[Perspective Series] Breaking Bread and Building Trust With Josh DeTar

Josh DeTar is the EVP of Evangelism at Tyfone, Inc., a company that builds omnichannel digital banking and payments solutions for credit unions and community banks. He champions the use of technology to empower financial institutions to deepen member relationships and deliver seamless digital experiences. Josh’s personal credit union journey inspired his advocacy, having experienced the impact of community financial services firsthand before transitioning to the fintech industry.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:27] Josh DeTar discusses how Tyfone helps community financial institutions deliver strong digital banking

• [5:22] Why consumers hesitate to switch banks despite preferring community institutions

• [7:42] Why Josh’s title is EVP of Evangelism and what the role actually means

• [11:47] The origin of Tyfone’s red Chuck Taylors and what they symbolize

• [15:31] How Tyfone uses “breaking bread” to strengthen relationships in the sales process

• [20:44] Tyfone’s approach to addressing mistakes with brutal honesty

• [23:28] Why leaders fail at transparency — and how fear and ego play a role

• [30:35] The connection between internal culture and exceptional customer experience
  

In this episode…

Many financial institutions promise personalized service, yet customers often feel disconnected when outdated digital tools undermine that experience. Community banks and credit unions, despite strong relationship-driven missions, struggle to compete with the speed and polish of big-bank technology. How can smaller institutions overcome technical gaps while staying true to their human-centered values?

Josh DeTar, an expert in digital banking strategy and customer experience, explains how community institutions can bridge this divide through transparency, empathy, and deliberate relationship-building. He emphasizes the importance of listening closely to customer needs, building only what adds real value, and maintaining open communication — especially when mistakes occur. Josh’s approach encourages leaders to sit on the same side of the table with customers, foster trust early in the relationship, and create internal cultures where honesty and accountability thrive.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Josh DeTar, EVP of Evangelism at Tyfone, about elevating digital experiences for community financial institutions. Josh discusses the power of transparency, the role of culture in customer success, and why “breaking bread” — literally — helps strengthen relationships. He also explores long sales cycles, building features that matter, and leading with humility.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik!

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn

• Josh DeTar on LinkedIn

• Tyfone

• The Digital Banking Podcast

• "[Perspective Series] Authentic Connections: The Key to Winning Customers With Greg Bennick" on The Customer Wins

• "[Perspective Series] Storytelling Secrets to Winning Pitches With Ben Wiener" on The Customer Wins

• "[Perspective Series] From Mom’s Kitchen to Millions With Brandon Castaneda" on The Customer Wins

• "[Perspective Series] Redefining Hiring Transparency With Ty Peck" on The Customer Wins

• Ty Peck on LinkedIn

• Business Draft

Quotable Moments:

• “Bank of America is a monolith, man. They're a big institution. Yeah, they build everything from scratch.”

• “Sometimes it's a perception thing, and that's just an industry movement element that is really having to change consumers' perceptions.”

• “We literally break bread. Yeah, I know it's so many of the elements.”

• “Everything they do, they've got to think about massive scale.”

• “I argue the question is not what features do you have? It's why did you build the ones that you build, and why did you build them in the way that you did?”

Action Steps:

1. Lead with transparency in customer relationships: Being open about challenges and mistakes builds trust early while setting realistic expectations that strengthen long-term partnerships.

2. Sit on the same side of the table as your customers: Understanding their perspective allows you to create solutions that truly address their needs and positions you as a collaborative partner.

3. Build only the features that deliver real value: Prioritizing meaningful functionality ensures development resources focus on what customers actually use and strengthens the overall product-customer fit.

4. Cultivate internal cultures of honesty and vulnerability: When team members can openly admit mistakes, they improve faster and help create more authentic, accountable customer experiences.

5. Invest in relationship-driven customer touchpoints: Human-centered moments like visiting customers in person or “breaking bread” create emotional connections that help differentiate your business and build loyalty.

   
   

Sponsor for this episode...

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Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and, in turn, grow their business.

