go,

I Hey, welcome back to the hustle podcast today.

I'm here with my friend Eric Bowman. Eric is a product designer at Facebook. He works on the group's team and previously found in Iran, a startup for quite some time in the Bay Area. He's been an industry for a very long time. In fact, he and I went to college together in the nineties, and today we're lucky to have him in the studio. He's in town on business, and we figured, Hey, let's get him into the studio and record a podcast. So here we are. Thanks for coming out to the side, dude, Thanks for inviting me. It's always good to see you. I think we talked more in the last couple of

years than we ever did. It's cool. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah, totally.

It's also know that there's been a lot of people from the art Institute that have done really great things, I think,

Yeah, no, I certainly think there's a whole crew of us that they're doing great stuff.

There's been a maybe five or six people from our institute that have worked here, so yeah, shout out to the artist. Okay. So, Eric Yeah. Tell us a little about who you are and what you are doing.

Sure. Let's see, S Oh, I've been doing product design for, you know, we've been doing it probably the same link the time, maybe 18 years, maybe a little. Over that time, I started off doing photography. I learned a lot about visual design through photography and then gravitated towards learning more about at the time. It's called multimedia and just sort of studying that at the Art Institute did all kinds of little small design studio projects where I was. I worked at a small studio in Dallas. I worked on Major League Baseball that calm and then recently I've been working at Facebook for the last year, and I think four months prior that I had my own startup company called Parkville, which is still around, and I learned a lot about business on. Before that, I worked at Yahoo as a director of design. Awesome.

Didn't Did you also work at monster dot com first appeared in time I am

I imagining did back in the days? Yes, I worked at Monster Yeah, back in New York. Yeah,

Yeah, I, uh, still around. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, so let's start by unpacking the experience of starting a startup in the Bay Area. What was that experience like?

It was amazing. I learned so much about how to build a team, how to build a team with equity. And you can't pay them anything either. That was a really challenging moment for me where I left Yahoo. I met my business partner. We had this idea for this start up, and we tried to similar team with no money so effectively getting people to come on board with sweat, equity and minds on we grew. Ah grew that team from five individuals that we weren't paying at all initially to a fully staffed team of 20 please. And we raised several rounds of funding and and yeah, it was a really, really fun, interesting experience and really challenging at the same time.

What was the most challenging thing? Was that the everything around finance or the lack thereof or raising finance?

Or I think there is. I think it's really challenging to build a company in the Bay Area Silicon Valley from the very beginning. It's real estates, Very expensive. Talent is really expensive. I think the biggest challenge is to grow a company and build a company and the most expensive place in the world. So, yeah, that was probably the biggest thing. Other challenges were just not knowing what to do. What do you do in payroll situations? What do you do in organizational issues? And so what we did is we really adopted mentorship. We had a mentorship model where we effectively said we asked her board Who is the greatest guy that knows this one thing? And can I meet with them one hour month? And we distributed that across the business and learned quite a bit about HR ops fund, raising all kinds of things.

That's interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that because I've been thinking about things like that to like, there's lots of roles that I don't want to feel here, but I want the knowledge best. I'm just curious. Best practice for that. When you're putting, these mentors are advisory boards together. Yeah, what works best in sort of a compensation model, too. Get them to care about

what you're doing is a great question. So We tried to different models. We started off giving them equity. And what we found is it actually wasn't. We sold on an initial burst in engagement where they would, you know, for the 1st 6 months they'd be really active with our company, and then it's slowly trickled over time. And so what we ended up doing that was most effective was we just paid people their hourly rate for the month, and most folks were really interested in that. So it wasn't that expensive for us. Yeah, that's cool. Noises, cures. We also did that for employees as well. So it was the other thing that we realized as a start up.

