The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 071 Braden Kelly

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show of 23

EPISODE #71: BRADEN KELLEY

In this episode, Travis interviews Braden Kelley. Braden is a successful entrepreneur and founder of

the fastest growing innovation portal innovationexcellence.com as well as a trusted consultant and

speaker when it comes to innovation and marketing strategies. His expertise in the field of innovation

and marketing has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs improve their business and take it to the next

level.

Travis and Braden shares their knowledge and know-how in using innovation to refine and improve

your business. They pointed out how entrepreneurs should create goals for innovation and define what

innovation is to them. This would help entrepreneurs in successfully create ways of innovating their

products and be more competitive in today’s cut-throat market. Braden also gave 3 components in

achieving innovation success and these are value creation, value access, and value translation which

they thoroughly defined and explained. These are just some of insights that Braden and Travis shared

on the value of innovation that entrepreneurs should take into account in their business today.

Braden Kelley- using innovation

to grow your business

Travis: Hey it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 71 of the Entrepreneur's Radio

Show. A production of Rockstar Entrepreneur Network, conversations with self-made millionaires and

high level entrepreneurs that grow your business.

Today I've got an interesting show for you that focuses on something from a completely different angle.

We focus on innovation. It’s something that I believe far too many businesses under utilize in growing

their business. Our guest today is Braden Kelly. Braden is the founder of Blogging Innovation, the

fastest growing innovation portal on the web, 59% year over year growth, that's pretty impressive. And

also the Foundation for Innovation Excellence. Braden has, is also the author of Stoking Your

Innovation Bonfire, and he is a contributing author to A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing.

Now before we get started I want to remind you to stay with us until the very end if you can because

I've got a question for you. And also I like to share a little inspiration with you as an entrepreneur. Also I

have a challenge for you, so be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can. Now that we've got

that out of the way, let's get down to business. Without further ado, welcome to the show Braden.

Braden: Thank you Travis.




Travis: How are you my man?

Braden: I am good; it's a beautiful day here in the Seattle area.

Travis: I'm jealous, I love Seattle. Hey listen, I don't know if you've listened to the show or you

understand the format. One of the things I like to do is I like to get kind of the background story and get

a feel of where you come from and how you discovered what you teach. Because the whole reason of

the show is I believe success is not presented in its truest light and a lot of people portray their success

in a way that seems like they're smarter and more perfect than everybody, when really success is kind

of a flawed journey, right.

Braden: Uhm hmm

Travis: You know, it's not perfect or there's a very few of us that get it right just the first time. There are

rare occasions, but you know, it's a journey to get there. So what's the back-story, how did you find

success and what brought you to today?

Braden: Well, I think it's exactly like you said, it's you know, success is kind of a meandering journey

and one that I'm in the middle of, or, you know, I would always look at it as I'm in the middle of it, where

other people might think that I'm farther along or at the end. I always believe that I'm towards the

beginning or in the middle. And I feel that it is kind of a meandering journey and that really, you know,

when you look at it we're all born successful in our journey during our life is to really unlock that

success. And to find out where we fit best, what our true purpose is in life and unfortunately the way

that our educational system is set-up and in the way that our society has set-up, it's not really set-up to

support that journey. It's set-up to look at it at children as empty vessels to be filled up with what they

want to fill them up with.

Travis: Right.

Braden: And not necessarily helping them unlock with their true purpose is and helping them be

successful.

Travis: Yeah, I agree with you. It's don't be creative, get in line and do as you're told, which is really

kind of the exact opposite of what an entrepreneur does, right.

Braden: Right. And the biggest problem with our educational system now is that there's too much of a

focus on the right answer, there's too much focus on trying to increase stem education and things like

that and too little focus on educating students for the 21st century. And if we look at what skills are

going to be required for success in the 21st century, the countries that are staying at the top of the




pyramid or move from the bottom to the middle, or if they're at the top they'll slow down to middle like

the US is doing now.

Travis: Right.

Braden: It's the countries that recognize that innovation is the key to sustained success. And as a

result, educate their employees and their children to have skills in entrepreneurship, to have skills in

successful collaboration, and to have skills in how to invent and how to create, instead of stamping out

that creativity during the educational process. And so, my success journey has really been trying to

figure out what doesn't resonate with me and what I won't be successful at. And finding those elements

as I go through life of things that do resonate for me and then try to focus more effort on that. And so, I

came from, not a poor family but, you know, a humble beginnings family, my father was a carpenter.

And so there was no money for me to go to university when I graduated from high school. So I went

into the military, I joined the US Navy, and spent a couple of years on active duty in the US Navy. Had

the opportunity to travel the world a bit in the western pacific. And that enabled me to then pay for

university, the University of Oregon. Go ducks.

And there I studied business which is something that I had always felt that I wanted to study, and did

my military service before the university rather than after so that I would have that option. And that the

government wouldn't tell me what to study based on their needs through ROTC or something like that.

And then after school I graduated during one of the recessions of the early 90's and there weren't a lot

of opportunities available. That's why I ended up in the technology industry, taking phone calls and

helping people through solve their technology problems. Which wasn't where I imagined by any stretch

of the imagination that I would be after I graduated.

Travis: Right.

