Kristi Ross Opens Up About How Purpose Drives tastytrade’s Groundbreaking Success

Jun 30

“Opportunity is all around you.”

This is one of the mottos I live by; to me, it speaks to a sense of empowerment. Because while opportunity is all around us, I am a firm believer that those opportunities don’t just drop into our laps. To capitalize on those opportunities, you have to pay attention, and you have to grab them when you see them.

In fact, the focus on opportunity is at the heart of our mission at tastytrade. Our core purpose is to empower our customers by teaching them to see opportunities in the markets and to know how to capitalize on those opportunities. But our belief in the power of recognizing opportunities extends to every area of our company—from our focus on serving our customers to our hiring process and the way I understand my role as a leader.

Eleven years ago, we saw an opportunity to make finance fun and actionable and to help everyday people take control of their finances in a way no one else had before. Having spent decades working in the trading and brokerage industry, we knew what was missing: Financial media was often boring and left viewers seeing the news but not knowing what to do in their own portfolios.

We believed we could support people who were ambitious and had a desire to learn by creating a strategic approach to investing—one based on probability and logic. And then we would educate them, not just through content but also by transparently showing them how to apply those concepts in live markets.

That focus on empowering our customers means that, to us, every interaction with a customer is also an opportunity—an opportunity to support them in their goals and give them the tools they need to take control of their investments.

That starts with us as leaders. We are responsible for setting the example and the tone for how our company interacts with customers. My co-founder Tom Sosnoff and I, as co-CEOs, for example, both have answered customer emails from day one. We brought on Scott Sheridan as co-founder and CEO of tastyworks, our brokerage subsidiary, and he too spends significant time answering customer emails. People might wonder, “How is that scalable? You can’t have the CEO or executives constantly answering customer emails!”

We believe the complete opposite. We believe each of those interactions is an opportunity to demonstrate how deeply we believe that our customers are our entire reason for being and that every customer is equal, whether they have $200 or $2 million. We want to model what it looks like to do that with vigor and authenticity and a genuine desire to help. That model is scalable because it’s one way we build the culture of putting the customer first.

It’s scalable because we’ve consciously built a team that embraces these values, a team that truly sees supporting and empowering our customers as an opportunity to make a difference. If you can create a community where your employees recognize that they’re part of something bigger than themselves and you spend time providing value to them, they will feel valued.

That customer-first mentality starts with us, but we believe it should extend to every member of our team, no matter their role. Everyone in the company is there to support our customers—whether they are in customer support, marketing, or the C-suite.

I’ve also learned to never underestimate the power of repeatedly communicating the purpose of your company—to articulate how specific projects tie into the wider mission and make sure your team understands the purpose behind every choice and initiative. As the leader, that 30,000-ft view may seem obvious, but that doesn’t mean it’s always clear to your team. In other words, it’s our responsibility to help our team see how every decision is rooted in an opportunity to better serve our customers.

We also believe that providing opportunities to our employees is the best way to build an empowered, participatory culture. At tastytrade, we ask our team to bring us ideas, and when they do, we help ensure that they are part of the execution of those new initiatives. We want them to know they have ownership over those entrepreneurial ideas and that they can make a difference and contribute meaningfully to our company’s purpose.

Hiring is a bedrock in building this vibrant culture of empowerment and innovation. We look for new employees who represent a combination of three areas of focus:

Openness: We want our team to want to communicate, share, voice their opinions, try new things, challenge each other, and learn together.
Attitude: Skills are important (and of course they’re a necessary factor in hiring), but a positive attitude and willingness to learn are even more integral to building a company.
Opportunities: Our culture is focused on empowerment and learning, so we are invested in finding employees who are excited to embrace those opportunities—to grow, to learn, to make a difference, to play a part in the culture we’ve built.

This is a winning combination, and we’ve found that candidates who embody all three will thrive when integrated into our culture. They will feel empowered in this environment. They will look for ways to do their jobs better. They will embrace the idea that we are here to help our customers any way we can.

I see this so clearly in how many of our employees become traders themselves, even if their jobs are in areas like tech or production or support. They are motivated to become deeply knowledgeable about the markets because they know this is the best way to help our customers. When you start by building a team of people who share the same core values—people who want to make a difference, build relationships, and learn—you have the foundation for building a winning culture.

We believe in building those core values into every aspect of our business model. It’s truly about building an entire ecosystem centered on your purpose. For us, that’s customer empowerment and accessibility—accessible information, accessible education, accessible support. Tom and I believe in modeling that through our own actions, but we also believe in rewarding our employees for embodying those values.

In building out our customer support team, we were cognizant that we did not want to structure our compensation models based on traditional markers of productivity—number of calls answered, number of emails sent, number of chats completed. That would only set our team up to feel like they needed to move through those interactions as quickly as possible.

What mattered to us, though, was whether they were able to truly help each customer, so our compensation model was never measured in those other metrics. To us, it’s more important to engage our customers in authentic two-way conversations and build relationships. It demonstrates that we truly care, but it’s also our opportunity to genuinely understand what they need so that we can improve our performance.

That’s how you create, to use a term from Pete Wilkins’s book, “loyal fans” (and customers). You prioritize building meaningful relationships. You encourage every employee to connect with your customers. You build a team of people who truly care and who understand how their work makes a real difference for your customers, and who value it so deeply that it comes naturally to them.

When you show customers that you are invested in their success, they will become your greatest champions and your most powerful source of marketing. That mindset will impact every area and every level of your business. Ultimately, it will be what drives your outcomes, efficiencies, and growth.

Opportunity is all around you—in every interaction, in every decision, in every chance to learn and grow.

You just have to choose to seize it.

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