uh said you know, I'm the, I'm the dishwasher of the family, like that's my role, right, like that's what I do. And this was a time, culturally, when I think you were seeing a lot of examples of shifting gender norms, like Tide, I think, or one of the detergent brands, was running a commercial and featuring the NFL quarterback Drew Brees and he called himself the equipment manager of the household because he did all the laundry. Um, so, like you know, here's a guy who is, like in the most macho sport ever doing the laundry at home. Here's another guy doing the dishes at home, and it was like this portrayal of men in the household as not being the useless guy on the couch, and I think that that was really breaking some stereotypes and so it fit perfectly into that cultural narrative too.

Jeannie Walters:

That's a great point and I think part of what I have seen is that people feel like this is a very authentic brand. It's very like they relate to it. They feel like they trust when new products are being rolled out. They trust that they're going to work and that they've been. You know that they get excited about, like these new sponges, which is kind of funny to even say. But you're absolutely right. And I think the part about the Wirecutter review which kind of struck me was you know, were they kind of hoping that it wasn't functional? Were they kind of hoping that this wasn't going to win and they were going to? They were going to be able to say, you know, hey, this, this tried and true version.

Rohit Bhargava:

Is it just marketing?

Jeannie Walters:

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Rohit Bhargava:

You don't need that smiley face to like put the spoon through to clean the spoon. Like you could use it, you could do that with a regular sponge.

Jeannie Walters:

Yeah like, but the, the tone of it made me think like. I think the reviewer was like genuinely surprised at the, at the way they could use it and the way that it like even met.

Jeannie Walters:

I think the the word ergonomic was used right like this really fits really nicely in my hand and and so I think that there's something here about, like to your point, having that personality and just being a really authentic brand and that term has been thrown around and, you know, misused so many times in marketing. But I feel like people, all of us in this world of, like, deep fakes and AI and all this, like there is this craving for just humanity, authentic humanity, and in a weird way, a sponge with a face connects with that in us.

Rohit Bhargava:

Well, and because there's also an identifiable founder right. Like there's someone who's like I am the Scrub Daddy. Like I don't know if there's a Mister Scotch or a Mister Brite, right? Probably at some point there was but like there's no identifiable person, right, who's sitting there like washing dishes.

Jeannie Walters:

It's so true, it's so true. And I think that when you think about the brands of today, even the big high-tech brands that kind of go viral. We know the founders, we know the people who were connected to those brands and that's always a big shift, like going from the Steve Jobs to Tim Cook. That was a big thing and Tim Cook, I think, has done a great job of being out there and connecting as well. It's interesting to think about as leaders ourselves, are there products in our product line, are there ways that we're approaching experience, that maybe we're making it too functional, too simplified, too utilitarian and what it really needs is like a happy face or just a way to authentically connect? So I am going to be watching this brand as well, all right, and this last one is just goofy. I'm going to say that. That's my opinion, but I think it's pretty goofy.

Jeannie Walters:

So this is about Fridgescaping. Now, had you heard of this?

Rohit Bhargava:

I had seen it yeah.

Jeannie Walters:

Okay. So I had kind of heard about it in the dark recesses of like Instagram and things like that and I honestly wasn't sure if it was real, if people really did this, but indeed they do.

Rohit Bhargava:

I always assume it's real, by the way.

Jeannie Walters:

So this is from the Washington Post and the headline is Fridgescaping is Everywhere, but Is it Safe? And the idea of Fridgescaping is literally what it sounds like. You basically decorate the inside of your refrigerator and the people who claim that this is a good thing, they say, well, it puts all this wonderful fresh produce in front and so people eat it more, and things like that. It makes me smile when I open my fridge and people do seasonal things and so they're cleaning out their fridge very well.

