0:00

Welcome to the Zeal Interestings Podcast. I'm

0:03

your host, Chris White. My cohost is

0:05

Trever Yarrish today. Thank you so much

0:07

for joining me again, Ttrever.

0:08

Of course. I'm super, super

0:10

excited for this podcast. So yeah.

0:13

Me too. Me Too. So let's introduce our guest,

0:16

Dawn Ressel. She's the CEO and design strategist

0:18

at Next Leap. Thank you so much for joining

0:20

us, Dawn.

0:21

Thank you for having me.

0:23

We got an intro from you from April

0:26

Wensel. Thank you very much, April. She's excellent.

0:30

The episode we recorded with her was really fun. Definitely excited,

0:32

based on her recommendation. You're the founder

0:34

of a consulting organization. You

0:37

serve clients. You do use your experience

0:39

in design and so can you

0:41

kind of give us a background of your

0:43

background in technology and what brought

0:45

you to doing your own service

0:48

organization?

0:49

Yeah, I'd love to, so I started

0:52

in technology around

0:56

2000 and I started as

0:58

an information architect/

1:00

interaction designer back then

1:03

and I stayed as

1:05

a individual contributor in

1:07

that field for over

1:10

eight years and

1:13

then I started moving into management

1:15

and I started managing a design

1:17

team at Intuit. I was

1:20

at Intuit for the last nine years of my

1:22

career before I started my own company

1:25

and yeah, I was managing

1:28

a design team that was working

1:30

most recently I was managing a design team

1:32

that was working on our central design

1:35

system at Intuit and

1:37

science systems are huge challenge right now

1:39

for organizations in terms of design and engineering

1:42

as well. So

1:43

Yeah, for people like myself and others

1:45

in our audience, can you kind of give us a short

1:48

definition of a design system at a larger

1:50

organization?

1:53

Ya, well, my mantra when I was at intuit is

1:55

was basically that the design system

1:58

is living and it's in code and

2:02

it reflects the actual

2:05

design of what's in your products. So

2:08

older school design systems that

2:10

I think are mostly being abandoned

2:12

nowadays, were basically

2:14

just artifacts documentation. So

2:17

what I was working on at Intuit was making

2:20

a live design system in code

2:23

with the collaboration of engineering

2:25

and architecture and designers

2:27

across the company so that our

2:29

products were actually pulling in

2:32

the assets real time. You know,

2:34

that we're a part of the design system,

2:36

So instead of creating a style guide

2:38

artifact that falls,

2:41

falls completely by the wayside within a

2:43

few months, you actually create a system through

2:45

which design was delivered to all the individual

2:47

projects.

2:48

Exactly. And you never had to worry about if

2:50

it was up to date because if

2:53

it's in code and it's the most recently

2:55

checked in version, you know, it's up to date.

2:57

So yeah, that was,

2:59

that was my challenge my most, my

3:01

last challenge at Intuit. It was a fun one.

3:06

I wanted to just throw out there a big heartfelt thank you on

3:08

behalf of all of the companies in the

3:10

world that use Intuit products for

3:12

the effort and

3:14

focus on making the

3:17

products easier to use, more cross

3:20

platform friendly. All of those different things. I know

3:22

the company is massive, but just to

3:25

hear that focus and emphasis,

3:27

it makes a massive difference to people who

3:30

use the product every single

3:32

day.

3:33

And it's funny because now I'm a

3:35

customer of Intuit, no longer an employee,

3:37

but I use QuickBooks all the time for my

3:40

own small business and I totally

3:43

see it from the other side and, and appreciate

3:45

all of the design and engineering

3:49

expertise that that company has. And I

3:51

learned a lot there which has

3:53

become the foundation for, for Next

3:55

Leap actually what I learned at Intuit.

3:57

So

3:59

Yeah. So give us the story of

4:01

how you transitioned from managing

4:04

a team inside of a very large organization

4:06

to deciding that you wanted to start a service organization.

