The D2Z Podcast
Gen Z entrepreneur and DTC agency leader Brandon Amoroso talks with some of the best in the marketing world. Brandon and guests reveal their top business-growth strategies for anyone in the online space–whether you are a brick-and-mortar business looking to scale or an established online business trying to grow. Consumer marketing is under constant and dramatic change, so Brandon aims to tackle new problems with a fresh Gen Z mindset. The D2Z Podcast delivers insights, strategies, and tactics that you can use and aims to shift how you think about business and your relationships with your teams, partners, and customers.
The D2Z Podcast
Incorporating AI into your Product - 135
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/
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon Amoroso, former founder of Electric and now the co-founder of Scalist, and today I'm talking with Mikado Kern, who's the founder at Impact, which is a digital product design and development consulting agency that specializes in successfully launching software products. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So before we jump into things here, can you give everybody just a quick TLDR on your background and how you got into software to begin with?
Speaker 2:Sure, definitely. You know, I started way back when as an electrical and automation engineer out of school, did that for a while and always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm out of school, did that for a while and always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I've always tried to test different things. But as an engineer back in the day, craigslist was a thing. I was building websites and doing SEO and that sort of thing, but I was also helping redesign software applications in the manufacturing space for automation and so I was kind of gravitated towards user experience design, which is what our bread and butter is for our agency. But yeah, I just started building people's websites, started finding clients on Craigslist and I got to a point where I was able to quit my job as an engineer and just started my business full time.
Speaker 2:I was running that for the last almost 20 years now and grown my business from a small agency to. We had, I think, at most about 50 people in our agency and we've been helping enterprise software clients specifically a lot in more of the complex spaces of cybersecurity, energy, robotics. I actually went full circle with my degree and some of my former businesses that I work with. But yeah, I mean we've been primarily helping our clients. If they have a software application that has become antiquated and the tech stack has been pretty much falling behind and they need to redesign it to actually work better and they're starting to lose competition to their competitors in the market space, we actually come in and really help them determine the best strategy, the best process and the user experience design and the front-end development for their products.
Speaker 1:What are some of the biggest challenges that maybe legacy is the wrong term but established tech companies face when it comes to things like tech debt and trying to iterate and build on a product that's been there for 10, 15 years? And you mentioned there's some newcomers that come onto the space and they don't have any tech, that they're also starting from zero, but, like you know, there's obviously been a lot that has changed in the last 10 to 15 years when it comes to even the languages used. You know the infrastructure to build. So what are some of the unique challenges that they would face versus somebody who's just starting that new?
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 2:I think what I always say is you have to have the three Ps to have a successful company and, as product, people in process.
Speaker 2:And when you see companies with legacy products, they tend to want to either try to bandage, fix what they currently have or they have to maintain what product they have because they have current clients and so to build something brand new.
Speaker 2:You've got the challenges of having their team just keeping the lights on, having that team's bandwidth be very limited to building something brand new, and then most of the time they're very immature in their process of actually becoming feature-centric to user-centric.
Speaker 2:And to change that mindset is very different because it's generally you've got a lot of developers that are designing as well and you've got to have that separation and to be not only user-centric focused but have the scalability and kind of the roadmap thinking of how does this product fit into the business goals, your users' goals and the constraints of the development team. Those are the main challenges we see when we go into clients is that they're unable to understand all the different risks and the different challenges that they're facing when they're trying to redesign the application, and so what we try to do is identify those risks really quickly with the leadership and then understand okay, these are things that we know that you need to have in your new application and these are things that are very risky and it's going to take a lot of effort. Let's get those in front of users and test them out in prototypes before you start building it.
Speaker 1:And can you drill down a little bit more on feature-centric versus user-centric?
Speaker 2:Like, what does that?
Speaker 1:look like in practice.
Speaker 2:So, when it comes to user-centric, we try to get the leadership development team and the product teams to really think about what is the user's goals, their pain points and what is their workflow throughout their you know when they're doing their tasks and when you get. A lot of times you get leaders that really think about well, if we have this feature or if we have AI, boom, you know we're going to sell it, everybody's going to want it. But what we're seeing, especially now with AI being such a big thing, is like we have 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 what is necessary for a user to say, oh, that's something that's much different than what your competitor has, or this is much better, or I can perform my workflow in such a more efficient manner than this other application.
