Friction is Killing Your Business

In this episode of The Intense Life, I sit down with my friend Blake Grewal, a business innovator who learns fast, thinks deeply, and brings something new to every room he’s in. I’ve genuinely enjoyed getting to know Blake professionally, and I’ve already started implementing some of the customer experience thinking he’s shared with me. We kick things off with our mutual love for Middle Eastern food and a very opinionated shawarma conversation, then we get into what Blake does best: helping businesses build smarter, simpler customer journeys. Blake talks about the strategies he’s implemented in his own work, and the systems he’s helped me think through at my firm, especially around onboarding and follow up. We dig into what it means to be a tech enabled service business without turning everything into cold automation. Blake makes a strong case for a human powered, tech assisted approach, where technology supports the relationship instead of replacing it. We also talk about the idea of “moments of insight,” meaning small, clear interactions that give people immediate value and make the next step obvious. We spend real time on two areas that get neglected all the time: onboarding and payment. If onboarding is where momentum dies, payment is where cashflow gets delayed for no good reason. We talk about why long emails get ignored, why clarity wins, and how simplifying touchpoints can improve outcomes for everyone. Blake also shares his background, what shaped his love of building businesses, and why he’s currently focused on working with economic development groups through his company, Customer IQ. If you want to improve your business engagement journey, integrate tech in a way that still feels human, and reduce self-inflicted operational pain, this episode is packed with practical insights you can use right away. A quick heads-up: there’s a technical glitch affecting video quality for the last 15 minutes. We were so excited to share this conversation that we decided it was still worth putting out, and I think you’ll be glad we did. Learn more about Blake and his work here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakegrewal