Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The biggest one is the root cause framework of thinking what is really happening and why people get mired in like dollars or retention numbers. But then if you ask the real goal, how do we make dogs healthier? I am a die hard like routine person. The question I typically will ask myself internally is how can I do something that will offer me the most time with my.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Foreigning us in the podcast today is Ryan Yockey. Ryan's the founder of Growth Code, a system helping founders scale their audience income and impact without burning out. After scaling multiple companies past $1 billion as a VP of engineering, he now works directly with founders to turn personal leverage into a business moat. With over 115,000 fans on LinkedIn, his insights blend root cause strategy with ruthless clarity, helping a new wave of builders break through plateaus. And I have gained a ton of insight from your content, Ryan, so thanks for sharing it. And a lot of what you've said has resonated with me and I know thousands of other people, but one of the things that really stood out is that you said that most careers don't break from lack of effort, they break from asking the wrong questions. Can you share some of the questions that made a big impact on your career?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
The biggest one is similar to what a lot of people are hearing these days with the root cause framework of thinking.
I think Elon Musk popularizes it quite a bit, but using that as a frame of what is really happening and why. And more often than not, I've found that people get really high level in their assumption or their deduction of what they're trying to solve or fix for it. And I think it applies to life too. But as I'm, as I've worked with so many companies, that's, that's often been the root of fixing something is to get deep and get close to the problem too. And I'm not afraid to get close to anything. I enjoy it too. It's kind of fun to go solve problems at scale like that. Yeah, it is for sure one of them. And then balance, you know, my life balance is a huge factor for me and being being a dad of three and having that sort of goal in life to be a present parent as much as I can? I have the beauty of working from home today and for the last few years. But how can I not spend so much time working, worrying about work, but also finding a way to be present? So how can this allow me to be present?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: What are some of those questions that you think are the right questions to ask?
[00:02:56] Speaker A: 12 questions that changed my career. I would hire myself for this role again. What would I do differently if I didn't care what anybody thought?
If I left today, what would I regret not building?
Am I doing this because I want to or because I'm supposed to?
What's one thing I'm scared to admit but know is true?
Is this role helping me grow or just keeping me busy?
What am I tolerating right now that I shouldn't be?
When's the last time I felt proud of my work?
Do I actually want my boss's job if this company shut down tomorrow? What would I do next?
What would I take? Would.
Would I take this meeting if it cost me a thousand dollars?
Am I playing not to lose or playing to win?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: So good.
So good.
Yeah. It was hard for me to isolate. I mean, number seven, I said, what am I tolerating right now that I shouldn't be? I think there's so much to that personally, professionally, and it's easy to let the little micro transgressions and deviations from our values go. Eh. I don't really like this thing that I tolerate frequently, but it's not that bad. And that just grows over time, I think, into complacence. And so many of these questions are great.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I would tell you Six was big in me becoming a VP at one point.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Is this role helping me grow or just keeping me busy? How so?
[00:04:28] Speaker A: It.
When I was at that inflection point from being a senior director and having that opportunity to become a vp, it was.
It was almost like busy work. When I was working at my other company and I felt like I could have done the job in hindsight. Obviously, hindsight's 20 20, but looking back, you're like, okay, I'm honestly ready for this, and I should find the next position that will really help me grow. Cause I'm not seeing the growth of this senior director position anymore. And it's different when you're going from senior director to vp. There's fewer jobs, but the.
The opportunity, you know, to do that is something that it's hard to recognize when to take that leap. And I felt like. I feel like that's one of those questions that you should ask yourself.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah. It remind me of this core value I have that I got from my husband. Don't sit on the bench. He came up with it when he was in high school and a great athlete, but wasn't getting a chance to play basketball because he wasn't tall. And I found myself in a job where I was sitting on the bench. The skills that I thought were important to develop in my career weren't valued in the company. The things that were valued, I knew were effectively corporate busy work and getting better at processing certain memos and certain formats was not going to be what advanced me to higher impact. And it was hard, right? Because when you actually run a question through that value system, it can be scary the answer. But I've never regretted the very clear decision that typically comes out of it.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that mirrors a framework I use in marketing and setting marketing objectives. Start with the problem statement and there can be four or five high level business problem statements we have to solve for.
And they're big ones, right? Your revenue's down margin some, there's some big problem we have to solve for and then from there there's two to four hypotheses about what could be impacting them. And from there a handful of experiments you could run to test which of those hypotheses are correct. But if you don't start with that problem statement, what is the biggest problem that we're solving for? Then all of these downstream experiments and hypotheses are totally disconnected from what could be the biggest priority. Because you in your little department silo have gone off and experimented on things that may or may not directly connect the biggest problems to be solved versus the other direction. Right? Problem statement. We have four or five high level company problem statements.