Richard Walker: 00:16

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Greg Bennick, keynote speaker and author. Ben Weiner, author of Fever Pitch, and Brandon Castaneda of EZ Bombs. Today is a special episode in my Perspective series, where I talk to people across industries and professions to gain insights and inspiration to improve customer experience in new ways. And today's guest is Josh DeTar, the EVP of Evangelism for Tyfone.

Today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms. Don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik! using Quik!. You'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions.

Visit Quick Forms to get started. Now, before I introduce today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Ty Peck, Co-Founder of Business Draft. Go check out the recent episode he was on and learn more about creating the ideal hiring experience. All right. Josh DeTar is the EVP of Evangelism at Tyfone.

He's a passionate advocate for leveraging technology to empower credit unions. A self-described tech geek whose tongue is purple from drinking the community financial institution Kool-Aid, Josh is renowned for transforming complex tech concepts into actionable strategies. Josh also hosts the Digital Banking Podcast, a top-ranked industry podcast where he's interviewed over 130 guests. Josh, welcome to The Customer Wins.

Josh DeTar: 02:01

Hey, thanks for having me, Rich. I'm stoked to be here, man.

Richard Walker: 02:05

Dude, it's awesome. When you and I first met, was so connected. So I've been looking forward to this. And for my audience who hasn't heard this podcast before, I'd love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. So, Josh, I want to understand your business a little bit better.

How does your company help people?

Josh DeTar: 02:27

So the simplest way to think about this is we help community financial institutions live the value proposition that they bring to communities of people, helping people and really empowering their financial lives, health, and futures. And we empower them through digital means to be able to live that mission. So we provide digital banking solutions that allow you, as a consumer, to connect with your community, financial institution through your phone, your computer, and be able to have a beautiful relationship where they can actually help you and your financial life.

Richard Walker: 03:06

So does that mean that Typhoon is the digital banking for credit unions? Like I have Bank of America personally so I can pay my bills, but I also have USC credit union, and I can transfer money and pay bills. So is that what you guys have built? Is that digital banking experience?

Josh DeTar: 03:20

Yep. Yeah. So we're a white label solution right. So you'll never see our brand really out in the wild if you're, you know, a consumer of a community financial institution. Yeah.

So we'd work with your credit union to build out that digital experience for you.

Richard Walker: 03:35

How challenging is it to compete with the mega banks? You know, I mean, Bank of America builds everything themselves. They have how much money to build it all? What does that look like? Competing with them and trying to improve upon the experience and do better?

Josh DeTar: 03:51

I'm curious. Rich, you're a car guy. How easy do you think it would be to beat a semi truck around a race track in a race car?

Richard Walker: 04:01

Well, I mean, that's super fast, right? Yeah, I mean, I expect so.

Josh DeTar: 04:06

Bank of America is a monolith, man. They're a big institution. Yeah, they build everything from scratch. But everything they do, they've got to think about massive scale. They've got layers of complexity.

Everything from tech debt to politics to, you know, 17 different approval processes that they've got to go through to move the needle. Community financial institutions don't have that right. I argue they can actually move significantly faster. What's interesting is that if you pull us consumers and you say, hey, if I were to give you these differences between these two types of financial institutions, which one would you prefer to do your business with? Nine out of ten people say, I'd rather do business with a community financial institution, Constitution.

But you know, the number one reason why they don't is the technology side.

Richard Walker: 05:04

Actually, yes. That's how I felt. I mean, I've been with Bank of America forever since I was a teenager, and the thought about switching all my bill pays and direct deposits and all those things is the one thing that I just can't get my head around. So how do you get people to change?

Josh DeTar: 05:22

Yeah. I mean, change is tough, right? And so for the community financial institution space, like I said, the reason that people choose not to do business with them many times is because of either the reality or the perception that the technology is not as good at the community Fi as it is with the Big Bang right now. I called out kind of that distinction between perception and reality. Sometimes it is a reality and the community Fi is on a really old tech stack.

