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Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your 

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host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance 

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marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. 

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We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, 

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marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and 

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have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned. 

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Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing 

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podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I am very excited 

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to have with me today Tamara Adlin. Hi, Tamara. Hi. Great to be here. 

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Nice to see you. I think we first met Nice to meet you. A million and twelve years ago at a conference 

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In Seattle. That's right. Yeah back when we were babies 

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The world has changed since then hasn't it Yeah. But not that much. In our world, it's not 

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well, skip that. Yes. It's changed. Yeah. 

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We'll we'll delve into that in the, bonus material. Exactly. So nice to have you 

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on. And, for those of you don't know, Tamara is very accomplished. It was 

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awesome meeting her at the UX training conference in at Amazon in 

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Seattle. She is a product professional. She's an amazing 

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veteran of user experience, a true expert in user experience and UX 

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coach, strategist. And she's also an author of the Persona Lifestyle. 

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Life cycle. Persona Lifestyle. Lifestyle Lifecycle. Persona life cycle. The 

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Persona Lifestyle. The persona life cycle. Yep. 

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I'm co author of those with with John Pruitt. Very accomplished. Yeah. Love it. And and if 

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you're you have any interest in these things, I would definitely follow Tamara. 

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Very knowledgeable. I know she's got some good stuff coming out in this year and 

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beyond. So maybe she'll get tease a little bit of that with us here today. Yeah. I'd love 

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it. Thank you so much. I've been listening to your other podcasts and have 

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noticed that they're all, of course, with hardcore marketing people. 

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And so if some UXers come and listen to this, I'm gonna turn the tables and 

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ask you a question first. Would you mind defining partner and affiliate 

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marketing and just marketing in this age for people who are technically 

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fluent, but actually hear those words thrown around and don't even know what they mean? Yeah. Well 

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said. And like any true user experience professional, you know, define 

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the terms, ask me the question. You're you're flipping it on me already. Oh, I know. I love it. Can't help it. I love 

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it. So I would define affiliate marketing as 

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a type of performance marketing. I would say performance marketing 

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is, a means of marketing where a brand is aiming to get their message 

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across to a customer to acquire or activate or retain 

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a customer. And it's typically they're getting a brand message out there. They're presenting 

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an offer. They're essentially saying, if we spend x dollars 

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on this marketing campaign via the media dollars they're spending on Google or with an 

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influencer or on a running website, They wanna see that return on investment and 

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that revenue, that purchase activity. So by performance marketing, we're defining it 

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as very measurable actions. This isn't just getting more 

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eyeballs hoping for a lift in awareness, but it's 

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it's very highly measured across a number of metrics, usually revenue tied to metrics. 

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That makes sense. Interesting. So yeah. Like, in our field, the roles have changed 

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over the years with titles and stuff. It sounds like this is a as much a title related thing 

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because performance marketing is how you would describe what you do as 

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opposed to, like, you're still putting out ads and messages and videos 

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and things. Right? It's just that you're measuring it differently, requiring different things of it? Yeah. I 

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think that's fair. I think it's a it's a rigor and a data around making sure that it's 

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delivering very tangible value to a brand. And I would 

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add that affiliate marketing is really that subset of of performance where 

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a brand is saying, yeah, I'm gonna get messages out there and ads out there. 

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But you start to kind of relinquish control, and you start to kinda let the 

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blogger, podcaster, influencer, writer 

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kind of take control of the message and say, here's what I love about this particular Nike trail 

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shoe. Here's why it kinda needs some improvement. This is why it's awesome. Oh, by the way, they're running a 

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little bit of an offer. So brands are kind of letting go a little bit in affiliate 

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marketing. And the cool thing about how it might tie into the UX world a little bit is that 

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they're saying, I'm gonna I'm not gonna get I'm not gonna get paid upfront in most cases. In some 

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cases, they are. In a lot of cases, affiliate marketers are saying, I'm gonna promote 

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this this subset of this Nike running shoe as an example, this this imaginary 

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trail running shoe. I'm not gonna get paid unless I unless my blog 

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sells a few pairs of shoes. So it's kind of a wild thing. And so a lot of these affiliate marketers are 

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very, very knowledgeable, very savvy. They're very careful about where they invest their money and time and effort. 

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And that conversion rate, that user experience that you're that you know so well is 

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really massively important to it. If it doesn't convert well, then your likelihood of these 

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affiliate marketers to promote you become a little lower. It's one factor in that at least. 

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So interesting. So the ways that we totally relate to each other are things like conversion 

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rate and call to action. You know, I'm just really fascinated with 

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what I think should be a much sort of better gradient between our worlds, 

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and you're helping me understand, some of the pieces of that. Yeah. 

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And I think our team spends maybe a surprising I think 

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you I think people in the UX world might be surprised perhaps, and maybe in some ways, 

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not surprised about there are teams out there that spend a lot of time thinking 

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about user experience and and what what happens 

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when that user lands on that page and how many variations of a page we might test 

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or recommend or or aim to improve. And so you think you bring up a really interesting point 

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of, like, what is the the gap in between our worlds, and how do we maybe bridge that 

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gap a little bit? Yeah. I mean and just personally, I can say, like, I may be an 

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expert in in UX and helping people improve conversion rates on products or on on, you 

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know, the little mini conversion rates of using features and things. But I have my own content, and I have 

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no idea how to market it. And the whole idea of marketing it makes me wanna just barf because it seems like it's 

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all so complex now, and there's metrics, and it just makes me completely shut down. 

