[Perspective Series] Scaling With AI, Collaboration, and Team Culture With Tracy Lee
- Quik! News Team
- Jul 12
- 31 min read
Tracy Lee is the Co-founder and CEO of This Dot Labs, a JavaScript consultancy that assists enterprises with digital transformation through staff augmentation and consulting services. She is recognized as a Google Developer Expert, Microsoft MVP, and GitHub Star and serves on the RxJS Core Team. Tracy is also a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, sharing her expertise in web development and open-source technologies. Her passion lies in building communities and fostering innovation within the tech industry.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:16] Tracy Lee discusses how This Dot Labs educates developers and embeds engineers into client teams
[4:25] Techniques This Dot Labs uses to empower engineers and improve team practices
[7:20] How throwing projects over the wall creates disconnects between stakeholders and engineers
[9:56] How AI tools are transforming product prototyping and reducing costs
[11:46] The impact of AI on engineering and why teams must rapidly adapt to stay competitive
[16:56] Tracy talks about evaluating whether to build AI agents now or wait for integrated solutions
[23:40] The importance of educating engineers on using AI tools to avoid falling behind
[25:49] The mindset shift required to effectively use the time freed up by AI-driven efficiencies
In this episode…
Many organizations face challenges in effectively integrating external engineers into their teams, often fearing resistance, miscommunication, and disruption to internal culture. Moreover, teams can become stuck in inefficient practices and struggle to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies, particularly in AI. How can companies embrace external expertise and emerging tools without jeopardizing their workflows or culture?
Tracy Lee, an expert in software engineering and team enablement, shares strategies for overcoming these challenges by focusing on education, collaboration, and proactive communication. She emphasizes the importance of embedding engineers who contribute technically and uplift and empower existing teams. She encourages leaders to push for clarity on business value before development begins and to leverage cutting-edge AI tools to speed up product prototyping. Tracy also highlights the critical need for engineers and teams to adopt AI tools quickly to avoid falling behind and suggests that leaders must foster a culture of continuous learning and higher-level strategic thinking.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Tracy Lee, CEO of This Dot Labs, about empowering engineering teams and embracing AI-driven efficiencies. Tracy discusses how embedding engineers enhances collaboration, the transformative impact of AI on software development, and how to cultivate forward-thinking team cultures. She also delves into product prototyping, overcoming resistance to team augmentation, and shifting employee mindsets to leverage time-saving technologies.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Quotable Moments:
"We typically go in and we become peacemakers. I don’t know if we do it on purpose."
"The art of the possible is here now, and that’s what’s really exciting to me."
"Whatever the reality that we are creating for ourselves is the reality we’re going to have to live in."
"You need to be introspective as a human to say, ‘How do I elevate myself now?’"
"You really need to be introspective as a human, right, as an employee or as a business owner."
Action Steps:
Embed engineers to elevate existing teams: Bringing in external engineers who prioritize education and collaboration helps improve internal team capabilities and culture.
Prioritize clear communication between stakeholders and engineering teams: Proactively aligning on business goals and expectations ensures that development efforts deliver true business value.
Adopt AI tools to streamline prototyping and development: Leveraging tools can significantly reduce product development time and cost while keeping teams competitive.
Educate teams on AI technologies continuously: Keeping engineers updated on evolving AI tools prevents skill gaps and ensures teams remain agile and future-ready.
Encourage mindset shifts toward higher-level thinking: Freeing up time with AI should motivate teams to focus on strategic, value-driven tasks that promote organizational growth.
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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 Richard Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how they're focused on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Marla Sofer of Knomee, Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group, and Abby Morton of Elements. Today, I get to speak with Tracy Lee, CEO of This Dot Labs, and 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 quick using our Form Extract API.
Simply submit your completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of a thousand submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. All right, I've been looking forward to talking to Tracy. She is the CEO of This Dot Labs, a leading technology consulting firm dedicated to empowering business leaders to execute technology roadmaps with precision and speed. My gosh, we all need that.
Trusted by premier clients such as Google, Meta, Stripe, Twilio, and more. This lab serves a diverse range of industries, from life sciences and financial services to innovative startups. Tracy is also recognized as a GitHub star, Google Developer Expert, Microsoft MVP, and a Google Women Techmakers lead, as well as a member of the RxJS core team, which I had to ask what that means. And it's pretty cool, but really techie. So, Tracy, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Tracy Lee: 01:49
Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you today.