Speaker 2:So getting that mindset to change with leadership is so important, because they really just think, okay, it's like if you build it, they'll come. That's what they're thinking is always. And they really just think, okay, it's like if you build it, they'll come. That's what they're thinking is always. And if we have these 10 features, we're, we're going to, we're going to blow the competition out of the water. But I've seen time and time again that more nimble, smaller companies with less features it does better, tend to do better if their user interface and their user experience and the tech stack outperforms the other ones with even less features. So that's just a mindset that you've got to switch, especially when you know they come from a legacy system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the uh to your point about, uh, you know, being feature centric. You know there's so many solutions out there where you need specialists, you need, you know, like whole implementation teams, because of the fact that they're just so, you know, complicated and complex, and then you might see a newcomer come to the market that might not even have all the bells and whistles that the industry incumbent has. But you know, the industry incumbent maybe only 25% of the product is actually even getting leveraged because it is, you know, a little bit more cumbersome to use. And you know the industry incumbent maybe only 25% of the product is actually even getting leveraged because it is, you know, a little bit more cumbersome to use. And, you know, just throwing AI into something for the sake of having AI, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure every software company out there now from the ones who've been around the 50 years to you know just getting started there's AI in the product and it's pretty obvious even at this point what companies companies are truly AI-centric and focused versus which ones are just trying to get it into the product so that they can say that they are an AI company.
Speaker 2: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 just moving resources over to implement this AI, whether it's just implementing Copilot or some type of chatbot that they said we've got this.
Speaker 2:But, then we've got other clients that say, hey, we are implementing a very smart chatbot, but we want something that is not just all text heavy or just typing in things. We're actually helping with the prompts, we're helping out create more visual responses. Visual like responses that are much easier to just like narrow down choices. It's far easier to to manage and to, you know, I guess, to talk with the, with AI and it. Just you can see the differences in results and the outcomes just from those two interactions with involving us that are really user centric versus ones that just want the feature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when. I think you know, the approach that I've tried to take is, you know, look at the user problems and then think about is there a way that AI could make this better? Because that isn't always the case. You know, ai isn't meant for every single component of your product, nor will it necessarily make it easier. It actually might make it more challenging, whereas there have been other instances. For example, like you know, one of the biggest issues with candidates applying to jobs is that they got to fill out all this basic information over and over and over again. But with AI now they can just upload their resume once. It'll scrape everything in about five seconds, auto-generate all the structured data for them, and that saves the candidates you, the candidates a tremendous amount of time.
Speaker 1:So that was an example where, at least hypothetically, we looked at the user problem and then AI was what actually was able to solve it in a way that you wouldn't have been able to in the past. So stuff like that is really cool. But then there are other instances where like in the Shopify ecosystem, as an example example you have a lot of these email marketing platforms who are trying to get ai incorporated into the product. But a subject line, you know writer, cool I guess, but you know, great, that saved me. You know, two seconds maybe. Um, you know, that is a little bit more gimmicky per se and it's sort of ai for the sake of ai, it's not transforming any component of the product or how the user is actually using it for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure you've seen where a new release by open ai just disrupts all these chat wrappers, chat gpt wrappers, and gets them out of business because they didn't really think things through as far as, like what, what do you? What problems are you trying to solve? And and yeah, we see, I mean we're seeing that happen with, I mean just with your applications right now, with, uh, you know how many people are using Grammarly. Do you use that as much anymore?
Speaker 1:Probably not so, yeah, it is interesting to see how some of the industry incumbents are like really transforming their platform with AI. What are the? Things that excites you the most, and how has that changed the way that you work with your clients or even do things internally as an agency owner?
