Ep. 30 | Human Centered Design and Succession Planning | Lacey Picazo, Founder and CEO of ZoCo Design

How can you ensure your business survives and thrives without being solely reliant on you? This is one of the guiding initiatives from this week’s guest, who is spending a lot of time, and money, on ensuring the future success without her in the drivers seat.

This week’s guest is Lacey Picazo, Founder and CEO of ZoCo Design, a product design and user research agency in Columbus, Ohio. With a background in design and human factors, Lacey is passionate about creating technology that is truly human-centered. Her expertise lies in understanding user behavior and crafting experiences that drive meaningful change. With over a decade of experience, Lacey’s approach to entrepreneurship and business growth is rooted in a deep understanding of people and their needs. Through her work, she emphasizes the importance of psychology in influencing user behavior, challenging the status quo of tech development. Lacey's unique insights into human-centered design and entrepreneurship make her a valuable voice in rethinking revenue and building sustainable businesses.

Key highlights in this episode:

• Human-centered design fueling technology success.
• Business survival in the absence of the founder(s).
• Secure your entrepreneurial legacy with strategic succession planning.
• The powerful impact of design on user behavior.
• Work-life balance as an entrepreneur.

I think the biggest piece of advice I would give is to build the company you actually want, which sounds trite, but I have so many founder friends who have not been able to do that…. Being really clear on your motivations for building a company is essential, especially before taking investment from any VC, PE or otherwise. That changes the incentives on how you must build the company.  - Lacey Picazo

Human-Centered Design in Technology Human-centered design is crucial in technology to create products that truly address user needs and behavior. Understanding user motivations and preferences is essential for developing impactful and successful technology solutions. By focusing on the human element, entrepreneurs can create products that drive behavior change and offer meaningful value to users. This process goes far beyond just a simple list of requirements and then “code to the road.”

Founder-Independent Business Growth Building a business that is not solely reliant on the founder's presence is crucial for long-term success. Entrepreneurs must prioritize creating a sustainable business model that can thrive even without their direct involvement. This occurs throughout several milestones in a business…the first salesperson, additional service delivery team members, the first leader, the executive team, and of course, the replacing CEO.

Resources in this episode:

• Find Lacey on LinkedIn
• Visit ZoCo's website to learn more about their services, their team, and to signup for their company updates.

About Lacey Picazo

Lacey is the CEO of ZoCo, the UX agency built for healthcare. Since 2013, ZoCo has built a reputation as the preferred partner for healthcare product teams—uncovering powerful care delivery insights, focusing product priorities through actionable user research, and putting those insights to action by designing behavior-shifting experiences. Lacey has been honored as a NAWBO 2021 Visionary, as a member of Columbus CEO’s inaugural ‘Future 50’ class, Business First’s ‘Forty Under 40’, Smart Business’s ‘Smart 50,’ the C-Suite Awards, and BizTech Awards ‘Outstanding Woman in Technology.’ Lacey founded ZoCo on the belief that design has the power to create meaningful change and advance the human condition. With this as a guide, she has served the Mid-Ohio Foodbank as the CX board co-chair, Innovate Ohio on the Citizen Interactions Board, Columbus Society of Comm