Early Bird or Latecomer?

Speaker A: Fast.

Speaker B: We've all heard that the early bird gets the worm, but this being first always mean being better. In business, there's a lot of pressure to move fast, adopt the newest thing, and get ahead of the competition. While plenty of successful people and companies seem to thrive by waiting, watching, and making their move later. In this episode of the Bounce Rate, we're talking about early risers, night owls, early adopters, and late comers to see when timing really creates an advantage. Um, I'm taking all of us here. Um, value punctuality.

Speaker A: Yes. And attendance.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: Agreed.

Speaker B: I. So one thing that I know. So growing up, my sister had a probably irrational fear of lateness. I mean, she would like throw tantrums about it. And my mom also didn't want to be late. We were very much like, we have to be someplace 15 minutes early. It was not until I moved to California for a little bit that I realized that in, in some cultures, in some families, it really is not a priority.

Speaker A: Oh my God. Uh, they drive me crazy. Yeah, I. Do you have that, do you have that friend? Like I bet we can all name that friend who is consistently 10 minutes late.

Speaker C: Me.

Speaker A: Every single time.

Speaker C: Me.

Speaker B: Really?

Speaker A: What is wrong with you? Go, just leave 10 minutes earlier in my house.

Speaker C: Like not when, when it's applied to like business functions. Of course, all on time and everything. But socially we would get mad at my parents cuz we would always be the casually late people, you know, I. And so like that's carried over listeners

Speaker A: cannot see the disappointment in my face.

Speaker C: Oh, my friends hate it. And my wife and my kids and. I don't know. It's in me though. It's in me deep down.

Speaker A: Are you establishing your alpha male pattern by dictating maybe?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think so.

Speaker B: You know what though, is, uh, because you get her earlier than me, I, it doesn't even register with me that,

Speaker C: like I said though, for anything professional. Yeah. Like I live and die by my calendar and you know, it's all fine, but social, I don't know what it is. Something just turns off in the mind, you know what I mean?

Speaker B: Now are you. Do you find yourself late to things that you love doing? Like, look, I'm not a surfman. I don't know enough, I don't know enough about it. But if you're scheduled to go or uh, if waves are the best at a certain time, do you find, I'll be there.

Speaker C: And that's the, you know, that's different. Right?

Speaker B: Like how, how?

Speaker C: Because surf, you know, you want to get the best surf. You have to pay attention. You have to be there. A social event, it says it starts at five, you get there at five. It's not going, it's not going because people like me are late.

Speaker A: You want to, you want to wait until you uh, want to just come in and in mid stride as things are.

Speaker C: Yeah. I want to walk in and be like, hey, what's up?

Speaker B: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Speaker A: And maybe that's why at business you can, you can be on time, is because like in business most things start right away. You get into it as immediately, look, here we go.

Speaker C: We're figuring it out.

Speaker A: I think we've got it. I think we've got it.

Speaker B: Uh, that's all for the. No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: And I don't think there's a correlation here, but when I carry this over to. I'm going to talk about marketing. I typically don't want to be the early bird, you know, and when I. Let me make sure I define what that means. If we're looking at Google AdWords. Right, right. And they're, they're releasing a new feature, I, uh, typically don't want to be in that beta test because it doesn't always work out so well. Right. I want to see what happens and then dive in once I know it. People are having success. Of course you can miss the worm sometimes on that, but for the most part I feel like that's a pretty solid strategy and that's what I've used throughout my career.

