Building Amazing Products Through Trust: An Interview with Lisa Lambert and Rick Kitagawa

Key Points

• Building the trust needed to enroll people in a paradigm shift.
• The importance of regularly talking to your customers, not to sell them, but to get valuable feedback.
• Stepping into the fire and building strong relationships with customers to tackle multi-level, multi-stakeholder problem solving.
• The importance of trust in remote work.
• How crucial is it to build customer and colleague trust so they are comfortable providing you with honest feedback.
• Overcoming ego and building the trust in yourself to admit when you’re wrong.
• Taking risks and building new things in uncertain times.
• Being fearless in reaching out to people.
• The support of incredible bosses in building up the next generation of leaders.

Quotables

“Trust is key when you’re working remote. First of all you have to trust yourself, that you’re going to get up in the morning and do the work that needs to get done, that you’re going to prioritize. You have to have team members that you can trust that are going to do the same, and they have to trust you as well.” —Ryan Flahive

“The most important thing that I’ve learned is that you need to have customers who trust you, because customers are key. Without customers, you don’t have a business.” —Ryan Flahive

“You need to get customers to trust you, both to buy your product and, at another level, to be honest with you and tell you the things you need to hear.” —Ryan Flahive

“A lot of it is trusting yourself enough so that you can say that you’re wrong and to trust your colleagues enough so that you really listen to what they have to say and you’re open to taking a different path forward.” —Ryan Flahive

“When you’re in a position to take risks, that means you should be in a position to make mistakes and be wrong.” —Ryan Flahive

“The only thing that’s certain is uncertainty, and we have to take risks and trust in ourselves.”

“Trust yourself to go out and talk to somebody and go after somebody because it’s amazing who will actually respond.” —Ryan Flahive

“Most of my enjoyment at work has come from engaging people at a human level, trusting myself that if I show up, I won’t make a fool of myself, and just talking to people.” —Ryan Flahive

Show Notes:

• Ryan’s podcast: Climate Changers Podcast
• Ryan’s solution for carnivorous environmentalists: Cowtipping.co
• Ryan’s main gig: SimTutor
• Connect with Ryan: Ryan’s LinkedIn profile
• Ryan’s personal website: RyanFlahive.com