Transcribed by https://otter.ai - this transcript is mostly machine-generated and may contain errors. [Intro music] Skipper Chong Warson Hi. I'm Skipper Chong Warson, and this is the second season of the How This Works show. I'm actually future Skipper. I'm re-recording the intro to say that we had a technical hiccup with Drew's video quality right around 36 minutes in. But it doesn't impact our discussion other than the visuals. So let's get back to the show. Have you ever wondered how people become good at what they do? That's what the focus of this show is. I dive into their journeys, how they began, where they are today, and the insights that they've gained along the way. Today. I've Drew Burdick with me. He has over 15 years of experience in the areas of strategy, innovation and design, building products and services through the lens of customer experience. He founded and runs StealthX. Drew, thanks for joining me today. Drew Burdick Yeah, thanks for having me glad to be here. Skipper Chong Warson So we opened the show talking about our respective pronouns, mine are he/him. What are yours? Drew Burdick Mine are he/him as well. Skipper Chong Warson So if you wouldn't mind just briefly introducing yourself, I gave some of it away in the show's intro, but just take a few sentences and tell us a little bit more about you before we dive in a little deeper. Drew Burdick I'm the managing partner at StealthX, an agency or consultancy that I launched six months ago. Prior to that, I was a partner at a firm called Slalom and I was leading the experience strategy design practice there. So I had about 30 folks reporting into me, combination of strategist, researchers and designers, and we worked primarily with Fortune 500 but also some mid sized companies on designing and building digital products, as well as helping them with service design and customer experience, customer strategy, those kinds of things. So yeah, that's a little bit about me. I've also had an agency in my past life. I worked at a company called Red Ventures. I've worked at a company called AIG so kind of worked in a lot of different industries and a lot of different sizes and shapes of companies. And yeah, excited to get back to entrepreneurship this year. It's been a fun road so far. Skipper Chong Warson So, Drew before we leave the opening sequence of questions, what's something that's unexpected or a surprising detail about yourself that you'd be comfortable sharing? Drew Burdick I've got two. So one is I grew up overseas in the Philippines from 4-18, which is a bit unusual. And then in my earlier career, I started a clothing brand around electronic music as kind of a just a side hobby, and it turned into something that was much bigger than I expected. We were traveling around festivals and concerts around the country, and we had 163 street team members. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I burned out pretty hardcore, though. I was working crazy hours, and it was ultimately what kind of caused me to say, I think I need to go work a job, like a regular job, for a little while. Skipper Chong Warson Interesting, I wonder how that plays into your experience of music today, like, how you experience music after that? Drew Burdick Yeah, um, so, a little bit more backstory. In college, I was big in electronic music, so we would actually throw, like, raves and stuff in our apartments, and we'd have, you know, like 75 people jammed into this tiny little space. Skipper Chong Warson (Laughs) Drew Burdick And one of my buddies was a DJ, and so we would, we would have these events. And anyway, I music is just something that I'm super passionate about, the design, spit and design as well. And so I created this company as that intersection. And, you know, after kind of moving on and working in corporate for a period of time, music continues to be something that inspires me, something that I'm really passionate about. I listen to music all the time. I have a lot of friends who are in music. And then, you know, I actually come from a pretty musical family, both my parents, my dad, like, has a bachelor's in music education. And my parents met in marching band and so, and my, you know, my brother can, like, play many instruments by year. So anyway -- music's deeply part of kind of who I am. Skipper Chong Warson So let's take a left turn, and let's talk a little bit about how you got interested in design, from music to design. Like, how did you get started? Like, what was the, what was the germ of that? What was the beginning of that for you? Drew Burdick Yeah, so I went to a liberal arts college, and I double majored in political science and communication, so, like, literally nothing to do with what I'm doing now, at one point, I thought I was, you know, I was big into Che Guevara. And I thought I was, I was big into Latin American politics. I thought I was going to do something in the kind of political landscape. And my final year of college, I met a guy who had an agency, and I was interning for this organization, and he was on their board, and he was like, Hey, you're kind of the creative guy. Have you ever thought about being a designer? And my in high school, I was big into art, so my art teacher kind of mentioned to me, like, Hey, you know, design, my You're not a great artist, you're like a B artist, but you might be a decent designer. And I was like, okay -- Skipper Chong Warson It's like a veiled compliment? Was that a