- CEO Story: Carly spent 14 years as a software engineer at Amazon but she was really more interested in business and product strategy. And so she started her own business fulfilling the need to help digital artists.
- Business Service: Digital art marketplace. Artists upload their art for sale. Online tools for building tools for the online gallery as a buyer.
- Secret Sauce: Win-win for everyone – the company, the digital artist, and the environment.
- CEO Hack: The service of making decisions quickly is to look at them immediately.
- CEO Nugget: Offering the customer value that is worth the technical effort, something that you can move fast with.
- CEO Defined: Drawing something that is bigger than what you can accomplish yourself and having other people fill it in.
Website: www.co2ign.com
Twitter: co2ign , GrapheneBee
Instagram: CO2ign
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Transcription
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00:23 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:51 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Carly Rector of Cosign Art. Carly, super excited to have you on the show.
01:00 – Carly Rector
Super excited to be on the show.
01:02 – Gresham Harkless
Yes, this is definitely a great time. And before we jump to the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Carly. I could hear about some of the awesome things that she's working on. And after spending 14 years at Amazon, Carly decided t in early 2021 to make a difference in the online communities. S loves playing with games and a little structure can guide stories around it. As for digital art, she also structure can give people both the art they love in the environment as a whole Carly is excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:44 – Carly Rector
I'm ready.
01:45 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched on a little bit when I read your bio, but I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started. What a car, your CEO story.
01:55 – Carly Rector
Sure. Yeah. As you mentioned, my background is as a software engineer. I was at Amazon for 14 years, but I was always sort of interested in the business and the sort of strategic product side of things and sort of the long-term direction of where things were going. And did a lot of that sort of influencing even while I was an engineer. My last 5 years at Amazon were on a couple of more sort of startup-like teams, like brand new initiatives, 1 in sort of community chat for retail, and 1 in home energy management. So I did sort of a lot of influencing the direction of those, helping to kick the projects off and grow them. But I always kind of planned to start my own thing eventually and sort of became time for that in early 2021. So that's when I quit and went to start my own business.
02:42 – Gresham Harkless
Nice.
02:43 – Carly Rector
Yep. And that was coincidentally, right around the time that NFTs started becoming big. So I really sort of saw the opportunity there to build something that was fulfilling that need for digital artists but in a different way.
02:55 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. Absolutely love that. Especially like you said, with the timing of working on those startup teams and then being in kind of like a, I guess, a startup type industry, you know, that NMTs are and how people are kind of, you know, figuring out how to leverage them, maximize, you know, all the opportunities there. I don't know if you've experienced this, but I've heard a lot about engineering and kind of entrepreneurship and the startup world kind of going hand in hand. And I imagine that you having that ability to be able to kind of, you know, be that engineer and think like that probably is super helpful.
03:24 – Carly Rector
Yeah. I think there's a really interesting approach to thinking about problem-solving that engineers have and It can get sort of tunnel vision sometimes on the technical stuff, but if you can broaden it, it can also bring an interesting perspective to building a company and building a product.
03:38 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes sense. And I love how you kind of talked about that strategy piece and being able to kind of broaden it, as you said, said, and start to see like all those different aspects and ramifications a lot of times. So the actions you sometimes take in action, sometimes you even don't take, and what that good amount to. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more on the cosine art and everything you're doing there. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving your clients there?
04:05 – Carly Rector
Yeah, sure. So how we describe it is, that it's a digital art marketplace that fights climate change. Artists can come and request an invite to sell their art on the site. We're still sort of invite-only right now, but we're onboarding new artists every day. Then they upload their work for sale. People can then come in and look at an artist's store find work they like and buy digitally signed copies of that work. We use digital signatures to give people unique copies of these art where they get to just download a file and it has a digital signature in it. Each copy funds carbon reduction via carbon credits from environmental projects that are validated through various registries.
And when you buy a signed copy, you can sort of see the project you funded and go look at the details in the registries. We're also gonna continue building out more sort of online tools for building your gallery as a buyer and sort of organizing collections and sharing it and displaying it on other sort of digital surfaces in your house going forward. So we're pretty excited for all that.
05:06 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that definitely sounds super exciting. And it's so funny with the, you know, the NFTs and you know, the whole world. That's where I heard was, you know, most impacted. It was probably the biggest opportunity, I should say, is probably the artists as well. So I love for 1 that you were able to kind of do that, but I love that sometimes we forget that we can do good and also do well for the world as a whole. And you've been able to kind of marry both of those in the organization you started.
