When to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass)

[00:00] one of the biggest pieces of advice I'm giving to people that are like, how should we adjust our marketing with the economic changes and things like that? I was like, start by assuming you no longer have product market fit. [00:09] because you had product market fit in a different market. It's a different market now. So you have to start over and hopefully you do, or it's pretty close to it. And you just have to adjust a couple of things and you can be right back on track. But like, if you just assume like you need to launch a new channel to fix this problem, like you're going to be wrong because like your entire customer base change, not just the next 10% of customers that you're looking for. [00:34] Welcome to Lenny's podcast. I'm Lenny. And my goal here is to help you get better at the craft [00:39] and growing products. [00:40] I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies. Today, my guest is Adam Grineer. [00:51] Adam was head of growth marketing and innovation at Uber, where he basically built their growth marketing infrastructure and the team from the ground up. Then he went on to VP of product and marketing at Lambda School. And most recently, he was VP of marketing at Masterclass. These days, Adam advises companies large and small on growth and marketing strategy. In our conversation, we cover how to decide when to try new and emerging acquisition channels like TikTok, VR, newsletter ads, and how to go about testing them out. [01:21] get into the growth CMO role, which is an emerging role that Adam has helped pioneer. And we get into some real talk about burnout and depression and mental health issues that often come with working in tech. This was a really powerful and insightful conversation, and I learned a lot from Adam, both as an operator and as a human. I can't wait for you to hear this episode. And so with that, I bring you Adam Grenier. This episode is brought to you by Whimsical.

[01:51] When I ask product managers and designers on Twitter what software they use most, Whimsical is always one of the most mentioned products, and the users are fanatical. Whimsical is built for collaborative thinking, combining visual, text, and data canvases into one fluid medium. Distributed teams use Whimsical for workshops, whiteboarding, wireframes, user flows, and even feature specs. And that includes thousands of built-in icons and a rich library of templates. [02:21] whimsical a game changer. Visit whimsical.com slash Lenny to have my own templates added to your account when you sign up. That's whimsical.com slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by Coda. Coda is an all-in-one doc that combines the best documents, spreadsheets, and apps in one place. I actually use Coda every single day. It's my home base for organizing my newsletter writing. [02:51] graphs of each and every post. It's also where I curate my private knowledge repository for paid newsletter subscribers, and it's also how I manage the workflow for this very podcast. Over the years, I've seen Koda evolve from being a tool that makes teams more productive to one that also helps bring the best practices across the tech industry to life with an incredibly rich collection of templates and guides in the Koda doc gallery, including resources from many guests on this podcast,

[03:21] and Shashir, the CEO of Coda. Some of the best teams out there, like Pinterest, Spotify, Square, and Uber, use Coda to run effectively and have published their templates for anyone to use. If you're ping-ponging between lots of documents and spreadsheets, make your life better and start using Coda. You can take advantage of a special, limited-time offer just for startups. Head over to coda.io slash Lenny to sign up and get a $1,000 credit on your first statement. [03:51] That's C-O-D-A dot I-O slash Lenny to sign up and get a thousand dollars in credit on your account. [03:59] Adam, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. [04:06] It's my pleasure. I'm really excited to chat. [04:08] So I'm going to give a very brief overview of your very impressive career. And just let me know if I missed anything. All right. Sound good? Okay. So you were most recently VP of Marketing at Masterclass [04:20] which I'm actually a happy subscriber of and have watched many, many a video. Before that, you're VP of Product and Marketing at Lambda School. I don't know if that's right before, but that was something you did. Also, you're Head of Growth and Marketing and Innovation at Uber, which is a really cool title. I think you spent four years there and you basically built their growth marketing infrastructure and the team. Currently, you're doing a bunch of advising and kind of exploring to see what you kind of want to do next. Is that about right? [04:49] Yeah, yeah, you hit most of the key points. I think pre-Uber, the first kind of chunk of my career was on the advertising side. So worked in like agency world. So I kind of think of this is phase three of my life. That ads world was phase one, kind of startup and growth world phase two, and now really just spending time helping entrepreneurs and founders and build companies and that type of stuff. So yeah. What's been your favorite phase so far?

[05:17] I mean, kind of all of them. I'm like, I just embrace what gets thrown at me and allow it to organically happen. So each kind of phase has had its pros and cons and ups and downs. And so I think they've all fit pretty well into where I was in my career. [05:34] Speaking of moving and adjusting and iterating, I know you're big into improv. Yep. [05:41] How serious are you about improv? Yeah, good question. Serious in the sense that I've done it for a very long time, and I still do it, and I try to do it regularly. Serious as in, am I aiming to make money off of it and have a career out of it? Unfortunately not. There was a point in my life that that is what I wanted to do. I lived in Chicago, did Second City, ImprovOlympic, a variety of different places, did quite a bit of performing, [06:11] as well and so kind of built a lifestyle that made doing improv full-time probably not the best path for me at the time. And so I made a pretty conscious choice early on that it was more of a hobby and if something ever came of it, cool, but if not, that's okay. It's still something I keep coming back to because it's very grounding and like fulfilling in ways that, you know, work and family life and things like that don't quite hit for me. [06:34] Actually, at Airbnb, we had an improv teacher come and work with the PM team. It was like for months. We did like improv games every once a week and played all these fun things. And I'm curious what what you've taken away from improv that has helped you become better at your work. Yeah. So I think like generally the whole suite of skills that you develop in improv are pretty applicable, right?

[07:04] Commenting, trying new things, like a little bit of everything. I think a couple of the key rules or themes of improv that I really try to hammer home with people are like, obviously the yes and side of improv, which everyone's probably heard, which is, you know, in a scene, the worst thing you could do is deny somebody because you're actually just like stopping progress and you're not building off of anything. So the appropriate approach is to say like, yes, that is true. And an ad to it. So if someone's like, hey, you have a chicken on your head. [07:34] saying, no, I don't just kind of ruins that scene versus saying like, yes, I do. And it's name is Sally. Like, what's your chicken's name? Like builds on that and like gives it more opportunity. And so like, I think that in growth in business is super important to be able to say like, yes, I do see, you know, your idea or yes, we did accomplish this. And like, this is what we want to do next. And this is how it's going to build on it, I think is super important. [08:04] of details. And so in a scene, if you give somebody like really specific details about something, like it gives like so much more meat to be able to work off of in terms of like what's coming next. So if someone's starting a scene and they're clearly like watching television and like clicking through the channels and I walk up and just say like, oh, you're watching TV. Cool. Like that's a yes statement. I'm not denying what they did. But if I come up and say like, oh, cool, you're watching TV. Is that an ALF episode? [08:34] was a kid. It reminds me this one time I actually ate my own cat. Just giving those specific details of Alf and me as a kid and I ate a cat, which if people don't know Alf, he ate cats. I don't remember that. I remember Alf, but I remember... He was always trying to get the family cat. So those kinds of details add a ton of value. And you

