Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
01:40:03 · Lenny Rachitsky, Sean Ellis
[01:40:03] S0: There's a really good corollary there with customer support. Like, if someone just hates your product and wants a refund, just give them give them a refund and let them move on versus being upset. [01:40:12] S1: Yeah. Absolutely. [01:40:13] S0: I love that. Final question. You mentioned to me when we... Before we started recording that you were maybe indirectly responsible for TikTok's success. Maybe share that story. [01:40:24] S1: Yeah. I mean, I I don't wanna overstate it, but I... Yeah. My trip around the world that I did three months ago, think I wrapped it up. I met with the original Founding Growth team at TikTok. They're based in Singapore and they had I can't remember what the previous product was called, but they started with the previous product. And then when TikTok came, they were in place to be the initial growth team for TikTok. They basically said, All the early stuff we did to grow TikTok was based on your writing. So that was before the book came out, it's a lot of just blogging that I had done, it was really cool to get that feedback that, yeah, I've always said I have some really good wins. Have a lot of unicorns that I helped, but none of the really, really big guys. Then to hear that, it felt really good to know that I played some kind of role in TikTok. Of course, almost the same week they told me that that was Congress having TikTok banned conversations. So it it was it was good. At the same time, knowing that maybe if they hadn't read my stuff, Congress wouldn't be wasting their time on TikTok bans.