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So it's funny that even me, who is adjacent to you in the field I 

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mean, this is my response anyway. It's kind of an ostrich approach to anything that seems hard. I just was like, 

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I'm not gonna do it. I don't I don't wanna but 

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understanding it is is powerful. Yeah. It's a it's a common reaction because 

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just like it's easier to give your friend advice on a situation they're dealing with, right, 

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it's a lot easier to apply marketing principles and effort and recommendations to someone 

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else's business than your own. I've I've been through that myself personally, so I absolutely appreciate where 

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your head's at with saying, I don't wanna figure out how to market my business or myself 

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or things I'm working on. And there's some ways that I describe marketing to UX 

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teams. Maybe you can correct some of that. Do you want me to tell you a little bit about how I do that? 

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So with UX teams Yeah. Like, I work with a lot of early stage startups who are just sort of 

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transitioning. It's actually their first pivot away from, like, creating a pitch deck or whatever to actually 

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launching something that everybody likes to call an MVP, but that's the story for another day. 

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And so Mhmm. You're creating this sort of experience with the product or 

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you are enabling users, not necessarily buyers because they might be two different 

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sets of people, users to get something done to satisfy some wants and needs that they 

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have. Marketing is telling the story that brings the people 

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to the product in the first place. There's this overlap then with this decision to buy 

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or try or set up a test account or whatever. And then so if if the 

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story gets them there, if it pulls their eyeballs over, and then this sort of landing experience or 

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whatever where we overlap gets them to click the right button, then they're gonna have expectations 

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from that story they were told that either will or will not be satisfied by 

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the experience that they have almost immediately with the product, which was created 

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by UXers. So it seems to me that marketing 

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and UX both work best if the UXers understand the story that the 

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marketers are telling, and the marketers really understand the 

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experience that's enabled and that both of them are getting clear direction from above, 

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Otherwise, it's you know, that's gonna clash somewhere. I love where you're where you're coming at 

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from there, and I could not agree more. And I think what I've observed being 

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we're an agency now, but also having been in house is that those those really great 

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teams are the ones that are doing what you just nailed as the really nice 

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understanding communication transfer of information to really 

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empathize with users across all aspects of the communication of a 

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product, even in the marketing. And the marketing teams are very well versed or sitting with 

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user experience people often, and they're listening to customers more often than maybe 

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some other types of marketers of the past or marketing teams now. And I would even 

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add that it seems like there's been a a big shift. I'm not sure the 

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exact timing, but I'm I'm sure you have served some of it and lived through a lot of it 

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is that a lot of teams are now kinda labeling it growth as opposed to 

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this is marketing and this is product and this is finance and this is UX. And and a lot of 

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these things are kind of just as you're highlighting, I think a lot of teams don't do it. 

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A lot of it's converging, and and product is really owning a lot of the big 

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decisions on marketing, what what what we call growth, making 

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sure that UX is has a seat at the table, making sure finance has a seat at the table. It's a 

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it's a kind of a wild I found this concept of growth and this silo 

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decreasing fascinating in the last ten years, definitely. I'm sure 

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you've seen it as well. Yeah. Any any thoughts on that? Okay. So I work 

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with really early stage startups where the silos aren't there simply because there aren't enough people 

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or really big companies that wanna behave like startups and, 

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you know, can can afford to hire me for my help or whatever. And I love the idea 

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that it's merging more into growth. I personally haven't seen it exactly. 

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What I have seen, at least in larger organizations, is people trying 

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to grab as much of the other one as they can, in a sort of political 

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empire building kind of way as opposed to a you know, 

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politics are are huge and rampant and not talked enough about, I think, in either of our fields and how they 

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impact our work. But if it could all come together, it would be great. Because it's like, 

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the way I see it sometimes now is, like, there's a there's a movie that the UXers sort of 

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helped to put together. But then it's like, there were these means that went around of, like, like, a horror movie 

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that they took the trailer and they overlaid voice over and music as if it was for 

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kids. Right? And that's what it feels like sometimes. Like, welcome to a 

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world where, you know, whatever. And then and then the movie is actually something 

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completely different. I'm a big meme fan fan, and that's one of my that's a really good 

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one. It's really funny. And, unfortunately, like you said, unfortunately, that happens sometimes when 

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one one department's intention turns into a completely different scenario for 

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another team. And both are doing it. It's not like there's any ill will or or I 

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mean, even if everybody's working their absolute best to get their jobs done, if those things don't 

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mesh, then, you know, sad things happen. I mean, in your I was just 

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telling you earlier that I was listening to some of your earlier podcasts, and Joe Black was talking about KPIs. 

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And he was about having to balance between new customer acquisition and long term value. 