Braden: But, you know, landed a job at Semantic, one of the larger software companies in the world

and had the opportunity to learn a lot along the way and throughout that journey, kept recognizing

opportunities as they presented themself and course correcting my journey as I went along towards

what I thought would make me successful. Did really well, ended up in Silicon Valley. Again, on the

technology industry but more so, at by that point, helping people use technology to solve business

problems. And it was during that part of the journey that what I recognize was the part of my job that I

really enjoy was helping people solve business problems. And the company that I was working for at

that time, which was Computer Associates, was taking me towards artificial intelligence, towards rules-

based programming, wanted me to learn C++ and Java, and I just, you know, "Hold on, wait, time out,

that's not the direction that I want to go. And so I took a time out, went off to England to do my MBA at

London Business School, to refocus my career in a more commercial direction. And take what I had

learned at that point, which is enjoy helping people solve their business problems and try to build upon




that and work towards using that towards achieving success. And it's been about time and then after I

graduated that's when I became an entrepreneur and that's when I started doing independent

consulting, and writing, and speaking around the topics of innovation, marketing, strategy, and helping

organizations achieve success in those areas. And as you can imagine, listening through that sort of

journey it didn't come easy and there's a lot more detail that I could talk about but it has been a journey.

And for me one of the biggest things was recognizing opportunity when it presented itself because

there's lots of little forks on the road if you look for them. And then ultimately capitalize on them.

Travis: You know, tons of it. Well you know I'm curious. So what part of technology plays a role within

the business strategy that you do now?

On a higher level.

Braden: Yeah, well I think it's the internet. You know for me in the types of work that I do now, a lot of

it's around helping organizations, you know, instill or reinforce a culture of success and our networks,

and our-- The internet helped to really facilitate communication and collaboration, and all of these

things. And then on the marketing side there's a lot more ways now to reach people via online and

mobile, and social that the internet and our networks really empower and make possible. And so I'm

constantly striving to understand how clients understand how to take advantage of these networks and

their capabilities as they grow.

Travis: Yeah, well, for me now I've been in business since the early 90's and the drastic change in the

way we do things versus today is just, you know, night and day. The majority of it is just facilitated or

has been facilitated through the internet. And the innovation that you talk about I believe is coming from

the, what's referred to as flattening of the world, right, where there's less and less borders between

countries and the way do things. Do you feel like that's the leading edge of what's causing or helping

expedite innovation? Does that make sense? Maybe phrasing that wrong but it's just, you know, I've--

So 22 years in business, I used one of the first mobile phones in my business where my monthly mobile

bill was $2,000 a month just for one phone, you know. And then I graduated alphanumeric pagers in

conjunction with mobile phones. And now the technology and all the things that I can do and the

efficiencies that I have versus back then are just unbelievable. And a lot of that change and innovation

is spurring a whole new level of innovation. Do you agree with that? And is it that kind of the path that

you're going down also?

Braden: I do agree with that. If you look at what our networks make possible versus what was possible

before, I mean now we have the ability to access just about any piece of information that we want at

any point in time that we want. You don't have to wait to go look something up. People in the palm of

their hand have the ability to answer just about any question that might come up or at least point them

in the right direction towards future research when they get home so to speak. And the consumer and




the individual is being empowered in ways that just weren't possible before, it truly is possible for

people to make money with what they know wherever they are in the world now. I mean if you look at

things like CrowdSpring, or 99 designs, or-- Even Amazon Mechanical Turk, or something like that, you

know, people wherever they are in the world can make a living based on what they know. And if you

look at also, in the innovation side. Interesting little known fact is that consumerism in the UK spend

more money on innovating than the consumer companies do. And kind of the things that make that

possible are things like, you know, Quirky, or Indiegogo, and Kickstarter, and places where they can

raise money. And things like 3D printing that people can use now to make an expensive prototypes.

Travis: Hey Braden, I'm picking up a lot of, and I don't mean to interrupt you, I'm picking up a lot of

background noise, there's something that-- Is that on your side?

Braden: I'm not hearing it, do you still hear it?

Travis: No, no it stopped. Whatever it is I didn't wanted to take away from your message of what you're

saying. Your speakers, our equipment on this side is really sensitive and so I want to take away from

the message there. And so you were saying in the UK, they spend more money on innovation than the

companies do?

Braden: Yes, in the UK the consumer spend more money on innovation than the consumer companies

do. And really what makes that possible, you know, new tools that are internet enabled like Corky, like

Kickstarter, like Corky for submitting ideas that can be turned into products. Things like Kickstarter and

Indiegogo that can be used for raising money to fund somebody's realization of an invention, and

ultimately, hopefully an innovation. Things like 3D printing that enable people to make prototypes that

are low cost that they wouldn't have able to make before at such a low cost. Also then you've got things

like Alibaba, these networks of suppliers and manufacturers that enable somebody with an idea that

has a prototype that can show somebody how to make something. You know now, consumers can

connect directly with manufacturers to produce things at scale and get their idea off the ground. So it's

becoming easier and easier for people all around the world to go from idea to reality at scale, both

faster and cheaper. And that poses both problems and opportunity for large companies.

Travis: Right. And what I have found is a lot of people don't know about what you're talking about. A lot

of people don't know about Mechanical Turk. If you took, well, let me qualify at that statement, if you

took internet marketers, experience internet marketers out of that group. A lot of brick and mortar and

service-based business people and just average John Q. Public really don't know anything about

Alibaba as sourcing or Mechanical Turk, or any of that stuff that you're talking about. Are you aware of

that?




