December 18, 2024 • 34 mins
Ever wondered why so many tech companies struggle with legacy software while others seem to effortlessly leap ahead with user-centric designs? Join us as we learn from Makoto Kern, the founder of IIIMPACT, who shares his remarkable journey from electrical engineering to spearheading a digital design agency that's transforming the way companies think about their products. Mikado uncovers the secrets to tackling tech debt while focusing on the three crucial Ps—product, people, and process—to enhance user experience and gain a competitive edge, even with fewer features.
Discover how artificial intelligence is reshaping the landscape of product development and user experience. Mikado sheds light on the art of integrating AI thoughtfully, highlighting real-world success stories where AI addresses genuine user needs rather than just being a flashy add-on. From streamlining job application processes to revolutionizing customer service, AI's potential is vast. Mikado explains how automating repetitive tasks can free up experts for more meaningful work, championing operational efficiency and elevating the user experience in the process.
Navigating the corporate world isn't easy, especially when it comes to balancing innovation with stagnation. Through fascinating examples of companies like SpaceX and Tesla, we explore how continuous improvement can stave off stagnation, even in economic downturns. Mikado also shares insights into the delicate dance of managing team and client relationships, emphasizing the importance of putting the team first to build long-term success. Addressing challenges of remote work and the crucial role of communication, Mikado provides valuable lessons on leading a cohesive team while fostering strong, enduring client connections.
Here's what you'll learn:
❗ The three P's for a successful company are product, people, and process.
❗ Legacy tech companies often struggle with tech debt and maintaining outdated products.
❗ User-centric design focuses on the user's goals and pain points, rather than just features.
❗ AI can enhance user experience but should be implemented thoughtfully.
❗ Innovation should be a continuous effort, even during recessionary periods.
❗ Team dynamics are crucial; putting the team first leads to better client relationships.
❗ Soft skills often outweigh hard skills in long-term success.
❗ Ego can hinder progress; leaders must remain open to feedback.
❗ Companies should embrace testing and experimentation to drive improvement.
❗ Empathy is essential in understanding team and client needs.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Impact and Software Development
05:49 User-Centric vs Feature-Centric Design
10:49 The Role of AI in Modern Software Development
19:24 The Importance of Team Dynamics
30:50 Ego and Motivation in Leadership
Makoto Kern
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/productuxdesigner/
Website - https://www.iiimpact.io/
Brandon Amoroso:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/
Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/
X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon
Scalis.ai - https://scalis.ai/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast
about using the Gen Z mindset togrow your business.
I'm Gen Z entrepreneur BrandonAmoroso, former founder of
Electric and now the co-founderof Scalist, and today I'm
talking with Mikado Kern, who'sthe founder at Impact, which is
a digital product design anddevelopment consulting agency
that specializes in successfullylaunching software products.
(00:21):
Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So before we jump into things here, can you give
everybody just a quick TLDR onyour background and how you got
into software to begin with?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Sure, definitely.
You know, I started way backwhen as an electrical and
automation engineer out ofschool, did that for a while and
always wanted to be anentrepreneur.
I'm out of school, did that fora while and always wanted to be
an entrepreneur and I've alwaystried to test different things.
But as an engineer back in theday, craigslist was a thing.
(00:54):
I was building websites anddoing SEO and that sort of thing
, but I was also helpingredesign software applications
in the manufacturing space forautomation and so I was kind of
gravitated towards userexperience design, which is what
our bread and butter is for ouragency.
But yeah, I just startedbuilding people's websites,
(01:15):
started finding clients onCraigslist and I got to a point
where I was able to quit my jobas an engineer and just started
my business full time.
I was running that for the lastalmost 20 years now and grown my
business from a small agency to.
We had, I think, at most about50 people in our agency and
(01:39):
we've been helping enterprisesoftware clients specifically a
lot in more of the complexspaces of cybersecurity, energy,
robotics.
I actually went full circlewith my degree and some of my
former businesses that I workwith.
But yeah, I mean we've beenprimarily helping our clients.
(02:00):
If they have a softwareapplication that has become
antiquated and the tech stackhas been pretty much falling
behind and they need to redesignit to actually work better and
they're starting to losecompetition to their competitors
in the market space, weactually come in and really help
them determine the beststrategy, the best process and
(02:22):
the user experience design andthe front-end development for
their products.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
What are some of the biggest challenges that maybe
legacy is the wrong term butestablished tech companies face
when it comes to things liketech debt and trying to iterate
and build on a product that'sbeen there for 10, 15 years?
And you mentioned there's somenewcomers that come onto the
space and they don't have anytech, that they're also starting
(02:47):
from zero, but, like you know,there's obviously been a lot
that has changed in the last 10to 15 years when it comes to
even the languages used.
You know the infrastructure tobuild.
So what are some of the uniquechallenges that they would face
versus somebody who's juststarting that new?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
For sure.
I think what I always say is youhave to have the three Ps to
have a successful company and,as product, people in process.
And when you see companies withlegacy products, they tend to
want to either try to bandage,fix what they currently have or
they have to maintain whatproduct they have because they
have current clients and so tobuild something brand new.
(03:28):
You've got the challenges ofhaving their team just keeping
the lights on, having thatteam's bandwidth be very limited
to building something brand new, and then most of the time
they're very immature in theirprocess of actually becoming
feature-centric to user-centric.
And to change that mindset isvery different because it's
(03:51):
generally you've got a lot ofdevelopers that are designing as
well and you've got to havethat separation and to be not
only user-centric focused buthave the scalability and kind of
the roadmap thinking of howdoes this product fit into the
business goals, your users'goals and the constraints of the
(04:13):
development team.
Those are the main challengeswe see when we go into clients
is that they're unable tounderstand all the different
risks and the differentchallenges that they're facing
when they're trying to redesignthe application, and so what we
try to do is identify thoserisks really quickly with the
(04:34):
leadership and then understandokay, these are things that we
know that you need to have inyour new application and these
are things that are very riskyand it's going to take a lot of
effort.
Let's get those in front ofusers and test them out in
prototypes before you startbuilding it.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And can you drill down a little bit more on
feature-centric versususer-centric?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Like, what does that?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
look like in practice .
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So, when it comes to user-centric, we try to get the
leadership development team andthe product teams to really
think about what is the user'sgoals, their pain points and
what is their workflowthroughout their you know when
they're doing their tasks andwhen you get.
(05:19):
A lot of times you get leadersthat really think about well, if
we have this feature or if wehave AI, boom, you know we're
going to sell it, everybody'sgoing to want it.
But what we're seeing,especially now with AI being
such a big thing, is like wehave to have AI and that's it.
But they're not really thinking.
Is it just a chatbot?
Is it something more?
Can we actually implement whatis necessary for a user to say,
(05:42):
oh, that's something that's muchdifferent than what your
competitor has, or this is muchbetter, or I can perform my
workflow in such a moreefficient manner than this other
application.
So getting that mindset tochange with leadership is so
important, because they reallyjust think, okay, it's like if
(06:03):
you build it, they'll come.
That's what they're thinking isalways.
And they really just think,okay, it's like if you build it,
they'll come.
That's what they're thinking isalways.
And if we have these 10features, we're, we're going to,
we're going to blow thecompetition out of the water.
But I've seen time and timeagain that more nimble, smaller
companies with less features itdoes better, tend to do better
if their user interface andtheir user experience and the
(06:23):
tech stack outperforms the otherones with even less features.