Speaker 2:You know with AI, as far as how we leverage it more internally, you know we definitely. When it comes to design, you're going to see, you know, with certain I guess with websites, they all look the same. Now, I mean, there's definitely templated designs. They seem to work fine as it is until something changes, so you can have the tools that we use. They help you quickly create like 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 of things but you know, when it comes to that, you can pretty much have AI say okay, generate a, you know, add to cart checkout you know, process your credit card and then you're done.
Speaker 2:You know those kinds of things. That way, you can focus on more of the harder problems to solve when it comes to workflow and the design and you can really put more effort into that. User research as well, we've seen. You know it does definitely disseminate the data. So if we're collecting a lot of like audio and we're collecting a lot of data points as far as like, how does this perform when we're doing a benchmark, usability testing and trying to get feedback on that, or any type of card sorting where we're trying to determine a better navigation system, and the taxonomy is really complicated and so AI is helping a little bit to to understand that. We're seeing.
Speaker 2:You know you still have to be an expert to know what the right questions to ask and what's the outcome what the outcome is. But you know the efficiencies gain where one person can do a little bit more if they're an expert. I think it's like anything where if you're average or subpar and you're trying to use AI, maybe you might do okay, or it may help you with certain things to help elevate your skill set okay, or it may help you with certain things to help elevate your skill set. But if you're above average and you really know what you're doing and you leverage AI, you can accelerate the time intensive tasks that normally waste your time so you can focus on the really hard solves. But with clients we're seeing what I'm really excited about is the the human element that we're seeing especially near like customer service. I think is a big one that's being disrupted and we're actually helping out with clients with that aspect of it where you know when you go through, you know, depending on what type of customer service you have, the subject matter can be very complex, so you could go to an FAQ system you can go to you have. The subject matter can be very complex, so you could go to an FAQ system you can go to. You know you call somebody up and ask for questions or you ask a chatbot to answer certain questions.
Speaker 2:But if you can really train, like the AI agents, and create specific ones for clients that know and understand their particular data, I can see, and we see, the advantages of using AI for that, where you can actually utilize less human interaction and less training and then use AI to actually help users that are new to an enterprise platform to understand how things work. So I think you're seeing a lot of acceleration there, because that's just something that you can normally program. You know a customer service, you know somebody says this, you know almost a flow chart of how to get them from A to B. So I mean, those are things that we're seeing in the immediate future, in the farther future. You know that one things that we're seeing in the immediate future, in the farther future. You know that one's hard to say because it's, you know, I'm seeing, like I said, a lot of companies are putting so much resources into just putting UI into their product and how they implement that, I think, is I'm trying to understand where the cost, the ROI, is.
Speaker 2:And so if it's going to cost them, you know whatever a number of resources to integrate that and maintain it and to continuously check that to make sure it's keeping up to date. I think that's where we may see a switch, where, you know, maybe AI isn't the answer, Maybe it's a. It's a semi automated type of thing where you've got, um, people that are in there understanding how to do a specific task, but then they have a specific AI agent helping them out. So each company whether it's a law firm, it's a robotics company or you know whatever energy company you're creating very customized AI agents for these corporations versus just having you know co-pilot integrated into your system. So I think that's kind of where you probably are seeing things switch or going towards, but I assume things will get more and more efficient and cost effective for people to actually integrate that.
Speaker 1:but we'll see yeah, I mean the costs continue to go down. I mean, like that parsing tool that I mentioned, we wouldn't have been able to do it even nine months ago because the costs were too high and also the accuracy of which it could, you know, perform the task was not. You know it wasn't. It wasn't helpful because you would still have to spend so much time, you know, actually doing things manually.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I think over over time it'll get easier and easier and the barrier to entry will get lower and lower for businesses. But at the same time you know some of these industry incumbents, like Shopify as an example, just cause that's what I'm closest to the amount of investment that would go into just trying to get all of the core need to have feature sets into a platform if somebody really did want to go after them. You mentioned checkout as an example. Everybody knows what it looks like and what it should do, but you still need it and there's like a thousand other things that you also still need in an econ platform. And so do you think there will be more and more sort of companies that start to incubate internally. You know sort of partitioning off a portion of you know their team or their resources to sort of spin up. You know net new product offerings or or or try and get some of that like. You know entrepreneurship mentality, but with the funding and sort of capabilities that a larger enterprise could provide.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that's what you should be doing. Um, we, you know, we always tend to be the innovation arm. Or you know, the, the, uh, the company that comes in and says, okay, we're going to develop something in a black box and then we're going to present it to you, type of thing, so your main team can just continue supporting the current product, Even though, as a company, you should always continuously invest in innovation and continuous improvement, always continuously invest in innovation and continuous improvement. But many of them seem to be happy with just maintaining or the status quo, because they see innovation, especially during a recessionary period, that tends to be cut first.
