No Hacks

Stewart Ehoff: Unlocking Business Potential Through Digital Experimentation

• Slobodan (Sani) Manić • Season 2 • Episode 1

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In this episode of No Hacks, we kick off Season 2 with Stewart Ehoff, the head of an award-winning experimentation program at RS, a dynamic public speaker, and a Dragon Ball Z fan. Join us as Stewart discusses his journey from web development to leading a successful experimentation team, offering deep insights into how he transitioned from building features to building tests. 

Discover actionable advice for web developers, the importance of curiosity, overcoming imposter syndrome, and the benefits of adopting an experimental mindset not only in digital realms but also in daily life. Stewart shares real-life success stories from RS, inspirational thoughts on maintaining humility, and practical tips on optimizing your work environment and personal habits.

00:00 Introduction to No Hacks Podcast Season 2
00:39 Meet Stewart Ehoff: From Web Developer to Experimentation Leader
01:19 The Journey from Web Development to Experimentation
02:51 Advice for Web Developers on Experimentation
04:35 Mentorship and Key Advice in Experimentation
07:20 Experimentation in Business: The RS Story
10:55 Building a Center of Excellence for Experimentation
14:58 Real-Life Experimentation Stories and Challenges
17:44 Optimizing Your Physical Work Environment
21:47 Listener Questions and Final Thoughts

#NoHacksPodcast #Experimentation #WebDevelopment #BusinessOptimization #Curiosity #Productivity #DigitalTransformation #BusinessExperimentation #HabitBuilding #WorkLifeBalance #Patience

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Introduction to No Hacks Podcast Season 2
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[00:00:00] Stewart: I started building tests instead of building features. 

the hippo is actually to the benefit not to the detriment of an experimentation program if you apply the right mindset, 

complacency is, is an easy way to become irrelevant.

humans, , are really, , Bad at building habits, 



[00:00:26] Sani: Welcome to a new episode and a new season of No Hacks podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of optimization, whether it's for your digital world or your daily routines, because mastering the process makes the entire journey enjoyable. 


Meet Stewart Ehoff: From Web Developer to Experimentation Leader
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[00:00:39] Sani: My guest today, opening season two of No Hacks podcast is Stewart Ehoff, head of an award winning experimentation program at RS, a public speaker and a Dragon Ball Z fan.

He's here to talk about moving from digital to business experimentation, but we will also touch on how you can use the experimental mindset to improve your day to day life.

Stewart, welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:57] Stewart: Sani, thank you so much for having me on. It's such a pleasure to be guest number one of season two as well. What an honor. 

[00:01:03] Sani: When did we agree on that? Was it June? That you would be the next episode, right?

[00:01:08] Stewart: I think I left a very cheeky comment on a LinkedIn post, uh, where you were talking with Lukas Vermeer and he was on your next episode. And I said, I want to be next. 

[00:01:16] Sani: And I'm really happy you're the guest. 


The Journey from Web Development to Experimentation
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[00:01:19] Sani: You started as a web developer. I started as a web developer. I'm always intrigued to see when a web developer goes to something else. So from web developer to heading a very successful award winning experimentation program at RS.

Did you have this mindset back then when you were just a web developer or was this something that you acquired along the way?

[00:01:38] Stewart: So I think as a, as a web developer, there are things that, In my early career, when I look back, I was always very curious about data and analytics and the meaning behind what we're building from a software or web perspective. I used to always get really frustrated with clients who would just say, Hey, can you make the logo bigger?

Or can you just put this thing on the menu? Or, Hey, we want to create this new page to do X, Y, Z. And you'd always just ask yourself, like, what is the rationale behind that? Where is this coming from? Is this all just. Your idea, do you have data behind this? Do you have research behind this? 99 percent of the time in, agency environments for web development, it's often just opinion led.

And that used to always bug me. It used to always frustrate me in terms of I'm building this stuff, but I don't understand the value of it. Right. And then I sort of happened upon. By accident, the world of experimentation, and it just completely blew my worldview open in terms of all of these challenges and frustrations and questions I had about the impact of what we're doing on users all just suddenly became clear to me.

