In this conversation we chat about Linda’s journey from a traditional consulting career to startup rocket ships (Snap and Faire), product management, and entrepreneurship.
We start out talking about the early days at Faire and key growth unlocks that helped it quickly grow from $50m to $2.5b, and now a $12b valuation. Linda was an early product leader, and saw it grow from 14 to 300 employees. We then talk about challenges when growing that quickly and reflections on ideal culture at fast growing startups. Finally, we talk about Linda’s path towards starting Product Lessons, and building an engaged audience through her terrific writing.
We hope you enjoy this amazing episode!
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In this conversation we chat about Linda’s journey from a traditional consulting career to startup rocket ships (Snap and Faire), product management, and entrepreneurship.
We start out talking about the early days at Faire and key growth unlocks that helped it quickly grow from $50m to $2.5b, and now a $12b valuation. Linda was an early product leader, and saw it grow from 14 to 300 employees. We then talk about challenges when growing that quickly and reflections on ideal culture at fast growing startups. Finally, we talk about Linda’s path towards starting Product Lessons, and building an engaged audience through her terrific writing.
We hope you enjoy this amazing episode!
Episode Highlights
Links
Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes!
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Hello, hello, you're listening to paradigm shift, a podcast about people building the future in pivotal moments in their journey. I'm Ashish. And I'm joined by my co host saying, and today, we are super thrilled to talk with Linda Zang, who's the founder of product lessons and a former product leader at companies like fair and snap. Linda, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. So to give some background, Linda runs a blog called product lessons, which has a lot of helpful, no BS advice and stories to help people accelerate their product careers. Before that she was an early product leader at Fair, which we'll talk a lot about, and a consultant at Bain. So Linda, maybe we'll start at the beginning. Could you tell us about how you ended up at Bain and what you were working on there? Yeah, sure. Thanks. So back when I was in college startups, and just tech in general was nowhere near as big of a deal as it is today, I would say the gravitational pull at the time was really around investment banking, and consulting. Those were the two like most prestigious things you could do. And, you know, being young and naive, I just wanted to do whatever I thought would make me look really, really good. And so I focused on getting into consulting, Bain seemed at least of firms I interviewed with seemed to be the best fit for me, moved out to San Francisco, because ultimately, I did think I wanted to be in tech. So I figured the proximity would make a lot of sense. And I spent a few years there. And I would say that, overall, like consulting is a pretty good professional bootcamp. Now that I have the distance of life time, I can evaluate it more objectively and, and think through the pros and cons. But I think for me, especially like I studied biology, in college, I thought I was going to be a doctor. So I didn't have you know, the Econ or the science or computer science background, the most people in tech, or some people in tech the least have. And so for me, being at Bain for a few years, like you get to learn a bunch of things like you know, how to manage job, how do you, Manager manager set expectations? So you generally exceed those expectations? How do you think rigorously? And probably most importantly, like how do you frame problems and solutions, so that other people understand clearly what you're talking about, and also in a way that, you know, generally makes you look good. So I think there's a lot of skills that apply to pretty much anything that you want to do. And so I saw consulting is kind of like a buffet, where you get to try a bunch of different projects, different plates, traveled to all these different places, and learn more about like, what it is that I wanted to do. And I think for me, the biggest realization came maybe six months in even just knowing that I wasn't happy, just making recommendations, and never being in the hot seat of like doing the thing and actually testing if it works. I think for me, there's a big disconnect between what said on slides, and what we spent all our hours doing perfecting, and then what actually happens in the real world, when you try and implement these strategies, like do they work? Do they not work? And so that was like one of the big reasons why I knew that I wouldn't be able to stay in consulting long term. And I wanted to be more of an operator in the tech startup world. Yeah, that makes total sense. I've worked with a bunch of folks from being and by observation has been one very smart. I think Bane does a great job of hiring people to very like good communicators and rigorous, that I think the challenge for some of them ends up being like, how do you then make the leap into building in the messiness of building and iterating I think two things come to mind one as a new pm on a team, you need to have a certain level of credibility to be successful. Right. And so I think that's the hard gap for new PMS sometimes. So how did you navigate that? And do I think snap is notorious for having very unique pm culture? Certainly back then. I think that was true. So tell us a little bit about that, too. Yeah, I think one of the one of the other things you get to see once you're inside a tech company is how there's always like a flavor, a