compliment? Drew Burdick It's like, okay, thank you? So this guy who kind of offered me this, like, Hey, I've got this internship you could do for my agency. You could, I'll teach you some, you know, teach you the ropes, whatever. And so I joined, and it was like, I don't know, love at first sight, like he gave me a bootleg copy of Photoshop Illustrator. It was like, CS2. And I was like, man, this is awesome. I like, how have I never done this? And so I pretty much like that from that point on, was like, I want to, you know, I want my career to be in the design universe in some form or fashion. So I started more in the graphic design kind of creative agency type of world. And I was freelancing. So I graduated 2009 when I graduated, the economy was terrible. There were no jobs available. I was just like doing whatever I could to pay the bills. I was, I was, I was valet at Ritz Carlton for a bit. I was parked, you know, I was washing windows as a side job. I was doing this, like concrete curbing company, okay? And all the while I was like, freelancing, whatever projects I could get. I was doing logos. I was doing, you know, flyers, business cards, and in parallel, I was doing the clothing line as just kind of like a fun little creative outlet. And both of them started to take off at around the same time. This was around 2010, or so, and so I had clients that I was starting to bring in as a freelancer. And then I had, I was going out and selling the T shirts and hats and things that I was designing and and, yeah, so that's kind of how it all sort of started. And it was from there i i started to have more and more work, too much work. So I started to hire people to help me, you know. And we had a small agency, and we're mostly working with kind of small, medium sized companies in the southeast. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Drew Burdick Yeah. And then just kept kind of growing, and it it evolved over time from graphic design, creative, you know, design to digital like group and design websites and things like that. And then moved into UX and product and and then kind of eventually led into more, like, I say, like, higher level innovation, customer strategy, service design, yeah, thinking more of that macro level. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick But it all kind of began with a bootleg copy of Photoshop. Skipper Chong Warson It all starts with the bootleg copy of Photoshop. Drew Burdick I think, yeah, that's right. Skipper Chong Warson So, it sounds like from and we've chatted before -- we had a pre conversation before recording this, and then you and I have chatted on a couple of different occasions, but it sounds like StealthX, your business also encompasses a lot of these same areas as well. Drew Burdick Yeah, we so for a bit of context, StealthX, we do customer strategy, product design and software engineering. And the thesis behind it is, I think there's the world is changing so rapidly with AI and a lot of these bigger companies, just frankly, can't move fast enough to be able to to meet the needs of companies, you know, like in the design universe. And so I earlier this year, it was like, Okay, I think it's time for me to move on and goes, you know, I want to be at the forefront of the tidal wave. And I think a team of, you know, five can punch harder than a team of 55 now because of all the capabilities that are available. So anyway, that's part of why I left, and now we're working with mostly good market companies, helping them enhance their customer and user experience. And it's combination of some clients who are doing more strategic type work, like you know, helping them think through their vision and their strategy, and then others were, we're actually doing more, you know, executing on product design. So we're, like, helping them redesign right now. We're working with a company, we're helping them redesign some enterprise software, and we've done the like, user research before. We're doing usability testing, those kinds of things. And, like, we built an e-commerce experience for a manufacturing company. So we've done a lot of, like, different types of things, but it's been, it's been a blast, and really, the way that we're approaching it is scrappy. And to kind of bring it back to my story, like, I've been a very scrappy person, kind of just figure it out, kind of, you know, the story arc of my life, it's been, there's very unorthodox doesn't really fit any kind of like typical mold. And so I've infused that into how we work and how we operate. And really, you know, try to focus on, how do we create value? And, you know, how do we be scrappy and have a kind of figure it out mindset? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah . So lest we get too caught up in jargon, because there's lots of jargon out there in the world, you know, we've talked about, you know, user experience, we've talked about product design, we've talked about service design. Lots of different terms are flying around, but the core of your business is really focused on this notion of customer experience. Can you break that apart for me a little bit, and why that's so important in your eyes and in your client's eyes? Drew Burdick Yeah, for sure. I think the simplest way to put it is as things continue to I call it like, become the sea of sameness, right? Like everybody is like fast, easy and cheap. Is the status quo now, right? And I think as you look forward to the next 5-10+ years, the businesses and the brands that are going to win in the market are the ones that have differentiated customer experience, meaning that they've, they've intentionally designed both the digital things and the physical things in a way that makes customers, you know, surprise and delight this, like, wow, this is so unique. How did they know, like, those kinds of moments? Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Drew Burdick And that's really what we try and inspire to to create, is those, those moments, those magical moments for customers. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick Where, you know, it engages them in a different way, creates brand loyalty, creates trust, and ultimately, from a business standpoint, it drives customer lifetime value, revenue, etc. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick So that's kind of the reason, to your point, there's a lot of buzzwords and jargon, but that's really kind of at the heart of what we're trying to achieve, is helping businesses surprise and delight their customers. Skipper Chong Warson Gotcha, yeah, I think especially in this day and age where there's so many metrics and frameworks and approaches to work, this notion of how, what is the one thing that we can focus on? And for most businesses, it's around, who's going to buy this product or service? Drew Burdick Yeah, agree. I mean, I think it's easy -- a lot of businesses get caught up in the efficiency, especially right now, 2024. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Drew Burdick There's a lot of emphasis on, like, efficiency, streamlining, optimizing, improving, but like, that's only going to get you so far. I believe you know, like, you're gonna, you're gonna run into a wall at some point where you know everybody's doing that. Everybody's like set, fast, easy and cheap. And so you have to think about, how do you elevate the experience? How do you create something that's different and creates additional value, or differentiated value? And and there's a lot of like, ways to solve that problem. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Drew Burdick You know, like, strip away all the jargon. It's basically just like, who are the humans at the middle of it? What do they even care about, and what are the things you need to change to create that for them? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, I just talked to Andy Polaine in the one of the last episodes, and he really boiled it down in a way that I hadn't heard it done quite as succinctly. But this notion of all businesses have a couple of different motives, or a few different motives, and the motives involve making money, saving money, saving time and mitigating risk, right? Which is also in his mind, like a stand in for saving or making money. So I think by being really tactical and focused on, well, what is the point of this business, this feature that we're building, how does it either win hearts and minds of customers or build more revenue, or whatever it is that it's meant to do? How do we focus in on that outcome that we want to accomplish? Drew Burdick Yeah, it's, I think it's also easy for design folks like you and I to forget that, that at the end of the day, our job is to help businesses make or save money. Skipper Chong Warson Right? Drew Burdick And I think there's been a bit of a we've kind of got distracted. You know? It's like we've done a lot of navel gazing as an industry. We've done a lot of like, you know, problem. We admire the problem too much, and we kind of forget like, hey, the reason why we're here is to help these organizations make money or save money, and we can, I think that the opportunity is as a part of that, how we infuse human-centered thinking and into the work, and how do we bring that into the business where we are making things more inclusive, more accessible, you know, making it better for people, considering the the edge cases and, you know, the pain that we may be creating unintentionally, and I think that's part of our role. But I think we have to still remember, like, ultimately, the reason why we have jobs is to help businesses make and save money. And I think other functions implicitly understand that and know that. And I think the design industry, we've kind of lost the script a little bit on that piece. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, well, and I don't mean to take us too far off of it into a sidebar, but I feel like there's something that's happened in the last -- let's just time block it to last 10 years and say that design has now become much more entrenched with this notion of business. Like, business outcomes, like, how can we align to business goals? How can we be much more accountable for the things that we do? Not just, Oh, this looks better, right? Just the aesthetic side of it, but how does it perform? What is the improvement? What is the the new feature or the substantive matter of it. And I think by falling into the business side of things now, it's become far more serious. And so I actually want to switch from talking about customer experience broadly and flip into your business at StealthX. How have you thought about customer experience, not just for your clients, but through the lens of building StealthX, like, how does that customer experience layer look like for you? Drew Burdick Yeah, it's a great question. So one of the things we've been working on is how we the