Lacey Picazo - Founder & CEO of ZoCo Design: When to Pursue Your Business Full-time, Being Vulnerable and Transparent, and Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Lacey Picazo  00:00

I think one of the most powerful things you can do in entrepreneurship is build a business that actually empowers and energizes you. And I think it's really easy to do the opposite. To build just what the market wants, what an investor tells you is best, what's going to have the biggest return on investment. And all those things are important. Don't get me wrong. But if you're going to spend all this energy, building something that should be something that you find valuable that you find impactful for your own soul.

Callan Harrington  00:26

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone to another episode of That Worked. I told myself I was not going to talk about the weather, but it's getting nice here, and I'm really excited about it. And I'm also excited about this week's guest. And this week I'm joined by Lacey Picazo. Lacey is the founder and CEO of ZoCo. ZoCo is the UX and product design studio for customer centric software companies. And ZoCo's won a ton of awards, some of which include the Inc. 5000, for being one of the fastest growing companies in the country. And then recently, they were named to Inc. Magazine's Best Places to Work in the US. Lacey herself is an incredible founder and CEO, and she has won the Visionary Award from the National Association of Women Business Owners, as well as about every award, you can win in the Columbus Ohio area, including Top 40 under 40, and Outstanding Woman in Technology. I've been fortunate to know Lacey for some time now. And every time we get together, she's brought ZoCo to a whole new level of growth. And when you hear our conversation, it's going to make complete sense as to why. We dive into a lot of things. One in particular is how intentional she was with her career prior to founding ZoCo. I found it super interesting just how strategic she was on getting out of her comfort zone and preparing herself for being a business owner. She also gave an excellent roadmap for transitioning from part time freelancer, to full time business owner and detailed the specifics on how she did it with a lot of actionable takeaways. And one of my favorite parts was exploring her leadership principles. And two in particular, were being vulnerable and being transparent with her team. When you hear how she broke this down, it's no surprise that ZoCo was recognized as one of the best places to work in the country. So with that, let's get to the show. Lacey, welcome to the show.

Lacey Picazo  02:56

Hey, Callan, excited to join you.

Callan Harrington  02:58

Yeah, I'm excited as well, this is- So we've known each other for a while now. So for our listeners that are unfamiliar, tell us a little bit about ZoCo.

Lacey Picazo  03:06

Happy to! ZoCo is a UX studio, we work alongside internal product teams, to help them build better products that are more connected to the people who actually use them. So we're really champions for human centered tech, connecting psychology and product design.

Callan Harrington  03:21

So okay, I got to ask this question, because you mentioned it earlier, but you're on the Michael Redd podcast. And I listened to that. And you said specifically that you're, and you said this again, a studio and not an agency. What is the difference?

Lacey Picazo  03:36

Oh, all words have baggage, right? The word research, we- almost half of our practice is UX research, and that word has a ton of baggage. But that's not what you asked me. So agency has baggage. I associate agencies with people who are trying to build kind of an empire of a lot of different services, right? Like we're a marketing agency, and we do twenty five different things. And we don't necessarily do any of them super well. We will do whatever a client asks us to do, happy to submit a bill for it, very project oriented. I use the word studio because we are intentionally small and impactful. We work closely internally embedded with our clients to help them figure out more ambiguously what should be next, right? So rather than saying, "hey ZoCo , do this thing for us, we need help with x." Even if we're doing project based work, we really pride ourselves on embedding in a way where we can understand the system we're working within, ask good questions to know this thing you asked for even the first thing to build, right? We get to the root cause and root problem and your true goals. Is this the thing? We modify that a little bit. And by being really UX focused, we don't have any conflicts of interest. And by that, I mean, you know, we're not trying to suggest something that we can develop or build in house because we don't have engineering. We don't have developers. We're not trying to have one service lead into another right? So like from an agency perspective, I just think of them differently as monopolistic. Like they're trying to build something much bigger and more catchable, where we're really focused and niche with what we do.

Callan Harrington  05:15

That makes complete sense. Where did your career start out?

