David DeWolf & Jessica Hall - CEO & VP of Product Strategy at 3Pilar Global

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. I am so excited for today's episode. We have on the authors of the book, The Product Mindset. Now pay attention because if you build or you're responsible for people building technology products, this book is a must read. Every page I turn, I was saying to myself, yes, that is so true or wow, what a unique perspective.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:22) Rarely do I get this excited, but it's because it's so succinct and packed with useful information that I have to recommend it. Grab a copy. You can read it cover to cover on your next flight. You can buy it on Amazon or Audible. It's very easy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) It's available today. Just search Product Mindset. Now get excited because today, we are talking to David DeWolf and Jessica Hall, the CEO and VP of Product Strategy at 3Pillar Global. And we discuss popular topics from their new book, The Product Mindset, and benefits of building an organization that produces great leaders. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:02) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. Say hello.

(Jessica Hall at 00:01:15) Hi. Hey.

(David DeWolf at 00:01:16) How's it going?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:17) Hey. Look at those microphones. I'm loving it. It's like official studios.

(David DeWolf at 00:01:23) That's the goal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:25) So I'm excited. Where are you guys calling in from today?

(David DeWolf at 00:01:28) We're in Northern Virginia, right outside of DC.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:31) Do you both live there, or do you live in different places and you're coming together?

(David DeWolf at 00:01:37) Well, different places within the same region. So we're, what, thirty minutes in opposite directions from the office.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:45) Because what I saw on the show notes, I saw different locations. I was like, oh, that's cool. I was curious about how they wrote a book living in different places, but it's really not that far away from each other then.

(Jessica Hall at 00:01:56) We're only forty-five minutes to an hour away from each other, but work in the same office. But our company's in three different countries, and we have five different locations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:09) There you go.

(Jessica Hall at 00:02:10) Two in the U.S., three in Romania, one in India.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:17) Very cool. That's exciting. And then how old is the company?

(David DeWolf at 00:02:20) It's about thirteen years. Thirteen years this past month.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:24) It's like having a child.

(David DeWolf at 00:02:26) I tell people all the time there are a lot of similarities between growing a family and growing a company. There's no doubt you can learn a lot of lessons from both that apply to the other. So they're both all about scale. Things get easier as you scale more.

(Jessica Hall at 00:02:40) And David has seven children, so keep that in mind. I stopped at two.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:44) I have two. So but they're both under two. But I'm definitely seeing how they learn, and I can't help but constantly reference it back to a machine learning algorithm. Look at how smart they are.

(David DeWolf at 00:02:57) Yep. Yep. There's definitely engineering references, but there's also business references too. Right? So you can talk about leverage and scale and, you know, all sorts of things, but, yeah, we won't go there.

(Jessica Hall at 00:03:10) We could have a whole episode on parenting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:10) We could have a whole episode on parenting.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:13) Parenting and professional development.

(Jessica Hall at 00:03:15) If you go back and do your parenting, then yeah.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:17) Yeah. Yeah. I mean—

(Jessica Hall at 00:03:18) There's a whole blog post about, like, what each of the seven—

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:23) Oh, you have a series?

(Jessica Hall at 00:03:24) Yeah. Well, no. I mean, you had written once about the lessons.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:28) The lessons learned, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:31) Oh, very cool. So I'm curious about number seven.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:36) I don't even remember the lesson from that one. By that time, you're out of lessons and you just learn something new every day. I don't know. But, no. I mean, the real thing with the seventh one is, for us, the seventh one has a six-year gap between him and the next oldest one. And so by the time he was born and in the first year of his life, I only changed three diapers. Not because I'm a bad dad—don't ever think that—and it's not because I made my wife do it all. It's because I had six other parents in the house besides me and my wife. And so that's just leverage right there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:09) It's delegation at its finest.

(David DeWolf at 00:04:10) That's exactly right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:12) So we're all parents now, but let's go back to when we were kids. Right? Since that's what we're talking about. So when you were a kid, David, what attracted you to technology? How did you get involved with it?

(David DeWolf at 00:04:23) Yeah. So probably when I was in high school, just started to dabble with computers a little bit, had a programming class, learned BASIC. I built—I remember my first game that I built in that class was a home run derby. And that was cool and exciting, and I really enjoyed that. And then just started to dabble and put computers together. And then went off to college, and I actually studied communications and media and thought I was gonna be in radio broadcasting and television. And ended up getting out of school and realized I can't support a family on the salaries for producing radio programs. Right? And I remember that moment. So I ended up in an ad agency, and this ad agency—this was back in late '99, early 2000—and the ad agency was getting into what they called new media, and that basically meant building websites. And so I was writing HTML, building websites, using some design skills. And I ended up—my very first engagement for that ad agency was consulting with a software company in Silicon Valley. So I spent the first three months of my career going to San Francisco, working for a software company. Ended up three months in—that CTO of that software company, for whatever reason, I fooled him, and he really began to mentor me and liked me a lot and ended up recruiting me to come work for him. And that's how I got into the software business.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:51) Well, that's exciting.

(David DeWolf at 00:05:52) Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun story.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:54) But you've leveraged that communication. That's such an important part, and you've leveraged that in your business to have some success as well.