05:32 – Carly Rector
Yeah, for sure. I like to think so anyway. And yeah, the big thing about it is entertainment definitely pitched as a big opportunity for artists. And that hasn't really materialized for a lot of them. In fact, it's shown a lot of art theft. There are a lot of bots that just scrape whatever Instagram and upload art and sell it for sale and it's not really helping artists as much as the pitch was. There's a lot of investment speculation mostly and obviously some crashing happening currently in that space but I really wanted to create an alternative that was much more focused on the artists and helping them out and people buying art from the artists they already enjoy online.
06:10 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And just like we were talking about, it's like at the core of entrepreneurship, I've seen sometimes a problem within a problem that's supposed to be solved and being able to kind of solve that problem and be able to kind of serve, you know, and provide an opportunity, I think, for the artists to make sure that they are getting that, you know, that opportunity. But again, you know, have kind of like a win-win-win scenario where you have, of course, the person that's buying, but also the environment as a whole that's also winning as well.
06:35 – Carly Rector
Yep. That's how, yeah, I love to say it's win-win-win because I really feel like it is. It's like the artists can make money, people get work they enjoy, everyone helps the environment and also my company makes money.
06:44 – Gresham Harkless
So it works out for everyone.
06:44 – Carly Rector
So yeah, absolutely.
06:48 – Gresham Harkless
We had an additional win on that, which is always a good thing because it just creates this great kind of intersection and a great opportunity for everybody to succeed. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? That could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but instead that win, win, win, win, is that intersection and ability to kind of, I think even see that as a whole and how you've been able to kind of build a company. Do you feel like that's your secret sauce?
07:11 – Carly Rector
Yeah, I think something like that. I think sort of really identifying that there's a way to do these things that work for everyone and sort of identifying the gaps in the current solutions. As I mentioned, NFTs are showing a lot of art theft. They're not focused on the artists. They also get a lot of flack for being overly complex not really doing what they're supposed to and using a lot of energy. The other sort of alternative for buying digital art is obviously buying physical versions of it like prints or merchandise and stuff like that. But that's not, that's very expensive in terms of you having to actually produce and ship it. And so the margins for artists are pretty low. So sort of identifying where all of the gaps there and figuring out something that like really hits on all of them.
07:53 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And you know, to me it rings, and I don't know if you feel the same way, it rings to, you know, your background and all that things to be able to see those gaps and see how to fulfill those gaps. And I think, you know, part of, and I don't know if you feel the same way, like the world that we lived in was very much siloed where, you know, sometimes you just solve this problem. But now it seems like with everything you've been able to create, I feel like we're finding that as a world that it doesn't say you just have to solve 1 problem. You can solve many problems in the same way. You just have to get more creative and think kind of maybe outside the box or that there isn't even a box there.
08:26 – Carly Rector
Yeah, I definitely feel like figuring out the right solution to match a problem. Like there are a lot of solutions in the world and there are a lot of problems in the world and you can match them up badly, but you can also match them up well in a way that solves things elegantly and helps out to like really helps out to things that the world needs.
08:43 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
08:54 – Carly Rector
Yeah, what has it I've sort of tried to cultivate in service of making decisions more quickly and am sort of looking to make them immediately. Like there's, in the sense that sometimes it's like, well, do you want to take some time and think about it? But just because a decision is important doesn't mean that you should be making it slowly or that it's going to help to take some time on it. So I really try and think, Okay, what am I going to get out of waiting until the end of the week to make this decision? Is there actually more information that I would get or more consideration that I would need to do that would change my perspective on it? Or is it just a judgment call and I could make it now as well as I can make it at the end of the week?
And for the ones where it's like, well, it's just a judgment call. I just need to make the call. I will just make the call and move on because there's no point wasting time on things where it's not going to help. So there's no point in delaying decisions. If it's not going to make a better decision later on, you just need to make the decision and then move on. And you have more time for all the other problems that you're going to have to make decisions on.
09:49 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think so many times the delaying of making a decision sometimes can be like a lack of trust, sometimes a lack of trust in ourselves. So it's so important to kind of, you know, trust, you know, whatever that might be intuition that that kind of quiet voice sometimes we have that we should do X, Y, and Z.
