When you're looking for a job, you need a spear and not a neck.
What happens when we're building a product?
Same thing, right? We want this product to be for everyone.
But we've learned with product market fit, that doesn't work.
We need a narrow, clear focus.
How did you realize this is a really powerful method versus the way people normally look for jobs?
While it's hard to figure out your candidate market fit, it's also a relief to know it's not about you.
So what I ask people to do is I ask them to think about what they want and what they don't want.
Now, you might not think that that's a radical step letting, but most people don't do that.
When they get laid off, they spray and pray.
This is very much like a product person thinks about new products.
There's no I in team.
Well, there is an I in village.
And the I in village is that when you start to interview and negotiate, you've got to be in charge.
I want you to play to win, not not to lose.
Is there anything else that you think might be helpful to people looking for a job?
If someone did this, it would blow my mind.
I would hire them on the spot.
Today, my guest is Phil Terry.
Phil is the author of Never Search Alone, which I've seen so many people reference as the most impactful thing they read for helping them find a job.
Once you listen to this episode, you'll see why.
Prior to this book, Phil was on the founding team of the first company that Amazon acquired back in the 90s and then was CEO of the pioneering product and customer experience consulting firm Creative Good for over 15 years where Phil and the team had companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and hundreds
of other companies as customers.
Phil also coauthored customers included, has written articles for the Harvard Business Review, and has delivered more than 500 keynotes to companies like Apple and Microsoft.
This episode is for anyone struggling to find a job or unhappy in the job that they are in.
I promise you the time you put into listening this episode will help you find a job that you love.
If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.
It's the best way to avoid missing feature episodes and helps the podcast tremendously.
With that, I bring you Phil Terry.
Phil, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Oh, what a pleasure.
I'm such a fan of yours, Lenny.
I'm thrilled to be here.
Thank you. I'm a huge fan of yours and I think by the end of this, I'll be an even bigger fan of yours.
What I'm hoping that we can do in our chat today is to help people who are struggling to find a job and especially struggling to find a job they love actually find that job with actual tips that they can use today in this week.
How does that feel to you?
That's great. We have some practical time -tested stuff that I've developed over the last 25 years with leaders in Silicon Valley, especially in the product community.
We've really brought a product lens to reinventing the job search.
This is a perfect Venn diagram of topics then.
Yes. There's a lot of ways I can approach this.
I want to start with a question about something that you run, something that you created, something that has had a lot of impact on a lot of people, job search councils.
What is a job search council?
It's a support group of six to eight job seekers.
It's not just for product people, but the product community really owns this.
It comes out of the product community.
What they do is they commit to being with each other, to supporting each other, go through the process of looking for a job and figuring out some of the...
I lay out a methodology, how to figure out your candidate market fit, one of the big concepts in the book, as well as how to play to win, not to lose.
You know what I mean?
People are scared in the job search.
Here's the thing, Lenny, that people really have a hard time believing.
Everyone. I mean everyone.
I work with some of the most senior people in Silicon Valley.
I'm talking about CEOs of public companies.
I'm talking about chief product officers, VPs of product at great brands.
Everyone, no matter who they are, Lenny, feels insecure and anxious in the job search.
If you do it alone, it magnifies it.
With job search councils, there's this great hack.
I didn't invent this.
It's baked into human psychology.
If you put anxious people together and ask them to be open and vulnerable and to ask for help, and we'll come back to asking for help, it actually flips the anxiety and the fear into hope, into motivation, into accountability and confidence.
It's like, what? For people.
It's fantastic. My mother taught me this.
We can talk about her at some point, but it's really powerful.
That's amazing. Your whole book is called Never Search Alone, so the whole premise of how you recommend people look for jobs is to look for jobs with other people.
You mentioned maybe it's your mom, maybe something else.
How did you realize this is a really powerful method versus the way people normally look for jobs?
Yeah, so I've set up my first council more than four years ago.
I set up the first CEO council for internet CEOs in the mid -90s, and then I've run product and CEO council since.
But it goes all the way back to my mom, 1960, Lenny, 1960, right?
What is that, 64 years ago?
In the San Fernando Valley, my mom was a newly minted elementary school teacher, and she put together a council of teachers.
That group met for 50 years, 5 -0, until the year she died, and they worked together to ask for help and support each other in their careers.
Lenny, people say to me, does this Never Search Alone method work in a tough job market?
I'll tell you, it comes out of tough job markets.
Absolutely, yes. Starting with my mom.
So in 1974, my dad, in 1976, he left, and it was just me and my mom and my sister.
He had insisted that she stop teaching, so she lost her tenure and everything.
Her candidate market fit was terrible, but she had her council, and it was the mid -70s, and Lenny, you probably can't imagine how hard it was for a single middle -aged woman with kids looking for a job in Los Angeles in the mid -70s.
It was terrible, but she had her support group, and they held her hand, and so the job she could get, guess what?
She had to be an entry -level teacher again.
After having been a senior teacher, coaching, and advising, it was really tough.
So that had a big impact on me.
And then when the dot -com bubble burst, I was running Creative Good, and suddenly there was a depression, and suddenly I'm helping hundreds of people try to figure out their job search.
So it's been going for a number of years, but it goes back to my mom.
I dedicate the book to her and the community we fill.
That's beautiful. Let me tell you about a product called Sidebar.
The most successful people that I know surround themselves with incredible peers.
When you have a trusted group of peers, you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just gut -check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life.
This gives you more than a leg up.
It gives you a leap forward.
Having a group of trusted and amazing peers was key to my career growth, and this is the Sidebar ethos.
But it's hard to build this trusted group of peers on your own.
Sidebar is a platform for senior tech professionals, director to C -level, to advance in their career.
Members are matched into peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback.
Guided by world -class programming and facilitation, all running on Sidebar's technology, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your career journey.
If you're a listener to this podcast, you're already committed to growth.
Sidebar is the missing piece to catalyze your career.
93 % of members say Sidebar helped them achieve a significant positive change in their career.
Check them out at Sidebar .com slash Lenny.
This episode is brought to you by Sprig.
What if product teams knew exactly what to build to reach their goals?
From increasing conversion to boosting engagement, these challenges require a deep understanding of your users, something that you can't get from product analytics alone.
Meet Sprig, a product experience platform that generates AI -powered opportunities to continuously improve your product at scale.
First, Sprig captures your product experience in real -time through heat maps, replays, surveys, and feedback studies.
Then, Sprig's industry -leading AI instantly analyzes all of your product experience data to generate real -time insights.
Sprig AI goes even further with actionable product recommendations to drive revenue, retention, and user satisfaction.
Join product teams at Figma and at Notion by uncovering AI -powered product opportunities at scale.
Visit Sprig .com slash Lenny to book a demo and get a $75 gift card.
That's sprig .com slash Lenny.
There's a lot of elements that you mentioned that we're going to dig into, so product, job candidate fit, plane to win.
You touched on a little bit idea of settling, figuring out what to settle for.
Your mom kind of took a job that's below what she was doing before, so I want to chat about all these things a little bit more on these councils.
What's the scale of these?
I think it's going to blow people's minds just how many of these are happening.
We have launched more than 2 ,000 of these, Lenny, 2 ,000.
And they're completely free, completely 100 % free.