And from then I was hooked and I was like, I got to get into this thing, right? Because that will connect me to the value of the work. 


Advice for Web Developers on Experimentation
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[00:02:51] Sani: There's a bunch of web developers, listening to this podcast. I have a lot of web developer friends. What's your advice to them? They work with a client who just asked for like bigger logo, how should they respond?

What should they do?

[00:03:01] Stewart: It's tricky, right? Because you got to pay the bills, right? So in an agency environment, often the developer is the last person to know what's going to be happening. Things are agreed by project managers or salespeople who sell websites or features in or whatever. I think as a web developer, I would just be asking questions about, Hey, how can we make sure this thing, this decision we've already made to do this thing.

How can we make sure that that is the best possible implementation or iteration or a change that we can make to the website, right? Like you're paying for development time to build stuff. I want to make sure the stuff I'm building is impactful. How do we make sure that that happens? So I think for the developers to try and lean into a bit of data, to lean into a bit of, insight that they might have, but also to look at, giving really good advice to, the people that they're working with and the things they're building things for, is the best advice that I can give.

[00:03:55] Sani: And then you guide them into making that decision.

[00:03:58] Stewart: I think so. It's quite difficult to suggest that a web developer in a, like an agency type setting that I found myself in eight years ago could suggest, Hey, why don't we AB test this? Cause that then just blows up so many different types of conversations. My path into this was more.

I started building tests instead of building features. So I think that is a logical step, a logical career step that if you're a developer feeling frustrated about value and about the return of what you do, maybe think about, Hey, could I be a developer for tests instead of just features? 

[00:04:32] Sani: You said you stumbled upon experimentation community. 


Mentorship and Key Advice in Experimentation
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[00:04:35] Sani: Hopefully more people do, but along the way you must have had, official or unofficial mentors who helped you. What is the one crucial advice that you got along the way? 

[00:04:44] Stewart: I met someone at a conference, in 2019, I think it was, so coming back five years ago and this was kind of post me already being into experimentation, but still being very new to it. And just meeting this person and then building a bit of relationship with them at the conference and, continuing to talk to them just opened my mind to the possibilities of what experimentation could be.

In an organization, I, in my earlier parts of my career, I was still thinking about it quite one dimensionally in terms of let's just build tests and ship them. But I never really thought about the broader operations of an organization, how businesses make money, uh, how product teams are also creating features alongside teams that are testing and why that's often a challenge.

And this one person just opened my mind to. The possibilities of how experimentation can apply to more than just web, how it can apply to more than just digital products. And it can actually be a methodology and a mindset that gets better business results. 

[00:05:45] Sani: One more thing about your background, your rock and roll beginning. So you're, drumming and programming audio ring rigs. How does that, if at all, play into what you're doing right now at , RS?

[00:05:56] Stewart: The connection always for me was. With studio engineering, audio engineering, there's a lot of logic that needs to be applied to that. You're basically just working with electronics and signals, right? You're pushing signals from some preamplification unit into a microphone, into a guitar, you're putting that signal back, you're processing it, um, and just kind of that logical workflow and processing, and also a level of kind of coding and programming for some of those things as well.

then sort of nudged me into software engineering and web development more broadly. The connection to experimentation, I think, is a little bit looser. But the way that I always like to think about it is that my music taste and what I enjoy is quite experimental and quite eclectic. So I have Such a wide variety of musical interests.

As a drummer, you get an appreciation for all the different styles of drumming that there could possibly be. Um, so I listened to a lot of different music. My Spotify shuffle is just a complete mess. Um, but it's always a lot of fun, right?

[00:06:56] Sani: You're the edge case user for, for Spotify for sure.

[00:06:59] Stewart: They're trying to pin me into some sort of like algorithm bucket. They can't, they can't do it. Right.