So that's just a mindset thatyou've got to switch, especially
when you know they come from alegacy system.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, the uh to your point about, uh, you know, being
feature centric.
You know there's so manysolutions out there where you
need specialists, you need, youknow, like whole implementation
teams, because of the fact thatthey're just so, you know,
complicated and complex, andthen you might see a newcomer
come to the market that mightnot even have all the bells and
(06:57):
whistles that the industryincumbent has.
But you know, the industryincumbent maybe only 25% of the
product is actually even gettingleveraged because it is, you
know, a little bit morecumbersome to use.
And you know the industryincumbent maybe only 25% of the
product is actually even gettingleveraged because it is, you
know, a little bit morecumbersome to use.
And, you know, just throwing AIinto something for the sake of
having AI, you know.
I'm pretty sure every softwarecompany out there now from the
ones who've been around the 50years to you know just getting
started there's AI in theproduct and it's pretty obvious
(07:21):
even at this point whatcompanies companies are truly
AI-centric and focused versuswhich ones are just trying to
get it into the product so thatthey can say that they are an AI
company.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, we actually are seeing that in real time right
now with some of our clients,where we have ones that really
don't involve us.
They just said, oh, we're justmoving resources over to
implement this AI, whether it'sjust implementing Copilot or
some type of chatbot that theysaid we've got this.
But, then we've got otherclients that say, hey, we are
(07:52):
implementing a very smartchatbot, but we want something
that is not just all text heavyor just typing in things.
We're actually helping with theprompts, we're helping out
create more visual responses.
Visual like responses that aremuch easier to just like narrow
down choices.
It's far easier to to manageand to, you know, I guess, to
talk with the, with AI and it.
(08:14):
Just you can see thedifferences in results and the
outcomes just from those twointeractions with involving us
that are really user centricversus ones that just want the
feature.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, and when.
I think you know, the approachthat I've tried to take is, you
know, look at the user problemsand then think about is there a
way that AI could make thisbetter?
Because that isn't always thecase.
You know, ai isn't meant forevery single component of your
product, nor will it necessarilymake it easier.
It actually might make it morechallenging, whereas there have
(08:49):
been other instances.
For example, like you know, oneof the biggest issues with
candidates applying to jobs isthat they got to fill out all
this basic information over andover and over again.
But with AI now they can justupload their resume once.
It'll scrape everything inabout five seconds,
auto-generate all the structureddata for them, and that saves
the candidates you, thecandidates a tremendous amount
of time.
So that was an example where, atleast hypothetically, we looked
(09:12):
at the user problem and then AIwas what actually was able to
solve it in a way that youwouldn't have been able to in
the past.
So stuff like that is reallycool.
But then there are otherinstances where like in the
Shopify ecosystem, as an exampleexample you have a lot of these
email marketing platforms whoare trying to get ai
incorporated into the product.
But a subject line, you knowwriter, cool I guess, but you
(09:33):
know, great, that saved me.
You know, two seconds maybe.
Um, you know, that is a littlebit more gimmicky per se and
it's sort of ai for the sake ofai, it's not transforming any
component of the product or howthe user is actually using it
for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I mean, I'm sure you've seen where a new release
by open ai just disrupts allthese chat wrappers, chat gpt
wrappers, and gets them out ofbusiness because they didn't
really think things through asfar as, like what, what do you?
What problems are you trying tosolve?
And and yeah, we see, I meanwe're seeing that happen with, I
mean just with yourapplications right now, with, uh
(10:11):
, you know how many people areusing Grammarly.
Do you use that as much anymore?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Probably not so, yeah , it is interesting to see how
some of the industry incumbentsare like really transforming
their platform with AI.
What are the?
Things that excites you themost, and how has that changed
(10:48):
the way that you work with yourclients or even do things
internally as an agency owner?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know with AI, as far as how we leverage it more
internally, you know wedefinitely.
When it comes to design, you'regoing to see, you know, with
certain I guess with websites,they all look the same.
Now, I mean, there's definitelytemplated designs.
They seem to work fine as it isuntil something changes, so you
(11:16):
can have the tools that we use.
They help you quickly createlike oh, I need a checkout.
You know, checkout we, I mean,we pretty much know what an
e-commerce checkout looks like.
There's some variations ofthings but you know, when it
comes to that, you can prettymuch have AI say okay, generate
a, you know, add to cartcheckout you know, process your
credit card and then you're done.
(11:36):
You know those kinds of things.
That way, you can focus on moreof the harder problems to solve
when it comes to workflow andthe design and you can really
put more effort into that.
User research as well, we'veseen.
You know it does definitelydisseminate the data.
So if we're collecting a lot oflike audio and we're collecting
a lot of data points as far aslike, how does this perform when
(11:59):
we're doing a benchmark,usability testing and trying to
get feedback on that, or anytype of card sorting where we're
trying to determine a betternavigation system, and the
taxonomy is really complicatedand so AI is helping a little
bit to to understand that.
We're seeing.
You know you still have to be anexpert to know what the right
questions to ask and what's theoutcome what the outcome is.
(12:20):
But you know the efficienciesgain where one person can do a
little bit more if they're anexpert.
I think it's like anythingwhere if you're average or
subpar and you're trying to useAI, maybe you might do okay, or
it may help you with certainthings to help elevate your
skill set okay, or it may helpyou with certain things to help
elevate your skill set.
But if you're above average andyou really know what you're
(12:41):
doing and you leverage AI, youcan accelerate the time
intensive tasks that normallywaste your time so you can focus
on the really hard solves.
But with clients we're seeingwhat I'm really excited about is
the the human element thatwe're seeing especially near
like customer service.
(13:02):
I think is a big one that'sbeing disrupted and we're
actually helping out withclients with that aspect of it
where you know when you gothrough, you know, depending on
what type of customer serviceyou have, the subject matter can
be very complex, so you couldgo to an FAQ system you can go
to you have.
The subject matter can be verycomplex, so you could go to an
FAQ system you can go to.
You know you call somebody upand ask for questions or you ask
(13:26):
a chatbot to answer certainquestions.
But if you can really train,like the AI agents, and create
specific ones for clients thatknow and understand their
particular data, I can see, andwe see, the advantages of using
AI for that, where you canactually utilize less human
(13:50):
interaction and less trainingand then use AI to actually help
users that are new to anenterprise platform to
understand how things work.
So I think you're seeing a lotof acceleration there, because
that's just something that youcan normally program.
You know a customer service,you know somebody says this, you
know almost a flow chart of howto get them from A to B.
(14:12):
So I mean, those are thingsthat we're seeing in the
immediate future, in the fartherfuture.
You know that one things thatwe're seeing in the immediate
future, in the farther future.
You know that one's hard to saybecause it's, you know, I'm
seeing, like I said, a lot ofcompanies are putting so much
resources into just putting UIinto their product and how they
(14:36):
implement that, I think, is I'mtrying to understand where the
cost, the ROI, is.
And so if it's going to costthem, you know whatever a number
of resources to integrate thatand maintain it and to
continuously check that to makesure it's keeping up to date.
I think that's where we may seea switch, where, you know,
(15:01):
maybe AI isn't the answer, Maybeit's a.
It's a semi automated type ofthing where you've got, um,
people that are in thereunderstanding how to do a
specific task, but then theyhave a specific AI agent helping
them out.