Lacey Picazo  05:18

Yeah. So, I'm a designer by background, even as a kid I remember always wanting to be a creator of things. Whether that was over-engineering my presentations on like those trifold posters, to be very visual, very emotive. I was in this group called Destination Imagination as a kid and actually traveled around the country within that group, was always making home videos and Lego cities, all sorts of things. So I went to school to be a designer, ended up being a digital designer. Worked for a few agencies in-house a few places. The challenge I always found, Callan, in those roles were: I wanted the work I was doing to connect with a stronger purpose for what we were trying to achieve and what we were trying to achieve for that end user. What were their jobs to be done? What were their goals? How do we understand if we build this thing, will they come? Right? Will it actually change and influence their behavior? And I thought threading the needle on those two, connecting people and product was something that wasn't really a primary focus in any of the roles that I had, the companies that I worked within prior to starting ZoCo. So I really had that as a goal as a designer. I wanted to work for a place that had a lot more focus on user research, on customer centricity. Meanwhile, at the same time, I started a company with my spouse called SideNow. It has no relationship to ZoCo, other than we received a little tiny bit of funding, we went through an accelerator program. And the impetus was, it connected me to the tech community. And I realized how much I love the tech and startup community in Columbus, how supportive it was, how invigorating and creative it is. And so that was kind of a lightbulb, right? To think, oh, might I want to just start a studio myself? Might I want to build the sort of environment that I want to work within? I had that as a hunch, started freelancing, took a hiatus, a little sideways turn and another career path for about a year and a half. I can tell you about if you'd like. But that actually helped give me some of the confidence to be able to start ZoCo, and I started this as a UX studio in 2013.

Callan Harrington  07:20

So, I'd love to circle back here for a minute. So you had founded a tech company, correct? Is that what you're saying?

Lacey Picazo  07:25

Yes, if you can call it that. Yeah. So it was called SideNow. And it was a social debating addition to Facebook back when you can build all sorts of add ons, and, you know, micro experiences within Facebook when they were very developer friendly. And so we built products that would allow, let's say, you and your spouse have a lot of silly debates about things that matter a lot to both of you. But you never settle those debates, because you're both pretty type A. And so it allowed you to go into your social sphere, and not only post your side with a micro video, and have people almost tug-of-war style poll to figure out who is the victor and be able to create their own commentary and video through the comments to help influence the side. And so it was, I think, still like a concept that has legs, although it would have ended too many marriages. But Facebook changed how they allow software to be built. So it just didn't make sense as their strategy progressed.

Callan Harrington  08:19

I'm just saying I might win some of the votes, but I don't know if I'm going to win any of those arguments. Okay, so what led to that? Did you just want to start a tech company? Was that something that that you were just kind of driven to do? Or did you really like this- was it the idea, like, I just have to go kind of take this to market? Like what was kind of the thought process around that?

Lacey Picazo  08:40

Oh, I wish I could take more credit. But it was the brainchild of Alex, my spouse, who's also an entrepreneur. And just the more debates that we had, over all sorts of things, that would come up every dinner conversation with our friends with other couples, where he just clearly wanted it settled. Well, we need some way to settle this that is not taking over all of our dinner conversations. So you know, many ventures are born and started to solve a problem, an opportunity that we had within our own household.

Callan Harrington  09:10

What did you learn from that experience just as a whole?

Lacey Picazo  09:13

I mean, I learned more about what was happening on the coasts, from a UX standpoint. I mean, the accelerator program that we went through was all localized. But I had the opportunity to meet and do research on other products that were being built outside of our own homeland and found that teams were a lot more integrated outside of the Midwest, right. And you know, back in, this was 2010. The idea then here of UX designer, which wasn't even a title we were using in Columbus then, but a digital designer, an engineer, researcher, product manager all working together in an integrated lifecycle, which now is the only way I'd ever want to do it. It was very rare at that time here. And that's how I always wanted to work. I was sick of throwing things over the fence and getting these odd relay race handoffs from different teams, and not having context for how they would translate my decisions, and vice versa. So that was very instrumental for how I wanted to build and grow a team and how I wanted to work with technology teams moving forward. But I think that really, like the biggest impact, Callan, on me was understanding how supportive the community was. And seeing that you could be vulnerable, not know how to do something, raise your hand and say, I don't know what this next step is. And have plenty of people who are willing to say, oh, either, "I've experienced that, here's what I think." Or, "oh, I'm actually struggling with that, too. Can we be accountability buddies, and keep in touch on that?" That was really empowering to feel the sense of community.

Callan Harrington  10:38

How did you find that support system? How did you find those people?