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Basically, are you focusing on pouring water into the bucket, or are you focusing 

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on making sure there's no holes in the bucket? Right? And so with the best of intentions, these groups can 

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be working a little bit against each other or at least Absolutely. They're not making the most of each other, you 

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know? Absolutely. I think you'd find, some of the people in resources 

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and education that Reforged has put out just fascinating because I think it's 

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very education focused. They're not necessarily having to, you know, focus only on 

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one business where you're, hey. Am I doing my job? Am I kind of covering my 

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butt to some degree? Anyway, the the learnings from that have just been fascinating. I think one of the 

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things they talk about a lot is the the fact that and I was I was 

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actually taken aback by how often they emphasized that alignment and that buy in 

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from executives that even at the most successful companies sometimes was very hard 

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to grasp to your alluding to what you, you know, experienced. And so coming 

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from some of these growth and product and marketing and and even a lot of 

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UX people in this community, The amount of times it was referenced to me kind of leads 

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me to validate and support where you're saying that, hey. In a lot of orgs, and I and we've all been 

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there. It isn't happening. Or some of those intentions are happening, but 

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there is a degree of misalignment or maybe a degree of, hey. We're not able to support 

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x y z enough. So I'm curious to know maybe more yeah. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, 

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misalignment is my big thing. Right? So I'm this UX person who and, you know, people know me for 

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personas. They know me for UX and startups and things like that. Really, what 

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I've become focused on is executive misalignment. But it's not like anybody's out there 

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shopping for a solution to executive misalignment. But what happens what happens in the world 

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of UX or or at least did as I was coming up is that, you know, the field was 

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young and everybody was figuring it out. And there was this whole notion of swimming upstream, meaning 

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how can we get UX people and usability people or whatever they were called at the 

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time involved earlier and earlier in the product design life cycle because it would be 

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helpful instead of, you know, in the beginning with usability testing. It was like 

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testing whether or not the baby was ugly. It was a little late. And and even if you found something was 

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unusable, then what are you gonna do about it if it's already designed and prototyped and ready for code or already 

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coded? So as as we swim upstream, we kept looking for how can 

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we insert ourselves earlier. And I found 

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myself, especially in the early stage startup work that I was doing, essentially swimming all the way 

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upstream to the c suite. And I had this face palm moment 

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where, you know, I had thought as a UX person, if I just asked the right executive at the right time to tell me 

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what they wanted me to build, they would tell me. And the face palm moment was they don't 

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know either. So simply having a c in front of your title doesn't 

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mean that you know exactly what you want people to build or 

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to market or to message. It just means that it's risky riskier 

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for you than most people to say what you think because you're putting your neck on the line, and 

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the chances of you being wrong are high. So if it's if it's true what I'm 

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saying that they don't know, if the executive team isn't any clearer 

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than you are, then as a UX person for a while, we just whined about that. And then I 

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thought, well, no. If we use our tools, then maybe it's our job to help them figure it 

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out. So what do they need to feel ready to 

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make a decision that they're also ready to stick with so that the seagull 

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management swoop and poop thing doesn't happen as often to projects, which are the things that 

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really sort of drive everybody crazy and and ensure that products that are launched aren't as good as they could 

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be. And so that's where I started getting super interested in executive alignment. 

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And then, of course, because, you know, I was so interested in personas, crafting 

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away a sort of a different kind of persona exercise that would help and 

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enable execs to discover where they were misaligned, craft goals that would 

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stick, and then change the conversation so that they were talking about descriptions of people, 

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which suddenly you know, it's a longer story than that, but which suddenly meant that they weren't arguing about who 

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was the smartest person in the room. And that where the pop ups were cut and 

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where I was the person saying, I don't know what our business goals are, even though none of them really knew 

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what they were either. Wow. It's so funny because I Patrick Moran came on the 

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podcast. I think he's now at Robinhood, and he was a entrepreneur resident at Reforge, and he 

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had similar concepts talking about how your boss is just a human, 

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and they're not necessarily all knowing to your point about the c suite. And 

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so using those UX skills to kind of, like, let's 

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start from some foundational principles to understand shared language, and I 

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think that's really fascinating. A hundred percent. Because I imagine that it grossly 

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impacts marketers too. I mean, if if some executive goes off for the weekend and and hears 

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about some feature that your competitor is building, the likelihood that that's gonna impact you at work the 

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following week is high. Right? But if it really, you know, it really it 

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really shouldn't. These whims and these fears and these anxieties and 

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these all of these things shouldn't be impacting marketers or UX people or product 

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people as much as a really solid shared understanding of what our 

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own finish line is. And the thing about the thing I like to say about I mean, and and then that 

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should be expressed as business goals, which are what needles need to move by how much in 

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what time period, in order for us to say this was a success. So do we need to 

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increase the number of people who sign up by twenty percent within the next six months? Do we need to 

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decrease the number of calls coming into the call center that last over six minutes by fifteen 

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percent over? And you would think that those exist at a project level, but they 

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don't. Because even if companies set year long goals or whatever or set 

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them even quarterly, Two days after the goals are set, if more than one executive is in 

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a room, something shifts and no one writes it down. So then everybody acts like 

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they're aligned and nobody it's career suicide to be in a C level meeting and raise your hand as a C 

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level person and say, I'm not sure what our business goals are anymore. And so because of all these human 

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reasons, everything gets foggy and no one admits it. 

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Right? And the impact is is catastrophic. And it's really an 

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emperor's new clothes kind of situation where the team below the execs has 

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this misguided impression that the execs are super clear on what they want you to do, 

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or the whole team knows that they're not and is trying to deal with it. Or you 

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have execs who are Acting like they're really clear, but they keep changing their 

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minds or both. I don't know that there was a natural or there. I think I lost track of my thought for a second, but that 

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kind of thing. And see, it's an example. Same thing. I lost track. They do too. I love 

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it. Where do you see executive misalignment happening most? 