That's where we can come in and help, right? Sometimes it's a perception thing, and that's just an industry movement element that is really having to change consumers' perceptions that the small fish don't have the tech that they're looking for. So that's kind of a whole separate conversation. But in the space where it is a reality, absolutely. That's where we step in and we can help uplevel the technology.

And so it puts the community at the credit union or community bank on a level playing field. And then it's a competition about relationships. And again I you know, think about your credit union and Bank of America. Who cares more about building a relationship with you and knowing you as an individual and a human and a person more? It's probably the credit union, right?

Richard Walker: 06:43

It is because they serve members. Look, I had a fascinating discussion with a credit union recently. You know, we sell into financial services and forms are a really big part of doing transactions. And a lot of the firms we work with in wealth management are focused on high net worth, ultra high net worth, people with a lot of money. And the credit union said we don't have that choice.

A member is a member to us, whether they have a dollar to invest or a 10 million to invest. We're going to serve them and help them no matter what. So their perception of scale or their need to scale is different in a lot of ways, but it's because they care about their members, right?

Josh DeTar: 07:19

Yep.

Richard Walker: 07:20

So I'm asking these questions, by the way, Josh, because I think about customer experience and user experience as being drivers of how you create change. And you being I mean, EVP of Evangelism, we got to talk about this like how. Are you creating? Why is this your title? Maybe I'll just open it up to that point right now.

Josh DeTar: 07:42

Well, you know, the running joke is that's what happens when you let a creative person make up a title. So shout out to Siva, our CEO, for letting me make up a title. I appreciate it. Although I would like to think that it's pretty fitting for me, and the reason that I say that is kind it's kind of like you said in my, you know, introduction. I am somebody who's really personally passionate about community space.

So if you rewind back to when I was a 17, 18 year old kid and venturing out on my own, I didn't understand the concept that when you swiped a debit card at the point of sale, there was supposed to be money on the other side of that thing. And literally I was asked by Wells Fargo after my latest round of overdrafts and nsfs to take my business elsewhere. Literally. They kicked me out and I went into work the next day defeated. And I felt like crap, man.

And I was talking to one of the guys I worked with, and he was like, hey, you know that our company is the segue of a credit union. You should go talk to the credit union. So that day after work, I went up to the credit union and I sat down with Mary. And Mary said, you are an idiot, but don't worry, I got you. And I literally owe a lot of where I am today to that person caring to that level.

And so I see the power and the value that credit unions and community banks can have on real people's lives. So that spurns a lot of the passion for it. But then my role within our organization is if you really want to like, boil it down to the technical terms, I'd be like our chief marketing officer. So I oversee all of our brand development, our business development, marketing culture, a lot of the kind of brand and warm and touchy feely side of our sales process, that kind of stuff. And so, you know, when you put all that together, the reason I chose EVP of Evangelism is because my ultimate goal is to get people excited to get our internal employees excited about what we do, but more importantly, why we do what we do.

And then same thing with our prospective customers. Yes, I want to get them excited about a feature that we have. But I mean, you can probably echo this point. Rich in the world of software, especially in the world of software development that we live in today with AI development tools, features are so incredibly replicable like a good team of developers with AI coding tools. I mean, I can build anything any one of our competitors have built in literally a matter of weeks now.

So I argue the question is not what features do you have? It's why did you build the ones that you build, and why did you build them in the way that you did? And that's always got to come back to the relationship you have with your customers sitting at the table with them, breaking bread with them and saying, Rich, how can I actually add value to you? And then what kind of features that turn into. So that's what I get to evangelize.

That's what I get to be a part of. And that's what gets me excited.

Richard Walker: 10:40

Man, I can't tell you how many features we built because it was cool. I have learned that lesson over and over again, because it's cool to me. Doesn't mean it sells or somebody wants to use it, and you really, really have to listen to customers and build what matters to them. I mean, my own product has 250 features to generate a form. Nobody's using all of them, somebody using some of them, and we built them because customers were listening and or sorry, we're listening to them and they're saying we need this for our user base.