Jeannie Walters:

So there are some things other people are kind of like hold on timeout. When you're transferring all of your fresh produce to beautiful seasonal containers like that might not be great for how you actually store the food. It might not be the best you know healthy way to store or safe way to store the food. When you're transferring everything from the container that has expiration dates to containers that don't, that's another consideration. So it's just kind of a goofy little trend, and so I'm just like this is one of those things. When I think about all the work you've done, Rohit and your, your book like this is non-obvious to me.

Jeannie Walters:

I do not get this. So what like and how do we? Kind of know, it's a trend, I think, in this world of social media. One or two people can post something and people go. Oh my gosh, this is everywhere, Right, Like I've.

Rohit Bhargava:

Well, that I mean that I can tell you an answer to right away. It's not a trend, it's a fad.

Jeannie Walters:

OK.

Rohit Bhargava:

And people often confuse those two things, and I think the difference is that a fad is usually something that happens in one category with one group of people, whereas a trend happens with lots of different people in lots of different industries and there's a crossover. So, for example, the fad here is Fridgescape your fridge. Make everything look really nice so you can take an Instagram photo.

Rohit Bhargava:

The trend could be that, in a world where we feel overwhelmed, we're looking to to organize our lives in more you know set specific ways, and one example of that is the you know fridgescaping, and another example is the Marie Kondo-ing of your closet. Another example is you know the minimalism around, like your schedule, like trying to get stuff off of your Zoom calendar, or like you know fixing your schedule so that you have different increments, so that you can like schedule your free time or whatever it is Like people are super specific about their schedule, right. So like when you take the scheduling thing together with the fridgescaping thing, together with the Marie Kondo thing, now you might actually be able to point to a trend that has a human behavior behind it, but like scaping fridgescaping not a trend that's just a fad that is fun to report, and the news article is exactly what you would expect it to be.

Rohit Bhargava:

Hey, check out all these people doing something that's fun and viral, but uh-oh, there might be some danger to it that you're not thinking about. Let's bring that up, right. And so I mean, this is a very typical kind of media lens on something that seems like it would be a trend and everybody kind of looks at it and then they forget about it like three months later.

Jeannie Walters:

I love the way you describe that and I think it's a really important point. And the other thing that I have found is that, you know, I will be scrolling and I'll see a headline about you know, teenagers doing something dumb. And I have two young men who I'm raising and they kind of laugh sometimes because I'll say, oh my gosh, do you know about this? Like don't eat laundry detergent. You guys, right, like don't do it. And they, they laugh and they say, like this is somebody did one thing stupid and somebody jumped on it and said we're all doing this stupid thing, right.

Jeannie Walters:

And so I think that we also have to, just to your point, like, remember the media lens, remember that they're looking for these stories cause, hey, I picked up this story cause I thought what is fridgescaping? This looks ridiculous. Let's talk about it, right? So so I think it's a really good point to really kind of make some distinctions between what is the thing that we're looking at and what does it really mean in the greater context of the world and of how people are interacting with the world and one another. So it's a great point.

Jeannie Walters:

Well, are you a fridgescaper? I'm curious.

Rohit Bhargava:

Me? No. Although the one element of FridgeScaping we did get to is we threw out all our plastic containers and now we only use glass containers.

Jeannie Walters:

We did the same.

Rohit Bhargava:

Which is a part of the Fridgescaping. You know the picture you showed what kindof super theatrical I guess, but if you look at some of these fridgescaping image that people are sharing it's literally just like 25 glass containers that are the same shape, same size, with all different food, so like it's basically your fridge, but with all containers, the exact same size. So it's not as disorganized as most of our fridges typically are, with different stuff and you know apples thrown in the side and that you know jar of jelly all the way in the back that you know we forget about. Like you know, it's like that.

Jeannie Walters:

Yep, yep For sure. Well, it's funny what you say about like needing control too, because we kind of touched on that in the beginning with the pre-planning, holiday shopping and things like that. There seems to be a wave of that. And when my when my husband and I first got married which is a long time ago now, but we had a whole discussion because I used whatever pen was around for the checks and he was like no, you have to use black ink to record and we had a whole discussion about that.

