Five with Fry

10: Avoiding the Traps of Overconfidence: Five Lessons for New Entrepreneurs with Ty Smith

• Dr. Jen Fry • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Avoiding the Traps of Overconfidence: Five Lessons for New Entrepreneurs with Ty Smith

What if the biggest obstacle to your startup’s success is… you? In this episode of Five with Fry, I sit down with veteran lean startup consultant Tyrome "Ty" Smith to unpack the common missteps that trip up new entrepreneurs—like overconfidence, skipping market research, and asking the wrong questions.

Ty shares wisdom from 25+ years of experience, breaking down why customer discovery isn’t just a box to check—it’s the heartbeat of any successful business. You’ll learn how to conduct meaningful customer interviews, avoid the trap of false validation, and embrace the emotional resilience needed to adapt and grow. Inspired by Frank Gehry’s advice not to fall in love with your first idea, this conversation is a must-listen for founders navigating the messy, exciting world of entrepreneurship.

Stay curious, stay bold, and—most importantly—keep asking the right questions. Got a topic you want us to cover? Let us know!

More about Ty: Tyrome ‘Ty’ Smith has over 25 years of consulting and leading executives and their teams by helping them understand human and organizational dynamics. As part of his work, He developed an innovative education program for the Department of Defense, including coaching and mentoring product development teams engaged in an internal incubator. In addition, he has provided support to several organizations either as faculty or entrepreneur-in-residence, including Bowie State University, University of Maryland Innovation Extension Program, StreetCode Academy, Digital Undivided, and TechStars. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Friends, welcome to Five with Fry, where five is the magic number, whether it's five minutes, five questions or anything that fits in five. I dive into the big topics that matter, sometimes alone and other times with a friend. From navigating sports conflict to family dynamics, travel, tech, hard-hitting issues and even politics Nothing and I mean nothing's off the table. This is where curiosity meets conversation, and we always sit at an intersection. I'm your host. Dr Jen Fry of Jen Fry Talks. Let's get into it.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Okay, friends, welcome to this new episode of Five with Fry, and I'm so excited. This is going to be one of my episodes where I bring on a friend to give some razzle dazzle, and so many of you know that I have a tech company. We help move groups of people, and so this person I'm bringing on is one of my mentors, and so I'm going to talk more about that, but I want to introduce you to Ty Rome. That's the M Ty, as we call him, Smith. He is a lean startup consultant, so my friend here has over 25 years of consulting and leading executives and their teams by helping them understand human and organizational dynamics. As part of his work, he developed an innovative education program with the DOD the Department of Defense, if y'all must know the DOD, including coaching and mentoring product development teams engaged in an internal incubator. In addition, it provides support to several organizations, either as faculty or entrepreneur in residence, including Bowie State, bowie State, bowie State I always get that wrong Bowie State, bowie, bowie. University of Maryland, Innovation or Innovation Extension Program, street Code Academies, Digital Undivided and Techstars.

Dr. Jen Fry:

And let me tell you, ty is the homie like we were just talking about beforehand. His wife got under 10. They all got a daughter. Now, like the way, like we this, this thing, cassandra has a daughter. I am, I'm gonna start being, I'm gonna start photoshopping myself into the pictures like we, we are part of the family. I just need my family reunion shirt, um. So welcome to the podcast, ty, welcome.

Ty Smith:

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Looking forward to this, jen, and, as you said, you know we were trying to figure out how long we've known each other. It feels like forever. This is going into year three and I remember like, yeah, I've got this and we'll talk about what the what's the in of got this Smith to. We're not talking with Tom. So you know, we got, we got, we got, like car seats in the Cadillac, right, we can go way back. So the energy is going to be off the chain, you know. So we'll see what happens.