Speaker B: I, uh, I work for a brand that it was a very small niche and, and there were only two competitors that were doing that were in this market space. And they said we have to dominate our, uh, the Google Ads. We have to make sure that we're in the top place and that we stay there. And so this company became, you know, we were running ads, not getting any leads from the ads. But it was so important to them that we were the first ones, that we were the early ones, so that it was harder for the other one to gain a footing in the world of ppc. And I thought it was interesting because it made me think, was this really worth it? We were spending hundreds and hundreds of uh, uh, it ended up being thousands a month on PPC ads just so we could be the first ones to do it. And I always kind of struck me as well, why like then, uh, let them be the first one to have to do it. But the hope that there could be a lead was made it so that we felt like it was exclusive. We had to take it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I am definitely a sit, watch and wait person. That's one of the conversations that I like to have with people about social media, because they'll talk, well, I gotta have social media so that I get the frontline news. I'm like, there is no frontline news. I need, I needed to go through somebody, uh, who's gonna vet it and then some analysis on it. Give me context. Let's figure it out. I don't need the instantaneous blow by blow. I did hear, though, another term that I really like and for technology as a, as a computer person and somebody that likes gadgets and so forth, I do really like this concept, especially for your phone. It's leapfrogging. So a leapfrogger goes and buys very close to the cutting edge of technology, but then they sit on it for three or four versions. So. And that really does describe me. I will go look out, figure out, hey, what's the real phone like? One thing I would like is one of those foldable screen phones. They're just way too expensive. But I would be willing to give that a shot. But once I spent that money, uh, I'm not changing phones for years. And then the next time it comes back. So I will leapfrog up to close to the cutting edge every time.

Speaker C: I, I think you could put me in that bucket as well. I think that that sums it up for me.

Speaker B: So, little mini question. If you are hosting a party and it starts at 7 and 6:59, you have friends come and they're the first ones there, and they come and they're like, hey, what can we do? What can we do to help? How do you feel? Do you feel like, oh, it's great that they were the first ones, or do you feel like, okay, well, gosh,

Speaker C: no, it doesn't bother me at all. I'm like, hey, great, you're here. Like, help do this, or just relax. I don't have a problem with people being early or being on time to a social event. I just, I'm not that person.

Speaker A: I'm more like, oh, thank God somebody came.

Speaker B: You're just like, uh, it's a relief

Speaker A: because otherwise I'm going to have a lot of guacamole.

Speaker B: That's. Yeah, that's true. You waited a lot, you know, to the switch here.

Speaker C: For, say, a business, is there any benefit or is it worthy of a conversation to try to get your customers to be the early bird with you versus the watch and wait I guess

Speaker A: I'd need to know what you mean by that.

Speaker C: It could apply to a new variety of situations. But say you're running a special, right, or you launch a new item. Do you want people to early adopt, be the early bird, or does it matter if they watch and wait and see if other people. I don't even know if that's, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, so. So it really depends if you're talking about flattening out demand. So the, the most obvious thing comes to my mind is a restaurant. Restaurants would very much appreciate having a bunch of early birds and a bunch of late risers to flatten out the demand so that there's not a line, so that your staff isn't crazy overworked, just for two hours, but then they straggle on until you're closing or, you know, at 3:00 clock or 4:00 clock in the afternoon, there's really nobody, but you still have to be open and so forth. So I think generally speaking, you want to mix. And, uh, I know a lot of people, I mean, well, that's what early bird specials are for, is to try to get people in who don't mind eating at 4, present company included, so that, so that we can flatten that out. And so there's. And it's definitely worth money to have fewer people coming at 6:30, because I'm willing to incentivize for that if it, if it's talking about things like I'm, um, launching a new service or product or something like that. I think you. It kind of depends on how far, how well developed that is. If it's a new dish and you think the dish is good, you want everybody to jump on it as much as possible because they'll start getting word of mouth and that's what's going to get it popular and make it happen. If you question it, if you really wonder, does paprika really belong on a cinnamon roll, you might want a smaller group of people to try that out and sort of, you know, limp that in so that you get feedback and can refine it later.

Speaker B: You raise an interesting point because what is the, the tie between early birds and social proof where if you're hosting a party and you invite a bunch of people and the peop. There's. There's a couple that comes the moment the party starts. They're the only ones. They did not need a text that says, hey, James's party is off the hook. Y' all should come here. So I think there's going to be Situations like that where, let's say I am. I'm a. I run a car wash, and I came up with a new type of scent that stays in your car even longer. It's the new car smell stays even longer. There's going to be people that see that, think it's cool, but say, I'm not going to be the first one that does this, because what if. What if it sucks? And so it's important when you do have those early adopters, the ones that like it, you need to mobilize them to share that social proof to inspire those. Those late comers, which I think the majority of us are. The majority of us want to know, does this iPad work before we, you know, invest that money?

