I recently went one-on-one with Riley Thomas, SVP of Markets at Built Technologies.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Riley: I did not initially intend to pursue a career in technology, but I always naturally gravitated towards it. I started out my career as an analyst at a firm that focused on fixed-income securities. Eventually, the firm built a technology platform which I was fortunate to work on and gain early exposure to the business of providing fintech solutions to large lending institutions and insurance companies. I was in the right place at the right time with a really good company. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. 

But I’ll tell you that the key to my success wasn’t luck. It was just general hard work, and that drive resulted in exponential gains later on, leading me to exciting career opportunities, like Built. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?

Riley: Frequency and time are essential to building a successful business. The consistency with which you repeat effective behaviors forms good, smart habits, and those habits have an impact over time. To that end, you need to have a long-term view of your business, and that requires patience while you focus on building out the right mechanisms, metrics, and people. 

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?

Riley: 

1. Stop selling your product. It may sound counterintuitive, but instead of focusing on selling your product, start learning from your customer on what they actually need. 

2. Get to know your customer. Do thorough research on your customer and ask credible questions. When you get to know your customer and what they value, you can find a natural way to weave in a way to solve for them. 

3. Don’t be afraid to walk away from a deal. A common mistake people make is that they think every deal needs to be closed. In actuality, the ones you say no to give you the time to focus on the ones that will say yes to you. 

4. Deliver impact. Your most important focus should be delivering value to the person you're working with.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?

1. Winners want to be around winners.

2. If you're going to build high-performing teams, you have to have ruthless standards. You have to have standards for yourself as a leader and have to have standards for your high performers. 

3. Build a team that can take feedback without getting defensive. If they're not able to take it, or some take it well and others don't, then you will never perform at your best because you can't get better. That constant feedback loop is absolutely critical and is the muscle tissue that a great team needs.

4. Figure out ways to go towards perfection, knowing that perfection is not achievable.

Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?

The rise of artificial intelligence is one of the most important trends in the last year. For the last 40 years it was just machine learning, taking large amounts of data and layering an algorithm on top of it to find patterns. We've gotten really good at finding those patterns, and now we have a lot of data to leverage with the expansion of the web. All that information is mineable in these large models. On the whole, AI will transform the way we work. I think it will create more opportunities for new types of businesses. Five or ten years from now, artificial intelligence will be beyond what the internet ever was. It is going to be quite amazing. 

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

My father was always encouraging me to find new ways to be helpful to others. Servant leadership is the best way to build trust and promote integrity within your team. If your team feels you rowing with them, they will want to row with you. When there is conflict, teams, and companies with cultures built on mutual respect and trust are better equipped to resolve whatever challenge they're faced with. 

For leaders who are growing their careers, I would say that humbleness actually can make you a better leader and person. When you've made mistakes, reflect on them. Bring them to the team and show you care and want to improve. This can be challenging for leaders early in their careers. Just know, all leaders make mistakes. It's how a leader handles their mistakes that matters. 

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders? 

1. Think long-term. I often think about the Iroquois Tribe’s seventh-generation principle. It says that decisions made today should be considered for the next seven generations. If you're going to build businesses, especially ones that have the ability to disrupt entire industries, think about the impact and the unintended consequences of growing that business. 

2. Ask yourself, “How hard could it be?” You probably won't realize how hard something is going to be if you maintain an incredible bias for positivity. “How hard can it be? We’ll figure it out.” The best entrepreneurs are able to maintain control of their internal negativity. They would much rather be positive and wrong than negative and right.

3. If it feels like playing jazz, you have the right team. I think that came from Ray Dalio. What he meant by that is a successful team is like a jazz band, each member knows their role and is able to improvise to create something. You don’t need a script to play off of, you just know what to do next. If you find yourself in a situation where you sit back and aren’t "playing jazz" with your team, it may be a sign that you need to make some changes. While that can be difficult, having the right people is necessary for a winning team. One mistake I have made in leading and building teams is waiting too long to make changes when it’s clear the team isn't functioning well. If you find yourself in that situation, act sooner rather than later.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Riley: Nothing is going to be given to you, you have to be willing to put in the hard work. If you want something, go out and do it. When I was starting out, I believed that if I worked twice as many hours, I would learn twice as much. If you want to go fast and far, work hard and learn.

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Riley: To anyone with a business idea or the desire to be an entrepreneur, don't hold back. We need more of you. You create the future employers of the world. If you have the ability to control your own negativity and the positive mindset to push through and push onward, then by all means, go do it. 


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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