Dr. Jen Fry:

This is episode to listen to. So the way kind of um, I'm pretty much like a feral cat that walks into people's houses and I'm like, well, this is my house now. And so kind of how it started was that I went to this I-Corps session and some of y'all don't know what I-Corps are. It's pretty much with a numerous amount of universities and please chime in Ty and essentially the whole goal of I-Corps is research, research, customer interviews, customer interviews. If y'all have a company and y'all haven't done customer interviews, baby, and we'll talk about this. We're going to try and keep this episode for like less than I don't know a decade. But so I went to this I-Corps session and a person who I worked with before, lisa Marie, was like you need to go and talk to this I corporate instructor. So I talked to to Janaba, who's amazing, and Janaba was like you need to talk to Ty Smith. And so I scheduled my little interview because the one thing I'll tell you as a founder is that if people tell you to talk to someone, take your ass over and talk to them. Like there's a reason. Don't like someone's, like call this person, text them, go and you need to go build a relationship. So I think it was like, literally within the first 20 minutes, ty and I were like yep, yep, this, this, this thing's been happening for a while, and so ty has been such an instrumental human in the development of my company and me.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Because and we're going to get into it because the, the things we're going to talk about are you know, what are the five things that new entrepreneurs do that shoot themselves in the foot? And I probably did five of them. I did 30 of them because, as a new entrepreneur, you just don't have a clue, and so Ty is a phenomenal mentor and also you can't have him as a mentor. He's mine. So y'all go find your own mentors.

Dr. Jen Fry:

But I'm just saying like, y'all don't be calling him up. We aren't, we aren't putting your LinkedIn information in the, in the notes. No, y'all go find your own damn mentor. No, um, but you know, you've worked with entrepreneurs for so long. This is your bread and butter, you're phenomenal at it and you know what, as we talk about the new entrepreneur that's just coming in, that time, we all did it. I got this thing. I need to do research. I already know about this thing and you just be watching for the, the meltdown which for me usually comes in like october of november, but we're going to talk about that. You say let's start with number one. What is the thing that new entrepreneurs do that you consistently see that just man shoots themselves in the foot.

Ty Smith:

They convince themselves that what they have is the next best thing. It's the only thing. Everybody will buy it. They absolutely know it. Does that make sense?

Dr. Jen Fry:

So it makes complete sense. So they, when they come to you, they're like this, is everyone's going to buy this, everyone wants this. Why do you see that that's such a big problem?

Ty Smith:

Because they are convinced, without a doubt, that if they just convince enough people that their thing, their, their, their newest way of building the mousetrap nobody else has thought about before, and I think that it's a, you know, it's a noble effort, right, that they think that what they bought, what they created, is the next best thing since sliced bread. Only, the problem is sliced bread is 100 years old, right, it's 100 years old.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Wait, say that again. Say that again. I love that analogy. Say that again.

Ty Smith:

They're convinced that their thing is the next best thing since sliced bread. The problem is, sliced bread is 100 years old, oh, and before that, people bake bread and cut it themselves, right, and so the idea that the thing is absolutely the best thing, when they have no data outside of what is going on in their head to convince me, as an advisor, that they're building something that is absolutely positively an awesome idea that has market potential. Because, ultimately, one of two things there are a couple of things that are happening and this is important. I think everybody should realize this you have a cost and you have a value, and the value, if you're in business, it's about profit. If it costs you more than the value you can extract from your idea.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Say it, say it. This is my favorite thing that you say. What does it become then?

Ty Smith:

A hobby. Don't get mad that it's a hobby. Don't get disillusioned that you're creating a hobby. Just understand that you're building out a hobby and every once in a while somebody may pay you a couple of bucks, right? What you also don't want is the cost of goods and services is equal to the amount of value that you extract. So you have a $1 cost in goods and services to build it and you get $1 of profit out of it. You have a public service oh, they call that the Red Cross, they call that the food bank, they call that social services and those are awesome models to create value. Love it.

Ty Smith:

I would suggest to you that, even if you make it costs you $1 and you make $1.50, you can't sustain that. That's not a sustainable model. What you want is one cost and whatever that means, to have you two or three or four X. In other words, for every dollar you put in, you get $4 out of it. That's a business.

