EntreLeadership - Why Empowered Teams Make the Best Products with Marty Cagan

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

How do you ensure your product or service keeps its edge as you scale? This is a huge challenge many founders of a fast-growing company face as they start to see some success. Marty Cagan, founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group, argues leaders must learn how to empower their teams to solve customer problems (on their own) or risk losing their product mojo. The author, speaker and tech-industry product maker—who’s known for helping some of the world’s most successful companies build products—unpacks the problem-solving principles crucial to designing effective teams and products that win big in the marketplace.   entreleadership.com/podcast Silicon Valley Product Group’s website Empowered by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones Principles by Ray Dalio The Founder EntreLeadership's Business Health Assessment EntreLeadership Partners Schedule a call with Tim, the Producer   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're like most business owners, you started out caring deeply about your product and service, and you probably still do. But, you know, think about early on when you're the founder. You're the salesperson, the service provider. You're in charge of delivering and fulfilling and applying the product and the service in the marketplace. And, you know, you're just excited about helping people. But what happens is as you grow and scale, you get busy running the other parts of the business. And the product or service starts to get delegated to your team, which is great. We love delegation, but it can also be really scary as the founder if you look up one day and you feel out of touch with the marketplace.

From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entry Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and my guest today is Marty Kagan. Marty is the founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, where he's helped focus on other businesses scaling and building great products through his writing, speaking, advising, and coaching. Now, before founding this company, he served as an executive responsible for defining a building products for some of the most successful companies in the world, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, and eBay, just to name a few. Now, you guys are going to love Marty because he cares deeply about helping business owners just like you, and he shares your passion for great products and service, and he's also seen this pattern of businesses that start up, but then the founder gets caught up and running the business, and they're starting. to be a loss of focus on the product. In the startup community, that very often happens is the founder was the, you know, totally passionate about the whole business, about the problem they were solving,

about their customers. And then, of course, there's some degree of success. And now there's just not enough hours in a day. And very often we see exactly what you're describing, that the team will complain that there's no more vision. We're rudderless. We don't really understand what we're here for. And, yeah, a lot of times we need to really coach that leader in making sure that, in fact, we refer to this as losing your product mojo. You're just really lost that spark you were referring to. And no, it's really critical not to, of course, because that would be the beginning

of the end. And so what we want to do is make sure that. that either that leader is able to retain that. In fact, one of the most common ways that will be addressed is that that leader will hire a chief operating officer, basically somebody to do a lot of the block and tackling of the business so that that person can continue to sort of carry the torch for the vision, for the product, the services that you're offering. But one way or another, that's really essential. If that falls off, and even by the way, you see that, when a founder retires. If they either sell out or, you know, move on for whatever reason, you see the same sort of consequence.

Why do you think it's key that the founder is the person who stays at the helm with the product versus delegating that piece to a product manager or somebody who can maybe, you know, build on what they started with? Yeah, well, it's a super. And what I'm about to say, you should realize I'm not everybody agrees with us. there are different schools of thought. Some people believe that it's good when you reach a certain size to bring in a professional manager, you know, sort of the stereotypical MBA from wherever to come in. I'm not in that school. I believe, and if you look at the most successful companies, they're almost, you know,

they're not always, but most of the time they are led by their founders that grew into that role. And so I'm much more interested in coaching and helping those founders to be. become the leader their companies need them to be, then to, okay, well, you just need to get out of the way and let us bring in a professional adult supervision. You've probably heard the phrase. And I think what's really going on is, you know, that spark you were alluding to is not a minor thing. That is right at the essence of that company. And you have to realize this founder was there from T-0, right, from the very, very beginning, from before the beginning.

was probably dreaming about the company as they were deciding to take a very risky move and try to build this thing. And if every single experiment that was done, every single customer encounter, every single mistake that was made, how do you capture that? I mean, I don't know anybody that's really figured out a good way to capture that. And so bringing in some professional, you know, so-called professional, you know, you Yes, they might be very experienced leading large organizations and providing Wall Street, everything they need, but they don't know what made that company what it is today.

They don't know what's important and what's accidental. They don't have that institutional knowledge. And they really have a hard time without that creating or even explaining the product vision that's necessary for the next several years. So I'm firmly in the school where I believe taking that founder and providing them the skills they need to grow. And in most cases, that's exactly what happens. You said bringing somebody in from the outside, they don't know what's important and what's accidental. That's a very interesting phrase.

There are things that are core to an organization, core values of the founder. but say more about the accidental piece. Yeah, well, in fact, this is a super hard problem when I joined eBay. It was young a company. That was my last sort of real day job, real company where I was not on my own. And I was attracted to the company because of the founders. In particular, Pierre Omijar was the co-founder of eBay. And just a genuine, really inspiration.

guy. He's gone on to be a major philanthropist, which is not surprising to me. He was just a genuine human. And I, what I was, he had really been, I was brought on as their original head of product, but really he was their original head of product as the founder. And what I wanted to do was make sure that I could take eBay forward and not lose the essence of eBay. So the very first things that I did was sit down with him to try. In fact, I remember I wrote a document, which I shared all over the company called eBay Secret Sauce, which was just an internal document. And it was from my discussions with him about of all the things that are, that make up, you know, that up eBay. I'm sure all your listeners know eBay, the marketplace, but all the things that make

it up, what's really important and what's just accidental? Because something had to be there, but if it changed, wouldn't matter. But certain things, if they changed, you could literally, you know, kill the golden goose. And it was a very profitable company and a very, you know, off to a great start. It was making money from the beginning. So, on one level, you just don't want to mess it up. On another level, you want to be able to build on what he's done. So luckily, you know, he stayed on and is still a board member. But he, so, you know, you don't lose all of that. But, and to be honest, not that it was my choice, nobody even asked me. But I think, I think it would have been better for the company if he had stayed as their leader. But, but anyway, they decided to bring it up professional.

And it's not like they did terrible. They didn't. But it's also fair to say that at the time, we were twice the size of Amazon. And today, eBay is minuscule compared to Amazon. It's an interesting exercise you did. You proactively decided to interview him and figure out the secret sauce. I'm imagining the founder of a construction company who's got 50 employees. They're listening to this conversation going,

man, I wish a Marty would come along and interview me about the secret sauce. What types of questions are you asking? What are the things you were documenting? Say more about that process. Yeah, well, I want to be clear, this is definitely not a science. It's more an art. I wish there was more like rigor about that. But what I wanted to understand was his views about why he made the decisions he made. And I've done this with lots of founders, by the way. we often refer to these as product principles. Like, it's not so much that it matters that this looks this way. What matters is what was in his head?