Jeannie Walters:

But I realized that looking at a check register with all black ink was very important to him and you choose your battles in these relationships, but I realized that was just about that moment of that felt good, that felt like he had control over that, even when other things were happening. That was important and so sometimes you just have to go okay, that's what it is.

Rohit Bhargava:

We all have something like that right, Probably.

Jeannie Walters:

We absolutely do. We absolutely do.

Jeannie Walters:

I'm not going to share mine.

Rohit Bhargava:

but I don't know if this is one, but I don't understand people who go to the baggage claim and then don't remember what their bag looks like. I don't have any respect for those people. How do you not know what your bag looks like? I don't get that. I just don't get it.

Jeannie Walters:

I don't either.

Jeannie Walters:

I don't either.

Rohit Bhargava:

Maybe I travel too much and I'm cranky, but that's just like don't travel. I mean at that point like really, or don't check your bag.

Jeannie Walters:

We're taking your license away to travel.

Rohit Bhargava:

Yeah, I'm sorry you picked up the wrong bag. You're banned from travel for six months.

Jeannie Walters:

We probably have lots of travel things. I found that when you travel a lot, you have your little routines, and when people don't honor those routines, they're just in my way, right.

Rohit Bhargava:

Yeah, I mean I'm hopefully a little more forgiving than that, because I do think that there's something to say about people who are on the trip of their lives and they really get to you know whatever. But like tie a ribbon around your bag or something you know, like that's not that difficult, right.

Jeannie Walters:

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Well, this was so fun and I'm so appreciative of your time and all of the work that you've contributed so far. And I just want to know is there any kind of final thought here? As we look to the future, as we look to 2025, what do you think business leaders, customer experience leaders should be thinking about when it comes to these non-obvious trends?

Rohit Bhargava:

Yeah, look, one of the things I say in my talks all the time is that the people who understand people always win, and I think that's especially true when it comes to customer experience and customer um, you know, anybody working as any sort of customer role and what I hope we were able to do my co-author and I in the book was give people some real techniques to be able to better understand people and pay attention to details that are around, and sometimes it's not about having any special training or abilities, it's about intention. You just have to intend to pay attention, put that phone down a little bit and look around at what's going on and notice the details, and I think sometimes that leads to more creative thinking, it leads to more innovation and just makes us better and more empathetic people too. So I know it's pretty ambitious to expect that a book could help anyone do all of those things, but that was our goal, that was what we were trying to do.

Jeannie Walters:

I love it. I love it and I did get a chance to read the book and I do highly recommend it and I'll show this for the folks watching on video and I'll do my best to describe it. But it has all these great illustrations and even the way you organize the content through this storyboard where you can really kind of see the overall macro thinking around this as well, which is really powerful. So it's not just like a book of do this tip, do this tip. They all tie together in this really unique way. that

Rohit Bhargava:

That storyboard was our replacement of the table of contents, and it was based on an actual white board with a bunch of post-it notes.

Rohit Bhargava:

That was the storyboard for the book, so it was actually inspired by what we did when we were writing the book.

Jeannie Walters:

Yeah, there are so many great little tidbits in here and I just really enjoyed it and I think I read it on a flight, so it's a quick, fun, easy, easy read. So I appreciate that too. There's we get so much content these days, right, that something actionable like that is really powerful. So thank you for that. So, yeah, so good luck on the book and everything else that you're doing. So appreciate your time and I really have just really appreciated all of your work throughout the year, so thank you for that as well.

Rohit Bhargava:

Well, thank you. Thanks for the invitation. This was a lot of fun.

Jeannie Walters:

Great, great. Well, thank you for being here. And and thank YOU for being here. We are always so grateful to have you along with us on the Experience Action Podcast. Now, just a reminder you can always leave me a voicemail at askjeannievip and that way I can answer your question all about customer experience, or maybe fridgescaping, we'll see. So thanks for being here and we will see you next time.

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