So each company whether it's alaw firm, it's a robotics
company or you know whateverenergy company you're creating
(15:22):
very customized AI agents forthese corporations versus just
having you know co-pilotintegrated into your system.
So I think that's kind of whereyou probably are seeing things
switch or going towards, but Iassume things will get more and
more efficient and costeffective for people to actually
integrate that.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
but we'll see yeah, I mean the costs continue to go
down.
I mean, like that parsing toolthat I mentioned, we wouldn't
have been able to do it evennine months ago because the
costs were too high and also theaccuracy of which it could, you
know, perform the task was not.
You know it wasn't.
It wasn't helpful because youwould still have to spend so
much time, you know, actuallydoing things manually.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And so.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I think over over time it'll get easier and easier
and the barrier to entry willget lower and lower for
businesses.
But at the same time you knowsome of these industry
incumbents, like Shopify as anexample, just cause that's what
I'm closest to the amount ofinvestment that would go into
just trying to get all of thecore need to have feature sets
(16:25):
into a platform if somebodyreally did want to go after them
.
You mentioned checkout as anexample.
Everybody knows what it lookslike and what it should do, but
you still need it and there'slike a thousand other things
that you also still need in anecon platform.
And so do you think there willbe more and more sort of
companies that start to incubateinternally.
(16:47):
You know sort of partitioningoff a portion of you know their
team or their resources to sortof spin up.
You know net new productofferings or or or try and get
some of that like.
You know entrepreneurshipmentality, but with the funding
and sort of capabilities that alarger enterprise could provide.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
You know, I think that's what you should be doing.
Um, we, you know, we alwaystend to be the innovation arm.
Or you know, the, the, uh, thecompany that comes in and says,
okay, we're going to developsomething in a black box and
then we're going to present itto you, type of thing, so your
main team can just continuesupporting the current product,
(17:32):
Even though, as a company, youshould always continuously
invest in innovation andcontinuous improvement, always
continuously invest ininnovation and continuous
improvement.
But many of them seem to behappy with just maintaining or
the status quo, because they seeinnovation, especially during a
recessionary period, that tendsto be cut first.
And the companies that don't cutand continue to innovate and
continuously improve when therecession is over with, and they
(17:55):
always tend not to last forever.
They tend to be way ahead ofany competition.
And so you know, I think it'sagain.
When we go into companies, wetry to understand where the
biggest risks are, becauseeverybody tends to be risk
adverse during recessionaryperiods.
But you still want to innovate.
(18:17):
Maybe it's at a slower pace,maybe you're not putting in such
a.
You're trying to hit that.
You know home run shot, butyou're trying to at least slowly
innovate constantly, everymonth.
I mean, look at SpaceX, lookslike Tesla.
They've leapfrogged so manycompanies because if you look at
their number of revisionswithin a year, I mean it's
(18:37):
exponentially more.
And so if you get companies tothink it like that and it has to
come from the top down that'swhy we always try and interface
with the top down versus tryingto make change from the bottom
up it's more effective becauseyou have to have the mindset
where everybody's like, hey,let's try to figure out how to
make this better, versus like,hey, what is this other
competitor doing over here?
We're not going to do anything,unless I see it with three
(18:59):
other competitors and it's like,well, you'll never.
You're always playing catch up.
So I think there should alwaysbe some type of budget to
innovate, but companies are justyou know, they're just tend not
to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, it's like proactive versus being reactive.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It's a lot easier to say you're proactive and want to
be proactive than to you know,actually be proactive oh, for
sure why do you think that youknow these problems typically
present themselves at you know,larger organizations and not the
small?
And eventually the small becomethese larger organizations
where the innovation does get tostart to get stifled.
(19:37):
Are there any examples of wellyou you mentioned, you know,
spacex and Tesla.
Those are pretty sizablecompanies but you know why do
you think it's sort of thestandard where you know you have
a company that comes onto thescene, they are really
innovative, they grow superquickly and then there's
eventually a plateau.
That they run into or a wallthat they run into.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
So I've got a nice, nice answer and I've got a harsh
answer.
Nice answer is you know there'sa lot of red tape.
People become again risk averse, they don't want to rock the
boat, so they're happy kind ofwith having a job and just
maintaining, versus like you'rein a startup, you have to like,
(20:18):
you have to innovate and youhave to keep going.
And if you make mistakes, whocares?
Just keep moving forward.
That's the mentality.
But with corporations it's likeI've done consulting work with
big fortune 10 companies tostartups and so I see the
difference in the mindset therewhere, if you, let's say, for
(20:42):
one big company, an e-commercecompany that I work for, you
know moving a button from downat the bottom of the page to the
top of the page, it took me amonth to try to like justify why
we should do that.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
And so it's like, but I've heardfrom other big companies where
they're sitting there andallowing their user experience
team to do 100 different tests.
(21:02):
I think it's like BookingcomOne of my colleagues.
I actually talked with them andthey said how many tests do you
run a month?
And they said hundreds.
They're just throwing out tests, a, b tests, constantly.
And that's what you have to do.
Don't be afraid to just test itwith a small group, see how it
performs and then launch it Ifit works.
If it doesn't, then great it's.
It's not a big effect, but, youknow, just making a small
(21:23):
change when your bottom line,you know, uh, two, 3% increase
in conversion up or down, couldbe, you know, hundreds of
thousands of dollars a month.
They're so afraid to to makethat change.
Um, so I think that that's whyyou see, corporations are, you
know they stagnate.
You know my, my main answer isthe Peter principle.
(21:47):
People are promoted to thepoint of incompetence and I see
that so often where you getsomebody in there and they kind
of know what they're doing, butthey really don't.
And there's a lot of egoinvolved.
And when, when it comes tocorporations, I think there's an
inverse relationship betweenego and skill set and so there's
a lot of big ego.
So having them understand, likeshit, we don't know what we're
(22:09):
doing.
Let's try to figure this outwith either bringing an expert
to just teach us to fish or youjust learn it yourself, which is
ripe with you know risk andcost.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So Well, I think the best experts are those that
actually don't even necessarilylook at themselves as experts.
You know they're constantlylearning and continuing to
reinvent themselves as well,especially in today's day and
age where everything is so fastpaced, it changes so quickly.
You know, if you had 15 yearsof email marketing experience
(22:40):
but you weren't constantly outthere, you know, looking at
what's new, learning the newplatforms, learning the new
tricks of the trade, so to speak, you know you could not be less
relevant or capable in thisparticular moment.
You know, resting on yourlaurels it's pretty much not a
thing anymore with how quicklythings change.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Oh yeah, I mean, I'm constantly trying to learn and
try to keep my team up to dateon what the latest processes are
, the tools are.
You know, human interaction andpsychology stay somewhat the
same, but it still changesbecause as device changes,
people's interactions change.
There's definitely a dynamicaspect to it that you need to
(23:22):
keep up with, but when it comesto being more efficient with the
tooling, with the teams andjust the human interaction with
our clients is always thebiggest challenge, and it's not
the product itself, it'sactually the people that we have
to deal with.
And so just that psychology,you know it seems to be similar
(23:44):
between company to company.
You just know okay, this iscategory A, this is the
immaturity level, so this is howyou deal with them.
It's category B.
So yeah, it's always a funchallenge to see these different
companies at different stages afun challenge to see these
different companies at differentstages.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
One of my questions for you was going to be you know
what, what were some of the orwhat have been some of the
biggest challenges that you'veencountered?