Ty Smith:

That's what you're trying to grow, and so you being convinced that your thing without evidence is the best thing that ever will be and the only evidence, as a mentor of mine named Steve Blank said, the only thing that matters is what people buy. Everything else is a hobby. That's where I built that cost and value. And so if you can't show me that you're actually creating value in terms of people are giving you something time, money, attention the thing that you're building you need to reevaluate. You know me, jen, I'll tell you straight up I don't get it. That's my job. I'm not trying to be hard, I'm not trying to be cantankerous, I'm just saying I don't get how you're, how you're creating value over and above whatever you think the thing is. That's number one.

Dr. Jen Fry:

So, you know, I think it's interesting because, let's be honest, ty, when people come to you or when people start out as new entrepreneurs, it's usually to say to solve one of their pain points. That's usually what it's for, and the problem with that is that that is kind of only the data point that they have, or it's their friends that agree. They have no actual tangible data point. And for me, one of the biggest revelations, the biggest help point, was the fact when someone was like no baby, you need research, you need research. You need research, you need to have data behind it. And I was like wait, what do you mean? I need to have data. I've got like people didn't tell me that they want this, but like can you speak about, then, why I-Corps is so important?

Ty Smith:

So number two, that is, how you build the product right. One of the things that's so powerful about the I-Core model, or customer discovery, is that what you're building out is information to validate Everything that a startup founder needs to know about how to do this. They learned in fourth grade science. I saw a problem. I had a hypothesis. I went and created a test, I found the data and I figured out whether or not I was right or wrong.

Ty Smith:

When you talk to people, what you're doing is trying to validate whether or not your understanding of a problem to be solved is real, and you have to trust the data. You're not looking for confirmation, you're looking actually, what a hypothesis and I know that you are a scientist, you're a social scientist but the hypothesis? You're trying to create a null hypothesis. You're trying to disinvalidate what you think, to figure out whether or not you're going in the right direction. And so what customer discovery means? When you go out and you do it, you have these conversations. You're trying without selling your idea, and I think this is a foot stop in the government. They call it up, please stop. It's like yes, pay attention, foot, stop, foot, stop. You're. You're not selling your idea. Say that again, you're not selling your idea. You're understanding how customers solve a problem.

Ty Smith:

By the way, that's another one of the technical five. Probably number three, two and a half is we call it W-P-A-Y-S what pays, what problem are you solving? Because if you can figure out what problem you're solving, what do you end up with? You can figure out what pays. Get it An acronym, play on words, play on concepts, and so in the customer discovery phase, what you're doing is narrowing whether or not you get to the right thing. Because ultimately, my friend of mine who flew jets in the Navy said my head is genius and what you're trying to figure out is what people find to be genius. If they can figure out how, if you can figure out what is a problem that they are ultimately willing to pay you to help solve, that's genius and hopefully it matches whatever product or service you're trying to build. Customer discovery is absolutely vital. It's the lifeblood. It's the lifeblood of founders, of the founder journey.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Can I add something on that? And when you're mentioning the idea of when you are doing interviews, you are not selling. I can't stress that enough, because people are trusting you and what I tend to see where people will fail with this is that they'll get some big wigs finally on the phone to do their interview and they can't help themselves Right. They get themselves on the interview. The conversation is going great. You're getting it, man. You're getting all the great information and you're like my product is perfect. Oh, my product is so perfect for them, this might be my only chance. So I have to sell. And then guess what happened. You just destroyed the relationship Because they are trusting that all they're doing is an interview, because there's nothing worse than the okie doke when someone's like, hey, I just want to do a 20-minute interview with you, that's it. You, you have all this information and you do the the interview and then guess what happens. They essentially tell you oh, you'll just be great. So about my product? And now they start selling. And so, instead of you using the interviews as a way to open the doors, you have now shut the door because they can't trust your word.