[00:07:05] Sani: Keep doing that. It is a connection still. It just proves that this is a mindset. This is not about. Shout out to Shiva, but this is not about following best practices. I know he loves that our mutual friend from a smaller podcast called from A to B, 


Experimentation in Business: The RS Story
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[00:07:20] Sani: let's talk about the main topic, your approach , to experimentation and business experimentation at a traditional company like RS before we do, what's your experimentation hill that you're willing to die on.

[00:07:32] Stewart: There's a lot of flack that people like to put out there around hippos And that hippos are like the worst thing for experimenters researchers CRO people kind of type deal I think the hippo is actually to the benefit not to the detriment of an experimentation program if you apply the right mindset, 

the only way that experimentation programs are ever going to succeed or ever going to grow is if they win the c suite And if they get them on board. So for me, like throwing around, what could I guess be a bit of a derogatory term in some respect with that, with calling people hippos, um, is not helpful.

It's counterproductive to the growth of experimentation. And I think probably demonstrates a bit of a closed mind rather than an open mind as to how we might win those people over.

[00:08:16] Sani: This is something I could not agree with more, because it's elitist. We are the people who know stuff, and anyone who doesn't agree with us is a hippo, or like whatever, whatever other term. 

[00:08:27] Stewart: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's kind of like, you know, when you take a step back and you look at, what some of these, C suite executives own and the level of accountability and responsibility they have in terms of enormous multi million, sometimes billion dollar balance sheets, profit and loss, the level of decision making that needs to happen and the breadth of knowledge and awareness that you need to have to sit in one of those roles

it's quite large. Right. , and I think it's very easy for us in our focused position on experimentation and CRO, just to think about, well, I know what's best for the company, but actually I think if we challenged ourselves to think about, well, if I was the CEO, could I do it? I think most people, 99 percent of people would answer no.

Maybe the 1 percent that answer yes, are probably a bit in over their heads. 

[00:09:10] Sani: I heard someone say, all right, ride the hippo. Don't fight with the hippo. It's even worse somehow when you say it like that, but like the meaning and what it implies, like just go work with them and be there to help them rather than fight them and in a closed room, talk about how they have no idea they don't get it.

That's not helping anyone, please don't do that.

[00:09:30] Stewart: Absolutely right.

[00:09:31] Sani: So a traditional company like RS. Digital experimentation at a company that is as old and traditional, getting that started. I don't know if you were the person who started the program or just joined the program, but how did that feel? Because it's not supposed to be like, you're thinking about booking Netflix, like whatever. You're not thinking about a company like RS.

How is that different?

[00:09:52] Stewart: It's a very, it's a very different sort of genesis story to when you hear about things like Booking. com where the company is a digital first company, and they apply the principles and methodologies of experimentation. From the outset, from the C suite, all the way through the company. And they instilled that as a core part of the culture 

rS were actually a bit of a trailblazer in themselves in the digital world. So I believe the first website was launched in something like 1999 or early 2000, which for B2B was like a first to market type position. But we used to have this big old. Hundreds of pages long catalog, right?

And that's how people would find the products and, and, place an order over the phone or , what have you. So over the last 25 years, since the inception of the first website, the company has been on this kind of digital growth journey to the point where around 65 percent of global revenues for RS come through digital channels, right?

So we are, um, we are a digital first company, right? From a revenue perspective. Yeah. 


Building a Center of Excellence for Experimentation
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[00:10:55] Stewart: When it comes to sort of the world of experimentation and kind of where my story started within all of this was, uh, when I first joined the company six years ago, I joined as an optimization developer and we had an optimization team within our digital function where ideas were just kind of chucked over the fence from product teams.

And then that optimization team that I sat in basically built all the tests end to end, did all the analysis. Chucked a result back over the fence and to nobody's surprise, nothing really happened with those results because it was not a core part of how we actually built products and solve problems for customers.

So my journey within this and kind of getting us to the position where we are now, where, we've won an award, we're starting to build a good reputation in the experimentation and in the digital industry at large for what we do, um, my part to play in all of that was helping the company to actually build.

a center of excellence for experimentation that empowers product teams to run experiments and brings the methodology of experimentation into the core of everything that we do. That's a still continuous journey, but if I was to sum up what the last sort of four to five years have looked at, that's been the focus and it still is the focus today. 