It's volunteer -driven.
We have hundreds of pages of tools.
We've done a Slack community.
We have a free matching program.
You can sign up and we'll match and put you in a council, then we'll give you training, live training.
There's so many volunteers.
We have 20 ,000 hours of volunteer work that's already been put into this line.
And you said that it's free.
I know these things aren't free to run.
I saw somewhere that you mentioned that basically all your book sales and also just money, your own money, you spent on running these councils.
Talk about that for a little bit.
Yeah, all of the books, actually two times the book sales are going into running this.
So we have 20 ,000 hours of volunteer time, but you also have to pay for technology and you have to pay for certain kinds of support.
Later, we'll talk about this.
And we're always looking for more volunteers.
I have a process for people to apply if they're interested in being a part of the team.
But yeah, I have dedicated this to my mom and I'm giving everything to it.
What's the general structure?
If someone's trying to think about how these things work, if they want to join these, as we go through, how did they work?
Okay, so you apply at Phil .org, P -H -Y -L, and it again is free.
And we match you behind the scenes.
Now, when you apply, we ask, first of all, are you in a job and looking or are you out of work?
Because we separate those two because they have different cadences.
If you're in a job and looking, we call you a slow seeker.
Because you have a full -time job and you can't work as quickly.
If you're out of work and looking, we call you a fast seeker and we put you in different groups, okay?
Fast seeker or slow seeker.
We also ask though, are you willing to be a moderator?
Every council needs a moderator and every moderator is a job seeker who volunteers to do that.
And if you volunteer to moderate, first of all, you get matched faster.
And secondly, you get more training and support.
It's a little bit more work for a lot more benefit.
And we've gotten 2 ,000 moderate interests with me.
It's amazing. And we feel like we're just beginning.
Okay, so you apply, you get matched, and then you go through an orientation program that we run live where we tell you how this works and what to expect in your first meeting.
And then there's a whole set of agendas and materials and everything in the book, as well as we have, everyone gets a free workbook, 100 -page workbook, after they join the community.
With all of the templates and guides and questions.
And then you have your first, the moderator pulls you together.
You work on Zoom or whenever technology, it's remote typically.
And you do a first meeting, we call it meeting zero, where you're open and vulnerable.
People share stories about their lives and who they are.
Builds trust and get a sense of who people are.
And then you move into the process.
You meet twice a week, typically if you're in a fast seeker council and every two weeks if you're an a slow seeker.
So that's the start of the answer, does that help you think?
Yeah, really helpful.
And then you basically are on this council until you find a job, I imagine.
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.
Is there anything you can share around the impact you've seen?
The reason I reached out to you to come on this podcast is I just started seeing people mentioning that they found a job.
And maybe the thing that helped them most was your book and being on one of these councils.
And I imagine there's a lot of stories you hear and a lot of numbers you can see of just people succeeding going through.
So what can you share about just the impact you've seen?
Well, I posted on LinkedIn today that I was going to be on your podcast.
I asked people if they wanted to share stories with me.
And I got over email in LinkedIn.
I've been flooded with stories from people who are in the process or people who did it.
And if you like, I can pull up and share a few of those.
Is that what the council?
Yeah, there's a few you have there that'd be really sweet.
Okay, so Justin Meats is a chief product officer who's gone through the process and he posted on LinkedIn today.
He said, as a product leader, I love how it has you apply the product process to your career.
So this comes out of the product world.
It's a product lens on the job search.
And it's for everyone, but it really makes sense for product people.
And he says, not only does your JSC help bounce ideas and help your job search, they also help you keep going and accountable when you're low on emotional energy.
And I talk about this in the book, Lenny, I say, look, most people think like, what's the most important thing to manage during your job search?
They think, well, maybe it's their resume or LinkedIn profile or their ability to network, or candidate market fit, a concept I introduced, I think is really important.
All those things are really important.
But the most important thing to manage is your emotional balance.
So I talk about your emotional balance sheet.
And for many job seekers, they have more life because Lenny Easton's assets, on their own balance sheets, they have more fear and anxiety.
They feel demoralized.
They have a hard time going.
That's why these things are so important.
He also says, Hey, it's a journey.
And the more you embrace it, the more you learn about yourself.
And he says, and this is important, Lenny.
And this is not, you know, I don't have a magic wand that, especially in a down market today that magically gets a job.
It's hard. The job search, and he talks, it can be hard and humiliating at times.
I know this is why I want to create this community, why we're doing this.
We want to give you a place where you can, you know, really get the support when it's hard and humiliating, but the process will ultimately set you up for success.
If you follow it, you know, this one woman who just started, she's a senior product leader in a major financial institution.
And she said, you know, it just from, she couldn't believe the level of support and openness and vulnerability.
And, you know, we really emphasize people being open and vulnerable.
And I've learned a lot about how to create that environment.
And it ties back to asking for help, which I know we'll talk about more at some point.
But, you know, when you create that, it's amazing what people can do together, Lenny.
Just to reinforce this point, people listening may be like, I don't, like, I'm just going to keep looking for a job.
I'll use all this advice.
I don't need a group.
What's your best pitch, again, to help people see the value of doing this in a group and joining a council or starting a council?
I acknowledge that that's a reaction that some people have, you know, that's totally valid.
And this is unusual what we're doing here.
You know, this is not how people look for a job.
We're trying to disrupt the job search process.
We had this great, Lenny, this is my quick story.
We had a great interview with a couple.
Two of them were product leaders.
Both, they had met at Amazon and then had gone to have great careers.
They both got laid off.
The woman joined a job search council right away.
She loved it. She raved about it.
Her husband, who was also an engineer, you know, was a little more introverted.
It's like, you know, this isn't for me.
And she said, no, listen, you won't.
And finally, he read the book.
He said, all right.
He's like, you know, because the book is it's kind of it's it.
It works for the product mind and for the engineering mind.
Oh, it makes sense.
He said, I'll join a council, but it's not going to.
I'm not going to feel connected to people.
I eligible, but I'll do this because you asked me to.
And he said in the interview, yes, we have enough on the site.
He was like, oh my God, I couldn't believe it.
You know, the level of trust we created right off the bat.
I've never experienced in my life.
And it's really truly accountability, the motivation, the ability to to hang in there.
And so I say to people, look.
Try it. And and, you know, we have all these videos on our website with all these people talking.
Go look at it. You know, if you want to read the book first and see if you think this makes sense.
But try it. You will be shocked in a positive way if you will discover how delightful it is.
And how how we, you know, we live in a world where there's increasing loneliness.
Like there's so much research about this, you know, the surgeon general's book, everybody talking and it's more detrimental to our health and smoking cigarettes.
You know, bowling alone famously came out 25 years ago.
We live in a world where people have have not experienced community in a in a powerful way.
I don't mean message boards.
I mean real community.
And I think you have a sense of this because you you you do real.
And that's and that's what we're talking about here.
It's it's real community, but with some practical tools and techniques, which we'll talk about them.
What do you think? Is that a good response?
I don't I don't need a job, but I want to join one.
You also just had a really beautiful way of describing these programs as a safety net for people.
Yeah. That ring a bell.
If we kind of go up to the 30 ,000 foot level, like what are we doing here?
What's our mission?