Richard Walker: 01:53
Yeah, we had such a good conversation when we met in New York. This is just going to be a continuation, I know.
Tracy Lee: 01:59
So yes.
Richard Walker: 02:00
For those who haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. So, Tracy, I wanted to understand your business a little bit better. How does your company help people?
Tracy Lee: 02:16
We love to educate developers, and we do that by embedding engineers into different teams, right. So just traditional staff augmentation and consulting. But one of the things my team is really passionate about is just getting in there, working alongside developers and showing them how they can be better. And yeah, our team is just I've been very fortunate to be able to hire people who have the same passion as me and who are just as excited about that.
Richard Walker: 02:44
Okay, so that shifts my perception of you even more positively, because, I mean, it's easy to say, oh, you guys are, you know, tech consulting and you bring in people, maybe replace teams or you build new teams altogether. But the fact that you're focusing on how to make people better. That's remarkable. Do you feel like customers have a resistance to bringing on other engineers onto their team, because they don't know how they're going to fit, and the other engineers are scared or ego or anything like that? Does that happen?
Tracy Lee: 03:13
I'm sure it happens a little bit, like I've definitely seen it in one of the two of organizations that we've been a part of. But I think because we have such a great reputation in the industry, you know, we're open source contributors. We give back to the community always. We have podcasts, right? We write blogs all the time.
So we're kind of already positioned as educators within the industry. So developers are typically more excited than not to be able to work with us because they probably know our engineers or they're like, oh, I mean, you know, again, you know, this started from the people who are writing the frameworks and the technologies that we all know and use, right? And so due to that, I don't know, engineers usually geek out about it and like, want to work with us.
Richard Walker: 03:56
I think that's awesome because I want people to join my team who can make other people on my team better. Yeah. And I think quite often, you know, I'm a tech leader too, right? We have a software company for 20 plus years. I think we often kind of get myopic of like, my team knows how to do it and, you know, augmenting it.
I don't know if it's going to work, but at the same time, like, how do I encourage my team to get better? So what are some of the techniques that your team members use to help empower people on other teams to do better?
Tracy Lee: 04:25
You know, it's funny because I still remember hiring my, like the first designer I ever worked with that actually worked and that designer, what they did and the reason why they were so amazing to me, I mean, I still work with them to this day, is that you tell them what you want, and then they tell you what they tell you and give you what you actually wanted, not what you said. Right. And that to me differentiates any sort of person you work with. So designer or engineer? Same thing with engineers.
I remember my first co-founder. I was a non-technical co-founder. I posted on Reddit that I needed like three mockup images and I would pay $300 for it or something like that. And he messaged me back and he's like, that's not what you need. And he told me what I needed to build.
And then he became my co-founder, you know, for seven, seven, some odd years. But that's kind of what we do, right? Like we go in there and we try to help engineers understand best practices. Right. I think a lot of times as well, it's, you know, we all get stuck in our ways.
We all have, you know, different relationships within, you know, within your organization. You have like different nuanced relationships, if you will. And a lot of the times in larger organizations, things just stall because there's some sort of either animosity with one team or whatever. So we typically go in and we become peacemakers. I don't know if we do it on purpose, but we're just more about collaborating than competing, if you will.
So doing that and really trying to understand, okay, this person like I remember this outsource team in India of this one organization we went into and everybody was blaming the team, the team in India like and you know, this project was six months past deadline. You're talking about millions of dollars in the hole. Okay. And when we got in there, we just realized that nobody was just talking to the team and trying to understand what was going on. There was just blame placed everywhere across these three different, three different teams.
So just being that like, you know, outside voice of, hey, like let's try to figure this out. Like let's be friends. Let's, let's talk, let's collaborate a little bit more I think really kind of rubs off on everybody. And that's the type of culture change and culture shift you need within technology.
Richard Walker: 06:51
I agree and I want to say this for the listeners. I hope you're hearing this the way I hear it, because although we're talking about the engineering, the software development, this applies across all organization types, right? I mean, everybody needs to grow and evolve, but everybody needs to communicate too. We have to spend the time to learn about each other. And I find too often it'll be thrown over the wall, like, here's your project.