We realized that we didn't have everything to offer our employees, and so we didn't have an engine CTO, right? So what we did is we had our lead engineer partner with a really experience engineering manager. So they were. We were able to distribute mentorship through these relationships, and it worked out for the well,

that's really cool. I think we could probably have a whole conversation about that. I mean, I think mentors, mentorship and training and all of those things are really important any organization. What were you guys trying to solve? And what are you most proud of? That you did it your time at

Parkville. So we were trying to solve the problem of loyalty for small businesses and local businesses. So local businesses, air struggling. How do you get in Retained your best customers? How do you automate that? How do you make that frictionless? So our role in this my role in the startup, was too paint that vision of what that product was and is do a lot of research to really figure out. Like, what do small businesses need? An A loyalty program? And what we discovered through R. M. V. P and through several iterations is that small businesses have very little time to do a lot of management of a rewards program. So we made it completely automated.

It was all dialed into their point of sale system, and it just ran in the background, so a small business owner would pay us X number of at the time. It was like there Louis plan was $50 a month and they would get customers. They would get referrals. They would get loyal customers baked in and they didn't have to do any work at all. So I was really proud that we were able Thio to really build a product that was sustainable, that small businesses valued and and, yeah, we created to staying sustainable business from scratch. It was really difficult initially to figure out what it is we were selling. But once we got it fine tuned, it was it was really exciting to see that thing go from 0 to 1.

Yes. And you did that for a while to seven years. You said seven years. Yeah, that's that's Ah, that's a long time. I don't think I've ever been anywhere. Yeah, for seven years. The closest would be my own business, I guess. Same for you. What? Why? Why did you decide Thio? We've

That's a really great question. I think I got I learned so much about business. I learned so much about operations, H R. People management fund raising and what I realized through doing all of that stuff, that it took me away from what I'm most passionate about. And that's designed right. So, um, it was a great learning experience, but was it was also a good way to figure out fine tune exactly what it is I wanted to dio. And what I wanted to do was focus on craft and focus on working on some really great products and focus on design.

Yeah, that's that's a big deal. I'm curious. Did you did you notice that that was a trend that was happening? And so you decided to get ahead of it by by changing your world? Or did you already get behind where you felt like you wanted to be with the balance of craft operations and felt like you needed to write it? Have radical change.

I think I just started to realize that I was the chief design officer of one because I was the only designer designer there, and I missed working with other designers. And, ah, what attracted me to Facebook was there was just so many brilliant designers that I could work with, and that was sort of the natural segue way for me, that was a selling point. Is essentially that and the fact that I could still do some really fun and your entrepreneurial stuff at a big company.

Now that's makes sense. So let's talk about Facebook. So, um, you know, I know we can't get into any of the details of what you're doing, but tell us about the kinds of problems you're trying to solve Them

hurts team, Sure. So I've been a Facebook for a year and four months. Something like that feels like it's been ages. My role at Facebook is really focusing in on the group's product. And specifically, I'm looking at How do we empower community leaders so effectively people that run groups? How do I make them more efficient? How do I make How do I help them on build tools so that they can manage their group more efficiently on grow the group more efficiently? The way we're organized it in the group's team is there's a leader's team or community leaders team, and that's sort of my pod. And then there is a connect team, which is how do we get everybody connected to a meaningful group and then we haven't engaged team that's really looking at, like, how do we keep people in the group engaged in the group and then we have the last pod is our core team, and our core team is looking at all of the common design concepts through groups and making sure those air consistent and there's continuity throughout the product. So my role is really on the leader side, really focusing in on community leaders.

That's awesome. How many people on that team and how are you guys structured? And how do you guys work together?

Yeah, so I don't know the actual numbers off the top of my head. When we started, I think there were four designers and since Facebook has really changed their mission, where community is actually in the mission statement groups is at the center piece of everything that we're doing across the company. A lot of folks are thinking about community and specifically thinking about groups. So when I started about a year almost 1/2 ago, there were four designers, and now I think we're close to 20 or 30. Designers don't quote me on that, but it's ah, it's a fairly large design team spread out into two offices. We have folks in Seattle, and then we have folks in Armadillo Park office.

Awesome. Okay, so what are you doing here in Austin?