(David DeWolf at 00:06:00) I mean, it's one of the great things that people ask me all the time, you know, how many people actually use their degree and what did you learn in college? Do you ever use your degree? Because people look and say, how does this map? You know? And for me, the answer is that there were a couple things I learned in school that they don't put on a piece of paper, but were incredibly meaningful. The first one was how to communicate. That is both the written word and the spoken word. I think it's really important. And especially for engineers—way too many are the stereotype and don't know how to interact and communicate. The second thing that I learned was I had a ton of leadership opportunities. How do you motivate and inspire people towards a goal? How do you organize people to accomplish more than the sum of the parts can? And I was just thrown into these situations over and over at college and was able to really refine my leadership skills. And it was the combination of those two things combined with the fact that I had this CTO that decided to mentor me that really got me started in the software industry and allowed me to stand out despite not having a background in computer science.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:09) That's exciting. I love it. It's like, who cares how we all get here? You're killing it. I'm very excited, and I think it's very useful. Right? Whether you have a strong background in computer science or not, you're contributing in a really big way to the industry. So I'm personally grateful. And the reason why I'm saying that is because I read your content, and I was like, I really like this guy.

(David DeWolf at 00:07:29) No, I appreciate that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:31) Jessica, how did you fall in love with technology?

(Jessica Hall at 00:07:34) So when I was a kid, it was not an uncommon occurrence in my house for my father to yell across the house, "Jessica!" because something was wrong with his computer, and I apparently was the cause of all of it. Sometimes that was actually the case. And so I just remember always fiddling around with my dad on his computer and trying different things and fixing things and being interested in it. I, like David, thought about a career in journalism. I wanted to write for the Washington Post, so I went to journalism school and worked at a place called the Newseum all the way through school. The Newseum is the interactive museum of news in Washington, D.C. And so I worked alongside people who worked for all the major networks and people who worked on television shows and satellite uplinks and big news services pushing out content to places all around the world. And I discovered they were crazy. And, you know what? The technology part was great and interesting and fun, and it was great to help people learn. But being a journalist wasn't necessarily something I wanted to do, but tremendous for me—like David, tremendous experience. I use my journalism degree every day. I just don't use it as a journalist. I use it as a UX researcher. I use it as a product manager. I use it as a team leader in order to understand what's going on, synthesize it, get people to understand what we're doing, get the information to the people who need it. It just wasn't necessarily planned. So I really came up through the design side. Started out doing some database engineering and some broadcast technology, then moved into design and animation. And then I got sick of being told to make something look pretty. That didn't make any sense to me, and that's how I ended up doing products as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:24) Wait. You didn't like making things pretty?

(Jessica Hall at 00:09:27) You know, at the end of the day, pretty is nice, but it's why are we building this? Who is it for? How is it gonna be useful? I want something to look good and be meaningful, and I feel like those things are achievable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:40) I love it. Yeah. Because focus on the value is just incredibly important, and that's probably one of the reasons why you guys are growing as fast as you are. So tell me a little bit about 3Pillar Global and what the growth's been like for your company.

(David DeWolf at 00:09:54) Yeah. Sure. So, you know, I started the story—how I got into the industry. And several years into my career, I was very active in both the open source movement, working with the Apache Software Foundation, and then also the agile trend that was starting to take root in the early 2000s. And so based on that, I decided to strike out and be an independent consultant. And I thought at that point in time that I was going to write a book, interestingly enough, but it was gonna be a technical book. And so I thought, you know what? I'll be an independent consultant. I'll write this book, and that'll be my life. Right? I'll continue to go around speaking and that type of thing to technical audiences. And I never wrote a single line of that book that I was gonna write. Instead, I woke up two years later, and I had six people working for me. And I will never forget how it hit me like a ton of bricks, the awesome responsibility of being responsible for six other families' paychecks. And to this day, I still can't remember actually making the decision to hire that first employee. It just kinda happened to me. I created a name in this niche market and all of a sudden began to be introduced to more than I could handle, and I would introduce friends, and they would go help out these different clients. And one of these clients came back and said, "Well, we actually want you involved. If you don't mind, do you mind if we subcontract this individual through you?" And I said, "Sure. If that's helpful to you, you know, I'll spend one or two hours with you a month." That's literally how I hired my first employee. And the rest is kinda history. I woke up at that moment. What I realized was that the reputation that we had built and grown without even trying was that we specialized in building software products. And products—the software that companies are using to sell, it is the value proposition, and it is interacting with those customers. That type of software is wildly different in approach than enterprise IT software or automating something, because it has to drive an actual financial result by itself. It has to be self-funding. And the bar, because it has to be chosen by people that are paying for it, is also higher in a lot of different ways, and you have to kind of explore and navigate a market versus build to requirements. And so those elements were different about this product space, and I kinda built a reputation for being an expert in product versus just being an expert software engineer. And that's kinda how we grew, and so that's what we doubled down on and said, "This is—" at that time, we didn't even talk about the digital economy. But I said, you know, software's eating the world. Those types of phrases were out there. Said, "In this world where the business model is becoming software, this has a real place. And not only are software companies gonna need this, but all enterprises are gonna have to transform into software companies, and they don't know how to do what I do." And so we bet the whole strategy of the company on that. And, you know, those six employees have grown to almost a thousand worldwide now at this point.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:55) And myself, I've been—you know, over the past ten years, I went through that phase of learning how to go from, you know, really building something cool to building something that's a product for business to actually achieving this product mindset. And so when I was reading through your book and when I first landed on the 3Pillar website, Chloe's like, "Hey, check this out." And your big text of, you need revenue. And then it's like, you said all the right things. I was like, "These people, they get it. They get how to drive it." Because I use the phrase, I stole it from Yaz at Williams-Sonoma—outcome-driven. Every—you have to be very, very clear about what the outcome is you want, and then you have to work backwards from that. And how you accomplish that in the least steps possible is a very important thing. And then I looked in the market, and it's, like, it's very hard to find a development company that's focused on achieving a specific outcome in the shortest amount of time possible, and that's what you guys do.