hierarchy of how things are done. Between Product Design Engineering, like some companies are extremely design driven, like snap would certainly fall within that. Some are really driven, some are really product driven. And just from what I've seen, I don't know if you guys have seen this as well, I think usually you can tell, based on the backgrounds of the founders, particularly the CEO, like what they've done previously, we all have our own biases as to what form of product development works the best. And so snabb was, you know, certainly very design driven. So it was never really going to be the perfect place for me just given my own skill level. And so I think that if I were to go back in time, the thing that I probably that probably would have saved me a lot of anxiety. It was just around the importance of finding like we talked about product market fit a lot, but I think it's also important to talk about your own skillset and that fit with the companies
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needs, because some businesses don't need someone who's super analytical. And then other businesses really do. And so if you're really analytical, you know, it actually makes a lot of sense to target companies that are like that. So for me, I knew I wanted to be a smaller company, where there was more work to do, then people to do them at a bigger company like snap, that just wasn't going to happen. Right? I think at a certain point, people were just more territorial about their work their charter, very hard to break in, as a new person. So I knew at that point, I wanted to target startups. So I interviewed around a lot. And for specifically for product roles, and it was just like, knows, across the board, a lot of straight up knows what you're actually pretty good. And then some other like bait and switches where they interview to the end, they give you an offer. And then it's like, oh, wait, but the offers for like a different role that we know for sure that you can succeed at. And now like years later, I look back on it. And I'm like, okay, that makes so much sense. Because as a hiring manager for PMS, you don't want to take a massive risk on a person just don't know, as you I mean, as you said, say like, it's important to establish credibility in order to de risk yourself as a candidate for these kinds of roles. Because a bad pm can really mess things up. Like it's not just like an isolated influence, like you actually do have influence over how dozens, maybe even hundreds of people spend their time. And so for me, I eventually did find my break, and fair after having interviewed with a number of companies, but I did the internal transfer step. So this is actually pretty common way of people breaking into pm without official experience as you step into a different role that you're obviously more qualified for. And then especially if it's at a smaller company, like I joined fair, you know, when I was 15, people super tiny, just raise your Series A, there were just a lot of opportunities. So I came in as I think officially I was like the head of product analytics or something like that. And then within the first week, you know, I was already working on stuff that had implications on product changes that we were going to roll out to improve the customer experience. So I basically became the PM. But it was easy, because there was so much need internally to have someone step into that role anyway. So the transition was seamless. But I've seen a lot of people make that work from an end. Yeah, and internal transfer perspective of once you've, once you're a known entity, and you've shown that you can do the work, especially if you start doing the work on officially, you know, in the way that I had, it's a much easier way to like make yourself, Linda, it may help to set the context for listeners who aren't super familiar with their Would you mind explaining what the business does? Why it's so operationally complex, why it was so unique and different when it launched. Sure thing. So fair, fair.com is actually just a b2b marketplace. So a lot of I mean, if you're a consumer, you probably haven't actually never used it, but maybe heard about it through startup channels. But the idea is that there are millions of merchants out there like store owners who have to find inventory for their store. And traditionally, it was through these much older channels of like going to a trade show, and having a book of business that you've known for decades. But the risk was really high to be a store owner, a retailer because if something doesn't sell, you basically eat the cost. And the margins are tough to begin with. So it's actually a really growing business to be in. And so the fair proposition was why don't we give the benefits of online shopping? So wide selection, as well as free returns, that consumers get already right on Amazon on like pretty much every online channel? Why don't we give those benefits to these retailers that have never received them before. And in addition to that, because you want a business, why not also give them a line of credit that would help them alleviate some of their cash flow challenges. And the brands are also happy to come on board because it gives them more opportunities to sell in the ways that they want to and reduce their you know, potential reliance on Amazon, which is a feared very feared entity among you know, independent brands and retailers. Are these physical retailers online merchants are they it's a combination of both What's that their primary Elisa when I was there a primarily physical retailers. So think of like those cute shops that you see on Valencia. Like every every city every town actually has these shops that are more uniquely curated and not like the Walmarts of the world. The Coke, you know, the Kmart of the world are just like small initially with small gift shops, right that were buying candles. That was like the first category just like Amazon had books, we had candles because candles are a popular gift and they're relatively easy to buy. And so that was like the first kind of wedge in and then we expanded of course into a bunch of different product lines. So