So we are working. Austin has a a support office, and what we're looking at is building product for admin DS, and how can we support them? So there's basically support concierge team out here in Austin, and what we're doing is doing Cem user research to better understand how they support our customers Are our users

have a question about the whole groups and the concept of a group leader? I'm just thinking out loud, Yeah, I'm just kind of going with whatever is in my head. Does that mean that at least your pot is focused on the people that are already leaders? Or does it also mean that you're trying to help people that are really well versed in a certain topic? Maybe there there's a lot of activity on Facebook and trying to help them understand that they are a leader and that they should probably create a group like Does it worry this, folks? Is there one side of that spectrum that you're you guys are

our focus on? Yes, so we look at it in sort of as a journey or a life cycle or funnel so at the top of the funnel, it's really somebody that's brand new. They may be a community leader and that spans everything right. That could be a community organizer. That could be someone out there that has a rotary club that they manage and that the lead. But they may not have experienced direct experience with groups to later. The later stage of that funnel would be a power admin, someone who is really good at managing a group, and they could be managing multiple groups. Eso we look at how we onboard new community leaders to get them on Facebook and groups and build a presence on Facebook. Two people that literally, uh, there's a group that comes to mind. Girls love travel, which is Ah,

there's an admin there that manages, I think, 50. I think it's something like a membership of 50,000 members, and so she's dealing with a whole other set of challenges. Managing that group for us is a group that only has, like, you know, could be a local group of like, maybe 30 or 40 people. So we're kind of looking at it through the were basically solving problems throughout that entire spectrum.

No, that's that's awesome. Yeah, Okay, so when you guys are working on something? Yeah, let's talk about what it's like to actually design at Facebook. Yeah, I have a lot of questions. About what? I wanted to start with this one because it's kind of like a design language question. I guess Facebook has a very robust design language system. Yeah, I've seen it. The tools are impeccable, and I I imagine also that there might be some overlap in some of the stuff and widgets that you guys were building that other teams will be building. I'd like for,

you know, business teams and stuff like that. Like, what is it like Thio Not just go through the U ex design and have your candidate of thing you want to build, like, how do you actually get it done in navigate the different teams and the difference of decisions that need to be made? Thio work when the design language system or get new things added to that system.

That's a great question. So you are correct. They have some of the best tools, and it is the embodiment of, like the very best style guide I think I've ever seen. If you want to call it a start, but it's not even a style guide. Lots of really robust tooling to help us be more efficient as designers. So the way it works at Facebook is I'll just take an example of things that I'm working at working on in the group's team. We may identify a pretty big opportunity, something that we're interested in tackling. And the design lead on that pod will effectively put together a design sprint and will basically say, We're gonna design a North star of what this experience should be. So let's just pretend that's we're not working on this. So this is just a fictitious example. But let's say we're really gonna build some sort of new moderation. Automated Tool Thing S.

So what we'll do is we'll organize a cross functional design sprint where will narrow in on obviously a design problem, and we will design a Ford thinking North star of what that experience should look like. And that's our guide post throughout the process. Now, when we're actually going through that weeklong design sprint sometimes three days, I've actually found sometimes shorter sprints could be more effective than longer sprints. But what will do is we will We will not limit herself entirely to the Facebook design standard stuff. Sometimes we will use out of the box components. Sometimes we will stretch those a little bit, but it's meant to be used as an aspirational North star. So sometimes that is pushing the boundaries of what Facebook's designed system looks like. From there. We will probably use that as a North Star for the next two or three months for that project, so it will guide us from 0 to 1. What is our EVP look like? There are compromises that happened in design,

and it's useful to have a face of what the product should be and our North Stars air useful in that way. So basically as we had rates, we reference that to make sure that we're building, you know, a five star product.

No, that's cool. So let's unpack that a little bit more when people say design sprints. I think every organization has a different definition of that. What is a design sprint in Facebook design?