Breaking bread. I remember talking to you about this. You guys literally break bread, don't you?

Josh DeTar: 11:14

We literally break bread. Yeah, I know it's a it's it's so many of the elements of I think a company's true culture are never done intentionally. They kind of manifest themselves out of the culture. So some of the silly things that we've become known for before I touch on the breaking bread, like our entire team, when we show up in person, anywhere, we all show up in matching red chucks like old school Chuck Taylors.

Richard Walker: 11:45

Nice. I love high tops.

Josh DeTar: 11:47

A whole backstory Depends on the person. So we've got high tops, low tops, we've got the platforms, we've got the thin soles. We leave that up to everybody. But they got to be the red chucks. And there's a whole backstory to how that started.

But it started as a happy accident and then it just snowballed. But it became such a core element of our culture where it reminds us that we want to collaborate together. We want to be a cohesive unit, both within ourselves and with our customers. So we actually put our customers in red chucks too. But it's also a humble reminder to walk a mile in each other's shoes, right?

So we like to think that those kinds of things actually talk a lot more about our brand than anything. And same thing with the breaking bread. So my wife was one of those, you know, stay-at-home moms who got hardcore into the whole homemade sourdough bread baking. And fun fact for my wife, me, our four and a half year old and our two-year-old, we go through an entire loaf of sourdough every single day. So she bakes a minimum of a loaf a day just for our family, right?

Wow. And then she started baking it for friends and family. And then she started baking it for our team. And then it was kind of a happy accident where we were talking about the symbolism of how important it was for us to sit at the table and break bread with our customers. And I was like, well, I might as well bring a loaf of bread to one of our customer meetings.

And it was just in that moment, rich like I watched the energy in the room, and I watched how people did that direct correlation between the figurative breaking bread and the literal breaking of bread. And now it's just become a standard thing. So anytime we meet in person, my wife bakes, you know, however many loaves we need for how many people are there. And I bring fresh sourdough bread for us to literally and figuratively sit at the table together and break bread.

Richard Walker: 13:49

So I'm sure everybody's asking, how many ovens do you have in your house now?

Josh DeTar: 13:53

So. well. Okay, so thankfully I've got my headphones on. My wife can't hear this because how she would respond, rich, is that she's gotten to the point where at this point, I probably should give her a kitchen remodel out of the deal and get her a bigger oven because our poor little oven is maxed.

Richard Walker: 14:14

No, man, I love this. You're touching on some of the core principles that I've been learning in talking to guests like yourself about what creates the best customer experience. And one of those core principles is to sit on the same side of the table with the customer. Do you see their view, see their perspective on how they're viewing the world, and then bring your special value to help them see it, maybe in a different way, in a better way, a solution way. And that whole idea of breaking bread.

I've always loved this. I mean, I didn't grow up in a household where we were always out with other people and having a big family style thing and breaking bread, like, literally. But I remember going to some of those Italian restaurants that are family style. And there were a lot of people, and I just loved that. I was like, oh, we're all here together somehow.

And it's just that that does that. So I think that's a wonderful thing that you guys have done. And so I want to actually talk a little bit about the sales process with you too. Yeah. Because you're helping fuel that.

And, you know, customer experience is end-to-end. It's not just the end result of your product. It's not just the user experience of your software. It's all the things you're doing. And talking about this idea of breaking bread, when does that actually happen?

Is it the first meeting? Is it signing the contract meeting? Tell me a little bit about your sales process and how you build customer experience into it.

Josh DeTar: 15:31

Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot to unpack there. So if you say just the breaking of the bread element, we like to kind of do that all throughout. So I mean everything from, you know, the first time we meet on site with a prospective customer to any time we have strategic planning on site with one of our current customers to we just wrapped up actually, in Dallas, not too far from you. A couple of weeks ago, our annual client conference, of which my wife shipped a ginormous box of sourdough and we broke bread with the entire conference.

Right? Wow. But the reason I bring that up is because to kind of answer your question. So our sales process is long. Our average sales cycle is close to a year.

