Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Brian Ragone, Founder and CEO of Puzzle, located in Sarasota, FL, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Puzzle works with leaders to build highly scalable business operations through process optimization and automation. But we’re working on a vision to help optimize how the world works and make progress measurable. Our customers are the executives of companies in the growth stage (20-80 employees) who are ready to create efficiency in their business and maximize their team’s productivity.
Tell us about yourself
This work found me five years ago (2017) when I realized that most organizations are incredibly disorganized. I was 23 at the time, and I found it odd that few people in organizations (if any) understood the details of how their business worked end-to-end. Not the executives. Not the managers. Not the specialists. Instead, they cloaked their unknowingness in dogmatic values - like trust, autonomy, agility, and ownership - which caused the chaotic storyline growing companies know well:
Storyline: once upon a time, no one had visibility into how work was done. Teams relied on meetings, emails, and chat more. As the team grew, productivity decreased dramatically. Work centralized on the most tenured. Those employees burnt out. They felt underappreciated. Their performance suffered. They resigned. Promises were broken to customers. Those customers churned—revenue decreased. Leaders started making poor decisions. Costs became greater than revenue. The company stopped investing. The business stopped growing- it either plateaued or failed in the long run— the end. Sound familiar?
So I asked myself in 2017, what if everyone could work together with the big picture in mind - executives, managers, and specialists alike? What if everyone knew how their role contributed to other team members’ efforts and the company’s broader goals? A place where everyone can understand how the business operates across the customer, employee, and product journeys.
From 2017 to 2020, I worked with this in mind. Until May 2020, I was laid off from Uber and decided to start Puzzle working with org leaders to take the mystery out of their business operations. And for the last two years, we’ve learned that the key to scalability is to get everyone on your team working with the big picture in mind. The more your teams understand the big picture (and how their work contributes to it), the better decisions they make and the better outcomes the organization will produce.
This is what motivates me every day - empowering people to see clearly how their work is contributing to the big picture of their organization and beyond.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
In the early years of a business, it’s difficult to book profits and simultaneously scale up operations, but luckily that’s what Puzzle does well for other organizations. Our biggest accomplishment has been operating profitably each year since Puzzle’s founding (2 years so far). We are growing in headcount, we are growing in revenue, we are investing in special projects, and we remain profitable. We’re our own case study in operational efficiency. And it takes a whole team of people to think through the lens of efficiency to achieve that goal.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
The hardest thing that comes with being a business owner is consistently saying no to the things that aren’t in line with your company’s current focus in a given timeframe. We have wild ambitions for Puzzle’s impact and dozens of ideas to explore. But it’s important to stay focused on the initiatives of today and say “no” or “not yet” to enticing industries, exciting new services, or demanding new initiatives.
It happens every day that a colleague, friend, mentor, or advisor, presents a new service, new partnership, or new strategy to get the business to the next level. And too often, I have said “yes” too early to too many new internal initiatives, and none of them get the focus or attention they need. This is an ongoing challenge that won’t go away, but I’m certainly improving in my discernment of how to execute the right new opportunity.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Build a business that offers a product or service where you would be a lifetime paying customer or engaged daily user.
- Don’t sell. Tell stories.
- Build a business that makes your eyes light up when you talk about it. You’ll only know this if you talk to people about it and they can feel your passion, or you do it in the mirror. Both are valuable.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.puzzleapp.io/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/puzzelapp.io
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puzzleapp.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/puzzleapp_io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bragone/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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