I mean, I think it stays. I think what's great about Facebook is every organization has their own sort of process as it relates to design, so I'm could only speak Thio. How we look, a design sprints on the group's team, but it's very much the Google venturers style sprint, the way make modifications, and we kind of augmented. Sometimes. I mentioned this earlier, but I don't really believe in, You know, weeklong sprints actually, liketo make them shorter. But yeah, it's it's basically the Google Ventures style designs. You

have any tips for someone that wants to try doing a two or three day sprint versus a five day like is there? Ah, a revised the formula for those those three days that you think works better for you, not necessarily Facebook, but you, as a designer like you only have two or three days like What would that process Phil

look like? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really useful to curate the right audience for the sprint. I think the sprints that I've been involved with that have gone awry and not been as useful have been sprints that are not nearly as focused, right, so being really clear on the problem, So Facebook, we have this people problem framework so effectively, everything that we do is centered around a people problem, and when I've seen designs, prints not go well. It's usually because that isn't really sharp and defined. And the other thing as just a piece of advice from a designer designer or anyone I would sort of I would recommend to really do the due diligence and research ahead of time. The designers role in running, in my opinion, good design sprints utilize a lot of research and pre work and making sure that all teammates air sort of dialed in to what we're doing, making sure that if you have a data science partner that there is adequate data science that's backing up, that people problem right and then making sure that the audience is the right folks getting the right folks

in the room. If I was working in house, I would I would probably take a similar approach. It's a little bit different from the agency side because someone approaches you and they're like, Well, yeah, we wantto we want to run like a design sprint. Well, there's things that diligence we have to do to make sure we have the right stuff to unpack for the sprint. But what we're coming in with, no, it almost sometimes no institutional knowledge total. So we do have to do some kind of research or other workshops just to make sure we're picking the right problem, sizing it appropriately, you know, getting getting the you know, the right data.

But so sometimes for us, that has to happen like Day zero or date like several days before, so that we can, from a consulting perspective like, you know, whether we're talking about, like, a few days or five days or 14 days or what? Yeah, it's a little bit easier. We're working with someone that we've worked with for a while because then we can kind of snapped in like you're talking about. And I already understand the problem space or have access to users or Donna.

Yeah, and I also think that's like in terms of time. Sometimes it's useful to have a weeklong design sprint. I don't want to completely shut on the weeklong designs because I think it can be really effective. But I think it's relative thio. What are your goals right? Sometimes a three long, two day, 23 long design sprint could be really useful in solving a shelter really sharp problem. So you're not may be expected to create like a huge North sorry prototype. It's just really let's all get in. Let's have some concentrated time to really solve a particular

problem. What I think you're saying is, when you're working on like a North Star, it's kind of like the stuff that we used to do probably were working at like older school agencies. It's about the idea you like, where it should go. It's not necessarily like, Let's get this testable prototyping go test. It's like, Well, this is the sort of Blue Scott. This is what we're shooting for. Yeah, something that really pulls on the heart strings, like something that really inspires something. So I would imagine that those three days cut me from wrong. You're probably probably looking at bigger like chunks, but not

as like, flushed out. Yeah, and the other thing that's really important around that North Star is it's useful for storytelling, right? If you're in a big company, you need to sell that vision fright. You need to sell that. That idea of what you're you're building and making sure that everybody is excited and motivated and and rallies behind that North star is super important, so I need to be aspirational.

We should talk more about that when we're done with the show, because I'd like to introduce you to a few people here that probably have a few questions for you about that. Sure more stuff about Facebook. I have some experience with Facebook, not as much as you do. Yeah, I am curious. You and I've been around for a long time. Yeah, we've been designing digital products since the nineties. I notice a lot of designers these days, especially in big companies, where they're hiring in mass quantities, that there's a lot of young designers and a lot of these designers, from company to company. Just in general. Their first job was a product company they've never worked in a never worked in an agency.

What do you think about that? Like because sometimes I wonder like, Are we lucky that we had the agency experiences because we were taught Thio? Pitch our work and thio sell it into collaborate and create vision and concepts? And do you feel the same way, or like what's your thought on that?