What were his values? What were his priorities? So I'll give you a very real example, and I think this is very relevant for the world today. And one of the things, honestly, that it very much impressed me about him, he was very conscious. I mean, he literally did state in one of the early

product principles that he believed that most people are good people, which I love. I mean, I think there's some eBay is sort of built on this idealistic notion of the world being largely trusted. But he also knew that not everybody was good. And we had an obligation to protect the good people from the bat. And so right from the beginning, he designed in mechanisms around protecting what we were referred to as trusted safety. You should be, and you have to realize in early eBay, this was before PayPal, this is before electronic ways. People paid by sending checks through the mail. That's hard to even remember. I can't even. I mean, I do remember now that you say it, but we've forgotten about those days. And so much was predicated on, do I trust.

you enough to send a check and that you'll send me what you're saying you've got. And so, but he proactively worried about that. Now, to me, there was a deep principle there about both trusting people, but also ethics, about it is our obligation to make sure we think through the bad actor scenario and do everything we can to protect it. I haven't actually told that story in a long time. It's been a while, but so many tech companies I meet today, especially tech companies, in my opinion, don't think enough about the ethical implications of what they're doing. We say they just pursue the happy path. Nobody would ever do anything awful. It'll be fine. You know, kids won't get into trouble. The environment won't suffer. None of those.

And of course, that's not the real world. And I wish companies like Facebook, did more, like Pierre did more, to worry about bad actors and what we can do to prevent it. But the point was that was part of his ethos. Yes. And I saw that and I wanted to capture that. So we came up with a number of principles that really captured what led him to make the choices he did. Because frankly, I thought we should continue to make those choices. First of all, it was still his company, its primary owner, but also it was a great recipe.

You know, it sounds like you really took something that was innate and inside of him and kind of drew it out of him and turned it into something that was tangible that clarified where his head and heart were at, but then also could be transferred to the broader team. That's exactly the goal. You know, when you start to unpack that for the rest of the team, what were the benefits of that? How did that manifest in decision making? How did that become a filter for things the team would do and not do? Well, stop me if I tell too many eBay stories, but another one is coming to mind where this is exactly, it was a different principle. And what was going on, most of your audience will know eBay is a marketplace. There are buyers and sellers. And you probably know, because a lot of people may in fact

be sellers on eBay. The money comes from sellers, right? Sellers list an item, they pay a little fee, and if they sell the item, they pay a little fee. But that's basically how the income comes. And in very early eBay, we had, you know, there was very little help for sellers. It was remarkable. The main reason sellers came was because all these buyers were there. But we made it very difficult, unfortunately, unintentionally. It was very difficult for them to give us money, ironically, but we realized that we needed to improve a lot as fast as we could, and we got to work. But what we started noticing was some of the things that sellers wanted us to do were actually not good for buyers. Now, that wasn't obvious at first, but then it started to become clear.

That made total sense for a seller, but not good for a buyer. And increasingly, we felt this tension in the teams. I mean, sometimes it was just shouting matches, but there was a tension there between, especially between the team working to help sellers and the team working to help buyers. And what we realized was there is a product principle here that we were missing. And there was very explicit conversations with Pierre about this. Now, look where this is going, Pierre. What does this mean? And he realized that there was a principle in his heart, in his mind, that we had not sort of, we had not spelled out. And because of that, we were starting to get into trouble.

We were starting to make judgments that were really against what he would have done. And we ended up calling it, well, the way we ended up realizing is that, yes, the revenue comes from sellers. However, there's really only one reason the sellers come to eBay, and that's because of the buyers. And so what we realized was the principle was if the needs of a buyer and a seller are in conflict, we are going to prioritize the needs of the buyers because that's the best thing we could actually do for sellers. Now, when I say that now, it sounds so obvious. Back then, it wasn't so obvious because there was so much pressure coming in to give sellers what they needed in order to sell more.

us to make more revenue. So, and I believe if that principle had not been articulated and shared, which immediately removed tension and made decisions so much easier for everybody, eBay might not even be here today, literally. Do you think it's because it was the exact right way of approaching that strategy? or do you think a lot of the value is just in that the founder made a clear decision and set a boundary? Like, I'm curious if it would have worked the other direction had Pierre said, hey, we exist to really amplify and magnify the sellers. And you might go, well, the tail would be wagging the dog.

But it seems like a lot of the value isn't necessarily that it was the perfect strategy and more so that the founder is engaged and leading and saying this is the direction we're going to go. No, there's some truth to that. In fact, we used to say some of these principles needed to come from the moral authority of the founder. In other words, me has had a product saying it like, yeah, okay, well, maybe people will listen to me, but will they really agree with me? No, and I think that that's an important point, the moral authority of the founder. That said, in this case, I do believe this is an example where Pierre's, because he was there from the very, beginning and he saw the dynamics of this marketplace playing out as it started to take hold and grow, it put him in a unique position to see that dynamic. He might not have named it before, but it was right there. He could call on it when he saw the problem. And so I think that was an

example of both. We needed it to come from the moral authority of the founder, but we also, he saw something that many marketplaces have learned since then. But I would say he was really the first one to put his finger on that. It's really important to have these conversations about why. I mean, that's essentially what you're getting at here. I've had this experience so many times with Dave, our founder through the years, where we'll be working on something with Entree leadership and the team will be in the room with Dave and we'll wrestle through and we'll say, okay, here's a decision. And Dave, very quickly from his gut, can just say, we're going that direction. And it's emphatic, and there's a conviction around it. And, you know, for a long time,

we would just walk out of the room and go, okay, we're just going to go do that. But we started to figure out as if we would slow down and say, Dave, help us understand the principle behind that decision. And most of the time, he's right. I mean, he's just brilliant. But what would happen when we started doing this is he would go, well, let me think about it. And he would draw back on a story from 15 years ago in the early days and a lesson that he had learned that he almost had consciously forgotten about because it had just become so ingrained in his psyche. You mentioned the word ethos. And it's just, it's in his ethos, and it's just there. And it's brilliant, but it's brilliant because he had an experience. And I think it's really key that founders