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Got some marketplace where you can kind of stock your store, get a lot of credit and also get free returns. It's kind of a no brainer value prop. So what drew you to fair early on? So enjoy? And you were number 15. Something was working, but it must have been early. How did you evaluate it? Yeah, so I was introduced a friend who was already working there. So we knew each other from our band is. And I think that the first thing that I noticed about the team was just how focused they were having talked to a bunch of different people, different startups, big and small. That was kind of like very obvious from the start, I was like, Oh, we mean business here. Like the goal is to become a multi billion dollar startup like, period, there is no other consideration. And that was very much what I wanted, like I wanted to be in a place that would be ideally my, you know, Silicon Valley, Joy Ride. And so the determination was, for sure already there. I thought it was also really interesting that, at least at the time, there are a few other companies pursuing this market. But if you actually look at the numbers, the market is massive, and the need is very, very high. So I think it was just like the b2b marketplace was an overlooked part of the economy, because it was so left behind by tech for a really long time. And so I thought the combination between, you know, the quality the founding team determination, as well as like the potential market that could be there would be like an interesting. So with fair, I think the the problem and the market are very clear, right? Like, you can evaluate that on day one. What were your observations on the demand piece? Like, what was the level of demand, confidence you had when you went in? And then how did you build that lever? While you were there? I probably didn't even look that far. From what I remember, I was really not. It was my first startup that I was trying. So I didn't know what to look for. Although, in the years since when I was, you know, interviewing people. And we had more data out there, there are a number of candidates who would interview our customers. I mean, they're, they're listed on the site, right? And it's, they're pretty easy to find, they would interview the customers to kind of get a read on what they thought of the company, what they wanted to improve. And that was actually a pretty good way to stand out to from the masses of like, oh, you actually went to the effort of talking to our customers. And maybe you bring in some new insight that we didn't even think of, or maybe you bring in something that we're thinking about right now. And it's a big problem for us. And I think, I guess these more savvy candidates figured out a way to actually do that. But I think it's possible. As long as you have the interest, you could do that to make sense. You mentioned earlier how distribution is really important, I think fair had like a lot of interesting, I think breakthroughs and some viral loops and innovation around distribution. Tell us about that, like I'm sure that didn't just work overnight, probably took some time to like, hone in and optimize and get to a place where it was actually like viral. What were your observations around how they built that part of the machine? Yeah, I would say it was like a sequence of silver bullets, that propelled each kind of big wave of growth. The first one that happened as I was there, for when I first joined, was paid marketing, that was probably the first big growth on log of, oh, these, like, these costs are actually really good for what we think our LTV is, or at least what the numbers trending towards. So that was a big unlock, that was like the first wave of growth that probably powered us to the series B. And then around there, also experimented with other ways of growing that's independent of relying on you know, Facebook, Google, etc. That was really the big like, unlock of realizing, Oh, the good thing about the business is that for years, for decades, now these people have had relationships with brands have had relationships with retailers, retailers have had relationships with brands, it's how they like know each other offline, they've met at these conferences conventions before. And so they all have their book of business already that exists outside of the internet. So what if we found a way to actually bring that online, so that brand A who's already on the platform can tell us what other retailers, they haven't invite those retailers on our behalf, the invite comes from them. Tell them about you know, the benefits and having joined the platform and so that the brand to retailer flow, that referral flow, the incentive was the next big unlock. And it was really incredible because some of these brands have a ton of relationships. And I think the tricky part was how do you encourage someone to share their book of business that they've built for many, many years and give them the confidence that we're not just going to take the book of business and run? Right because these are these are precious relationships like they have they know each other in real life, they probably know about each other's families, too. And so structuring the incentive and building the confidence and building a sales flow to alleviate you know, their concerns like that was really tricky, like the devils in the details.