process of working with us is a great experience for our clients. So there's kind of this, like we're helping our clients design better experiences for their customers, but we're also trying to design a great experience of working with StealthX. And so that looks a lot of different ways, but some of the ways that you know we think about like, we'll hold special events where we'll invite our clients to these kind of unique events where we're focusing on community and connection. Other things that we'll do is big on, you know, giving gifts. Obviously there's some like, especially publicly traded companies, you get the considerations around giving too much or whatever, like, there's policies around that, but anti corruption, bribery laws or whatever, but sure, giving special, thoughtful, personalized gifts, right? Also thinking through the client journey of, you know, from the moment they kind of first interact with us to, you know, the end of a project, what are the different moments in that journey? And how do we make sure that it's easy to work with us? It's clear, like they know kind of what to expect, and we're showing up in a more thoughtful way than just executing as a vendor, which a lot of I think vendors, that's what that's how they approach it. It's just like, we have to save the work. We did the work. Thank you for your money, and we walk away, right? And so we're trying to be much more thoughtful about that. So yeah, anyway, that's, that's kind of one of the things -- and then, you know, there's a lot of other we have a lot of ideas for next year in terms of how we want to continue to expand on that idea, I've actually been working with a client recently. They're a B2B company, and we've been architecting kind of their client journey. And it's really fascinating. We've been talking about a lot of these really, like, unique experiences that you can provide to their client that will have those, like, surprise and delight moments, you. It establishes the brand of their mind as, like, something different than just a vendor, but more true, trusted partner and advisor. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Drew Burdick And so some of those, like conversations I've been having with them, is triggering ideas for us and like, how we can help better served clients? Skipper Chong Warson Well, there's also that notion of working on the business versus working in the business, and it's interesting that you're talking about this B2B client, and how that your work with them is actually informing your own so it's like you're using that work together as a kind of qualitative research. You know, the design industry is evolving rapidly. You know, with the notion of AI, how product intersects with marketing and customer experience, what sort of shifts are you foreseeing like on the horizon? We're recording at the end of December, this episode will probably come out in 2025, what are the things that you see sort of coming up? Drew Burdick Yeah, it's funny. I just, I had a podcast recently on this kind of topic, and one of the things that I feel pretty strongly about is, you look at the market, there's a lot of layoffs, a lot of like cuts. The market is, you know, full of folks who are trying to find their next, their next gig. Drew Burdick Yeah. Drew Burdick And I think it signals to this notion that maybe, like the golden age of large design organizations plotting along, and kind of an agile, you know, agile -- Skipper Chong Warson Agile-ish. Drew Burdick Yeah, is maybe on its way out. I think you're gonna start to see, in my opinion. I think you're gonna start to see a lot more small teams that are delivering at like faster and sort of like, higher capacity and higher velocity. And I think you're also gonna see like this interesting thing happening right now where it's like this network of freelancers and fractional folks. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick Which is, you're right, how we met. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick And you've got people who they they've either been laid off or quit, and now they're kind of putting out their own shingle, and they're operating as an independent contractor, consultant, freelancer, whatever. And you're starting to see this kind of network effect where you can get the best of the best of, like, all these different skills and abilities that you can bring together to create, like a team of Avengers that can deliver even more, you know, value, than if you build your own in-house team. And so I think, obviously, like the design, there's a lot of folks that I talk to about this, and they get, like, really uncomfortable with that idea. Uncomfortable with that idea, because they're like, but how am I going to get paid? And how am I going to get benefits? Am I going to get a salary? Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Drew Burdick And I think it's the if you've ever read the book, Who Moved My Cheese, it's a classic business book, great allegory in there talks about, you know, two people and too nice. And they, every day, they go in and get find the cheese. And one day, the cheese disappears. And they had, like, people had, like, set up homes and, you know, whatever. And the mice, the names were Sniff and Scurry and Hem and Haw. So the Sniff and Scurry like had already kind of seen that writing on the wall. And so they went back out of the maze to go find more cheese. But people were, like, hemming and hawing, like, How dare the cheese be moved? And I think that as designers, you know, I want to be the Sniff and Scurry and the story and, like, not kind of, like, slam my fist on the table and demand that things go back to the way they were. It's like, it's just where we are, you know. And so, yeah, I think it's gonna, people are gonna have to adjust to not having the sort of, like, safety net of a large organization that you're, you know, and massive teams you can just hide in and, like, chip away at, like, one feature for years, right? I think you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to deliver more value, and you're gonna have to do it more efficiently and more nimbly than ever before. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, yeah. I hear you and I the notion of change is hard, whether that change is foisted upon you or it comes to you, right? And there's all sorts of categories of change, big change, little change. I know a variety of people who've been part of reduction in forces. You know, over the course of the year, some people have been out of work for months, if not years, and I think it's just a really hard place right now, especially those folks who have come out of boot camps and some of those really formulated frameworks of learning, of saying, Well, I've done all this work. I have all these examples that are sort of textbook perfect, but they're not real work examples. So I think it's, I think it's challenging to have so many sort of a supply demand -- it's not a problem. And I don't mean to reduce people to, you know, sort of dots and and just like a bucket of people, but I do think there's a challenge right now around how best to utilize designers who may not have a full skill set or an articulated skill set. Drew Burdick Yeah, I agree. And it's funny, I wrote on the boot camp thing recently about like, I think it's a bad investment. I think the folks that are starting to get a boot camps now, I'd be like, I wouldn't do that, you know, like, the boot camp training is, is already behind. You know, it's kind of like, honestly, if you go to college and you and you're and you're learning about, you know, digital product design, except for a few programs, like, you're probably learning things that are already five years out of date, right? And that's just because academia can't create the curriculums fast enough to keep up with the pace. But, yeah, I think that especially folks who are more early career, junior, who will want who you know, are trying to build the experience and the muscle to. Be able to go, you know, be more in a senior or, you know, lead role. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick It's gonna be hard. And I think that's where the recommendation, the guidance, I've been giving for folks who've kind of approached me and said, Hey, can you count, you know, mentor me. Can you help me? The thing I've been recommending is, I'm like, look like you're gonna have to find ways to differentiate yourself, right? And that's probably going to mean that other things, like adjacent skills you're gonna have to learn. And also, I think, I think there's a world where designers are gonna have to start to learn more about their industry, right? Like, really get deep on an industry and become, like, you know, an authority on, I don't know, like, UX design for manufacturing companies, you know, of this size and scale and thinking, and you understand supply chain, and you understand logistics, and you understand all the nuance, right? Like, I think those are the kinds of things that people are gonna have to think about, which is a little bit different, right? I think most, most of us who come up and design, we've been fairly industry agnostic, or, you know, we haven't been like, as focused on like. I want to deeply understand this industry, and we're more like. I want to deeply understand this discipline. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Drew Burdick I think it might, it might flip a little bit right, because people, business leaders who are looking to bring on design folks, I think they will value more a design person who has the ability to deliver and understands the business implicitly. And it's not like, you know the having to learn, like, what you know in the insurance industry, what is an underwriter, and you're like, Okay, this isn't like, it needs you to understand, like, the underwriting process, so you can design a new underwriting platform, right, and be able to, like, more deeply understand the needs of the nuance. So, yeah. Skipper Chong Warson In our pre conversation, we talked about, I think you had just done Product Camp and some other community initiatives around the Charlotte, North Carolina area. And you talked earlier about how in some of the your areas of work, it's been focused on the sort of the southeast region of the United States. I wonder how you see this, this regional focus, but not to say you're only limited to that part of the country -- how this regional focus and collaboration might foster design and the way that entrepreneurism shows up in different places? Drew Burdick Yeah, so I think this is kind of like raw thoughts, but I've been actually thinking about this recently so you're getting my early formation or whatever. But I think if you look at COVID, everybody got comfortable with like remote work and virtual work. And I think there's this, there's this epidemic of loneliness right now, right where people, they miss being around other human beings. And if you're think about, you're working at home, you're by yourself, especially if you're working independently, you just like, long for human interaction and and so we've, we've really doubled down on, you know, focusing deeply on North Carolina because of where we live and it's where we are. And like, creating relationships, building on the relationships we have, and building new relationships, but also being at the nexus of the community, right? I think, I think there's a -- in business -- a competitive advantage you have is, like, if you the proximity, like, if you're close to someone else. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Drew Burdick You have an advantage over other people who are on the other side of the planet or whatever. Yeah, because you can, just like, last night, I went to this event. It was like 200 people called founders and funders event. It was a lot of Charlotte based entrepreneurs, investors, etc. I found, you know, founders, and I bumped into like 12 people that I know, and I've met several more folks. And you know, those relationships lead to opportunities. They lead to collaboration. And so, yeah, I think the proximity thing is important, and I think it's going to become even more important as the world becomes more like, fragmented and virtual, you know, like, I think people are going to long for those human moments. Skipper Chong Warson Plus one to that, because humans are social animals, this notion that we can do everything on a screen and we can it's possible you and I are having this conversation on a video call. But I think there's something much more impactful about how you can show up in person, in addition to these sort of virtual touch points as well. Drew Burdick Yeah, I've been thinking about this idea that like, like, with AI and AI is consuming everything, and it's everybody's afraid the thing that AI can't take a soul, right? It's like the human quality of the work and the interaction. And I think that's really where -- so as we go we look forward to the future of work, it's going to become more and more important to build the relationships to be human, to lean into those, you know, moments where you're having lunch with somebody, or you're having a coffee, or, you know, things like that -- that's where we've really invested a lot of time energy is cultivating community and connection, because I feel like that's really going to be a competitive advantage of the long term. And also, just, I like people, and I like talking to people. So it's, you know, it's, it's always fun to meet interesting people, hear their stories, learn from them, learn what makes them tick and you know, the combination of meeting all these different people, you learn a lot, and it introduces you to ideas you never would have learned otherwise. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, so we've gone through a number of topics, some of which we had pre-talked about, some of which we talked about before, and some of which, you know, have just come up in conversation, is there something that we haven't covered yet, something specific that you'd want to get into? Drew Burdick I think the only one that is like, in my head bouncing around, and maybe this is like a question to you, is like, there was a recent conference from Lenny, like Lenny and friends -- Skipper Chong Warson Lenny, Lenny Rachitsky. Drew Burdick Yeah, Lenny Rachitsky did it. And I think there, I mean, it was, like, a good amount of people went -- Skipper Chong Warson A ton of people went. Drew Burdick Yeah, it was, I was actually very surprising, like, I saw the pictures, wow. Okay, that's cool. Okay. Did not expect that to be as big as it was, but just shows the pent up demand for human relations interaction, right? Skipper Chong Warson Plus one. Drew Burdick But anyway, I, one of the topics that I came out of that, and has been kind of explored, you know, over the last month or two, since that event, was this notion that, like, product is dead. And there's a lot of, a lot of folks I've been talking to have have shared that, you know, they're in SAS companies that are trying to move into services -- Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Drew Burdick And you know, or they have products, and they're trying to figure out how to move out of it so that they're not commoditized. And I'm just curious. Like what's your take is on the commoditization of product, commoditization of design, and the shift to services? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. I think there's a lot underneath there. But I think this notion of moving towards how, as you said, the commoditization of product design, even development, right? If we're talking about what has been talked about as that three legged stool of product design. I think that all of these things have been declared dead at some point, right? Development is dead. We don't need to. We can use AI to code everything now. And I think I saw a statistic that well over 50% of all the code on GitHub is now somehow AI generated, or AI validated, or whatever it is. I don't, I don't know exactly how they can tell. And I would say the same thing for design, right? We've seen a plethora of design systems that have come out, and this notion of, if you just follow the pattern then, and this idea that everything looks the same right, so much uniformity in so many different