Go. Yeah. And then what? You're left with that kind of situation where they're not necessarily performing as what you wanted them to perform. Right?
Tracy Lee: 07:20
Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing too. You talk about throwing things over the wall. I think a lot of times executive leadership or stakeholders, they're like, we want to get this thing done, you know, and then they think they get it to a certain point. And of course, they throw it over the wall to engineering and, you know, engineering implements it.
And then you talk about these, you know, two-year transformations. And all of a sudden at the end, the business requirements have changed because two years is a really long time for something to be delivered or, you know, it's only 80% of what it what it needs to be because this one little thing was missed. So I think our team overindexes on pushing stakeholders to what is it you actually want? Is it actually delivering business value and having those conversations because, you know, development is expensive, and the last thing you want to do is spend tons of money on something that it could have been solved some other way, or should have been implemented some other way.
Richard Walker: 08:17
And I think this all comes back to the customer experience, because the product you're building, whether it's to empower a service you provide or the actual product the customer gets, is a core part of the experience they have. And having those good understanding between what the customer wants and translating it into actually what's built is really hard. I've had a product where I would deliver it, I'd listen to the customer deliver it six months later and the customer say, that's not what I wanted.
Tracy Lee: 08:40
Yeah.
Richard Walker: 08:41
And things change in the industry. It changed in their mind. I have to go redo it six months later and they'd still tell me it's not what they wanted. It's so hard to accomplish.
Tracy Lee: 08:49
I know. Well, I mean, that's why tools these days are so amazing, right? Like, you know, honestly, right now, because, you know, we do get a lot of startups wanting to build exciting things. And that translation, like that whole idea to idea to POC, let's say that process, you know, usually it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy.
A lot of people like business people might not know how to translate it into code. ET cetera. ET cetera. You need a designer, right? You don't know how to get your ideas out.
But things like V0, for example, which is an amazing tool. V0 dev. If you haven't checked it out yet, you can just put everything you want in there and prompt engineer it and it will spit out what you need, to the point where you're saving like 30 to 100 plus thousand dollars on just utilizing the tools that are out there just to get your ideas again, onto paper or into code.
Richard Walker: 09:45
Oh my gosh. So I think that's referred to as vibe coding, where you're sitting there prompting the system to code what you want without actually doing the coding. Is that correct?
Tracy Lee: 09:56
It's like one it's one step away because I think vibe coding is more you're an engineer and you're utilizing a tool like let's say cursor or windsurfer or something like that, where it's orchestrating things for you and it's building code. This is more I feel like this is in a different category, because I think most developers won't use something like v0 to do that. V0 is more used for like prototyping aspect of things versus I'm going to, you know, I don't know, like migrate x, Y and Z into this and let me.
Richard Walker: 10:33
So maybe.
Tracy Lee: 10:34
Through it.
Richard Walker: 10:35
Maybe the non-coders who are creating these prototypes because it's their brainchild. Maybe that's why they think it's coding where the reality is the actual engineers are doing the coding with other tools. Yeah, but yeah, you know what? We have been building something new here, and my product owner has been using Vercel. Yeah, I think is like v0.
Tracy Lee: 10:55
He's also vercel is from v0. Oh is it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a product of V0 product.
Richard Walker: 11:01
So I'm still learning. There's so many things that are changing so fast. But yeah my gosh. The prototypes he's putting together inside of a few hours are shaving off weeks and weeks of a traditional process.
Tracy Lee: 11:12
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, he's probably using V0 is exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 11:17
Yeah. It's unreal to me. So look, we're talking about I already we didn't even say the word AI, but this is actually what we're talking about because these tools are driven by large language models and prompting and things like that. How are you seeing AI beyond this change the coding experience, and how are you injecting that to help customers move towards it? Because because we're a lot of companies are struggling with adopting AI into their practices, including engineering, right.
Tracy Lee: 11:46
It's interesting because I, I'm trying to think of something that, you know, back back from like the Industrial revolution or whichever other revolution that was many years back. That equates to this. But I think everything that's being built right now when it comes to helping engineers, let's say with AI or or I mean, we'll stick to the engineering because otherwise we're going to open up too many big boxes, but we're trying the tools that are available now are fitting the mental model of what we understand. So it's like, how do you eliminate an engineer? Meaning okay, now you see five engineers working together, meaning five eyes, let's say like working together to build this thing.
