Embracing Career Pivots, Navigating Change, and Building a Motivated Remote Team

Ryan Leffel at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://youtu.be/qlxN7B9JezE

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

About Priceline and a question for the room

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, hope you all had a good lunch, nice and full. I know that I am. My name is Ryan, I am the head of design at Priceline, and like John said, today we're going to talk a little bit about my career: navigating change, career pivots, and lessons learned along the way.

[00:00:18] Starting off here with Priceline. A little bit about Priceline for those of you who aren't familiar. Priceline is an online travel agency. We sell hotels, flights, rental cars, packages, cruises, experiences. Priceline is part of Booking Holdings, so our sister brands are Booking.com, Agoda, Rentalcars.com, OpenTable and Kayak. Our mission at Priceline is to be the best travel dealmakers in the world. Our goal is to make travel affordable and accessible for anyone.

[00:00:51] We have a lot of scale at Priceline. Our products touch roughly 1 million people every day. That's between app, web, email, social, cares and various other channels, so really we have a lot of reach. We do a lot of testing at Priceline, high velocity testing. On average there's 100 tests running any time you visit Priceline. If you were to open up the Priceline app or look on the desktop site and you're sitting next to someone else, you'll probably see slightly different variations of the same thing.

[00:01:20] That's not what I'm here to talk about today, though I do love talking about design optimization and conversion, so if you want to chat about that please connect with me after. And I promise this slide is not up for no reason. We will come back to this at the end.

[00:01:35] But before we move on, I have one question for everyone. This is a really important question. When you know the answer I just want you to shout it out. For many of you I'm sure this is the reason why you're at UXDX this week, to get the answer to this question. Would you rather be able to speak any language or speak to animals? Shout it out when you know. I hear a lot of animals. Why animals, if you don't mind? Because that's... love it. Perfect, great answer. This will make sense a little bit later on, or at least I hope it does.

My career and connecting the dots

[00:02:09] I'm going to start off just by talking a little bit about me. I started off as a developer. I went to graduate school at NYU. I've spent a lot of time in agencies, I spent time at brands, and I also pivoted careers at some point along the way and opened up a gym. We're going to get into that a little bit more.

[00:02:30] First I want to just start talking about our own careers, what we're doing every single day. It's like a roller coaster. Our careers really are. There's ups, downs, twists and turns and highs and lows, and sometimes things move really fast and other times it's just really slow. And I'm a little bit out of my comfort zone today, because I usually do talk about design, conversion and building really cool products, and today I'm going to talk about me. That's why I'm here, and I put slides together, so we're going to do this.

[00:03:03] I'm going to start off with a great quote. I love this. This is by Steve Jobs, and what it says is: you cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. To me this has a lot of meaning for a few reasons. One, we think we have a plan, we think we know where we're headed, but that is bound to change. It's inevitable. We can bank on that happening. And two, I really feel like whatever we are going through today, whatever we're learning, whatever we're experiencing, will at some point down the road make a lot of sense.

[00:03:43] For me, everything was going to plan. This is earlier on in my career. My dots were connecting. As I mentioned, I started off as a developer. What I didn't mention is I was a really bad developer, and realized that pretty quickly, the hard way. But I was passionate about how things were put together and why, and doing the right thing for the customer and the business. That led me to New York University, where I got a master's degree in design and programming and user experience research.

[00:04:11] I got a little bit lucky there. My thesis advisor was the founder of a company called R/GA, which is a big digital agency, so I got a little bit of help getting my first job after graduate school. I spent about five years at R/GA and felt like, okay, I get agency, I know what agency is like, I want to try my hand at brand. I got hired at Yahoo, which was a great company with great people. It was also, for me, a very good early lesson in dealing with the unexpected.

[00:04:40] At Yahoo there are layoffs pretty much every year. You just knew it was coming and you had to learn how to roll with it. And throughout your career you learn a lot from good managers and bad managers. It shapes who you want to become. I had a great manager at Yahoo. At the end of my first year my manager got laid off. I got called into an office. I'm going to say asked, but I wasn't really asked. I was put in charge of the team that he was previously running. These are people who were my peers and my friends, and in that moment I was suddenly their manager. So it was a great lesson again in dealing with the unexpected, and I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back it's also for me a great lesson in managing teams and building teams very early on.

[00:05:28] So finally my time came. November of 2010, I got laid off at Yahoo, and I had no idea that getting laid off at this moment was going to be the beginning of a really wild ride.