10:07 – Carly Rector
Yeah. Amazon has a principle called bias fraction. That's along those same lines, which is basically just make, if you can make a decision and tell that you're wrong faster than you could consider longer and make the correct decision, then it's better to just make the decision and learn. Like, if it's cheap to be wrong, then just make it and go forward. Like, consider it more if it's obviously going to have big, big impacts if you're wrong, but if it's not that big a deal or like there's not a way that you're going to get more information by considering it longer, then don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. Don't wait, just like make the call and see what happens and maybe you're wrong and then you'll learn, learn, learn your wrong as fast as possible, and then you can pivot. So rather than sort of being paralyzed and waiting to make that soon.
10:49 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that. And I love that you use that word cheaply because I think cheaply we can always think of, you know, dollars and cents. But we also can think of that in terms of time and energy. The more time you spend, the more time you're wasting that could be put potentially someplace else and solving those other problems, just like you said. So, absolutely love that. And I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I usually say it might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
11:19 – Carly Rector
Yeah, I think we've touched all on it a little bit more in terms of sort of matching up solutions to problems. I like to think of it in terms of like, you have the customer problem and then you have technical solutions. And there's a lot of time you come up with a solution looking for a problem with tech or it's like, how do I use X technology to solve your problem? And that's, I think, not a good way to go usually. It's better to work backward from the problem, the customer's problem.
But On the other hand, I think the thing that a lot of people don't get and that I didn't get for a while is sometimes you can also sort of over-specify a problem and just sort of push from 1 side to the other without any feedback and that can make you more inefficient. In terms of saying like, here's the specific problem this customer is having, and a product manager will define this, or something like that. But all of the specifics in it are not necessarily customer requirements. They're just how the product manager has envisioned it. And some of them might make it harder, technically.
And so being able to sort of take that technical feedback on like, okay, these things are actually really hard though, are they offering the customer value to be worth the technical effort and sort of having that feedback loop of, can we adjust the problem slightly to make the solution easier? And is it going to still offer the same value to people? I think is how you really get something that works and something that you can move fast with.
12:39 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes sense. I appreciate you giving that example as well, too, because I think it helps you to kind of, I think, and I don't know if you meant this, but being able to kind of drill down and go deeply into the problem to really truly understand like what you're solving. As you said, if maybe moving the problem or sometimes even changing the ways that you're, I guess, approaching the problem, you can sometimes solve the problem in a different way and maybe do it cheaply as we used that word earlier, so that it's able to come to fruition.
13:06 – Carly Rector
Yep, yeah, exactly. And I think there can be a lot of problems in that when you put sort of hard wall between product or the business and the technical side of things where they're just sort of throwing requirements over the wall and the technical side doesn't really understand why they're solving the problem that they are, or they're sort of unwilling to take the feedback and that can happen a lot. And I think it's a lot better to sort of make it so that mechanism can happen so that the engineers understand the problem they're solving and they understand that they can make suggestions and say, actually, we could do this in like half the time if we tweak this 1 requirement slightly, like that kind of changes, they should be empowered to make, I think.
13:43 – Gresham Harkless
So yeah, absolutely. You can definitely hear that in everything you build. And that's why I love that aspect of your secret sauce as well too, and how that has grown into and enveloped your organization. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Karli, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:03 – Carly Rector
Yeah, to me, it's sort of about drawing outlines for something bigger than I can accomplish myself and having other people there to fill it in. There are a lot of things that can sort of be accomplished and be possible in the world. A lot of them have a much bigger scope than any 1 person can accomplish. And so they sort of need someone there to define the scope of it and direct people and figure out how to accomplish this big thing. And then the people who are really good at what they do can come in and do what they do and do their best work and be satisfied that they're doing it in a direction that is productive because there's sort of that overall framework set for them to work in.
14:40 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that and you know I've been really big into like coloring and you know you hear that a lot in art. And I love the outline aspect because I almost feel like, and I'm envisioning everybody has their own set of, you know, crayons, markers, or colored pencils, whatever it is. And these are their, you know, their superpower, so to speak. But as the CEO, you get to create that outline and you work together with the team to color those aspects in so that at the end of the day, you have a beautiful piece of art, you have a beautiful, you know, colored paper, whatever it is. But that vision comes in for wishing.
15:13 – Carly Rector
Yep. And it's going to be something much better than anyone could have done by themselves.
15:17 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Carly truly appreciates that definition and perspective. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get an overview, and find out about all the awesome things you're on the table working on.