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With these, right, and so, some people go with a pure monetary incentive, like we played with, like different variables and different levels of how much money is too much how much money is not enough, etc. So a lot of different A B tests, there's monetary incentives, there's like, like not directly monetary incentives, so things like won't give them a year free shipping, or they'll be marked as 0%. Commission forever for you. So there's really no disincentive. Like, there's not going to hit your margins. But we make eventually we'll make the money because those retailers, once they come on, if we give them a good experience, they'll start buying from other brands. Does that take a lot of iteration to get it working? Or did you kind of know fairly early on that, hey, there's enough signal? Yeah, that wouldn't work. Honestly, the first iteration, like was already fairly promising, even in a small test. And I think that's true of most things that happened in the early days, like you don't have a ton of sample. But when things do move the needle, they move the needle like this, like it's not, you don't know exactly if it's gonna be, you know, 100% or 95%. But it's gonna be up there. And that's when you know, you can dial it in. And that's because it was early and there are so many opportunities, because nothing didn't really have that much. Was it sales and outreach driven? Sort of, like initiation of the loop? Or was it product focused? And what is it now? I think it was a combination of both, like, from what I remember, I mean, in the early days, it was definitely like, more manual, like, you have to figure out how do we test this with a pilot batch? The general framework on virality is, you know, the percentage of your audience that participates in the loop? And then the the payload, right, like, how big is the audience that they can bring on? And then the conversion, right, those are kind of like the three variables. And so yeah, I'm curious, is that how you thought about the viral loop? And kind of just sequentially, like, optimized it? Yeah. Look at each variable and try to project into the future, how big this could get. So yeah, I mean, I think that that was the tendency always at the company. Do you think this is a playbook that's likely to work for other b2b style marketplaces to? And how would you think about the types of characteristics that are going to make it more or less likely to work? Yeah, I think that the best solution probably needs to be tailored to the specific customers, I think the thing that was unique about the opportunity, with fair was that these people had a strong book of business set of relationships. And those relationships had value. It wasn't like a, oh, I barely know you, it was a we know each other. And if you're giving me your word that this is good. And there's obviously some benefits financial not otherwise, for me, as well as for you, then it's, we're going to do it. But the interesting thing also is that it's not like it really depends on that relationship dynamic. Sometimes people can feel really competitive. They're like, Oh, this is my secret. And I don't want everyone else to be using this site, because then it's going to be like Amazon, and you know, everything is going to be non unique again, so that, you know, the retailer retailer relationship, I don't know if it ever worked, we tried multiple times, didn't work when I was there. But the retailer brand, it was more complementary, it wasn't as competitive because the brand just making the stuff and the retailer selling it. So, you know, we didn't have to have that concern. So I think it really depends, I would say the variables you got to play with are like understanding the dynamics between these customer relationships, both sides of the market, but even if it's one side of the market, like do they know each other? Do they feel competitive with each other? What would be a good deal for them? That doesn't? That's not so good, that people start exploding, and then the quality dips, because after a number of experiments, you realize, oh, sometimes it can actually, the LTV may not make sense, because the quality dips, for whatever reason, what was the incentive for the brands to invite the merchants, I think the initial one was something like, the brand will always get 0% Commission, which means we don't take anything from that transaction. So it's basically just like, if you had the offline relationship, however, the retailer also gets like, something like $100 off some some monetary incentive off that order their first order with you. So everyone's getting a pretty good deal out of it. But you can play with like, you know, the numbers. And you can also add in new new variables like free shipping, or other things depending on you know, the structure of that you joined right after a series a and it seems like that was that was an inflection point for the company. Like he figured out the paid marketing. Yes, he figured out this viral loop. So could you unpack like the growth that you saw at the company during that time, like the state of the business when you joined the state of business when you left? Yeah, so I joined right after series, as you mentioned, employee and I'm 15 I think we're valued at 50 million at that point. And by the time I left, we were at two and a half billion, probably around 300 employees I want to say and way past your ears, you