Braden: You know, sometimes it's easy to forget. For me, given what I talk about in the space that I

play, it's sometimes easy to forget that because most of the people that I talk to are in marketing or

innovation.

Travis: Right.

Braden: And so it's easy to forget that, that people don't necessarily understand all of the great tools

that are available out there to help them get their business off the ground or to help them get a new

product or service off the ground.

Travis: Yeah, exactly.

Braden: The global economy. But we do really live in a world now where it's no longer that just

because you have an idea mean, it used to be that you had an idea that you have to figure out how to

do the whole thing by yourself. And that's no longer true, you can start with an idea and now much

more quickly and cheaply get a prototype made with the 3D printer which you don't have to buy the 3D

printer, there's lots of services out there that will help you make a prototype, or help you create

something with the 3D printer. But even 3D printers are dropping into the $1,000, $2,000 range so it's

less than what people used to pay for a laser printer.

Travis: Yeah, exactly. There was a time when say if I wanted to produce something from a 3D printer,

say my business was. I conceive something and I would have to buy that printer assuming that the 3D

printer existed back then which it didn't, but--

Braden: Right.

Travis: The point is, is that the hybrid business models now is there's sites to where you can upload

your design and do a revenue share with them. I know a guy, I'll give you an example. A guy was into

racing his son's Go-kart, and there was a nose that broke off on the tip of the Go-carts, you know, it's

kind of an expensive hobby. And no one could find replacement parts to that nose on the Go-kart. And

so he designed one and uploaded it, and then would reach out to the networks of everybody that he

knew, the race those Go-karts and said, "Hey, you can order a new nose piece here. I designed it and I

did a revenue share with this company and they own the 3D printer,” right?

Braden: Uhm hmm

Travis: And so what they do is they place and order, he would get half the revenue, and they would

print that nose and send it to the person that bought it. And I think that's a good illustration of what

you're talking about, right.




Braden: Yes, I think that we live in an era, and it takes a little while for people to change the way that

they think, but we live in an era where just about anything that you think you might have to do yourself,

there's a good chance that there's somebody who set up a business to help facilitate that service. So

there's people that have set-up businesses to provide prototyping services. There are people that have

the 3D printer that will, you know, much like Kinko's does, or maybe Kinko's will have them soon if they

don't already, that will, you know, for a small fee, print-out whatever it is that you want to print-out on a

3D printer. And so, you know, people have to stop thinking that they have to do everything themselves

and instead if they want to get something to market that they think has a lot of potential. You know, just

kind of go on the assumption that there's probably somebody somewhere that with right agreement or

arrangement could help me get the next step done.

And you know, really, ideas are a dime a dozen, ideas are worthless without an insight that grounds

them, but then also without the execution. So if you truly are an innovator, you're going to run through

walls to realize the great idea back to me, unique and differentiate the customer insight that you have.

And that means looking at creative ways to move to the next step.

Travis: Right, right.

Braden: And those people that can help you to do that.

Travis: Yeah, I agree with you. And so there's several different connotations of that. So to continue that

example, many years ago if the 3D printer existed and you were in that business model you'd have to

go out and buy all of the equipment for that. And now you just outsource it. You can also do that with

people.

Braden: Yes.

Travis: You know. There was a time when if you needed 4 people to run your office, you needed to put

them on your staff and payroll full-time, right. Because everybody wants a full time job. Well now you

can just outsource, you can have certain people do certain task and they get paid on performance

rather than coming and placing their rear in the chair for 8 hours, right.

Braden: Right.

Travis: It's just another form of innovation to your problem.

Braden: Yes, and there's some very interesting things going on around the design of work and I wrote

about crowd computing, you know, we talk about cloud computing, and we talk about crowd sourcing.

But there's a new and emerging concept called crowd computing where it sort of reimagining who and

what does the work. So we're living in a time where now both humans and the machines can work




together to get work done. So if you imagine something like invoice processing, you know there's

certain components of getting paper invoices in and digitizing them that people have to do. Like a

person has to receive that and note that it's been received and then it's in the right format or whatever.

Or if not, initiate it being translated into a pdf or whatever.

Travis: Right.

Braden: But once it's been turned into a pdf and optical character recognition software starts to churn

through it. Here's the machine doing some work to identify what the invoice number is, who the

company is, and some of these things, and popping those into fields in a database. There's work that

humans and computers can do together. So potentially-- In the beginning you may not have very high

expectations for what the computer can do like recognizing whether the invoice number is high or not.

The invoice number is correct or not that they correctly grab the invoice number out of the pdf and put it

in the invoice number field. And so you might have a human go behind and validate whether or not that

was successful. But we live in an era now where the human doesn't have to be an employee, that a

human could be on a crowd platform that you have sitting in that process. Something like Amazon

Mechanical Turk or one of the others, where that person just that little teeny micro task of checking to

see whether it correctly grabbed the invoice number.

Travis: Right.

Braden : And then, so we almost have to reimagine work as a collection of either projects or jobs that

can be broken down into tasks and microtasks. And once you get down to that microtask level then you

can start thinking about whether or not microtask can be done by artificially intelligent machine or

whether that microtask could be done by a person using a crowd platform, or whether you want to have

that microtask performed by a contractor, or whether you want to have that microtask performed by an

employee. It used to be like you said, that you hired for people and put them in office and they did the

whole thing. But that's not necessarily the most efficient way anymore, now you can have humans and

machines working together to get things done.