(David DeWolf at 00:13:58) Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. I mean, it is about those outcomes, and it's shocking how many companies are out there building software, and they can't tell you what that outcome is they're pursuing. We ask clients, we ask prospects all the time, you know, why? Why are you building this? And they can't tell us, "Well, we're trying to grow our revenues X percent. We're trying to capture this market share. We're trying to X, Y, or Z." The only way you will be successful is if you really define that outcome and then you drive towards it. It's a huge part of the book—helping to set that mindset.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:28) So how does an existing business—let's say people, they feel like they're a little ambiguous. Right? And they wanna move towards this outcome-driven approach. They wanna begin to implement this product mindset. What are their first steps?

(Jessica Hall at 00:14:42) That's a great question. So, I mean, as a very first step, trying to get some working knowledge of what are the characteristics. And David starts to talk about them. There are things that we've seen over the 13 years we've been in business, over and over again. When these things are present, they tend to lead to success. The product is chosen.

(Jessica Hall at 00:15:06) People have more choices than ever. They can abandon easier than ever. You know, not only did they have to choose you today, but every month when that bill comes, they have to continue to choose. So things have to be chosen. They have to be self-funding.

(Jessica Hall at 00:15:20) There's always more revenue coming into the system because there's constant cost. Every month, you're paying your AWS bill and you're paying your engineers and your designers and your product managers. Money has to be coming in. That's the self-funding piece. And then the last one is you're never done.

(Jessica Hall at 00:15:36) You don't get to just put it into maintenance mode. There's always things that need to happen. And if those things aren't happening, then you're not being chosen, then new revenue isn't coming in the door. So if we think that those are the things that lead to success, then the question is, what gets us there? How do we want all of our teams to be thinking as they go through their day, through picking up a ticket and deciding what to do about it or deciding how to prioritize or to offer trade-offs?

(Jessica Hall at 00:16:06) We want them thinking about things like, how do we minimize time to value? How do we get things in customers' hands faster? How do we solve for need? How do we understand what problems our customers have and put the right thing together for them? How do we excel at change?

(Jessica Hall at 00:16:21) How do we have good tools and processes and thinking around when to make a change, when to hold, how to make that change, who needs to be involved in it? And so our general sense is that if you can put all this together—and we've seen it over 13 years, over 100 clients, over 150 products that we've touched—these things actually work out pretty darn well, and this is definitely something an organization can learn. So the initial step is getting a sense of what is it we're trying to do. The next piece is, does your team know what mountain you're climbing?

(Jessica Hall at 00:16:55) I do some consulting, and I was recently with a client. And I walked around and talked to people all over their entire organization—in marketing, in sales, in ops, engineering, product, UX. And I said, simple question: What are the three most important things you're trying to get done the next three months? No one could tell me.

(Jessica Hall at 00:17:19) Fifteen people, all the different departments. Nobody knew. Like, they're like, "Oh, we got to hit this release date. We're trying to get these done." It's like, what are we trying to do? So often leaders don't invest in context. There's like the one deck that they deliver once a year, like, "Here's what we're doing." Nobody understands it. They kind of know that this is going to happen, but you don't really necessarily think people are committed.

(Jessica Hall at 00:17:44) So spending some time with your leadership team—no more than three objectives. And really start thinking in smaller chunks, not necessarily a year, but three-month chunks. Research shows that it's a time period we have enough time to get started. You don't see it as too far away that you're not able to make progress against it. What is the goal for the next three months?

(Jessica Hall at 00:18:04) We want to drive—we want to reduce churn. We want to increase engagement. We want to increase adoption. We want to bring new features to market that's going to allow us to cross. What are those three simple objectives?

(Jessica Hall at 00:18:18) And then you say it all the time, constantly. And everybody is reminded when we're making—when we're prioritizing what work we want to do, we're deciding what kind of design we're going to invest time in, we're testing with our customers—we're really hammering at those things.

(Jessica Hall at 00:18:35) And we often see that folks just don't necessarily beat that drum. They just get stuck into, "I got to get from here to there with this much stuff by this much time." And so it slips into this very execution mindset as opposed to being an outcome-driven mindset. You know, the wonderful thing is the work of Carol Dweck and others shows mindsets can change. Like, these things are moldable and shapeable.

(Jessica Hall at 00:18:59) It ain't easy. It's not going to happen overnight, but it is definitely possible that you can help to change some of the behavior patterns in your organizations by taking small steps and just repeating like crazy.