take the time to actually sit down with their team and go back to those stories and go, this is why I have a core value around this issue. This is why I'm always going to react to that vendor issue that way. Here's somebody that tried to screw us back in the day. And I said on that day, no matter what, we will never not read the contract again before signing it or, you know, fill in the blank, right? And I think many times we forget that people just can't read our minds. It's like we know so much in our own friends. founder approach. I was the founder of Entree leadership. And there's so many stories early on when Dave and I were getting that thing off the ground that I just forget, Marty, that my team

wasn't there, and they can't read my mind. And I'm assuming for some reason that they can see what I see. Yeah, this is exactly right. And, you know, Dave's still going strong. But as far as succession planning, if Dave was sitting here, you know, I would encourage him to dig deep into these principles, just like, you know, I was trying to do with Pierre, dig deep into, like, where did these, you know, core beliefs come from? Get them out. We, you know, it's not that hard to write these down. Some founders call them like a manifesto. But, you may know there was Ray Dalio. He wrote the book, Principles. Yeah, a great book. Yes. I thought so, too. And I was so grateful to him that he, because he's a very unusual leader, super out of the box kind of leader. And I'd never worked with them,

but I had heard about all these experiments that they had been doing at Bridgewater. And they were just so wild and interesting. I just was so curious. And the fact that he took the time to write this down into like a manifesto. And he's not religious about it. He says, don't follow these. Just I want you to know, this is why we built the company this way. This is the belief system. And you can have your own, but you should have your own. You should have one. And I really agree with that and believe that. Jeff Bezos at Amazon is very good about sharing his core principles as well. And that's so valuable to so many of us. Steve Jobs was as well. And that's, yeah, I encourage founders to do that, especially if they are worried about succession, succession planning.

Yes. That's a huge thing. Well, and even if you're not, I mean, you can only scale to the degree that you can advance decision-making to the front lines. You talk a lot about this idea of a team that's empowered. And if the team doesn't have a vision for the product and if they don't understand your belief systems, human nature is to kind of wait until somebody comes in as an adult and says, this is what we're going to do. because you don't want to put your neck out there and go the wrong direction. So talk more about this idea of empowering our teams to make these decisions.

Yeah. And in a way, it is like keeping that magic from the early days. Because, you know, that's one of the beautiful things of the early stages of any company. You know, everybody's empower. You're all right there. You do whatever needs to be done. I've worked in large companies and I've worked in brand new startup companies. And in this, you know, there's pros and cons to both.

We all know that. But in the startups, you really are truly empowered to figure all it really matters is figure out a way to make money that's, you know, ethical that we can really build a business on. And everybody is encouraged to do anything they can. There's none of this not my job attitude. None of this. In fact, one of the things Bezos likes to argue is we want people to think like an owner, not like an employee. That is right at the heart of what we're talking about. about. And so empowerment is very much like that. It means instead of just command and control,

telling your people what you want them to do, instead you do two things. You tell them what problem you need them to solve and you give them the context that you have as much of this context as possible. The principles we were just talking about is an example of that context. but you give them the context so that they could make good decisions. This is actually another good company is Netflix, and they have the mantra, lead with context, not control. This is what they mean.

Don't tell your people what to do. Tell them the context. Tell them the principles. Tell them the goals. Tell them the vision. And let them figure out the best way to make that happen. Now, there's some very practical reasons why empowered teams. consistently do better. One of them is sort of obvious, the motivation, right? You're going to feel

a lot more ownership if you're given that problem to solve. But even more tactically on the ground, these teams are the ones working with the enabling technology or working with the customers every single day. So they're in the best position to see the best solutions and to really take ownership of those solutions. So that's why, you know, you could pick your most your favorite innovation, whatever it is, whether it's an iPhone or an Alexa device or anything, this is where it comes from, empowered teams. It's rare that the executive or even the founder knew that solution. I have learned this and I've experienced the value of what you're talking about and I've become good at empowering teams and I've seen the payoff. But I want to go back and

talk to Daniel Tardy 15 years ago when he was the founder. And it was scrappy and cash flow was super lean. And it was me and a super small team. And this young kid had a lot of ego. He had a lot of passion. And he thought he was really smart. And also he had a lot of fear about delegation. And so I hear what you're saying. And I'm imagining a lot of founders can also relate to where I was early on. that we just believe that our ideas are really good and that the team may not come up with a better idea. And we like creating solutions. And we imagine these ideas and we're driving to work and we go, okay, I know what we're going to do. And we just drop it on the team and we say, okay, here's my brilliance. Now you guys go build this. And the fear to handing the ideation and the thinking

to the team is, okay, I'd like to empower my team, but we got to make payroll this month. We got to keep cash flow up. If the team spends a month or two months building the wrong idea, we've got all that time that we've lost. And then I'm going to have to let some people go because I don't have two months to pay people and not get the next customer in the door because they're the one, you know, driving revenue. And I think a lot of founders are in that mix of, yeah, Marty, I want to empower my team, but what if they're not smart enough? Then what if it takes too long? And, you know, frankly, I think I might be a little bit smarter than them. Yeah. Now, this is normal. And luckily from, and by the way, I should say I had a lot of the, I was like you. Most of us were.

Luckily, though, I had somebody coaching me, a manager coaching me, several managers actually over my career that have coached me in through these differences. Because as you probably figured out pretty quickly, it just doesn't scale. If you stay really small, it's really no problem because you are that person. and you're already living it. But the problem is making that scale. What are you going to do? You want when you're not in the room where it happens, when you can't be in that room where it happens,

and you want them to make good choices, all right. They're either going to have to call you on the phone for every little decision, which you will quickly start complaining about, or they need to know how to make good decisions. So that's really the only solution I know to scale. And that's what I think people, good leaders invest in. They're investing in making that more scalable so that they don't have to be in every room,

every meeting. And of course, even if they could, do you really want the people who are just there to take orders? Most of us don't. We often have a phrase in the tech community, which is we need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries. Mercenaries will just build whatever. If that's what you're going to do, if you want people that'll just build whatever, you might as well hire an agency, hire somebody, and just pay them to do it rather than having your own people.