[09:04] Masterclass, we've got this way to build content that is both entertainment and education. Like, that's interesting, right? But if I say we create content that is both education and entertainment to solve people's deep curiosities in the way that maybe a biography would. Like, that just opens up the exact problem that you're trying to solve. Like, what are other alternatives to that problem? Like, how are people consuming that? [09:34] something that I really value and look for kind of in every aspect of my business life as well. It sounds like it's really helpful, one, in like marketing, creativity and positioning, things like that you just described. Have you found it also to be helpful in collaboration, like this yes and piece? I'm curious, is there an example or story where you like, yes, and did someone do you actually say yes and in a meeting? How do you actually find that you could use this? I hear it every now and then. I don't usually literally say it. I think one of the areas that [10:04] when you've got cross-functional work. So obviously at Uber, we dealt with city teams a lot. And so a lot of the times the way that the central team would scope a problem versus a local team would scope a problem would almost feel at odds with each other. And if you approach it with that yes and, it's often still true, right? It's like, oh, both of these things can be true at once. You could have a different goal than I have, or you have a system problem local to you

[10:34] important to me. Like, that's okay. That's that the both things can exist. So now that we accept both and can work off of each other, like we're more likely to build both a better rapport and energy among ourselves, because we're not just saying like, no, no, no, no, you're wrong. Like, like, that's not true. That's not important to the business. Why are you doing that? Like that type of energy when cross functional work, like it just kills the scene, right? It kills that progress. And then you just [11:00] you don't build relationships you don't build the right solutions all that type of stuff it sounds really good like everyone in theory wants to be really good at this and i imagine just doing a bunch of improv is a really good way to get better at like not getting defensive and being like yes and how do we make this idea better is there something you can advise folks to work on this skill or is it just like do a bunch of improv classes and i'll kind of help i mean that's one i would say that like i'll say that all the time to people like do some improv classes and i get a lot [11:30] People are like, no, I'm not funny, or I don't want to do improv. And I think it's still a really great class to take, even if you have zero interest in doing improv or public speaking or any of that kind of stuff. Because, again, like improv 101 – [11:45] It's taught everywhere. Every city has it somewhere. And it's rarely ever people that are trying to do improv professionally. It's all games, like you said. The classes that you all did at Airbnb is what Improv 101 is. It's just like, hey, let's just have fun. Let's just get out of our skin and things like that.

[12:04] Do you think everybody should take improv classes? I think it's also something with a lot of goals or skills that you want to develop. I think being really public and open about you wanting to develop that. So if you're managing a team and you want to sharpen the skills, like make it a team goal or, you know, have accountability and just say like, hey, guys, I know that I've been pushing back on things lately. I want to really try to embrace and grow off of ideas better. Hold me accountable. [12:34] giving people permission to push back on that when it doesn't happen, I think also just opens the door for more productive conversations with people and the ability to hold yourself accountable and keep trying it. I love that. And such a good team bonding activity. There's all these reasons to do this as a team. My wife, actually, she's a designer, artist, writer, illustrator kind of person. And she's been taking a lot of these sorts of classes to help inspire her creativity. She [13:04] Yeah, as you said, it just helps you kind of like get the juices flowing along these lines. [13:09] Okay, so we're not going to talk about improv the whole time. There's kind of... We could if you want to. We could. Let's just go. Throw me a word. Let's go. No, we don't want to do that. So there's basically three things I really wanted to chat about with you. One is... [13:24] how to decide when to invest in an emerging acquisition channel. Like TikTok, VR, Clubhouse was a big thing. You have some really interesting thoughts on how to decide and approach this thing. Two, the growth CMO role, which is kind of this, I think, emerging role, something you're really good at. And I just want to get your thoughts on what's happening there. And then three, some real talk on burnout and depression that often comes with working in tech and stuff that we go through.

[13:54] in the first topic. [13:55] If you think about just every company, essentially goes through this kind of S-curve of growth. [14:00] slow they find something that's kind of working then hopefully it works out things start to grow grow [14:05] And then eventually it kind of flattens out and you kind of see this S curve that happens. And every company is always trying to find the next S curve to add this layer on the cake that keeps overall growth up while this first growth channel slows. And so people are always looking for like, what's the next thing? Oh, man, Clubhouse is coming out. We should get on Clubhouse. Oh, TikTok is so hot. We've got to run some TikTok ads. And there's always something new, like newsletter ads. I don't know, podcast ads, if that's new. [14:35] So I'd love to hear insights there. [14:38] Yeah, so the exploring emerging channels framework that I'll take either my teams or companies that I'm advising through has kind of three core ingredients that I like to spend time with. So the first is really understanding if there is an overlap between what the customer's need is, what your company's goals are, and what the channel actually does really well. [15:08] Spotify in the moment of like things like Clubhouse and paparazzi and stuff like that becoming really popular. Well, for Spotify, you know, they are, you know, they're, they're trying to get more people to consume music and be entertained by music and things like that. And it's all audio driven, right? And so their, their growth goals are probably around new customers or, or deeper engagement with, with audio. The, the customer's needs are, you know, like, like discovery and,

[15:38] to maybe have deeper relationships with their music. If you're a jazz fan, like, can you learn, you know, new jazz artists or more about the artists that you love, things like that. And then take those two channels. If you take something like Clubhouse, it's audio first. It's almost like live podcast radio type feel to it. You can get into these rooms with just like people with really amazing esoteric knowledge about something. And so its strengths have like a [16:08] the goals of Spotify, the needs of the customer and the strengths of that. And so that to me is like, great. That is probably a green light in terms of, is it even worth our time? Right? Versus like paparazzi is like very photo driven and like nothing really to do with music or anything like that. And so it's like, yeah, even though paparazzi might have like become the best, biggest channel ever, like, is that the thing you should be putting your time into? It would be like [16:38] that's like the medium matches yeah so the medium like the the strengths of the medium right so let's take like influencer right now actually like two of the channels that a lot of people are talking about right now are like streaming tv or ott and influencer marketing right and so to me like one of the strengths of influencer marketing is hyper targeted contextual marketing right and so i can

[17:08] you know, marketing elf something, like, great, I can go find that specific thing. Whereas OTT is a lot harder to get like that specific. OTT strength is like broad reach and video storytelling and that type of stuff, right? So it's like, okay, well, maybe my medium is if I'm masterclass and I have a ton of video content and storytelling and things like that, like that channel actually like makes a ton of sense probably, right? So it's kind of like, what are the strengths of that channel is something that, [17:36] That is actually probably the piece I see people ignore the most, which is they just want to know if a channel is hot or not. And this gets especially hairy, like, in this world of a lot of B2B doing, like, [17:52] more consumer-esque marketing. There's so many B2B companies that just don't apply to emerging channels, right? Emerging consumer channels, right? And it's just like, please just stop. I don't need a Notion Clubhouse channel this week. And maybe there is. Maybe there's a world to do that. But I think that's kind of number one is making sure that there's even a reason that you should be there to put it on your radar right now. [18:19] Awesome. What does OTT stand for, by the way? Oh my gosh, you're putting me on the spot. It's all good. But essentially it's streaming platforms. [18:28] Over the top. So instead of it being like cable, TV, it's coming from a box. So it's primarily if you think of ads on Amazon or Hulu or even if you go to CNN.com and you start streaming and you get an ad first. It's basically like video ads. Yeah.