Okay. That's, you know, that's the mental model. And that's kind of like the furthest from the I would say those are the people who are like very far along in the curve. Right. However, I think that even the reason why it's so important to catch up right now is because like that, is not even that mental model that we have of like, oh, I can see five engineers doing the work.
Like that's what we understand. But in a year, you know, that mental model is going to shift because we already have that. So like what does it look like in a year? I mean, you don't even know the art of the possible, right? And that's what's really exciting to me.
But that's what's also why I think we're so passionate now. Like we're even more passionate now as an organization about helping teams understand what it means to use AI. And so we're spending a lot of time enabling teams on utilizing these AI tools, because if you're not, like as far along as what I'm saying, right. Like if you're not able to basically turn on agent mode and, and truly understand like what it means to what is possible the art of the possible, then in six months to a year, that knowledge is already I mean, it's already like you're already behind, right? So I feel like I'm constantly running these days.
I mean, it's it's, you know, things are just moving so fast when it comes to technology.
Richard Walker: 13:53
It's unreal. It's totally unreal. So Google released Vo three, and I don't know what's going to be out by the time this episode actually airs. It may be Vo 3.5. Who knows?
And one of my prior guests, Michael Dydasco, he wrote this brilliant article after reviewing Vo three, but he equated it to when silent movies went to sound movies. And the first one, I think, was The Jazz Singer or something like that was the first movie that had sound to it. Vo three is the first AI to produce video with sound mapped to it. And the way he said it was like, this is a huge pivotal point because now all the tools that are creating video have to scrap everything and make sure they have audio as part of it, because that's the new standard and that's what's happening with AI across the board is like every week, month, there's a new standard we have to live up to, or.
Tracy Lee: 14:40
Like the black and white to color as well. Right is another. Yeah. Like everything needs to be kind of like colored.
Richard Walker: 14:48
But those things I thought those things took decades. I mean, I wasn't there, so I don't I didn't really study the timeline, whereas right now it's happening in weeks and months.
Tracy Lee: 14:56
Yeah. It's wild.
Richard Walker: 14:57
So fast. How can you not run? So how do you keep up? What do you do?
Tracy Lee: 15:02
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. And you know, you think about getting older, right. So you know you know when you're when you're a teenager, everything seems like it's so long, right? You remember your summers.
They're so long. Whatever. And then as we get older, right, we're like, wow, that was so short. You know, it's not it's not a week now. It's not a day.
It's months. It's quarters. You know, like companies are saying like, oh, that's going to take a quarter. That's going to take a year to implement, etc.. And we kind of, you know, get used to the our timeline shortening.
And I think with technology speeding up so fast as well and us seeing it before our very eyes, it seems like things are just like fast forwarding as well. So it's like our entire timeline just fast forwarding. Or is it because we're watching something go so fast? I don't know, but I think that's like more of an existential question.
Richard Walker: 15:51
Yeah. Look, I'll offer a different perspective. When I started Quik!, one of my first clients said after they got my product, they said, I don't have to hire two assistants now. And so it wasn't that we eliminated a job. We eliminated a need for future jobs or expansion.
And this was not I. Right? So, I mean, tech has been doing this for a long time. And I think, like you talk about the art of the possible, but also imagining the next 6 to 12 months is super, super hard to really predict what it means. I think that we as a society adapt to efficiency, and we're using these tools to say what can make us more efficient, like like the product prototyping can go from weeks to days or hours.
Yes.
Tracy Lee: 16:30
And now we can just.
Richard Walker: 16:31
Get more done with less resource or team and etc. obviously there's cost. We had to buy that technology to do it. So I feel like that's how we're advancing. And it's the other thing I see is there's so many new things coming out. Nobody in the world can keep up with them all.
So I think the question just becomes, how do you, as a leader, continually ask, could this be done with another technology? I mean, it's like the old Apple commercials. There's an app for that.
Tracy Lee: 16:56
Yes, yes. I mean, it is quite wild because like, okay, so right now my process, for example, for, you know, my, my, my operations person, my, you know, my, the person who manages, I mean, I would call her an administrative person, right? I will Slack message her all the things. And so she basically compiles, you know, my day and all the follow ups that I had. ET cetera.