Dr. Jen Fry:

And I was in a program once and I was explaining, I was probably getting like on my LinkedIn messages, I was probably getting like a 70% conversion rate of people being willing to do interviews. And someone asked me how I'm like, well, I'm very honest in my 300 character personal invite about what I'm doing. But then also when I interview, I actually interview. I don't sell. And so when I get done with the interview, I say is there a, two or three other people you can connect me with? And they say absolutely, because they can trust me. And the thing about it is that the person in this program was like well, you should use that to sell. It's absolutely not because they are trusting me. So I like what you're saying about this is that the customer discovery is so important. So like, speak on really. Like, how does I-Corps help people with that customer discovery when they're coming to them and not having a clue?

Ty Smith:

So I think that this is where good consultation, coaching, comes in. When we, as coaches, hear you talk about how you went through your process, what questions you're asking, you will get, for instance, an I-Core. Or you get with folks who, like me, the colleagues that I hang out with will say things like so where did you get that information? Or what were you trying to learn? Because, ultimately, right, ultimately, what you're trying to learn in the customer discovery, what you're doing in this customer discovery space, is learning. You're trying to figure out and trying to learn more about the customer space. You're trying to learn more about whether or not the space that your offer may actually get into in an I-Core program, the first thing that we'll start asking is so let's talk about your data and we'll say so, give us some exemplars of your questions. It is those experiences, I believe, and I think others would believe, that help you, as a founder, focus on the right things. Without it, you're left to your own device, unless you're ultimately and exquisitely curious, because ultimately, that's what you have to be. I think that where my experience with you is your curiosity, you're curious, almost curious, first before you're building. So, knowing your background and what you're trying to build it was.

Ty Smith:

There's a problem here, and Lord knows I can't be the only one, so I wonder who else might have this problem. I wonder how other people solve this problem. I wonder what people use, what tools they may solve this problem. I wonder how they feel about how, when they're caught in this problem space Right there, there are four questions have not solved one thing. That I think is the right thing, because what I'm trying to do is learn the environment around which my solution lives, because I may ultimately figure out that it's not the right one. There is an architect, his name is Frank Gehry, and Frank Gehry is known for saying don't fall in love with your first idea, because ultimately, Baby, don't, don't do it.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Don't fall in love, don't. You can be like they're. Very rarely is there where your first idea is such an exquisite solution that you're only one, that there is no way. And the amount of research you have and that's where people fail is that they don't ask questions, or what they'll do is they'll do questions, which I like to call it as leading the witness. Yep, right, and so you ask these questions that are leading the witness to get the answers you want.

Dr. Jen Fry:

but it's still not going to get you paid for this thing, and so you have to. In I-Corp, you learn how to ask really good and really, in a way, honest questions that will get you what you want. Because the reality of it, ty, is, if you have to lead the witness on so many questions, I think you realize in your head that you don't have the product that you actually do.

Ty Smith:

Exactly. I think that's an outstanding insight that your audience needs to hold on to that. What you're trying to do is, if you ask these leading questions, you're creating a false validation dynamic. Right, I am validating based on, not the customer, remember cost and and value, because the only thing that matters is what people buy. What you're trying to do is to validate. If you ask these leading questions, you're validating your own idea. See, I knew they had it. You get it. You come into an icore program. You talk to somebody like me. You're like how do you know? I don't, I don't get. It doesn't make any sense what you're saying. And a good coach, uh, will allow you to do that, and I think that's one of the other ones are your capacity to manage your emotions as a founder.

Dr. Jen Fry:

So we decided to break this into two parts because, as you can tell, ty and I can talk, so I hope you enjoyed part one and be ready for next week for part two. Well, friends, that's it for this episode of Five with Fry your dose of five insights, ideas and inspiration. If you love what you heard, don't forget to head over to where podcasts are played, to subscribe, share and leave a review. Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop us a message. We love to hear from you. You can come follow me on ig, twitter, the tick tock at gen fry talks, or join me on linkedin. Look for me at dr gen fry. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold and keep the conversation going. See you on the next Five with Fry.