Lacey Picazo  10:41

Yeah, I mean, just through building the startup, through building SideNow. The process that we went through helped us connect with many other founders. Different meetups and mixers and got to connect with some folks in VC, got to connect with people who had built things before. But honestly, I think Columbus is a community, and maybe many other communities are like this. But if you ask you shall receive, right? If you're very insular, and you don't reach out and say, "hey, you're building something interesting. Can we get coffee? I want to learn about your journey, where you're at in it, where you've had hang ups?" and be able to reflect and apply what other people are learning to what I'm doing. If you ask for that, I have found very few people turn you down. If you ask with a very clear, like I want to learn and this is what I want to learn about, and this is how I think I might be able to learn this from you, folks are so supportive and helpful. Whereas, I think it's also easy to get really insular and just start building your thing. And never lift up your head to see what other people are doing. I don't even mean competition. I don't mean other people that are in your space. I mean, just generally other entrepreneurs, other builders, other tinkerers. And that I think has probably been a big part of my career growth in building the network, building some vulnerability into real conversations to figure out where are people challenged, where are they struggling, where am I struggling, and what can we learn together?

Callan Harrington  12:00

I think that's such great advice. And I totally agree with that. Because one of the things especially with being entrepreneurs, it's a lonely world until you find kind of that peer group of others that are experiencing some of those same challenges and problems. And you also realize there's so many people out there that are willing to help, but you got to put yourself out there. And I think you hit on one of the most important pieces is getting really clear on what your ask is doesn't mean you have to have the answer, right? You're going out to find that answer. But what is it specifically that you are looking for? Because if that person you're talking to maybe, you know, I'm not the person to have that but Lacey is. Lacey has experienced this problem million times, I'm sure she'd be willing to talk to you. Because you're so clear on what you're asking. I think that's such a great point. So, I want to talk about this sidetrack. Sidetrack is the wrong word. But this other position that you tried, this was the pharmaceutical sales rep role, is that right?

Lacey Picazo  12:53

Yeah, you remember that, huh?

Callan Harrington  12:54

Yeah, I do. This was what I wanted to talk about. And for one- a couple of reasons. You're going to design route.

Lacey Picazo  13:01

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  13:02

And you had tried a number of these positions. Now, like, it adds so much more color, it makes so much more sense when you're saying you went out, you saw what the coasts were doing, and you're like, this is what I want to be doing. I wasn't doing this, if I'm hearing you correctly, I wasn't doing this in the companies I was with, but this is how I want to do it. What led to this wanting to try this different career path just in general?

Lacey Picazo  13:24

Well, I wouldn't say I wanted to try it. So, Callan, I was feeling excited about the opportunity to build my own studio, excited to be an entrepreneur, whether it was building software with my spouse, or building ZoCo in this future vision, and I was freelancing at night. But I told one of my good friends who was currently in medical device sales, I said to her, you know, I think I could figure out the business part of building a business. I, you know, didn't go to school for that. But that part, I think I can build community, learn from others, and figure out. I've got the design and the service part and the vision for that down pat. I'm sure I'll have hurdles, but we'll figure it out. But sales, talking to people who don't want to talk to me, of figuring out how to put myself out there and say, hey, this is my flag. This is what I'm doing. Like, I would love to help you. It just feels uncomfortable. And I was raised in a very Midwest, nice sort of household, right?Where you're not going to ask for things that way. And I told my friend, her name's Stephanie. And I'll have to, you know, give her tons of shout out and kudos for this moment in my career. But she said, "well, why don't you just try just jumping in with both feet? Why don't you do what I'm doing?" And she had gotten me an interview with her company, and ultimately led to me getting a job in pharma sales, not with her company, but another company. And so it was really a skill development opportunity, Callan, of figuring out: would I ever be able to build comfort in this? Because I'm also kind of a secret introvert. I love one-on-ones with people and learning from people. But showing up and talking to somebody who I'm not sure that they necessarily want to talk to me or being in a big group setting... it's not really my comfort zone, I find it very draining. And so I thought, well, this is a good way to figure out can I do this? Can I build some skill here? And so I did that for about a year and a half and never really loved that job. Never really loved showing up at doctors offices, but I liked building relationships with those people. I liked building relationships to figure out, well, what are their challenges? What are they looking to achieve? And just the one-on-one opportunities with that. But the thing that was really great, not only did it help reduce my fear of sales, of problem solving, of talking to people, I don't know, which was the goal of taking that role. But it freed up a ton of headspace for actually building ZoCo and starting to vision, well, what is this thing? And can I do it? Because I was freelancing while I was in an agency. I was freelancing while I was doing pharma sales. But doing that, while you're an agency, it's very draining to spend your whole day on a computer, right? Your whole day is nothing but: okay, I'm working on this, I'm sending emails, I'm in meetings and like you're just very focused on a screen and in the chair. But by being out and about in the community, in my car, listening to podcasts, talking to doctors, for however many hours a day I was doing that, it freed up my entire evening where I was very fresh, and was very excited to go back to my computer and start working on freelance design, start thinking about what the future holds. And it's honestly a lot more my environment today, where I'm much more apt to be out and about talking to people. And then I do my deep work late afternoons or after my kiddos go to bed. And I found that was a cycle that really worked well for me.