[00:12:09] Sani: I talked to Ruben DeBoer about this very topic centers of excellence or enablers as he prefers to call it, it's basically a unit within an organization that is there to make sure everybody else is capable of doing their job as well as they can. 

[00:12:23] Stewart: I call the purpose of our team. Really around enabling the business at large to make better decisions. And we do that through owning things like tooling, capability, processes, workflows, and operations, largely around experimentation. What my team doesn't do is, is run the experiments themselves.

So we work with product teams and, uh, other business units who want to drive a business result. Um, we work with them to help them use experimentation as a capability, as a methodology to achieve their results, to mitigate risk, and to make sure we deliver the best outcome for the customers. 

[00:13:02] Sani: And you mentioned this is an award winning program. This is a experimentation lead 2023, right?

[00:13:09] Stewart: That's right.

[00:13:10] Sani: the war. Yeah. You'll stocked on, on the e commerce experimenters podcast, last year. You still feel like an underdog despite winning the experimentation lead award in, in, in this entire space.

So how do you and your team, how do you manage that imposter syndrome in the space, even though you are now kind of successful and recognized, like, does it still exist? Is it, is it a problem or does it drive you? 

[00:13:32] Stewart: I think it drives me, but also I think there's a level of humility that is still important to demonstrate and to recognize, the scale of our experimentation team and the results that we're driving and what we're able to achieve is. When you look at it statistically, you know, based on data that optimizely have as, as a benchmark of, you know, companies that run experiments and how many experiments that they run.

We're in the 95th percentile, right? But even still, it often feels like the difference between the organizational culture within which I sit versus something like a booking. com or like a Netflix or an Amazon or similar is so different someone who's in the top, you know, 95 percent or in the top 5%, should I say, versus the top 1 percent or even the top 0.

01%. That is, that is enormous. It's such a big chasm to cross. So I think though we're a highly successful team, I think it's still important to maintain the humility and look at actually, there's still so much more we could be doing. I never want to be complacent. And complacency is, is an easy way to become irrelevant.

So for me, it's more of a driving factor, as you suggest. We're doing great, but we can always do better. 

[00:14:47] Sani: That's the right approach because you're optimizing the product. But who's optimizing the program that's optimizing things. If you're not also doing that, if you're not optimizing, Checking if it's going well, what could be done better? You're probably missing out. 


Real-Life Experimentation Stories and Challenges
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[00:14:58] Sani: Give me some real life experimentation stories from RS. , and especially if you can touch on the role of curiosity and organization wide curiosity or fear of failure or ethics, because to me, those are the most interesting ones, like when you see something that's just not working, let's fix it, let's see how, but how do you know where to look, which buttons to push and which buttons not to push? 

[00:15:22] Stewart: I'm always one to lean into a big challenge and the business, was going through a bit of a transformation journey in regards to its search capabilities.

Uh, we were replacing our search engine with a new sort of AI machine learning led. search engine capability across global markets, which was an enormous change given the volume of users who use the search functionality, I believe it's about 60 percent of users who land, who kind of use the search functionality.

Right. Um, and the business was just going to kind of ship it and cross its fingers and pray and hope that as we shipped that it would, you improve business metrics it would do everything that the investment proposal said it would do. We'd all be popping bottles of champagne and conversion would go up by 5 billion percent and we'd all be millionaires, right?

That really felt like the positive energy and the positive story that was coming through.

The curiosity in me sort of said, well, battle sounds very happy, but what if it's not? What if it's not better? What if it's worse? Or even if it is better, to what extent is it better? How do we empirically measure that?