Travis: Yeah, I think even the single largest, and I'm probably going to state this improperly. The single

largest program is Apache, right, and that was crowd created wasn't it?

Braden: I don't know about whether it's the largest, but yes, it's an open source business offer.

Travis: Yeah, it's an open source and that drives a lot of the things that we interact with. I think even

Facebook is built on Apache, right?

Braden: I'm not sure, but for the audience, they don't know what Apache is. Apache is a web server

and a lot of even commercial software that has a web server component uses Apache as a web server.




Travis: And it's built from a crowd standpoint, you know. It's a group of people that don't know each

other and they go in there, and its open source, and they collectively evolved this thing. A lot like

Wikipedia, right.

Braden: Right.

Travis: So now, one of the things, I know that you have one of the fastest growing innovation blogs, is

that a proper word for it? Innovation blog?

Braden: Well we like to call it a website, it does have a blog component but we also do a lot of other

things like webinars and we have a directory of service providers, and other tools on the website as

well.

Travis: Well, one of the things that was interesting here is you've got a consistent 59% year over year

growth, that's pretty impressive.

Braden: Well, thank you. Yeah, innovationexcellence.com continues to grow and we have almost

6,000 articles on the site. Now on the business aspects of innovation. And we have over 300

contributing authors from all around the world. And we get visitors from over 170 countries every

month.

Travis: And so you're using that same strategy that we're talking about to develop this and grow your

business?

Braden: Yes. So innovation excellence is one of the things that I do, and on the site our strategy really

is to not assume that we know the best answers to everything but to bring in the best voices that we

can onto the site wherever they may live in the world. And really try to build a platform for the innovation

community or for people that are innovation enthusiast or just interested in innovation. And so we do

have the blog and then we are also introducing things like research for people that want to go into a

little more depth into different innovation, or crowd sourcing, or co-creation topics. And then we're about

ready to launch a certification program that people can become certified in their innovation knowledge.

And then we'll be moving into other areas. And so we truly view it as a platform, the site itself. And we

are looking to plug in different services on top of that platform and create win-wins with people. So

we're working with Doc Williams to create our research offer. We don't necessarily have to own

everything so we create collaborative partnerships with people to create win-wins and building up the

platform with these different offerings rather than having to have everybody's and employee, and

control the whole thing, we're trying to use some of these more crowd sourced or collaborative

commerce thinking.

http://innovationexcellence.com/




Travis: Right. So take me down a path-- The majority of our listeners are existing business owners.

How can a business owner use innovation to refine and grow their business in a way that is meaningful

to them?

Braden: Well I think that the first thing that they have to do is sit down and think about what their goals

are for innovation and what innovation means to them. And so that means really setting a vision

strategy and goals for innovation, and even a definition for innovation to serve as the basis for a

common language of innovation to use within their organization. So that everybody in the organization

is talking about the same thing when they say innovation. And so I have my definition of innovation that

I use and that's innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adapted solutions

valued about every existing alternative. And there's lots of words in that definition and there's lots of key

distinction. One is the distinction between invention and innovation, they're not the same thing. Another

is the distinction between useful and valuable. If you get too focused on something that's useful and

investing in something that's useful you'll end up bankrupt. So you want to focus on investing your

money in something that's valuable, that people are going to be willing to spend more for than it cost

you to make or deliver. And then value is central in my definition and when I talk about innovation I talk

about 3 main components to innovation. And their 3 main components that I think everybody should

think about is they embark on their innovation journey if they want to achieve innovation success. And

those 3 components are value creation, value access, and value translation. Now value creation is

probably the most self-explanatory of the 3. Value creation is really all about creating value, so it's

really about making something more efficient or more effective, making something possible that was

impossible before, or even adding emotional benefits or psychological benefits for the customer or the

consumer that weren't there before. And so that's the easiest one to explain.

Value translation, the last one, I'll skip to that one, is really all about helping people understand how this

new thing is going to fit in to their lives, and so if you look back to the launch of the iPad when the iPad

was first announced. To be honest it got panned in the press, it got killed, people called it iLame,

people said it was a giant iPhone. And a lot of the reason behind that was Apple did a terrible job of

value translation when they announce the product. And they launched it with our most advanced

technology and a transformational device, or some gobbledygook techno babble that nobody really

understood. And people looked at it and thought, "Yeah, it does look like a giant iPhone".

Travis: Right.

Braden: But then, 3 months later when they started shipping the product is when the out of home

advertisement started appearing with somebody leaning back from the coach with an iPad on their lap.

And then it started to be a little bit more clear about what the used case was for this new device and

how it really started to fit in people's lives. And then another key component was the value access

component which obviously by this time Apple has a whole cadre of retail stores spread across the




world where people can go in and actually experience of the device and have knowledgeable people

that can help them really understand how this kind of device could fit in to their lives. And they've got

this whole Appstore built up already so there is a lot of additional pieces of value that people can add

on to the device. And then Apple spends a lot of time and money on things like packaging and other

things to tell people quickly and easily, start extracting value from the devices that they create and the

value that that they create.

Travis: And that all relates to value translation.

Braden: The last part where I started talking about the Apple Stores and things like that is really about

value access which is, you can almost kind of think of as friction reduction, you know. How do you get

people from the value it created to actually extracting the value from it. So value translation is how you

help people understand how something fits into their lives, value access is how you help people really

unlock the value from that. And that can be things like design, things like packaging. Things like your

channels of distribution. Getting the right products and services into the right places where people want

to consume them. And so there's a lot of different ways that you can help to help people access the

value it created. If creating the value isn't enough, you have to help people see it, see how it fits into

their lives with the translation and help them access it as well.