[18:49] A lot of them now are happening on televisions and on streaming services rather than just on websites. Got it. Okay, cool. So the first is kind of the strength of the channel. You should look at that. Yep. [18:59] Yep. And how that overlaps with your customer and your business needs. The second is the channel DNA. And so this is looking at things like where, you know, where are they in their their trajectory. So Clubhouse is actually a perfect example because in a weird way. So Clubhouse got hot. [19:17] before Facebook got cold. And I was pretty amazed how many more people were trying to crack Clubhouse than TikTok. Like, because TikTok hadn't really released their ads solution yet, but neither had Clubhouse. But everybody was talking about Clubhouse. Like, TikTok is very clearly, like, not going away anytime soon, where Clubhouse hopefully won't. Like, this is an amazing product. I really enjoyed it and loved it. But it was, like, clearly, like, very early, very quickly at that point of hotness, where everyone was going to be able to crack Clubhouse. [19:47] is kind of like, that's the reason I should be there. And [19:51] Part of this reason is to accept the risks of going into that channel, right? So if I go and dedicate two quarters of work to Clubhouse, I need to accept that they are so early in this curve that there's a good chance this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it'll be over. Next, it's not a repeatable action. It also... [20:12] is important because if you get something to work on a channel that's earlier in their growth curve,

[20:19] the likelihood that they will change is very high. You're going to need to commit a lot of cycles to keep it going, right? Because it's like, okay, well, their product is going to evolve drastically very quickly over the next two years. And so the thing that's working right now, and so a really great example is like Facebook early, I was at Zoosk, and so Zoosk and companies like Zynga got tons of their early growth because of notifications on Facebook, which was one of their early features, which allowed [20:49] basically anybody that took any action on Zynga, it would post on everybody else's page that like you got 10 carats. And that was like a huge growth lever, right? But then Facebook just pulled the plug on that. And so it's like, well, if you put all of your energy into that and that's it, like it was pretty clear that that was still an area that's like this may not last forever, right? The last thing on the channel DNA that I like to look at that's a little bit more... [21:16] I don't know if it's odd or unusual is the right term. I like to spend a lot of time thinking about how they monetize. Like, what is the monetization strategy of... [21:25] the channel. And the reason is because if you as a business can match or support their monetization strategy, it actually gives you like a really interesting leg up with that channel because the likelihood of you being able to like call them up and like go do custom stuff with them or partner with them or that your solutions will actually like stick around for a while go up pretty drastically. And so this is like my key example of this was with when Facebook started exploring mobile ads,

[21:55] until tonight, we were one of the like alpha testers of mobile ads because I'd been sitting here buying, you know, ad inventory on networks for, you know, the last five or six years and just waiting for Facebook to work because it just wasn't really working for mobile installs. And it's like, I know this is a huge channel because I can use it on my like online marketing, like my web marketing. But as a mobile acquisition, it's nowhere near as efficient as a lot of these other networks. And so as soon as they were doing that, [22:25] I was able to basically position and say, like, look, you want to work with us? Like, let me in your alpha because I have five years of experience, like, already buying mobile ads. I know the space. I know it'll work. And if you get us to work, we're a killer case study because we are a non-game. And, like, a lot of money is spent on gaming, but there's these whole other major categories that you're going to need other than gaming, like, examples within that group. [22:55] case study and like a lot of different scenarios than the gaming players. And so I was spending a lot less than the gaming players. But because of that, understanding that like your goal at Facebook is to make ads work for all of travel and for all of leisure and all, you know, those kinds of things like that's the value of working with me. So that's another piece of the kind of the channel DNA [23:15] I like people to focus on. Awesome. That's such a good one. Because to your point, if your goals are aligned, they're going to be like, yes. [23:22] we want let's make this happen and they're always like it always feels like it's this behemoth that doesn't want to talk to any new startups but if you can make the case of this is going to help you and the way you lay it out so clear it's such a good idea

[23:34] Especially with the merging channels, right? Because their whole thing is that like they want to make this work for a long time. Not just you know, it's it's part of the challenge you see with the [23:45] Some new channels, flipping to the other side of, like, growing an ads business, will gravitate towards, like, oh, I want to get Disney on here. But, like, Disney is, like, very campaign-driven, or they have been traditionally, where it's, like, yeah, you may get one big paycheck from them. [24:01] But that doesn't, like, the way that, like, UA-driven gaming works is, like, you get that to work. That's, like, [24:07] a gift that keeps on giving forever right because it's like there's not one of those companies there's thousands of them and they all do the same thing so being able to drive that conversation is really helpful [24:17] And then the third main ingredient is just your own company DNA. And so I think like risk profile is a big one. Like, do you actually have comfort in being like a first mover, like a true first mover, like nobody knows anything. Tracking is not going to work. Like, it's not going to be programmatic. It's not like you're probably going to show up on content that's offensive. You're probably like going to ask for refunds that won't happen. Like there's going to be really painful to be a true first mover. [24:47] appetite? Do you have the staff to actually be able to like put someone on that and not distract from everything else? And then the other piece on the company side is just your current channel mix. There's very few companies that I recommend saying like, yes, go put energy on this brand new channel that you don't know how to scale yet before you've figured out some type of volume on Google and Facebook. If you're trying to do it, like every now and then there may be like a perfect