We're building a private safety net for all those who've been laid off or let go.
Look, the government.
We're not going to do what the government does with unemployment insurance.
We're never going to be able to do something like that.
But the government's never going to be able to innovate around how to actually look for a job.
That's where we come in.
Right. We're trying to build this.
And we talked about this earlier, Lenny.
Creative destruction is this economic concept that sits at the heart of capitalism.
It's creative destruction basically says under capitalism.
It's dynamic. New products and services displace or disrupt old products and services, companies and methods.
It's why our economy has grown sixfold over the last hundred years.
It's remarkable. It's why we have this amazing multi -trillion dollar economy.
But it comes with some negative unintended consequences, which is that people both in jobs and out of jobs, they're anxious and fearful.
And there's no program that addresses that.
That's what we're going after here.
We're trying to be the solve for the unintended consequences of the thing that is so positive in many ways that we as product people love because we get to build new products and displace old products.
And I'll just say one more thing.
The reason you know this creative destruction works so well is if you compare our economy to late Soviet Union's economy, they were a planned economy with no creative destruction.
So there was no innovation and it eventually it just failed.
It just collapsed. It's remarkable.
It's a huge country with a massive military and nuclear weapons, but they couldn't make their economy work.
Why? Because they didn't have this element.
So it's something to celebrate.
But as we celebrate it, we need we need to have something that addresses the negative unintended consequences.
And I think it's our all of those all of us who benefited from this.
I think it's our duty to do something about it.
That is beautiful. You're very good at this.
Let's shift to talking about tactics.
Let's talk about some of the things that you've shared.
So you've mentioned things like candidate market fit, playing to win.
Go wherever you want to go.
Let's pick a few and then dive in.
Candidate market fit is probably the most important job search tactic in the book, aside from the job search council.
And it may be the thing I'm known for, but that, you know, when I dial it, they coined candidate market fit, you know.
So here's the thing.
And this is why this is so important in a down market.
You know, when you're looking for a job, you're in a marketplace with supply and demand, you know, characteristics.
So if there's a lot of supply, which there is right now in the tech world, because there's been a lot of layoffs, you know, the the overall economy, there's been net job additions, Lenny, but those have been primarily in health care and government.
There have been net job losses in tech.
And we could talk about why that is, but that's the world that we're in.
So let's say you're a director of product.
Two years ago, when the economy was great in tech, and the job market was great in tech, you could probably get a VP of product role.
Okay, what about today?
Well, today, your candidate market fit has been pushed down, because there's a bunch of VPs of products, we're going to take a director role.
Guess what? That means you might not be able to get the director role.
You might need to get a senior manager role or whatever.
Now, the important thing about this is it's not a personal segment about you.
It's the marketplace.
And that's what so many people today in their notes, we said that it was like such a relief for them.
While it's hard to figure out your candidate market fit, it's also a relief to know it's not about you.
So what I asked people to do is I asked them to first and the first radical step I asked them to take is to think about what they want and what they don't want.
Now, you might not think that that's a reputable step, Lenny, but most people don't do that.
When they get laid off, they spray and pray.
That's the typical, let me just, you know, wait a minute, just take a moment.
They're like, Oh, don't slow me down.
I'm like, I'm going to slow you down to go fast.
In fact, what our data shows is that the average job search and a job search council, you know, from beginning to end is three months.
If you look at the national data for job search, it's three to six months.
So we're at the very low end of the national average.
So, you know, this is not a slow down, you know, take two years, whatever.
No, no, most people need to put food on the plate, right?
So it's a slowdown at first.
And we as product people should understand this.
You want to think about your strategy.
You want to understand the marketplace, the customer, the product market fit.
You're not going to just go, you know, you're going to iterate.
First step, what do you want?
What don't you want?
That's the Manukin two pager named after Allison Manukin, who was a member of one of our product councils.
So we run product councils and general management CEO councils for people in jobs.
That's a paid program that companies pay for.
It's out of that program, helping those people that I developed this methodology that we're now as a community giving to the world.
So Allison, she was the GM at Intuit.
And then she spun out a division and ran it as CEO.
And she's now a professor at the Harvard Business School.
And about 15 years ago, she was in transition.
And we talked and she created.
And we created this thing we call now the Manukin two pager.
I told her, Allison, I'm going to make your day famous.
That's my job. I love it right now.
And it's just a simple thing.
What do you like? What don't you like?
And you share it, you create it, and then you share it in your council.
And here's something cool, Lenny.
Like, let's say you and I are in a job search council.
You share yours and I share mine.
Now you see a few things about what you don't like.
I'm like, hot damn, I also don't like those.
I forgot. I got to add that.
Or you say a thing about what you like, like, oh, wow.
No, that's really important to me.
And I left that out.
So that's part of the shared learning environment.
I'm asking you to do these, but with others who are you're walking it through.
Now, once you have done that Manukin two pager, and it's a draft, you don't have to get it fine.
Just in the niche. And not everyone knows exactly what they want, by the way.
This is important, especially younger people, but sometimes mid -career people too.
They're like, oh, I'm not.
So I'm not asking you to make a final decision.
No, no, we're going to iterate.
We're product people.
We're going to iterate.
So we're going to take this Manukin two -pager, this draft that we've shared with our council, and we're going to go out and do a listening tour.
Because guess what?
In the job search, we're the product.
We're our skills and experience.
That's the product that we're bringing to market.
So we have to go see what the market wants.
Now we have a sense of what we want, but what does the market want?
And what are some of our trusted friends?
What do they think about what I want and what I'm a fit for?
And what do they think I'm a fit for now, given the market conditions that we have?
I will tell you, people are terrified to do the listening tour.
They're like, I don't know.
What am I going to hear from people?
Because I asked them to ask a golden question.
If you were in my shoes, how would you approach this?
I call that the golden question.
It's such a creative question.
It really opens the conversation.
But they're thinking, oh, no.
People are going to tell me all this stuff.
Now, most of the people are telling you this.
Once in a while, you get a helpful piece of critique.
Oh, you make everything a priority, in which case nothing is.
And you could work on that.
Super helpful to know.
We all have stuff to work on.
But I will tell you, once people do the listening, they're blown away.
The people who are in jobs, they love helping others if it's done well.
Because guess what?
They're also anxious themselves.
And they want to give back.
They want to feel like they're supporting people.
And you actually end up, and we're going to talk about this, but when you ask someone for help well, you've done your homework, you're thoughtful.
They want to help you even more.
They become invested in you.
So the secret about the listening tour is that not only are you getting market research, customer feedback on your fit, you're also creating a whole group of listening posts, people who are invested in your success.
Just to clarify, and that specific point of this listening tour, you write this Manukin two -pager, which basically describes what you want, what you don't want, goals you have, what you hate.
And the listening tour is find colleagues, friends, people that are other say product managers, and get their feedback on what you want, what you don't want, what you hate, what your goals are.
And what they're seeing in the market, what they think you're a fit.
I see, got it. So it's like, oh, this is unrealistic.
You're not going to get this.
That's right. Like looking for that.
And we see both things, Lenny.
So some people underestimate their fit, others overestimate it or don't recognize that changed market condition, right?
The other thing I'll say is that in the book, I have three different kinds of structured listening tour conversations.