What does that look like? , I sort of intercepted this initiative and I said, Hey, what if we didn't just ship it? What if we A, B tested it for a period of time? And it wasn't really a true experiment that was necessarily problem statement and hypothesis led because we were, uh, you know, I acknowledge that we were effectively forcing.

an AB test into a preexisting business decision. But I almost wanted to do it from a risk mitigation perspective and from a curiosity perspective to understand, well, to what extent is it good? And when you talk to the teams about how they're going to measure this stuff, they say, well, we'll just look at four weeks previous data and four weeks post data, and it's like, we're not going to prove anything with that.

We didn't call it an AB test. We called it a monitored launch, right?

We're effectively monitoring the launch and it turned out to be the biggest success story that we've had. In experimentation there were some interesting market dynamics, uh, when we looked at, um, the launch and the release of this new search engine.

And we're always trying to encourage the business to think about, um, all the different ways that we can experiment and how that helps us. 

[00:17:32] Sani: You're an experimenter through and through, even when you were a developer, you were an experimenter.

I want to just spend some time talking about experimenters,, approach to real life situations and how you optimize your real life. 


Optimizing Your Physical Work Environment
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[00:17:44] Sani: And let's just start with a segment I'll call optimize that. Your challenge is to optimize your physical work environment. What's your approach there?

[00:17:54] Stewart: So I've actually been going on this journey myself already, which has been really interesting. So the physical work environment, I mean, I started with a problem statement. Uh, previously my work environment was. the same place as my relaxation environment, which was not productive at all. And I realized that I was not feeling restful in the evenings as a result of kind of working and playing or relaxing in the same space, right?

So my hypothesis was that if I separate the two spaces, I will be more productive at work because I'll be less distracted by potentially doing relaxing or fun things. And then in my evening time or in my fun and relaxing time, I won't be thinking about work because they won't exist in the same physical space, right?

I, I tried it, right? So I just said, look, let's, let's create a study environment, like a small safe work environment. And then let's create a separate relaxation environment so that I can close the door on work and on work related things at the end of the day, when I'm ready to to hang it up, right?

[00:18:59] Stewart: Or if I'm not, or if I, if I want to step back into it, then I step back into that room and that room is the manifestation and the representation of me being in work mode, right? And the difference between my focus was like night and day. So I was more focused at work and I was more. Uh, relaxed during my relaxation time.

Uh, and I've now had to kind of recombine the work and, and relaxation setups. And I now know through going back to how it was before that it's been really impactful for me. Um, I've not been as productive and I'm now so looking forward to when I can get back to that state of having them in separate environments.

[00:19:40] Sani: Would that, does that have to be a separate room or just a separate corner in the room?

[00:19:44] Stewart: I think for me it had to be a separate room because I think the act of kind of closing the door was important, right? I mean, many of us are now working, you know, in a post COVID era, we're now working remotely, right? And our homes have now become our workplace. Pre COVID when we all went and commuted to an office every day, the home was always just for relaxation.

It was never for work. So for me, that act of having a room in the house that's dedicated to work only. And I know that's a luxury that, that maybe not everyone can afford because not everyone has as many rooms as they might want to be able to do that kind of stuff. Right. But for me closing the door and saying works in there and the rest of the houses for relaxation and fun, that was the big difference for me.

[00:20:28] Sani: I've been a remote worker for 15 years and most of that time I've spent without a dedicated environment for work and everything you said, I could not agree more. Uh, I couldn't agree with it more because I know whenever I have that. Close the door. Literally, it's a close the door, my computer is there, I'm here, and when it's the same room like it is now, like, I literally work from a corner of my living room at the moment, hopefully that changes sometime soon.

My brain doesn't shut off. Like, I'm 24 7, I'm in work mode. Even when I'm not working. Even when I know I

[00:21:07] Stewart: on the sofa, right? And you can see your work set up over there, and you're like I'm watching a great show on Netflix, but maybe I could be doing some work right now and making bank, right?

[00:21:15] Sani: Check email. Yeah, there's some tasks to do. There's whatever. The only time I'm not in work mode is on my long runs. Because that's when my brain like completely shuts down. And that's when I listen to podcasts, listen to music, listen to audiobooks. But even the best thing, like after an hour of running, like you can't even, you hear it, but you're not really absorbing the sound of what they're saying.