[25:17] but like if [25:19] If you're not at least getting something out of the basic channels that everybody else is using, it's probably not the thing you should be putting your first energy into. It should be like, great, I've got a good foundation. Like you said, now we're at that stage of trying to add things. It tends to be a better stage to do more risky exploration into new channels. What advice do you have or can you give to founders, teams that are trying to test one of these in terms of just like how to... [25:45] how to run these tests like how much time should they spend would you say what do they look for i know that's a hard question and super dependent on the situation but any advice there [25:55] Yeah, so I think going through those three ingredients should help shape that answer, right? Because if you're like, okay, well, the first one is super strong, the channel DNA is maybe like really early, and I've got a small to mid-sized team, and maybe only one channel working, then it may be like, great, put like half of one person into this, because it's maybe interesting, but like, don't put any more than that into it, right? [26:25] And I have a 20-person team, so I'm going to put three dedicated people to this because we are in prime position to be the leaders in this new channel and really push it. So I think it's figuring those pieces out because it is a very it depends answer. But rarely ever is it like, hey, this should be your entire team's focus for the next episode. [26:47] three sprints or five sprints. I think that if you've got that half person working on it for a while and there starts to be some magic happening, sure, put a sprint or two against it as a whole team. But generally speaking, I think keeping it minimum at first is my typical recommendation. I had another guest, Yuri, who I think you know from a former Grammarly, and he made a really good point that it's often better not to try something than to do it badly and then take

[27:17] I guess, like in your experience, what's like a time frame you think people should put into this stuff? Like, is it you said two sprints, maybe like a couple of weeks? Like, I don't know. It's like the range of just like maybe don't spend more than X months on something new if it's not like clearly working just based on your experience. Generally, like I wouldn't let anything be. [27:36] bleed past a quarter. Like you can probably get some good signal in a month or less. Like what I would call fishing, like it wouldn't be like you're just, you know, putting bait in the water to figure out where the fish are, not necessarily getting statistically significant repeatable solutions. The big [27:57] variables, I can change that timing. So like, you know, if I'm [28:01] exploring a new video channel, like the content I need to create is if I'm going to have to create something that takes three weeks to produce and $20,000 to make, I may want to give it a little more time because I gave it a more of an upfront investment, right? Versus if it's like, oh, I want to put text ads in podcasts, like listings or something like that. It's like, great. I can like, I can do that by myself at midnight and it's not distracting anybody or anything. And if it doesn't [28:31] Let's move on. But yeah, generally, like I'm ideally what you're working through and we'll talk. You can touch a little bit more on this with like the growth CMO is like this should all be part of a roadmap. Right. Like it shouldn't just be like randomly chosen and thrown at is this should be part of your like sprint process. And you should have a backlog of other things that you want to try. And so you're actually weighing that decision of how long based on like what other opportunities you're missing out on by investing in that.

[29:01] more than a couple cycles to kind of suss out because there's no rules. There's no playbooks yet on how to do them well. So give it a little bit of time. [29:09] But yeah, if you're going over a quarter and you don't feel... [29:11] like directionally it's getting better or it's interesting like i would you know put it back on ice for a while cool and to your point you're not going to see any like [29:21] statistically significant answers is the thing you look for just like is it like you know and you see it like oh wow qualitatively feels like it's working kind of thing is that what you kind of look for? [29:30] Yeah, and I think the define that going into it, like, what am I looking for for this? So something like Clubhouse, I'm probably not going to see clicks, right? It's more about like, okay, are we able to start a room and increase the size of that room by 10% every time that we run it? Okay, great. That means that we're at least getting better at this and there's more reach, like, available to us. But if we're getting 20 people every time we start a room and then it goes down to 15, then, like, we're either not doing this well, the channel's not doing well, or, like, [30:00] There's just not enough reach for us to actually like expand versus like TikTok. You might be able to say like, great, this is all about like I can actually track clicks and conversion. So let's look at it the way we would any other channel. Got it. So kind of look for momentum and that you're getting better and that it's. [30:14] moving somewhere. Awesome. Yeah. Yep. Cool. So a question that I'm sure is on many people's minds that they would want to ask is, Adam, what are emerging platforms that are interesting right now that we should experiment with? [30:25] What do you feel? Yeah, so I mentioned OTT or like, basically, the key thing with OTT is that it's way more trackable than traditional television, but it has similar value that traditional TV does in terms of the ability to do more long form storytelling type content. And a lot of it's not skippable if you buy it right. And so you can actually like, yeah, and so those are reasons to be exploring that right now. It's hard for me to call that an emerging channel,

[30:55] around forever it's just there's more of it and there's the tools and services around it are way better now than they were four years ago and so i think the the sophistication and ability to scale ott is much higher down than ever before influencer is probably the one that i'm most intrigued by because similar to ott like the the scale and services and the ability to go do it is still there it's also got [31:20] that hyper granularity that like when I get into influencer tools, it feels to me like early Facebook when I used to go be able to target Lenny, right? Or 10 people that have exactly the same likes as Lenny, right? And that type of stuff where it's like, you can get so specific and like find exactly who you need. It's incredibly tedious and manual. And it's a lot of like, [31:50] on like the technology being built around influencer because I think that's a huge area of opportunity for entrepreneurs right now. But generally speaking, like the scope and opportunity there is huge and it's not going away, but it's very it feels very new and different right now. And the ability and it supplements the ability to do some hyper level targeting that you've not been able to do, like that Facebook and Google are getting less open about at the same time. [32:18] I think VR is really interesting in the way that mobile was interesting before, like... [32:23] I think I had iPhone 3, right? Where it was like, if you've got a VR app, like it's a really interesting space. But if you don't, it's not that interesting to me yet. Any that have come up for you that you're like, no, these are great. Like all I think of TikTok.

[32:53] But I think of that less as you should be doing it as this, like, should I do it? Should I not? It's more I need to figure out how to do Facebook if I'm at least mildly... [33:03] appropriately should be there. Podcast ads, I think are great. I think that I bought podcast ads like 15 years ago, so it doesn't feel like an emerging channel to me. I think there's way more volume now than there's ever been before. One of the guys that was on my team at Uber has a company that's doing programmatic buying and that type of stuff. And so I think there's more opportunities on podcasts. I think podcasts, people want to treat it like Facebook ads or like direct response [33:33] like immediate response ads. And actually what I keep seeing as the effective like strategy with podcast ads is treating it more like radio where it's more about [33:43] getting on the right program, making it personal and feel like it should be part of that program, and then repeating over and over and over again. And so yeah, so I think podcasts is super interesting. I think it's just hard to scale. Like it's likely not going to get people the same volumes as the Googles and Facebooks of the world. Cue our mid-roll ad. I'm excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey, John. Hey, Lenny. Excited to be [34:13] they think of product analytics. But now you're getting into experimentation and even just launched a CDP. What's the thought process there? Well, we've always thought of Amplitude as being about supporting the full product loop. Think collect data, inform bets, ship experiments, and learn. That's the heart of growth to us. So the big aha was seeing how many customers were using Amplitude to analyze experiments, use segments for outreach, and send data to other destinations. Experiment in