4:09

Well, it wasn't exactly

4:11

a straight line to be honest,

4:18

but you know, I, I felt

4:20

like in summary, you

4:22

know, I had been at intuit for nine

4:24

years and a variety of roles. And I

4:27

guess the headline is I felt like I had

4:29

accomplished what I set out to accomplish

4:31

within those four walls. And

4:33

so I knew there was something next

4:35

for me. I didn't know

4:38

for a little while, but it was actually going

4:40

to become Next Leap. So

4:43

I actually started interviewing for

4:45

jobs, traditional user experience

4:48

design manager jobs in

4:50

Silicon Valley and

4:53

I was thinking, I actually live in San Diego now, but

4:55

I was thinking, well maybe I need to relocate

4:57

back to the bay area. That's where all

4:59

the jobs are.

5:01

And through the process of interviewing with

5:04

honestly some really great companies, I

5:07

just felt that none of it was

5:09

resonating with me and so I had to do a

5:11

lot of internal

5:13

reflection on, okay- It wasn't just that

5:16

Intuit wasn't resonating with me. It's that

5:18

really this job inside

5:20

of any four walls is

5:23

not resonating with me. And why is that?

5:25

And so what I learned

5:27

through the process of, of self reflection

5:30

was that the work that I was doing on

5:32

the side while

5:35

at Intuit was actually the most meaningful work

5:37

that I had done personally

5:39

most fulfilling, um, in

5:41

the last few years of my career. And that was working

5:44

with nonprofits on the side and

5:46

applying design thinking and

5:48

innovation techniques that I learned at

5:51

Intuit to the nonprofit sector. And

5:54

when I realized that that was the

5:56

thing that was going to be

6:00

what would make me excited

6:02

to wake up every morning, I

6:05

started looking for those types of jobs

6:07

in the nonprofit sector. It only took me a couple

6:09

of days to realize that nobody in the nonprofit

6:11

sector has a full time job

6:14

for this. Because to be honest, they haven't figured

6:16

out that they actually, most of them hadn't figured

6:19

out that they need this.

6:20

They didn't understand that they needed user experience

6:23

systems.

6:23

Ya, they haven't figured that out yet. So I

6:26

thought, Oh, I've got to make this

6:28

happen. And so it wasn't

6:30

that I had the

6:33

ambition to start a company, it was that I had the

6:35

ambition to do this work and

6:38

I felt that starting a company was the

6:40

only vehicle in which to accomplish that.

6:42

So.

6:43

So you just mentioned something that I

6:45

wanted to jump into dive into a little

6:47

bit. During, as your career progressed,

6:50

I noticed that you started speaking

6:53

more actually.

6:56

Ya, I did.

6:56

Speaking on different topics and one of those topics

6:58

was empathy. And

7:01

that's been a natural

7:03

progression of sort of UX

7:05

work as well as, you know, really

7:07

digging into design thinking and these types of things.

7:09

And um, so you

7:13

just mentioned that it was hard,

7:15

it was hard. The hard part is

7:18

helping a business understand

7:21

what it is and why they need it

7:23

and why it's important. And the companies

7:25

that are on the other side of that understanding,

7:28

totally get it. And they're like, I don't know,

7:31

you know, the world wasn't colorful before

7:33

this moment, you know. And so

7:35

what I would love to sort of dig into

7:37

a little bit is how do you sell empathy

7:40

acquisition or how do you sell? How do you, how

7:42

do you help people, help businesses like cross

7:45

that chasm of understanding?

7:47

Yeah, it's a complicated question

7:50

and I'll answer it in the

7:52

best way possible, but the reality

7:54

is my pitch is slightly different depending

7:56

on every organization.

7:59

So what I like to do is find

8:01

out what their challenges are and

8:04

what they see as their biggest opportunities

8:07

and almost always I can in some

8:09

way tie that back to they

8:11

need to to get more empathy for

8:13

their constituents. You know, whether

8:15

it's for a for profit,

8:18

their end customers or for a nonprofit,

8:21

their donors or volunteers

8:24

or board of directors. Almost

8:27

everything can be tied back to, there's

8:29

a human being somewhere

8:31

that is not having their needs met and

8:34

that's the core of your challenge. So

8:36

I rarely lead with empathy. I

8:39

lead with, Hey, I'm a problem solver.