(David DeWolf at 00:19:12) Yeah. It's amazing. You started the question with this organization that wants to adopt this but doesn't have it. Just hit on that key point of context. And that actually reminds me of the genesis of the product mindset—the way we tripped over this was that one of the very first clients we had at 3Pillar, we went in doing a consulting engagement to help get a product back on track.

(David DeWolf at 00:19:33) And we assumed, like every good consultant does, it's either people, process, or technology. Right? And I went in there and they were using the exact same technology stack I would recommend. And their people were actually brilliant. I really enjoyed working with them.

(David DeWolf at 00:19:45) I was learning things from them. And their processes—while they weren't the perfect agile shop for where we were at that point in time—they were actually pretty mature and they were doing well. And I was like, what the heck is going on? And one day, an engineer—this company was reinventing the way warranties are managed, the warranty supply chain, basically, and how you dispatch different service providers in order to go service your washing machine or that type of thing. And an engineer came up to me and said, "What's a warranty?"

(David DeWolf at 00:20:16) And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Oh my gosh, these people don't have context. They didn't know two fundamental things. They didn't know why we were building this software—like, what was the revenue we were trying to drive towards it—and they didn't understand the customer and what the customer needed because they didn't even know what the customer's words were. Right?

(David DeWolf at 00:20:34) And so I think that executive that you're talking about that has this nebulous environment and they're just building to build—what can they do? They can define those two things. And then the third principle and third understanding is this always-changing world that you have to operate in. But if you can nail that objective, that big thing we're trying to accomplish, and you can nail understanding the customer and make sure every person on your team understands those two things, man, you've taken a step forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:01) So let's say that I've got a couple things. This is good. This is good. I like it. So let's say that I'm a little bit shy. Let's say that I don't necessarily have the right processes. I have some great people. We want to achieve this goal, but I'm not doing all of these things now. Like, all these things that you just said, they sound great, but let's say I'm not there yet and I'm a little bit shy. If I come to you guys, like, is that—do you get that from time to time? Do you know how to handle that? Am I going to get beat up about not having the perfect systems in place? Or do you help me with that?

(David DeWolf at 00:21:33) Welcome to the world, is that what we'd say?

(Jessica Hall at 00:21:35) Well, what I usually say is nobody calls us when things are perfect. Google ain't calling us. The people who call us call us because they need help, and the people who answer that call are people who want to help—people who will meet you where you are and help you get where you're going, who understand that this is a crazy, mixed-up, changing world and you need a guide.

(Jessica Hall at 00:21:59) You need someone who has been there and done that and that will help you along your journey. And that's when we're hiring people, we're looking for people who want to do that. They're strong, highly skilled in their engineering or UX or product discipline, but they're also people who are there to help, who are called towards that calling—that, you know, people are going to need guidance along the way. And not just do they need to know, do I choose this technology or that technology, but, okay, what are the other things? What am I not thinking about? What am I not considering?

(Jessica Hall at 00:22:34) I think my favorite clients in my, closing in on six years of working at 3Pillar, is the ones who just come and say, like, "Listen, I don't think I have all the answers. But I really care about learning. I'm really open. I want to try new things. What are other people doing? What do you guys think we should do here?" And it creates such an amazing partnership where we learn from each other and we grow together. And I think our best client relationships are ones that have started in one place and ended up in a totally different place, and we all got there together. We didn't all know exactly what we were supposed to do at the start.

(David DeWolf at 00:23:06) I think the other thing I'd add to that is what we're really talking about is how modern software product organizations—true digital organizations—think these days. And it reminds me of artificial intelligence and machine learning. There are four companies in the world that really do AI and machine learning, and everybody else is just talking about it in the press, but they think they're far behind the whole ecosystem. The reality is that the vast majority of people don't know.

(David DeWolf at 00:23:42) And I think from a product mindset, there's only a few more people that are ahead of AI and machine learning. The reality is digital product organizations are new, especially in the enterprise, especially outside of the core software company ISV universe. And so I would say to that person, don't be embarrassed. Right? It is on the leader to actually recognize and acknowledge where you're at and to go find the help that you need to be able to shape that organization and move it forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:07) Amen. I like that. Right? Because I was just—I was doing a workshop last week, and we were having this conversation with the leader. We went into the workshop thinking it was going to be one thing. We came out understanding that there is this entirely different thing, and so his goals needed to be different. And I said, "Look, this is a hard goal to put in front because it shows that—because this is your goal, it shows your problems."

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:30) And so, but you're going to get so much respect when you set this as your goal. Your problems are clear and you stand up and say, "Well, hey, we have problems. We got to solve them." That's way better than just setting a pretty goal to hit.

(David DeWolf at 00:24:41) And it's how you improve things. Right? Is acknowledge the weakness and go get it. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:46) Yeah. Totally. Go after it. It's why it's fun to wake up in the morning. So, David, I was reading your blog. I was reading about—you read the books Rest, When, and Deep Work.

(David DeWolf at 00:24:56) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:56) I've read, like, two of the three of those. You're thinking about productivity, and that sort of changed your working style. And I was hoping you could just elaborate a little bit on your growth there.

