Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:57:51 · G2 Patel
[00:57:51] S0: I feel like it's, life's too short not to be, and I'm only friends with people that I feel are good human beings. What I try not to do is I try to minimize my time no matter how successful they are with people whose energy I don't vibe with, because I think life's too short. And in my mind, one of the most off-putting things is, look, all of us have a healthy ego. There are times when ego gets manifested with insecurity and you have to make sure that you're at least self-aware enough to know when your ego is starting to take over your behavior in a way that's counterproductive. And all of those things are super important. But what I think is extremely important is that you ... Life is just fun to live when you love the people you are around. Can I digress for a second in this one story that ... I'll tell you the story that was ... So my mother was, she passed away two and a half years ago, but she was extremely sick in the hospital for eight weeks before she passed away. And I was very close to my mom. She was my everything and we were only child. I grew up with a rough childhood. My dad was a high-stakes kind of conn man, like Bernie Madoff. I didn't want to be any part of that. So I had actually left India, come over here, hadn't seen him. And so he was very abusive to my mom. So there was a bunch of that that had happened. And so, we had had a very difficult early childhood life for me, and her and I had bonded during that time at a very deep level. And so when she came to America, she always wanted to have her own place, but she lived very close by and she was very dependent on me emotionally in every way. And so, I had almost become a parent to her. And at the last eight weeks things flipped and she became a parent again. And so we were getting to the point where she was ending her journey. And I was sitting one in the morning at the bedside by her in the hospital. I was living in the hospital at the time. And she was sleeping and I was just crying profusely. And she wakes up, and she knows why I'm crying, because she's going to be gone soon. And she looks at me, Lenny, and she's like all perplexed and she's like, "I had no idea that you loved me so much." Now, by the way, this is the most abnormal thing for me to hear, because I'm like, "What are you talking about mom?
01:00:44 · G2 Patel, Lenny Rachitsky
Like you're one of the most important people in my life." And everything that I did was to make sure that my mom was okay. Why did it feel that way to her? Because she didn't know how I was thinking. And that kind of notion of people don't know what's going on in your mind is so important that my biggest lesson from that was, "Don't be stingy with words." Because even my mother that knows me inside and out didn't know how much I loved her, that there's no chance that people in the business world are going to know how you feel if you're not explicit with them. And so, I'm actually very clear with people, when I find them and when I find them rewarding, I let them know how much they mean, because I genuinely find a lot of energy coming out of that. And B, the circle of friends just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I found that to be a super rewarding thing in life. And you're right, most of the people that were at the AI Summit are dear friends, and isn't that just a better way to live life? [01:02:01] S1: I think we've uncovered one of the secrets of your success, which is just tell people how you feel and help them see that you appreciate them. Make it clear that you appreciate them, that you value them, which is a lot of people don't do, they just assume they know that they like you. [01:02:16] S0: And don't make it fake. [01:02:18] S1: And don't make it fake. [01:02:19] S0: Don't make it fake. If you don't love someone, don't tell them you love them. That's the other thing that I have.
01:02:19 · G2 Patel, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:02:19] S0: Don't make it fake. If you don't love someone, don't tell them you love them. That's the other thing that I have. [01:02:27] S1: It's so interesting. We just did a little interview kind of thing with my mother-in-law meant for our son, just for him to have when he's older. They just interviewed her about her story and stuff and they asked her at the end of it, "What's something you want Jude," which is his name, "to know, a lesson to learn from you?" And it's to just, if you love someone, tell them you love them as much as you can. [01:02:52] S0: Yeah, that's so true. You're so intentional about the way in which you do these things. I wish I'd done a, I should do that now. Now I think about it, do a podcast for my daughter that's only for her when she gets older. [01:03:06] S1: I'll send you these. This group, they do this. I think they're in the Bay Area, but it's incredible. It's a whole documentary thing where they interview you, film your life for a little bit and then make a whole documentary. [01:03:17] S0: Oh really? Oh, wow. I'd love that actually. [01:03:19] S1: Yes. Oh, man. They're going to get a lot of business right now. [01:03:21] S0: There you go.