Callan Harrington  16:30

All right, I've got about twenty things I want to unpack from this. So, a couple things. One, that may be the best example I've heard of. So you did this because your end goal was to start a company and you needed to get sales experience. Is that right?

Lacey Picazo  16:42

I had a hunch. She also said, "well, you could be good at this. Let's try it." I don't know. But let's see, you know, like why not? And so it was much more experimental to figure out you don't know what you don't know. But I had a hunch that that was a skill that was lacking, and that this would be a way to start to solve for it.

Callan Harrington  16:59

So, how did you come to that decision, in that you were rising up the ranks? As a designer? My guess is if you weren't continue to go that track, then you would have led a design team, probably got bigger and bigger design companies. Was it that you just had no interest in doing that? So, in order to do- it was either kind of shake it up, see if this is going to be something that I like, one, or worst case scenario is I round out my skill set to be able to start my own company?

Lacey Picazo  17:26

Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely a person that doesn't like unnecessary barriers Callan and I felt that my last couple of roles, if there are things I wanted to learn, wanted to experience wanted to do. I didn't necessarily have control of that, right? If I wanted to be in a client meeting to learn from a client directly, if I wasn't a certain level of designer wasn't going to get to do that. If I wanted to work directly with the researchers or directly with the engineers, I can verbalize that. But it doesn't mean it's going to happen. Right? And I don't like being told no, if I think that there's a better way to do something. And so I didn't see myself being able to build that skill set that was lacking within the agency space, not for a very long time, where I think I could have continued to ask for that opportunity or voice or shown different areas of interest. But I'm kind of impatient. And so I thought, okay, well, if this is something I want to try, if I want to keep freelancing, which I can't do twelve hours a day between agency and freelance. It's just too much of the same. So I knew that that wasn't a path that would help me keep going towards where I was interested in growing. I'm going to go out and pursue something different. Shake it up a bit, and see if this experiment will help me learn or get that piece that I'm missing a little bit faster, and feel more energy towards freelancing in the evenings and starting to find well, do I want to build a business? Do I want to design for myself? And what might that look like?

Callan Harrington  18:45

I love that. That's such a cool story. So, you started building ZoCo, as I understand it on the side while you're at this pharmaceutical sales rep job, is that right?

Lacey Picazo  18:54

Yeah, I sure did. Well, it wasn't ZoCo yet. It was just freelance designing.

Callan Harrington  18:58

Okay.

Lacey Picazo  18:58

But you've got it.

Callan Harrington  19:00

What was the decision to go do that full time? What led to that?

Lacey Picazo  19:03

You know, honestly, it's not very inspirational. It's very basic. It was when my day job in pharmacy sales was getting in the way of doing what I wanted to do, I was already doing kind of a limited amount to make sure I hit all my numbers, got good marks, did the things that I wanted to and didn't call anyone's attention. But I felt myself every day wanting to cut out of work a little bit sooner, so that I can pursue what I was actually excited about. And I didn't feel good about doing that. Because you know, if you say you're going to commit to something, you better commit to it. And so okay, I've got to make a decision because my heart is pulling me this way. This is where I want to spend all my time. And this piece is now in the way. I think I've gotten a lot of what I needed from it. And it's been excellent. But, like if I keep pursuing this path, I'm going to probably start to neglect it so that this can grow. And I think that decision point came pretty quickly as freelance work started to grow. And so I was really only in the pharma job for about a year, and that spring decided, okay, I think I'm just going to pursue freelance full time. But actually, I think I want to build a studio. I don't want to just be a freelancer, I want to build a team, I want to work with other people. I really miss that. So I'm going to start ZoCo. And then left my job and started ZoCo in the same month.

Callan Harrington  20:16

Why was that important to you? Why was that important? To build a company as opposed to being a solopreneur?