Speaker C: Yeah, I like that insight. I know it took us off track there a little bit, but just.

Speaker A: No, no, no. I think that's good. I think I was. What. What always occurs to me is movie releases. Are you guys a, uh, see the premiere kind of person?

Speaker C: I am not that.

Speaker B: So this is an interesting take because there's certain things that anything Batman, I will see the moment it comes out. I will be the first one to

Speaker A: see it in there. Is there a new Batman in the works right now?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Felt like there was. Who's. Who's Batman?

Speaker B: Robert Pattinson. They're making a sequel to that movie, but there's also going to be a Batman in the Superman James Gunn universe that they're working on. So we're gonna have dual Batman. It's gonna be great. I've been drooping about this, but for me, I will consume Batman media whether or not someone says, eh, this one wasn't great or not, because I love Batman so much. There's other things, like Star wars, where I used to watch every Star wars thing the moment it came out. And now I didn't even see that Mandalorian Grogu movie.

Speaker A: No, sorry.

Speaker B: Uh, to Disney, if you looking to sponsor this episode. I did not. I did not see that. I'm waiting for it to come on

Speaker A: streaming, but we could become ardent, huge fans if they so chose to sponsor us at Disney World. Probably Disneyland, actually.

Speaker B: We'll do a live episode. We'll do a live episode. Disneyland. But, uh, either way, I'm not an early bird. I'm not an early adopter when it comes to that media. I'm going to wait until I hear people say that they like it or if there's anything special. Uh, so, yeah, there's two. Two sides of the coin.

Speaker A: What's the cost of Being an early bird, like if, if somebody is an early adopter of a lot of stuff, especially in, um, for a local business, if they're, if they're always looking to get on the next thing, what's the cost to that? And what's the cost if I'm, what's the opposite of an early bird?

Speaker B: A late comer?

Speaker A: If I'm a late comer, over sleeper, whatever. If I'm the late person, what's the, what's the potential cost there?

Speaker C: So interesting, I think this, I think on the consumer side it kind of boils down to psychology, right? Being the first there, going to the premiere. There's something about being the first, like, I don't know, you know, Whereas other people might not care as much, right. Like I'm going to see it. Who cares if I see it that week or, uh, two weeks later, right. Or eat, taste it or whatever. On the business side, you know, when I, I'm going to go to marketing, the cost of being the first to try out this new service. Google Ads, for example, releases like, you could be the. Get the worm, right? You could be one of the first people really reap the benefits, but majority of the times it might be a little bit of a waste of money, right. So I don't know how that averages out at the end.

Speaker B: In event marketing, you literally have early bird pricing because they know this is a new thing and it could go

Speaker A: either way when you want to get to critical mass.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. If you can. Let's say you've got this special. Let's say you've got this event. The more people you get in, the more momentum you can build and the more successful overall it can be by the end. And yeah, sometimes like you'll start something and it's slow going and then I, I've had situations like that where I have a running event that the first, you know, we have 10 events. The first seven is just the word getting out. People are like, oh, yeah, this is okay. And then the last two or three people actually came and they're. And they go, oh, uh, it's a shame it's ending. I wish I'd known about this.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Did I answer your question right? Because you were talking about the risk reward of early birds versus late comers.

Speaker A: I, I think.

Speaker C: Or not correct.

Speaker A: But where, I think where I was thinking about it is if I think of a business owner who is an early bird, I'm going to say in this particular case, they're quick to Keep jumping onto things. So they may I. And in fact I know some business. They've gone through four POS systems in the past year. They keep jumping, jumping.

Speaker C: That's a huge mental load. Ah.