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Like maybe Series E or something like that. And now I think that they just raised for like 14 billion maybe close to 1000 employees. I just want to say that's like crazy, crazy growth. And you were there two years, three years. I was there for close to three. Yeah. Yeah, that's insane. That's just incredible. What a ride. So what made you leave? So you at some point, you were like, hey, you know, I'm ready for the next thing. And you took a very unconventional jump, I think you decided to become a solo entrepreneur. So tell us about that transition. Yeah. So by the time that I was thinking about leaving this, like, sick of COVID, the company had changed so much, it was not really I would not classify as a startup anymore. Like it was a big company. There were a lot of new processes being put in. And I think I just realized, I think COVID helped me realize it, I've just, this may not actually like being a part of a big company may not actually be what I really want to do. I think that there's a shift between the types of problems that you're solving for, in the beginning, it was very heavily weighted towards customer problems, customer problems, customer problems all day long. Like, how do you solve this? How do you solve that? How do you make a better experience, but then as the company gets bigger, I think even around the 100, person, Mark, there's far more people problems that come in, and ego problems that come in, and they're just not as fun for me, even though it would have been very lucrative to continue solving those problems. It was both a hard decision and easy decision, I think was a hard decision from a, like a prestige prospective. But I think was an easy decision. From what do I really want here perspective. And I think I also took a look at the numbers of sure I could get more, obviously, for your vesting schedule, I'm only partially through. And I also had multiple grants. So I was even less partially through them the time that was spent there by Givens trajectory, like if it works out from an IPO perspective, from like, you know, whatever liquidity event happens perspective, I'm going to be fine. And the extra, whatever million is not going to be is not going to make a difference in my life. And I think that took me a while to understand like, it took me multiple years of like being intact to realize that, that chase of the next million isn't really going to make it it's not going to change who I am. And like what I want in life. So that's when I realized I, you know, I let it go. So for what it's worth, you're infinitely faster at coming to that conclusion than many people, I think many people don't ever reach that conclusion. But this kind of brings up the topic of culture, right? Because there's a bunch of reasons why someone would work at a company's mission, people culture compensation, and it sounds like for you, culture is really important. And that's something that that degraded over time. In your view, what's the ideal scenario for culture, let's say you are working on an org, if you could design any sort of culture that was able to sustain that scale, what do you think are the principles that are important for you personally, I think in an ideal world, the kinds of places that would be interesting for me and sustainable for me, would be a place where there's just a lot more focus on what we can do for the customers in the market. I mean, that's like been the the thing that I've, I've learned the most about myself probably is just like, yeah, and consulting. It's not that interesting, because you're not actually helping the end customers. And big tech, you're too far from the end customers, right? There's a lot of other layers around what can be done, and what can actually be pushed through etc. And then a startup is like the only place where you can really be so close and really get to know these people, and be able to make changes quickly without having to go through five different layers and two different processes of approval. And so that's like probably the big thing of being able to stay close to that. And I think part of it, I don't know, if Netflix to solve this. I mean, I actually had a Netflix offer a number of years ago didn't join. So I don't really know for sure, but one of the things that they talked about in their culture deck was around density of talent. And the whole theory, I don't know if this actually works in practice, the whole theory is if you have highly dense talent, that means you can trust them with more freedom or responsibility, which probably means that you don't need as much process approval layers in place to have you be able to do things and then those people will be happier. Because then they can actually do their work and feel rewarded for it and not be bothered with all the other stuff. Can you tell us about what you're working on these days with product lessons and product toolkit and what excites you about it? Yeah, so it's been a year of freedom. I would say it's been the first year in my life where I've actually had true freedom, like not having to go into a specific place a specific time and do other things. So I've actually just given myself the chance to dabble in whatever it is that I want to do. And it's been a really interesting journey. So product lessons was the first thing that I started with. It actually started when I was still at fair in the middle of the pandemic. And I started writing because
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I mean, I didn't have to commute anymore. So I figured I would just share, like everything that I was learning, and not filter through any, like not censor what I'm saying, because I think it's really important to be honest about the experience that you're having the good, bad and ugly, like, that's what makes anything resonate these days. So I started blogging, I really, really enjoyed it, I got to meet a lot of cool people, Zane included. So it's been a really fun time. And I think at a certain point, I realized, I actually enjoy writing and creating more than my day job, which has changed a lot. And so I figured, like, why don't I just do this, and see where it takes me. So that's when I quit, started focusing more on the blog, had a panic attack, like maybe a month in and was like, Whoa, this is a blog, but I don't know if this is ever going to be a business. And so that's when I test the waters for a paid product, not like a pay newsletter, but a paid product that would be like, essentially