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I mean, you talk we talked a little bit about company size as a factor. Are there other 

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factors that kind of seem to be maybe a characteristic or a pattern to 

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watch out for? Oh, I think it's every single company. I think alignment 

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exercises are and should become part of the product life cycle 

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going forward for everyone. Now and I say executive misalignment. It can just be stakeholders. It can 

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just be your grand boss and your great grand boss and your great great grand boss. Right? Like, I'm not saying that that 

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coming in and trying to do alignment workshops with the executives of a Fortune five hundred company is gonna solve your 

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problems in developing a feature for one of a suite of products. It'll get you fired, but it's 

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not gonna do much other than that. But alignment exercises with stakeholders one or two 

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levels above you does amazing things because it also enables those 

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people to get clarity from their bosses without 

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putting their jobs and their reputations at risk. So any alignment 

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is better than no alignment and any numbers. That's 

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why I respect your field for getting so tied to metrics. 

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Our field, my field, UX, needs to get more and more tied to numbers. And 

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if we do this together, then that's a pretty powerful force. Wow. 

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I love that concept of your field, UX, being more tied to numbers. 

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How would you maybe categorize it now versus where would you like to see it go to? 

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You kind of alluded to it. You know, I have my own alignment workshop process that I've created, and the very 

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first step is business goals, and getting clarity on what the business goals are. And I have this little 

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Mad Libs format for anybody old enough to remember Mad Libs. It's that 

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you you start with word increase or decrease, some important metric like number of 

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people who sign up by some actual amount with a number in it, like twenty percent 

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within some time period, six months. Now, obviously, this is not rocket surgery. It's not 

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like I'm like, oh, Tamara now knows, you know, because she said that we know what a goal is. Obviously 

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not. But by sort of forcing that structure that does a couple things, 

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increase or decrease is simple. The metric is often tricky 

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to come up with, and they may not even be instrumented for it. But then what really gets 

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interesting is the number. Because when you do an alignment workshop, if you get agreement that you 

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nobody's going to disagree that we need more people to sign up. But what you find 

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when you do the workshop in the right way is that the CEO is thinking that it has to 

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be eighty percent, while the market CMO is thinking ten percent would be great, 

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while the CFO says if we're not tripling it, we're doomed. The fact that those 

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people I don't care what the number ends up being. If it's twenty percent, eighty percent, I may 

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or may not be able to do that, but at least I need to know what you're aiming for as a UX person, and then I can push back on 

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it. What I care about is that everybody says the same number by the end of the conversation. Because 

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if I start working on increasing the number of people who sign up thinking that 

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twenty percent would be enough, I'm gonna get great responses from the CMO, 

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terrible response from the c well, a bummed out and and a freaking tsunami 

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of rage from the CFO. And yet, I was trying to do my 

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job. Or in the beginning, if I get but but if we do it my way, and I say I don't 

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care what the number is as during the alignment workshop, then UX has a chance because I 

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can say then, Oh, I see that you all agreed that this has to triple in six months. I can't 

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do that for you, and here's why. So there's so many benefits 

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to that. And so that's the way I'm asking UX people to do this, is to create those Mad Libs and 

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then even just to write those down for for this project. If you're working on 

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this landing page or you're working on this feature or this checkout cart 

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experience, not for the whole company, just this one. Get to those numbers 

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and ask for clarification on them. That way, your boss isn't gonna know those 

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numbers either, but your boss can forward your email up the chain and say, oh, poor Tamara 

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isn't clear on exactly what our metrics are for this. And can you 

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help poor Tamara understand this rather than get themselves in trouble. All 

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of this is also tied with politics. And Yeah. I mean, I'm just, 

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like, so blown away from an perspective because I think 

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that it's surprising how many people on any field. And so it's almost like 

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saying to marketers, hey, You can apply some of these Tamara 

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UX principles to framing the work, clarification on 

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goals, just as an example of your if then statement 

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that sounds so simple, yet every stakeholder could think through these terms. Every leader could think through 

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these terms so that I think it would just be a really awesome tool to remind and help 

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people with. In some cases, they're not doing it at all. In other cases, they're maybe doing some 

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of that. I think it's a really great reminder of alignment for a 

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marketer that is our audience, a marketer that we talk about on this show. I mean, I think 

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a marketer like a UX person can design for anything as long as we know what it is. 

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We can try, we can do our best, but we can't do a dozen different things at the same time. 

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Right? And we also can't reach a finish line that is foggy and moving. 

