Ryan Barry is the CEO of Appcues, a user engagement platform serving over 1,400 technology businesses worldwide. Before taking the helm at Appcues in March 2025, Ryan spent nearly 11 years at Zappi, co-authoring the best-selling book The Consumer Insights Revolution and scaling the company as President alongside founder Steve Phillips. In this episode, Ryan reveals the unconventional leadership frameworks he used to recruit an entirely new executive team without outside recruiters, why he refused to hire a chief of staff or executive assistant in favor of AI productivity tools, and the four non-negotiable traits he screens for in every single hire.

What You'll Learn:

- Why Ryan eliminated most one-on-ones from his calendar and what he replaced them with.

- The four traits he screens for in every hire: curious, adaptable, smart, and growth-minded.

- How he recruited a full executive team through crowdsourcing instead of executive search firms.

- Why he refused to hire an EA or chief of staff and used AI tools instead to force himself to learn the cutting edge.

- His framework for deciding which decisions need to "breathe overnight" versus which should be made immediately.

- The difference between coming in hot with passion versus assuming you know the answer in week two.

- Why he embeds team personality profiles and decision-making guides directly into company AI tools.

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer - Why This CEO Removed All One-on-Ones From His Calendar EP 8

01:03 Introducing Ryan Barry, CEO of Appcues

05:08 Why coming in hot fails most new executives

06:16 Breaking down silos in two hours instead of three weeks

08:41 How AI elevated support roles instead of replacing them

11:11 Recruiting executives without search firms

17:20 The four non-negotiable traits for every hire

21:04 Managing a geographically dispersed team across Latin America

27:48 How he manages energy and async work across time zones

31:22 Empowering teams to make decisions without approval

35:06 Why he removed most one-on-ones from his calendar

39:21 One piece of advice for first-time founders and leaders

Where to find Ryan Barry:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-barry-8354036/

Appcues: https://www.appcues.com/

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/