15:33 – Carly Rector
Yeah, for sure. Obviously you can check out our site, co2ign.com. If you're an artist, you can sign up to get an invite. If you're an art lover, you can browse the art and buy some of it. You can also follow us, co2ign, on all the social networks, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also follow me on Twitter, I'm Graphene B. And I would love people to get involved and people to reach out to me if they're interested.
15:57 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely, absolutely. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes too so that everybody can follow up and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal today.
16:06 – Carly Rector
Yeah, thank you. You too.
16:08 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:23 - Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:51 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Carly Rector of Cosign Art. Carly, super excited to have you on the show.
01:00 - Carly Rector
Super excited to be on the show.
01:02 - Gresham Harkless
Yes, this is definitely a great time. And before we jump to the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Carly. I could hear about some of the awesome things that she's working on. And after spending 14 years at Amazon, Carly decided t in early 2021 to make a difference in the online communities. S loves playing with games and a little structure can guide stories around it. As for digital art, she also structure can give people both the art they love in the environment as a whole Carly is excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid="true"]
01:44 - Carly Rector
I'm ready.
01:45 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched on a little bit when I read your bio, but I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started. What a car, your CEO story.
01:55 - Carly Rector
Sure. Yeah. As you mentioned, my background is as a software engineer. I was at Amazon for 14 years, but I was always sort of interested in the business and the sort of strategic product side of things and sort of the long-term direction of where things were going. And did a lot of that sort of influencing even while I was an engineer. My last 5 years at Amazon were on a couple of more sort of startup-like teams, like brand new initiatives, 1 in sort of community chat for retail, and 1 in home energy management. So I did sort of a lot of influencing the direction of those, helping to kick the projects off and grow them. But I always kind of planned to start my own thing eventually and sort of became time for that in early 2021. So that's when I quit and went to start my own business.
02:42 - Gresham Harkless
Nice.
02:43 - Carly Rector
Yep. And that was coincidentally, right around the time that NFTs started becoming big. So I really sort of saw the opportunity there to build something that was fulfilling that need for digital artists but in a different way.
02:55 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. Absolutely love that. Especially like you said, with the timing of working on those startup teams and then being in kind of like a, I guess, a startup type industry, you know, that NMTs are and how people are kind of, you know, figuring out how to leverage them, maximize, you know, all the opportunities there. I don't know if you've experienced this, but I've heard a lot about engineering and kind of entrepreneurship and the startup world kind of going hand in hand. And I imagine that you having that ability to be able to kind of, you know, be that engineer and think like that probably is super helpful.
03:24 - Carly Rector
Yeah. I think there's a really interesting approach to thinking about problem-solving that engineers have and It can get sort of tunnel vision sometimes on the technical stuff, but if you can broaden it, it can also bring an interesting perspective to building a company and building a product.
03:38 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes sense. And I love how you kind of talked about that strategy piece and being able to kind of broaden it, as you said, said, and start to see like all those different aspects and ramifications a lot of times. So the actions you sometimes take in action, sometimes you even don't take, and what that good amount to. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more on the cosine art and everything you're doing there. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving your clients there?
04:05 - Carly Rector
Yeah, sure. So how we describe it is, that it's a digital art marketplace that fights climate change. Artists can come and request an invite to sell their art on the site. We're still sort of invite-only right now, but we're onboarding new artists every day. Then they upload their work for sale. People can then come in and look at an artist's store find work they like and buy digitally signed copies of that work. We use digital signatures to give people unique copies of these art where they get to just download a file and it has a digital signature in it. Each copy funds carbon reduction via carbon credits from environmental projects that are validated through various registries.
And when you buy a signed copy, you can sort of see the project you funded and go look at the details in the registries. We're also gonna continue building out more sort of online tools for building your gallery as a buyer and sort of organizing collections and sharing it and displaying it on other sort of digital surfaces in your house going forward. So we're pretty excited for all that.
05:06 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that definitely sounds super exciting. And it's so funny with the, you know, the NFTs and you know, the whole world. That's where I heard was, you know, most impacted. It was probably the biggest opportunity, I should say, is probably the artists as well. So I love for 1 that you were able to kind of do that, but I love that sometimes we forget that we can do good and also do well for the world as a whole. And you've been able to kind of marry both of those in the organization you started.
05:32 - Carly Rector
Yeah, for sure. I like to think so anyway. And yeah, the big thing about it is entertainment definitely pitched as a big opportunity for artists. And that hasn't really materialized for a lot of them. In fact, it's shown a lot of art theft. There are a lot of bots that just scrape whatever Instagram and upload art and sell it for sale and it's not really helping artists as much as the pitch was. There's a lot of investment speculation mostly and obviously some crashing happening currently in that space but I really wanted to create an alternative that was much more focused on the artists and helping them out and people buying art from the artists they already enjoy online.