The career detour: opening a gym

[00:05:45] I'm going to talk a little bit about my career detour now. When I got laid off at Yahoo I got a year of severance, which was pretty amazing. As it happened, at that time I had the opportunity to help start a fitness business. The concept was a gym that was going to focus on personal training and small group training and CrossFit. I was always passionate about fitness, I always wanted to start a business, and I figured, okay, I'm getting paid for another year so I don't really have to worry about making money from a business. Why not? My instinct was telling me this is the right thing to do. I trusted my instinct.

[00:06:21] I also thought that because of my background in design, if this didn't work out I could just get back into design. It was going to be easy. What I didn't realize is it's really hard to be an entrepreneur. That was a lesson for me. Way harder to be an entrepreneur than I thought. It took around three and a half years until the business got to a point where it's fairly stable, maybe doing okay, and there's people there to help manage it and run the day to day. But at the end of the day the business wasn't doing as well as I needed. The gym wasn't really working out. That's a dad joke. It wasn't working, certainly to the level of being able to support a family.

[00:07:01] Now there's different ways to measure success. One is financially, and yes, it was struggling financially. But then there's reward. In terms of reward, it was pretty amazing being some part of somebody's fitness journey, seeing somebody's life improve for the better. That's a really meaningful and amazing thing. Now for those of you in the room who are managers and who are leaders, you have an opportunity to help grow people on your team. You have the opportunity to help change somebody's career trajectory for the better. That also is a very meaningful and rewarding thing, and I bring it up because I think sometimes it's very easy to lose sight of that.

The rebound and the road to Priceline

[00:07:43] I'll talk a little bit about my rebound here. I said okay, if the gym doesn't work out I can get back into design, no problem. I'd spent five years at one of the largest digital agencies in the world, I spent time at Yahoo, it won't be a problem. What I didn't do is stay current with what was happening in the industry. See, when I worked at R/GA we were still designing for the desktop. Aging myself a bit here, but we were designing for a desktop and completely separate experiences for mobile. When I worked at Yahoo I was working on an internal application which is only for the desktop.

[00:08:16] When somebody did eventually want to talk to me, and by the way I got a lot of "you're a gym guy, why would we talk to you, it doesn't make any sense," I finally get a call, they asked me about responsive design. I was completely lost. So a piece of advice here: if you do pivot careers and you want to try something completely different, don't lose touch with what you previously did in the past.

[00:08:36] I eventually got lucky. Somebody who was a former colleague of mine at R/GA was running creative at another large agency. He brought me in there to do some freelance work. Then it became easier and easier to get more freelance work. Finally I landed a full-time job at a digital agency called Kora [?]. I took a few steps back from where I left off, which is a little bit of a blow to the ego, but I was also confident that I would be able to work my way back up and get back to where I think I should be.

[00:09:09] So five years running creative and strategy at Kora [?]. I wanted, again, enough of agency, I want to get back into brand and product. I took a role at a company called Pearson, which is another great company. I stayed there four months. I realized very early on that it wasn't the right place for me. It wasn't the right place for me to grow my career in the way I wanted to, and I really think that our careers are too valuable to spend time doing something which we don't really love and which we don't think is the right thing.

[00:09:40] Now that being said, there were two main things which I was tasked with doing when I came to Pearson. One was helping my company start their first design system. Number two was rebuilding a team. They had a team, there was a lot of turnover, they needed somebody to come in and could really help rebuild it. The opportunity at Priceline came along, and the two things that were the hot topics during the interview at Priceline were design systems and building a team. It was incredibly relevant. Although I only stayed at Pearson for four months, if I would have never made that brief stop I would have never got the role I have today at Priceline.

Embrace change, fail, and trust the process

[00:10:19] So we think we have a plan, and plans change, and here are some important things that I've learned along the way. One, embrace change. Like I've already mentioned, it's going to happen. There's nothing you can do to stop it. Be open-minded. Don't be afraid to try new things. Trust your instinct and take risk. I went into the gym knowing that it might not work out, but my instinct was telling me it was the right thing to do and it was the right time to do it.

[00:10:51] Oops. Know that it's okay to fail. It's okay to hit the wrong button when you're presenting. But that comes up a lot. You hear people say it's okay to fail, and genuinely that is really, really true. The thing is how you respond to failure and what you learn from it. This is okay. Embrace failure and take it as a learning moment.