ET cetera. Right. But, you know, she was out for a week. And honestly, I was like, well, you know what? Why am I not just dumping all this into ChatGPT and creating, like, a custom GPT, and then they'll do all the I mean, right now, you know, I guess I could build agents to do all the follow ups for me, etc., etc..
cetera. Right. But, like, that's very possible. And how much money is that going to save me? It's going to save me a lot of money to do that.
Right. But like, that's the reality is possible now. So I mean, again, you think.
Tracy Lee: 17:50
It still.requires…
Richard Walker: 17:51
It still requires an investment of time thinking.
Tracy Lee: 17:54
And doing. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 17:55
And part of my premise on agents is, is it worth it for me to build an agent now, or just wait weeks or months for somebody to put the agent into the software I'm already using.
Tracy Lee: 18:06
And then it becomes.
Richard Walker: 18:07
Part of the process already. But I will advocate. I'm a huge fan of custom gpts. I have a ton of them. Yeah, and I build them for my assistant and say, here, here's another GPT to perform this task.
Go use it from now on. And so she'll run it for me, which is amazing.
Tracy Lee: 18:22
I love.
Tracy Lee: 18:22
That.
Tracy Lee: 18:23
Yeah.
Tracy Lee: 18:23
And I need to do more of that to be honest, because we again, we think about all these things and all these things that humans might need to be in the loop for, but we're like, I mean, the art of the possible is here now.
Richard Walker: 18:37
I know. So what are you going to do with it? Is there a negative to this in your mind? Do you see like a negative trajectory? Some.
I keep hearing things like the leader of some AI company publicly says everything's great, but privately says doom and gloom. How do you feel about this?
Tracy Lee: 18:54
I think that.
Tracy Lee: 18:55
We're going to just have to deal with it, you know? Like what? What do you do? Right. Like, I mean, I, I think, you know, there's a lot of doom and gloom in the government right now, for example.
And it's like, well, you know, what do you do with it, right? Like you, you deal with it's a reality. So like whatever the reality that we are creating for ourselves is the reality we're going to have to live in. So when we get there, I'm sure we'll figure it out. Right?
I think that like, you know, you talk about, you know, this, this whole idea of doom and gloom and everything like that. But I think that what's happening right now is really like embracing of the culture. So it's it's no different than, you know, people saying like, I'm going to embrace social media or like, I'm going to get a cell phone. You know, I'm not going to have a landline anymore. Like those types of things, I think, you know, you can you can make a lot of similar references to what's happening right now to just general adoption, adopting of technology.
Tracy Lee: 19:52
As.
Richard Walker: 19:52
A leader of your organization. And you hear announcements by companies that say, we're not hiring any more engineers, we have enough. In fact, we're going to cut back. And you're in the business of bringing engineers to companies that need you. Does that.
Tracy Lee: 20:05
It changes.
Tracy Lee: 20:07
I mean, it changes, right? Like, I mean, I think for us, we're we've never been the type of organization that is a button sweep type, butt in seat type situation. So I think a lot of larger organizations, maybe if you think of like, I don't know, McKinsey or, you know, whatever, who, you know, it's like, oh, they have 100 people on like within one organization like that is going to change, right? So okay, you're getting like a 25%, 50% reduction in your workforce. But that kind of cuts away at the sort of, you know, I don't know the fact that didn't need to be there, if you will.
Right. What does that mean? And I think we'll see an overcorrection. Right. Like you see those stories like Klarna, for example.
I don't know if you saw that where they, they they basically about a year ago they fired what was it like 700 of their customer service people. And then they realized there was a like there was an issue with quality. So they they just announced recently that they're starting to rehire humans to do the work. But, you know, okay, fine. You know, you cut you cut your cost.
It was 700 people. Okay. Now you're hiring back. Are you going to hire back those 700 people? Probably not.
So I think there's still a lot of experimentation, just like within the world across different industries of, okay, you're going to cut and you're going to try and you're going to experiment and you know, you're not going to be better or worse for it, right? I think the way we see it is we're going to start seeing more. 2 to 3 Tiger teams that go into organizations. But I mean we saw this with the. Sort of like I don't know if you call a tech bubble that burst a few years ago.