At the same time, our industry and our average contracts are anywhere from 5 to 7 years long. Wow. You think about the software that we deploy for a financial institution. I would argue it's becoming either the number one or number two most important piece of software that a financial institution consumes right next to their core banking provider. And the reason that I would say sometimes even number one, is because we touch their actual account holder base.

Right. You'll never see the core provider. You see my software, you interact with it daily. And so they don't make these decisions lightly. And they don't make them every Tuesday.

Right. Yeah. You're only picking a vendor for this every half a decade, a decade. And then you're staying with somebody hopefully for decades because they're doing right by you. They're innovating.

They're providing, you know, service after the sale, all of those things. So for us, you know, when we talk about being able to maintain that potentially decades-long relationship with a customer, we kind of go into it understanding that there is no possible way that humans are going to coexist for that long without going through highs and lows, right? There's going to come times. We're just in the trenches with our customers. I'll be the first one to tell you we are not perfect, right?

We are going to screw up. So at the very onset of that start of that sales process, we want to start to cultivate a relationship with our prospective customer. And we want to set the framework for what a long-term relationship is, where we understand we're going to go through highs and lows, so that when we look back on this thing ten years later, we say, hey, you know what? We all knew what we were signing up for. We knew who we were going to be in the trenches with, and we'd still look back on it and make that same decision today, knowing what we know now back then.

Right. So in those really long, complex sales cycles, like it is really, really important to, like you said, like to sit on the same side and understand what success looks like for you? Where do you see value? And then are we actually the right fit? Because sometimes we're not.

And that's okay. And that should be okay.

Richard Walker: 18:58

Yeah. I tell my customers I have a very simple rule. Only happy customers. Meaning I'm not selling for the sake of selling. Yeah.

I'm solving a problem with you because we're the right way to solve it. Or I'm telling you, a solution. That is perhaps a better way to solve it than it's not mine. Because I only want to solve the problems I can solve the best way we can solve them, and therefore make the customer happy. Going back to this idea of going ahead.

Josh DeTar: 19:22

Oh, I was going to say sorry. I think you'll align to this really well. Rich, you know something that I tell our customers and I say, I say this as a blanket statement, but I say it as I think about me first in how you evaluate this, but never reward vendors for bad behavior, especially if that vendor is me. I should earn your business every single day. And if I'm not, don't reward me. Don't stick around.

Right.

Richard Walker: 19:51

You know, that's the right attitude for long-term thinking because, look, I have customer number one, two, three, five, ten. I've kept all the customers. We've only lost customers in 23 years for two reasons. They went out of business, they got acquired and the acquirer didn't use our solution. And the thing I always look at is how do I earn their business every year?

How do we make sure that when they go through the analysis at the end of the life cycle for that system, they keep choosing us and we do it in a couple of ways. We do it with service, but we also do it with innovation so that we continue to rise to the level of their needs. And that's a lot of listening. I was going to ask, when you're sitting down and trying to talk about the ups and downs that are potentially going to happen, and you're trying to address it, is that a literal discussion? Are you being that crystal clear, or is it implied in your activities and behaviors in the sales process?

Josh DeTar: 20:44

Brutal, honest transparency. That's the only way we operate. No, no. Because again, you know, you think about any long-term relationship, right? And

If you're not putting all the cards on the table, you're not working with a full deck. And so it creates a gray area. It creates ambiguity. And that's what creates frustration. Right.

I've always kind of argued that you're going to go through those hard times, right. And you can either have the hard conversation today or you can push it off to tomorrow, and it's going to be twice as bad tomorrow. Yeah. Right. Right.

And so for us, yeah, we go into it. And I mean literally rich, you know, one of the, one of my amazing mentors is actually one of our co-founders and our COO Prabhakar. And it's one of the things that I think he just has an incredibly special gift of. And he actually leads and oversees our customer success teams, right, is just this brutal, honest transparency. And literally even at our client Conference a couple of weeks ago.