[00:11:12] And the last thing, to me, is the most important. What you experience today is going to help you tomorrow. All those things at the end of the week that make you think, oh man, this is a horrible week, or this week was great, those are like bookmarks, and they're going to come back and help you in the future. One thing I really like to say is the present is really the best lesson plan for the future.

[00:11:33] Trust the process and good things will happen. For me, what I learned down the road is my time at the gym was like going for my MBA. I learned a lot about business, and because of that I became better as a designer, I became better as a leader, I became better at selling design work. I also learned that the gym wasn't about the equipment. It was about building a community. Designers, developers, project managers, it doesn't matter who you are, everyone loves to be part of a community. Because of that experience I became really good at building communities. Although the gym wasn't ultimately as successful as I would have hoped it was going to be, I learned a lot during that time that made me happier and more successful today than I was before.

COVID, fear, uncertainty and doubt

[00:12:22] All right, so getting on with the story here. September 2019, it's my first day at Priceline. I'm feeling good, I'm energized, I'm motivated. Nothing is going to get in my way. I'm finally where I need to be. Nothing is going to stop me. Five months later, this thing called COVID, I'm sure everyone here is familiar, COVID comes along and I'm working in an industry, new in an industry, which was pretty much coming to a halt, and I was taking over a team which I thought I was going to need to be really hands-on with, and now all of a sudden we're remote.

[00:13:00] The headlines, not pretty. There is nothing good in the headlines that you're reading in the news. And this brings me to another quote. "I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." That's Mark Twain. What I really like about this, and I think there's a simple truth here, is we spend way too much time worrying about things that haven't yet occurred.

[00:13:25] Now there's something called FUD. It's fear, uncertainty and doubt. I've come across this everywhere I've ever been. I'm sure you all have. I want to talk a little bit about what that means and how to get through it. Let's look at an example here from Priceline. COVID happens, travel pretty much comes to a halt, which leads to the question: when will people begin to travel again? Now, like I said, there's fear, uncertainty, doubt, and then there's always reality.

[00:13:55] Fear is: what is going to happen to us? We're dealing with a lot of unknown here. There's the uncertainty of what is going to happen to the business. And doubt: well, it's going to be a long time before people travel again. What's going to happen to us? Are we going to still have our jobs in six months? And the reality here is we learned how to be successful, and I want to talk a little bit about how.

[00:14:22] Now there are things that matter, there are things we can influence, there are things we can control, and there are things we just can't control. If something is important to you, that means that it matters to you. If you are able to help indirectly shape the outcome of a situation, then you could have influence. And then there's things you can control. This is in your ability. For example, you can control your thoughts, you can control your actions. And I know it's easy to stand up here and say, but if you can't control something, try not to spend too much time worrying about it.

[00:15:01] So people couldn't travel again. One thing that matters is we still have our mission. Our mission is still to be the best travel dealmakers in the world. We were able to have an influence on making sure our customers trust us. That still very much mattered. We were able to control what we did. We were no longer testing at a high velocity, because people weren't going on leisure travel or business travel or personal travel. We had to completely change our testing strategy and the way we operated. What became important at the moment was delivering messages about safety, about cancellation policies, about cleanliness. We knew that those were things that mattered in the moment. By focusing on those things we were able to be successful.

[00:15:49] And the important thing here to keep in mind is you can't always control an outcome, but you can always have an influence. By recognizing what mattered, we found where we can have an influence, we knew what we can control, and ultimately we did learn how to be successful.

[00:16:11] Now I think there's three important things that happened during this time. One, the leadership and the management stayed calm. When it's uncertain and you don't know what's going to happen, stay calm. If you panic, your team panics, everyone around you panics. Be resilient. You can't get dogmatic about process. You need to know when it's time to make a change.

[00:16:32] One thing that was really interesting to happen during COVID is a lot of our call centers were pretty much knocked out, and we had a lot of customers who needed support. Like I said before, it was really important that our customers trusted us, that they know we're there for them. We had developers, we had product managers, designers, all hands on deck. I was making calls to hotels and to airlines on behalf of customers to help people get a refund for trips that weren't going to be happening. Not what I signed up for, not what a lot of people signed up for, but we were resilient. We found ways to work together to make us successful.

[00:17:09] And finally, focus on solutions, not problems. It's very easy to talk about problems and complain about problems, and quite often there's a solution that's right in front of you. Always think solutions over problems.