01:03:21 · G2 Patel, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:03:21] S0: There you go. [01:03:24] S1: Let me end with a question around just your journey. So today you lead product at a 90,000 person company. You manage 30,000 people. Like you said, you grew up in India in Bombay very far outside Silicon Valley. A lot of people hearing this today are kind of in a similar boat. They're way outside of the valley, maybe don't have a lot of obvious way to break in. They don't have a lot of opportunity and they see someone like you and that's their dream. What would your advice be to someone in that place right now?
01:04:00 · G2 Patel
[01:04:00] S0: The platform that you choose and the quality of problems that you pick to solve actually determine a lot of the path of success for you. And typically harder problems have a higher likelihood of success. Because the harder problems are the ones that attract better people to that problem and business as a team sport. And if you attract people to the problems that are hard and important enough to solve, then you get the best team, and you get the best team, your odds are winning just go up exponentially. So most people think I'm going to go out and pick an easy enough problem to solve. And it's like you don't get the best-team attracted to you to start up a lemonade stand, very important job. But that might not be the thing that actually gets the best team to come to you. But if you actually pick a hard enough problem to solve, you'll get the best team to come. So that's one. Number two, I'd say that you can teach and learn a lot of things in life. I don't think you can learn hunger or you can't teach hunger. So find what you're intrinsically hungry about and make sure that you try to pursue that area. And that's different from passion about something. It's like in everything that you do in work, you have to just understand the formula that there's going to be 30% of the stuff that you do at work that you're just going to hate. And you have to get used to things that you hate that you have to do. But further, but find something that you're really hungry about that makes you want to come in to work every day, because the mission is worth the expenditure of energy that you're putting into it. And I'll leave you with a story which was, I hadn't gone to India in a long time. When I left India, I didn't go back. I left in '91 and I hadn't gone back in any kind of meaningful way until 2017 because of all the trauma in childhood. For whatever reason, I hadn't gone back. But I took my daughter and we went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and we went there and there was this tour guide, his name was Raj. And this tour guide was like he understood so much about the product that he was selling, which was the tour of the Taj Mahal. I don't know if he was making the shit up or not, but it sounded really good and he seemed like he was kind of early on it.
01:06:32 · G2 Patel
But when we were walking back, there's all these people and he would just start talking to them and he'd bust out in different languages. He'd talk to someone in German, talk to someone in French, someone in Spanish, someone in Hindi, someone in. And at some point in time in Mandarin. And at some point in time I stopped, "Dude, how many languages do you speak?" He's like, "Oh, I speak, I don't know, 12 or 14 or some ridiculous number. But I try to learn a new language every year." I'm like, "Oh, why is that?" And he goes, "Well, I just want to honor the people that come here and not be presumptuous that they will speak in the language that I know." I want to speak in their language. And I'm thinking to myself, I was a box at the time. I'm like, "This guy is smarter than every person on the executive team and probably just as smart as every salesperson we have, but he's making $10 a day and all of us are enjoying this amazing life, and it's because we have access to a platform and he doesn't." So when people start confusing life thinking that, "Everything that I've earned is because of my amazing abilities." I always question that, because there's a lot of luck in this thing. But when luck does present itself, be extremely prepared to capitalize on it. And make sure that you pick the platform that can actually give you that springboard. Because platforms really matter. And if we, like I had the platform and benefit of America, of education, of being in tech, of having great friends and mentors, all of those things created compounding value. But I intentionally sought out those platforms, seek out the platform, be obsessed about being extremely prepared, and don't be intellectually lazy. Laziness is not a good trait. So do the preparation that's needed. And then just make sure that during that time period that you're doing, if you build a community around you of people that are vested in your success, I think it's just, life is just a more fun way to live it, rather than being the lone wolf that's going at it by themselves. And that's why I always feel like making sure that you are expressive and communicative and don't try to carry the entire world's burden on your shoulders, but actually share it with people with you, the people that you share it with actually appreciate that you're sharing it with them. And most people in the world love to help.