kinds of products. And then I would say the same thing for product as well, that you know these practices and these frameworks and these processes that are followed -- if you're staying in your lane, and the example that you cited before around a designer waiting for the requirements or the brief or whatever it is that gets pitched over the fence. And if you say, here, make this. You're only doing that one thing. You're not asking the deeper questions. You're not functioning as a human designer, as a human product person, as a human developer, whatever your title is, unless you're digging underneath and asking why, and maybe even pulling some more information and context out of your coworkers, and even better, pull it out of your customers or users, and say, Why are we working on this thing? Ask those questions that can blow some of this stuff open and then figure out ways to move forward, like that, stuff that I don't think any of the AI tools can do, at least not yet. Drew Burdick Yeah, can't agree more, man, I feel like the all three legs of the stool are in a state of disruption. Skipper Chong Warson Plus one. Drew Burdick And, you know, I think it's, it's going to be really interesting to see how teams evolve, you know, like, I kind of did the Agile bunny ears a little bit ago. Like, it'll be interesting to see how, how that evolves. Like, I was, actually, I met with a product leader yesterday, and we were talking about, you know, frankly, like a lot of product owners, product managers, effectively, have been sort of tactical, sort of like execution type people. They're, you know, they're writing requirements, they're creating user stories, they're managing a backlog, whatever. And you're like, really, AI, can do all of that. Skipper Chong Warson Right? Drew Burdick Like you're more, you become more of this facilitator, and, like, I mean, I was telling her, I'm, like, you could have, you know, Otter or some meeting recording, and it capture all the data, take that transcript, get GPT to, like, break it into, like, a table with, you know, all the requirements and things that were described, put it, you know, import into JIRA, and you're good. And now you just, instead of spending like two weeks on writing requirements and creating user stories, it's just done. So it's like, now, what are you gonna do with that time to create value, right? And similarly, you know, whether we like it or not, Figma has is now learning like the, you know, learn the model is learning from the designs that we're creating, we all opt into it by using the platform. Skipper Chong Warson Yep. Drew Burdick So we're only a half step away from all the design systems that we've built and the patterns that we've created, AI will start to generate interface. So it's like, what are we going to do? Like, if it's that much faster for us to create interface -- Skipper Chong Warson Right. Drew Burdick -- to your point. Like, the things that we should be thinking about are, like, why? Like, why are they doing this? What? What's, where can we create more value? What are customers really struggling with? Like, it's, it's, it's the nuance that I think we're gonna have to really become experts at. Like -- Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick -- that AI to your point, yet hasn't been able to crack that nut and so, yeah, it'll be interesting to watch. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. So let's get into our closing questions. And these are closing questions that we ask all of our guests, but drew what's a significant lesson in your can be in your work or in your home life, like what's something that you wish you would have learned earlier? Drew Burdick Yeah. So I have this tattoo on my arm, and it says, do the next right thing. And in the middle of COVID, there's a lot of like, stuff going on, personally and professionally. It was just, it was, it was hard time, right? I think hard for many people, and that quote was something that really helped my wife and I through, like, that process of realizing, like, we don't have to know what the future holds. We don't have to know have all the answers, just do the next right thing. And sometimes, especially with everything we just talked about, where the world's changing so quickly, there's a lot of like, unknowns. Rather than getting afraid of, like, what could be or what might be, it's really saying, All right, let's just do the next right thing and then do the next right thing after that, and after that. And so that's something that I wish that I had learned earlier on, because I think it would have saved me a lot of stress and anxiety if I figure that out, and I tell everybody that, that's why, you know, I have it on my arm, because it's just such an important reminder, you know, in the in the days that we live in, where things are confusing and potentially, you know, like, can be scary. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick Sometimes you just gotta say, just put one foot in front of the other. I can't, you know, I can't figure it all out right now. So -- Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, so what's one thing that you're reading or listening to or watching right now that you'd recommend to the listeners? Drew Burdick Yeah, this is not something that I well, I should say it's something I've read multiple times and I continually go back to it. It's Daniel Coyle's Culture Code and Culture Playbook, excellent books, and I've been referencing it a lot lately, because I'm in the process of building a company, building a team, and it's a good reminder for me on what do I want the culture to be? Right? Culture is, I think, the kind of cumulative sum of your actions, small actions, build over time to become big ones. And so, yeah, I highly recommend it. Culture Playbook is great. Has, like, really practical, like, things that you can do within a team to to cultivate psychological safety, and yeah, become a high performing team. Skipper Chong Warson Nice. So let's say you have, unexpectedly, a day off, and you have unlimited resources to do whatever you want in that day. Do you only have the day? What do you do? Drew Burdick Take my family, go to the airport, see whatever the closest flight anywhere is, and hop on the flight and go. We actually talked about this quite a bit, like a couple years ago when there was a hurricane about to hit the East Coast, and my wife was like, hey, what if we just because we were the house we were living in, if the power went out, the water would go out, because our water pump would cut off. And so we had young kids at the time, and we're like. I don't really want to be in a house with no power, no water, with like, a three year old. So we we just, like, booked a flight to the, you know, the soonest flight out of town, and it was to San Antonio, and we ended up having a wonderful time. We, like, got to explore San Antonio, went to the Alamo, stayed at an Airbnb. It was a really good experience. But ever since we did that, that's one of the things that we love, is just like, get on a plane, go experience the food, the culture, you know, or and the people of that particular area. So -- Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, that's, that's a great suggestion. Just be really improvisational about it. And I hope everything was okay with the hurricane. Drew Burdick Yeah, it was good, actually, funny enough, it ended up, I think it detoured into the Atlantic and didn't end up hitting the coast. So we were, we flew to San Antonio for really no reason, but it was a good, a good memory. Skipper Chong Warson Nice. That's a great memory. So, do you have a prediction of something that will be true in a year? Drew Burdick I would say, at the rate that AI is moving, we will see more mass adoption of solopreneurs building products, like designing, building and launching products without a team of anybody. And I think it's going to start to cause the bigger companies to question, like, why do we have all these people sure when we could just use like cursor and replit and launch something now? So I think it's going to, I think there's probably going to be even more of an identity crisis for people in the three legged stool, because it's gonna feel like, what do we do? You know? Like, what? What happens now? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Drew Burdick So I think it's probably gonna happen sooner than we would like, I think it's gonna be probably the next 12 months where that was that it's already happening now, yeah, it's just gonna happen at an accelerator rate. I I've been using the metaphor of, we're in like the 64MB era of AI, actually, probably now we're in like the 256MB era. So for those who don't remember, like, computers used to have, you know, like 64MB of RAM, now we're at like 32GB, or, you know, 64GB, or whatever, right? And so it got faster and faster as time went on. And that's, I think, what's going to happen with AI. So I would, I would say, actually, if you are a designer or developer or product person, I would experiment like crazy. I would test all of these tools. I would play, you know, because I think the more that you're aware of what it's capable of, then you'll start to create ideas that you can kind of use to improve your workflow, improve the quality of the work that you're doing. I think if you see it as, like, almost a an Augment, like, if you're you know, it's like, it's if you're familiar with the Marvel cinematic universe, you know, like, if you're Captain America, right, he gets, like, the shot and becomes a super soldier. Like, that's kind of what it is, if you, if you think about it that way, right? If you have that attitude, like, this is going to help me, and I need to just look for ways to apply it. But, yeah. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, the augmentation. Drew Burdick Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson So Drew, where can people find out more about you? Find out more about StealthX? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. So I on social. You can look me up -- drewhburdick -- on pretty much every social platform also drewburdick.com. I also have a podcast which, a little sort of plug, Skipper will be on there here shortly. So catch, catch part two of this conversation over there, it's Building Great Experiences on Spotify, Apple podcasts and YouTube. And then StealthX, you can find us at stealthx.co. Drew Burdick Nice. Well, Drew, thanks a lot for your time. And as you said there will be kind of a part two where we flip the tables and drew will be asking me some questions, so tune in to Building Great Experiences. Drew Burdick Yeah, thanks, Skipper. [Outro music] Skipper Chong Warson And that's it for this episode of the How This Works show. We appreciate your support. Subscribe so you don't miss out. And until next time, remain ever curious and we'll talk again soon.