(David DeWolf at 00:25:05) Yeah. You know, I think it's really relevant to this conversation because we're talking about Agile. Right? In a product mindset, right, if you look at the different methodologies that are out there—for the engineer, it's Agile and how do we work in this agile engineering environment? For the product manager, it's lean. Right?

(David DeWolf at 00:25:21) For the UX experience designer, it's design thinking. Right? All these different tools that we have, they're all good. The product mindset pulls them all together. But every single one of them is highly collaborative. Every single one of them is about being very nimble and flexible and moving. And in that world, I have gotten really drunk on the collaboration with people and open environments and being able to have the ability to continually collect information, because innovation comes from the ability to connect dots. And so the more dots you're able to collect and pick up, the more you can notice those trends and piece them together.

(David DeWolf at 00:26:04) But what those books did for me was change my mindset to realize that if you're going to collect all those dots, what is likewise as important is to have the mental capacity and time to connect the dots. Gathering them is not enough. And Deep Work is all about doing mentally intensive creative things. And science—and the science is kind of laid out in all of these books—science shows that as human beings, we need time to be able to rest our minds, and sometimes that's doing different types of work.

(David DeWolf at 00:26:40) One of the most refreshing things for me on the weekend is I've got 10 acres and I'll go out and chop wood. Right? It's totally different work than I do the rest of the week, but it's rest for me. It's great. I love it.

(David DeWolf at 00:26:51) I need sleep. I need to take care of my health. Right? When I was young—when I was writing open-source software—I would go to bed at three in the morning and I'd wake up at six in the morning, maybe seven. Right? That was a normal night's sleep for me. I don't function at my ultimate capacity in that world. And so these books really shaped my mind, overthinking a little bit differently than I had kind of grown up as an engineer, just kind of working hard, writing code, collecting dots and collecting information, but never taking the time necessarily to piece them together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:23) Yeah. Sounds like a lot of discipline too. Right? Because I know for myself, I get up early. I'm an early person. I get up at five, 05:30, go for a run. But the hardest part of getting up at 05:30 isn't getting up at 05:30. It's going to bed at nine.

(David DeWolf at 00:27:36) You hit the nail on the wall. I'm totally—I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:40) So I have a routine. I do like a hot shower. I do some stretching. I put on my sleep mask. I lay in bed. Like, I have this routine, and the hardest part is saying, "All right, I got to—I got to say today is a win. I got to go enact that routine."

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:54) Okay. And then, then everything else is easy. So I liked reading about that.

(David DeWolf at 00:27:57) That's cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:57) What's the—Jessica, what's the culture like at 3Pillar as a whole?

(Jessica Hall at 00:28:02) Yeah. Well, it's funny that you mentioned that because, you know, when your CEO and founder is talking about rest and sleep and doing all these other things, it kind of enables the rest of the organization to start to say, "Okay, well, he's doing it." And he's not just reading the book and then it's lasting for a week and then he moves on to the next thing. I know plenty of CEOs who do that—not this one.

(Jessica Hall at 00:28:28) So, yeah, I've been with 3Pillar for almost six years now. It's been a phenomenal journey. You know, I came here—I have a funny story. I've never done it to anybody else, by the way. No job description, no manager, no team, no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

(Jessica Hall at 00:28:44) And I basically just kind of figured it all out, and I had tremendous support from the organization. So it's been a place where I've been able to really challenge myself to grow, to take on new things, work with great, smart, open, friendly, talented people on some really tough challenges, but also felt like I had a lot of support in order to grow and to get coaching and to be willing to do new things. And also a place where I've had, you know, my two girls and had the flexibility of being able to be a mom and a professional, which is, you know, a challenging thing. And, you know, I don't know what's next, and that's okay. I know I'm pretty excited that it's going to be fun, and we're going to learn a lot.

(Jessica Hall at 00:29:27) And it's not going to be easy by any stretch, but it's been a great run. And you just work with tremendous people all around the world. I mean, this book would not be possible without so many people who have done amazing things for clients, who have taught me, who have mentored me, have coached me, have told me when I'm being stupid. That one too. And it's been, you know, not—I mean, I totally like, that's, you know, harsh feedback is necessary at times, and just tremendous group of people to work with.

(Jessica Hall at 00:29:58) And, you know, what we do is hard, and we go into situations with clients where they are under pressure and they are behind and they are stressed out. And so we have to make it easy. Like, when you're in our four walls, like, we've got to make it easy for you. We're going to support you so that you can go out there and deliver for your client.

(David DeWolf at 00:30:15) And that is needed for innovation. Right? Taking that back to your listeners, what's the takeaway from that? Well, if you truly want to innovate, if you want to build successful product, you have to have a culture where people feel supported. You have to have a culture where people can take care of their family life.

(David DeWolf at 00:30:32) You know, if you have a new girl that is born, right, those types of things are essential because we go back to those books you mentioned. We need space to be able to innovate, to come up with that new idea, to come up with that creative thing. And the reality is, and so many companies miss this, that we are better off when we have that support.

