Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:58:12 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:58:12] S1: To make this even more concrete for people that are starting to like, oh, shit, I gotta do do this. Can you just give us a list that doesn't have to be exhaustive of potential growth loops, levers, methods, engines for folks to consider? You've mentioned a few, but just give a list of people like, okay. Got it. Maybe we'll try one of these.
00:58:29 · Elena Verna
[00:58:29] S0: I'm really big on creating a growth loop out of user generated content. I think with everything that is happening with AI and SEO at the moment, your biggest claim to fame on content strategy will be harnessing user generated content, whether it's user generated templates, whether it's user generated case studies, review, whatever it is. You need to start investing into it now, creating a library out of it, using it for activation purposes, using it then for acquisition purposes, using community to spark the conversations around it. That can be a really wonderful strategy that everybody should consider of whether there's juice in it within your product. Other ones can be, Hey, we're a very, let's say, individualistic product, but can we actually create a referral mechanism for it? For B2C, that's actually very straightforward. A lot of B2C products thrive on referrals. For B2B, it can be more of invitation of other team members into the product to complete other jobs to be done. Hey, I've done this. I need my manager to see it. Can I create a report to share with my manager? And all of sudden, it starts to spread within the company. So, creating additional product functionality that then creates these loops potentially for you. So, it can be slew of things. Obviously, I'd highly recommend just understanding all of the menus of these earned tactics. I should do a blog post on that, actually. And then just see what works for you or not, because at least ideation step of it has to happen. If you especially are relying on search engines for your acquisition, start thinking about some of the earned channels as soon as possible.
01:00:22 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna
[01:00:22] S1: And even though you recommend spend more time on earned channels, owned channels, there's also Explore SEO, Explore paid growth, right, sales. Absolutely. [01:00:33] S0: I mean, everybody does paid, arguably almost too soon potentially. There's a point to make that shouldn't be. A lot of companies should not be doing paid right now, but SEO, social, resellers, all of those are wonderful tactics. Obviously, I skew very heavily towards earned channels just because once you stand that up, that's a gift that just keeps on giving and nobody can take that away from you. But that doesn't mean that other tactics and other channels should not be explored as well. [01:01:05] S1: Amazing. Let's keep going. So we have three to go. Number eight.
01:01:10 · Elena Verna
[01:01:10] S0: So, number eight. This one's kind of a doozy and I think a lot of people don't do it. I don't know why they don't do it. I think it's such an incredible ability to propel forward. And that is what doesn't work, as I said in the previous Growth Tactics, is trying to think that each problem is unique and you need to solve it on your own. Maybe this is not so much as an award, but not hiring advisors is something that I do not recommend for you to do. You can get access to anybody for one hour a week. Yeah, you'll have to pay them. So nobody's going to volunteer their hour. We're all very, very busy. But hiring advisors is the biggest career amplification and your business amplification can possibly do. Because to create a network of people that have all of these data points and those all of the other patterns that you can do is something that can just propel you so far forward. That doesn't mean you have to do everything advisor says, that's not the point, they're not the strategy setter, but they are additional input into your decision making that you otherwise wouldn't have. You can go and hire somebody from Atlassian. You can go and hire somebody from Airbnb that have been and lived through all of this and they can help you solving your problem. So, I think any growth team that does not have an advisor is a growth team that is underperforming. Because even me who I've like, I've applied so many companies, I've operated at so many companies, I don't know everything. Every time I take an operator role, I hire advisors for myself because that is the fastest way to learn anything. And I often see these teams that just like try to figure out everything on their own and not have any advisory, like advisors on their boards, so to speak. And I'm not even talking like an official board. I'm talking not even advisory board, but you can hire somebody like as a contractor that will be your advisor. I think it's a huge mistake, especially in this day and age, because we have a big asymmetry of information in our field. There's very little available to learn because we're all very cagey because of competition. But at the end of the day, people know a lot of the stuff and how it worked for them internally. And I highly, highly encourage you to not try to wing it on your own.
01:03:45 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:03:45] S1: Along those lines, there's also an advice of just like, don't worry about advisors. There's... Never know if they're gonna be useful. There's always hanger ons that join your startup and wanna help, but they're not helpful. If you give one tip for a founder or team that's interviewing advisers looking for an adviser to vet them to help them find people that are actually great. What would your tip be?
01:04:07 · Elena Verna
[01:04:07] S0: I have actually a good one. Many advisors might not like it though. I think that you should not hire an advisor until you do some sort of workshop with them on the problem that you're experiencing. See them in action. See what kind of information they can provide to you. Because any advisor that is cagey about what they know is not the type of advisor that you're going to want to have on your team. You want to have somebody that has lived through it, that can talk to you, to your face about it, that is able to have hard conversations, that is able to provide you necessary examples, that is able to give you and connect thoughts for you for necessary patterns. So, instead of just saying, Oh, this person looks good. Let me hire them as an advisor. Say, Hey, let's have a workshop first. I have this problem. I think that you can help me fix it. Pay them for it, whatever their rate is for that workshop for sure. But see how they actually interact with your team and then hire them on ongoing retainer bases. Because that creates an interview loop that is very practical, that is very quick to understand whether you can work with them, they can work with you, and whether they have anything to contribute to you. And then every single month, evaluate whether that advisor should stay with you. Some advisors, they only need to be with the company for three months and off they go. That's fine. Some of them might stick with you for four or five years, but every single month you should go and say, Did they add any value? And I'm not saying that advisors should have any monetary expectations, like revenue attribution, so to speak, to them. But did you find value in having conversations with them? Did they offer anything valuable to you?