You know, starting and runningyour own business that you
weren't necessarily expecting.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Um, you know, I've always tried to like learn how
people, I guess, manage you know, their, their team or their,
their clients.
And there's a there's I can'tremember where I saw it from but
somebody said you know, I putmy team first and the client
second.
And I tend to follow, havefollowed that for a long time
(24:35):
and people on my team have beenwith me I've had people with me
for a couple of decades now andbut most people have been with
me, have stuck with me for awhile, several years, and I
think that's a testament to ifyou put your team first and you
really defend them, you'd reallytry to support them.
They'll just automatically dothat with a client and that
seems to be where you know ourclient and you know our client.
(24:59):
Engagements are not just like afew months, it's it's multiple
year engagements.
So I think that's a goodtestament to show that's.
That's probably a good approachversus a client's always right,
whatever they say.
Just you know you do everythingthey ask for.
I mean that's that's not thecase because they're not always
right.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Sorry to say, and that's where the relationship
really starts to falter.
You know, as soon as therespect is lost and you just
become essentially like a taskrabbit for whatever they want,
you know, then why are theypaying you for strategy and for
your expert advice, when you'vejust been basically, you know,
pushed down into being anexecutor of whatever they bring
(25:39):
across the table?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Exactly I think the challenge is to.
You know we have differentpersonalities who we deal with
and different personalities onour team and you know I tend to
always try to be direct with theleadership that I'm involved
with and I think they respectthat.
I try not to sugarcoat like,look, you can do this one thing,
maybe somebody likes to do that, but you know what you want in
(26:04):
the long run is not this or that, and you know I try to be um
you know honest about what wesay and not just sugarcoat shit.
So I think that that they they,you know respect that and they
know that I'm not just in thereto try and make a quick buck,
I'm actually trying to, you know, take ownership of what we're
trying to recommend and if wemake a mistake, we own up to it
(26:26):
and we say, hey, let's, let'spivot and figure something else
out.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, so no, that makes a lot of sense and all the
biggest issues we ever had withthe agency was always the
client and the team memberrelationship.
But I think you know, I neverreally thought about it in your
way of you know, always put theteam first and the client second
but, looking back, you knowwhen we like fired our first
(26:50):
client ever that should havebeen fired.
You know, probably like a monthor two earlier than they
actually got fired and sort ofthe team morale and just
everything, probably 2xovernight, because I just sort
of put my foot down and saidwe're done doing this, we're
done, you know, being sort ofthe scapegoat for X, y and Z
(27:13):
things and you know, the teamgot brought so much closer
together as a byproduct of thatand then we got to work and
focus and spend more time on thepeople that we should have been
spending more time with.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, and you know that just comes with maturity,
because when you're firststarting out building a business
, you just want to get as manyclients as you can, you want to
just appease them as much aspossible.
And it's just I get that.
I mean, you're starting offit's hard to be confident and
say you know what I don't needyou and you know what I don't
need you, and you know you haveone other client.
It's hard to.
It's hard to be that confidentto say that.
(27:45):
So I get that.
And I think you know again,because you, if when I do focus
on the team, there's definitelya tendency to I have to watch
out, because I've had teammembers where they took
advantage of that, and so youknow I.
And again I can't rememberwhere I heard this from, but
they said you.
So you know I.
And again I can't remember whereI heard this from, but they
said you know, you know what isthe most detrimental person on
(28:07):
your team?
Is it that?
Is it that person who knowseverything but doesn't give a
shit?
Or somebody who doesn't quiteknow a lot, but you know they
really care?
And so you actually take thesecond one.
You know you prefer that secondone Cause that first one, who's
got that ego and who doesn'treally care, can be a very that
can be a virus within yourcompany and I've had that before
(28:27):
and that can bring you know.
One bad person can bring downyour company If you don't be
careful.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
And I think it's harder to identify in a remote
environment than in person.
Yeah, you're just not engagingand interacting as much or as
frequently, and you know it'seasier to hide online than it is
in person.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
So yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Which is one of the blessings and also curses of
this new remote work world.
You know there's a lot ofbenefits to it, but there's
definitely some some cons aswell.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, I mean that's.
I mean I always tell my teamthat we have to over-communicate
.
I mean just, you know, whetherit's constant meetings, it's,
it's fine, but just make themshort and sweet and just just
show yourself, let's talk.
And, you know, have thoseconversations.
But I always tend to try totalk to what with my team,
one-on-one anyway, just to seehow they're doing and just get
(29:19):
that human aspect.
Again, I'm a user experiencedesigner so I have to have
empathy.
So hopefully that's one of mystrong suits, that I can read
people better.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
When it comes to the way that you think about
building your team.
What's more important for you,like hard skills or soft skills,
or is it some combination ofboth?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So that's a very interesting question, because if
you asked me five years ago or10 years ago, it'd probably be
different, because we're aconsulting agency.
There's definitely a certainlevel of hard skills that has to
be present and you have to begood at, but it's the soft
skills that show your successrate in the long run.
Hard skills are great in theshort term.
(30:01):
Your success rate in the longrun Hard skills are great in the
short term, but not in the longrun.
I've got people who are verycompetent in what they do, but
there's frustrating things thatthey would do that would just
eat at the team, eat at theclient, eat at my time, and that
just builds and builds.
Unless they change that again,that could be a that's a virus
(30:22):
too that can grow within yourteam.
And so I think when you'reinterviewing people, attitude is
such a big key.
It's like you can ask them thehard skills, but if their
attitude is garbage or you cansense some type of like you know
chip on their shoulder or egothat's going to manifest itself
at some point.
(30:42):
So you've got to be like awareof that.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
To your point about ego and like chip on the
shoulder.
Why do you think, then, thatsome of the more like successful
founders over the past decade,like some of them definitely
have you know that, that chip ontheir shoulder?
Do you think you know that thatchip on their shoulder?
Do you think you know, in somecases it actually can be a good
thing as long as it's, you know,in the right direction and
(31:10):
channeled the right way.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, use that power for good and not evil.
Yeah, I think if you're, ifyou're driven, it's, it's one
thing.
But you know us as designers um, we're going to present things
that a client may not like, orthey have their own subjective
view on things.
(31:32):
We try to back whatever we dowith data.
So it's not like well, you know, this checkout works better.
It's just more conversion rate,whatever.
This is why you should do itversus.
I think I like this button overhere better than over.
Well, you know, this checkoutworks better.
It's just more conversion rate,whatever.
This is why you should do itversus.
I think I like this button overhere better than over there,
just because it just I thinkit's better.
And so if you got somebody witha chip on their shoulder,
(31:53):
they're going to take that, thatfeedback.
With clients who don't knowexactly what they're doing or
why they're making that decision, they're going to take it
harder, and so they're going toget upset, they're going to get
demotivated, and so I've andI've seen that happen, where
certain certain people on myteam will just be so frustrated
because they can't get across,I'm like, well, that's your job
(32:14):
to sell it.
If you can't sell it, thendon't get so frustrated and
don't get so attached tosomething.
So I think that's you know,that's where if you've got a
founder who has a chip on theirshoulder, but they're driven to
like if it's a product that theyknow that they want that
success and they're just drivento make sure it's successful.
Yeah, use sucks.
Then you have to understandyou're not the end all be all.
(32:35):
And that's the problem withsometimes where we've gone to
companies where the leader isnot really present, but then he
or she will come in at the lastminute, throw a monkey wrench,
because they just feel like, hey, I'm going to just blow this
(32:55):
all up.