an upsell. And so I interviewed a lot of the readers the most engaged readers anyway, for the blog, and try to figure out like, what's actually missing? I mean, product management career lessons, like pretty saturated, there's a lot of free content, like how do you get anyone to even want to pay for anything. And that's when I, it actually became pretty obvious in the interviews, that what's really lacking is concrete examples, and templates that people can start using immediately. Not like theory, not in a perfect world, here's how everything would work. But just like, what can you do today, that's gonna save you a lot of time and set you up to do well. And so I created a product toolkit to be examples, templates, like really no fluff, no pretty theory, but just like explanations as to why these things work. And then how do you actually use them in your day to day, and that was the first product and I think it was like a the the weekend launch was great. I think what I learned was that the newsletter and email list, as we've seen, in many instances, like ProductHunt, originally, originally, an email list AngelList was originally an email list, app Sumo, which I think makes like $80 million, something like that $80 million in revenue, don't quote me on it, they started off as an email list. So having that distribution is so powerful. And I got to feel that in my own small way, where I launched, it was like, oh, a 10k weekend, like I had no idea I could do that. Because I've never been able to do that online. Right. And that wasn't that was like disproportionate to the amount of work that I had to put in, in that specific instance, to create the product. And so that was my first realization that actually, maybe this could be like a sustaining business. And one of the other things I realized was, I didn't want to go the VC back route. Even though in Silicon Valley, at least, that's like, almost the default path that that everybody wants to go under. Because I think that a lot of businesses don't need to be funded in that way. I think many businesses actually far more businesses can be bootstrapped. Because the cost of getting it up and running is so low these days, like this is probably the best time to start a side hustle and see, you know, where it takes you. And so I was like, let me just try to bootstrap brow. And I've been able to bootstrap everything since then also created another website called top startups, top startup startup IO. And that's really a profit, I thought would be really useful. Like, for me years ago, looking for the fairs of the world. It was so hard. I mean, I was lucky in that I got, I had an insight connection. But a lot of people don't find themselves in that position, the perfect time for their life. So to be able to find like the most promising startups, I think, is really useful. There's a lot of noise out there. And so top startups focuses on people who are startup that are backed by tier one investors, especially the ones who are backed by multiple tier one investors, which also like comprise of the vast majority of any gains in the startup market. So I think that's like a good signal for people to use. And it's free to use for, for anyone, I just want to say I have immense respect for your ability to like get off the treadmill, in a sense and pursue your curiosity and, and passions. I think that's such a high leverage high ROI path in the long term. You know, kind of like the marshmallow test, right? Like, I think you've passed the marshmallow test. So one question about that. So as you think about building audience, right, so you've been fairly successful at building an audience, for your blog and for your products? What advice would you have for someone early on in that journey to maybe set themselves up for like, success? Yeah, I would say that. It depends on really your goals. I think the building an audience is actually a very catchy phrase, especially over the last year with a boom like the Creator economy, boom, but it's not the right thing for everyone. Because not everybody wants to like make videos or write or tweet like it's, that's not everyone's cup of tea. And I think if you don't really enjoy those things, if that's not your native format, that's not what gives you energy. It's probably not worth it.
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doing, if you just want to do a SaaS product, I don't know, if you need to build an audience, there's plenty of sass products, I make a lot of money, no previous built an audience, etc. So I think the the building an audience really only works if it's in a format that you really enjoy. And the reason why I say that is because after the initial dopamine eventually just becomes like, work if you don't enjoy it. And that's the thing that I really try to keep a pulse on of, like, Does this feel like another job because I told myself, I wasn't gonna sign up for another job for at least a year, right. And so if it becomes a job, there's something that I have to change. But yeah, if you do find a format that really works for you, I would say that, it's good to pick like a starting dose of, hey, I'm going to do this for four weeks. And I'm going to do one a week, or like, every other day or something like that commit, pre commit to like a dosage that you think is enough to judge kind of, if it's something that you want to do long term. And then once you're past that point, you can always reassess. And then in terms of like, being able to build enough residents that someone would want to follow or read regularly, like retention is obviously really important, cuz you don't want a leaky bucket where you get people to sign up, but they never read your stuff, or something like that. I think it's important to have fun to read. This one's like having a red pill. And the red pill is just what are you willing to say? What are you willing to share that nobody else is saying or sharing, because there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people