I mean, his closing speech, he was like, here's where we screwed up last year. Here's where we went wrong. Right. And here's how I think I'm going to fix it. What do you think?

And so, yes, we believe that even in the marketing materials, even in the sales process, like we've got to talk about. Hey, look, nobody's perfect. If you're going to be with us for ten plus years, I'm going to screw up at some point. Okay. So don't expect me to be perfect.

And if you do, we're not going to be the right fit for you. Right. We're going to try to evolve and innovate and change. And that's going to mean bumps in the road. So what I can't promise you is perfection.

But what I can promise you is how I will show up when we're imperfect. So we really do. We think it's really important to have that conversation very, very early on, because you almost have to get a vibe check back from the credit union or the community bank. Like, do they align to that methodology, right. And some do and some don't.

Richard Walker: 22:53

You know that that level of transparency and honesty is a gift. And I know you and your team know this because you use it and it's part of your culture and it's part of who you are. But you also know what happens when people are not transparent. Yeah. And the way I see it is this leadership requires making decisions, and the better decisions come from better facts and fewer assumptions.

So when you give your customer the gift of facts and not assumptions or masking, they can make better decisions. And if you accept that that decision can be against you, you're better off for it.

Josh DeTar: 23:28

Yeah I agree. Right. You know what's funny, Rich, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I'd love to get your perspective on it. You know, as I've gotten older and matured and gone through different phases in my professional career and even my personal life, I look back on some of the decisions that I've made in the past. Right?

And hindsight is always 2020, and I always try and think about how I might have done things differently. But even sitting in my like position today, I try to think about so much of this stuff that you and I are talking about is like the biggest no-brainer. Duh. Like, does anybody really wake up and go, how can I screw my customer over today? You know, how can I lie to them?

But you know what's crazy is that while I don't think about hope, maybe I'm being a little too naive, but I really hope that most people don't think that way. They still do it right. And so we all know these things, like you and I can sit here and talk about, hey, it's important to listen to your customers. Hey, it's important to be transparent. Hey, it's important to be honest.

Hey, it's important to show up when you say it. Like, we all know these things and we all say these things. But so many times, people and organizations don't live it. And what I've been trying to figure out is, how do I never become that person? And how do I make sure our organization never becomes that?

Because I think that's such. To your point, a special gift to be able to hold that so dear in your culture that it doesn't change and shift. But I think just being aware of it is kind of step number one. But I'm really curious what your thoughts are because, yeah, I look around and I'm like, I see some people and I'm like, you and I both know that's not the right way to do this, but you're doing it anyway. Yeah.

Why?

Richard Walker: 25:15

Look, I'm going to come across judgmental. I just know this is going to come across judgmental.

Josh DeTar: 25:20

I love it.

Richard Walker: 25:21

So the thing is this is a sign of weakness, insecurity, lack of identity when your identity is integrity and honesty and transparency, when your identity is to serve your customer to the best of your ability and for their needs, not yours. You don't have these issues. Yeah, but when you're all about yourself or you're you have a fear-based mindset of I'm afraid I'll lose the deal, I'm afraid I'll lose the customer. And look, Josh, I've been through this myself. When we had outages in the early days, we had to confront a customer about the outage.

I didn't know how transparent I should be. I was so afraid that if I told him what really happened, it was my fat thumb that hit the wrong key. I mean, literally it caused six hours of outage or something. I just felt like, okay, they'll lose faith and trust in me and they won't work with me anymore. What I found by being stronger, by being vulnerable with them was they're like, yeah, we've been there too, rich.

We've done the same thing. We get it. We just want to move forward. So thank you for telling us what happened so we can move forward together. And it builds strength with each other versus weakness with each other.

Because you start from a weak standpoint.

Josh DeTar: 26:31

You know, I really appreciate you saying that because that's kind of where my head's been going with a lot of this is and I don't want to, you know, the first anytime somebody says, look, I'm really humble, you're like, are you really?

Richard Walker: 26:42

But hold on.