But if you want teams of missionaries, where they are true believers, where they are passionate about what you are passionate about, now you need to give them more authority, you need to give them more autonomy, you need to give them more accountability. And that's where this come from, this idea of making people think like owners, not think like employees. That's really what it is, this sense of agency. It's really good. Well, I figured out a couple things. One, I figured out the team oftentimes is a lot smarter than me.

And especially when they're on the front lines talking to customers, they're getting feedback from customers and they're building what customers want and they're solving customer problems. And as I became less and less engaged in the front lines, the mind share of the team actually was way more brilliant than any one idea that I ever had. So it was a humbling experience, but my ego came down and it turned out to be a good thing for the team. I also figured out when the team experiences a failure, let's say they test an idea they're really excited about and it backfires. It's hard to put a price on the investment into the wisdom they now have because next thing, time, they have this experience and this pain where they're going to go, their spidey senses are just a little bit more dialed in. And I think as founders, sometimes if we're propping the team up too much or we make sure the team never fails, we're actually doing them a disservice.

Yeah, and yourself, because you need them to develop these muscles. And, you know, one of these things that, this is really one of the underlying principles on how we do good products is knowing what you can't know, literally knowing what you can't know. And so, I mean, you use some words like you became more humble. That's what happened to all of us, I think, that have got good at this, is we learned that most of our ideas will not actually work. And once you get over that, you know, there are some people whose ego won't let them get past that realization. They still always pretend their ideas are gold. And if there is an issue, it's because of the, the people not able to carry through those wishes.

But really, that's not the case. This is just the reality. Most of our ideas won't work. And so we need to try a lot of ideas. One of the things I always tell founders is, you know, you want to fall in love with the problem, not fall in love with the solution. Because the solutions,

you're going to have to try a lot of different solutions to find one that works. The problem being the customer's problem? Yeah, it could be a customer problem. It's usually a customer problem. It can also be a customer problem. It can also be a company problem, but sometimes it's even both. But yeah, usually it's a customer problem.

That's why you created your company to solve that problem. You didn't really, some founders don't understand us sometimes. I don't have to explain it. You didn't really create the company just because you wanted to build that app. You created the company because you wanted to help these people with this problem. And that's what you're trying to do. As long as you solve that, you've succeeded. And so, and I tell them the reality is about 80% of our product ideas don't work.

And there's a lot of reasons they don't work, sometimes because the customer doesn't care about it as much as we thought they would. Sometimes because it's too complicated our solution and they don't want to deal with it. Sometimes because it would take way longer to build than we appreciate it. Sometimes it's because there are unintended consequences like legal consequences or financial consequences. that are bad. And so for lots of valid reasons, most of our ideas won't work. And the sooner you can accept that, the sooner you're on a path to a good company, because now you can say, all right, that's the reality. If that's the reality, then our goal is now, how do we quickly build the skills to figure out the good ideas from the bad? I know there's times that I have,

even in my own mind been confused about what was the problem and what was the solution. How do we ensure that we frame the problem and that earlier you were talking about that context, make sure that the context is a high enough fidelity for ourselves and for the team so that that stays as our true north and we can test solution after solution. Some of them fail, some of them succeed. But how do we distinguish problem from solution in a way that keeps that clarity? Sure. Well, in fact, that's such a common thing that there are many techniques out there today to help us with that, depending on, you know, the particular kind of problem or solution you're working on. But at a most basic level, we try to get people to think of three questions. Number one, what problem are you really trying to solve for your customer? Number two, who's the customer, really? What kind of customer? And number three, how do you, how will you know if you've succeeded? If you're going to answer even those three questions, it gives a lot of clarity to the problem, and then the teams can get to work on potential solutions. There are also much more, there are many more techniques.

You may have heard, there's one called jobs to be done. There's another called opportunity solution trees. These are all techniques to help frame and clarify this difference between the problem and the solution, or some people will frame it as the opportunity and the solution. So I love these three questions, just to make it practical, for fun, let's roll play this a little bit. Let's say I have a pet grooming company. And we know we want to grow and we know we want more customers. We also know that during the pandemic, not many people are coming into the store. They don't feel safe to come in the store.

There's local regulations that they can't come in. And we've got this idea of buying a van and going on the road and doing pet grooming out in the community. if I'm going to take these three questions, what problem are we trying to solve, who is our customer, and how will we know? Where do I start? What does this conversation sound like? Well, that's a perfect, you know, classic example of this.

So, yeah, there is a real problem to solve there. And the pandemic has created a lot of these, by the way, for people. So that's why a lot of, you might have noticed, there's been a lot of opportunity. And some companies have really risen to take this on. But the problem to solve there is, yeah, You can't take your dog into the groomer anymore because maybe there's safety issues, like we said. Now, the second question is going to be a little more interesting there.

Who exactly is this for? Is this for people that take their dog to the groomer today? Is this for people that never would take their dog to the groomer? So, for example, there is this cost element there. Maybe people do it themselves. and now you want to make a more cost-effective offering. You can start to see how solutions can go in lots of different areas. But let's say, you know, you define this as people that were taking their dog into the groomer

and now we're not. And then the third question there is, okay, yeah, what's the success? Is it the same level of revenue you had before? Maybe the economics of having a van versus a office where you do this makes it so that you could actually succeed with half the customers. So the measure of success might be significantly different. But the point is that would frame our situation and then we could get to work on potential solutions.

Now, a van is one solution for sure, but maybe there are others. Maybe there are team, you know, maybe you can team up with just like Uber Eats. Maybe there are ways to team up and have your dog delivered to some, you know, without the person in there and there's less safety risks. There's other approaches to that solution. And the point is you want to give as much latitude as possible to the teams. Okay, so we're asking these three questions. What's the problem?

Who is the customer? And then what a success look like? In our example of the pet groomer, I want you to say more about number two because it sounds like you're getting really specific there, not just people that have pets and have money, but a lot more dialed in. Why is that so important?

Yeah, and it's one of those hard one lessons our industry has learned because, of course, at one level, you'd like this to apply to anybody. And it may, but that's, you know, may get lucky and it's going to extend beyond your target. But here's what's really going on. One of the surest ways to fail is to try to please everyone. It just really is. And one of the things you learn hard is that, If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And you do a half-bake solution for everybody. And in fact, I see that all the time. Because most products fail, not because there's no demand for, say, mobile grooming services. The reason they fail is because the solution is not good enough. People say, oh, it's just not worth it. I'll just continue to give my own dog a bath.