Travis: This is really a completely unique way of looking at things; you've got me thinking on different

levels. Where did this come from, how did you develop this?

Braden: Well, one of the things that I specialize in is collecting and connecting dots and finding new

ways to throw those dots up on the wall and hopefully result in portable mental models that are ideally

very simple. So people can carry them around in the back of their mind so you don't have to pull some

300-page book off the shelf and try to find the right diagram somewhere in the book. But hopefully

people can remember value creation, value access, and value translation, and just throw those up on a

board and start identifying what value they're creating, how they're helping people access it, and how

they're going to translate it for people. It's something that I created and that's something that comes

from my muse and something that is hopefully one of my unique talents. So it's hard to describe where

it came from.

Travis: That's pretty good job of explaining, I mean, you don't need to explain exactly where it comes

from. But in general, I like it because it's a complete, different way of thinking. Maybe not a complete

different way but it's a different angle, coming at it from a different angle, right.

Braden: Yes. I mean I think that-- When I wrote my books, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire and one of

the reasons that I wrote it was because I was just so frustrated with picking up all these other books on

innovation where I'd read 200 pages and I'd come away with like one insight out of that 200 pages. And




I thought great, okay that took me a couple of weeks to read and I got one thing out of it. And so I really

wrote my book from the standpoint of identify and remove barriers in innovation and really try to surface

as many insights as possible within the 200 pages that I wrote whether they were mine or other people.

I'm not afraid to throw other people's great thinking out there as well when I think that people have

come up with something really powerful. And I think that the key is to try to help people have things that

they can carry around with them, that they can write on a piece of paper, or printout and put on their

wall to help them remember, or pass out to their team to help guide their thinking and keep them

focused. And I think there's a lot of overly complicated frameworks out there now as it relates to

innovation.

Travis: Right. So I guess from the business owner standpoint, and I have my own answer to this,

although I want to hear yours first. I'm a business owner, why do I need to innovate?

Braden: Well, my answer to that is that in any market, you're not generally the only one. In any market

you're always seeking to compete and hopefully be number 1, or become number one or stay number

1. And so innovation is the way to keep you focused around creating new value and creating more

value than every existing alternative. And a lot of us are entrepreneurial in nature, a lot of us are looking

to challenge the status quo, and so if you don't invest in innovation, it's actually riskier than the risk that

you take in investing in innovation. And I think that's something that people don't always grasp or don't

always think about is that, you know, people think about investing in innovation is being risky because

you might come up with an idea that you hopefully have grounded in a unique and differentiated

customer inside that you think has promise. But there's no guarantee it's going to pay off. You might

invest a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, a million dollars in developing something and it might

completely fail. Hopefully you're investing in a handful of things, so hopefully one of them will succeed.

Travis: Right.

Braden: Hopefully you're creating a portfolio of ideas but even with that there's risk involved, and I think

that a lot of people don't think about the fact that not doing that is actually risky as well. And I would

argue, more risky than engaging in innovation and just be nearing to invest in staying at the top of the

game.

Travis: I agree with you. I think the number 1 innovation is, it would be naive to believe that other

people that you're competing with, doing what you do, are not trying to improve how they do it.

Braden: Right.

Travis: And so innovation allows you to stay on the edge and push things, and possibly dominate your

category. I think people get lulled into a false sense of security because something has worked for so

long that they believe that just rinsing and repeating and doing the same thing over and over will




maintain their level of success. And it will for a short period of time, although it will lose its

effectiveness. And so that for me, I've always been an innovator for a couple of reasons, I get very

bored with the same old same old, and number 2 I want to dominate what I do, I want to be the

absolute best. And you don't do that, or I don't feel like you achieve that without pressing some buttons

and without willing to make a couple of mistakes or wrong moves along the way just as long as you

remain accountable for them and dial it in, right?

Braden: Right, and as you look at a business, operational excellence is incredibly important and quality

if you're making products, or delivering services. Also incredibly important but the fact of the matter is

the customers and their desires and what delights them doesn't stay static forever. And so if you don't

keep innovating, if you don't keep investing and staying close to your customers, which ultimately,

hopefully, will lead to innovation, then you may find yourself no longer at the top step of the podium so

to speak. And if you look in the personal computer market, Dell was the number 1 for a long time but

they totally missed the inflection point when things went from megahertz and megabytes to design. And

they were investing next to nothing in design and HP came along and ate their lunch and moved to the

top spot at that point in time.

Travis: Yeah.

Braden: Because they were investing more. And so, just because you're number one and just because

you're doing a good job of executing your strategy doesn't mean the customer is going to change what

they find important. And that creates both risk to your business if you're not investing in innovations,

staying close to your customer, but also opportunity.

Travis: Right.

Braden: If you're not the number 1 player for you to try to jump to number 1 when that inflection point

happens.

Travis: Yeah, also the intangible that we're not talking about is innovation causes you to grow on a

personal level. I know for me it has expanded me a wide range of directions that I didn't anticipate

because of the journey that takes you down when you're doing it. Does that make sense?

Braden: Yes. And I just published an article on Monday that revealed the secret of innovation success,

and I can share it with you in one word, curiosity.