Lacey Picazo  20:20

Yeah, you know, I think one of the most powerful things you can do in entrepreneurship is build a business that actually empowers and energizes you. And I think it's really easy to do the opposite. To build just what the market wants, what an investor tells you is best, what's going to have the biggest return on investment. And all those things are important. Don't get me wrong. But if you're going to spend all this energy building something, it should be something that you find valuable, that you find impactful for your own soul. And I missed working with my design team colleagues, I had great peers, and great partners internally at all the agencies I worked with, people I was learning alongside who had challenged me, helped me grow. And I missed that a lot in freelancing. So, while building a consulting business of one can be lucrative, it wasn't energizing to me personally. And so I really wanted to build a team that shared my values that we could champion the same things and grow together.

Callan Harrington  21:14

Gotcha. So for you, you are following the energy on that.

Lacey Picazo  21:17

You got it.

Callan Harrington  21:18

Got it. I love that. So first year, what are the challenges that you're facing? And I'm also curious, what were the challenges that you came against that you did not expect?

Lacey Picazo  21:30

Well, the first year, it was just me, while I set out, Callan, to build a team, I figured out I was fairly risk adverse those first several years, from a financial standpoint, and feeling like well, man, I don't want to bring somebody in and potentially fail them if I can't keep up this pace. So let me test out and see if I can keep this pace, this revenue, all of these things in order to hire somebody. I think the things that challenged me were learning one, what all there is that goes into running a studio, running an agency. It's a lot more than just doing great work, right? It's great client relationships, it's contracting, it's resource management, it's project management. There's so many other details that I wouldn't say necessarily aren't my skills, but aren't things that I'm as excited about. And so finding ways to learn and grow in those areas will building a team around me of people who do actually love those things, right? That was really empowering, building the business and finding, okay, what things am I doing today that I don't like doing that I am less interested in growing in? Let me find somebody who loves those things who could come in and take them. And so actually, my first hire was a project manager, not a designer. Which as soon as I had that headspace cleared for myself, was able to do more impactful things that helped the business grow. And probably, I don't know, a few months later hired two designers because I was able to scale through taking the things off my plate that I didn't love. So that was a big learning for me. Man, there were so many gotchas over the years. Both in literal business sense of understanding, oh, we can have short term disability insurance to help pay for all these maternity leaves. It doesn't just have to come out of pocket, amazing! Things that were very literal sort of business management learnings, to the importance of building a culture that is uniform, that's consistent, and never diluting it or trading upon it. That was a big learning that came back multiple times early days of ZoCo to prove its importance.

Callan Harrington  23:28

How did you think about when to hire? Managing the ebbs and flows that just come naturally with a service business? Especially because you're working bigger contracts, as I understand it, right?

Lacey Picazo  23:38

You've got it. Yeah. You know, I will tell you what my philosophy was the first three to five years of ZoCo, that really helped me get over the hump. So I had a wonderful CPA at that time, who gave me the advice when I was trying to decide, do I have enough capital to grow? Do I have enough capital to hire a team? Does this make sense? He said, "Lacey, when you're just starting out, if you have three months of expenses in the bank, three months of salary, of overhead, plus that for the person you'd like to hire, you're good, you're golden. Hire that person. Most agencies run only a couple of months of visibility out, you're fine." Well, I'll tell you those first few years, I actually doubled that because it made me sleep better at night. So if I had six months of expenses, of revenue of salary in the bank, then I felt confident, okay, I can hire this person. That's changed over time as ouroverhead has gotten a lot greater, right. But I think like that mentality of how far can you predict into the future? What can you forecast? What can you rely on and what things might be at risk that are in your control? Putting that on the table to weigh the decision has been helpful for how we've decided when and how to add a teammate, and it's got us to a point where, knock on wood, we've never had to cut teammates, we've never had to do layoffs. And can I promise that'll be our next decade? I sure hope so. Right? The last couple of years have taught us nothing is predictable, but I think how we've managed forcasting in our finances has really helped.

Callan Harrington  25:02

Let's talk about that a little bit. Because that's pretty incredible for a services based business, working with good size client. Is it that you have a really consistent pipeline? Or is it that you're conservative with how you hire, or what does that look like?