Josh DeTar: 26:44

But I do. I think that comes down to it. Like I really try to. And again, I'm not saying I'm perfect at this, right? But I try to be very thoughtful about it, like, I can't have an ego in this.

As soon as you have an ego and something that can be damaged or bruised, you do. You start to get protected. You start to think about, well, you know, how can I spin this so I'm not the bad guy. Whereas if I just show up and I'm like, hey man, I'm sorry, I was an idiot and I, I totally missed that. I missed it.

Richard Walker: 27:14

That.

Josh DeTar: 27:14

There's nothing I can do about that now except change how I'm going to go forward from this point and to your point. Like that's really hard. Sometimes it's really hard to be able to stand up in the back of the room and go, hey, yeah, I was the one that hit the button. That's my bad. That's hard.

Richard Walker: 27:29

You know what? So we hired a new CTO this year, Sean and I, and I love him and he's been fantastic. But honestly, the thing that made me realize we absolutely had the right person in this role was in August, this 2025, we had an outage, a really big one. And honestly, it was my decision to push forward through a process that could have resulted in an outage and did end up with an outage. And when he and I got on a call with customers, he was the first to raise his hand.

He's like, it's my fault. I take 100% accountability and responsibility for this to allow this to have happened. And, you know, tell me how angry you are at me. I mean, he didn't have to do that. I was the CEO.

I could have done that, but he did that. And when I have people on my team who are like, it's me, I screwed up and I'm taking responsibility for it, I know I have the right people on my team. It's amazing.

Josh DeTar: 28:22

You know? Isn't that true? But so going back to what we were just talking about, really thinking about even just your internal teams as well as how you work with your customers. Again, you know, there's all sorts of different people in different walks of life, right? But I would argue the vast, vast majority of people, right, are going to be a lot more forgiving of transparency than of opaqueness.

And so the same thing. You're like, hey, you know the type of people I want to hire in my organization, you know, you know, Sean's not going to be perfect, right? Especially if he's with you for the next ten years. He's going to screw up again. He's going to cause another outage, I guarantee it.

Right? But you already know how he's going to respond and react in that moment. And knowing that tells you a lot more about him and his value than how he codes, right. And I would like to argue that customers hopefully think the right types of customers also think the same way. Like, hey, you know what?

I could totally beat you up over this. And look, I've got to hold you to your SLAs and all of these things. But man, I appreciate that. You were just open about it and you said, hey, you know what? We totally screwed up, and we're really sorry.

And here's why and here's how we're going to fix it. But we're not perfect. And I'm really sorry.

Richard Walker: 29:34

Yeah, I gotta tell you, I mean, this is such an important point in my head because I will tell you, there's only two things that actually stress me out in life. Deception. Not being honest. Not being transparent. deception, and you trying to take time away from me and my kids.

You know, that's it. Those are the things that stress me out the most. And that whole idea of integrity and honesty is so, so paramount to how we succeed. So, Josh, I don't normally do this in my own show, but I actually want to share one of the other core principles of customer experience that I think drive customer experience. And I didn't learn it from my guests.

This is mine. This is my own personal way of viewing it, and that is how you treat your own team is how you treat your customer. So if you want the best customer experience, you have to give your own team the best experience. And this idea of transparency and honesty starts with them. Empowerment starts with them.

Joy starts with them. If those are the things you want for your customers, you have to start with your own team on that. Do you agree? I'm just curious.

Josh DeTar: 30:35

I 1,000% agree. Actually I would you know, I would love to put my own team to the test on this. But I would love to think like one of my greatest joys, which would be that if you asked my team about me, they would say, oh, that guy is transparent to a fault. Like we know everything that's going through that dude's head. Yeah, and it's because they always know what's going on and where things stand.

And there's never this man. I wonder what's really happening, I wonder. And so again, there's just we move past things way faster. And again, I think that goes back to like, you've got to be willing to be vulnerable in those moments. But I would agree, because then my team never has this fear of being transparent to our customers.