8:42

I come from Silicon Valley. I

8:45

had these really innovative techniques that

8:47

I think will help you achieve your goals.

8:49

And I usually tie it to money because

8:52

everybody listens to money.

8:56

You're not reaching the right donors, you're losing customers.

8:58

And that's the thing that nonprofits and for profits

9:01

have income in common is they're always

9:03

concerned about money. And so a

9:06

lot of times with nonprofits I'll start

9:08

building relationships with people in the

9:10

fundraising capacity

9:13

because they can tell me

9:15

their story of where, where the gaps

9:17

are in terms of getting

9:19

the money and I'm not a grant writer or

9:21

anything like that. I, I refer them

9:24

to grant writers. But a lot of times they think the silver

9:26

bullet is we just need a better grant writer. And

9:28

the reality is a lot it is much, much

9:30

more complicated. You know, a lot

9:32

of times they're not telling the right story or they're

9:35

not delivering the right programming or they're

9:37

not, you know, whatever they're saying

9:39

isn't resonating with people in a way that needs

9:41

to, for them to get the donations

9:44

or revenue that they want. So I always

9:46

tie it back to money. I never go in

9:48

and say you should do empathy for the sake of

9:50

empathy because it's the right thing to do. It doesn't sell.

9:53

How does it, how does it

9:55

tie back to money? Do you reference

9:58

past experience that you have?

10:01

You mentioned you bring in,

10:03

like what are the types of things that

10:05

help you get that point

10:07

across?

10:08

Yeah. Well also I guess

10:10

for nonprofits, the other thing that sells is impact

10:12

as well, so I either figure out what their

10:15

biggest pain point is. Is it money

10:17

or is it impact? But on the finances

10:19

side it's usually

10:22

around, you know, are you telling

10:24

the best story to your donors or

10:26

if you're a for profit, do you

10:28

know why your customers are choosing your competitors

10:31

over you? And a lot of times I don't

10:33

know. So why are, why are your customers,

10:36

why isn't everyone your customer? Not that everyone

10:38

is going to be your customer, but everyone who could potentially

10:40

be your customer, why are they choosing

10:42

other products in the marketplace? Yeah. So...

10:45

Helping them identify those arguments

10:48

against the product or reasons

10:50

why people leave the product.

10:52

Yeah. Yeah. Or how do you create,

10:54

you know, don't you want to create a fanatical

10:57

set of customers that is going to promote

10:59

your brand for you? You know,

11:01

how much money do you invest right now in marketing?

11:03

Wouldn't it be great if you could reduce

11:06

that amount because you have so many fanatical

11:09

customers promoting on

11:11

your behalf on social media,

11:13

you know, so, so if I can

11:16

tie it to those things and they're like,

11:18

well, gee, how are you going to help us do that? Are you going to come

11:20

up with a new marketing strategy or something like

11:22

that. We already have a marketing firm. I'm like, no, that's not

11:24

what I do. I actually help you

11:26

understand much more deeply

11:29

who your customers are and what they care about. And that

11:31

is input for marketing, but

11:33

it's input for your whole business really.

11:36

So...

11:38

Awesome. Uh, so as

11:40

far as the nitty gritty goes, what are some

11:42

of the common mistakes that you

11:45

see organizations making either on the nonprofit

11:47

or profit or for profit side

11:49

that, that you find yourself like coaching people

11:52

through and helping them out with frequently?