Travis: Yes.

Braden: So, stay curious my friend.




Travis: Yeah, I'm with you and its funny the way we started out this interview you were talking about

kids and school. And I was very embarrassed about this for years, I was a terrible student. Now, you

know I've had some pretty epic success in business. And a lot of the reasons why I've had success in

business is because I'm curious and because I'm willing to push the boundaries, and I'm willing to scare

myself, I'm willing to do things different. All of those things I just described are exactly what gets you in

trouble in school.

Braden: Right. Sit still, stay in your seat.

Travis : Right. Don't push that, don't walk down there, what are you doing, all of those things. And so

for years I was embarrassed about it because I don't like to be, I never wanted to be viewed as a

trouble maker or a trouble kid or anything, it's just I couldn't sit still, you know. I even have a hard time

sitting still now, is I'm just intoxicated and exhilarated, and excited about forward movement. And so, so

many of the things that you've mentioned completely resonate with me. Let me go back a little bit

because I took some notes and I want to go deeper on a couple of things. And so you said create a

qual-- Create a goal for innovation. I was writing so fast my writing is terrible. Create a goal for

innovation. So you get a clear objective of what you want when you decide to innovate in your

company. I'm going to give you an example and you tell me if I'm on with this example, okay.

Braden: Okay.

Travis: Let's say I own a local business and my goal is to be-- I'm going to innovate to where I'm the

most sought after company in my local area for quality and for value and people come to me without

the focus on price but for the removal of risk. Is that a goal, or being the best at what I do locally, is that

a goal for innovation?

Braden: If you would have a way of measuring it, it could be a goal.

Travis: Okay, so you have to quantify it, that's a goal for innovation. And one of the reasons why they

use that as an example is I think a common problem a lot of people make is they focus on top line

growth rather than bottom line growth. They want to grow things 200% whereas a couple of simple

moves, if you strategically offer your services or your product and it's a high quality, well you can

charge 20% more and make 300% more net profit, right?

Braden: Uhm hmm

Travis: And I think that's something that people miss. Okay, so let's move on to the next one then, write

a term for innovation. So innovation can change the iteration or the meaning of innovation can change

per person right?




Braden: Yes, and per organization, and I think it's important for an organization to sit down on a cross-

functional way and a collaborative team focused way to define what innovation is going to mean for the

organization. So anybody, anywhere in the organization says innovation or starts saying we need to

innovate or we're going to innovate that they're all talking about the same thing. And so then you have

to, of course widely communicate that definition as well. Hopefully along with your vision strategy and

goals for innovation.

Travis: Right, okay.

Braden: Yeah.

Travis: So that definitely makes sense, everybody's got to have the same vernacular. So, the

difference between invention and innovation. So to me invention is creating something, innovation is

making something better.

Braden: So the way that I like to talk about it is invention is directly related to the act of creation or

creativity. It's coming up with something new. But without making something widely adoptive, it's not

innovation. So it's great that you come up with a new mousetrap or something but hundreds of other

people come up with a new mousetrap every year. Apply for patents on new mousetraps every single

year, but still we use the same little clap trap that was invented a 100 years ago. And so that means

nobody has really innovated in the mousetrap space because if they had then we'd all be using that.

And so it has to be widely adopted, it has to create more value than every existing alternative and make

people want to go through the pain of replacing their existing solution, and that existing solution could

be the dreaded "Do nothing" option which people forget about. People say, "Oh, I came up with

something that nobody has come up with before, this is completely new to the world, nobody has come

up with a solution before for this problem. And the reality is that even when you think that's true or even

when you look across the landscape you can't find any other product or service that does it, people are

still solving that problem and it may be by doing nothing. And they're still going to have to fight against

that.

Travis: Right.

Braden: Still going to have to convince people to stop doing nothing, and that's not always as easy as

you might think.

Travis: Boy, amen to that. I see people creating products, good people, sharp people, creating

products to solve a problem that most people don't realize that they even have a problem. A lot of

problems only become clear to you after 20 years of living with it, right.

Braden: Uhm hmm




Travis: And unfortunately trying to sell prevention to a problem that someone doesn't know that they

have is a very tough sell, right.

Braden: Yes, and if you really-- People also like to talk an innovation about a kind of two ends of the

spectrum, one is disruptive innovation or radical innovation on one end. And then on the other end, the

more incremental type innovations, things that are making a small change or improvement. And people

often forget that when it comes to an incremental innovation you might get away with just explaining it

because it anchors to something that people already understand. Kind of like how you're saying on the

other end, on the disruptive end that people may not even understand that they have a problem. So as

you move towards that radical or disruptive in the innovation spectrum, you need to invest in education

at the same time and helping people understand what the problem is, understand that your solution can

finally remove it for them. And more and more of that value translation piece of helping people

understand how the solution fits into their lives, and you can see situations where people didn't invest in

that education and failed as a result. Things like the Segway. The vision for the Segway is it was going

to completely transform how we move around, and it was going to disrupt everything from the

skateboard to the automobile. And that didn't happen, and a lot of that was the fact that they didn't

invest enough time and effort in helping municipalities or cities understand that these things are going

to be safe to ride on the sidewalk.

Travis: Right.

Braden: And getting permission for them to be ridden on the sidewalk. And so don't ignore the

education component if you do really have something that's disruptive.

Travis: Right. So, okay, and then the last one is value creation. Let's see. No, no. Those are the 3 that

you had outlined already, the value creation, value translation, and then value access, right?