[34:43] learning has always been Amplitude's core focus, right? Yeah. So Amplitude tries to meet customers where they are. We just launch starter templates and have a great scholarship program for startups. There's never been a more important time for growing. Absolutely agree. Thanks for joining us, John, and head to Amplitude.com to get started. [35:01] I also come from a very consumer perspective. I'm actually stronger on B2B companies using podcasting because it has that exact same value I just described, but each one of their customers [35:13] substantially more valuable. So they don't need the scale that a consumer, like application or product would need. Yep, that's exactly who I work with usually. [35:22] One last question on this topic. Yep. What percentage of the time do you find that an emerging channel kind of works? Is it like 20% of the time, 10% or 5%? Like, what's kind of like, what should people estimate of like, okay, it's probably not going to work. But when it does, it's going to be game changing. Like 5% of the time. Like, there's new things popping up all the time. I think the area that I think of as emerging that I've found more success in is taking things that exist already. [35:45] and make them like, like, so the two slices of it are either it's existed for a long, like podcasting existed for a long time. And now we're finally getting to a spot where like, it's like, like it's, it feels scalable. The other is like existing channels that introduce something brand new. So like at the mobile ads I described on Facebook, right? Like pre-mobile install ads and posts, like those first channels. [36:11] 18 months of mobile install were very, like...

[36:14] felt like an emerging channel, right? Because they were changing the product every week and tracking didn't work. And there were all these kind of funky problems with it, even though Facebook had been around forever. But brand spanking new channels, I don't know, they rarely work or are worth the effort early that you hope that they will be. Cool. But when they work, it's game changing, I imagine. Reminds me, Airbnb, Apple is coming out with Apple TV, I think it was. And they're just like, [36:44] And there's a team put on it. I don't know. They spent a month building this app and did a bunch of nothing as far as I understand. But it felt good. It felt good to be part of the launch. One question I wanted to come back to. Are there tools that you recommend for influencer marketing that you want to plug or... [36:59] Or point out or is there nothing? We were using Grin at a masterclass. We onboarded them. So there's probably like half a dozen companies in that same zone where they're building tools that allow you to do the discovery of influencers, the CRM of those influencers, and also often like the measurement and payments and all that kind of. So it's like an all-in-one type of management platform. That being said, though, like I said, it's still super manual. [37:29] find this list of like 50 influencers that are the exact right influencer for this class launch or whatever it might be but it's still then I have to go like wait till they all respond to me and there's still a lot of manual back and forth so that's probably one of um yeah I'm trying to think of there's a few other in that same category that are competitive with Grin that are they all seem equally pretty good I can't even remember the reason we chose Grin over some of the other ones like it was all pretty close yep

[37:55] Sweet. Okay. If any other comes to mind, we'll throw in the show notes. Before we get to the growth CMO discussion, there's kind of this tangential area that I want to spend a little time on, which is this idea of as a startup, you initially should and often do start with a very narrow audience, kind of your early adopters. I wrote this post about your super specific who, and eventually you want to cross the chasm and go broader. You have some interesting insights on how to think about that and when to do that. Can you talk about that? [38:25] Yeah, so I think the book Cross Chasm is like a great place to start in terms of like thinking about the broader topic of that. Um... [38:34] What I see missed a lot of the time that I like to spend time with people on is to really understand that those early adapters are actually like, or adopters are... [38:48] are often just drastically different than the broad audience. And spending time to actually figure that out and... [38:58] map out like what you need to see with those early adopters to have confidence that the product is actually going to have product market fit beyond them. Yeah, so that's, I don't have anything like hyper specific to add to that necessarily, or happy to dig in deeper to it. But it's probably the biggest challenge that I've seen with a lot of companies that I've worked with. And then as I do more investing and things like that, like it's, it's probably the biggest flag that I see with a

[39:28] your TAM and your product market fit are not using the same definition, right? Like, in that problem, I think is often a, yeah, just a red flag for a lot of companies that I meet. Got it. So essentially, you often underestimate how challenging it'll be to grow from your initial kind of early adopter crowd. Do you have any, is there like an example of that happening where a company just like got screwed because they didn't think about that enough? Or is there something someone can do early on? Is it like test a little bit more broadly early? What do [39:58] I mean, Clubhouse might be a good example in the sense that they leaned into the broader audience maybe quicker than they should have, right? Like if they'd given it more time to really understand, like their product market seemed to fit the moment in time. And like could they have built some experiments or tools or features that maybe – [40:20] how stress test will this work like in an ongoing fashion that's you know they were on such tear that's pretty hard decision to make so hard and so easy in hindsight um [40:31] I think that's another piece of it, is that the... [40:35] The audience changes aren't always just literal people. Even right now, one of the biggest pieces of advice I'm giving to people that are like, how should we adjust our marketing with the economic changes and things like that is start by assuming you no longer have product market fit. [40:51] because you had product market fit in a different market. It's a different market now, so you have to start over. And hopefully you do, or it's pretty close to it, and you just have to adjust a couple of things, and you can be right back on track. But if you just assume you need to launch a new channel to fix this problem, you're going to be wrong because your entire customer base changed, not just the next 10% of customers that you're looking for. It's just a reminder of how freaking hard startups are. Man, we have product market fit. Okay, we're done.

[41:21] Not anymore. Not anymore. Oh, man. Okay, sweet. So, on to this next topic around the growth CMO. So you're this really interesting combination of marketing brain and also like very analytical growth person. And I think you refer to this as kind of this growth CMO, which I don't actually hear the term much. So I'm curious, what is a growth CMO? How do you define it? And why is it important? [41:43] Yeah, so it's something I've just spent a lot of the last few years thinking about, specifically because [41:50] Now I've been at a handful of companies where we've brought in CMOs that in all ways are like absolute world-class CMOs. And they don't last. They don't fit. And like, they don't succeed. Right? And so I've spent a lot of time figuring like, well, why not? Some of it coming because I'm spending time with those people being like, why are you doing it this way? That's not how [42:15] a company at our stage operates, trying to do it the way that like a traditional CMO would have done, you know, marketing for a company, etc. Like one of the key examples I like to use is brand in that like everybody, when they think about brand, they think of it as an action, not as like a consistent ongoing investment. Or they think about it as like campaigns and things like that. [42:45] In my mind, I think a growth CMO is looking at each brand investment is how do you then immediately follow that up with the next one? Like, how do you shift to this kind of like fast product iteration mindset with even things like brand? It's very possible.