You know, what did that mean for us? Right. That there was a lot of layoffs. I feel like the layoffs are still happening as well. But what I think that means, I mean, this all came from, you know, that.
And then. I feel like the interest rates affected it. ET cetera. ET cetera. But I think what it translated to.
In business is okay, we need to actually start seeing business value for our spend. So what does that mean? Engineers need to be aligned with business values. Anything and anybody that wasn't aligned with business values is probably going to get cut. So yeah, but if you align yourself with business value then I mean I wouldn't be worried.
Richard Walker: 22:24
I think that's the cycle of businesses as they mature and get big anyway. And it's not like, well, first of all, I, don't have a scarcity mindset. I believe that if we become more efficient, we'll find more things to do. We'll find more services to offer, more problems to solve. I've seen that with AI all the time.
Is there a core specialty at This Dot Labs that you guys focus on, like an expertise or.
Tracy Lee: 22:48
Yeah, it's application development. So it's all things JavaScript. Anything related to building applications. You know, we love like large scale migrations. Were really good at it as well.
Right. Like anything modern technology, I like to say that we bring Silicon Valley best practices to other industries, which is what we're really good at. So I think a lot of industries that we go into like healthcare, life sciences, fintech, etc., they're so focused on those problems within those specific industries. But sometimes you need to like pop your head up and say, well, what's the best practice that Silicon Valley is now? You know what?
What is kind of like the bleeding edge? And what do I need to do to learn from that, to make sure that I'm staying ahead.
Richard Walker: 23:32
And how much of that is driven by a desire to build AI into those organizations workflow or their products?
Tracy Lee: 23:39
Yeah.
Tracy Lee: 23:40
I mean, before it wasn't I mean, we've, you know, we've been using AI this year, and I mean, we've, we've we've been building AI products, you know, for the past two years, let's say. But it wasn't until this year that we really started saying like, okay, you know what? We actually really need to go and educate engineers on what it means to use these AI tools, because we don't want everybody to be left behind. Right? Like we want to create a better place where people are more efficient, more effective, and can focus more on like higher-level things.
But I think as humans, one of the biggest problems we're going to have is I call it like the seven stages of AI adoption. But it's this whole idea where, okay, all of a sudden you're fully utilizing AI tooling and then you're like, you're not doing what you know, it's like, oh, I have an hour to now hang out on YouTube or half an hour, and then all of a sudden you have like a whole day to do that and you're like, well, okay, now I have a whole day to do that. But you really need to be introspective as a human right, as an employee or as a business owner to say like, okay, how do I elevate myself now to that higher level thinking? And I think that mindset shift is like the biggest thing that we're going to see people struggling with and something that we're already seeing people struggle with now, they don't know what to do with the extra time. They don't know how to shift their mindset to like doing, doing, doing versus like, now I can do something else.
Richard Walker: 25:05
Man, that is so true, so true. Anytime in my business, when I've had people find that time available to them, they've coasted.
Tracy Lee: 25:13
Exactly. You got.
Tracy Lee: 25:14
It. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 25:15
Yeah. And when they finally exit the organization, we look and see the work they were doing. It's terrible. It's like, oh, you only spent five hours a month on the phone when we paid you for 40 hours a week to be on the phone. What were you doing with your time?
And to me it's kind of sad because in my organization, I really want people to take initiative and be responsible for their career, and therefore they've got to look for education, they've got to look for the next thing for them. So if we empower them to do that, but they don't do it, it's not my fault. I mean, I just can't take any credit for what they didn't do. So how do you get them to do that?
Tracy Lee: 25:49
I think that's the hardest part. Right? Because like, for me, I haven't solved it. But it's like, well, it takes introspection or it takes I mean, I think that's why we're wanting to go into these organizations as well, because a lot of engineers are scared of, okay, I utilize these things. Like, now what do I do?
But now you have so much more time. So I was talking to a product lead at stripe the other day, and he was saying that as a product lead, he actually is so excited that they have these like product focused product lead engineers, if you will, because he doesn't have to spend time like, you know, defining everything to a T, like doing all the stuff that a lot of product managers typically have to do. He can be very forward thinking. He can have higher level strategy because, again, all the all the stuff that you would typically have to do to manage an engineer like stripe engineers are already that. So he doesn't have to do any of that work.