06:10 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And just like we were talking about, it's like at the core of entrepreneurship, I've seen sometimes a problem within a problem that's supposed to be solved and being able to kind of solve that problem and be able to kind of serve, you know, and provide an opportunity, I think, for the artists to make sure that they are getting that, you know, that opportunity. But again, you know, have kind of like a win-win-win scenario where you have, of course, the person that's buying, but also the environment as a whole that's also winning as well.
06:35 - Carly Rector
Yep. That's how, yeah, I love to say it's win-win-win because I really feel like it is. It's like the artists can make money, people get work they enjoy, everyone helps the environment and also my company makes money.
06:44 - Gresham Harkless
So it works out for everyone.
06:44 - Carly Rector
So yeah, absolutely.
06:48 - Gresham Harkless
We had an additional win on that, which is always a good thing because it just creates this great kind of intersection and a great opportunity for everybody to succeed. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? That could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but instead that win, win, win, win, is that intersection and ability to kind of, I think even see that as a whole and how you've been able to kind of build a company. Do you feel like that's your secret sauce?
07:11 - Carly Rector
Yeah, I think something like that. I think sort of really identifying that there's a way to do these things that work for everyone and sort of identifying the gaps in the current solutions. As I mentioned, NFTs are showing a lot of art theft. They're not focused on the artists. They also get a lot of flack for being overly complex not really doing what they're supposed to and using a lot of energy. The other sort of alternative for buying digital art is obviously buying physical versions of it like prints or merchandise and stuff like that. But that's not, that's very expensive in terms of you having to actually produce and ship it. And so the margins for artists are pretty low. So sort of identifying where all of the gaps there and figuring out something that like really hits on all of them.
07:53 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And you know, to me it rings, and I don't know if you feel the same way, it rings to, you know, your background and all that things to be able to see those gaps and see how to fulfill those gaps. And I think, you know, part of, and I don't know if you feel the same way, like the world that we lived in was very much siloed where, you know, sometimes you just solve this problem. But now it seems like with everything you've been able to create, I feel like we're finding that as a world that it doesn't say you just have to solve 1 problem. You can solve many problems in the same way. You just have to get more creative and think kind of maybe outside the box or that there isn't even a box there.
08:26 - Carly Rector
Yeah, I definitely feel like figuring out the right solution to match a problem. Like there are a lot of solutions in the world and there are a lot of problems in the world and you can match them up badly, but you can also match them up well in a way that solves things elegantly and helps out to like really helps out to things that the world needs.
08:43 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
08:54 - Carly Rector
Yeah, what has it I've sort of tried to cultivate in service of making decisions more quickly and am sort of looking to make them immediately. Like there's, in the sense that sometimes it's like, well, do you want to take some time and think about it? But just because a decision is important doesn't mean that you should be making it slowly or that it's going to help to take some time on it. So I really try and think, Okay, what am I going to get out of waiting until the end of the week to make this decision? Is there actually more information that I would get or more consideration that I would need to do that would change my perspective on it? Or is it just a judgment call and I could make it now as well as I can make it at the end of the week?
And for the ones where it's like, well, it's just a judgment call. I just need to make the call. I will just make the call and move on because there's no point wasting time on things where it's not going to help. So there's no point in delaying decisions. If it's not going to make a better decision later on, you just need to make the decision and then move on. And you have more time for all the other problems that you're going to have to make decisions on.
09:49 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think so many times the delaying of making a decision sometimes can be like a lack of trust, sometimes a lack of trust in ourselves. So it's so important to kind of, you know, trust, you know, whatever that might be intuition that that kind of quiet voice sometimes we have that we should do X, Y, and Z.
10:07 - Carly Rector
Yeah. Amazon has a principle called bias fraction. That's along those same lines, which is basically just make, if you can make a decision and tell that you're wrong faster than you could consider longer and make the correct decision, then it's better to just make the decision and learn. Like, if it's cheap to be wrong, then just make it and go forward. Like, consider it more if it's obviously going to have big, big impacts if you're wrong, but if it's not that big a deal or like there's not a way that you're going to get more information by considering it longer, then don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. Don't wait, just like make the call and see what happens and maybe you're wrong and then you'll learn, learn, learn your wrong as fast as possible, and then you can pivot. So rather than sort of being paralyzed and waiting to make that soon.