11:55

On the for profit side, it's

11:57

often that they had this

11:59

great idea they thought,

12:01

which they thought was a great idea, but

12:04

you know, they didn't do the upfront work

12:06

to validate whether or not there was a need

12:08

for it in the marketplace. And

12:10

so a lot of times it's either

12:13

helping them reimagine that product

12:16

or, or even maybe even just the messaging

12:18

is off, but the product is right. Um,

12:21

so yeah, it's just figuring out how do

12:23

they better align their products, services

12:26

and messaging with what the customers actually

12:28

value and want, and

12:31

align it with their actual behavior so that

12:34

they'll, they'll do what the companies

12:36

want them to do, which is buy their product

12:38

or service. So yeah, that's

12:40

pretty much it. On the nonprofit side, one

12:43

of the biggest things I see is that,

12:45

you know, the nonprofit industry is

12:48

being disrupted right now. A

12:50

lot of the funding sources are

12:52

drying up. There's more competition for the

12:55

same limited set of funds and

12:58

uh, they need to create additional sources

13:00

of revenue. And so

13:02

social enterprise is a big area

13:05

of opportunity for a lot of nonprofits

13:07

right now. I like working

13:09

with them to help them figure out, is there

13:12

an opportunity for social enterprise

13:14

that's aligned with your mission or even

13:16

a strategic corporate partnership

13:19

that's aligned with your mission that can help

13:21

funnel more revenue into your

13:23

organization so you can do great work.

13:25

Now, I noticed you, you are

13:28

not alone in your business. This Next

13:30

Leap is not just Dawn Ressel, but you actually

13:32

have a partner.

13:32

Correct, I do! Lisa

13:35

Towell. She and I worked together

13:37

at Intuit on the Intuit design

13:39

system and uh, we just

13:42

clicked basically on day

13:44

one when we started working together because

13:47

she had a sticker on her laptop,

13:50

you know, in corporate America, a lot of people like

13:52

to decorate their laptops with stickers

13:55

and yeah, she

13:58

had a sticker on her laptop

14:00

for an organization called mercy for animals

14:02

that I'm a huge, huge

14:05

fan of. They do work on behalf

14:07

of helping farmed animals

14:10

and, and suffering for farm animals. And

14:12

I looked at that and was like, that's

14:15

interesting. So I said, hey,

14:17

you know, tell me more about mercy for animals. I'm

14:19

a big fan of them too and

14:21

she starts telling me, Oh yeah, they do great work, blah,

14:23

blah blah. And here she is thinking like

14:25

I may be not familiar with

14:28

that organization at all and she's in a

14:30

corporate setting trying to be a little bit

14:32

discreet about the fact that it's a vegan

14:36

organization. But uh, I was like, Hey, um,

14:39

do you happen to be vegan? And she's like,

14:42

yes. And I said, yeah, me too.

14:52

It's become so much more than that. But yeah, we were

14:55

delighted when we found out our person,

14:57

our team of three, it was two thirds vegan

15:00

because, and, and hundred percent

15:03

female. So you can imagine how

15:05

rare that is

15:07

at a technology company to have a

15:10

two thirds vegan, 100

15:12

percent female project team.

15:18

So we were basically, you

15:20

know, joined at the hip from day one and

15:23

now now we have Next Leap together. Yeah.

15:26

Very cool. I wanted to, that dovetail

15:28

as well into a question that I really wanted to ask

15:30

you about when I was doing research. I

15:32

saw on your blog that you do a lot of writing about

15:35

animal advocacy and veganism.

15:37

It sounds like you have a very deep personal interest

15:39

in the topics, but do you find that that

15:42

also dovetails well into what

15:44

Next Leap does and like

15:46

how you weave that

15:49

writing into what you do as a business?

15:51

Well, yeah, it's a great question

15:54

and it's one that I am continuing

15:56

to evolve the answer

15:58

to. So you know, really the

16:00

reason I started Next Leap was

16:03

I wanted to do work that was aligned with my personal

16:05

passion and work that I felt was

16:08

doing good in the world and I've

16:10

been vegan for 17 years, so that

16:12

is a huge part of what I, I

16:14

want to see a shift in the world is how

16:16

we treat animals and what we eat and the

16:19

impact that that has on the environment.

16:21

So I decided

16:24

that veganism should be

16:26

a focus of my business because it's a focus

16:28

of my passion and also Lisa's

16:30

passion and we're still continuing to

16:33

figure out exactly how

16:35

that's going to show up in our business. But I'll tell

16:37

you what we've done so far. So

16:40

right now I run a workshop series

16:42

called kickstart your vegan business.