Right? Yeah. Because they're like, hey, if Josh will be transparent to us and he doesn't feel like he has to hide something from us to gain respect, then I could be transparent with our customers. I don't need to hide something to gain their respect. So yeah, I totally agree.

I think it's how that culture that you cultivate, and that goes back to what we kind of started this conversation with right off for our team that a lot of times is the tip of the spear. And we are you know, we're the first marketing message that a prospective customer sees. We're maybe the first faces that they interact with and see what our culture is like. Again, they're not perfect. We screw up, right?

Yeah. I said something recently in a deal that I'm having to go back and say, hey, I'm really sorry. In the moment I thought that that made sense and it was the right thing to say, and it wasn't right. We're not perfect through that, but we represent. Hey, here's what you're going to see when you become a customer of ours.

So if we set that tone right in the early stages, that's going to carry through. So yeah I agree. Like how you set your team up to interact with your prospective customers also sets up what the long term relationship is going to look like, because it's going to permeate through the whole org and through that relationship with that customer.

Richard Walker: 32:33

Yeah. Yeah. It's a principle of if 95% of the time you're absolutely true to who you are, then the 5% you screw up, everybody's going to say, okay, but really he is who he is. Like that was just a little blip in the course of things. Man, I, I understand why you have an hour-long episode, and I should maybe migrate to an hour-long episode because I want to keep talking about this, but we're at a point where I gotta start wrapping this up before I get to my last question.

Yeah, we didn't even talk about AI. So. Oh, before I get oh, it totally is. Before I get to my last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you? Josh.

Josh DeTar: 33:11

Yeah, absolutely. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so just find Josh DeTar on LinkedIn. I'm also super responsive to email. I like to maintain an inbox zero. So just josh.detar@tyrofone.com. I love to meet new people. I love to talk about different ideas of how we can really drive value within our ecosystem and for our customers. So email me. I'm happy to respond.

Richard Walker: 33:38

Outstanding. All right, so I get to ask one of my favorite questions, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today.

Josh DeTar: 33:46

Oh man, can I give you two answers. And even the second has a part A and a part B. I would be remiss if I didn't say that the first and most important and influential person in my life is my wife. Every single day she makes me a better person. She helps remind me of what my core foundations and principles are.

She's there for me, to pick me up, to guide me, to support me, to love me through my faults and riches. I can tell you that if it wasn't for her, I would probably be living under a bridge somewhere. So she has made me the man that I am today, and I will take any and every opportunity to thank her for what she has given me and our family. So she's number one. And then number two A and B. I already referenced one of them, our COO Prabhaker and our CEO Siva.

Our two co-founders are just some of the most special humans I think I've ever had an opportunity of working with. You know, they came up through the Intel Andy Grove days where Andy Grove ran a super flat organization and a challenge-based culture where you could challenge anyone on anything at any time, as long as you did it with data, you did it with respect, and you knew that a challenge could come back your way. And that's how they've run typhoons. And so, you know, I'm going back to the conversation we had earlier. Right.

Like if I look back on 15 plus year old manager, Josh, I was more micromanaging, I was less transparent. And Siva and Prabhakar taught me that it wasn't a weakness to show your weakness. It was actually a strength. And that might be one of the single greatest gifts I think I've ever been given in how I think about being a part of an organization. So they've had a huge impact on me.

Richard Walker: 35:41

Man. That's awesome. That is so awesome. You guys must be really good at OKRs as well. Like.

Josh DeTar: 35:48

We try, we try.

Richard Walker: 35:49

Yeah. All right, I gotta wrap this up. I want to give a huge thank you to Josh DeTar, EVP of Evangelism at Tyrone, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Josh's website at tyfone.com, and don't forget to check out quick at Quickforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I have and we'll click the like button.

Share this with someone and subscribe to our channel for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Josh, thank you so much for joining me today.

Josh DeTar: 36:18

Rich. The pleasure is mine. Thank you for an amazing conversation and for being such a wonderful host. Thank you.

Outro: 36:25

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