Intentionality Beats Convenience - Episode 38

Hey and welcome back to another No Trade Secrets Debrief Session. This episode was sparked by my conversation with Andrew Martino. Andrew has built businesses around off-premise dining, delivery, digital restaurants, and hospitality operations. What stood out to me in that conversation was the level of intentionality behind the way he thinks about delivery. He talked about how restaurants can't just take the same food that they serve in person, throw it into a box, turn on delivery apps and hope the experience works. You have to think about how the food travels, how it holds up, what the customer experiences when the food arrives. You have to think about also what does the platform, meaning the food delivery platform, what do they control? What does the restaurant control? Where are the incentives aligned? And where are they not? Right? And so that got me thinking about a much bigger founder lesson. The easiest option is not always the right strategy to take. A lot of businesses make decisions on default. Not because they're the best decisions to make, but because they're the easiest one. Or because that's how everyone else does it. Or because that tool is already there or in place, or because this platform makes it more simple and easy to just do it and ship it, or have what you're trying to accomplish accomplished. Or a decision could be made just simply because the founder is busy. That's dangerous. Because if you're not making a decision that actually supports the long-term direction of the business and what you truly value as a business, convenience can start to run the company. And you can get into a habit of continually making the easiest decision. So I think one of the most dangerous things you can do in business is when the easiest option is there and you allow that to become your default strategy every time. Because once you fall into a pattern of that, it gets can get really easy to stay in that motion. So the delivery platform example. So the customer, and say if uh you there's an issue with the food, right? The customer wants the actual problem solved. The restaurant wants the customer to have a good experience and hopefully leave them a review, and definitely wants them to order again from them. Delivery driver is often the one that's caught right bang smack in the middle, and a lot of these platforms, what they want is the fastest resolution to the problem that also protects the platform. So, if the order is, for example, missing half of the food, the customer may not want a refund. They might want the rest of their food. But the system in a lot of these delivery apps is designed to resolve the case, not necessarily to restore the experience to the customer. And that's a powerful business lesson because the convenient option may give you access to more customers, but it may also take away your control over the customer's experience, and that is their direct experience of your business, not of the platform. If a customer is missing half of their food, they're not thinking negatively about Uber Eats. Their negative emotions are tied directly to your restaurant. So as a founder, you have to ask: is this helping us build the business we actually want? Or is this just what's the most easy? Because convenience can give you speed, but it can also take away your control. And sometimes what is convenient for the business will create friction for the customer. So if the customer has to submit a ticket or call this number, or if a customer has to mail a check, or return a broken product before it's replaced, or is met with red tape and you know uh this is our policy, or you need to be transferred to talk to someone else. Those kind of things definitely can make internal operations easier, but they can drastically affect the customer experience in a negative way. And if the customer has to do extra work because someone somewhere in this process dropped a ball, that is not operational efficiency. The better question you can ask yourself are we making this easier for us? Are we or are we making this better for the customer? Because they are not always the same thing. Because a process that's convenient for the business but is frustrating for the customer is not efficient and can be pretty expensive in the long run. So that's where we go to intentionality. And intentionality does not mean moving slowly forever, it just means slowing down at the right moments so you can move forward better afterwards. And so Andrew talked about setting aside a meal in real time to think deeply about how their business was going to decide on this thing going forward. What's the goal? What are we trying to create? What does the customer need? What does the team need? What happens if this scales? What complexity does this create? That kind of thinking matters because founders often move fast by instinct. Because speed is valuable, but speed without thought can create a mess. And the best operators that I've ever seen don't just move quickly, they move deliberately. So one of the biggest risks, or a big risk for a founder, is letting your business happen to you. Taking on the wrong client because you needed the revenue. Adding a service just because someone asked, using the platform like we just went over just because it's easy. Accepting bad payment terms or bad contract engagement just because you want the deal. None of these decisions may destroy the business in isolation, but together they can create huge drift. And drift can be very dangerous because it feels normal while it's happening. And then you wake up one day and realize the business is more complex, less profitable, harder to manage, and less aligned than when you set out. And that's not because of one big major failure. This is not one event that usually leads to this, but because convenience made too many decisions. So how do we apply this as a founder? I think the exercise is pretty simple. Look at your business and ask yourself, in what areas did we choose convenience instead of strategy? Now some areas to look at. Look at your pricing, look at your payment terms, look at your tech stack, look at your full customer experience in your customer or client journey. Look at your team structure. Look at your different service offerings, look at your reporting. Look at what goes on and listen what happens in your meetings, in your communications, and look at your delivery process. And then ask yourself for each of those: is this still serving us? Is it still serving the customer? Is this still aligned with where we are going and want to go as a company? Ask yourself straight up, is this decision intentional or is it just familiar? Now I'm not saying that convenience is always bad. Convenience is powerful when it does support the strategy. Automation can be great, platforms can be super powerful. AI can change the way that you run your business operationally. But only if they serve the experience and the economics and the mission and vision of your company. And so the big lesson that I took away from my conversation with Andrew is that great businesses are designed. They don't just happen, they're examined, they're adjusted frequently, they pivot, they understand that what works well today may not work well in the future. They're built with intention. And your job as the founder is to keep asking whether the way that your business operates still matches the business you're trying to build. So it's not a question of whether a decision makes your life easier. The question is whether the decision makes your business stronger.