Yeah, I think there's a I think there is a good There's a lot of value in having a diverse set of experiences. Yeah, as a designer, and you get different things out of that right you get you get that salesmanship component, which is super important, right to to effectively, like convince people that this is the right problem to solve and the agency skills Working at an agency really helps you to to refine that

skill. So, yeah, I know

I have a degree. I think it's important for designers thio to sort of have, ah, wide breadth of experience when it comes to doing design work. It's, I think, the ones that are the most effective certainly Facebook have have done lots of different things. It's also important when you're building an organization to you make sure that you have ah lot of diversity in terms of people from different backgrounds. Maybe folks that are straight from a traditional h e I background to folks that are, you know, coming from a studio thio, maybe someone that even comes from an entirely different world of maybe filmmaking or architecture. I think I think once you get that sort of hodgepodge of backgrounds, you sometimes get really useful, beautiful things in terms of collaboration,

Absolutely. You know, I've never I've never worked in house at a big company. But I wholeheartedly agree that we hire people from They're classically trained people that are really great. A graphic designer Web designer coming to Prada design people. They're coming from different industries, and I think it that variety really does help. I'm not always sure how other people look at that, and I imagine it's a lot different in the Bay Area. I guess there's maybe a lot more opportunities for a designer in the Bay Area, which the whole conversation. So I'm curious because we were you. You mentioned this and I thought it would be a good thing to talk about this, this notion of you said earlier, and every organization process is gonna be a little bit different Before we start recording. You're saying that Facebook isn't agile in a tradition traditional sense. What can you say about Facebook's designs? Approach thio process in ownership of the work and how designers have more responsibility? Yeah, yeah, and

an opportunity. Yeah, I think it's important that we're mindful that what we do is designers as product designers. This is an evolving field. Right things. They're sort of changing a lot. You know, we've been doing this for a little while, and the role of a designer is different now than it was 10 years ago or even a couple years ago. The way we ship software weary ship product at Facebook. Product designers air not order takers, right? We're not effectively like waiting for someone to give us requirements were effectively driving. Requirements, were determining what it is we want to ship. We are understanding what the you know, we have enough business document.

Understand? Like what is the right thing that we should be shipping? What should we scale down which we scale up? I can't speak toe outside of to the Facebook at large, but what we look at on the group's team is Facebook. Product designers were really thinking critically about the experiences that we ship specifically, like the product requirements as it relates to the things that we wanna make investments in. So a lot of times, that is a direct reflection of that North star that we created right, so there could be a whole set of imaginary record requirements that the designer and other folks air helping to drive and that ultimately mix it into things that we ship for things that we test thing to be mindful of is that at Facebook we are, um we could we could run experiments really quickly. It's unlike any other place in the world. You could test things instantly, and it's not only do we have really good design tools, but we also have really good tools for experimentation. So it's pretty. It's pretty liberating and that we could basically say I want to test this wacky thing and see what happened with

millions of people, like

almost instantly, yeah, So the scale and the ability to do that quickly is is mind boggling. So in short, I would say that designers drive a lot of our product direction and we work in close collaboration with our cross functional partners. So much of those design decisions and the problems that we solve and kind of the emphasis of the problems that we saw are centered around things that we identify in the sprint and things that we identify through data and research.

Just ah, you a personal question. I have Ah, I've seen a lot of the ways that Facebook contest off. I personally think it's great. I'm just curious from your standpoint, not Facebook per se, but companies that can signal test that quickly.

Do you feel there's a

right way to do that? Because sometimes I wonder if, like you can always see the benefit in that. But sometimes I wonder if, if running experiments and testing it like that inhibit one's ability to think outside of the box. Maybe I'm wrong, But how do you guys manage that? The both Creating the creation of the North Star and the sort of testing it and really, really, really understanding the way people are responding to it and making sure that that that the things are like, innovative and doing not water down and eyes there