One I call reverse exit interviews.
This is what people you used to work with before, right?
Go ask them, hey, what did I do well?
What do you think my strengths are?
What do you think I'm a fit for?
Here's what I'm thinking.
Do you think I accurately am projecting myself?
The second is your broader network, you know, and that's where I ask you to do the golden question if you were in my shoes.
And then third is recruiters.
Now here, this is an important hack.
Recruiters don't like being barraged with get me a job.
They do like someone saying him, what do you think I'm a fit for?
Asking their advice.
And this is especially true if you pre -build a relationship with a recruiter.
So anyone listening to your podcast right now, if you're in a job, I have a really important message for you.
When that recruiter calls, pick up the phone, even if you don't want the job, help them network with them, tell, you know, introduce them to other people and build that relationship.
Because whether you lose a job or whether you decide to start looking when you're in work, you want that relationship.
Now, Lenny, there's a problem.
Many people haven't done.
Okay. So part of what we're doing with the Never Search Alone community is we're building a recruiter network.
We're finding recruiters who are willing to, in a protected way, do a couple of conversations a month, helping people think about their candidate market fit.
And if anyone listening to the show is a recruiter, please come join us and volunteer.
We need more recruiters.
I know many of you want to give back and you don't know how.
You tell me this. Here's a way to give it.
Love that. And so the intent of this is that you're trying to figure out, one, what does the market want?
And how do I be honest about what it wants?
Because it may not be, what you want may not exist right now.
And then two, help you refine your pitch and how you're approaching and who you're talking to.
Is there anything else that comes out of doing this exercise?
Because I think people might be hearing this like, yeah, so much work.
I have enough work to do all these interviews.
I got to reach out to people.
I got kids and family.
I have to write this two -pager now.
And listening to her, what other benefits do you get out of this doing this exercise?
You build those relationships.
So you turn people on as listening posts.
So you light up your network in a way that you...
If you just send an email saying, I want a job.
Or if you just go, hey, do you have a job for me?
People don't know what to say.
But as you say, hey, if you're in my shoes, how would you approach this?
And what do you think?
If you were me, I shouldn't be looking for.
And what are you seeing in the market?
They love that. And now they're really thinking about it.
And if they see a job that might be a fit, they tell you about it.
They tell you about it.
Yeah, and that gets to candidate mark.
Because at the end of this, we're going to create a very simple, narrow, focused candidate market fit statement at the end of listening to her.
So once you've now done this listening to her, now you need to create a focused candidate market fit.
And this is tough. And this is...
Look, again, this is why you need a job search counsel.
You need them to be there with you during the listening tour.
Not every listening tour conversation will be a home run.
Once in a while, it will be a dud.
I talk about this in the book.
Like, warning, there are some curves ahead.
You could have a conversation.
A number of women that I have worked with over the years have gone and done conversations and they've gotten, frankly, sexist feedback that was not helpful.
You're too poised or you're not poised enough.
It's just this strange set of stuff.
So you need your counsel to sort of help you carce out and interpret what people are telling you.
And at the end of this listening tour, and it never really ends, but once you've done 10 or 15 and you're ready to say, okay, I'm going to take a stab at my candidate market fit, now you need your job search counsel.
Because you're going to want every bone in your body is going to want that to be expansive, to want it to be broad.
Remember, we're product people, at least those of us in the Lenny's podcast community.
What happens when we're building a product?
Same thing, right? We want this product to be for everyone.
But we've learned with product market fit, that doesn't work, right?
We need a narrow, clear focus.
Same thing with candidate market fit.
So I say to people, and we have this whole grid that we give them.
I'm looking for a director of product role in a healthcare series beast in San Francisco, like bing, bing, bing.
And people say, oh, if it's so narrow, I'm going to lose up.
And here's the thing, right?
When you're looking for a job, you need a spear and not a neck.
With a net, everything flips through.
Now, part two of this, people are expansive but not reductive.
What are you talking about, Phil?
Here's what I mean.
If you give them a specific, and I say to you, Lenny, I'm looking for a director of product role at a healthcare startup that's a series B in San Francisco.
Well, if you see another financial fintech startup that's in a heavily regulated industry looking for a director of product that's a series B, you're going to be like, you know what?
Phil is looking for it, but I bet Phil could do that.
You can be expansive.
But if I told you, hey, Lenny, I'll take any product job I can, you are never going to think of me.
You're never going to remember me.
You're not going to be reductive from a broad statement, but you will be expansive from a narrow.
And I'll tell you, Lenny, this is so hard for people.
And this is why, again, you need that council and you need that broader community.
And every week, every two weeks, we do a LinkedIn Live where we address, you know, we go over these questions again and again, because it goes, if I were in the job search, I'd feel the same way, even with all the darn research I've done.
It's really hard. If you've been using this metaphor of approaching this like a product person, and this is very much like a product person thinks about new products, there should be a very narrow audience to start with, kind of a wedge or an ICP.
When someone's building this, what is a sign they've narrowed it enough?
Are there like a certain number of attributes?
What tells you that like, cool, this is small now?
So it's typically three to four attributes.
And we give people a whole grid in a set of examples.
So we had a woman who was a designer.
She was a product designer, right?
And what her product market fit was, she was looking for companies that either did not have a design team or needed to reboot one.
And so she wasn't talking about stage of business or even industry, but that really plants an image in your mind.
You know exactly if you hear about a company that doesn't have design or looking to reboot design, you're going to think of her immediately.
Because after you've done your listening tour and you've created your candidate market fit and your counsel signs off on it, Lenny, this is important, right?
Then you go back out to your listening tour and you tell all those people, here's now based, thank you for your help.
Here's the candidate market fit I've come up with, right?
And you also post it on LinkedIn.
You tell the whole world, right?
Now, will that candidate market fit change over time?
Yet we're iterative, right?
So if you go and go and the market is changing, like what was true three months ago may not be true now.
Two weeks ago, the stock market was convinced we're going into a recession and everything crashed.
Two weeks later, we're like, oh no, we're not going into a recession.
That affects the psychology of hiring managers and companies, not just psychology, their willingness to open up wrecks and everything else.
So things are changing.
So you need to be flexible and adaptive to that, which is also why you need the counsel and why you need to have a good network around you that you've asked for help from and they're invested in you and can be there for you as you try and keep navigating this.
Just to follow us through that a little bit more.
When someone is thinking right now, like, okay, what are my attributes?
What's on that grid, roughly?
There's stage of company.
I imagine there's stage of company industry level of role and function, of course, and culture.
Is there like a set of options you have of type of culture?
Basically, everyone wants a good culture.
So culture. I mean, sometimes it can be very specific.
I need a company that has a particular kind of policy for kids or whatever, remote or hybrid or whatever, that kind of element.
But I tell people, make it simple.
This should not be paragraphs and paragraphs.
It should be a one sentence statement.
You can do a longer thing that you can then share with people when you're getting into the conversation, but you want something simple that people are, oh, Lenny, looking for a cheap product officer.
Yeah, it's exactly like you want your product to feel too.
Exactly. I need a SOC 2 compliance.
I'm going to think.
That's a lot. Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so I'm thinking through this list here.
So I think sub -level and role.
I imagine people kind of get a pretty good sense of where they want to be.