[43:15] organization. It means that we rename everything marketing to product-led growth or growth or like referral programs and like everything that it to me it actually like dilutes the value of like marketing should be playing in the company. And it doesn't mean that like the traditional marketing CMO isn't a good fit for some companies. Like I think like direct-to-consumer products are [43:45] But I think product [43:47] driven companies, product-led companies. If your CMO and your product leader aren't married at the hip, you're just missing out on just tons of opportunity and the likelihood of things actually working very well consistently and compounding on each other. So what are the attributes of this person of which you call a growth CMO? Sounds like partly it's being much more performance-driven. Sounds like a big part of it is being very understanding product and not kind of creating [44:17] Thank you guys. Go build this thing. But also as a person that's a growth team. What else do you look for? Yeah. So I would say so data driven generally, like it doesn't have to be like to me, performance is like a very loaded word in our world because people think, especially in marketing, think that means not brand.

[44:47] landing page clicks and sales, but you absolutely can measure them. And like making that part of the DNA of everything that's happening, like data being part of that, I think is pretty quintessential of being a growth-driven CMO. The second, I think, is the iteration process is not thinking about things and like, hey, we need to plan for the next 24 months. But like you can still do that and you can still have a vision and everything. But having that more of like a agile type approach to [45:17] like the storytelling that your salespeople are doing to, you know, what are your landing pages look like to like, what is the design of your logo to the brand itself? Like all of those things, like being more open to everything being like possibly iterated on, on a regular basis, using data to like validate that and like challenge what has worked for you a week. We live in such a real time world now, especially with product driven companies, the things change so quickly. If you as a marketing leader aren't being iterative and [45:47] it, you'll get eaten alive. And then I think experimentation is just a huge piece of it, and something that I see a lot of. [45:55] more traditional marketing leaders, [45:59] Like, it's just, it's the idea of experimentation is like trying a new channel. It's not like, how do we experiment with our brand? How do we experiment with our, like the funnel, like the whole picture, not just the top of the funnel or the external elements of it. One of the things that I've, I haven't quite figured out the right way.

[46:20] language to put against us, but the traditional model of marketing is the four Ps, product placement, promotion, pricing. And in my mind, the world that we live in now, product is no longer a part of marketing, but it's actually like they're married at the hip. They're one in the same. And most companies aren't operating that way. They're still operating as if they're two [46:50] still like, like, there's not. And to me, it's just like, no, no, no, like the product is like the company now. And the marketing, like is integrated with literally every single piece of it. And it's not just a, like, a lot of traditional marketing got established in like the 1920s and the 1950s, around like, [47:14] Products that took, you know, years to develop or try or like a product team was like a science group trying new flavors of cereal, not necessarily. And like so the marketing team owned the box, like where it went on the shelf and, you know, like what the price was and like all of those kinds of things was marketing. Right. Because product was such a wildly different part of the organization. [47:44] that world. [47:45] Because most haven't had to grow through the true growth of a business that's just being established today.

[47:52] And the assumption is every software company should be hiring a CMO that is of this sort, of a growth CMO, right? [48:01] Yeah, and I would say that, like, my sense is that there's very few marketing leaders that can't be a growth CMO. So I don't think you have to have come up as like a performance driven experimentation. It's, it's more about like adapting and growing. And like, like, again, like, the fundamentals are all the same. Right? Like, one of my like, like, pet projects that I haven't done anything with yet is that every time like something new comes out in the growth world, I go back in history as far as I can to try to find like the earliest example of that. [48:31] Just to be able to say, look, this isn't new, but we can learn from the way that Coca-Cola invented the coupon. The first known coupon was Coca-Cola giving away Coke for free. But it was actually a marketplace because what they would do is they would actually give – they would go to a town and they would go to the soda fountain. And they would give free Coke syrup to that side of the market. And they would give coupons to the other side of the market to spark it, to get it going. And then it's like, well, now all the customers want Coke. [49:01] to supply it, you'll pay for it. And that to me is just like, like learning that and understanding that is like really cool. And it's just interesting to me because I'm a huge nerd. But that to me is like, [49:11] All of the things that great marketing leaders have learned are right. It's the operating aspect of those insights and those skills and understanding your customer and their psychology. Like all of those things have stayed the same. It's the operating of it in the way a growth organization, like a product driven growth organization operates, is very fundamentally different than the way a traditional marketing run organization had run.

[49:37] I was going to ask you what a marketing leader can do to evolve into this, where you think things are going. And your point about you're capable of it, you can iterate and adapt, is really great and empowering. Is there anything specific they can do to learn how to do this better other than is it like mentorship? Is there class courses? Just do the job, figure it out. Do you have anything you can suggest there? Folks listening, they're like, oh, shit, I'm in trouble. Yeah. Honestly, I think like learn product development, right? [50:07] development. And there's actually a book called Hacking Marketing, I think. I'll confirm. But it's essentially like how to run a marketing team on Agile. That to me is just like, again, any great marketing leader should be able to go and consume. [50:24] how to do product development, how to run a product, like sprints and those types of things. And their mind, if they're a great marketing CMO or CMO, like we'll be like, oh, my gosh, I could do this with this big event that we want to host. I could do this with, you know, everything. Like there's nothing off the table when when you actually like learn those fundamentals. But, you know, as well as I know, like smart people can learn that stuff. [50:54] has some classes on it. There's a bunch of new product-led growth classes out in the wild. Like Maven, I think has a couple. And yeah, there's a variety of those types of things that just going and doing it, you don't have to go and like operate it yourself. Like you don't have to go become a product manager, but understanding those skills and those systems will one, I think, make you think differently about how to run your marketing team and two, make you exponentially better at working with your product organization. Awesome. I'm actually hearing from folks listening

[51:24] but broadly that this is a good way to learn how product works and how product leaders think. So that's interesting. So if you're listening to this, good job. You also mentioned that a lot of [51:35] Marketing leaders don't work out at a company. They join, they leave, things go wrong. As a hiring founder or leader, what do you look for to kind of tell you this person's probably not what we need and not what you call a growth CMO? Like what are flags that are like, they're probably not going to adapt and evolve to the way we want to operate? [51:54] First and foremost, [51:58] Obviously depends on the stage. Anything like, let's say... [52:02] sea or below. Like, comfortable with chaos and... [52:10] willingness to go do something they've not done for probably 15 years are like two huge signals for me because like the... [52:22] Every company I've been part of at every scale now, which is all of them, basically, is that's the thing that a lot of people coming from more traditional marketing environments into startup worlds. [52:37] They're like, it's like a pace and just the unpredictability and change and those kinds of things are just at such a higher rate than they've seen for a long time that it can be really jarring for people. I think it's totally reasonable. Like, it's crazy, right? [52:52] if anybody that's had the exposure on both sides. And then the willingness to go do the work is just that like, you know, like people are churning constantly and the challenges are different every week and those types of things. And so it's like every now and then you got to go write an email or you got to go like, you know, open up Facebook and get into the weeds with it with your team, like into the data of it and that type of stuff. And that stuff that like, I don't want to do personally me, I'm past the point where I should be in Facebook. But like, man, when I need to,