And so they're not, the value is not high enough. one of the principles that we've really learned is you need to focus in on exactly who that's for. And there are techniques to essentially we're segmenting our customer base into different kinds of people. We say differences that make a difference. So it might be income level. It might even be dog breed level. It could be whatever you decide really makes sense. But focus in, nail it, do a solution that they absolutely love. And then from there, we can broaden the appeal in the successive iterations. As you improve your service, it becomes relevant to a broader and broader market.

There's a discipline that at Ramsey Solutions in the last few years, we've really started to apply just ubiquitously across everything that we're doing here and largely influenced by your work. And that is to, after we have the answer to who is the target customer, actually conduct customer interviews, actually interview them about their problem, don't make assumptions that they want the product or even the prototype, but actually become really intimately acquainted with who they are and what they want in terms of solving that problem. I think it's very, it wasn't common for us for a long time. And so I assume it's uncommon for a lot of small businesses to be having these conversations. Again, that founder often knows the customer's psyche because they're in that marketplace with them.

But what's the process of making sure that everyone on the team has that intimate relationship with that customer? Once you've got to find, this is who we're going to solve a problem for. Yeah. And in fact, a lot of the times the problem is the founder knows too much. Say more about that. They think they, yeah, they think they, because they, let's say, come, maybe this groomer was a dog groomer, is a dog groomer. And so they feel like they know the business so much that they make so many assumptions about who the customer is. But again, so often they're wrong.

I remember that was one of the very original product lessons I learned. I thought customers were more like me than they actually were. It's one of those things that if you know a lot about something, you're not even a that you're assuming these things. But if you know nothing about something, you realize, oh, you're going into it with a totally different mindset. I have to learn all of this. But either way, it's essential to get in front of actual users and customers. You will always learn so much. The famous Get Out of the Building, or I love the quote from a guy named Steve Blank, which is inside your company, there are, oh, what's that?

actual quote, no facts exist inside the company only opinions. And the point is, you really have to get outside of the company. Go outside of those walls, sit down with users and customers. And it's true. It's one of the most valuable things we can do. And generally, when we go in front of them, we're trying to make sure we understand who they really are. We want to make sure we understand the problems they really have. We also want to understand what it would take for them to switch to our product. And of course, we want to take advantage of being in front of them. We want to show them usually a prototype of whatever the new product or service is so that we can see how well that addresses their needs. But this is the fundamental blocking and tackling of coming up with a new

service or product. So how do you differentiate between the customer who you have a mission to go serve. And then the time that you need to shift who your customer is based on this feedback loop, I'm thinking about my friend Ryan. Her brother was killed in action. He's a fallen hero in the line of service. He was killed in Afghanistan and war. And she decided to, I mean, it just became her personal mission to go help families who have suffered the same tragedy of somebody in their family as a fallen hero. She's not going to deviate from helping those. people. That's her story. That's her mission. That's why she exists and gets out of bed every morning. But there may be times that she's interviewing customers and with her particular service and the

way she's supporting them. She's going to get feedback. I don't think you're saying whoever your customer needs to become, you can follow them anywhere and everywhere, even if it takes you off your mission. I mean, because there's value in staying true to the marketplace that you want to serve and is on your mission. But how do we know where we're getting too broad or maybe we're too narrow on our mission and we need a kind of, you know, there's kind of a spectrum there. And I'm curious how we do that dance. Yeah. Well, that's a good scenario because there's a lot of possible outcomes there. So first of all, any and all interaction that Ryan does with others that have experienced the same tragedy is going to be valuable. She could tell what parts are similar to others and what might be

different, because of course, I'm sure there are a lot of important differences as well. And then she can decide are those differences that make a difference, or does she keep everything the same? It may be that there are very different kinds. I'm just speculating here, but maybe the nature of the service. Maybe it's different for airmen versus infantry versus whatever. And so she realizes maybe there's different tactics she could take. Or it's also possible that while talking to people, she realizes that even people that haven't suffered that particular tragedy, maybe it's victims of drunk drivers, that there is so much she finds that are in common with the suffering that the family endures that she decides to expand her mission. That would be a

choice, obviously. But that would be fine if that's what she wants to do. That could be good. The reason we talk to them, talk to actual, our, you know, in this case, customer is not the right term, but the recipients of these services, we're learning. We may learn that there are more opportunities than we realize. We may learn that the solution that, you know, Ryan has is applicable to more than just what she originally thought. Those are all good learnings. And then, yes, she will have to decide. And yes, one of your implications is it's possible to get so excited about so many different things that it dilutes the effort. And then that's right, lose that focus. That's the kind of thing. Although it's also possible that with the expanded

purpose that there is more funds to be had and be able to basically, you know, succeed in her broader mission of helping people. So we clearly define the problem that we need to solve. We clearly define who the customer is. And then we define, I can't remember if you called them signs of success or how will we know if we've solved the problem. How will we know if we've succeeded? Yes. So when we're setting our team up with that criteria on the how will we know we've succeeded. Is this just a document? Is it a list of bullet points that are, is it quantitative? Is it qualitative? All of the above? What does that look like? Well, usually the mission is qualitative. It might be like providing care to agree people or

whatever it might be. But the measures of success are quantitative. We need some way to know objectively have we accomplished our mission. We want to know that up front. And The reason I say that is because we'll have lots of different solutions. And the way we judge with one solution is better than another is how well it achieves the objectives. So they're referred to as key results. These are the how do you measure success. It might be if our goal is to help a thousand families in a month, then we're really looking for a solution that scales to a thousand families a month. If our goal was a million families a month, we're going to be needing to look at different kinds of solutions.

So when we're testing a solution, I mean, this gets really sticky, right? Because we get really excited about a particular solution. And sometimes the reason it's not working is it hasn't had enough time to bake. Sometimes it's a good solution, but it's only, it's incomplete and it needs more added to it. Sometimes it needs another month to merit aid in the marketplace. Sometimes it needs more funding. Sometimes we need to iterate and beat it up a lot. bit. Sometimes we need to kill it. How do we know when we need to keep pushing into a solution in the

testing phase and when we go, no, this is a failure, we need a fish and cut bait and move on to the next test? Yeah. Well, there's really two parts to that. And this gets to the essence of creating any new business or any new product line. Really critical. And I want to be clear, not an easy question. So the two parts to that. The straightforward part is the better we are at trying out many approaches and the faster we are. The reason speed is so important is because the clock is ticking and money is running out. Yes. So we need to be able to move fast.