a way you think about that. I think it's a really great question, and I think there's lots of different methodologies in philosophies around testing. I am not a believer in doing incrementally growth e kind of experiments where you're just testing different shades of a color or anything along those lines. I believe in taking bold bets in testing those in my experience, Uh, my start up in working at Facebook and in other places when I've made incremental tests, I've seen incremental results right when I've made, when he tested really big, bold things. I've seen huge angle changers as it relates to metrics. I think innovation can happen. I absolutely believe innovation can happen in a testing environment. I think it's really the scope of the experiments and making sure that you are being ambitious enough. Yeah, so, yeah,

that's that's probably the way I would sort of frame that. And the other thing that I think is really important is to the marriage of quantitative data. And qualitative data is so important, Right? So if we're doing any sort of split testing, we're also gonna be looking at some lab stuff, right? We're gonna be bringing users to really sort of gut check that from a qualitative standpoint. And then the other thing that will do on my team is we're gonna look at sentiment, right? So we're gonna really understand, like there's a community leader feel supported. Do they feel like they're actually getting a lot of value out of this experience? So those air sort of fuzzy things that we test so all of those things. They're combined, I think help us to better understand, should we build X y Z should we invest in X?

Y? Z thinks thinks that on the most recent episode of the podcast, I was talking with Greg Story, who's formally known or unhappy Coggan now is ah is ah VP at U. S. A. And we're having a conversation about the need for designers to build empathy skills in order for them to work inside of their organization. You understand that like, there was a lot of hard work done by a lot of people to get somewhere in, like, really having empathy within the organization. What are your thoughts around on development of empathy and both in the organization and yeah, and also really understanding the way people are using your products because you guys were Facebook. You're you're working on products that affect millions of people. They're all different on and and and also maybe maybe could also chime in a little bit about you mentioned last night because I thought it was really interesting. You said something like, Yeah,

you know, like we're doing, You know, there's all these companies in the barrier that are doing all this work. But most people using these products are in the

Bay Area. Yeah, yeah, I feel really passionate about this. I think as we start to build to develop these sort of markets that have a huge amount of talent, a huge amount of smart people, we need to get out side of our little filter bubble and connect with real people and really understand and empathize with folks in non bubbles effectively. So that could be middle America that could be in Indonesia. That could be and other parts of the world. But I think it's just so important for us to not develop products and come up with feature ideas in these vacuums. I think it's so important and it's kind of an obvious point, I think. But I think it's more important than ever. Thio certainly Facebook and I believe this, you know, to be true for any folks doing product development in Silicon Valley that it's an unnatural environment and we really need to make sure that we test their assumptions in places that are very different. Then those there's sort of this sort of bubbles and I don't like using the word bubble.

But you know we as designers, we need thio. We need to develop empathy for folks from all walks of life. We're living in such a polarized world that it's really important that we really understand. Like, how does someone in Middle America user products like, How did they experience those those those products, What are their problems? And, yeah, I think it's really important for us to spend more time there and, you know, at big companies and small companies, and there's ways to do it with small companies as well. But you know, that diverse perspective will only yield better product, in my opinion,

I mean, not everyone has the luxury of working at a company like Facebook with the team in the resource is in a in a product that really lends itself to do that. You hear what would being that you've been an on both sides of the fence now, like running your own startup and working with customers and trying to build a product for that market and now being at Facebook and working on a product that scale, like for people that do want to develop this skill set better and get out of there like behind their desk, whether an agency or a product like any tips on how they could do

that. Yeah. Um, I think it's a really good question. I mean, one of the things I did my own startup is I was doing sales for a while, and so I was selling my product to local businesses. And what I found is is almost was It was such a beautiful augmentation of user research because I had an EVP product and I was going to door to door, and I was trying to convince some small business owner that had limited amount of time to buy my product. And what was interesting about that is it was a quick forcing function to find out, like, Is what I'm designing shit or not. Is it delivering enough value? And I literally had small windows to do that. Yeah, so that was real cheap. That was literally me coming like lugging a laptop around,

going door to door and going to a coffee shop and saying, Hey, do you have five minutes to just check out this demo? So I mean, I think those kinds of things air empathy, building their low cost. And they help you to really understand what this, what people are dealing with and what what's meaningful to them. You know, you could do that in a lab. You could do that in a lot of wide variety, different ways. But I think it's just so important for us to do as much of that is possible because obviously, obviously we're building products for people and it's just really important. And my point it from my point of view to to make sure that we're empathetic to folks from all different walks of life,

right? Yeah, to keep going, I run an agency.