16:45

And it is. Yeah,

16:47

I've done it now in

16:50

three cities. No actually

16:52

three times two in San Diego, once

16:54

in Berkeley and I'm

16:56

going to offer it in

16:59

London, in the UK in October. I

17:01

just happened to be going there and I was

17:03

like, that would be a great place to run this

17:05

workshop. Ya, so I'm running it

17:08

in London and then I'll be running it

17:11

in L.A. in November. And so,

17:13

um, that's one way that I'm,

17:15

I'm doing it with Next Leap because I feel

17:17

that the things that I learned in Silicon

17:20

Valley can be used to grow

17:22

any business. There's really

17:24

no businesses I want to see you succeed more

17:26

than vegan businesses. So the more

17:28

I can help grow that economy

17:31

from the ground up, I think the

17:33

better off we're all going to be. So. So

17:36

that's one thing I'm really passionate about. That's

17:38

one way I'm to achieving that through Next

17:40

Leap. But I'm also going to a conference

17:42

next week that's called, The Good Food Conference

17:46

and uh, they're going to be doing a free

17:48

live stream. So for anyone who,

17:50

Where's that going to be?

17:51

In Berkeley, California.

17:54

That whole conference is about

17:57

growing the plants

17:59

meat and clean meat sector,

18:02

uh, and cleaning

18:04

lab grown meat. And the goal

18:06

of that industry is to completely disrupt

18:09

the factory farming industry so

18:11

that we don't even need to

18:13

have animals to produce meat that

18:15

tastes exactly like meat. Right?

18:20

It technically is meat. Yeah. So what we

18:22

do today is incredibly inefficient. You

18:24

know, we grow, raise a whole

18:27

animal to eat

18:29

the muscle fibers. And so what clean

18:31

meat does is it says, Hey, all

18:33

we need to do really is biopsy

18:36

from live animals,

18:38

take those cells and

18:41

grow them in a lab and then turn

18:44

that into muscle fiber that is

18:46

exactly the same thing as meat.

18:48

And so this conference is the

18:50

first. This is the inaugural conference.

18:53

Yeah.

18:54

And is it in Berkeley

18:56

because there's related companies in that area or.

18:58

I'm not sure why it's in Berkeley.

19:02

There's a lot of biotech, I know that.

19:02

Well the bay area's definitely

19:04

an epicenter for this industry, but I'm

19:07

not exactly sure why it's in Berkeley

19:09

specifically, but um, yes,

19:11

so I'm really excited about that

19:13

conference and if you see what's happening in

19:15

the industry, you know, consumers

19:18

are choosing plant based

19:20

alternatives in at rates that

19:23

are exponential and so the sector

19:25

is growing like crazy and there's no end

19:28

in sight. And so my

19:30

hypothesis with Next Leap is that, hey,

19:32

you know, there's a space for Next

19:34

Leap to play in this industry.

19:36

There's certainly enough money there

19:39

to um,

19:42

support an entire consulting

19:45

business. There's

19:47

billions and billions of dollars. I mean Bill Gates and

19:49

Richard Branson are investing in

19:52

industries just as, as examples, you

19:54

know, Leonardo Dicaprio, like all these

19:57

huge names are investing in this industry.

20:00

So part of my investigation and

20:03

hypothesis testing is going to happen actually

20:06

good food conference on, you know,

20:08

where our Next Leap can fit in, in a

20:10

bigger way than

20:12

just working with the startups,

20:15

but working with bigger companies.

20:17

That's awesome. I

20:19

want to maybe shift focus for

20:21

a few minutes and ask a question,

20:24

uh, being a consultancy ourselves

20:27

as Zeal and one

20:29

of the things that always fascinates me

20:32

about other consultancies is how

20:35

they do what they do and how they're successful

20:37

at it because being a consultancy is,

20:39

is tough. It has a lot of challenges involved

20:41

in it. So both

20:44

selfishly as well as I know we have a lot of

20:46

listeners on our podcast that are also

20:48

involved in consultancies. So one

20:51

of the questions I love to ask is just from

20:54

a high level as well as

20:57

are there, are there details

20:59

that stand out,

21:01

things that stand out, not entire process

21:03

or anything like that, but just sort of through

21:06

your client process, onboarding, reporting,

21:09

updating, tooling. The question

21:11

that I have is what are some of the things

21:13

that you have experienced maybe in the

21:16

last year of of start really

21:18

getting Next Leap going and whatnot that have made

21:20

a huge difference in how you

21:22

work with your clients? And again,

21:24

that's a really broad topic. Maybe

21:27

something that happened recently that really stood out to you or

21:29

some of the things that you know make a huge

21:31

difference when you're working with clients. That is

21:33

a key distinction that other consultancies could learn from.