(David DeWolf at 00:30:51) We are better off when we have that space. We are better off when we are balanced and have that space because our minds are so much more effective and efficient. And so you may not get seventy hours a week, but you're getting optimal peak performance in the hours people are working. And I will take that all day every day over burning people out. Right? And so I think that's just essential.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:17) And that's how you come full circle. I mean, myself, I learned the importance of rest after hitting burnout. Right? Because then you take the time and then you realize, like you said before, you start connecting all those dots and you're like, I need to do this more, and I need to not burn out less. And if I do this more, I'll be even better. And then it comes back down to the discipline. But one thing that I took away from that, I like your takeaway, but one thing I took away was that—and correct me if I'm wrong—you saw greatness in Jessica, and you said, let's bring this person in, let them explore, and figure out and tell us what I need to do. Is that how it happened?

(David DeWolf at 00:31:54) Yeah. I mean, it's a long, funny story.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:58) It's a good one.

(David DeWolf at 00:31:58) Jess literally showed up on day one and didn't have a manager. And it's funny how it all transpired, but she showed up. And I met with her and I was like, listen, I hear you're an absolute rock star, and we are excited to have hired you. But something happened in these processes and kind of fell through the cracks. So you and I get to figure out your job together. And she just took that rope and ran with it and has been an absolute rock star ever since, and she's one of those rare people that really works well in a nebulous environment. And, you know, again, freedom and responsibility, right? There's another principle. When you give people the freedom to do great things, they do great things. Now that didn't mean it wasn't without responsibility. We sat down and we very quickly decided on a practice she was going to build for us from scratch. Said, this is the practice. These are the business results we're going for. Go. Here's a bunch of rope. Take it. And she built a great practice out of that. And that was just the beginning of the journey. And so, yeah, that really is how it happened, but in a funny way how it started.

(Jessica Hall at 00:33:02) Yeah. We didn't—we've never done that to anybody. I think I was the one who was like—but didn't start. And one thing they always say is we have some amazing Agile, amazing technologists and designers and product managers. It's like, listen, I'm going to give you the tools and I'm going to give you the template, and then I'm going to let you decide. Here's how we write—here's how we like to write stories. Here's how we like to do some of these things. These are some of the practices we've seen work over and over again. But you're on the ground. You're in there with the client dealing with their situation, what they need in the moment, and you've got to make a call.

(David DeWolf at 00:33:35) Yep.

(Jessica Hall at 00:33:36) And we will support you in that call, and we will help you. But you're the one who has the context, who knows what's going on with the code, who knows what's going on with the business, who knows what's going on with the political environment. And I want you to make the call that you think is the right one for that moment because nobody is going to make it better than you. So I can give you all the tools, and I'll keep improving those tools, and I'll keep bringing those tools along. But the most important thing you can do is read the situation and use your judgment.

(Jessica Hall at 00:34:05) And you know what? Your judgment's going to be wrong sometimes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:08) Yeah.

(Jessica Hall at 00:34:08) And then we'll unwind it together and we'll sort it out. But I think you'll also find that clients, like anybody else, if you're doing what you think is best to achieve their goals and maybe it doesn't quite work out, they will forgive you because they'll understand. They'll take the attitude that we're all going to learn together. That's what makes a great client is that kind of shared commitment towards achieving those results together.

(David DeWolf at 00:34:35) It also describes why mindset is so important. Right? Mindset is really about shaping how we make those judgment calls in the moment. Right? How are you thinking so when you're faced with a decision, you can make it. And so this goes whether you're building a practice in a business or if you're an engineer deciding how to write a line of code, how to implement some feature. If you understand the surrounding, if you understand what the military calls commander's intent, if you understand the objective versus just the rules, you make better judgment calls. And so the leader's responsibility is to set that context, to set that mindset, to provide those guiding principles so that individuals can, in a safe way, feel supported to make judgment calls.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:19) I love the way you language that because we're a growing company here. We have about 15 people, and I've been—well, you know what it's like when you start a company. Right? And you want to empower them and give this concept of individual ownership. But I like how you languaged, and I've never heard of that commander's intent. That's really what I want to say to them. I want to say, look, it's okay to make a mistake. Just know, like, what your intent was behind it. Like, what are you going for? Because what I ultimately care about—I don't care about the few mistakes that you make. I care about what you're after, like, what you see is the carrot, like, where you're headed.

(David DeWolf at 00:35:51) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:51) Because that allows me to know that your mistakes are building and you're becoming more experienced towards the single objective we want to achieve. So I love that.

(David DeWolf at 00:35:59) Yeah. And way too often as entrepreneurs, especially, not just as leaders but as entrepreneurs, we forget to communicate that why, that commander's intent behind it, and we just say, hey, we need to get this done. That's not commander's intent. Right? What are we trying to accomplish? Right? It goes back to the same theme, expressing that. And I think especially as entrepreneurs, we forget to do that because so often we have played every single role. Right? I laugh all the time of the thousand roles we have here. The only role I've never played is the CFO role because I didn't have a CFO early on. I was the controller. I was the bookkeeper, but I didn't really play the CFO. But every other one I did. And so sometimes I skip three steps forward just assuming things. And so extracting ourselves as entrepreneurs more and more and more and more and giving more and more rope and expressing intent so that everybody in the organization knows what you're after and can make judgment calls. So powerful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:53) Let's say I'm an engineer, a leader, engineering leader, manager, maybe even executive, and I'm super attracted to this culture right now. And I'm saying, alright, this is a place where I want to work. Like, this is my tribe. These are my people. How would they learn more about a career at 3Pillar?