So I think I think you just have to realize that that is a possibility. And then like what else? What do you do with your the rest of your time?
Richard Walker: 26:48
So I'm going to share an idea. I have been around a lot of artists in my life my grandfather, my mother, my brother, their friends, etc.. Also, one of my friends runs a hedge fund and he is the artist of hedge funds in the sense that what he did is he reached out to all of the people he admired in the hedge fund world, people you and I have never heard of. And he wrote to them and he went and had lunch with them. He'd fly to New York just to sit down for lunch with them.
And when you meet somebody who's that passionate about their skill, their core focus, and they know and admire certain people, they've read those books, you want to be around them. And what do those people do? They become very, very successful because they're constantly pushing themselves. So be the artist, is my advice. Learn your craft and find who's better at it, and go learn with them and and be part of this.
So let's go back to you. You are Microsoft MVP woman tech leader. Like you're involved, right? You went out and did these things. Get certifications and get involved.
You you had actually said you are a non-technical co-founder. But it seems with those credentials you are technical.
Tracy Lee: 27:53
I was a non-technical co-founder and then after my last company was acquired, I took a breather, took a break, you know? But then, you know, I was working awful hours. I mean, I was going to sleep at two, waking up at seven, right? Like we were just running like crazy. I mean, you know how it is to be a founder sometimes, but, you know, I, I sort of, like, woke up after that journey and I was like, well, what do I do now?
I'm bored. And so I learned how to code and I got really excited about it. It was a new challenge, right? And I love new challenges. I was kind of bored with, you know, just doing marketing, right.
And then I, I don't know, I did that for about a year. You know, people started asking me to speak at conferences. I started speaking at tons of different conferences. And then a year into it, I said, well, you know, maybe I should start a company. And so I decided to start this out as a consultancy.
And it's been it's been fun. You know, I've been doing that for eight and a half years now. And I don't know now. Now this AI thing is like a new thing. That's like getting me really stoked and excited.
Tracy Lee: 28:58
So I know is an adventure, right?
Richard Walker: 29:01
You have to evolve with it. What what's one of the hardest things you went through as a founder to get to this stage?
Tracy Lee: 29:08
One of the hardest things I went through as a founder, I think, is figuring out like, what that work life balance thing looks like, right? Everybody talks about work life balance. You know, you can read. I think it was Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, right? Like there is no such thing as work life balance, right?
You just. Right. But I think you you you need to be introspective. You need to take time for yourself. You need to figure out, like, what your actual end goal is because you know you're in it, right?
But I think for me, like, I typically make what I do at work like enjoyable and fun, if you will. So my work and my personal life kind of meld together a little bit. So it just kind of becomes all encompassing. But I mean, it's what I enjoy doing. And if I was going to go, you know, build cruise ships or something like that, I'd do the same thing, right?
I'd be like, oh, let's go meet all the cruise people. Like, this is exciting.
Tracy Lee: 30:09
Right?
Richard Walker: 30:09
You immerse yourself in it. Yeah, I, I have written an article that there's no such thing as work life balance as well.
Tracy Lee: 30:16
And I actually I.
Richard Walker: 30:17
Actually approach it from a different perspective. And I asked this question to people, Do you work to live or do you live to work? And the difference is, where do you find your fulfillment? I'm not saying that if you work to live, you don't enjoy your job. And I'm not saying if you live to work, you don't enjoy your life.
But where do you derive your fulfillment from? And I have found roughly 25% of the people who answer. They live to work. They're passionate about their career, their craft, whatever. But most people just work to create a lifestyle that they want.
And the problem is, when you can't answer the question.
Tracy Lee: 30:50
If you haven't decided which.
Richard Walker: 30:52
Ones for you, then you're in trouble. Then you're in this quandary of what am I doing with my life?
Tracy Lee: 30:57
Yeah, I.
Tracy Lee: 30:58
You know, I was I was scrolling Instagram the other day and they were talking about how a lot of these founders or people who work hard, these high achievers, actually, you know, they spend so much time trying to prove their lives are worth something due to, you know, their younger sort of I don't know, what you call it, but, like, you know, what do you call it? The childhood traumas of, you know, needing to whatever. And I'm like.
Tracy Lee: 31:28
Okay. I mean.
Tracy Lee: 31:29
Like.