[53:22] use my time to just be like, look, we have to figure this out now. And like, I'm going to go do the things that I thought I was done with in my career. So those are those are pretty big ones. I think then, generally speaking, one of the exercises I like to take founders through when they're hiring a marketing leader is, you know, every marketer is going to have a T shaped career, right? Everybody came from like something they probably became awesome at. And then over time, just expanded their purview. And so like, for me, it was, you know, mobile, I got into mobile, [53:52] client ever was on microsystems, like early 2000s, getting Java developers to make apps for flip phones. So I just like new digital mobile world, like, really, really well before a lot of people did. But then eventually, I'm like, great, now I'm running an entire digital marketing team. Now I'm running an entire marketing team. Now I'm getting into growth. Now I want to learn product and like I've expanded. And so typically, it's like going through that exercise of like, find [54:22] they make up for those other things. Right? So for me, I've, at Lambda School, I ran our PR team for a while. I am not a PR person. But I'm like, I make it a goal in my life to get to the like, the valley of despair of the Dunning-Kruger effect, to be like, great, I just need to know how bad I am at PR before, because if I still think I'm good at it, that's not a good place for me to be. But once I know how bad it is, I now know I need to go hire the right person to come in, and I'm going to listen to them. I'm not going to assume that I'm smarter than them, and the

[54:52] those types of things. And so I think same thing with product questions and data questions and experimentation questions for this concept of a growth CMO is like, well, somebody's coming from a world where they've not had to work really closely with the product team, [55:08] Spend time with them to figure out how they plan on adapting to that. My guess is most won't have thought of that. The good ones will be able to figure it out together with you in that interview or afterwards or whatever it might be. [55:22] Awesome. Maybe one day we'll do a follow-up chat just to dive into hiring a marketing person. I know that's like a whole deep topic. Yeah, lots of thoughts. [55:52] a lot about in tech and in business. And so I'd love to just spend a little time on this. I know you're a big proponent of talking about these sorts of things. So I'm curious, I know you've been through both these things, and I'm curious just to hear your journey, what that's been like, what you've learned about how to get through it. [56:07] Yeah, so I kind of the two biggest inputs for me in terms of like really taking the time to understand my my mental health. Like one is my wife, who's been a very strong proponent of like mental health resources for everybody, like since I met her. And so like just being able to learn from her and, you know, get exposure to like, well, why is this important? Like, what are the values of it and seeing it?

[56:35] pretty regularly of like, you know, family members or co-workers or it's like, oh, man, like, I bet there's something deeper here that like maybe is important for them to figure out. Is that just something she's good at or is she like trained in this stuff? No, she's good at it. And she's, you know, she's had therapy and stuff like that. And just she's like one of the most like empathetic, passionate people I've ever met in my life. And so she just feels like poor people so much that I think it's something like really important to her. [57:05] I got like to a spot where I was like incredibly exhausted and tired and just down, not excited about work and things like that. And so I started going to therapy and with this assumption that I was just working too hard. Right. That was kind of my like, man, I need to go to therapy to figure out the tools that I need to deal with me working too hard. And I just uncovered so many interesting [57:35] child in my family and I did something pretty different than a lot of my like relatives and things like that so like recognition is something I long for and it turns out I get that at work and I just hadn't gotten that like in other parts of my life and so this thing that I'm like this is my problem was actually like a solution to my real problem and knowing that just helped me like totally just change my perspective of how hard I work and it made me less like [58:04] Like I was getting judgmental about myself around like, man, I'm working too hard. I shouldn't be doing this, but I have to. And then I got in this spot where I'm like, oh, I'm working hard because I love it, because I like it. I'm having an impact and I'm working with people I like and people respect the work that I do. And that helped me identify that like, oh, I can work just as hard, but I can work smarter. I can work more on the things I have impact on. I can work more with people that actually respect the type of work that I'm doing.

[58:34] And that actually just started to relax me and get me to the spot of like, "Oh, okay, I still had some burnout in there." And that's part of the innovation, part of my title was that I got to a spot where I'm [58:48] I was traveling constantly. I had teams all over the world. And I was, the structure of Uber was working where every city had a GM. And I was like the person they called when their spend was too high. And so 500 GMs. Uber GMs. Dealing with. So. [59:06] Yeah, exactly. And so I was working in a world where I was dealing with a lot of politics and a lot of and I love mentoring people. And I had this massive team, like 150 people that I barely know any of them. And so I'm not mentoring people either anymore. And I just got to spend like, I'm working so hard on things that I actually don't enjoy. And so I'm like, I'm gonna go work on flying cars. And which is a whole other podcast. [59:36] feelings or things that I felt my entire life that I uncovered that I thought was just burnout. I was like, oh, actually, like that this point in my life, this point in my life and this point in my life, I felt this way, too. And at those points, I wasn't burnt out. And so I actually have deeper work to do here and deeper understanding of myself so that I can actually like maximize my life and enjoy it. Right. And because I'm going to keep working to some degree this hard. And yeah, I want to just like make the most of that. I don't

[1:00:06] or depression, not burnout. What have you found to be that line of just like, oh, wow, this is a lot more serious than I'm just working way too hard? [1:00:13] For me, it's almost the like, it's kind of, it's hard to describe, but like I personally now can pretty [1:00:22] cleanly tell the difference between exhaustion and depression. And it tends to tie to my [1:00:32] my broader motivations, not just my motivation to work, right? So like, when I'm exhausted, [1:00:39] I will also show up to work. I'll still execute. I'll still do those types of things. But like, I'm going to go and like if I if I can take an improv class, it's going to be a blast. I'm going to enjoy it and I'm going to love it. Right. If I'm depressed, I won't go to that improv class. Like, I'll just like cancel it. You know, I won't go to it. I won't. Or if I go to it, I'll go home immediately. Like one of the things I love about [1:01:04] actual improv classes is the community, right? Is the like, "Hey, let's all go grab a drink now." And this is like a totally different group of people. It's not my family. It's not my work people. It's just me, right? And I wouldn't do that, right? And so it's kind of noticing like, where else is this impacting? And to what degree and why? It can help me understand like, "Oh, there's like, what's going on in my life." More often than not, I can then take those feelings and it'll be like, "Oh, I've felt this way for like three weeks now." [1:01:34] I should think about this and like dissect it a little bit. And so again, I'll spend time with my therapist and like, or work with my, one of the,