Any advice for someone to decide what stage is right for them?
I mean, if I were coaching someone, which, as you know, I do, we would talk a lot about this.
But when I'm in the book and in the community, I say, to figure out stage again, I want you to rely on your job search council, your network, and your own experience.
And it becomes pretty...
People usually have a pretty good sense.
Who was I talking to recently?
I need a big company.
Whereas many people are like, I don't want that.
I want a startup. And what I will tell you is that one thing to keep in mind right now is that there are more jobs in the startup world than there are in the established company.
In the tech world for product people.
That's where new job creation has been happening.
It's slower than it was before, the big companies, they've just been shedding people.
They've just been throwing them off.
Whereas the smaller companies, there's more opportunity there.
Now, that doesn't mean that if you can't stand working at a startup, I'm not telling you you should go there necessarily.
But I will say this.
And again, if you need to put food on the table, like we were talking to someone recently, they had moved to a new city and then were laid off the next day.
They moved for the company.
And then they were laid off the next day.
And they're like, okay, I need to get a job.
I said, okay, yeah, sure.
Just know that if you're going to get any job just to have, while you still look for the job you really want, just know that that's a hard pen.
I understand it and I support it.
It makes sense. And it's hard.
It's harder than you realize.
And you absolutely have to keep your job search council.
Because otherwise, you're going to get lost.
Can I share one story about Candidate Market Fit that might be helpful to people?
I was coaching, he was an EVP at a traditional media company, but on the digital side, running their streaming business.
But it was very much an old economy, old media company.
This was not a player in the streaming space.
And they smartly recognized that if they stayed there, they were going to end up in a pretty bad cul -de -sac.
And by the way, that company's had layoffs.
They decided they wanted to go work for a company like Netflix or Apple TV.
And there's someone who ran hundreds of people, corner office, limo, first class, you know what I mean, in the airplane.
What was their Candidate Market Fit?
They went out and did this.
Their Candidate Market Fit, if they were going to join a top streamer, was as an individual contributor.
That was because those guys didn't respect much of what they brought from traditional media.
And if he had done this search alone, he would not have done that.
But to his credit, he decided to take that and it transformed his career.
There's now someone who had a lot of management experience, but also tied now with one of the top streamers.
He's just done incredibly well.
But that is really hard to do.
So in this example, when you talk about Candidate Market Fit, a big part of it is what the market wants from you.
Yeah. It's not like he's like, I'm going to go, I see.
He just realized as he was going through the process, this is where I'm actually going to succeed.
He talked to people and I helped him network with people in Silicon Valley.
They were just honest with him.
And that's what Justin was talking about.
This can be hard a million times to figure out.
We had another person who was a Chief Product Officer in a startup and she was great.
She helped me with the book.
She was an early reader.
She's a member of your community, Lenny.
And she realized that she wasn't getting the right product training.
She was the only product person.
She didn't really know what she was doing.
Well, what was your Candidate Market Fit?
It was an IC. It was an IC role.
Individual contributor role in a larger tech company.
And to her credit, she realized that was the right path for her learning.
And she did this before the shoot.
It didn't really hit the fan.
I'm in the tech world, fortunately.
Just not swear. So this is, you know, I talk about this in the book.
Sometimes you need a two -step strategy.
Let's say you want to be a VP of Product at a top streaming company or whatever it is.
But you're not fit for that today.
So the question is, how do you step there?
I tell a story in the book about a guy who had been a VP of Product.
He wanted a COO role.
He was not a fit. He was not a fit, Lenny.
And it was very clear.
The market was telling him.
He did the listening to her.
But he came back and he said, I don't care.
I want a COO role. So he interviewed 50 companies, right?
Can you imagine who took him a year and a half?
The 50th company hired him.
10 days later, they were a public company, massive fraud, and they went bankrupt.
I said, okay. Like, you aren't.
The market is clear.
The only COO role you're a fit for is a company that's bound to go bankrupt.
Like, and he like, okay.
And he went back to VP of Product role.
I said, if you want to become a COO from that role where you are today, one of the great paths is to do it from that job inside a company.
Okay. And that's what he ended up doing.
It was a two -step strategy.
He couldn't go straight there.
I'm not talking about people's innate worth, Lenny.
I believe every human is a worthwhile person.
And I deeply believe in belonging and giving people support, you know, and spreading love and creating community.
But I also believe in being practical and realistic.
And like, I didn't create this situation.
I'm just trying to report to you what the situation is and how you can manage it so that you don't get stuck.
I can't... How many people have you seen, Lenny, who get stuck?
They, you know, they get stuck in a bad job.
They're not learning.
And then they keep go from there.
They get into their 40s and 50s, and it is tough.
A number of people in the job search community who are in their 50s, 60s, whatever, they're dealing with ageism, they're dealing with, they're not close enough to the technology frontier.
You know, you've got to get closer to the technology frontier, even if that means you're going to go from the EVP to an IC role.
That's how creative destruction works.
The closer you are to the technology frontier, the more new jobs and opportunities there are.
The further you are from the technology frontier, the worse you're going to be over the long run.
You might be able to get a better sounding job in the short term, but you're going to find yourself stuck.
I love your Venn diagram of just like warmth and support and belonging and also just like straight real talk.
Here's the reality.
What a combo. This is such powerful advice.
And I think people might be feeling like, yeah, I get it, but man, I don't want to be an IC again.
I've been a director, I've been a VP.
That sounds really not great.
Is there anything else you can share to help people get past that?
I'm like, okay, maybe I really should be looking for an IC role again.
Again, if you're in a job search council and also you're in our Slack community, what you're going to find is that you're not alone.
So that's a big thing.
It's not just, it's not you.
There's not something wrong with you.
This is the market that we're in.
And by the way, the more relationships you build, the better you do your listening tour.
One of the tactics, Lenny, I tell people, is you're going to send out an update note every month to all of your network that you've talked to.
And it might be, I don't have a job yet, or I don't even have any news, but he's the one that lets you know, I'm still going and I appreciate everything you've done for me.
And I'm still looking for acts.
That could be it. You know, and Justin, in his note, I referenced him earlier as Chief Product Officer, his note on LinkedIn today said, you know, Phil told me to keep people updated and I didn't do it enough.
And don't make that mistake.
You got to do that.
Lenny, I met with a group of about 50 job seekers recently who've been in the Never Search Alone communities for more than a year, okay?
They're struggling, you know?
Again, I don't have a magic wand.
But as I talked to them, what was happening?
They stopped networking.
They left their job search council.
You know, they weren't updating their candidate market fit to the changing market condition.
I'm like, you have to do everything.
You can't get passive.
One of the concepts, Lenny, I talk about is, you've got to be the I in village.
Real life, there's no I in team.
Well, there is an I in village, okay?
And the I in village is that when I'm saying you've got to ask for help, you got to be a part of job search council committee.
You have to be independent and accountable and responsible.
I'm not saying you're not going to become passive independent.
I don't know, this is how you become more independent.
This is how you stand up and be more accountable and responsible.
This is how you can do the best search possible in the market conditions that we have.
So the advice here is if you're struggling, finding a job, this is a solution.
Join a council, bring people on board with you, update people on your progress.
Like these are the things that break you out of that funk that you're probably in.