Speaker 2:And the companies that don't cut and continue to innovate and continuously improve when the recession is over with, and they always tend not to last forever. They tend to be way ahead of any competition. And so you know, I think it's again. When we go into companies, we try to understand where the biggest risks are, because everybody tends to be risk adverse during recessionary periods.
Speaker 2:But you still want to innovate. 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, but you're trying to at least slowly innovate constantly, every month. I mean, look at SpaceX, looks like Tesla. They've leapfrogged so many companies because if you look at their number of revisions within a year, I mean it's exponentially more. And so if you get companies to think it like that and it has to come from the top down that's why we always try and interface with the top down versus trying to make change from the bottom up it's more effective because you 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 other competitors and it's like, well, you'll never. You're always playing catch up. So I think there should always be some type of budget to innovate, but companies are just you know, they're just tend not to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like proactive versus being reactive.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1: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 you know these problems typically present themselves at you know, larger organizations and not the small? And eventually the small become these larger organizations where the innovation does get to start to get stifled. Are there any examples of well you you mentioned, you know, spacex and Tesla.
Speaker 1:Those are pretty sizable companies but you know why do you think it's sort of the standard where you know you have a company that comes onto the scene, they are really innovative, they grow super quickly and then there's eventually a plateau. That they run into or a wall that they run into.
Speaker 2:So I've got a nice, nice answer and I've got a harsh answer. Nice answer is you know there's a lot of red tape. People become again risk averse, they don't want to rock the boat, so they're happy kind of with having a job and just maintaining, versus like you're in a startup, you have to like, you have to innovate and you have to keep going. And if you make mistakes, who cares? Just keep moving forward. That's the mentality. But with corporations it's like I've done consulting work with big fortune 10 companies to startups and so I see the difference in the mindset there where, if you, let's say, for one big company, an e-commerce company that I work for, you know moving a button from down at the bottom of the page to the top of the page, it took me a month to try to like justify why we should do that. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:And so it's like, but I've heard from other big companies where they're sitting there and allowing their user experience team to do 100 different tests. I think it's like Bookingcom One of my colleagues. I actually talked with them and they said how many tests do you run a month? And they said hundreds. They're just throwing out tests, a, b tests, constantly.
Speaker 2:And that's what you have to do. Don't be afraid to just test it with a small group, see how it performs and then launch it If it works. If it doesn't, then great it's. It's not a big effect, but, you know, just making a small change when your bottom line, you know, uh, two, 3% increase in conversion up or down, could be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. They're so afraid to to make that change.
Speaker 2:Um, so I think that that's why you see, corporations are, you know they stagnate. You know my, my main answer is the Peter principle. People are promoted to the point of incompetence and I see that so often where you get somebody in there and they kind of know what they're doing, but they really don't. And there's a lot of ego involved. And when, when it comes to corporations, I think there's an inverse relationship between ego and skill set and so there's a lot of big ego. So having them understand, like shit, we don't know what we're doing. Let's try to figure this out with either bringing an expert to just teach us to fish or you just learn it yourself, which is ripe with you know risk and cost.