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So then the trick becomes, how do you enable 

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I'm just gonna say executives. It can be stakeholders, whatever, to have a conversation that 

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is politically extremely dangerous for them to have without help. And the way 

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that I like to do that is to present I write them myself and say, I know I'm 

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so wrong. And then they can argue about how wrong I am and misguided 

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I am. But still, they're getting to something that's going to help me. See what I mean? And then also by doing 

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this sort of persona portion of this, then they're arguing about how important Genevieve is to the 

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business versus Bruce. They're not arguing about which one of them is smarter 

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than the other one. Are you having to come in as a third party to kind 

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of facilitate these conversations in all cases? I love doing that. But it's also 

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true that this alignment persona workshop that I have, I'm currently putting together a free course 

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on it right now on my site. And the reason I'm putting together a free course is because I think it needs 

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to be a tool in the UXers toolbox, and it certainly can be a tool in the marketers toolbox. And 

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I think there is a certain amount you can do from within, you have to be careful and you 

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have to do a dry run first without important muckety mucks in the room. But 

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if you do this the wonderful thing about getting clarity on goals 

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is that it's never inappropriate to ask for them, but they don't 

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exist. So if you say, so I'm I'm doing this class series so that 

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because I want everybody to use this because I think it's really smart and I'm proud of myself and I you know, and lots of other 

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practitioners have used it and really liked it. Of course, sometimes having me, the 

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author of the books or the method, come in from the outside as a consultant is really 

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important because I'm the one who can slam the book on the table and say, listen, you executives. One, two, three 

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eyes on me and not get myself in trouble. So I want people to start trying 

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it. Even if you just do it with your own team, with all friendly faces, 

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it's going to change the way you understand and then 

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reflect back expectations on the important decision 

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makers in your organization, which will also here's the here's the thing. This exercise 

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gets to what I call a magic sentence, which is if our goal is x 

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to increase sign ups by twenty percent within the first six months, and we don't make 

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Genevieve ridiculously happy, what the hell are we doing? That's a magic sentence. 

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Genevieve is different than Bruce. Bruce may already have an account or something. 

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Genevieve does not. If you're able to say, we know our number one goal is is 

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that number, and we know that if we don't get I mean, if we Genevieve's new. If we don't make her 

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ridiculously happy, what the heck are we we're never gonna get to this number. And everybody agrees 

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on that. Then when that C level person goes to the 

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Hamptons and comes back saying, we need this feature that our competitors have, 

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you, the lolly littlest person in the whole team can go, how does that help Genevieve? 

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Because you said Genevieve was really important. The the point is that exec has the power to 

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say, oh, Genevieve is no longer the most important. That's fine. But at least you know, and at least they have 

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to take on the fact that then there, it has implications for something all the exec team signed off 

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on. It changes the vocabulary and the conversation. And that's what I mean, 

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I get goosebumps about this stuff. It's like the usability of people and teams and 

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organizations. And if we get fluent in their language, then 

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and marketers will be great at this because you guys are great at audience just like we are. And if 

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we team up, oh my god, an alignment workshop with 

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members of marketing and tech and UX 

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and product and finance, that's what gets 

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flipping exciting. Yeah. It's the holy grail. Well, and so what I wanna do is put 

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this method out there for free. Of course, I wanna make money, but I'm not trying to build a huge agency. I'm just me. I'm gonna 

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get enough consulting or coaching gigs out of this anyway. What I want is people to be like, oh my 

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god. This is so cool. And try it. So that's why I'm gonna put up this 

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free course that people can take and just try it if they want. I love 

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it. Well, thank you. When you kind of assess where a team is at from 

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an alignment, goal, clarity, usability perspective, when 

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teams are doing really well on the spectrum or maybe better than most 

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you see, what have they done right in your perspective? What what are they 

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Well, you know, I'm super biased because I've been working on this alignment stuff forever. And 

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so to me, if there is some kind of finish line 

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that they have somehow made hard to move in a positive 

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way for the company, that's good. If they have tools 

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that make sense and help team and and also if they look at the 

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teams around them as their users also. So we have users of products. But as human 

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beings, we have users. Right? The members of our team or whatever, and we put 

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out artifacts that are either usable or not usable. That's why in UX, a long time ago, people are like, 

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let's stop doing these big reports because nobody's gonna read them. They're not usable. Even if a 

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team has figured out how it can be most usable to the other teams that are out there and not be a pain in the ass 

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from the engineer's perspective, but actually a relief, Those teams that really think holistically about 

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this, I think, do better. And also who have managers who 

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are much more about being the umbrella to keep 

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stuff off their teams versus anything else, which 

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which requires, I think, a certain amount of EQ from the manager who you know, how do you make 

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a name for yourself, which everybody wants to do while mostly serving serving your 

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team and enabling them to do great work? It's a long answer. That's great. No. 

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It's a very great answer. With this free tool that you're rolling out and releasing, 

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can you maybe share more of, like, what types of people, types of teams do you think would 

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be a no brainer for it? Oh my god. All of them. All of them. So this alignment persona 

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stuff. Okay. So traditional data driven personas as introduced so smartly by 

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Alan Cooper back in ninety nine, were about solving a problem in the design and development process 

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right downstream a little bit, which is, you know, we need more data and more empathy down there. This 

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alignment persona workshop that I've sort of evolved over time says that's not 

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the problem we're trying to solve. Yes. That may be a problem, but the reason so many persona 

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data driven persona efforts fail or buyer personas or marketing personas, and we could talk on 

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another time about the differences, is because they don't resonate for the 

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leadership team, and they don't serve as a way to keep the leadership team from 

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seeming to constantly change their minds. And that's why the persona efforts don't work 

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because they don't I have this analogy where if you're if you're building a house and everything's working 

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great for building the house, that's fine. What I'm more interested is, you 

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know, in your process and you have personas and your house is your product. What happen if a 

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tornado comes through? I'm more fascinated by the tornado, and the tornado is executive 

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teams making decisions. There's nothing you can do down here in your design 

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development process that can fight a tornado, and you're it's 

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gonna stop if a tornado comes through. So what can we do to prevent the tornado? 