I'm like where were you twodays ago or a week ago?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
You can't do that In part.
They're hanging out.
Yeah, when were you two daysago or a week ago?
You know you can't do that, andjust because that's how you
feel.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
So I think you know again, you have to, as, as you
know, consultants, we have towrangle in those cats as as we
used to say to, to make surethat, yeah, it's, it's used you
know, whatever motivation theyhave is used to an advantage.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, Ego not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Chip on the shoulder, you know, might be as long as
it manifests itself inmotivation, exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on
and sharing your insights.
Um, and I'll definitely includeit in the show notes, but
before we hop, can you leteverybody know where they can
find and connect with you onlineif they want to learn more?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Definitely.
Um, you could, you could, youcould check out our.
We actually started our ownpodcast.
It's Make an Impact YT forYouTube.
You can check it out there.
Talk about the latest AI to UX,to product strategy.
Or you could check out ourwebsite at impactwith3i's
(33:58):
I-I-I-M-P-A-C-Tio.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Awesome.
Well, again, I reallyappreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
This has been great.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, thank you For everybody that's listening.
As always, you can find me atBrandonAmarosocom or Scalistai.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next time.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Bye everybody.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast
about using the Gen Z mindset togrow your business.
I'm Gen Z entrepreneur BrandonAmoroso, former founder of
Electric and now the co-founderof Scalist, and today I'm
talking with Mikado Kern, who'sthe founder at Impact, which is
a digital product design anddevelopment consulting agency
that specializes in successfullylaunching software products.
(00:21):
Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So before we jump into things here, can you give
everybody just a quick TLDR onyour background and how you got
into software to begin with?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Sure, definitely.
You know, I started way backwhen as an electrical and
automation engineer out ofschool, did that for a while and
always wanted to be anentrepreneur.
I'm out of school, did that fora while and always wanted to be
an entrepreneur and I've alwaystried to test different things.
But as an engineer back in theday, craigslist was a thing.
(00:54):
I was building websites anddoing SEO and that sort of thing
, but I was also helpingredesign software applications
in the manufacturing space forautomation and so I was kind of
gravitated towards userexperience design, which is what
our bread and butter is for ouragency.
But yeah, I just startedbuilding people's websites,
(01:15):
started finding clients onCraigslist and I got to a point
where I was able to quit my jobas an engineer and just started
my business full time.
I was running that for the lastalmost 20 years now and grown my
business from a small agency to.
We had, I think, at most about50 people in our agency and
(01:39):
we've been helping enterprisesoftware clients specifically a
lot in more of the complexspaces of cybersecurity, energy,
robotics.
I actually went full circlewith my degree and some of my
former businesses that I workwith.
But yeah, I mean we've beenprimarily helping our clients.
(02:00):
If they have a softwareapplication that has become
antiquated and the tech stackhas been pretty much falling
behind and they need to redesignit to actually work better and
they're starting to losecompetition to their competitors
in the market space, weactually come in and really help
them determine the beststrategy, the best process and
(02:22):
the user experience design andthe front-end development for
their products.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
What are some of the biggest challenges that maybe
legacy is the wrong term butestablished tech companies face
when it comes to things liketech debt and trying to iterate
and build on a product that'sbeen there for 10, 15 years?
And you mentioned there's somenewcomers that come onto the
space and they don't have anytech, that they're also starting
(02:47):
from zero, but, like you know,there's obviously been a lot
that has changed in the last 10to 15 years when it comes to
even the languages used.
You know the infrastructure tobuild.
So what are some of the uniquechallenges that they would face
versus somebody who's juststarting that new?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
For sure.
I think what I always say is youhave to have the three Ps to
have a successful company and,as product, people in process.
And when you see companies withlegacy products, they tend to
want to either try to bandage,fix what they currently have or
they have to maintain whatproduct they have because they
have current clients and so tobuild something brand new.
(03:28):
You've got the challenges ofhaving their team just keeping
the lights on, having thatteam's bandwidth be very limited
to building something brand new, and then most of the time
they're very immature in theirprocess of actually becoming
feature-centric to user-centric.
And to change that mindset isvery different because it's
(03:51):
generally you've got a lot ofdevelopers that are designing as
well and you've got to havethat separation and to be not
only user-centric focused buthave the scalability and kind of
the roadmap thinking of howdoes this product fit into the
business goals, your users'goals and the constraints of the
(04:13):
development team.
Those are the main challengeswe see when we go into clients
is that they're unable tounderstand all the different
risks and the differentchallenges that they're facing
when they're trying to redesignthe application, and so what we
try to do is identify thoserisks really quickly with the
(04:34):
leadership and then understandokay, these are things that we
know that you need to have inyour new application and these
are things that are very riskyand it's going to take a lot of
effort.
Let's get those in front ofusers and test them out in
prototypes before you startbuilding it.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And can you drill down a little bit more on
feature-centric versususer-centric?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Like, what does that?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
look like in practice .
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So, when it comes to user-centric, we try to get the
leadership development team andthe product teams to really
think about what is the user'sgoals, their pain points and
what is their workflowthroughout their you know when
they're doing their tasks andwhen you get.
(05:19):
A lot of times you get leadersthat really think about well, if
we have this feature or if wehave AI, boom, you know we're
going to sell it, everybody'sgoing to want it.
But what we're seeing,especially now with AI being
such a big thing, is like wehave to have AI and that's it.
But they're not really thinking.
Is it just a chatbot?
Is it something more?
Can we actually implement whatis necessary for a user to say,
(05:42):
oh, that's something that's muchdifferent than what your
competitor has, or this is muchbetter, or I can perform my
workflow in such a moreefficient manner than this other
application.
So getting that mindset tochange with leadership is so
important, because they reallyjust think, okay, it's like if
(06:03):
you build it, they'll come.
That's what they're thinking isalways.
And they really just think,okay, it's like if you build it,
they'll come.
That's what they're thinking isalways.
And if we have these 10features, we're, we're going to,
we're going to blow thecompetition out of the water.
But I've seen time and timeagain that more nimble, smaller
companies with less features itdoes better, tend to do better
if their user interface andtheir user experience and the
(06:23):
tech stack outperforms the otherones with even less features.
So that's just a mindset thatyou've got to switch, especially
when you know they come from alegacy system.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, the uh to your point about, uh, you know, being
feature centric.
You know there's so manysolutions out there where you
need specialists, you need, youknow, like whole implementation
teams, because of the fact thatthey're just so, you know,
complicated and complex, andthen you might see a newcomer
come to the market that mightnot even have all the bells and
(06:57):
whistles that the industryincumbent has.
But you know, the industryincumbent maybe only 25% of the
product is actually even gettingleveraged because it is, you
know, a little bit morecumbersome to use.
And you know the industryincumbent maybe only 25% of the
product is actually even gettingleveraged because it is, you
know, a little bit morecumbersome to use.
And, you know, just throwing AIinto something for the sake of
having AI, you know.
I'm pretty sure every softwarecompany out there now from the
ones who've been around the 50years to you know just getting
started there's AI in theproduct and it's pretty obvious
(07:21):
even at this point whatcompanies companies are truly
AI-centric and focused versuswhich ones are just trying to
get it into the product so thatthey can say that they are an AI
company.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, we actually are seeing that in real time right
now with some of our clients,where we have ones that really
don't involve us.