Speaker 1:So Well, I think the best experts are those that actually don't even necessarily look at themselves as experts. You know they're constantly learning and continuing to reinvent themselves as well, especially in today's day and age where everything is so fast paced, it changes so quickly. You know, if you had 15 years of email marketing experience but you weren't constantly out there, you know, looking at what's new, learning the new platforms, learning the new tricks of the trade, so to speak, you know you could not be less relevant or capable in this particular moment. You know, resting on your laurels it's pretty much not a thing anymore with how quickly things change.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, I'm constantly trying to learn and try to keep my team up to date on what the latest processes are, the tools are. You know, human interaction and psychology stay somewhat the same, but it still changes because as device changes, people's interactions change. There's definitely a dynamic aspect to it that you need to keep up with, but when it comes to being more efficient with the tooling, with the teams and just the human interaction with our clients is always the biggest challenge, and it's not the product itself, it's actually the people that we have to deal with. And so just that psychology, you know it seems to be similar between company to company. You just know okay, this is category A, this is the immaturity level, so this is how you deal with them. It's category B. So yeah, it's always a fun challenge to see these different companies at different stages a fun challenge to see these different companies at different stages.
Speaker 1:One of my questions for you was going to be you know what, what were some of the or what have been some of the biggest challenges that you've encountered? You know, starting and running your own business that you weren't necessarily expecting.
Speaker 2: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't remember where I saw it from but somebody said you know, I put my team first and the client second. And I tend to follow, have followed that for a long time and people on my team have been with me I've had people with me for a couple of decades now and but most people have been with me, have stuck with me for a while, several years, and I think that's a testament to if you put your team first and you really defend them, you'd really try to support them.
Speaker 2:They'll just automatically do that with a client and that seems to be where you know our client and you know our client. Engagements are not just like a few months, it's it's multiple year engagements. So I think that's a good testament to show that's. That's probably a good approach versus a client's always right, whatever they say. Just you know you do everything they ask for. I mean that's that's not the case because they're not always right.
Speaker 1:Sorry to say, and that's where the relationship really starts to falter. You know, as soon as the respect is lost and you just become essentially like a task rabbit for whatever they want, you know, then why are they paying you for strategy and for your expert advice, when you've just been basically, you know, pushed down into being an executor of whatever they bring across the table?
Speaker 2:Exactly I think the challenge is to. You know we have different personalities who we deal with and different personalities on our team and you know I tend to always try to be direct with the leadership that I'm involved with and I think they respect that. 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 the long run is not this or that, and you know I try to be um you know honest about what we say and not just sugarcoat shit.
Speaker 2:So I think that that they they, you know respect that and they know that I'm not just in there to try and make a quick buck, I'm actually trying to, you know, take ownership of what we're trying to recommend and if we make a mistake, we own up to it and we say, hey, let's, let's pivot and figure something else out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so no, that makes a lot of sense and all the biggest issues we ever had with the agency was always the client and the team member relationship. But I think you know, I never really thought about it in your way of you know, always put the team first and the client second but, looking back, you know when we like fired our first client ever that should have been fired.
Speaker 1:You know, probably like a month or two earlier than they actually got fired and sort of the team morale and just everything, probably 2x overnight, because I just sort of put my foot down and said we're done doing this, we're done, you know, being sort of the scapegoat for X, y and Z things and you know, the team got brought so much closer together as a byproduct of that and then we got to work and focus and spend more time on the people that we should have been spending more time with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know that just comes with maturity, because when you're first starting out building a business, you just want to get as many clients as you can, you want to just appease them as much as possible. And it's just I get that. I mean, you're starting off it's hard to be confident and say you know what I don't need you and you know what I don't need you, and you know you have one other client. It's hard to. It's hard to be that confident to say that. So I get that. And I think you know again, because you, if when I do focus on the team, there's definitely a tendency to I have to watch out, because I've had team members where they took advantage of that, and so you know I. And again I can't remember where I heard this from, but they said you. So you know I.
Speaker 2:And again I can't remember where I heard this from, but they said you know, you know what is the most detrimental person on your team? Is it that? Is it that person who knows everything but doesn't give a shit? Or somebody who doesn't quite know a lot, but you know they really care? And so you actually take the second one. You know you prefer that second one Cause that first one, who's got that ego and who doesn't really care, can be a very that can be a virus within your company and I've had that before and that can bring you know. One bad person can bring down your company If you don't be careful.
