Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:21:29 · Jason Cohen
Does it feel good to just not be growing? The answer could be yes. If I'm a CPA, and I have some clients, and life is good, the answer could be yes. I'm not dictating the answer here. I'm just asking because a lot of times, whether it's our careers, or as founders, our companies, a lot of times we've just been in the mode of, "Oh, I've got to grow, I've got to get promoted, I've got to do more, I've got my resume." We've got in that mode for so long, maybe our whole life, that I was going to say lose sight of, but maybe we never had sight of, "Wait, does this make me happy? Is this what I really want? Am I fulfilled doing this? Or even if I do have these goals, have I gotten stuck in a rut where my goal is growth and I don't know, more money, more everything, but I'm stuck in a rut here." Sometimes we forget to take a step back and go, "Wait a minute. Is this still right or do I need to turn the page and have a new chapter of life right now?" And so this question, do you need to grow, or if you're not growing, you're dying, well, for some people, no, they like doing the same thing forever. And that's great, actually. That's nice. But for many people, especially the kind of people who want to get into product, and build stuff, and innovate, and people who start companies, a lot of people like that are not the kind of people that want to just do rote things for 20 years. And so the not growing part, what I like to say is maybe the you in if you are not growing, you're dying is you, the person as opposed to you, the company. It's also you, the company. But what if we took it to mean you? If you are not growing, then in some sense, maybe for some people, you're dying. Maybe if you're listening to this, that's you. You're a shark and you got to go. And we all know people too, who claim they hate work or maybe they do hate work. Let's not say claim, they do hate work, but then they retire and kind of go downhill because they don't have a purpose or this, or that, and the other thing. In that case, it was true, if they're not growing, they're dying, literally. So again, I don't mean to overstate this, and I certainly don't mean to claim that there's some answer that's right for everybody, of course, but surely this is the right kind of question.
01:23:48 · Jason Cohen
And surely for many people who are listening to this, the answer is, "Yeah, I mean, in some sense, some very rough sense, that's probably right for me. And so if I'm in a stagnant situation and really, every other option has been exhausted and isn't going to happen, this is simply a stagnant thing. Maybe there's something else needs to happen. I need to leave, the company needs to change some drastic way, I sell the company, I change jobs." I don't know. Of course, it's going to be super context specific and personal. But something dramatic may need to change because nothing incrementally is changing. So this final question, do you need to grow? Or if you're not growing, you're dying, is that true? And are you therefore dying and what needs to happen? So if you were looking for more metrics in another framework, sorry, it's existential, but it is. It is existential. So do you have to only ask this at the end of the chain? No, of course you should feel fulfilled. And of course you want to be checking in with yourself at least annually, of course. But I put it at the end of my list in the sense that I'm assuming the original question is about the company, especially with smaller companies, but also with big public companies. There's plenty of big public companies that aren't growing, aren't there? So this is true of all scales because there are natural sizes for things. So yeah, it's a little philosophical, but I think it's quite important.
01:25:18 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:25:18] S0: Such a beautiful way to wrap up this piece. A lot of people listening to podcasts are bootstrap founders, and for them, this is actually very much an option. They can just be happy with the revenue they're generating. Like with my newsletter right now, I'd be very sad if it stopped growing, but also just, it's amazing the life it has created for me. And even if it did stop growing, and just stayed flat, and doesn't become an elephant curve, that'd be incredible. In practice, psychologically still hard for that to be the case, and that's why this component of the sequence is really important. Like, "Why do you actually need it to grow?" Is that just your ego, is that just like, "I'm used to growth?"
01:25:58 · Jason Cohen
[01:25:58] S1: It can also help you avoid doing unnatural things that you actually regret to grow. So if growth at all costs is just the thing, there's probably ways you could, "Grow the newsletter," that you would just say, "I just wouldn't be proud of that. And the newsletter's doing so well, that I don't need to do that." And so again, maybe that's a softer version because growth hasn't actually stopped, but okay, it's a softer version of, "I certainly don't agree with growth." You might say, "I certainly don't agree with growth at all costs. I want to grow as much as possible within the things that I'm proud of. If we grew fast, but the content was crappy, I'm just not willing to do that. It's not the point." And so it helps set up these boundaries of like, "Wait a minute, not if ... " And early on, we may not have that flexibility. You could argue that you should have those values early on because that's who you are, and that's what you're doing, and people respond. So I could argue you should have that all along, but I could also argue that at the beginning you're just trying to do something where you don't die, you're starting to blog, you're probably copying other people's style. You probably don't have that much unique things to say. So there's a lot of ... That's okay. You're just trying to get going. It's okay. 20 years later, if you have no style, and no voice of your own, and nothing new to say, that's probably not good, but to get going, sure. So sometimes we have this thing where we get going with maybe looser ... I don't want to say values. I'm not saying that's unethical, but looser bar or a pride that we have in our own work, and we tighten it up as we're able, as we can afford to, you might even say. So good, but then that becomes a nice filter here of like, "What is it in a greater sense I'm trying to do here, I'm willing to do here?" So if you're not growing, you're dying fair, but that has to come with these limits. And the more successful you are, the more you can be serious about those limits.
01:27:43 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:27:43] S0: I think an important element of this is also the product you're currently working on, maybe it's okay for it just to not grow. This is a good opportunity to do something else, have this thing maybe running on the side, maybe sunset it at some point, but it's a good opportunity to be like, "Okay, wait, what else is out there?" We had a recent podcast conversation with Matt MacInnis, CPO at Rippling, and there's some really good advice he shared on just when to quit, when to quit your startup, just like, "If it's like four or five years in and it's just not clicking, maybe it's time to move on." And even though people do succeed years in, most likely it's not going to be you.
01:28:16 · Jason Cohen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:28:16] S1: I have a book almost out now that's on pre-order about topics like what we've been talking. The next book I want to write is on this topic of how do I make these decisions of uncertainty? Like, "Maybe it is time to quit. Maybe I should move to a different city. Maybe I should marry this person. Maybe I should launch this company. Maybe I should use this strategy where you want to use probability and expected value. It's unlikely that ... " But the truth is we don't know what the probability is. We don't know what the probability curves look like. We actually can't use expected value. And anyway, even if you could have expected value, I am a human being. This is my life and I either sell the company or I don't. And so all this stuff about probability, and like, " That doesn't apply to me. I need other ways of sorting this out." So I guess I would just say briefly, probability is not going to work for these decisions. So that doesn't say what is right, but it's not that, which is nice, because you could put those tools down. "I'll do some market research to see if I should sell my company." Nope. That's not where the answers are. [01:29:26] S0: More questions than answers on that one. [01:29:28] S1: Yeah. [01:29:29] S0: Speaking of the book, let's give you a chance to share what you're working on, and when this is coming out, and where folks can find it.