(David DeWolf at 00:37:11) Yeah. I mean, two things. Number one, Cody, our head of global recruiting is jumping for joy right now. So reach out to Cody or somebody on his team. I mean, if you go to 3pillarglobal.com, we have a career section that explains our culture and what it is to be a 3Pillar team member and what our culture is. A lot of the things we're talking about here. But you can find jobs there. And seriously, in all seriousness, reach out to us through the website or to Cody Winters, and he would be happy to chat with anybody. We are always hiring and growing and looking for folks to help us build great products.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:49) One of the things I want to compliment you guys on is putting your culture on your website. Nine out of 10 of the people I talk to don't do it because I try to show them—I try to show you guys some love. You come on the show. You give me your time. You're here sharing all your best knowledge. And I'm like, what happened? We found out from the show was I'd get calls from guests, like, six, seven months later saying, hey, somebody from your show, they heard my story. They liked it. They added me on LinkedIn. I've since hired them and moved them across the country or whatever it is, and they've become one of the best employees ever. It's awesome.

(David DeWolf at 00:38:14) Because the—

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:14) Because the people that listen to our show are the people who are trying to listen to great people to improve and grow themselves. So that's like our tribe, you know? And so I always tell people, look, put your culture items. They should not be secretive internal items. They need to be on a website because that will magnetically attract your people. They'll go to your website. They'll see what you believe, and they say, I identify that, and I want to work there.

(Jessica Hall at 00:38:36) That's one of the reasons why we wrote the book, too, is that, you know, some of it is because we wanted to attract people who believe what we believe and wanted to work the way we want to work. Whether that be an engineer, UX designer, or product manager, or that was a client who, you know, said, you know, I want something different. I just don't want people who do what I tell them to and don't think for themselves. Like, I want something different. I'm looking at something different. And that's what I—in addition to doing some of the culture things and things our wonderful marketing team does to attract talent, we really wrote the book because we wanted people who wanted to work like this. Some of our work around the product mindset came because employees said, you know what? You guys haven't been talking about this in a while. You know, we think this is important. We think you need to get back on it. And that definitely spurred a lot of work that we've done in order to get our own teams get excited for it. And the last week was just amazing.

(David DeWolf at 00:39:33) Oh, so much fun.

(Jessica Hall at 00:39:34) So cool. So last week was product week. It was the internal launch of the book. And so in every center there were also—there are master classes, there were book clubs, there were—

(David DeWolf at 00:39:46) Scavenger hunts.

(Jessica Hall at 00:39:47) Scavenger hunts and games with marshmallows and pipe cleaners and, you know, all over the world. And all it lit up my—like, my phone is still blowing up with stuff from that. And it was so cool to see everyone around the world who's excited about this idea, excited for this launch to arrive, to get—you know, to celebrate and to share what they're all about. And, you know, we wouldn't have gotten here without, you know, 890—what's the number at the moment?

(David DeWolf at 00:40:16) Oh, hot.

(Jessica Hall at 00:40:17) 890 some odd people who believed in this and contributed to this and are celebrating this and doing really cool stuff with it all over the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:28) So could I buy it today?

(Jessica Hall at 00:40:30) Yes, you can.

(David DeWolf at 00:40:30) You can. Go to Amazon and you can find it. You can do two things. Number one, you can just do a search for the product mindset on Amazon. The other thing, go to productmindset.com. We have a website dedicated to the book. You can find not only the book itself and get the link to Amazon, but you can also find some research that we did with Forrester that proves out a lot of concepts of the book and provides a little bit more color around how organizations are actually adopting a product mindset and these principles in their everyday life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:59) So you have, like, some case studies in there?

(David DeWolf at 00:41:01) We do. Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. And by the way, the book is chock full of stories. So we really—we tried to make this a really simple, easy read. The goal was actually for executives that were flying from DC to San Francisco to be able to digest it in a flight. And so it's a pretty easy read, and I think it's something that—we really believe this is a movement. We believe the product mindset is kind of the next wave that needs to happen in our industry. And so, really, I would encourage you to check out productmindset.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:30) I like that feature, digestible in a flight.

(David DeWolf at 00:41:33) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:34) Because that is actually attractive to me because I look—I read a lot on flights, right?

(Jessica Hall at 00:41:38) Yeah. Lots of people do. And I think they're always looking for, like, what is something that—I'm reading a wonderful book right now called Accelerate. It's about the science of DevOps, and I love it, but it is hard. It's hard. It is making me work a lot and think, but we wanted to make you think, not necessarily make you work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:56) I like it. I'm reading a book right now called Get Together. It's a, like, very easy read about communities. Have you interested in that one?

(Jessica Hall at 00:42:03) I feel like I heard about it, but I haven't read it. Who wrote it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:05) I think it's a newer book. It was, like, some of the people that have done a lot of these social movements, whether it was, like, launching Instagram in different countries or creating a walk that everybody does, like, how do you get these millions of people together, and how do you do that successfully? And it's a ninety or, you know, two hour read or something. It's pretty short, but it's very concise and it's a nice takeaway. It's called Get Together. But, yeah, I personally very excited about your book. How about we put it in our—we'll take maybe—maybe send us an interesting photo of something you were saying that people were doing for the launch. We'll put it in our newsletter and we'll put a link to the Amazon and everything so people could go buy it. That would—

(Jessica Hall at 00:42:45) That would be awesome.