sharing free content. But I think the vast majority is like, it's like censored, that's probably how I would call a lot of it. It's just there's stuff that you're not willing to share because of certain reasons, good or bad. And then it just becomes far less compelling. And so I think my red pill is just been, I'll share anything and everything. How did you manage yourself and your your psychology, I think it's really hard to be a solo printer. And I mean, it's just can be emotionally so challenging, and so many different ways. So tell us about your ups and downs through it, and how did you sort of like, stay center, then, not always, there are good days, and there are bad days, and then they're really bad days. And it doesn't doesn't really change. I think that I had those at every company that I worked at, and I still have them now, I think in the first six months, so it was like a honeymoon, right? Where you're experiencing freedom for the first time in your life, and everything is just amazing, and you think it's gonna last forever. But after the honeymoon period, you realize, oh, like life is never gonna be perfect. And for me, I think the first thing was just mastering my own psychology. And I think that's like an ongoing thing. I still struggle with it a lot of times, but it was like letting the ghost of my past self meaning I would sometimes compare where I was today, like where I am in this moment, to where I would be if I stayed, if I stayed in consulting, if I stayed at snap, which also did really well, during the pandemic, if I stayed at fair, and having that ghost chase you is probably one of the worst experiences that you can put yourself through from like a pure mental perspective, it's unrelenting, and it just causes a lot of unhappiness. And so I think I had to let that go. And one of the things that helped me like rationalize that is realizing that when I envision my past self of like, what could have been, Oh, I could have done this, I could have done that. I'm always thinking of the best scenario for my life. Whereas I'm comparing the worst scenario of my life right now. But every single choice is not just one choice, it's a bundle of things that come along with it. And if the bundle overall is bad, even though just one part of your life is working out, it still isn't gonna make you happy. So I think it's not cherry picking the good, and comparing it with the bad of the present. But recognizing that it's, it's a whole, if the whole you think is better, like the overall picture is better, then actually, you probably did make the right choice. At least that's the self talk that I give myself. Another book that I read, that I actually thought was actually really good was called chatter. So the idea is, the importance of self talk, like life is a creation of the mind. So how is it that some people can talk themselves into doing great things and to feel good about themselves, whereas other people devolve into this like negative cycle that ends up destroying parts of their life. And so that was something that was interesting, because I have a lot of self talk, there's a lot of voices in my head. And it's not always positive. So that book was pretty useful, and like helping me understand that, oh, I can control all this, I can control the voice. And that voice is probably the most important voice in the world, because this is the conversation you have with yourself, which is the story of your life, which is then the story that you live out. It's all very like interrelated. And that was like a pretty good realization as well. And then the other thing that's been good is I've found other people who are in similar parts of their life who are doing similar things, and then you can kind of commiserate and rant
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about the stuff that's not going well, right? So finding like minded people, especially, I mean, on the internet these days, like you can find pretty much anyone who's kind of going through something similar, and being able to, you know, meet with them and share secrets, not so secrets and stuff like that, like, that's also very helpful. Yeah, that makes a huge difference. So one last question about that, which is, do you have certain rituals or things you do that help you with staying, you know, balanced and centered and focused? So some people I talk to, they go on walks every day, some like Barry's boot camp every day.
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Everybody's got their own sort of thing, some journal, what is it for you? I think a blog has actually been a form of therapy for me, because I get to share what I've been thinking about. That's actually probably been one of my bigger outlets. I've been trying to get into meditation, but it hasn't quite worked out. For me, I haven't really made time for that. But I think a lot of it is just like catching the patterns in your behavior. Like I now know, when I'm about to slip into something negative, like negative self talk, or just like being hard on myself. And once I detect that, oh, like, take a moment just for myself and figure out like, what is it that I'm actually like, what's what's going well, and what am I grateful for? And like, is it still really what I want, because it's always it's a reversible option. I mean, that's the biggest thing of like, you can leave. And if you want to go back to tech, whatever it is, you can always do that. There's lots of opportunities. I mean, we're living in a really good time, too. But there's always lots of opportunities. If you have the right skills. I love the focus on observing yourself. Because I think there's, when you observe a behavior, it becomes a lot easier to change the behavior, the more you understand why you're doing it and the impact it's having on you. It just becomes a rational decision to change behavior. And it does become forced to a certain point of time. Yeah. So here, here's this thing is meditation in case it wasn't clear.