[1:01:43] One of the tools that my therapist has given me is to like open up with my friends and have these conversations with my friends. And so now I went from five, six years ago, really just having my therapist or my wife to talk about this kind of stuff to, I don't know, I have five or six different friends that were working. [1:02:00] massively transparent with each other about this stuff. Because the second I shared any of this with them, they shared it with me. And now we've become like safe places to have those conversations, where I'm gonna be like, hey, there's this thing going on, you know, like, my, my dad has ALS. And so like, he's been really sick. And, you know, I've got three kids, and I've got jobs and work and money in the market crash, like, there's so many different things. It's like, okay, let me actually figure out which one of these things [1:02:26] is causing this energy right now. And having many years of therapy now and those resources can help me get to that solution to get to that answer so that I can figure out, okay, what do I need to do right now? Is it do I need to actually take time for myself and dig deeper into these personal things? Do I actually need to change something with the shape of my career, like those types of things? [1:02:46] Awesome. And it sounds like the things that have been most helpful and I'm curious what else you'd recommend to folks that are maybe feeling some of this. So it sounds like therapy is really powerful. Your partner being open to your partner, finding a group of friends where you could be transparent about these sorts of things. Is there anything else you suggest folks look into?

[1:03:16] and I can't remember it now. There was a meditation thing that was the first. It almost felt like Noom for me for meditation. It wasn't just waking up, right? Where it's like, oh, I'm actually learning about meditation, not just learning how to meditate. And that's how my brain likes to do things. I'm like a lifetime learner. I love digging into things. And so that was the first time I actually like, [1:03:37] I learned breathing techniques and things like that. But going through that program of waking up was the first time I actually like really appreciated when and how and where to do it. I'm still not an everyday meditate person. I now use, I'm an investor, so I'm biased, but Aura, A-U-R-A, which is like a marketplace app for, it's like some of the other meditation apps, but it's a marketplace. So it's actually like coaches and stuff adding content. So I use that now as needed, which I really enjoy. [1:04:07] and diet and those types of things definitely tie to it. It's like eating is like a pretty clean signal for me or snacking is a really clean signal at least for me of like okay this is like I'm snacking more than I should be and like eating healthy can both like help me identify that I'm in those spots but also just like make me feel better. One thing I would say is that like the [1:04:33] a service that we had at Uber. [1:04:35] And I think I was surprised how much stuff is covered by companies in terms of the ability to find a therapist and... [1:04:44] pay for a therapist or other tools. And so that's one thing is I would suggest like, go look through your benefits. Your healthcare provider offers a lot of that stuff too. Yeah, so those are a handful. Listen to Lenny's podcast. I hope that to be true. I don't know if that's anywhere near as powerful as these other things. One thing I'll mention is on the meditation front, there's this amazing book that

[1:05:06] All right. [1:05:07] kind of does exactly what you also described where it teaches you why this works. It's got like a bad title. It's called Why Buddhism is True. And it's not trying to convince you to be a Buddhist, but it has a lot of incredible insights on why meditation is so powerful. [1:05:20] and how to think about it. So I'll put that in the show notes too. Yeah. I'm going to check that out. I wanted to come back to the burnout piece. I imagine some folks are listening to this and they're like, am I burnt out? I don't know. What are signs that you're burnt out versus just like working a lot and tired? The one that I see the most is [1:05:39] is adaptability goes down really fast. And this is more me noticing, like, I've managed a lot of people, coached a lot of people. And so, like, when I see that from people that I'm working with, [1:05:52] I usually immediately bring up, I'm like, look, like, you're... [1:05:57] openness to change in the business or trying new things or going back and trying things that maybe we tried before and didn't work like has shifted from oh here are the flags that we should be aware of but let's give it a shot to why are we wasting our time let's not do this like this just like energy around like let's just do the thing we're supposed to do it's [1:06:16] That to me is just and I think that's maybe specifically applicable to our environment, to like high growth and marketing and product where it's just like that's just a key ingredient to doing this job. Well, is adaptability and flexibility and, you know, exploration. And if you're losing that, it's probably not because you've gotten mad at it. Right. It's probably because you're just over it.

[1:06:37] Right? Like where you're like, I just don't want to deal with the BS around this. I want to go do the thing that makes my job easier, which... [1:06:48] Again, most of the people that have chosen this career path want their jobs to be harder because it's more fun. It's more interesting. It's more rewarding. And so when you're looking for ways to, like, minimize the challenge or the opportunity, I think that's like a pretty good signal that, like, there may be more burnout than just exhaustion. Because if anything, I see the opposite for people that are exhausted, where, like, they get re-motivated by new stuff, by opportunities to go do something different and that kind of stuff. [1:07:18] have to run. Where are you on this journey today? And then just what's next for Adam Greenier? [1:07:23] Yeah, thank you. Good question. I'm constantly optimizing this matrix of like, what am I good at versus what do I love doing? And so what I've found is that I just I really love like entrepreneurs and working really closely with entrepreneurs and helping them, you know, figure out all of these like, funky things that I've been able to see over the last 20 years, and maneuver and I've, I've worked at a lot of places. And so I'm really good at context changing and, and helping connect the dots for people. [1:07:53] A couple ways I've found to be able to do that is advising companies, so working with founders and growth leaders and things like that, and investing. And so I'm actually right now, I've been investing now for kind of six, seven years. I recently joined Andreessen's Scout Fund, so I'm doing a bit more volume now, but I

[1:08:09] I would say if I had to make a bet right now, I think a full-time or closer to full-time investing world is what I'd like to lean more towards. But I'm very much, let's just open up opportunities. And once the right one is in front of me, I'm going to tackle it. And so who knows? I may go back full-time somewhere or whatnot. But right now, the advising, investing, coaching kind of hybrid is the term I think it was Bayzad at Reforge used was me as a service. [1:08:37] It is my current world. [1:08:39] I'd be shocked if I eventually don't gravitate towards some kind of foundation because I thrive when I've got a little bit of an anchor. Amazing. Mass. Me as a service. Okay. For folks that may want to reach out to you about taking your money in their startup or asking whatever questions, maybe advising questions, where can folks reach you and learn more? [1:08:59] Yeah, just Twitter, AK Grineer, and LinkedIn as well as AK Grineer. So yeah, look me up, connect. I'm always open to connecting and chatting with people and just love digging into problems. So happy to abide. Amazing. Adam, this was such an action-packed chat, so many levels and layers. I can't wait for folks to listen to this. Thank you so much for joining me and being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. My pleasure. Thanks, man. Good stuff. Take care. [1:09:29] to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast.com. See you in the next episode.