It's just there as a background noise. And to me that, that's, That spot I want for my non work hours. And I totally and absolutely get what you say. 


Listener Questions and Final Thoughts
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[00:21:47] Sani: We have some listener questions as well. So I asked test and learn community and shout out to TLC and shout out to Kelly Wortham to provide some questions and Florin Boisson.

I'm sorry if that's wrong, but that, that's how I pronounce that last name. Uh, asked how do you randomize your in real life, experiments and how do you ensure the consistency of treatment across real life situations?

[00:22:10] Stewart: That's a really tough one, right? Cause, when you're trying to optimize, like, as we spoke about the physical work environment or other areas where I try to optimize, which is primarily in, in, uh, kind of workout routines and kind of supplement in supplementing as well. , having a level of randomization when the sample size is one and the split is often doing it versus not doing it, um, is quite difficult, right?

Uh, in an ideal scenario, I would copy myself. And having a direct clone of myself in real time where one would get the treatment and one would not, but obviously we don't live in that kind of

[00:22:46] Sani: Do you think that that will happen with it? Do you think that will happen with AI event? Do you think AB testing your life will be possible in the next two years?

[00:22:56] Stewart: If it exists in kind of a digital capacity, then maybe, but I'm, I'm primarily thinking about like going to the gym and

[00:23:04] Sani: No, for

[00:23:05] Stewart: stuff like that. So, uh, an AI, well, who knows how technology could advance in the coming years. Right. But today I don't know a way that AI could kind of, uh, do that.

Right. Um, but I guess, you know, in terms of randomization and sampling, I think when it comes to things like habitual changes to try and, um, improve certain aspects of your life, one thing that you have to consider is giving enough time. , humans, , are really, , Bad at building habits, right? Um, and there's a great book, Atomic Habits, that kind of talks about how you can break that down into, into small bite sized chunks to then, you know, build that muscle and make it a part of your everyday routine and everyday life.

But humans are bad at building habits. And as such, people, you know, with their New Year's resolutions after Christmas, they'll say, I'm not gonna eat fast food anymore. And then after a week, they're like, Do you know what, I'm going to go eat some fast food because I'm really craving it. Right. It's not enough time to try and, beat that habit or make that change or to optimize for that.

Right. You know, someone who's like dieting for a week or just trying to come off fast food because they want to lose a little bit of weight, uh, a weekend, it's made no difference. I'll just go have the McDonald's or the KFC. And it's like, you know, for any kind of changes that we're making to our personal lives, you really have to give it Multiple weeks, if not months to see a difference in, optimizing for our life.

So when I, when I changed the setup, uh, at home from, you know, one place to having two separate setups, I gave it a good two to three months before I made a decision of, do I like this or not? Is this, is this actually working for me? Is this providing any kind of benefits? Uh, and I do the same with supplements at the gym.

If I'm trying, new different supplements, vitamins, two years ago I started with creatine because everyone was telling me creatine is the way to build muscle mass, man. And two weeks in I was like, no, I'm not seeing a difference. Three months in, yeah, there's a good difference. So, I think just my, my response would be give it time.

Time is the best thing and be consistent.

[00:25:03] Sani: It's the only way really. With an experiment of one, like that, that is literally the only thing you can do, just give it time, make it a habit and stick to it. Right. I mean, the thing with the gym, what was it saying? Like it takes. I don't know how many weeks for you to feel different. And then three months for you to notice the difference visually and six months for other people to notice.

It's some, something along those lines. I'm not exactly sure what the numbers were. That's a really good answer. Let's go back to the physical work environment and let's try to give a challenge to listeners. Like what is the one thing you suggest them to change? And yeah, get a dedicated room, but let's say they can't.

Let's just say that is one, that's just something that for a person who doesn't have a room, what is the one challenge that you will , like them to try and stick to.