Speaker A: And I think that's the cost for them. The, the being an early bird means that you'. You're not just resting on your laurels. You can't just let something go that because you're constantly thinking, I can do better, I can do better, I can do better. And the reality is you need good enough. And then you really need to focus on what your differentiator is for your business. So if I'm a restaurant, nine times out of ten it's going to be your food quality and your staff management. Not what your POS system is or back of house system is. If your insurance it. You gotta be focused on getting the word out and referrals and making sure that all your people renew. Not doing crazy stunts to try to find brand new people that have never heard of you. Right. So I think that's the, I think for the early bird, for the late comer, it's they, they linger too long in a system that's not working and they're not making change frequently enough so that they're not, they're, they're actually. It's, it's hit. Hitting them up and affecting their performance. I guess that was where I was thinking I.

Speaker B: And, and I think you raised uh, another interesting point operationally and, and it's a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's highly applicable to what local business owners have to deal with. And that is the actual literal, uh, earliness of employees. And I mean that from a psychological standpoint. Obviously. When I first, when I had my first job at Anyone remember from that one episode it was uh.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, uh, Snickerdoodle.

Speaker B: Yeah. At Snickerdoodle.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: That was at Sonic

Speaker C: Wiener Schnitzel. That's what I was trying to say.

Speaker B: Wiener Stencil. We don't even have those.

Speaker A: Yeah, we did. There's one on Highway 6.

Speaker B: What? Really? Okay. When I started my first job, you hear these platitudes of saying, oh, you gotta be on time to, to impress the boss. And obviously I was never egregiously late or you know, if, if something happened, I would text and say, or I would call and say, um, I'm sorry, it was a terrible accident. I can't get through. But again, it all just kind of sounds like, you know, sayings like, oh, it's important to Be on time. It's so funny. Whenever I started working events and being in charge of those events, there is a psychological thing. Whenever your helper is there at the same time you're there, you stop equating them as, all right, this is my employee that I have to send and do things. And you start going, we're on the same team. They're. They're here with me doing the thing. And it's so funny where if you. Let's say something starts at 5, and then someone arrives 10 till 5, and they're helping you prep, and then the other employee arrives 10 after 5. I've already made in my decision that this guy is my guy. And wherever I go, I'm gonna, um. There. That's going to be my person. There is a. There's this psychology when it comes to bonding in teams, where if someone is early with you, as most local business owners have to be, you go, that's it.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think, uh, there's some great platitudes around that. One is, the world is run by those who show up. I mean, I think it's. It's true so many times if you're there and no one else is, you're making the decisions and you're part of the team and you're the one that is contributing and so forth. Early bird gets a worm. That's an old one, but the late sleeping worm lives another day.

Speaker B: I've never heard this one.

Speaker A: Uh, it might be an errachism.

Speaker B: Is that an original one? Those who live to eat a worm will live to eat another.

Speaker A: If you give a worm to a fish, he lives to fish for the rest of his life. You know, these do not make any sense.

Speaker B: Give a fish to a worm. I don't know if, you know, it's

Speaker A: kind of like a stitch in time. Staves nine. And the way I always thought about that one was a stitch. And I was always thinking like, a rift, because I was a big Doctor who fan, and I was like, a rift in time saves nine. Nine. What? What are we talking? Uh, never made any sense.

Speaker C: I find myself a lot of times I'll say these types of sayings, and then when I'm writing an email, I'll find my way in, and I'm like, uh, I write it and I'm like, what is that? What am I saying?

Speaker A: Like, what does that mean? The one that drives are total non sequitur. The one that drives me crazy, and I don't know where my craw is on my body, but I have so much stuff that sticks in my croft, which is another platitude. Uh, is six of one, half dozen of another. I'm like, what do you mean, six of one or six of another? No, it should be six of one, half dozen of the same. Come on, get it right. Like six apples or a half dozen orange.

Speaker C: I got a million dollars every time I heard that one. I wouldn't be rich.