Lacey Picazo  25:17

Oh, gosh, it's probably a lot of things. We are conservative with how we hire, we're not only conservative from a financial standpoint, we're very strict maybe isn't the right word, but we're very considerate of making sure people are good values fit, making sure that they're going to align with our culture and thrive here. But that sometimes means it takes us longer to hire, which naturally makes us more conservative with hiring. But I mean, I have a really excellent VP of Ops, VP of Finance. The reason she's on our team is because somebody told me once, "hire people that are smarter than you. Hire people that can do things you can't." And so bringing Sarah onto our team, she's been on our team almost six years now and is a true gem. Really helped elevate my ability to forecast and think about our finances in different ways, to build control charts, to see anomalies in our data, to understand those things better. But we're also really thoughtful with what clients we bring into the fold, Callan. Will this be a client that we know is going to make a meaningful referral on the other side of this? Because we know we're going to knock it out of the park. This is a problem we can absolutely run with. And are they a great values fit? Is the individual that we're working with, that's going to be our champion internally at the client? Are they going to see the work how we see it and share a lot of our values for how we work? Or might there be some conflicts there that are going to create friction later? And if the answer to that is yes, it's probably not a client we should pursue. And so those things I think, have helped keep us out of hot water from a pipeline, from a sales, from a client relationship perspective. That's really paid it forward, and helped us be more stable as we've built the business.

Callan Harrington  26:55

Yeah. Were you always that narrow on kind of your ideal customer profile, like you're describing? Or did you have to get it wrong a few times before you started to get it right and kind of narrowing that down? What did that look like?

Lacey Picazo  27:06

I mean, everything in our business is a big experiment. Right? So we're constantly iterating testing and learning and narrowing. I wouldn't say- there are a lot of things that we've always had right. Our vision's maintained pretty persistently, and the core of the type of work we do has been consistent throughout our decade. But on the client side, I love that you say it sounds like we're narrow, because I would say a lot of people actually have a hard time bucketing our clients because they are fairly diverse. But they're very similar from internal needs standpoint, like what are their challenges? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? And what are their value sets? And what are they looking for in a partner? So when those things align with our services, and how we want to show up in our work, it's a great fit. From an industry standpoint, from a size a client standpoint, there's a lot of diversity, like we're more known for working with high growth, high potential startups, typically VC backed series A plus. We work with a ton of really big corporates as well, that are trying to figure out how do we do product better? How do we utilize the power of UX within our company to make sure we're building the right experiences for our customers? But there's a lot of differences between a 300 person startup and a 10,000 person corporate enterprise, right? From a maturity standpoint, from how quickly they make decisions, how they operate. So there's actually a fair amount of diversity in our clients. But we figured out what are the bands and kind of the non negotiables of how we make decisions within a client. And they're a bit more qualitative than how an agency would typically try and group their clients.

Callan Harrington  28:38

How do you validate those more qualitative metrics than quantitative? In my mind, it's super easy to figure out. They've got their series A, they've got thirty employees, they've got to go to ten million, it's a SaaS business. That one you could find, you can go on CrunchBase and essentially get all that. How do you qualify for more of those quantitative metrics? I love that as a way to kind of narrow that down. How do you do that?

Lacey Picazo  29:00

Well, I'll tell you, we've got a bit of a leg up because human factors research is a big part of our business, right? And so myself and my teammates who facilitate those first calls, Andrew on my team, our VP of experience. He facilitates a lot of those calls with me. And so we're good at kind of treating those as a research opportunity. We ask a lot more questions than we provide the answers in those calls, to understand how people are processing challenges, what they've done to solve those challenges, how they view the future and what they might want to do or experiment in to solve those challenges. And so by asking really good questions to understand how a team's working today, how decisions are being made, and how they like to collaborate and work with others, it helps us get a good gut feel for would this be a good partner? And I'll tell you, you know, like sometimes we're only having two hours of conversation, right, before finalizing it, but our gut has gotten really good. As far as the type of questions we ask, what we're looking for, all the clients we've worked with in recent years. Our team is just so thrilled. On paper, it might be like, oh, this is the company? That's what they do? Is that very exciting? I don't know. And then they get in the kickoff, and they're like, these people are phenomenal, I would go to war for them. They're amazing. We have such great clients and client partnerships. But I think it's really honing how we identify who are the people that we actually want to work with, and who are going to collaborate with us in such a way where we can all meet our potential and thrive.

Callan Harrington  30:26

As you got to the different stages of growth with the company, how did you need to evolve to be the right CEO at that next level?