21:38

I mean I have the good fortune

21:40

of having skills

21:42

and talents that naturally

21:44

have to be applied collaboratively.

21:47

I literally cannot work in a vacuum,

21:50

so I'll share what I do

21:53

and hopefully it's more broadly applicable

21:55

to people in other industries. For

21:57

instance, when I do a research project,

22:00

I require my

22:02

clients to sit in on

22:05

all of the interviews and listen,

22:07

so I don't just deliver them a report

22:10

at the end. I want them there for the whole journey.

22:13

So either they listened to it live or

22:15

they listen to the recording, but ideally

22:17

they listened to it live and what I did

22:19

with my last client where we did a

22:21

research project like this, they were

22:23

in every single interview live and

22:26

then we half an hour afterwards

22:28

debriefed on every

22:30

single interview and the reason that was important

22:33

was because they have a different

22:35

perspective. You know, I'm hearing what I'm

22:37

hearing from an objective perspective,

22:39

but they're hearing what they're hearing from

22:41

They're very emotionally invested in what

22:44

you're talking about

22:45

Yeah and they know the topic really well and so

22:47

I want to know what they found important

22:49

in that interview as well as what I found important.

22:51

So it's almost like that part of the research is,

22:54

is really as important as the learnings.

22:58

So here's what I gathered

23:00

in doing this research with these

23:02

people that we interviewed and

23:05

then as important is what

23:07

did that mean to you when you heard those things?

23:09

And that was

23:10

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

23:12

And that way when they get the report, they

23:14

are already invested in the outcome, but

23:16

the cool thing is they're always also,

23:19

the report always also surprises

23:21

them in some way. You know, they're never

23:23

100 percent like, yeah, we already talked about

23:26

this because when you look at an

23:28

individual and that's the, you know, that's the

23:30

skill that I bring as a, as a researcher

23:32

is in the analysis portion. When

23:34

you look at one individual interview,

23:38

you get different insights. When you look at

23:40

everything collectively, and so what I do

23:42

in the analysis piece is I bring together

23:44

the themes across everything and

23:47

so they haven't necessarily yet come

23:49

to that big picture of what are all the themes across

23:51

and so that's the value that I add in the report.

23:54

So there's always surprises there for them. Like

23:56

in a good way, you know, they're like, oh yeah,

23:58

but it, it resonates with them, you know? And

24:00

so

24:01

Do you let a lot of your ideas

24:05

that come up in the process of research

24:07

and you let a lot of those ideas

24:10

surface. I know I've talked to a lot

24:12

of consultants and ourselves as

24:14

well. I'm like 80

24:17

percent of being a good consultant is asking

24:19

good questions, right. Is being

24:21

a good question asker and then

24:23

there's this consulting part which

24:25

is where you help them work

24:28

through that. But usually that's with more inquiry

24:30

and more questions and then

24:33

there's, you know, the piece where it's, you have expertise

24:36

in this area as well and bring

24:38

forth some ideas. So I just, what, what does that look

24:40

like for you?

24:41

Definitely a balance. But then

24:44

a lot of the inquiry that I'm doing on their behalf

24:46

is with the people that they are trying

24:48

to serve, right. And better serve in

24:51

some way. So yeah, inquiry is

24:54

probably 90 percent of my job, but at the end

24:56

of the day, my job is to come

24:58

back and say, okay, of all the

25:00

things, and I'll use the research

25:02

project as an example, but in a research project,

25:05

okay, we heard a thousand different

25:07

things. My job is to shine a light

25:10

on, of those things, what are the 10 things

25:12

you need to be thinking about? What are the

25:14

most important things? Right. And

25:16

then I also usually give them, I mean

25:19

always give them recommendations of how

25:21

I think they should address

25:24

improving the experience for their customers. And that can

25:26

be very lightweight depending on to what

25:28

extent they want to engage with me on the

25:30

problem solving piece of it. It could just

25:33

be some bullet points or

25:35

ideally, you know, they're bringing me in and helping me

25:38

generate some potential solutions to

25:41

that are going to address those insights.

