Tonight, the newest members of Unreal Collective and I start our 12 week journey together with a community kickoff call, where all 15 new members have the opportunity to meet each other face to face.
This will be the third session kick off and I find myself putting more and more intention into the experience of the call itself. Actually, I’ve looked over the entire program and am making several small tweaks to improve the overall experience.
There are a ton of touch points every member has with myself, the community, and the entire program over the course of 12 weeks. And I’ve realized that to make the program better and better, I have to do so with intention.
The original beta group required me to make a ton of assumptions, create a lot of processes and planning on the fly, and really made me realize how much I could enhance the program overall.
The last session was a big improvement with more solidified processes, some assets already created, and a better understanding of how to facilitate and lead the group calls to achieve our stated goals. But, even still, there was plenty of opportunity for improvement.
Over the last several months, I’ve further improved the program from messaging to marketing to onboarding new members. And as things get tighter and tighter, I still find more and more places I can add small touches to add some excitement here or some anticipation there.
While there is something to say about intuition and good taste guiding the creation of something, I think every extraordinary experience is built on a ton of intention. There is a great episode of the podcast Masters of Scale in which the co-founder of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, talks about how he approached the experience of using Airbnb.
If you want to build something that’s truly viral you have to create a total mindf*** experience that you tell everyone about. We basically took one part of our product and we extrapolated what would a five star experience be. Then we went crazy. So a one, two, or three star experience is you get to your Airbnb and no one’s there. You knock on the door. They don’t open. That’s a one star. Maybe it’s a three star if they don’t open, you have to wait 20 minutes.
If they never show up and you’re pissed and you need to get your money back, that’s a one star experience. You’re never using us again. So a five star experience is you knock on the door, they open the door, they let you in. Great. That’s not a big deal. You’re not going tell every friend about it. You might say, “I used Airbnb.”…
So what would a ten star check in be? A ten star check in would be The Beatles check in. In 1964. I’d get off the plane and there’d be 5,000 high school kids cheering my name with cars welcoming me to the country. I’d get to the front yard of your house and there’d be a press conference for me, and it would be just a mindf*** experience.
So what would 11 star experience be? I would show up at the airport and you’d be there with Elon Musk and you’re saying, “You’re going to space.” The point of the the process is that maybe 9, 10, 11 are not feasible. But if you go through the crazy exercise of keep going, there’s some sweet spot between they showed up and they opened the door and I went to space. That’s the sweet spot. You have to almost design the extreme to come backwards. Suddenly, doesn’t knowing my preferences and having a surfboard in the house seem not crazy and reasonable? It’s actually kind of crazy logistically, but this is the kind of stuff that creates great experience.
I see someone’s experience with a product or service that I offer as an extension of my personal brand. It’s very important to me that they have a great experience — and I’m finding that the sky is truly the limit when considering how to craft that experience.
But it doesn’t happen by accident — it takes intention and not just the willingness to accept feedback, but the interest in seeking it out.