Speaker 1:And I think it's harder to identify in a remote environment than in person. Yeah, you're just not engaging and interacting as much or as frequently, and you know it's easier to hide online than it is in person.
Speaker 2:So yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Which is one of the blessings and also curses of this new remote work world. You know there's a lot of benefits to it, but there's definitely some some cons as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's. I mean I always tell my team that we have to over-communicate. I mean just, you know, whether it's constant meetings, it's, it's fine, but just make them short and sweet and just just show yourself, let's talk. And, you know, have those conversations. But I always tend to try to talk to what with my team, one-on-one anyway, just to see how they're doing and just get that human aspect. Again, I'm a user experience designer so I have to have empathy. So hopefully that's one of my strong suits, that I can read people better.
Speaker 1: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 of both?
Speaker 2:So that's a very interesting question, because if you asked me five years ago or 10 years ago, it'd probably be different, because we're a consulting agency. There's definitely a certain level of hard skills that has to be present and you have to be good at, but it's the soft skills that show your success rate in the long run. Hard skills are great in the short term. Your success rate in the long run Hard skills are great in the short term, but not in the long run.
Speaker 2:I've got people who are very competent in what they do, but there's frustrating things that they would do that would just eat at the team, eat at the client, eat at my time, and that just builds and builds. Unless they change that again, that could be a that's a virus too that can grow within your team. And so I think when you're interviewing people, attitude is such a big key. It's like you can ask them the hard skills, but if their attitude is garbage or you can sense some type of like you know chip on their shoulder or ego that's going to manifest itself at some point. So you've got to be like aware of that.
Speaker 1:To your point about ego and like chip on the shoulder. Why do you think, then, that some of the more like successful founders over the past decade, like some of them definitely have you know that, that chip on their shoulder? Do you think you know that that chip on their shoulder? Do you think you know, in some cases it actually can be a good thing as long as it's, you know, in the right direction and channeled the right way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, use that power for good and not evil. Yeah, I think if you're, if you'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, or they have their own subjective view on things. We try to back whatever we do with 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 it versus.
Speaker 2:I think I like this button over here better than over. Well, you know, this checkout works better. It's just more conversion rate, whatever. This is why you should do it versus. I think I like this button over here better than over there, just because it just I think it's better. And so if you got somebody with a chip on their shoulder, they're going to take that, that feedback.
Speaker 2:With clients who don't know exactly what they're doing or why they're making that decision, they're going to take it harder, and so they're going to get upset, they're going to get demotivated, and so I've and I've seen that happen, where certain certain people on my team will just be so frustrated because they can't get across, I'm like, well, that's your job to sell it. If you can't sell it, then don't get so frustrated and don't get so attached to something. So I think that's you know, that's where if you've got a founder who has a chip on their shoulder, but they're driven to like if it's a product that they know that they want that success and they're just driven to make sure it's successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, use sucks. Then you have to understand you're not the end all be all. And that's the problem with sometimes where we've gone to companies where the leader is not really present, but then he or she will come in at the last minute, throw a monkey wrench, because they just feel like, hey, I'm going to just blow this all up. I'm like where were you two days ago or a week ago?
Speaker 1:You can't do that In part. They're hanging out. Yeah, when were you two days ago or a week ago? You know you can't do that, and just because that's how you feel.
Speaker 2:So I think you know again, you have to, as, as you know, consultants, we have to wrangle in those cats as as we used to say to, to make sure that, yeah, it's, it's used you know, whatever motivation they have is used to an advantage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Ego not a good thing.
Speaker 2:Chip on the shoulder, you know, might be as long as it manifests itself in motivation, exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights. Um, and I'll definitely include it in the show notes, but before we hop, can you let everybody know where they can find and connect with you online if they want to learn more?
Speaker 2:Definitely. Um, you could, you could, you could check out our. We actually started our own podcast. It's Make an Impact YT for YouTube. You can check it out there. Talk about the latest AI to UX, to product strategy. Or you could check out our website at impactwith3i's I-I-I-M-P-A-C-Tio.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, again, I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you For everybody that's listening. As always, you can find me at BrandonAmarosocom or Scalistai. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Bye everybody.