25:43

So that's really the part where I lend

25:45

my expertise is in the

25:48

process. I never go in and tell people what to

25:50

do necessarily. I'm

25:53

much more about how, how should you do it,

25:55

you know, that

25:57

But they love hearing your ideas because you've done this

25:59

for so many entities. But you do have great

26:03

ideas. I mean let's be real. This is when you

26:05

spend so much head space in

26:08

something, you have a level of expertise in digging

26:10

into this and understanding the psychology and those

26:13

things. It lends itself to you having

26:15

some really great offerings as well. So

26:17

Yeah. Yeah, and that's where my recommendations come

26:19

in, but I typically, if I'm going to do a research project

26:21

with them first before we get

26:23

to solutioning, I typically reserve any

26:27

sharing. Even if I have ideas for them,

26:29

I typically reserve sharing ideas

26:31

on solutions until after we've done the

26:33

discovery on the research side.

26:38

Are All of your engagements kind of structured like

26:40

that where there's a research phase and then there's a solution

26:43

building phase?

26:43

Not always, but that is the ideal

26:46

engagement for me because a

26:48

lot of times when I go into an organization,

26:51

what I need in order to help

26:53

them create the best solutions is, is the

26:55

insights. And so it doesn't

26:57

usually take very long to figure out

26:59

that they don't have a lot of insights.

27:03

Start asking them questions and they start looking at each other.

27:08

Or they give me an answer and I'm

27:11

like, okay, so tell me how you, how you

27:13

know that, and then you know,

27:15

it's not really supported in any

27:17

way other than maybe just anecdotally or even

27:20

a well, well that's how we do it or that's

27:22

how we feel, you know? And so I

27:25

usually like to start with research

27:27

and usually they really can

27:30

benefit from it, but in some

27:32

cases I'll just go in and do like

27:34

innovation workshops. So if they have

27:36

already identified a problem and

27:39

kind of have already narrowed in on what their

27:41

customer pain or problem

27:43

is, I might just go in and help

27:45

them figure out how to launch

27:47

some lean experiments to test different ideas

27:50

in the market or, or even generate ideas

27:52

to potential solutions and then figure out a strategy

27:55

for how they can test that in a lean way.

27:58

That's awesome. I think that's

28:00

actually an excellent place to start wrapping up.

28:02

But before we go, I definitely wanted to ask you, Dawn if

28:04

there's anything project wise or link

28:06

wise that you'd like to draw our listeners' attention to.

28:09

Sure. I, I would love for people

28:11

to check out my website

28:14

at NextLeapDesign.com

28:16

if you're interested in anything I said

28:18

around particularly the growth

28:21

of the plant food and clean

28:23

meat industry. I've got a couple

28:25

of really recent blog articles that

28:28

might peak your

28:30

interest in that. And, and I'll

28:33

be blogging more about that after

28:36

I attend the Good Food Conference, which

28:38

is happening that is happening September

28:41

6th and 7th. And

28:45

people can listen to the live stream of that conference if

28:47

they are available. So

28:49

Yeah, we'll include some links in the show notes.

28:51

This podcast uh, you know, we're, we're time travelers

28:53

here, so this podcast will

28:56

likely come out after that conference and

28:58

we'll see if they have any kind of recordings up that would be

29:00

very interesting.

29:04

I love that so

29:07

our future selves are transporting.

29:11

Exactly. Exactly. Well,

29:13

thank you so much, Dawn. Super

29:16

Informative. I learned a lot.

29:17

I really, really,

29:19

really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Thank

29:21

you for having me. This is great.

29:23

Definitely. And to our listeners, thanks again

29:25

for listening. If you'd like to learn more, you

29:27

can follow us on twitter @codingzeal and we'll include some links

29:30

to Dawn's website in the

29:32

show notes. So please give her a visit and

29:34

we'll see you next time. Thank you.