[00:25:47] Stewart: So I think where my mind is at with this is that, uh, and I've done a lot of thinking about, , this in, in recent weeks and months is that between work and home life, there needs to be a bridge, a mechanism that, that tells you that work is done and that you'll pick it back up tomorrow. And for people quite often working in an office environment that used to be the drive home.

So when I used to drive home, 20, 30 minute drive, listen to the radio, listen to podcasts or music or whatever. My brain's not really doing much, but it's just kind of in, in the background. It's processing the events of the day. Dealing with whatever, putting it to one side so that I can kind of relax in the evening.

Right. Um, and when we're kind of working from home and in, in this type of environment, I think you need some sort of mechanism that tells your brain to start doing that. And that can be as simple as, you know, closing the door if you have a separate room, but for people who don't close the laptop. Right.

Or close the laptop and put it away. Put it somewhere where you can't see it. If in your situation, signing your workspace is also your relaxation space, right? Put it away. So you can't see it. And then that stops a stops the temptation of while you're relaxing, thinking about work, because it creates a barrier to, ah, got to get my laptop back out if I want to check my emails.

Right. But then it also gives a physical representation of now it's time to switch off. I've closed the laptop or I've turned the screen off or I've put the laptop away or disconnected my keyboard. I don't know. Something right. Give yourself, give yourself that cue and stick to it.

[00:27:22] Sani: Yeah. Like after a workout, after a run, you need. The cool down, like you literally need stretch or cool down after run, whatever it is, because your body needs that signal that we're done with the torture. Now it's relaxation time. It's muscle recovery time, whatever it is. You know, one thing for people working from home, and I might try this when you're done, go for a walk.

Don't bring your phone, just go for a 20 minute walk there's that disconnect, like you said, , to drive back home, this is a cool down, this is where your brain stops thinking about work and starts thinking about what you want to watch on Netflix or whatever it is. I'll try that.

To someone who, Is let's say a web developer or any kind of digital professional with that experimental mindset. What are your words of encouragement for them to try and embrace that fully and just go into an experimentation career?

[00:28:15] Stewart: So I think the start of this is just being curious and asking good questions. I think that's the foundation of any good, um, experimentation mindset, right? Be curious, ask questions. Uh, and then if you're thinking about actually moving into this , as a career, it is a space that has lots of different entry points and lots of different opportunities.

So for the web dev, uh, pals on, on the, on the podcast, right. There's huge opportunities in development, software engineering, for experimenters. And actually my experience is that most developers, and this is not a criticism, it's just the reality of where we're at, most developers don't think critically about what it is that they're building.

They don't think critically about the impact on their customers and the difference between, just a normal engineer versus like a staff to engineer at Meta who takes, enormous salaries, right? The difference between them is not how good they are at writing code.

It's how good are they at identifying customer problems and solving for them. And experimentation is such a critical skill in being able to validate that you've solved customer problems and finding the right solutions that, you know, even if you still want to continue being a developer and be that staff engineer at Meta, Building that commercial muscle through an experimentation mindset, uh, where you could do far worse, right?

Uh, there's far worse ways to spend your time.

[00:29:40] Sani: Definitely. Thank you, Stewart, for being the guest on no hacks. I have one more question for you, but let me just, uh, thank the listeners first for still listening to no hacks, no hacks to stronger than ever, better than first guest this season is Stewart E. Hoff. I think you'll learn a lot.

If you want to connect and follow the, the NoHacks podcast, just go to nohackspot. com slash follow. All the links are there. Stewart, how do we connect with you? How can people get in touch with you?

[00:30:05] Stewart: So LinkedIn is the best place. , if you search, , for Stewart Ehoff, uh, the surname is E H O double F, right? And there's not many Ehoffs in the world. It's quite a unique surname. So. I'm sure you'll be able to find me. Yeah, LinkedIn is absolutely the best place. And if you listened and you like what we spoke about, shoot me a message.

I'd love to hear from you.

[00:30:22] Sani: There's your call to action. And one last question. What is one word or phrase that you want to leave for yourself six months from now?

[00:30:31] Stewart: Patience. 




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Slobodan (Sani) Manić

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