Braden: Yup.

Travis: Okay. So yeah, I agree with you. As a matter of fact I think we're taking a step back to what you

said as far as the education. The day of one step marketing, buy my stuff, call job qualities number 1 is

less and less effective than it ever has been before. And we're in an age where people need more

nurturing, more education, more time spent on educating the why. And that speaks specifically to what

you were talking about, right?

Braden: Right. And we're also in a day and age where because we have so much information

available, customers are expecting information to be available. And so that means that entrepreneurs

and companies need to make sure that they have the right content available and the right places at the

right times so that customers that don't want to be sold to can sell themselves. And that's also a change

in mindset that people have to have and come to terms with us, it relates to marketing.




Travis: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. One of the things that you said that I wanted to comment on and

I didn't made a note of it is you said you don't feel like you need to have the answers to everything. I

think that's brilliant of you to be openly candid about that and I think the same way also. It's much better

to just take a collaborative approach. When you're an expert on something, you still don't need to know

that answer to everything. It's better to listen to a multiple of ideas and figure out what applies best to

what you're doing. But I've been around people that because they've had success on one or two things

feel like they know the answers to everything. And it's very hard to, or at least for me to consistently

remain a part of their tribe if they have that ongoing, prevailing attitude.

Braden: Right.

Travis: And I don't know if that's just a filter of mine or is that a filter of yours and do you think that's a

common thing amongst people today.

Braden: Well, I think that some people do think that they know the best way or the right way. And I

think that the better way to think about it or the mindset to have is that I know one way. And it's good to

know one way because some people don't have any way of getting something done. So you're an

expert because you know one way. But as soon as you start thinking it's the best way or the right way

then you close yourself off to seeing when a better way comes along. So maintain the mindset of I

know one way of how to do this.

Travis: Exactly, and now, notice there's a flip side of that, okay. And I think that there's should be a tax

on opinions. If you don't know for sure what you're talking about, then hold your tongue because there's

so many people that deliver advise and other people take it as the actually what they should do, and

this is serious stuff that affects their livelihood, their business, they're income. And they're taking the

advice from people that actually know nothing. I see people write reviews on books and they hadn't

read the book yet. And I'm like, why have you written this review, right?

Braden: Yeah.

Travis: So at the same time there is multiple ways to achieve something. But try to surround yourself

by people that are going to give you advice based on what they know and hold their tongue whenever

they don't know, or at least, clearly explained to you, this is my opinion, and I'll have experience in this

because there's so much confusion. I belong to several different groups, and I see a lot of people going

deep on topics that they're completely wrong on, when they really-- I guess they maybe they don't

realize, they're doing themselves and the person that they're sharing the advise with justice, and I know

that has a negative connotation but I get frustrated when I see people taking an advise that is going to

harm them. Have you experienced that much and what's your opinion on that?




Braden: Well, being at a consultant and one of the things that I try to do in my practice is to be upfront

honest because it's much better to admit that you don't know something than to have people find it out.

And so I tried not say that I know the answer when I don't, and instead say, “I'll go find out” when I don't

know the answer. And I think that it is true, that a lot of people will pretend that they know that that's the

way or the best answer. And I think that people should always remember as a consumer of advice that

they are the ones that are going to have to implement the advice. And as a deliverer of advice, I always

try to keep in mind the fact that somebody else is going to have to deliver-- I'm not going to sit there

and run the day to day operations for a client. So it's very important that I get them involved as early

and often in crafting the solution with them based on what I know and what they know.

Travis: Right.

Braden: And what they can do. And to make each solution a custom solution that can actually be

implemented.

Travis: We need as many entrepreneurs as we can get. I'm completely convinced that

entrepreneurship makes a person a better individual, a better human being. And I guess from me, my

advice would be just be careful about-- Surround yourself with people that know what they're talking

about on a topic when you seek advice, right?

Braden: Right.

Travis: And seek a mentor if you're going down a path and a path that you're not familiar with. Seek a

mentor that's been down that path because those decisions can cut 18 months, 24 months, 4 years off

of a journey, right?

Braden: Right. Anytime you can learn from someone else’s mistakes, the fewer mistakes you have to

make yourself.

Travis: Yeah, and if possible having them interact with you and look at what you're doing and saying,

"No, no, skip that, focus on this, eliminate A, B, C over there." It's just a great way to fast track a

business. And it's the best way to dial down the background, nonsensical noise that could derail you

and focus on what will give you a meaningful impact in the shortest period of time.

Hey we're getting close on time so we need to transition into the lightning round, are you ready for the

lightning round Braden?

Braden: I am ready for the lightning round.

Travis: Alright, a quick question for you, are you left brain, right brain? I have a suspicion on which I

think you are but which one are you.




Braden: Both.

Travis: Well, yeah, I know your both, but which did you start out as?

Braden: I started out as the more logical side, but become more artistic.

Travis: Yeah, that's what I suspected. Where do you think I started out, where would you guess?

Braden: I would imagine similar.

Travis: I started out right.

Braden: I forget which is left and which is right.

Travis: Right is the artistic, highly creative, highly innovative.

Braden: Okay, alright.

Travis: And left is the analytical.

Braden: Okay, so it's the other way.

Travis: Yeah, and so obviously the more you balance those two in-between each other the better your

business becomes. But I started out as a right brain and had to learn to develop those left brain skills

which took quite awhile. As you know, developing the other side that doesn't to you naturally can take

some time right.