And it will still be hard.
It will still be hard.
I wish that weren't true, Lenny.
Now, I will tell you that look, what's the difference between now and the dot com depression of 2000, 2001 and 2002?
The difference is that we were a much smaller industry then.
And people had been in web jobs only for a couple of years.
Where now we've got people who are in jobs for 10, 15, or more years in tech who have never seen a downturn.
They've never seen a market like this.
We've never seen a tech market like this.
It will improve at some point.
But right now, it's tough.
And I can't change that.
But I can provide tools.
I can provide community.
I can provide heart and smarts.
So that you can get the best job you can get right now.
Speaking of advice, is there anything else along the lines of Canada market fit before we move on to more tactics?
Just that, again, that you're going to resist the narrowness of it.
In every bone in your body.
Just know that that's what everyone is feeling.
But go watch. I have this great video online.
He was a VP of product.
He was initially masked.
But VP of product at Nike.
I met him through Marty and Chris at Silicon Valley product group.
He joined one of our product councils.
And then he decided to leave.
And he was like, Phil, I love you.
But this Canada market fit stuff?
No. You're wrong. It needs to be bright.
And so he went out and he actually spoke to a bunch of VCs.
And like, we don't have any idea what to do with you.
You have to tell us something really specific.
You're like, oh, man.
So he went, he's like, Phil, he did it.
Bam, bam, bam. I tell another story in the book about DeeDee.
She was a chief data officer of a large company.
She wanted, in tech, wanted to become a CTO.
She had a technology and engineering background as well as data.
She spent a year spinning her wheels alone.
I said, join a job search council.
She figured out her candidate market fit.
It turns out she was a great sit for a mid -sized regional bank CTO.
And within three weeks, she had three offers.
A year, nothing. Within three weeks, three offers.
So I can't guarantee that you're going to get three offers within three weeks.
I'm not saying that.
Some of you, it might take you six months or a year.
And the more senior you are, Lenny, the longer it is.
If you're a CEO, it's going to take you a long time, unless you happen to be the CEO of Chipotle, who just became the CEO of Starbucks.
Yeah, I know you're creating a page that we're going to link people to, which is, I think, or is it phil .org slash Lenny?
Okay, cool. And is it going to have this template to help you work out your candidate market fit?
There'll be a link to where you can download not only that template, but all the templates.
You don't even have to join a job search council to get all this stuff.
I hope you do. Again, it's free.
And people like, I will say early on, people are like, what's the trick here?
This is free and you're going to charge me.
No, no, this is free.
I feel very, I've dedicated, why am I making it free?
Because one, I can, which is cool.
Second, this is in honor of my mom.
And third, I want to create a private safety net for the ravages of creative destruction.
It's great. A lot of positive consequences, but there's negative ones.
And I just don't love the idea of charging people for this.
I charge people for other things, but not for this.
And we'll link people to the things you charge for so they can support you and benefit you in other ways or benefit themselves in other ways.
Benefit them and me.
That'd be awesome. Let's talk about some other tactics.
You mentioned this idea of playing to win.
And I think within that there's this kind of OKR and mission tactic.
Let's talk about that.
50%, Lenny, of the people who read my book, join a job search council, and follow everything I've described.
Like the people don't do what I'm about to tell you, OK?
It is the biggest mistake and miss.
And I'm really sorry about this.
And I'm on the, you know, I'm on a campaign, right?
So here's the thing.
When you start to interview and negotiate, you've got to be in charge.
People think when I talk, this is collaborative coaching.
I want you to play to win, not not to lose.
Now, when people hear me say that, they translate it in their brains into, oh, Phil is saying that I've got to be a ruthless negotiator.
If anyone who knows me, I'm like, ruthless is just not how I am.
You know, at least in this sense.
And no, no, I'm like, what I want you to do.
And it's a great tactic that we stumbled upon.
And it's one of the best tactics in the book.
And I really hope we can get the other half of the people who are in the community to do this and your listeners who aren't involved to decide to join also do this.
When you start interviewing, I want you to create your own version of the job description.
I want you to go privately, Lenny.
And I want you to create what I call a job mission with OKRs.
Now, most job descriptions, they suck, Lenny.
The company doesn't know what the f they're doing.
They don't know what they're looking for.
And so, but I'm not telling you to say that to them, just to be clear.
I'm telling you, I want you to create your own job mission with OKRs.
This is key. It needs to be with OKRs.
Now, your audience knows what an OKR is, objectives and key results.
I assume I don't need to explain that.
It needs to be something where you are saying, here's what I think I'm going to be accountable for.
Here's what I'm going to actually the outcomes I'm going to deliver.
At the company that you join.
At the company you join.
Now, you'll keep it private at first because drafting it, this thing has multiple benefits.
The first is drafting it will help you understand and develop great interview questions to ask them to clarify, what is this job?
And they'll be impressed by that.
Okay, the second thing is once you've had a couple of interviews and it's a draft now, it's not a full final thing.
This is so important.
I want you to pull the hiring manager aside and say, Hey, Lenny, you're the hiring manager.
I've thought about what the role is.
I want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly.
Can I share something with you?
I don't want you to email it.
I want you to do a phone call, Zoom or coffee or whatever.
And Lenny, can you imagine how hiring managers feel when they get this job mission with OKRs?
I was talking to a senior guy at Amazon who's hired more than 2000 product leaders and others.
He said, Phil, no one in this was, he's part of our product.
He said, no one in my life has ever done this.
If someone did this, it would blow my mind.
I would hire them on the spot.
And that's the message I want these folks to understand.
We talked about similar metals, Lenny.
In the job search, a civil metal sucks.
At the Olympics, hey, it's pretty good.
You get to be on the podium.
But guess what? Civil metal is almost worse than, because you were almost there.
And we have a number of videos and other things we were talking about.
The difference in many cases between getting the silver goal has been doing the job mission with OKRs.
Companies say, this is what distinguished you.
This is what we were like, well, who is this person?
They're already thinking about what they're accountable and the outcomes, and naturally, they're thinking about it better than I am, which is fantastic, right?
So it raises the odds.
But it also does something.
If you present it, again, Lenny, you're the hiring manager.
I show you my job mission with OKRs.
And you're like, oh, this is fantastic.
But you also say, oh, you know, this thing you have here, this OKR, this isn't part of the role.
Like, well, that's helpful to understand.
But this thing that you don't have listed is, oh, really?
Lenny, how many times we're going to, I'm going to ask people in the audience to raise their hands.
How many times have you taken a job A that turned out to be job B?
Everybody just raised their hands, Lenny.
So this helps to address that, right?
And then if you get the offer, and again, this raises the odds of getting the offer, then sets you up to negotiate what I call the four legs of the negotiations tool.
This is not hard negotiation.
This is something that company loves.
I actually say, you know, you get an offer, and it's like, whatever, $250 ,000 base with a 30 % bonus.
You know, this may be a director or whatever, or a senior manager.
Maybe it's an 800 base, you know, if you're more senior, whatever it might be.
I want you to go and talk to the hiring manager, if possible.
Hopefully not the recruiter, we'll talk about that.
And I want you to say, this is great.
I want to talk about money.
But before we do, I want to think about some of the things that will set me up to seed in this role.