They just said, oh, we're justmoving resources over to
implement this AI, whether it'sjust implementing Copilot or
some type of chatbot that theysaid we've got this.
But, then we've got otherclients that say, hey, we are
(07:52):
implementing a very smartchatbot, but we want something
that is not just all text heavyor just typing in things.
We're actually helping with theprompts, we're helping out
create more visual responses.
Visual like responses that aremuch easier to just like narrow
down choices.
It's far easier to to manageand to, you know, I guess, to
talk with the, with AI and it.
(08:14):
Just you can see thedifferences in results and the
outcomes just from those twointeractions with involving us
that are really user centricversus ones that just want the
feature.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, and when.
I think you know, the approachthat I've tried to take is, you
know, look at the user problemsand then think about is there a
way that AI could make thisbetter?
Because that isn't always thecase.
You know, ai isn't meant forevery single component of your
product, nor will it necessarilymake it easier.
It actually might make it morechallenging, whereas there have
(08:49):
been other instances.
For example, like you know, oneof the biggest issues with
candidates applying to jobs isthat they got to fill out all
this basic information over andover and over again.
But with AI now they can justupload their resume once.
It'll scrape everything inabout five seconds,
auto-generate all the structureddata for them, and that saves
the candidates you, thecandidates a tremendous amount
of time.
So that was an example where, atleast hypothetically, we looked
(09:12):
at the user problem and then AIwas what actually was able to
solve it in a way that youwouldn't have been able to in
the past.
So stuff like that is reallycool.
But then there are otherinstances where like in the
Shopify ecosystem, as an exampleexample you have a lot of these
email marketing platforms whoare trying to get ai
incorporated into the product.
But a subject line, you knowwriter, cool I guess, but you
(09:33):
know, great, that saved me.
You know, two seconds maybe.
Um, you know, that is a littlebit more gimmicky per se and
it's sort of ai for the sake ofai, it's not transforming any
component of the product or howthe user is actually using it
for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I mean, I'm sure you've seen where a new release
by open ai just disrupts allthese chat wrappers, chat gpt
wrappers, and gets them out ofbusiness because they didn't
really think things through asfar as, like what, what do you?
What problems are you trying tosolve?
And and yeah, we see, I meanwe're seeing that happen with, I
mean just with yourapplications right now, with, uh
(10:11):
, you know how many people areusing Grammarly.
Do you use that as much anymore?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Probably not so, yeah , it is interesting to see how
some of the industry incumbentsare like really transforming
their platform with AI.
What are the?
Things that excites you themost, and how has that changed
(10:48):
the way that you work with yourclients or even do things
internally as an agency owner?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know with AI, as far as how we leverage it more
internally, you know wedefinitely.
When it comes to design, you'regoing to see, you know, with
certain I guess with websites,they all look the same.
Now, I mean, there's definitelytemplated designs.
They seem to work fine as it isuntil something changes, so you
(11:16):
can have the tools that we use.
They help you quickly createlike oh, I need a checkout.
You know, checkout we, I mean,we pretty much know what an
e-commerce checkout looks like.
There's some variations ofthings but you know, when it
comes to that, you can prettymuch have AI say okay, generate
a, you know, add to cartcheckout you know, process your
credit card and then you're done.
(11:36):
You know those kinds of things.
That way, you can focus on moreof the harder problems to solve
when it comes to workflow andthe design and you can really
put more effort into that.
User research as well, we'veseen.
You know it does definitelydisseminate the data.
So if we're collecting a lot oflike audio and we're collecting
a lot of data points as far aslike, how does this perform when
(11:59):
we're doing a benchmark,usability testing and trying to
get feedback on that, or anytype of card sorting where we're
trying to determine a betternavigation system, and the
taxonomy is really complicatedand so AI is helping a little
bit to to understand that.
We're seeing.
You know you still have to be anexpert to know what the right
questions to ask and what's theoutcome what the outcome is.
(12:20):
But you know the efficienciesgain where one person can do a
little bit more if they're anexpert.
I think it's like anythingwhere if you're average or
subpar and you're trying to useAI, maybe you might do okay, or
it may help you with certainthings to help elevate your
skill set okay, or it may helpyou with certain things to help
elevate your skill set.
But if you're above average andyou really know what you're
(12:41):
doing and you leverage AI, youcan accelerate the time
intensive tasks that normallywaste your time so you can focus
on the really hard solves.
But with clients we're seeingwhat I'm really excited about is
the the human element thatwe're seeing especially near
like customer service.
(13:02):
I think is a big one that'sbeing disrupted and we're
actually helping out withclients with that aspect of it
where you know when you gothrough, you know, depending on
what type of customer serviceyou have, the subject matter can
be very complex, so you couldgo to an FAQ system you can go
to you have.
The subject matter can be verycomplex, so you could go to an
FAQ system you can go to.
You know you call somebody upand ask for questions or you ask
(13:26):
a chatbot to answer certainquestions.
But if you can really train,like the AI agents, and create
specific ones for clients thatknow and understand their
particular data, I can see, andwe see, the advantages of using
AI for that, where you canactually utilize less human
(13:50):
interaction and less trainingand then use AI to actually help
users that are new to anenterprise platform to
understand how things work.
So I think you're seeing a lotof acceleration there, because
that's just something that youcan normally program.
You know a customer service,you know somebody says this, you
know almost a flow chart of howto get them from A to B.
(14:12):
So I mean, those are thingsthat we're seeing in the
immediate future, in the fartherfuture.
You know that one things thatwe're seeing in the immediate
future, in the farther future.
You know that one's hard to saybecause it's, you know, I'm
seeing, like I said, a lot ofcompanies are putting so much
resources into just putting UIinto their product and how they
(14:36):
implement that, I think, is I'mtrying to understand where the
cost, the ROI, is.
And so if it's going to costthem, you know whatever a number
of resources to integrate thatand maintain it and to
continuously check that to makesure it's keeping up to date.
I think that's where we may seea switch, where, you know,
(15:01):
maybe AI isn't the answer, Maybeit's a.
It's a semi automated type ofthing where you've got, um,
people that are in thereunderstanding how to do a
specific task, but then theyhave a specific AI agent helping
them out.
So each company whether it's alaw firm, it's a robotics
company or you know whateverenergy company you're creating
(15:22):
very customized AI agents forthese corporations versus just
having you know co-pilotintegrated into your system.
So I think that's kind of whereyou probably are seeing things
switch or going towards, but Iassume things will get more and
more efficient and costeffective for people to actually
integrate that.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
but we'll see yeah, I mean the costs continue to go
down.
I mean, like that parsing toolthat I mentioned, we wouldn't
have been able to do it evennine months ago because the
costs were too high and also theaccuracy of which it could, you
know, perform the task was not.
You know it wasn't.
It wasn't helpful because youwould still have to spend so
much time, you know, actuallydoing things manually.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And so.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I think over over time it'll get easier and easier
and the barrier to entry willget lower and lower for
businesses.
But at the same time you knowsome of these industry
incumbents, like Shopify as anexample, just cause that's what
I'm closest to the amount ofinvestment that would go into
just trying to get all of thecore need to have feature sets
(16:25):
into a platform if somebodyreally did want to go after them
.
You mentioned checkout as anexample.
Everybody knows what it lookslike and what it should do, but
you still need it and there'slike a thousand other things
that you also still need in anecon platform.
And so do you think there willbe more and more sort of
companies that start to incubateinternally.