It is not unusual for a good team to be able to try out 50 ideas in a week if they're good. Now, that's incredibly useful if it's going to take several hundred attempts. before you find something that really works. You can also start to see why so many new businesses fail. They don't have those skills. They don't have those muscles. So what do they get? They get maybe two or three tries. And if that doesn't work, which it rarely would, it would be incredibly lucky if one of those three worked, then they're out of money, right? The game over. On the other hand, if you have the skills to try out lots of ideas, then the likelihood of actually coming up with at least one that really solves the problem well is much, much higher. So that's the one dimension.

The other dimension is, this is the hard part, there is still a judgment. In fact, a lot of times this is exactly the coaching I do with teams is they will tell me the problem they're working on. And if they can't, normally they can come up with a solution in a few weeks. So we're good. Sometimes, though, they've been working on it for a month and they have not moved the needle at all. And they don't know, do they just need to persist? Do they just need to persevere? Or is this like not going to happen?

It's just not going to happen. And it's, this is I tell people, it's important. possible to truly know that. And this is where judgment comes in. You are having to make a gut call. Now, a lot of times they'll ask me my opinion just because I've done this for literally 40 years now. So I have lots of mistakes and some successes too that I can draw on. And they'll say, and sometimes I'll say, I'll ask them about the customers they've been talking to. I'll ask them the things they've tried. And sometimes I'll say, absolutely, you should keep going. This is a very hard problem. It is a worthy problem. You are making progress. Keep going.

Full speed. Other times I'll say, look, maybe you try one more thing, but if it doesn't work, it's probably not going to happen. And, you know, it doesn't mean you're abandoning an idea forever. It might just go on a back burner for a while until you can really think of some insight or some new approach or sometimes a new technology will emerge that makes this now promising. Or a shift in the marketplace. Yes. Any of these things can happen. You know, you mentioned teams that are really good at it and have these skills of testing a lot of ideas, maybe 50 in a week. What are some of the core attributes of a team that can really RPM at that level?

What's required? I'm thinking a lot of business owners out there maybe don't even have a technology offering, but they've got a team of people, and they want to start infusing this mindset of testing and iterating across their entire team. What should they be talking about? Yeah, and I want to be clear, this is not specific to technology. In fact, you might remember there was a movie a few years ago. It was basically telling the origin story for McDonald's.

Do you remember what the movie was called? life. Yeah, that's right. And there was a great scene in there where they prototyped what essentially was the secret sauce for McDonald's, which was, of course, was not the burger. It was the, it was the kitchen set up. It was their introducing sort of a factory model for fast food. And they prototyped a hundred iterations of this. Now, they prototyped it on a basketball court with chalk and people moving. It was all very low-tech. But it was a beautiful example of the power of prototyping a solution. In this case, it's feasible.

How can you come up with a solution that can make a fresh burger in just a few minutes consistently at large scale? But they were able to do that. And so I want to be clear, it's not a technology thing. It's more of a mindset thing. Now, it's also true. And with technology, it's even more important to do this. But there are certain skill sets you need.

You need, and the one that's missing the most is actually design. We haven't talked much about design, but real product or service designers are worth their weight in gold. They know service design, interaction design, visual design, user research. they have these great skills that are so valuable in coming up. And that's essentially they were doing a service design problem for McDonald's. But that's a critical skill set. You also need somebody that understands the business dynamics. They need to understand how this is going to be marketed, how it's going to be sold,

how it's going to be priced, how it's going to be what are the contractual elements, the legal elements, the compliance, the compliance. Reliance regulations, are there regulations? Somebody has to know that dimension. That's usually referred to as the product manager for that. In a startup, it's usually one of the founders. And then you need some of the makers, the people who are going to build it. It might be an engineer.

It might be in a case of a restaurant. It may be a cook, but you need people that know how to actually do the things that you're talking about. So when you put those skill sets together, a cross-functional team like this, that's what you're setting up. That's what you're enabling them to try out many different approaches to the problem. You know, you mentioned in a restaurant, it might be the cook. Many restaurants I've gone to, they have a menu. You come in, you pick from the menu, and you either tip a little bit or tip a lot, and you either come back or you don't. but how would a restaurant take on this approach of actually prototyping and testing and getting feedback from their customers?

Because I've been to certain restaurants and I go, this one's not going to make it. And then two months later, that place is vacant. But had they asked me and 100 people like me, I could have probably given them some feedback that would have kept them in business if they were up for pivoting. So, you know, many businesses are like this. And I think a lot of business owners go, okay, Marty, how do I actually talk to? my customer, do I just say, okay, is this something that you would do? Do I find people that aren't my customers? I'm not bugging the people that are the paying customers. Do I call my friends and family and ask them to pretend that they're customers? How do I approach this? Now, I'm with you.

And I also, that's a great example. I have had the same experience where you go into a place and you realize that clearly the owner had, was fell in love with the solution, not with the problem. right and they were dead set that this was going to be the menu despite the fact that nobody's liking it you know and by the time they really kind of acknowledge that they're out of money as opposed to before the pandemic i went to a new restaurant which was a small restaurant but the way they set it up was everybody that goes in there the the owner who was also the main chef uh came and sat down at your table at the end of your meal and wanted to grill you on they he grilled us he was like I want to know what you thought of your dishes I saw what you ordered I want to know what you thought about him

I want to know what you thought about like is this the kind of place that you would tell your friends to come to uh if if not why not and he was really pushing and it was interesting too because he was he was working to find all the reasons we didn't like something and what was funny is my wife and I actually really liked the meal, but he kept pushing. And I remember saying, yeah, well, one thing was I really wanted this medium, but it actually came rare. And he said, oh, yeah, that's our problem because the chef thinks it should be rare. Well, I understand, but I sort of wished it wasn't. But he was like, then, why didn't you ask for it to be cooked more? And I'm like, oh, man, I don't want to do that.