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So switching gears a bit, we have three questions that we like to ask every guest. And the first is around superpowers. So everyone has something that they do that feels like played to them, but it's worked to others, they're really good at it, they do it for fun. I'm curious to hear what are some superpowers that you've identified in yourself that you like to lean on, I think I've always been bad at actually self identifying. So I think most of the superpowers that I now associate myself with are just like things that other people have told me over the years. The first one is writing. So I do really enjoy reading, I also read a lot. So I think it's very hard to be a bad writer, when you also read a lot. And we intentionally, you get all kind of feeds into each other. And that's useful for a number of things like a blog, building an audience, actually being a PM, you know, writing strategy, dogs, bunch of stuff, I think, another superpower that other people have told me multiple times, just like wanting to get better. I really believe that if you want to change certain parts of yourself, and you're willing to do the work, like you can do it, there's a lot of things that I've changed about myself over the years. And I think having that like hunger, to change, and to change for the better. That keeps me going at all times. So even if I'm at a lower starting point, if I'm a little behind, even if I'm not like the most gifted person in the world, I know that I'll stick around and keep doing it until well, I guess never. Because I'll just keep going, I'll just keep going. But I've what I've shifted to myself is like, what it is that I'm trying to optimize for. And realizing that if you just try to optimize for everything that other people are telling you, you're always gonna be living someone else's life. And that took me a few years to realize, and now I've sort of changed for what it is that I'm done calling myself on. And then broadly speaking, I think around superpowers, I've learned that you don't have to be the 99th percentile when the top 1% For any given thing, you can still be in the top 1%. Overall, if you're actually like pretty good at a number of things that are not commonly found in each other. I think Scott Adams, the delivery guy came up with this concept of the talent stack, which I've also written about, which is really just like creating your own combination of unique skills that then propel you into kind of League of your own. And so I think everyone actually can create their own blend of talents that then give them an overall superpower, even if they're not naturally gravitated, gravitating towards a specific thing. The second questions around that people have given you a break. You mentioned that you like to practice gratitude. When you reflect back on your career. Are there moments in time where you're particularly grateful to someone who has gone to bat for you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think I've I think I'm very lucky to have met really good people.
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Throughout my life, the first the early memories have all been teachers, like teachers who made me realize that, oh, like maybe I am special, you know, and maybe I can do these things that I thought were impossible. And so I always struggled with self confidence as a kid. And there are two teachers who like, helped me, like shake that off and actually be more bold. And what I wanted to pursue, there was one in grade five, who made me feel really good about myself, there was one in college who helped me get over the fact that I wasn't going to be a doctor, and, you know, help intro me into tech and like internships and stuff like that, which is obviously a big breakthrough if you've never had work experience before. And so I'm particularly grateful for the people early on, because I was because that's, I mean, all the change that we undergo it compounds, right. And so I think the first step of like, stepping into your own, and being more confident, that changes everything else. So those will for sure. I've also had, you know, like great managers, like a fair, you know, we had a really wonderful, had a product that I think modeled a lot of what I wanted to be like, if I was going to continue to be a manager, like, how do you treat people? And how do you make them feel? And how have their back while still
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demanding excellence? And how do you make that balance? I think if you have never seen the tension between demanding excellence, but also supporting someone and like really caring about them, it's very hard to like make, strike that balance yourself. Even when you do you see, it's still hard to strike that balance. So I'm grateful to have had a role model. And last question is around books. I know you're a big reader, can you tell us about a couple of books that have really stood out to you and been impactful for you personally and professionally? Yeah, I always have like a recency bias. When it comes to these books, there's one that I read a few years ago, that really stood out. It's called How to measure your life. And maybe you guys have read it before. The thing that I really liked about it was the analogy around the culture of a family and the culture of a team on a company and how that's really not all that different from each other. And it goes through a lot of examples of people who have it all. But there's something fatal, that's wrong. And that ends up being kind of the tipping point where everything else just like, unravels, so that I thought was a really good read. Chatter was been a good read. For me. I mentioned this earlier, it's around self talk, and how do you create better conversations with yourself, which I read that much earlier in my life, I feel like it explains so much of what what I've gone through. And I also like a lot of novels like sci fi stuff, Michael Creighton is always a good read. He's got a really good collection, I mean, between Jurassic Park and like, a bunch of the other novels that are less well known, like there's some really, really good ones. And I think what's most remarkable about his books, is that they were written so long ago, but they're still futuristic seeming today. And so I think he's someone who really had just like a third eye into the far distant future. I know this has been a really, really enjoyable conversation. And thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, likewise, it's been so fun. Thanks for having me, guys. It's our pleasure.