Lacey Picazo  30:36

Yeah, let's see... I have evolved a lot. And a big part of that is just been having great mentorships, friends, and partners in the community. I've been in lots of roundtable groups and peer circles to learn from others, and to help challenge my own perspectives and see where I have gaps. There's nothing better than talking with the same group of friends over years, and you're presenting a problem to them, hey, this is what I'm facing. And they say, you might have it wrong, this might actually be a you issue, not a them issue, because I've seen this problem before. Right? And so that has been really helpful, being more open minded and being highly flexible to think through, well, do I have it right? Or might there actually be something that's missing in my perspective? How do I test that in the smallest way possible to know if it's right or not? I think what's really been helpful in my leadership growth is one, being vulnerable enough to know I don't have it all figured out, let's learn from others. And then two, being curious enough to talk to other people and understand their perspectives at more than face value, even if they don't necessarily know what their perspectives are being able to have an open conversation to figure out, what is it that's missing? What are the fears that you have? What is it about this experience that's giving you challenge? That's really grown in my career and been valuable for helping build a really strong culture, a really strong team, and really strong relationships with our clients. But I think it's taken time to hone those skills. So, while I think they were present in the beginning, because so much of my background is in human factors and design, it took time to become really comfortable, where I can use them in basically all interactions that I'm having to try and understand how people work. How they work in experiences and how they work in systems. And that applies not just the projects we do, but to all the people that I interact with, because we're really a people business.

Callan Harrington  32:29

Yeah, that makes sense. You brought up vulnerability a few times. So, being in the CEO position, how do you balance vulnerability versus confidence, right? And like to give you an example, something that I struggled with was being vulnerable about kind of the situation, versus being confident about kind of what's going on with the company. And fear of- and this is I'd say, a personal fear, that they're thinking, "well, if Callen's worried about what's going on, then I'm going to be worried about what's going on." I got over that more as I got later in my career and realized that you just kind of have to show some of that stuff. But how do you balance that?

Lacey Picazo  33:06

Well, there is a balance, but I'll tell you that I over-index on transparency. And it has always paid off, even at times where I expected the team to not have that reaction. I think of building a relationship is deposits and withdrawals, right? I am constantly trying to make deposits from a transparency standpoint. So the team knows what's keeping me up at night, where we're at, how we're doing financially, what our goals and our aims are. So they understand where leadership's spending time and why. And so they can challenge those assumptions and push back on them or redirect and have a say, which really helps them feel empowered. And not just feel, but be empowered to shape where this company is going. But by making those deposits, they have my back. And so you know, even though we've been a pretty stable company across ten years, any studio and service based business, we've had our ups and downs, right? And I found by talking about those challenges with the team openly and wondering, oh, gosh, are they going to turn tail and run now? Is this a challenge they want to persist through? Actually, the opposite has happened at basically every corner right, where they've rallied and said, okay, like, that's good to know. Now I know, now, it's clear what I must do in order to help support that problem. And so it's no longer ambiguous or fear based, it's very clear, black and white, I know what's going on. I know what I must do in order to help. So let's do it. Let's rally the troops. And I think that that has been really helpful. That said, you don't want to give unnecessary stress or burden to your team either. Right? So if it's not something that requires being open hearted about that's going to need a ton of context in order for everyone to feel comfort, like they're not all problems that I would bring to the team as openly. It just depends, right? Because I've also found, you know, if you wind up everybody about everything that's in your head at all times, then they have no space for their own concerns and challenges and anxieties, right? And so you have to be thoughtful about what are you burdening the team with or not. But also knowing this is a team sport. And if they don't know what's on your mind, they can't help. And worse, they're probably going to create their own stories for what's on your mind if you've left the gap to fill. And so that's been really helpful for creating a culture of transparency and trust and empowerment as being a lot more transparent, being willing to be vulnerable. Be willing to say, I don't know about this, this is what I'm thinking, but you tell me what you think. And having more open conversations about it.

Callan Harrington  35:31

Do you find for those spots where, like, where you don't want to just kind of, you know, overburden them with everything that's going on? Is that where that peer network and mentors? Is that where those really come into place for you?

Lacey Picazo  35:46

Yes, yes. One of the most instrumental parts of my career has been being in the Vistage group. I've also been in a couple of founder peer circles, technology peer circles. But Artie Isaac was one of my college professors, and I kind of followed him after leaving university and found out he was leading a Vistage group and chairing that group. And so I was very eager, when I started ZoCo, to join that and learn from others to kind of, you know, see around corners cover my own blind spots. And that was immensely helpful. And we always say, in that group, which I'm still in today, you bring the top and bottom 5% of your challenges to a Vistage group. It's not just the like surface level, how do I figure out this thing that doesn't really matter that much? It's oh, man, I'm going through something dark and deep and scary that I wouldn't just talk about at any coffee meeting with anybody, or really in any public setting, right? This is challenging. This is hard. I've seen people go through all sorts of things over the years. Lots of tears have been shed, lots of hugs, but then also lots of triumphs and rah-rah moments. And so having that kind of personal cheerleading squad that almost acts as a board, it's been really, really helpful to me.