10:49 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that. And I love that you use that word cheaply because I think cheaply we can always think of, you know, dollars and cents. But we also can think of that in terms of time and energy. The more time you spend, the more time you're wasting that could be put potentially someplace else and solving those other problems, just like you said. So, absolutely love that. And I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I usually say it might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
11:19 - Carly Rector
Yeah, I think we've touched all on it a little bit more in terms of sort of matching up solutions to problems. I like to think of it in terms of like, you have the customer problem and then you have technical solutions. And there's a lot of time you come up with a solution looking for a problem with tech or it's like, how do I use X technology to solve your problem? And that's, I think, not a good way to go usually. It's better to work backward from the problem, the customer's problem.
But On the other hand, I think the thing that a lot of people don't get and that I didn't get for a while is sometimes you can also sort of over-specify a problem and just sort of push from 1 side to the other without any feedback and that can make you more inefficient. In terms of saying like, here's the specific problem this customer is having, and a product manager will define this, or something like that. But all of the specifics in it are not necessarily customer requirements. They're just how the product manager has envisioned it. And some of them might make it harder, technically.
And so being able to sort of take that technical feedback on like, okay, these things are actually really hard though, are they offering the customer value to be worth the technical effort and sort of having that feedback loop of, can we adjust the problem slightly to make the solution easier? And is it going to still offer the same value to people? I think is how you really get something that works and something that you can move fast with.
12:39 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes sense. I appreciate you giving that example as well, too, because I think it helps you to kind of, I think, and I don't know if you meant this, but being able to kind of drill down and go deeply into the problem to really truly understand like what you're solving. As you said, if maybe moving the problem or sometimes even changing the ways that you're, I guess, approaching the problem, you can sometimes solve the problem in a different way and maybe do it cheaply as we used that word earlier, so that it's able to come to fruition.
13:06 - Carly Rector
Yep, yeah, exactly. And I think there can be a lot of problems in that when you put sort of hard wall between product or the business and the technical side of things where they're just sort of throwing requirements over the wall and the technical side doesn't really understand why they're solving the problem that they are, or they're sort of unwilling to take the feedback and that can happen a lot. And I think it's a lot better to sort of make it so that mechanism can happen so that the engineers understand the problem they're solving and they understand that they can make suggestions and say, actually, we could do this in like half the time if we tweak this 1 requirement slightly, like that kind of changes, they should be empowered to make, I think.
13:43 - Gresham Harkless
So yeah, absolutely. You can definitely hear that in everything you build. And that's why I love that aspect of your secret sauce as well too, and how that has grown into and enveloped your organization. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Karli, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:03 - Carly Rector
Yeah, to me, it's sort of about drawing outlines for something bigger than I can accomplish myself and having other people there to fill it in. There are a lot of things that can sort of be accomplished and be possible in the world. A lot of them have a much bigger scope than any 1 person can accomplish. And so they sort of need someone there to define the scope of it and direct people and figure out how to accomplish this big thing. And then the people who are really good at what they do can come in and do what they do and do their best work and be satisfied that they're doing it in a direction that is productive because there's sort of that overall framework set for them to work in.
14:40 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that and you know I've been really big into like coloring and you know you hear that a lot in art. And I love the outline aspect because I almost feel like, and I'm envisioning everybody has their own set of, you know, crayons, markers, or colored pencils, whatever it is. And these are their, you know, their superpower, so to speak. But as the CEO, you get to create that outline and you work together with the team to color those aspects in so that at the end of the day, you have a beautiful piece of art, you have a beautiful, you know, colored paper, whatever it is. But that vision comes in for wishing.
15:13 - Carly Rector
Yep. And it's going to be something much better than anyone could have done by themselves.
15:17 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Carly truly appreciates that definition and perspective. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get an overview, and find out about all the awesome things you're on the table working on.
15:33 - Carly Rector
Yeah, for sure. Obviously you can check out our site, co2ign.com. If you're an artist, you can sign up to get an invite. If you're an art lover, you can browse the art and buy some of it. You can also follow us, co2ign, on all the social networks, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also follow me on Twitter, I'm Graphene B. And I would love people to get involved and people to reach out to me if they're interested.
15:57 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely, absolutely. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes too so that everybody can follow up and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal today.
16:06 - Carly Rector
Yeah, thank you. You too.
16:08 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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