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Expect it and manage it. Your question was different. Your question was, what kind of teams 

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can use this? Any team that has experienced a tornado, this can help 

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because it tries to control the weather a little bit before it gets out of control. 

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Right? It tries to be able to say, oh, before you become a tornado, large large 

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front of wind, perhaps we can redirect you over here. Or perhaps we can put our 

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entire project under a dome so that the tornado doesn't blow it to 

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pieces. So I don't think it can hurt any project 

408
00:33:35,300 --> 00:33:40,100
to get more clarity at the beginning. And it doesn't take data to do it either. It takes 

409
00:33:40,100 --> 00:33:44,900
wrangling everybody's assumptions and lining them up. What you'll find, it's it also 

410
00:33:44,900 --> 00:33:49,700
pushes all the hard questions earlier. It takes some time and it's hard because 

411
00:33:49,700 --> 00:33:54,300
asking people to clarify goals is like a DNA level question that 

412
00:33:54,300 --> 00:33:59,100
takes time for the people above you to sort through. It's not easy to get to this 

413
00:33:59,100 --> 00:34:04,100
alignment, but it's magical when you do. And the investment 

414
00:34:04,100 --> 00:34:09,000
of time, couple weeks maybe, still isn't huge. So I think 

415
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:14,000
every team should try this on a tiny scale. And then what happens if you're able to 

416
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:19,000
do a project or a product that performs better than anybody expected, then you can say, here's 

417
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:23,800
how we did this and create a pull. Wow. Maybe we can try that for team over 

418
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:28,700
here or team over. Just start small. Yep. One landing page. 

419
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:33,600
One of your, you know, little projects within a project. Yeah. When 

420
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:38,200
you get that hard earned agreement, which obviously takes a while and there's clarity, 

421
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:43,300
and then time goes on and storms arise as you reference the analogy. 

422
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:48,300
How do you encourage and and enable people to 

423
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:53,700
point back to that as the little mouse voice said earlier? What about Genevieve? 

424
00:34:54,100 --> 00:34:59,100
How do you encourage those that maybe don't aren't naturally able to 

425
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:04,500
point back to that? It's a bit of a, you know, detailed minor 

426
00:35:04,500 --> 00:35:09,100
question, but maybe a big one. Like, how do you encourage it? It's not a minor question. 

427
00:35:09,500 --> 00:35:13,600
When you do these workshops for real, you do them with the stakeholders, 

428
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:19,100
and they are in the room. This isn't about gathering data and trying to change people's 

429
00:35:19,100 --> 00:35:24,100
minds. This is about trying to get people to dump their minds out on the table so everybody can 

430
00:35:24,100 --> 00:35:29,100
see where their minds are. So if this is if you get stakeholders or executives 

431
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:34,100
together and they collaboratively go through these five conversations, which is number one is the 

432
00:35:34,100 --> 00:35:39,000
business goals. Number two is how do we talk about users today. Number three is how can we 

433
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:43,600
group those descriptions under sticky notes that start with the words I want or I need. 

434
00:35:44,100 --> 00:35:48,900
Step four is to sort of gather those together into motivation based personas. And step 

435
00:35:48,900 --> 00:35:53,800
five is to prioritize those alignment personas based on the business goals. 

436
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:58,600
So, again, that that's how you get to that magic sentence. Our primary business goal is x. If 

437
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:03,400
we don't make Genevieve ridiculously happy, we'll fail. They were in 

438
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:08,800
the room. They were in the room. And so you also tell them, 

439
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:13,500
of course, you can change your mind about which is our primary business goal because 

440
00:36:13,500 --> 00:36:18,300
you're in charge and the honcho of all honchos. But at least we need to 

441
00:36:18,300 --> 00:36:23,200
know that it's changed because then when we flip over to do some projects 

442
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:28,200
for Bruce, we'll be able to tell you these four things for Genevieve we can no longer do. And we'll 

443
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:33,100
be able to show you the impact of this. But the fact that they're in the room, even though there are some 

444
00:36:33,100 --> 00:36:37,400
resistance at first, it's a relief to them to be able to talk about Genevieve and Bruce, 

445
00:36:37,900 --> 00:36:42,700
because nobody's given them a different vocabulary before. Right? If you throw 

446
00:36:42,700 --> 00:36:47,300
personas over the wall, even if they're driven by data, data does 

447
00:36:47,300 --> 00:36:52,300
not get rid of people's assumptions. It is not as powerful as 

448
00:36:52,300 --> 00:36:57,300
we think. It never is. Because if you have a strongly held assumption 

449
00:36:57,300 --> 00:37:02,300
and you're a senior level person, it doesn't mat you're gonna find ways around that data. 

450
00:37:02,300 --> 00:37:07,100
Oh, it wasn't collected right, or they're not considering this, or the market has changed. One of my 

451
00:37:07,100 --> 00:37:11,900
favorite quotes of this podcast, data does not change people's assumptions. 

452
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:17,200
It doesn't. Here's a gotcha. Ready? Ready? Ready? People still get married. 

453
00:37:17,700 --> 00:37:22,400
Why? Why? Because I know that's a hardcore one. 