One to two should be reflected in any quarter's goals.
From there we can tackle a whole bunch of product marketing, whatever hypotheses about things that could be impacting them. And then the experiments that you can control for and test actual experiments, right? Not just go off and change something and see what changes, but actually controlled for experiment, then ladders back pretty neatly. And I find that solves a lot of the downstream business strife of people don't get what marketing's doing. It's hard to explain. Well, sure, if the CEO has set goals in one term and we've gone off and run experiments without that direct connection, we're going backwards. And it sounds like you're saying the same thing for life of what's the problem we actually need to solve here? Are there other questions you think people should ask themselves today to reveal if they're maybe prioritizing the wrong things or potentially off track?
[00:07:47] Speaker A: I think a lot of it. I mean when we talk about prioritizing and track, is the.
Is goal setting right? And are you, how do I say it, the right way is the goal that you're looking for the one that we actually need to obtain today, you know, so in like the farmer's dog. Whereas that it's more often than not it's how do we gain customers and then how do we retain them? Right. And that sounds like typical product and marketing fit. But then if you ask the real goal, right. How do we make dogs healthier? Right. How do we make them get the food that they need to get at the right time to their door and happy? And essentially is the dog happy? And then is the customer happy because their dog's happy. Right.
And that's the real goal. Right. And if people often you get in other businesses, people get mired in like dollars or retention numbers or conversion numbers or ltv, Right. And albeit that's important, it ends up being the byproduct of doing what's right. Right. And so what's the right thing to do is might be an easier statement to say or a question to ask, like what is the right thing that we need to be doing as a business?
And. And then what's the outcome that you're looking to get from that? And for us, it's like a healthier dog, right? We're giving them the healthiest possible option that you can get.
In FabFitFun, my previous company that I spent a lot of time at as well, it's like, how can you ensure that the customer is getting what they asked for to the door? And do they feel like they got what they were looking for out of the product offering, which was subscription boxes at scale, back when the subscription box economy was huge.
But are they happy with their choices? Right. Did they get the choice that they wanted to get? And we offered them options at scale and I think both of those are easy. I can probably go through any company that I've been at, and that's usually why I join companies, is the mission statement aligns with personal wellness or health habit. Where I was at even prior to that was how can we make people healthier through blood and DNA testing and then delivering meals that were so unique to that person. But really the goal is how do you make them healthier? How do you help somebody obtain their life goal? In this case, lose weight or gain weight or just feel good and meet their. Their life goal as a whole. So I think it's like, are you actually solving the real. Is this the real goal that we have? Is the real problem and is it going to make it better?
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah. At work it seems like you have Often a mission statement that can make that clear what you tie it to.
Personally though, how do you think about prioritizing the right things in your very busy schedule while making time for the important things like reflection time with your kids and exercise?
[00:10:51] Speaker A: I, I am a die hard like routine person. So for me it's. What's the, the question I typically will ask myself internally is like, how can I do something that will then offer me the most time with my family and my family time? And so how can I prioritize my life to get the most impact that I need for my personal wellness as well as like, obviously I have worked to do too, but also offering me the opportunity to be the most present parent I can possibly be and the present partner that I can be for my family.
I really don't think you need to work that much or that hard, right. To get the job done in your work life. You could probably boil it down pretty quick if you're really efficient with your time. And then for me, when I think about that, it's like, okay, well how can I fit everything else? So I, I work out pretty much every single day, sometimes twice a day. I.
But it's like a therapy thing for me. And then wellness. I, I do journal and I write to DOS every single morning.
Part of that routine is like, I'll go work out. I work out early, but I've always been an early bird. But like 5am I'll get my day started.
I can get most of my wellness internal reflection time done in that point. And then it allows me, when I'm thinking about these things, to have the opportunity to be. I can be present with my kids in the morning, take them to school. I don't have any. Nothing else is looming over my head because the rest of my day is already fairly well planned. And then I can be present when they're done with school or I can take a break and go to school because I've allowed myself that opportunity through routine and just being present and practicing presence too is, is probably my biggest thing. Cause like anybody, I like to work to a degree.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: So yeah, how do you practice presence?
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Ooh, hard one.
For me, it typically looks like honestly trying to not think about the next thing that I have to do, that's my biggest one. For me, I am just a habitual worker at times and I'm always like thinking about the next big thing I can do, but really like taking a breath and recognizing the moment that I can be here with my kids and be here with my wife. Is.
And then, like, really taking in that moment is.
It's like a forever practice. I grew up in a house of people too, that always just wanted to work full time and were like, go, go, go, go, go.
So military family growing up as well. So everything was all go all the time.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: In part two, Ryan shares how he practices being fully present, his routine to organize, his days and calendar based on what's most important, and his approach to intentional time batching.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: It.