(16:47):
You know sort of partitioningoff a portion of you know their
team or their resources to sortof spin up.
You know net new productofferings or or or try and get
some of that like.
You know entrepreneurshipmentality, but with the funding
and sort of capabilities that alarger enterprise could provide.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
You know, I think that's what you should be doing.
Um, we, you know, we alwaystend to be the innovation arm.
Or you know, the, the, uh, thecompany that comes in and says,
okay, we're going to developsomething in a black box and
then we're going to present itto you, type of thing, so your
main team can just continuesupporting the current product,
(17:32):
Even though, as a company, youshould always continuously
invest in innovation andcontinuous improvement, always
continuously invest ininnovation and continuous
improvement.
But many of them seem to behappy with just maintaining or
the status quo, because they seeinnovation, especially during a
recessionary period, that tendsto be cut first.
And the companies that don't cutand continue to innovate and
continuously improve when therecession is over with, and they
(17:55):
always tend not to last forever.
They tend to be way ahead ofany competition.
And so you know, I think it'sagain.
When we go into companies, wetry to understand where the
biggest risks are, becauseeverybody tends to be risk
adverse during recessionaryperiods.
But you still want to innovate.
(18:17):
Maybe it's at a slower pace,maybe you're not putting in such
a.
You're trying to hit that.
You know home run shot, butyou're trying to at least slowly
innovate constantly, everymonth.
I mean, look at SpaceX, lookslike Tesla.
They've leapfrogged so manycompanies because if you look at
their number of revisionswithin a year, I mean it's
(18:37):
exponentially more.
And so if you get companies tothink it like that and it has to
come from the top down that'swhy we always try and interface
with the top down versus tryingto make change from the bottom
up it's more effective becauseyou have to have the mindset
where everybody's like, hey,let's try to figure out how to
make this better, versus like,hey, what is this other
competitor doing over here?
We're not going to do anything,unless I see it with three
(18:59):
other competitors and it's like,well, you'll never.
You're always playing catch up.
So I think there should alwaysbe some type of budget to
innovate, but companies are justyou know, they're just tend not
to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, it's like proactive versus being reactive.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It's a lot easier to say you're proactive and want to
be proactive than to you know,actually be proactive oh, for
sure why do you think that youknow these problems typically
present themselves at you know,larger organizations and not the
small?
And eventually the small becomethese larger organizations
where the innovation does get tostart to get stifled.
(19:37):
Are there any examples of wellyou you mentioned, you know,
spacex and Tesla.
Those are pretty sizablecompanies but you know why do
you think it's sort of thestandard where you know you have
a company that comes onto thescene, they are really
innovative, they grow superquickly and then there's
eventually a plateau.
That they run into or a wallthat they run into.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
So I've got a nice, nice answer and I've got a harsh
answer.
Nice answer is you know there'sa lot of red tape.
People become again risk averse, they don't want to rock the
boat, so they're happy kind ofwith having a job and just
maintaining, versus like you'rein a startup, you have to like,
(20:18):
you have to innovate and youhave to keep going.
And if you make mistakes, whocares?
Just keep moving forward.
That's the mentality.
But with corporations it's likeI've done consulting work with
big fortune 10 companies tostartups and so I see the
difference in the mindset therewhere, if you, let's say, for
(20:42):
one big company, an e-commercecompany that I work for, you
know moving a button from downat the bottom of the page to the
top of the page, it took me amonth to try to like justify why
we should do that.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
And so it's like, but I've heardfrom other big companies where
they're sitting there andallowing their user experience
team to do 100 different tests.
(21:02):
I think it's like BookingcomOne of my colleagues.
I actually talked with them andthey said how many tests do you
run a month?
And they said hundreds.
They're just throwing out tests, a, b tests, constantly.
And that's what you have to do.
Don't be afraid to just test itwith a small group, see how it
performs and then launch it Ifit works.
If it doesn't, then great it's.
It's not a big effect, but, youknow, just making a small
(21:23):
change when your bottom line,you know, uh, two, 3% increase
in conversion up or down, couldbe, you know, hundreds of
thousands of dollars a month.
They're so afraid to to makethat change.
Um, so I think that that's whyyou see, corporations are, you
know they stagnate.
You know my, my main answer isthe Peter principle.
(21:47):
People are promoted to thepoint of incompetence and I see
that so often where you getsomebody in there and they kind
of know what they're doing, butthey really don't.
And there's a lot of egoinvolved.
And when, when it comes tocorporations, I think there's an
inverse relationship betweenego and skill set and so there's
a lot of big ego.
So having them understand, likeshit, we don't know what we're
(22:09):
doing.
Let's try to figure this outwith either bringing an expert
to just teach us to fish or youjust learn it yourself, which is
ripe with you know risk andcost.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So Well, I think the best experts are those that
actually don't even necessarilylook at themselves as experts.
You know they're constantlylearning and continuing to
reinvent themselves as well,especially in today's day and
age where everything is so fastpaced, it changes so quickly.
You know, if you had 15 yearsof email marketing experience
(22:40):
but you weren't constantly outthere, you know, looking at
what's new, learning the newplatforms, learning the new
tricks of the trade, so to speak, you know you could not be less
relevant or capable in thisparticular moment.
You know, resting on yourlaurels it's pretty much not a
thing anymore with how quicklythings change.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Oh yeah, I mean, I'm constantly trying to learn and
try to keep my team up to dateon what the latest processes are
, the tools are.
You know, human interaction andpsychology stay somewhat the
same, but it still changesbecause as device changes,
people's interactions change.
There's definitely a dynamicaspect to it that you need to
(23:22):
keep up with, but when it comesto being more efficient with the
tooling, with the teams andjust the human interaction with
our clients is always thebiggest challenge, and it's not
the product itself, it'sactually the people that we have
to deal with.
And so just that psychology,you know it seems to be similar
(23:44):
between company to company.
You just know okay, this iscategory A, this is the
immaturity level, so this is howyou deal with them.
It's category B.
So yeah, it's always a funchallenge to see these different
companies at different stages afun challenge to see these
different companies at differentstages.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
One of my questions for you was going to be you know
what, what were some of the orwhat have been some of the
biggest challenges that you'veencountered?
You know, starting and runningyour own business that you
weren't necessarily expecting.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Um, you know, I've always tried to like learn how
people, I guess, manage you know, their, their team or their,
their clients.
And there's a there's I can'tremember where I saw it from but
somebody said you know, I putmy team first and the client
second.
And I tend to follow, havefollowed that for a long time
(24:35):
and people on my team have beenwith me I've had people with me
for a couple of decades now andbut most people have been with
me, have stuck with me for awhile, several years, and I
think that's a testament to ifyou put your team first and you
really defend them, you'd reallytry to support them.
They'll just automatically dothat with a client and that
seems to be where you know ourclient and you know our client.
(24:59):
Engagements are not just like afew months, it's it's multiple
year engagements.
So I think that's a goodtestament to show that's.
That's probably a good approachversus a client's always right,
whatever they say.
Just you know you do everythingthey ask for.
I mean that's that's not thecase because they're not always
right.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Sorry to say, and that's where the relationship
really starts to falter.
You know, as soon as therespect is lost and you just
become essentially like a taskrabbit for whatever they want,
you know, then why are theypaying you for strategy and for
your expert advice, when you'vejust been basically, you know,
pushed down into being anexecutor of whatever they bring
(25:39):
across the table?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Exactly I think the challenge is to.