Callan Harrington  36:57

What comes next for you in your career?

Lacey Picazo  37:00

Yeah, I am constantly looking for opportunities to learn and grow. As far as for ZoCo?  ZoCo sees the next decade as an opportunity to grow and scale our impact, continue to evangelize the power of UX within software, within digital experiences. We love nothing more than seeing the teams we work within, grow, see their impact seen and heard within their companies. We want those teams to grow, rather than us replace them. And so from a ZoCo standpoint, we're gonna keep doing what we've set out to do. For me, personally, I am really loving this current phase of business, to where I continue to narrow and narrow. Where do I find the most impact? Where do I find the most purpose at work? And what am I still doing that I don't necessarily want to be doing? Right? What are the things that I still have to do in order to make the business successful, but may not have to do in the future? And so we've continued to grow our team grow their abilities, and leadership, grow our leadership team to take on more of those things. And so I'm really looking forward to having a bit more space to experiment to find out where else, and how, can I add value, add extra creativity within the business in the season ahead.

Callan Harrington  38:14

If you can have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be? And what advice would you give them?

Lacey Picazo  38:23

Gosh, I would say, and this resonates with, you know, my story about taking the sales position, is just being confident and comfortable asking for exactly what you want. Every time I do, it has led to better things. Like the first job I ever got out of school happened because I talked to a speaker who had come in from an agency. I followed him out into the hallway after his talk, and I said, I want to work for you. What are the next steps? How do I follow up? And I took the initiative to do it. There are plenty of stories like that. But it's also being clear on what you don't want to do. It's being clear on: well, if I will do this, what are the boundaries that I'll do it within? Rather than saying yes to things, being Midwest nice, right? Oh, sure. Fine, that'll be fine. I remember having a conversation with Artie, where I said to him, you know, now that I have three kids, got three girls, I'm not that interested in doing as many evening events. Whether it's speaking, whether it's showing up for a roundtable group, what have you. Even if it's something I really value, evening events are going to be hard. I think I might limit these to like, one a month. We'll leave it at that. And he said, I agree with that. That's a great boundary to set. Literally the next day, the universe decided to challenge me, and I got a request for my first ever keynote talk. And it was on a topic I was really energized about, really excited to support with. But it was at 6pm. And so I thought okay, this is the universe saying, "did you mean it? Are you actually going to hold that as a boundary? Or are you going to kind of sway on that because this is a cool opportunity in something else you've said you want to do?" But I thought to that conversation for asking about exactly what I want. I talked to Artie about it. And he said, "well, under what terms would you do it?" Right? Can you set a boundary that would make that attractive? And so I went back like a little nervous. Oh, this sounds really egotistical, but I'm just gonna say it. I said, well, what if I did this, but I would only do it if I'm done and out of there by 5:30, which means you'd have to change your whole event schedule. And I thought for sure, like, oh that's like a rude ask. I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't ask that. But she said yes. And the event organizers shifted the times of the event, I ended up speaking at four o'clock, I was out of there by little before 5:30. So I got to pick up my kids, have dinner with my family. And it was just such an amazing learning. Okay, that wasn't that scary. And if the other option was I was going to say no, anyway, why not ask, right? Why not just say, well, no. And I would do it if these were the terms instead, giving the other person some optionality. And it was just a powerful reminder to ask for what you want, to not be afraid that you're looking like you need too much or that you're being difficult or challenging. It's okay. It's okay to say no. It's okay to ask for what your boundaries are and play within those.

Callan Harrington  41:19

I can't think of a better story to wrap this up on. That is fantastic! Lacey, thanks so much for coming on the show today. This has been excellent.

Lacey Picazo  41:28

Thank you, Callan, I appreciate it.

Callan Harrington  41:34

I hope you enjoyed Lacey and I's conversation. One of the biggest takeaways that I personally got from the show was just that power of focus and intentionality. It's something I'm working to get better on, and I learned a ton in this conversation with Lacey. If you want to learn more about Lacey, you could find her on LinkedIn. Or you can also find her at ZoCo design that's: zocodesign.com Also, if you liked the episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks again for listening and I will see you next week.