(David DeWolf at 00:42:46) Awesome. We'd appreciate it. Thanks so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:47) Yeah. Our job is to find really good information and then spread that information as far as possible. So as we start to wrap up here today, what are you most excited about with the company? Like, what's getting you jumping out of bed in the morning?

(David DeWolf at 00:43:01) I'm going to go first or you want me to?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:01) You want me to?

(Jessica Hall at 00:43:03) You go first.

(David DeWolf at 00:43:04) Okay. You know, what I'm super excited about is we have spent the last couple of years really focused on getting our message out there. And this book is a big part of it. You know, the reality is I was an engineer, right?

(David DeWolf at 00:43:22) I'm an engineer. I'm not a marketer, right? And so we built this company. We built a different way to build products that has literally built billions of dollars of equity value for our clients, and it was the best kept secret.

(David DeWolf at 00:43:36) And what we have done in the past year of bringing in professionals that know how to market, know how to get books out there and take our thought leadership and truly make it thought leadership versus just this hidden nugget is we're now telling the world about it. And I'm super excited because of the companies that are reaching out to us and saying, oh my goodness, we need that. I'll give you a quick example. There is a software company executive that has been a software executive for thirty years that most of you, the listeners of your podcast, would recognize the name of that I was having a conversation with after he read a preview copy of the book.

(David DeWolf at 00:44:14) And he said, David, for years, I've known that product is different from other types of software, but I've never been able to articulate it. For the first time, you put it in words that I can now teach to other people. And I was blown away by that. It's the type of impact that we're having, and that's what our team has been able to do as we've kind of taken it to the next step and we're starting to shout from the rooftops, right? This gold nugget that we found, and we're so excited about it. And what's cool is it's not just marketing, it's real, and it's working for real clients. And so the impact of that on the industry and the new types of clients we get to work with, the new incredible employees that we're attracting because of that, the way that we're not just building businesses, but we are a thought leader that's setting the standard for how products are being built, that just gets me up in the morning. I'm just jazzed and totally excited about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:02) And thank you, by the way, too. We need that as an industry.

(David DeWolf at 00:45:06) Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to do. I'm glad it's kind of happened.

(Jessica Hall at 00:45:09) Yeah. I mean, and for me, one of the things that I've loved throughout the years is just people who opened up new opportunities for themselves. One of our clients, a QA manager, got really excited about the product mindset, became an advocate for them across his organization, got a whole new career, and just won a major award from his involvement there. We have a really strong alumni network. A lot of my crew has gone on to lead their own teams, lead their own business units, lead their own efforts.

(Jessica Hall at 00:45:41) And we've had many entrepreneurs who came through 3Pillar at one point and were able to take the product mindset into other organizations. So just, you know, one thing that would make me incredibly excited and happy is to hear that we helped people.

(David DeWolf at 00:45:55) Yeah.

(Jessica Hall at 00:45:55) We helped people and not only do we help our clients and new clients, yay, hope there's some of those, but also just people who read the book start to put these ideas into practice and they see growth in their careers. They see new opportunities that maybe they didn't think were open to them. They get that seat at the table and that voice in decision making that they've always wanted, but they weren't quite sure what they needed to develop in order to get there. These are the kind of things you need if you want that seat at the table where decisions are being made and the kind of way that you need to think in order to have that kind of impact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:33) Yes. I'm gonna say yes. Yes. Yes. Especially to that one thing that stood out to me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:39) I'd say one of the biggest blinding things in this entire interview is what you just mentioned. You produce leaders, and that is how you find good leadership. You want to find good leadership, go watch where people are leaving and becoming great leaders in the world. And you know that that company has a system for producing great leaders, and that gets me so excited. I talk about this in my talks all over the world. I mention it because everyone's so scared. How do I retain? How do I hold on? Yeah. It's like, produce leaders at a rate that people look at you and say, you have a reputation. I know if I have a desire to be better, and I know if I go over there with those people, I will be in an environment where I will have every opportunity to become better.

(David DeWolf at 00:47:20) You just gave me goosebumps. I so believe what you just said. In fact, a core part of our vision is that we want to be the employer of choice within this space, and we define that as the value of your career should go up when you come and work at 3Pillar, right? We want to take individuals and help them live into their full potential, become the best version of themselves. And that's how we should measure our leaders is are they doing that for other people? It's not about yourself. Leadership is not a privilege. Let me tell you. It is not. It is a responsibility, and it's a huge one. It's great to hear you say that we need more people out there really pointing to that, encouraging others to look and act that way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:04) Absolutely. No. This is exciting. I love getting to meet you guys. It's like, you guys are 100% my tribe. I guess we're sort of wrapping up now, but thank you so much for your time. And then Jake and Chloe will loop back with you as we post the quick clips. So thank you so much.

(David DeWolf at 00:48:16) Absolutely. Thank you, guys. A lot of fun. Take care.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:18) Have a great day.

(David DeWolf at 00:48:19) Alright. Bye bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:19) Bye.