454
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:27,800
Because I ours is gonna be different. We have something unusual. Nobody 

455
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:32,700
else understands what we have. Yep. It doesn't matter that there's data 

456
00:37:32,700 --> 00:37:37,400
that says this might actually not be a great idea. And it's it's the same 

457
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:42,100
power. It's the same I love this stuff so much. You know, I see you smiling and I'm like, it's made me 

458
00:37:42,100 --> 00:37:46,900
happy. And maybe getting married is the right thing to do for a lot of people, but it's the same point. 

459
00:37:47,300 --> 00:37:52,300
The data doesn't change your assumption or your strongly held beliefs. When that happens 

460
00:37:52,300 --> 00:37:56,900
in a workplace function and you've seen that, and and maybe it's a redundant question, 

461
00:37:56,900 --> 00:38:01,900
but let's say the data is presented to a discussion around UX. How do you 

462
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:07,000
combat those assumptions when the data aiming to combat it was delivered and 

463
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:11,800
cleared and had the statistical significance and had all the things? You're 

464
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:16,800
asking some of the most the smartest question that of somebody I'm talking about this with for 

465
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:21,700
the first time. So when we were in seventh grade in United States and we were starting to learn science, what's the 

466
00:38:21,700 --> 00:38:26,700
first step of doing any experiment? Hypothesis. Exactly. But when we do research 

467
00:38:26,700 --> 00:38:31,700
in business, I don't think we clarify our hypotheses enough. In fact, we have a lot of reasons 

468
00:38:31,700 --> 00:38:36,700
that we're told not to because it's gonna bias the research or whatever. What I'm saying is that 

469
00:38:36,900 --> 00:38:41,800
if you get everybody's assumptions out on the table, you line them up so that everybody suddenly agrees 

470
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:46,500
through this process that if we don't make Genevieve ridiculously happy in the next release, we're not we're we're 

471
00:38:46,500 --> 00:38:50,900
not gonna do well, and here's why, because we have this very important goal. 

472
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:56,500
Now you have Genevieve, you have Bruce, you have whoever. Now you can go out and validate 

473
00:38:56,500 --> 00:39:01,500
or invalidate those alignment personas based on data. You can 

474
00:39:01,500 --> 00:39:06,300
say, I know we had great conversations about Genevieve, but we went out there, and we 

475
00:39:06,300 --> 00:39:11,300
found out that Genevieve doesn't like washing her socks by hand 

476
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:16,100
and never has. But then at least you're all talking about the same person. 

477
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:21,300
You're not just throwing in these bullets that say, you know, women between the ages of 

478
00:39:21,300 --> 00:39:25,000
twenty seven and thirty five who read the O magazine tend to 

479
00:39:25,900 --> 00:39:30,800
enjoy outsourcing undergarments, care and control on a yearly 

480
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:35,700
basis. No. You're saying we found out Genevieve doesn't like a washer, washer socks. And suddenly 

481
00:39:35,700 --> 00:39:40,600
it's, I mean, it's a weird analogy, but it's more relatable, and people then can 

482
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:45,500
have that conversation. Oh, wow. Interesting. I love it. Kinda winding down. I 

483
00:39:45,500 --> 00:39:50,300
feel like we could talk for hours literally, and this has been already, I think, super informative. 

484
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:55,300
I love the bridging of the gap between UX and marketing, which is obviously predominantly what 

485
00:39:55,300 --> 00:40:00,300
we talk about. But when you assess an opportunity to coach or counsel or support 

486
00:40:00,300 --> 00:40:05,300
a business or an entrepreneur or a team, how do you what factors do you look at to say, 

487
00:40:05,300 --> 00:40:10,200
hey. I'm I'm gonna take this project over this other one? So in terms of the startup, I wrote 

488
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:15,200
a I wrote a an article about why blockchain and 

489
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:19,900
Web three UX is gonna suck for a while. And part of it is because 

490
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:25,400
I was surprised, although looking back on it, it's not so surprising to find that 

491
00:40:25,500 --> 00:40:30,500
the people starting these new companies in this disruptive technology were sort of starting over from 

492
00:40:30,500 --> 00:40:35,300
scratch and they had the same run fast break things. We're inventing everything over 

493
00:40:35,300 --> 00:40:40,200
again that the people in two thousand, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand one had. And both of you, you and 

494
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:44,800
I were working at that time. But since, you know, since then, early two thousands, people like, oh, yes. Usability, 

495
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,000
product design. Oh, that all makes sense. And then it was like, bam. All that got thrown out the window. So 

496
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:54,800
when I look at startups, one of the things I look for and I help assess 

497
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:59,700
opportunities for a venture firm too. Like, is this first of all, is the founder pre 

498
00:40:59,700 --> 00:41:04,700
disastered? Meaning, there's a there's a movie, old movie with Robin Williams called The World According 

499
00:41:04,700 --> 00:41:09,600
to Garp. And he Garp and his young wife are looking at a house and they're and while 

500
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:14,400
they're looking at this house to buy, a small plane crashes into the house. And 

501
00:41:14,900 --> 00:41:19,700
Robin Williams Garth Garp says, we'll take it. And his wife is like, are you crazy? 