And so we had a really good discussion. And he got a much better understanding of at least, you know, a couple real paying customers. Now, this is important because you did mention friends and family. And that's a common mistake because friends and family, they can judge, I mean, they can judge some things, but they can't judge the important things. They care too much about you. So, for example, can you get from friends and family whether they really would come back? No.

But can you get it from real paying customers? You can do pretty good if you know what you're doing. And so, yes, even for something like a restaurant, absolutely engage this way. It occurs to me that the founder of the restaurant, who's also a chef, I mean, what a great practice to sit down and engage with your customers in that way. But even still, the questions. he asks are really important. And I've had to learn this in just soliciting feedback from my team to disarm them and make sure they feel like it's safe, soliciting feedback from customers,

open-ended questions, questions that aren't just, do you like this? Yes or no. How do we set the questions up? Because I think most people, you know, in general, back to the eBay principle, most people are good. And with that is most people want to say things that are kind and nice. And so if you ask them, did you like your meal today? And that's all you ask, most people are going to say, yeah, it was fine or it was good. And if you accidentally take away from that, okay, everything's golden. That very same person that said, yes, it was good may never be coming back because you didn't grill and dig in. Say more about the process of interviewing your customers in a way that gets to the juice. Well, the first thing I should say is most companies of medium or large size, they have people that are professionals at this. They're called user researchers. And they are, I love these people because they are so good at helping us get the most out of these interactions. That said, it actually doesn't take too long to build some decent skills. Just like this restaurant owner had built some decent skills. And I don't know how much about that might have been coming from doing some homework or just sort of. of lessons learned. But like I said, he was digging explicitly for the bats. He was not looking, he didn't care, in fact, when we said the things we liked. He was interested in the problems, looking for all the reasons why it might not be great. There is a very simple technique that

you've all seen. You just may not have known it was for this purpose. You know about the net promoter score survey. It's a simple, simple technique that's been a around a while. But the idea is you ask the person on a scale of zero to 10, how likely would they be to recommend this restaurant to a friend. And the reason it's set up this way is if they answer nine or 10, that means they probably really will recommend it. Anything lower than a nine, we failed. So a seven or eight basically means they could care less. Less than a six or less means they're going to warn their friends off of it. So, of course, the reason it's designed this way is because most people will say,

just like you said, you say, will you recommend it? And then, oh, yeah, I like it. They say, okay, on zero to ten, and they'll say, oh, six. And we know that was a very polite way of saying this was terrible. Yeah, and at a point, it's like you could say. I love that question, because if you're having a live conversation, somebody says six, you can then start to ask what would make it at 10? Exactly right.

Okay, we have some good things going for us that got it to a six. Okay, so we got that rapport and it's not awkward that they're insulting you. But you didn't say 10. What could we do that would then make it a 10? Exactly. Well, as we wrap up here, I know you talk about this idea of missionaries and mercenaries. We hit on it earlier. But I think it's just, it's on the top of the minds of so many leaders.

And that is, how do I have a team of missionaries? We have a mission. there's so many product things that we can learn from you, Marty, but I think what is in your heart is having leaders that feel empowered to build teams who are on mission and who are empowered. And actually, you know, product thinking is an extension of a team that has a culture that really cares, that really gives a rip. And as we're thinking about leaders who are struggling to get their teams to really care about the mission or have the experiences that they had as the founder, going back to our first,

friend Ryan, she's the one whose brother died. She has these personal experiences that are just, they're ingrained in her psyche. And as we start to hire people, you know, Dave Ramsey, I mean, he went through the bankruptcy and clawed his way out and became his life mission to help people not experience that same pain. And now at a thousand team members, we've got a lot of people that have never had financial distress. And they're here because we're a great place to work. And, you know, it's a struggle to get them to feel that same mission in the way that a founder often feels it. What have you found in terms of getting that into our culture and how can we build great teams that are on mission and are excited about making a difference in the world with the people that we're trying to help? Yeah. Well, this is really the role of leaders is to create these teams, recruit the people.

But, yes, not everybody you recruit is going to be somebody that's experienced. a personal bankruptcy. Most people won't. However, a good leader, in fact, you're going to see the, if you want teams of missionaries, you need to do a lot of evangelizing. And that is a very big part of the job. You need to share, let me tell you what it's like to actually have to declare personal bankruptcy. Let me tell you the pain.

Let me share with you what it was like. Let me introduce you to others that have had it. Let me, let me, you know, show you these videos that are done interviewing people that have been through these kinds of things. To develop this kind of empathy is critical with our customers. And, of course, a great way is what we just talked about. Go meet these people. It's so valuable to get this into the teams. It's one of our absolute best ways to turn mercenaries into missionaries.

It's very hard. it's very hard to think like a mercenary if you can see the people in pain when you can see it in their eyes you have to be a pretty cold-hearted person to kind of like not feel for them so we do everything we can as leaders to nurture this so that's of course hiring people that are you think going to relate to this and you're also going to share the vision you're going to evangelize the vision the mission, the vision, the mission, and you are going to make sure that they have a lot of interaction with real users and customers. And you want to make sure that they feel empowered to actually do something about it. You really want at all costs to avoid the situation where they

feel like, yeah, well, I'm sorry for them, but I can't do anything. That's exactly the wrong. We want to coach them to see so they know how they can do things. Some of the most powerful moments for me personally here at Ramsey. I've been here 17 years. I'm entrenched in the mission. I know the place backwards and forwards and our values. And I mean, there was 40 people when I started. And so at the founding level, but even still, there was days where I would become calloused or I would become familiar and, you know, the adage of familiarity breeds contempt. And I've never lost my heart. for our mission. But it was it was really profound that in those moments, it was it was Dave Ramsey who would go find a customer and bring them into staff meeting and put them up on stage and

interview them about their success story, about, you know, being on the verge of bankruptcy and finding our plan and getting out of it and then, you know, succeeding and celebrating and saying, I'm debt free and now their kids are going to be able to go to college and it's going to be paid for and completely changed their family tree. Yeah. And just hearing those conversations, taking an entire staff meeting and hearing those conversations, even for a guy like me who is on mission and is excited about what we're doing, I mean, it was just this oxygen.