Cognitive biases and the growth mindset

[00:17:23] Now everyone here is probably familiar with cognitive biases. As designers, as marketers, as product people, we use these all the time to help people make a purchase decision. But did you know there's also cognitive biases that really impact how we react to certain situations? I want to talk about a few of them.

[00:17:43] The first is the ambiguity effect. This is really talking about decision-making being affected by a lack of information. There has been research done, and what it says is, if you're at work and you're presented with two options, one is a project which has a ton of detail and very little reward, or one that's not well defined and has a ton of reward, a lot of upside, most people are going to pick the first. Most people are going to go at the project that has a lot of definition even though there's not a lot of reward.

[00:18:15] Another cognitive bias is the status quo. This is our natural preference for the current state of affairs. A great example for this is Coca-Cola. In the 1980s Coca-Cola decided that they needed a new version of Coke. They needed to change their taste. They came with a new formula. They did a lot of blind taste testing. The feedback they were getting is it's sweeter, it's better, people loved it. No brainer, we need to update the Coke. They put a new Coke on the shelves that had "new" on it. Classic Coke outsold New Coke by three times as many sales. This is because of the status quo bias. People didn't want to get the new Coke because they wanted to stick with what they're familiar with.

[00:18:56] Lastly here we have the negativity effect. All things being equal, we always gravitate towards negative feelings over positive. It's why people remember a bad first impression more than a really good first impression. I always like to say this is why the Bad News Network hasn't taken off. Our brains are like Teflon for bad news.

[00:19:19] Now the thing about this which is really important for everyone to understand is our brains are wired to protect us from harm. If you're switching jobs, if you're moving, if you're faced with uncertainty, your brain is going to try to stop you. It's part of human nature. I bring this up because I want everyone to know it's okay, and I think this is something people often struggle with. The good news is we can change this. It's something we can all get better at.

[00:19:45] I'll talk a little bit about how. There's two types of mindset that are really important. There's a fixed mindset. Somebody with a fixed mindset avoids challenges. They give up easily. They have this feeling that their abilities are fixed. Growth mindset is where you embrace challenge. You welcome failure. You know it's an opportunity to learn and do better, and you also think that your abilities can be developed. You can always improve, you can always get better. Somebody with a fixed mindset might say, I have no control over this, where somebody with a growth mindset might say, my effort determines my success. If we could all learn to have a growth mindset, we get naturally much better at getting through those moments of the unknown and through those ambiguous periods where we're just not quite sure what to do.

[00:20:37] So what's really important here, and one thing that really helps, is to build what is called a growth mindset culture. This is a culture that embraces challenge, it welcomes failure, and it lets people know that your abilities can always be developed. There's always something you can learn. And this brings me to the last piece here, a really important lesson I've learned along the way, which is people and community, and how do you build a positive community that people really like to be a part of and really like to develop and work in.

Building a strong community

[00:21:10] Another great quote here, by Lance Armstrong: knowledge is power, community is strength, positive attitude is everything. Always try to stay positive. The more you know the better, but it's really my belief that if you have a strong community, everything we're talking about naturally becomes much easier to deal with.

[00:21:28] Now here are some things that I've learned that really help build a strong community. One, people are people. They're not resources. A resource is like a unit that does a function. People are your teammates, they're other human beings, and this is why I used to hear a lot of Human Resources. Now I think we're hearing more of People and Culture, People and Organizational Development. Think of the people you work with as people. Don't call them resources.

[00:21:53] Two, your team needs to trust. You can have the most talented team in the world, but if they don't trust each other, if they don't trust your company mission, then their craft is never going to really match up to the talent that it really has. Diversity is extremely important. People from different backgrounds bring different perspectives and different ideas, and this is really where the good ideas and where innovation comes from.

[00:22:19] Rely on senior members to bring experience. When I was at the gym, people who had been there for a long time and had seen results were really the best salespeople. They were the best motivators for the newer people. Same as I deal with today: designers and researchers, people who have more experience have stories, and those stories are really important to share, and they help more junior members. Mentorship is really important, again, for building a very strong and powerful community.

[00:22:47] Make it fun. Yeah, we're at work to work, but that doesn't mean we can't have a good time while we're doing that. I think there are intentional ways that we can go about making work more fun. We will talk about this in a little bit. And lastly, be human. Remember, as people, not resources, start a meeting by asking people how they're doing. Don't just jump into it.