Like, you know, I've thought about like, I think there's like $10 million of tech debt here.
Does that sound right to you?
And are we on board that we're going to like, that'll be priority one to eliminate the first day I start the job.
We had two CPOs, both interviewing at private equity firms is about the private equity on companies about the same size, sales companies.
One had tech debt of $20 million, one had tech debt of $10 million.
I told them both, you got to get that, you know, talk about that.
So one talked about it in the negotiation and the company was like, oh, that's great.
They wrote a check on day one.
Six months later, the tech debt was relieved.
They, you know, updated the systems.
They were able to get into innovation.
A year later, they got promoted to a GM role in addition to their CPO role.
And then a year after that, they were being interviewed for the CEO role.
The other person where there was $10 million of tech debt was kind of shy about asking, sort of mentioned it.
They're like, oh, we'll talk about it when you get here, but they didn't really commit.
And they never addressed it.
One month, six months, 12 months, 18 months later, he's looking for a job.
This is the opportunity cost of not being set up for success.
Now, again, don't hear this as antagonistic.
We're not antagonistic here.
We're trying to say, what's going to help me succeed?
So one CPO recently was negotiating, like, I'm not just talking about budget for tech debt or whatever.
Like, if you're a senior person, like, do you think your team needs more training?
Do you need to send them over to Marty's workshops, over to my product councils, right?
Get them into Lenny's community.
Like, the company was like, you're negotiating the training budget of the team that you don't even run yet?
Well, we're talking about your salary?
Who are you? We love you.
We're going to pay you even more.
Companies love this.
And even if you're a junior person, you're not going to negotiate budget, but you can talk about like, mentorship, professional development, what kinds of, you know, will you be able to attend conferences or training?
Again, and this is like, we're not hard negotiating this.
We're saying, here's what I think I'm going to need to accomplish the LPRs that we've already agreed upon.
This is really cool advice.
I want to make sure people super understand it.
So an example of tech debt.
So this person asked, I need $10 million budget in order to address this tech debt.
Yeah. I see. So it's not like, I believe we will save $10 million if we spend on time.
It's like, here's how much this team will need.
And I will need to.
I'm going to need a check for $10 million on day one.
I guess someone would be shy asking for that.
Or that was 20 million, actually.
That was the one that asked for it.
That was the 20 million.
That was right. And again, it was not, yes, people feel really shy about this.
But the company was like, love that they understood what it was going to take.
I will tell you what, if the company doesn't like this, it's a huge red flag.
Huge red flag. It means they're not serious.
But if you're talking to them, hey, I think we're going to need, I'm going to need to train the team.
I'm going to need the higher three more ICs.
Or the design function is weak or whatever it might be.
And you're like, do you agree?
Do you see it this way?
And they're like, yeah, that's right.
Good. Wow. You're already like bang, bang, bang.
We haven't even finished negotiating your salary.
And this is so counterintuitive, Lenny.
I'm sort of the queen of counterintuitive stuff.
Counterintuitive market fit is counterintuitive, right?
But this is as well.
People think they're going to lose the opportunity when it actually wins them.
Now, of course, if they marched in and said, damn it, you have to do X and Y, right?
That's all what I'm talking about.
Like, hey, here's how I see it.
OK, ours, I think we're going to need this.
Does that make sense to you?
And you're having a collaborative conversation about how you need to be set up for success.
And by the way, if they say, no, I hear you, I believe you, but no, then you make a judgment decision.
Like, I'm not always saying you turn that away.
You're like, well, especially if you need a job, right?
But you're now going in eyes wide open.
OK, you're not going to be able to believe that tech debt initially.
You're going to have to work within that constraint.
So I love that we're getting into negotiation advice, by the way, because I was hoping we'd get there.
So the advice here is identify something that you'll need to be successful.
And your finding is that when you ask for, and it seems like a financial investment as a part of you joining ends up leading to a better comp for you.
Yes. And I will say that there is less negotiating room today than there was two years ago because of the market that we're in.
And the data bears that out.
We see that. But here's the other piece of data.
So I want you to ask for things that tie back to the OKRs that you've already agreed on with the hiring manager.
This is how this thing connects together, right?
It's like Legos. And then we come to the money.
And you've had this lovely conversation.
You've shown them how much you're invested in succeeding.
That's what you see.
Letting the problem that every hiring manager has is distinguishing between someone who is a good talker and someone who can actually make things happen.
You know this, right?
And this is true from individual contributor to CEO.
By doing the job mission with OKRs and by showing them that draft, you are showing them, not telling them, showing them that you take initiative, that you're accountable, that you can make things happen.
And then in the job negotiation, by talking to them about what you need to succeed, you're showing them that you really want to succeed.
And guess who that benefits?
That benefits the company, obviously.
So I want you to do that first.
And then, OK, so let's talk money.
Now, 87 % of the time, Lenny, when you ask for more money, you get it.
Now, that's a longitudinal statistic, meaning over many years.
It's going to be lower in a moment like this, but you can still ask.
And people are afraid to ask.
Again, don't ask in some shark way, like some of my friends in business might do, some M &A negotiators, whatever.
No, ask like, are you open?
Unless it's a deal breaker.
You know, if it's a deal breaker, just be open about that.
But if it's not like, let's say they offered you whatever it is, 400 base with up to 100%, whatever, and some RSU's or options, blah, blah.
And you really wanted 450.
Lenny, you can say, hey, are you open to 450?
That was really what I was hoping for when I think I'm worse.
Are you open to that?
Is that something we can talk about?
And most of the time, they say yes.
And they may not get you to 450.
They were like, you know what?
Yes, thank you. We could let me get back to you.
Or no, we could go to 420.
Does that work? You know, great.
You make it sound very easy.
Here's the thing. I hate negotiating.
I do, too. And I talk about this in the book.
Jason Fried, you know.
So, you know, Jason Fried's got this great thing where they have all very clear bands, 37 signals, well, at base camp.
He's like, because no one's trained in negotiation.
Half of them expect people to negotiate.
And this is another thing Marty says about my book.
He says, you know, what he loves is that companies have all of these resources.
They've got lawyers and HR people.
And you're there alone.
You know, that's why you need your job search counsel.
This is when you really need to ask for help.
Because everybody in your body is going to say, I'm not going to negotiate.
That's going to make it worse.
And it almost never does.
And again, you could be a jerk about it.
That won't be good.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about collaborative conversation.
I'm talking about what you need to succeed, showing them that you're thinking about resources, support, budget that will help you deliver on the things that you signed up for.
And then asking, you know, are you open to, you know, if they didn't quite hit your range.
Like the way you phrase it make it very low risk to ask.
Do you have any specific advice on doing this over email, over a phone call, or in person?
Is there something you're like, definitely do it in this way?
Strongly, strongly want you to do it either in person or over the phone live with the hiring manager.
Now, some companies won't let you do that.
You have to talk to the HR person or whatever.
But as much as you can work with the hiring manager, even if it's just to say, hey, I just want to run by you.
Some of the things I think I need to succeed in the role, before we talk money with the hiring manager or whatever, with the recruiter, I mean.
And they'll go to bat for you behind the scenes if you do that.
Not guaranteed, but more like, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. That's totally true.
Because oftentimes you don't really have like a specific budget as a hiring manager.