502
00:41:19,700 --> 00:41:24,500
And he said, no, no, no. It's pre disastered. What are the chances this will happen again? So 

503
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:29,200
if a founder or a team or a person looking for coaching has been 

504
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:34,200
through the disaster part in a previous portion of their life, then they are going to 

505
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:39,200
understand the value of looking at something in a in a different way or and or the value 

506
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:43,900
of looking at old lessons that might be valid now. And 

507
00:41:43,900 --> 00:41:48,900
so because of my experience, you know, I can talk to young founders quickly and figure out 

508
00:41:49,100 --> 00:41:54,000
whether they know how far away their product is from being great, whether they're capable of thinking 

509
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:59,000
in the way that's gonna make the right changes. That's experience. But a shortcut for that is to 

510
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:03,800
look if somebody has been somewhat pre disastered and therefore has 

511
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:08,600
a desire to get past the assumptions that are driving 

512
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:13,400
them inside, and telling them they're right about everything. Love it. Wow. 

513
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:18,100
That's fantastic. What advice would you give folks maybe interested in the 

514
00:42:18,100 --> 00:42:23,000
user experience, what realm, and maybe not familiar with it, like how to get into it, how 

515
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:28,000
to start thinking about it, maybe even applying some of the principles to what they 

516
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:32,900
do now. Well, I guess I would have specific advice based on who's 

517
00:42:32,900 --> 00:42:37,700
probably listening to this podcast. If it's people in marketing or people getting into marketing, 

518
00:42:38,100 --> 00:42:43,100
I would say, don't just think, oh, I'm gonna switch to UX because then you're gonna like put your there's too 

519
00:42:43,100 --> 00:42:48,000
many people that come out of these boot camps and whatever. Instead, make it a one plus one 

520
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:53,000
equals three look for the overlaps between marketing and UX. One 

521
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:57,900
of those overlaps is gonna be in the field of personas, because there are traditional 

522
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:03,100
data driven product personas. There are marketing personas that evolved after 

523
00:43:03,100 --> 00:43:07,800
that. There's a concept I've seen out there called buyer personas. There's proto personas of all these things. So 

524
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:12,700
these descriptions of who users are or who purchasers are can be a great 

525
00:43:12,700 --> 00:43:17,700
field, a way to overlap and start the communication between you and 

526
00:43:17,700 --> 00:43:22,700
that other team, whether it's a UX and marketing team or the other way marketing and UX. Or as 

527
00:43:22,700 --> 00:43:27,400
a marketer, you can start looking at what if the thing I'm 

528
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:32,300
designing doesn't stop at the CTA on the landing page? What if through 

529
00:43:32,300 --> 00:43:37,200
truly understanding the story, the full story of the movie 

530
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:42,000
and impacting that because I know what people actually want is the thing that's gonna make 

531
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:46,800
me make this trailer a lot better and offer to 

532
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:51,600
help and find, you know, even create a glossary. We started 

533
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:56,300
this interview by me asking you to create glossary definitions for the 

534
00:43:56,300 --> 00:44:01,100
people listening in. So if you're a marketer interested in UX, why don't you do that? Start by 

535
00:44:01,100 --> 00:44:05,900
creating a little glossary of terms and find where the overlap is. Yeah. We have a nice, 

536
00:44:06,100 --> 00:44:11,000
growth glossary on our website. I love where you're thinking. What a great idea. Great 

537
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:16,000
advice. Cool. Right? Maybe we should do that. And Yeah. And that's a way to approach as 

538
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:20,900
part of a solution to the UX team that's also struggling. You're all struggling with the same 

539
00:44:20,900 --> 00:44:25,700
stuff. Love it. Tamara, this has been amazing. Where where can people find you 

540
00:44:25,700 --> 00:44:30,400
and learn more about you and contact you? Yeah. Well, I'm on I'm the only 

541
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:35,200
Tamara Adlin on LinkedIn, t a m a r a a d l I n. And then my last 

542
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:40,200
name a d l I n I n c dot com adlin inc dot com. That's where I'm 

543
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:45,200
going to post this free course and I'm still recording and people will be able to access it and 

544
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:50,100
also information about the services that I have and availability. I love speaking or 

545
00:44:50,100 --> 00:44:54,800
being on podcast. So anybody out there, please feel free to reach out. Tamara, 

546
00:44:55,100 --> 00:44:59,900
this has been amazing. When I first met you years and years years ago, your your talk 

547
00:45:00,300 --> 00:45:05,300
at Amazon was with some of the heavy hitters in user experience. It was it was passionate. It 

548
00:45:05,300 --> 00:45:10,200
was clear. It was inspiring. This talk was as well. I we went fifty 

549
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:15,000
minutes, and usually, I'm kind of, like, counting time and and saying, is this over? 

550
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:19,900
And this went this went by. It felt like twenty minutes. So so thank you. And, 

551
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:25,200
I'm really excited about your free course. I think it might be something our team might look at and look 

552
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:29,900
at maybe as a learning, maybe as something we introduce. And so, highly recommend 

553
00:45:29,900 --> 00:45:34,900
folks in the marketing world, in the UX world, in the startup world, reach out to Tamara and 

554
00:45:34,900 --> 00:45:39,500
learn more. Thank you so much. It's been so fun talking to you and reconnecting with you. 

555
00:45:39,700 --> 00:45:43,900
Likewise. Have an amazing weekend. You too. We'll talk soon. Bye.