Braden: Definitely.

Travis: Alright. So let's rock out the lightning round. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of

technology that you've recently discovered, that you'd recommend to other business owners?

Braden: This is rather unconventional but I'm going to say pencil and paper.

Travis: Unplug huh.

Braden: Because they still work when the battery runs out or the power goes off.

Travis: Right.

Braden: Sorry but a little notebook with a pen or pencil is still more powerful than any piece of

advanced technology we've invented for the last 100 years. And so carrying around pencil and paper

with me has been one thing I've started to do again.




Travis: Yeah, I do too. I keep a lot of notes in a notebook. And then I horde my notebooks, I've got tons

of notebooks and I go back and scan through them, do you do that too?

Braden: Yeah, and then one truth that I learned a few years ago is that just that simple act of writing

something down helps you remember it. So even if you never go back and look at the notebook, the

fact that you took the time to write something down will help you remember it better.

Travis: Right. How about a book, what's a book or program that made an impact on you related to

business that you'd recommend.

Braden: Well, I will take the program tact here and say that the MBA Program at London Business

School probably transformed my life more than anything else. I quit a 6-figure job in Silicon Valley, I

sold or donated nearly all of my belongings and moved to a completely different country. And there I

have the opportunity to study new things in a new place with people from all around the world and all

those things coming together is a definite recipe for learning and growth. And at the same time I have

the opportunity to make 400 new friends that are spread all around the world and the experience

resulted in me becoming an entrepreneur where I have actually not a huge inclination to do so before.

Travis: Very cool. What famous quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business?

Braden: Well the one that I would like to say is from Pablo Picasso, and it is that "Every act of creation

is first of all an act of destruction." And I really like this quote because it reinforces it when it comes to

innovation or it comes to entrepreneurship. There is something or someone in front of you that

ultimately you are looking to destroy. And then your act of creation, you must expect and plan for the

resistance you will face. So you must know your enemy and how you will defeat them even if you are

fighting against the dreaded do nothing solution.

Travis: Right. I agree with you. How do people connect with you?

Braden: People can find me at BradenKelley.com which is my website. They can reach me on Twitter

as @innovate, and then my-- I'm very visible on the internet so there's lots of ways to find me, and then

of course can't forget to mention innovationexcellence.com again which is the world's leading

innovation website.

Travis: There's no hiding on the inner web is there?

Braden: No, so you have to be very careful in how you present yourself.

Travis: So, listen man, I appreciate you taking the time to come hangout with us and share your

complete and unique perspective on things, and your experience, and wisdom, and story with us. We

http://www.london.edu/programmes/mba.html



http://bradenkelley.com/

http://www.innovationexcellence.com/




actually could go longer with talking on a variety of other topics. This is a topic that could go very deep

and in a multiple of directions.

Braden: Definitely, sometimes I go all day.

Travis: Yeah, right. So thanks for taking that time. Can you hangout a couple of more minutes with us?

Braden: Sure Travis.

Travis: Cool. Alright, so listen, I want to remind you that you can find all of the links to the books and

the resources mentioned in the show in the show notes. Just go to-- Braden can you sing?

Braden: Can I sing? It depends on who you ask. My daughter would say yes, I don't know about what

other people might say.

Travis: Okay. I've been trying this. I normally do it with Sandra. And so you do the .com part whenever

I read the website, you know, like the old Yahoo commercial.

Braden: Okay.

Travis: You don't have to sing a whole lot, just, you know, note that right.

Braden: Okay.

Travis: So the show notes are in, just go to RockStarEntpreneurNetwork

Braden: .com

Travis: It's a brand new site that we're building out that's completely focused on giving you resources

to grow your business just like the show. And while you're there, I don't know if you remember, at the

beginning of the show I mentioned that I had a challenge for you. And my challenge is this, I want you

to click on the microphone icon on the right side of the screen, send me a voice message with a

challenge or a problem that you're having with your business that you need advice or help on. What's

keeping you from growing and finding that next level of success that would allow you to reach your true

potential and make a difference? Are you struggling with marketing, staffing, sales, profits, innovation,

right? It doesn't matter, any aspect of business I want you to-- You have 3 minutes, just leave your

name, your business name and what you do and then what your problem is. And this is one of the ways

that we help entrepreneurs just like you with their business to take it to that next level. So I challenge

you to do that. I've mentioned this before, if you're having these problems, there's a very good chance

that other people are having the similar problem. What we'll do is when we get enough good questions

http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/




we'll start answering them on air. We may take an entire episode to do that. So take a minute whenever

you get a chance.

I want to close the show today with a quote from Zig Ziglar, and the quote reads, "You can get

everything in life you want, if you'll just help enough other people to get what they want."

This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now, remember, no matter where you're at in your journey as

an entrepreneur, you're an inspiration to those around you to go after their dreams too. So I want to

encourage you to keep it up. To your incredible success, do you want to say good bye Braden?

Braden: Yes, so good-bye everyone and good bye Travis, and thank you for tuning in and I hope you

continue to tune in to all of the great programs that Travis and hi co-host brings to you.

End of Interview

Travis: To your incredible success my friend, take care.




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Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show

“Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/biz-accelerator

http://theentrepreneursradioshow.com/

The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 071 Braden Kelly

Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Transcript of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 071 Braden Kelly