[00:23:10] Another lesson that I've learned here. Jobs ago I had a manager that was a bad manager. This was the type of person that you just know you don't want to be. But there was one thing this person did that I took a lot from, and it still stays with me: ask people for good news. We always start a meeting by saying, does anyone have any good news? People go around the room and they talk about things that have happened at work, things that have happened in their personal life, but it's good news. It's a good way to get people engaged and it's a really good way to be human.

[00:23:43] Now there's a girl on my team and her name is Jen, and she keeps this database of just really odd, bizarre questions. Some come from her. We actually have user submissions now from people on the team where they can submit their own questions. After we do good news we always ask a Jen question, as I like to call it. The first one everyone here is familiar with. I put examples of a few other questions that we sometimes ask at the beginning of meetings. They're kind of like little ice breakers, but it's a good way to get people bonding and connecting and laughing. It's just a simple way to make a meeting fun and get people to know each other and trust one another.

Break rules, then test and iterate on the team

[00:24:25] Next is break rules. I don't think you can really build a community if you don't break some rules. Here's a lesson that I learned at the gym. Everyone was there because they were into fitness. They wanted to be in shape. But what I realized is those people love pizza, they love bagels, they love beer. And what I found is that if you give them pizza sometimes after a workout, they hang out and they bond. Bring in bagels sometimes in the morning. It creates a space for them to get together and talk. Give them drinks after a workout. We used to have happy hours after workouts, which seems like the most unfitness thing that you could possibly do, especially when there's pizza to go along with it, but people loved it. It got people talking, and what I started to realize is the more I did this kind of thing, the more people became friends. Our retention actually improved dramatically after we started doing this, because if somebody's friends stayed, they were going to stay.

[00:25:22] Now at Priceline we also try to break the rules, although in a different kind of way. We play games. We have a meeting once every other week in the middle of the day where we don't talk about work. We have a social chairperson on the team and they're responsible for finding a game. We play a game as a team for one hour, usually some type of online virtual interactive game. Sometimes we'll pick a movie, give everyone two weeks to watch a movie, and we'll have a meeting in the middle of the day, nothing about work, talking about that movie, coming up with our own movie rating. Another thing that we like to do is dress up in costumes with a matching Zoom background. That's fun. We've done it before on Halloween, we've done it at just random times during the year, but again, it's just a very simple, intentional way to get people to connect.

[00:26:11] So again, coming back to this point. At Priceline we do a lot of testing. Testing, learning and iterating. That's how you build a product. It's also how you build a team, and it's how you build a community. This type of thinking should translate into everything that we do. Experiment and iterate on your team, on your process, on your solutions. Don't get stuck into one way of thinking and only one way of doing things. Pay attention, talk to your team, observe what they're doing, try new things, shake it up, see how it works.

[00:26:47] So as I said, it's a roller coaster. That's my roller coaster story. I think we all have one. I think they're all meaningful. I think they're all incredibly valuable, thinking about what our roller coaster stories are, sharing them with other people, because it's a really good way to help others along and let people know that we have all been through very similar things. It's a wild ride and we are all in this together. So thank you all very much.

Q&A

[00:27:15] Host: A question for myself really is, what would be the single best piece of advice that you could recommend to a professional trying to navigate a career transition?

[00:27:31] Ryan: I really believe if there's something you want to do and you're passionate about doing it, you should give it a try. I think our lives and our careers are too short not to do something. That's why I jumped into the gym. I knew it was a risk, but I also knew my instinct was telling me it's the right thing to do and it's the right time to do it. So I think it's really important that you don't just follow the rules of what you think you're supposed to do. Take a risk, take some chance, and I think at the end of the day everything is going to connect. Everything is going to work out.

[00:28:04] Host: It's really interesting. I know they say as well sometimes that some people who do quite well came from a background where they had a shop or something, because they learned about accounts, they knew everything. When you go into the area of having your own business I think that really helps, because it gives you that overall view of everything as well, and it opens completely new vistas. So it's good to go down roads that look like they're not going anywhere.

[00:28:26] Ryan: Certainly. The worst thing that could happen is you look back one day and say, oh man, I didn't do this one thing when I had a chance, and then there's nothing you could do about it at that point. The moment is gone.

[00:28:35] Host: Okay, we'll move to questions from the audience. From your experience, remote, hybrid or in office, what do you think is the best space for design?