You know we have differentpersonalities who we deal with
and different personalities onour team and you know I tend to
always try to be direct with theleadership that I'm involved
with and I think they respectthat.
I try not to sugarcoat like,look, you can do this one thing,
maybe somebody likes to do that, but you know what you want in
(26:04):
the long run is not this or that, and you know I try to be um
you know honest about what wesay and not just sugarcoat shit.
So I think that that they they,you know respect that and they
know that I'm not just in thereto try and make a quick buck,
I'm actually trying to, you know, take ownership of what we're
trying to recommend and if wemake a mistake, we own up to it
(26:26):
and we say, hey, let's, let'spivot and figure something else
out.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, so no, that makes a lot of sense and all the
biggest issues we ever had withthe agency was always the
client and the team memberrelationship.
But I think you know, I neverreally thought about it in your
way of you know, always put theteam first and the client second
but, looking back, you knowwhen we like fired our first
(26:50):
client ever that should havebeen fired.
You know, probably like a monthor two earlier than they
actually got fired and sort ofthe team morale and just
everything, probably 2xovernight, because I just sort
of put my foot down and saidwe're done doing this, we're
done, you know, being sort ofthe scapegoat for X, y and Z
(27:13):
things and you know, the teamgot brought so much closer
together as a byproduct of thatand then we got to work and
focus and spend more time on thepeople that we should have been
spending more time with.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, and you know that just comes with maturity,
because when you're firststarting out building a business
, you just want to get as manyclients as you can, you want to
just appease them as much aspossible.
And it's just I get that.
I mean, you're starting offit's hard to be confident and
say you know what I don't needyou and you know what I don't
need you, and you know you haveone other client.
It's hard to.
It's hard to be that confidentto say that.
(27:45):
So I get that.
And I think you know again,because you, if when I do focus
on the team, there's definitelya tendency to I have to watch
out, because I've had teammembers where they took
advantage of that, and so youknow I.
And again I can't rememberwhere I heard this from, but
they said you.
So you know I.
And again I can't remember whereI heard this from, but they
said you know, you know what isthe most detrimental person on
(28:07):
your team?
Is it that?
Is it that person who knowseverything but doesn't give a
shit?
Or somebody who doesn't quiteknow a lot, but you know they
really care?
And so you actually take thesecond one.
You know you prefer that secondone Cause that first one, who's
got that ego and who doesn'treally care, can be a very that
can be a virus within yourcompany and I've had that before
(28:27):
and that can bring you know.
One bad person can bring downyour company If you don't be
careful.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
And I think it's harder to identify in a remote
environment than in person.
Yeah, you're just not engagingand interacting as much or as
frequently, and you know it'seasier to hide online than it is
in person.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
So yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Which is one of the blessings and also curses of
this new remote work world.
You know there's a lot ofbenefits to it, but there's
definitely some some cons aswell.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, I mean that's.
I mean I always tell my teamthat we have to over-communicate
.
I mean just, you know, whetherit's constant meetings, it's,
it's fine, but just make themshort and sweet and just just
show yourself, let's talk.
And, you know, have thoseconversations.
But I always tend to try totalk to what with my team,
one-on-one anyway, just to seehow they're doing and just get
(29:19):
that human aspect.
Again, I'm a user experiencedesigner so I have to have
empathy.
So hopefully that's one of mystrong suits, that I can read
people better.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
When it comes to the way that you think about
building your team.
What's more important for you,like hard skills or soft skills,
or is it some combination ofboth?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So that's a very interesting question, because if
you asked me five years ago or10 years ago, it'd probably be
different, because we're aconsulting agency.
There's definitely a certainlevel of hard skills that has to
be present and you have to begood at, but it's the soft
skills that show your successrate in the long run.
Hard skills are great in theshort term.
(30:01):
Your success rate in the longrun Hard skills are great in the
short term, but not in the longrun.
I've got people who are verycompetent in what they do, but
there's frustrating things thatthey would do that would just
eat at the team, eat at theclient, eat at my time, and that
just builds and builds.
Unless they change that again,that could be a that's a virus
(30:22):
too that can grow within yourteam.
And so I think when you'reinterviewing people, attitude is
such a big key.
It's like you can ask them thehard skills, but if their
attitude is garbage or you cansense some type of like you know
chip on their shoulder or egothat's going to manifest itself
at some point.
(30:42):
So you've got to be like awareof that.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
To your point about ego and like chip on the
shoulder.
Why do you think, then, thatsome of the more like successful
founders over the past decade,like some of them definitely
have you know that, that chip ontheir shoulder?
Do you think you know that thatchip on their shoulder?
Do you think you know, in somecases it actually can be a good
thing as long as it's, you know,in the right direction and
(31:10):
channeled the right way.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, use that power for good and not evil.
Yeah, I think if you're, ifyou're driven, it's, it's one
thing.
But you know us as designers um, we're going to present things
that a client may not like, orthey have their own subjective
view on things.
(31:32):
We try to back whatever we dowith data.
So it's not like well, you know, this checkout works better.
It's just more conversion rate,whatever.
This is why you should do itversus.
I think I like this button overhere better than over.
Well, you know, this checkoutworks better.
It's just more conversion rate,whatever.
This is why you should do itversus.
I think I like this button overhere better than over there,
just because it just I thinkit's better.
And so if you got somebody witha chip on their shoulder,
(31:53):
they're going to take that, thatfeedback.
With clients who don't knowexactly what they're doing or
why they're making that decision, they're going to take it
harder, and so they're going toget upset, they're going to get
demotivated, and so I've andI've seen that happen, where
certain certain people on myteam will just be so frustrated
because they can't get across,I'm like, well, that's your job
(32:14):
to sell it.
If you can't sell it, thendon't get so frustrated and
don't get so attached tosomething.
So I think that's you know,that's where if you've got a
founder who has a chip on theirshoulder, but they're driven to
like if it's a product that theyknow that they want that
success and they're just drivento make sure it's successful.
Yeah, use sucks.
Then you have to understandyou're not the end all be all.
(32:35):
And that's the problem withsometimes where we've gone to
companies where the leader isnot really present, but then he
or she will come in at the lastminute, throw a monkey wrench,
because they just feel like, hey, I'm going to just blow this
(32:55):
all up.
I'm like where were you twodays ago or a week ago?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
You can't do that In part.
They're hanging out.
Yeah, when were you two daysago or a week ago?
You know you can't do that, andjust because that's how you
feel.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
So I think you know again, you have to, as, as you
know, consultants, we have towrangle in those cats as as we
used to say to, to make surethat, yeah, it's, it's used you
know, whatever motivation theyhave is used to an advantage.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, Ego not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Chip on the shoulder, you know, might be as long as
it manifests itself inmotivation, exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on
and sharing your insights.
Um, and I'll definitely includeit in the show notes, but
before we hop, can you leteverybody know where they can
find and connect with you onlineif they want to learn more?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Definitely.
Um, you could, you could, youcould check out our.
We actually started our ownpodcast.
It's Make an Impact YT forYouTube.
You can check it out there.
Talk about the latest AI to UX,to product strategy.
Or you could check out ourwebsite at impactwith3i's
(33:58):
I-I-I-M-P-A-C-Tio.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Awesome.
Well, again, I reallyappreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
This has been great.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, thank you For everybody that's listening.
As always, you can find me atBrandonAmarosocom or Scalistai.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next time.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Bye everybody.
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