I mean, I'd walk out of those staff meetings going, I'm on fire. Okay, we were a little dull. We were a little rusty. But my emotions would double down every time I heard a real customer talking to us about their story and their experience with what we do here. And I think there's practical ways that business owners can do that regardless of what your product or service is, but exposing your team to the work that you do and the impact you're making. And a lot of the team may be back in the factory or in the back office and don't naturally interact with customers. But if you're intentional about it, you can get everybody on the team to see the impact of their work.

And you should. Absolutely. And that credit to Dave Rims. He's probably sensed the organization getting a little complacent. You know, not like they're lazy. It's just like people are working like crazy, but losing sight maybe of a vision. It's like, okay, good time to bring some more customers in. I want to re-inject. And I see that in the best leaders. They do that. They are constantly worried about that. That's that back to the lead with context, not control. That 30 minutes in front of a customer

is so much more valuable than hours of direction. So so much more motivating. Marty, as we wrap up, you know, our country's in kind of a crazy season. And it's really charged up. And there's a lot of polarizing conversations out there. And many people are looking to Washington to fix everything. And I think Washington has a responsibility. But I also believe, personally, that the business community, men and women listening to this podcast, leaders out there who are working to serve their teams and create great solutions and products, I actually believe the business community is a huge piece of this solution that collectively small business owners, men and women across this country who have a heart and who care about doing the right thing and being decent people and just doubling down on their business. I mean, just blooming where they're planted. If we all do that, I think our country is on the way to healing and getting back into a better spot as we go forward.

What do you want to tell those men and women about what's in your heart? heart and what you want for them and what you want them to go forward with and the banner that they can carry forward as we start to put our country back together. Yes. Well, I'd like to sort of reinforce what you're saying, but I kind of, you know, no secret, my, I come from the technology industry. And honestly, the technology industry has not been so good on this front. ethics have not been where they should have been. And our country is paying the price for that. Some of the problems you're alluding to are that was a major contributor.

And so I have been trying to encourage more leaders in the technology space to think about the ethical implications about what they're doing. Worry about the impact of bad actors. care more about society, care more about the environment, care more about the people who are using our services, so that many more are doing what you're suggesting. They're really the benefits to society of thriving companies and services. Really good stuff.

Well, your new book is called Empowered. And, guys, I've got to tell you, the format of this book is my favorite type of format. It's about 80 chapters, 81, to be exact, three to four pages each. and each chapter is on a principle. Many of them we've hit on today, but there's so many more, and I wish we had hours and hours to just go through all of these because you've just got so much brilliance to offer and so much practical application.

Business people are tired of fluff and hype, and they really want nuts and bolts, and that's what this book is all about, and that's what you guys teach. And so we're very grateful, Marty. Thank you for your heart, for your wisdom, and for your encouragement today. It's been an honor.

Well, thank you very much for inviting me. You're welcome back anytime. Marty Kagan, everybody, on the Entree Leadership Podcast. And I'm serious. I mean, this guy in his book and his work have impacted Ramsey Solutions, and our top product people are always singing his praises. We've had his people in to train our team and we're using it. It's not just something that we found another guy who's got a book. This is really something we embody here at Ramsey Solutions.

So can't endorse this guy more than that. And I want you guys to check out the book. Even if you're not in a tech organization, any small business that's got a product or service, which by definition, that's every small business needs to read this book Empowered. And Marty, thank you so much. And all the best out there, brother.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, folks, great conversation with Marty. I hope you enjoyed it. And that's one to go back and listen to. I got to tell you, his book is fantastic. You don't want to miss out on that. But here's the thing.

If you're building a business, you're also building a product or service. And that's not something you just build once and then you go build a business, you're always improving and iterating if you want to stay in the game. Now, I know from my experience, there's been seasons where I was just focused on the business, and there's been seasons I was just focused on the product or service. And, well, what you figure out when you master this is you're always really focused on both, always thinking about how is the customer in the marketplace experiencing what we deliver. Dave Ramsey has modeled this like no one else.

He's on the air every day talking to customers. He's on the stage in live events, interacting with the marketplace. And then, boom, he jumps over and he puts on the CEO hat. And he's leading executive committee, and he's in charge of hiring and firing a delegation and staff meetings. And, hey, if you want to do it right, you got to do both. You have to be a founder who never loses sight of the product in the front lines. And what we found at Entree leadership is it can be overwhelming.

There can be a lot of things that are pulling at your attention that get you to lose your focus on either the product or on running the business. Don't do that. There's six things you need to be thinking about and focused on and have in front of you. Your personal leadership, your purpose, the people, your plan, your product, and your profit. Those are the six drivers of a peak performing business.

And so our coaching team put together an assessment that will help you. It's free, absolutely free. A quick check-in for you to answer some questions and then figure out how you're doing in each of these six areas. And you're going to get a scorecard. It's going to spit out and say, hey, here's the problem area.

And you might find out, whoa, we are not focused enough on our product. Or you might go, hey, we're doing pretty good on product, but we've got other components of the business we need to zoom over and spend some time on. Figure out where you're at, figure out where you stand, and then get clarity on the actions you need to take. Take the free assessment by texting the keyword progress to 33444. Again, text progress to 33444 or just click on the link in the show notes. All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the show. If you did, be sure to leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And if you're a small business owner between two and 200 team members,

we'd love to have a live conversation with you and get your feedback on the show because, oh, look, we'd like to improve our product and you're the customer. And so we want to talk to you about how the show has been helpful or ways that we can improve. So if you want to help us out with that, just click on the link in the show notes and fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, the producer. and he will get you squared away. So thanks for helping us out on that. Also, if you want to stay plugged in with everything going on at Entree Leadership,

get lots more great free content and all the action behind the scenes. Just follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can also follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rudder. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep learning.

bleeding. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Christy Wright Show. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy Wright. You know, it's so easy to feel stuck. You live life, just going through the motions, doing dishes, doing laundry, carpool lines, and a whole list of commitments that bring you no joy. We say yes to what everyone expects of us, and we have no energy or time for what we want. And let's be honest, most of the time, we don't even know what we want. Why do we live like that? God certainly never called us to. You know, I believe that the life God has for us is bigger and more amazing than any of us realize. That's why I want you to check out the Christy Wright Show.

Every week, we will fire you up to break through what's holding you back and inspire you to create a life you love and are proud of. Each episode will help you build confidence in yourself and the God that created you. To hear full episodes, just search Christy Wright wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.