[00:28:43] Ryan: Honestly, I think it all works. We have been remote now for the past few years. Starting, actually it's kind of already started, but we are now going back into the office two days a week. I think that remote works, I think that hybrid works, and I do think that there is value to being in person. The one thing that I will say about being remote that I didn't expect to happen, and I mentioned at the beginning it was one of my concerns coming in to take over a team that I thought I was going to have to be very hands-on with, I think being remote forced everyone to connect and bond and learn to work with one another from a distance. We were able to rely more on asynchronous communication. I think people became better at supporting one another, so I do think there is some very real value to it. But I think that there's also, like being in person, nothing could beat the relationships that you build by spending time with people together.

[00:29:39] Host: I think it's about being more free range than a battery hen. Okay, so we'll move on to the next question. Why is diversity important in your opinion? Would you hire based on diversity over talent?

[00:29:56] Ryan: As I said, I think diversity is important because people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives and they have different ideas, and I think that becomes a really powerful thing. In terms of hiring diversity over talent, I think when we hire we make sure that we're hiring a diverse slate. When we have roles that are open, we won't even get candidates until we have a certain number of candidates to review. I think at the end of the day you have to pick who is right for the role, but I don't think you should always just rush into that and hire the first person because they seem like they're the right thing. I'm not saying to move slow, you obviously want to move fast, but pay attention to who you're talking to when you interview. I think we have a lot of opportunity to open that up a little bit and talk to a more broad slate of candidates.

[00:30:46] Host: How do you embrace change in scenarios where your instinct is screaming at you to stop?

[00:30:51] Ryan: Well, it's never easy, but be aware of the cognitive biases. Be self-aware. Know that a lot of the times the reason why your instinct is screaming at you is because your brain is telling you to stop: I'm uncomfortable, this isn't the right thing to do. And it's really important to be able to step out of your comfort zone and consider other ways of doing things, even if it's uncomfortable. You need to give it a try, because if you keep on doing the safe thing, or the thing that you think you're supposed to do, there's a good chance that you're not doing the right thing. So don't be afraid to take some risk and try something new, even if it's not what you're comfortable with.

[00:31:30] Host: Okay, and let's see, you tried something new. The next question: was it difficult to get back to work after taking a year off?

[00:31:40] Ryan: No, because I didn't. It was pretty much I got laid off at Yahoo and within two weeks was starting a business. And for the gym it was a lot of work. There's designing the space, there was a lot that went into it. It took a good nine months before anything actually opened up, with no members. So it wasn't really a break, though I would love to have a year off work, so if anyone has any ideas on how to make that happen, drop them in.

[00:32:05] Host: Okay. With testing, is there a theoretical inflection point where too much testing could be a partial negative?

[00:32:14] Ryan: Yeah, I think that's just part of the debate with testing. That's why you have to be careful what you test and how you're testing it. I don't know necessarily that too much testing is going to be a bad thing, because I think the more you test the more you learn, and that often leads to something good. Again, I think it's a really good way to build a product, but I think you have to listen to the data and listen to your users and make sure that you're testing the right things at the right time, not testing something just for the sake of testing. It's not about the sheer volume, it's about the meaningfulness of what you're doing.

[00:32:47] Host: Okay, and how do you create good company culture? Is that like the community you were talking about earlier on?

[00:32:53] Ryan: To me, company culture and team culture are two different things. I think team culture is something we have direct control of, because it's our teams. So I think it's a lot of the things I've talked about. Be human, try and make it fun, intentionally try to make it fun. It doesn't have to be about work all the time, but the more you can get people to bond and connect, the closer people on your team become. They start to trust each other, they start to respect each other. When it's all about work all the time and all you're doing is reviewing work and talking about work, it doesn't give people the chance to form a connection and really get to know one another. And I think it's our job as managers and leaders, especially on our team, to make sure that we're getting at least our teams to trust one another and respect one another.

[00:33:38] Host: Okay. Why do you think, or sorry, how do you know a career risk is worth it as opposed to being a bad decision?

[00:33:48] Ryan: I honestly don't think there's a good spin to put on that. It very well could be, but you're never going to know until you try it. And again, like I said before, I would rather try something and fail and have it be the wrong decision than not try it at all, unless it's just something really stupid. But in general I think that's the way to think about it, because again, down the road you're going to look back at things and say, man, I wish I tried that one thing. I had that one opportunity to try something new and I walked away from it and I didn't do it. And I really like what Steve Jobs said, dots connect. Everything we're going through today is going to line up and make sense down the road.

[00:34:27] Host: Okay, all our questions have moved, so Ryan, really appreciated. Thanks for coming on and talking to us about that, and please give a round of applause for Ryan.

[00:34:43] Ryan: Thanks.