Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:33:01 · Sean Ellis
[01:33:01] S1: Yeah. As I... As I've gone through and done a lot of, workshops and programs with companies, I keep coming back to this advice that I heard from guy Oleg Kubanov, which is, it often comes down to asking the right question at the right time how you figure things out. He's a former data scientist from Meta, where he basically boils data science down to learning how to ask the right questions. So I actually have a course with him called gopractice.io where that's really the big benefit of the course is to learn how to ask the right questions. And yeah, you learn how to query them in Amplitude, but more importantly, being able to ask the right question. I think it's kind of cool to hear that from a data scientist from Meta, the importance of that. But every time I'm going through exercises in my workshops, it almost always comes down to people who aren't able to come up with the right or a good answer for a challenging in a business, it's because they're not asking the obvious question. As soon as they ask, why aren't users downloading the software? Let's just ask them that question. That would be one example from my workshop. Who considers the product a must have? That part of getting to figuring out the must have kind of benefit that then allows you to hone in on product market fit. And so, right questions, right time, I think is a really important, way to think about, growth and even getting to product market fit.
01:34:39 · Lenny Rachitsky, Sean Ellis
[01:34:39] S0: I love this advice because I think it gives us a glimpse into how your brain has developed these really simple, seemingly simple ideas that end up being really powerful. And it feels like the advice is just think a lot about the question you need to ask because that'll get you just something that a lot of people just kind of under underthink or don't. There's, like, things... Just think maybe it's too simple. Like... [01:35:02] S1: Yeah. Or they just jump right into the solution side of things where they're where they're not really trying to understand what's going on. [01:35:08] S0: Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Well, with that, Sean, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [01:35:14] S1: I am. [01:35:15] S0: Alright. Our first question is, what are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? [01:35:20] S1: Increasingly, I'm recommending a book called Presenting to Win that's been around forever, but, it really helped me with my presenting. So, of course, when I'm out traveling, I'm often sharing the stage with other speakers and yeah, I'd like to recommend that one to them. I've already talked about Nir Eyal's Hooked. I recommend that always. We'll just stick with two. That's a good two. [01:35:47] S0: Within presenting to win, is there one tip that sticks with you of like, here's something that really helped me be a better presenter?
01:35:47 · Lenny Rachitsky, Sean Ellis
[01:35:47] S0: Within presenting to win, is there one tip that sticks with you of like, here's something that really helped me be a better presenter? [01:35:52] S1: Ultimately, confidence in presenting comes down to having very well organized information that you're going to present. And when you organize it correctly, you are much more likely to deliver it with confidence. And so he basically says, if I had a presentation to do and I had an hour to present, I'd spend fifty five minutes creating the right presentation and then five minutes practicing it. But, yeah, there's a lot more to it. But that... [01:36:18] S0: Wow. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. We'll link to that book in the show notes. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? [01:36:24] S1: Yeah. So I've been binging the Olympics. I love that. Just, you know, watching people who, like, work their ass off for years and then maybe have thirty seconds to do the thing that they worked hard for. So Olympics have been awesome. Then And then the movie, I actually just saw BlackBerry. I don't know if you've seen that. [01:36:42] S0: Oh, story of the BlackBerry.
01:36:42 · Lenny Rachitsky, Sean Ellis
[01:36:42] S0: Oh, story of the BlackBerry. [01:36:44] S1: Yeah. I mean, obviously, we all kind of know the story, but it was... So really, it's a classic example of product market fit and then not. It's probably even a counterexample to the dangers of how would you feel if you could no longer use this product? Pretty sure most people would have said on BlackBerry, it's the keyboard. And until iPhone came along, you know, the keyboard was super important, then suddenly it wasn't. But, yeah, it's also also interesting on, like, egos and and other things that, like, every... Everybody's getting friendly in the beginning, and then and then egos take over, and things get a lot harder later on. [01:37:23] S0: That was actually a really good movie. There's also an amazing movie called Tetris for some reason, I think of these two together about the story of Tetris. There's like some... It's like a similar parallels to those two movies. [01:37:32] S1: Awesome. I'll have to see that one. [01:37:34] S0: Next question. Do you have a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? [01:37:39] S1: I forget the name of it, but it's called Pack Gear Hanging Suitcase. And basically, I've done almost 100,000 miles in travel this year, and I have another trip scheduled for next week. And I love it because it basically has all my clothes folded in this little insert that goes into my suitcase and then I just pull it out and hang it up and just makes makes travel way easier. [01:38:06] S0: It's called the pack gear suitcase? [01:38:08] S1: Pack gear hanging suitcase organizer.
01:38:08 · Sean Ellis, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:38:08] S1: Pack gear hanging suitcase organizer. [01:38:12] S0: So cool. Gonna check that out. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to that you find useful in work or in life, maybe share with friends and family sometimes?
01:38:22 · Sean Ellis
[01:38:22] S1: Focus on on reputation and learning over earnings, has served me super well that, and I'll give you an example. I had I had two companies when I was doing a lot of this early interim stuff, yeah, ten plus years ago. And I had two of them where I talked to the founders afterwards, and I could tell they weren't like that stoked on my contributions. And I offered a full refund to both of them with the thought that I have this reputation that's I randomly pulled the numbers. My reputation is worth $5,000,000 Why would I possibly mortgage that reputation for $20,000 And so one of them, I gave the check back to them and he was happy to take it. But he had said, Oh, you can make it up to me. I don't you don't have give me the check, just make it up to me by continuing to help me for an unlimited amount of time going forward. Was like, Oh, take the check. And then the other one said, No, no, I'm actually really happy with what you did. We're fine. But the two VCs who had made those introductions were the first two to give me term sheets when I went out to raise money for my company and the pre money ultimately ended up being valued at more than double what I had put my personal reputation at. Unfortunately, the company didn't do that well itself because of the elusive product market fit challenges. But the learning there of just focus on learning and reputation. Reputation opened the door to more and more learning. And as I got more learning, the reputation grew. And so, yeah.