You work today way. D'oh! Both then freelance. How does a

consultant navigate this when you? Sometimes you have customers that want you to have access to their data to their customers, and others want to shield you from that. So any tips there from a consulting or freelance, especially freelance perspective.

Yeah, you know, I think it's Ah, I think it really depends on the product work that you're doing. Sometimes you could find proxy voices in my experience, so sometimes you may not have direct a direct line to the customer. So sometimes you know what you might have to do is have to find, sir, what is the next available archetype for that person? I think anything is better than nothing. So that could be doing remote testing that could be talking into this small business owner down the street. I think so long as you're talking to people and getting outside of the studio that your end, Yeah, I think it's so important because we have these designers. I love to do design ideation, work with other designers and vibe off of, ah,

sketch on a white board. And I think it's just so important to get that outside like perspective on what you're doing. I think the most important thing if I were gonna go back to my start up and if I was gonna if I was in studio environment is to spend a lot of time recruiting and figuring out like, all right are there is their segment that I can bounce ideas off of in a rural part of the world that would that we have access Thio. I think those kinds of things, they're useful. The other thing that I did quite a bit with my start up is I talked to my mom. Really? Was said, I'm gonna walk you through this. You're a small business owner. My dad's salesman, 50 year old salesman. Give me a read on this experience. Like what do you What do you think this does? Would you pay for this?

Would you actually pay for this? And I think just just really training your brain Thio doing more of that. I mean, it's basic user experience, design work, but I think it's just Maur important than ever, too. Get outside of your own bubbles,

right? Yeah, I think so. I mean, and you know, I think everyone cares about this, but it's so easy to forget. Sometimes when you have deadlines or you're in the studio when you're just trying to get work done and it's sometimes it's easy. It's an easy thing to forget. You know, I think sometimes how important is just tow talk to people. Yeah. Yeah, it

is only for people. And I don't think I think I think you just you can learn so much in really brief amount of time. Like I said when I was doing door to door sales trying to sell my product. I knew within two minutes whether or not something was stupid or not, and I spent hours working on it. And I was just literally, like I would never do that. I needed to be integrated to my point of sale system. I'm not gonna manually input in data. And I'm like, Oh, that's obvious, right? So, like, I think those kinds of obvious ah ha moments can save you a lot of time.

Awesome. Thanks for sharing your perspective on that. Yeah. So what does the future look like for you? Like, what are you hoping to accomplish this year or what your hopes for 2019 for?

Yeah, you're so I mean, I think my in terms of my goals I really want Thio spend time just getting better at my craft, getting better at design, learning from others. I've I'm in my forties and I'm constantly learning, and that's exciting to me. And so I spent a lot of time at my start up learning about business and learning about management. And if I felt like it was really important for me to get back to my craft So this year in the next couple of years, who knows how long? I want to spend a lot of concentrated time learning from really great designers and improving my design skill set?

That's awesome. Well, thanks for making time to stop by looking forward to hanging out this evening. Yeah, how could people connect with the Internet?

It's a great question. I'm not a I'm not that much of a public figure again, but I don't really I'm not really sort of that that involved in Twitter or what not, but maybe lengthen. I don't know

where. Maybe people can email me that I could just send spam your

way are just totally, absolutely, absolutely. You find me on instagram. I don't know. That's

cool. Thanks for tuning into

the hustle. Podcasting. We'll see you next time. Hustles. Brought to you by Fun Size, a digital service and product design agency that works with inspiring teams, don't cover opportunities, evolved popular products, bring new businesses to market and prepare for the future. Learn more at fun size dot co I'm Brian, a design need in cosmic surfer here, a fun size,