Tracy Lee: 31:29
I.
Tracy Lee: 31:29
Guess maybe I could see that a little bit. Sure. You know, but I mean, I don't, I don't I don't fully subscribe to that, that idea. I think, you know, there's certain people in life who just want to make a difference, like. And that's what I want, right?
Like, I want to make the world a bigger, better place. I saw I saw that when I started this thought, you know, I initially started because I just like to bring people together. And in technology, it's kind of crazy. But like all the technology that is built these days, like, is built on just a bunch of people talking and deciding they want to do something.
Tracy Lee: 32:05
And so crazy. Yeah.
Tracy Lee: 32:07
And if you can get those people to just talk, you know, if you can. Like for me, it was like getting the Chrome team to talk to the edge team, getting the team to talk to the angular team, etcetera, etcetera. Etc. and getting them to learn best practices from each other, right? Like you're creating a culture within technology that everything is built on of collaboration versus like this is better, that's better, etc. and we're all better for it, right? So seeing that type of impact through just having conversations makes me really excited and passionate about just like making people better.
Richard Walker: 32:44
Well man, I love that. I love that Tracy. I am passionate about ideas coming to life. And one of the things I love about software is you can pour your brain into a keyboard and bring something out in your computer that works and is different, and you're so right because you spoke truth to it. You just said, hey, I want to do this, and I'm going through that with my team right now.
I'm like, I want to do this. And they're like, okay, we'll figure out how to do it. I'm going to have to wrap up. So before I get to my last question, how should people find and connect with you?
Tracy Lee: 33:13
Yes.
Tracy Lee: 33:14
Well I am on X. Acts at Lady Li so you can find me there. Or you can find me on LinkedIn at Tracy Li. You can find me online too at our website this.co. But I'm pretty, pretty out there hanging out, so I'm always happy to chat and talk to people about what they're doing.
Richard Walker: 33:33
No, this is so true because I met you at your event you were hosting in New York, and you were so open and free and talking to people. It was such a pleasure to meet you. So I know other people are gonna have the same experience. All right. Here is my last question.
Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role?
Tracy Lee: 33:52
I will call out one person. So one of my very first investors of this thought was Will bunker. He's the founder of Match.com, and he always liked to figure out like what he would. When he met me, he was trying to figure out like, what I'm motivated by. So the first thing he does when he meets somebody is like, what are you motivated by?
Money? Fame? Ego? Like, what is it that motivates you? And then the other thing he made me realize was, Tracy, you get bored when it's making the donuts.
So once, once something is running, like, you don't want to make the donuts. And he's like, but making the donuts is what makes the money. So like, I can't tell you how many times in my head, you know, like weekly I talk about making the donuts to.
Tracy Lee: 34:36
Myself, right?
Tracy Lee: 34:38
But I think understanding that, too and saying like, okay, well, this is the type of life I want to live. This is where my strengths are. So this is how I should, you know, craft whether my company, how things are set up or my life generally on you know what I thrive on, right.
Tracy Lee: 34:54
So yeah.
Tracy Lee: 34:55
I would say he had a big impact.
Richard Walker: 34:57
Oh that's awesome. I love that analogy because I think so many founders, myself included, suffer from that. Like, okay, I got it. Now I want to move on to the next thing. You guys keep running it.
Tracy Lee: 35:06
Yeah yeah yeah, man.
Richard Walker: 35:08
Ask my forms team about that. Like, I built a thousand forms and I haven't built since, and they've built 100,000 more.
Tracy Lee: 35:15
But you figured it out.
Tracy Lee: 35:16
That's the exciting part for you, you know?
Tracy Lee: 35:18
Right.
Tracy Lee: 35:18
I solved the.
Tracy Lee: 35:18
Problem.
Richard Walker: 35:19
Let's move on.
Tracy Lee: 35:20
Exactly, exactly.
Richard Walker: 35:22
Oh, my gosh, I could keep talking to you, but I always try to keep my show on a time frame. So I want to give a big thank you to Tracy Lee, CEO of This Dot Labs, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Tracy's website at thisdot.co. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quickforms.com, where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion.
We'll click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Tracy, thank you so much for joining me today.
Tracy Lee: 35:52
Yes, thank you so much for having me.
Outro: 35:56
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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