Right. So to you, it's like, sure, 450, let's make it happen.
That's right. Now, some companies know this and they're like, you have to talk to the person we designate, the internal recruiter.
But you can also get back to that hiring manager, you know, and even informally.
Again, if you've built a good relationship, and everything is about building good relationships, Lenny.
You know, I want you to be a good interviewer.
I want you to ask good questions.
I want you to listen.
I want you to present that job mission with OKRs that shows how innovative and how much you take initiative and how much you're thinking about this and how much you want this, right?
Every step of the way.
This episode is brought to you by Dovetail, the customer insights hub for product teams.
Understanding customers is a critical part of good product development, but it's so much harder than it should be.
Whether it's finding insights in large volumes of customer calls, crawling through feedback, or finding out what you already know, getting the full picture of your customers is slow and full of friction.
This is where Dovetail comes in.
Dovetail is the AI first customer insights hub that automates end -to -end qualitative data analysis and insight discovery.
Their latest AI features automatically break down your calls into key moments, themes, and digestible summaries so that you can get to the heart of customer problems fast.
And when you need quick clarity on a decision, you can use Dovetail's AI powered semantic search to retrieve supporting data from across your organization, summarize it, and create video highlight reels that you can share with your team.
Get access to all of Dovetail's latest AI features on their professional plan.
And the best news is that listeners of this podcast can get an exclusive 30 -day Dovetail Pro Trial today.
Just go to dovetail .com slash Lenny.
That's dovetail .com slash Lenny.
While we're on this topic of negotiation and compass or anything else there that you might want to share that might be helpful to people.
In the book, before you do the listening tour, I asked people to do what I call the gratitude house exercise, which is to think about who are all the people in your life who have helped you get to where you are today.
I mean, you could talk about your third grade teacher, you know what I mean?
Like, I'm just talking on, I just want you to do that.
And I want you to do that because everyone has this idea that they're alone.
We have all received enormous hope to do what we're doing.
Whoever we are, even the Kermit and the Dither was born to a mother, okay?
And they did not make it themselves for the first several years of their lives, right?
We all are born of mothers.
We all are born as families and communities, some better or worse.
I had a pretty tough childhood, but there was love.
And I want you to do that gratitude house exercise.
And then it can sometimes surface people that you'll go talk to in the listening tour.
Might not talk to your third grade teacher, but you'll go talk to some.
Now, when you're going into interview, I ask people to take a moment and reread the gratitude house exercise.
Remind themselves of everyone they're carrying with them to imagine that they're on your shoulders.
All of those people, including your job search council, of course, and everyone you've talked to listening to, you're walking in with 50 people, Lenny, okay?
Even people who tell me, I don't know anyone.
Now that is not true.
You know, you might not know as many people as I do, okay?
That's understandable.
My job is to know people, okay?
But everyone knows some people, and you bring them with you, even metaphorically, so that you feel not alone when you're going in to that interview.
The other thing I say with the interview and the negotiations is you've got to go do a deep reach right afterwards, Lenny, because we all have these cockamamie ideas about what happened.
We think we did terribly when we did well.
And we need to talk it through with someone else who can help us parse exactly what happened and really where we're at.
I had a woman who was a director of product.
She was interviewing for a VP of product roles.
She texted me after the interview.
Oh, I screwed it up.
This and that. This and that.
But they really liked me, and we're going to go to the next round.
I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Something is not true here.
This is just your own imposter syndrome and inner critic.
That's another exercise we have people to do, by the way, is what we call the inner critic exercise.
Name the critic. Mine is Tub Tour.
I was overweight when I was a kid.
My dad called me Tub Tour.
I learned that tactic from Julie Cameron from The Artist's Way.
She recommends that.
Yes, she's great. Love that book.
By the way, it's on my bookshelf back there.
I love that. I think I called mine Jim.
We had a really good episode, I don't know if you saw it with Joe Hudson.
He has a whole series of advice on your inner critic and his point to it is, your inner critic is always lying to you.
I did see that episode.
I love it. And we all have it.
People think, oh, yeah.
Like everyone, and that's what I love about this moment we're into, Lenny.
I started in therapy in the 1980s.
In the 1980s, you did not share that you were in therapy.
Today, we have tennis stars talking about their emotional well -being and their therapy and how they're doing.
It's beginning to normalize in some really important ways.
They're not bad. They're actually really important to the decision -making system, but they can go off in certain ways that they can really hurt us.
And it feels like these councils are like a light therapy for people.
Yes. I wouldn't ever want to say the word therapy because of course that implies certification and training, but there's a therapeutic aspect to it.
I feel comfortable saying that.
Okay. So in this gratitude house, just coming back there real quick.
The reason that is powerful is that it gives you confidence to ask for stuff to believe in yourself.
Gives you confidence to walk in there is who you are, Lenny.
Not as your inner critic, but as the whole good person that you are.
When you show up, this is one of the reasons job search councils are so important because if your anxiety and fear starts to run away and erode at your confidence, it will hurt your interviewee.
You will not show up well.
So you're not going to even, even in a down market, you won't even get the jobs that your candidate market fit suggests you're good for in that down market.
You're going to slide down a few more notches or you just won't get offers and then you're going to get paralyzed and feel like you're really worthless.
And if anyone watching this has been out of work for a while and feels that, let me just tell you, you are not worthless.
You are not worthless.
And I want you to invest in yourself, to prove that to yourself that you're not worthless.
You are worth the investment of this time and energy.
I'm not asking you to do this for me.
I'm asking you to do this for you.
You got tingles when you said that.
That was a really powerful message.
I'm glad you said that.
Thank you, Lenny. So, yeah.
So we're on this topic of playing to win and what you just said is kind of along the same lines is just remember you're playing to win.
You're not trying to lose.
You're not trying to.
Not just to be really, I just can't say anything.
I just can't rock the boat.
I'm not asking you to rock the boat.
I'm asking you to take charge and demonstrate the power of who you are.
These companies will love it.
So when I asked a lot of people to ask you what you're amazing at, one of those common themes is really good at just asking for help and teaching people how to ask for help, which is actually a topic for a recent newsletter post by one of my newsletter fellows, Natalie.
So let's talk about it.
Talk about why this is so important, why you spend so much thought and time on this topic.
First, I'm going to shout out my mom again.
So my mom's name, her nickname was Chick, C -H -I -C, her friends and family.
And I dedicate the book to Chick.
And she started that first council in 1960 and she asked for help.
Of course, she taught me to ask for help and to start councils.
And of course, when I was very young, I didn't want to do what my mother said, right?
You're not right. But I ended up in a bad situation and she's like, you've got to ask for help.
And I asked my high school teachers for help.
I was alcoholic at the age of 12, Lenny.
And things were really spiraling downwards.
And I was no longer living with my mom.
There's a whole long story about that.
And I was in a pretty unsupportive position and she's like, you've got to ask for help.
And so I did. And OMG, Lenny.
I mean, it just, I was carried by these teachers.
And I also have to give a shout out and I'm going to cry now to my girlfriend in high school, Karen Cavanaugh, whose family had very few resources.
They were struggling, but they made a home for me.
And I couldn't have done it without them and some of my other friends and my teachers.
Like, I worked a full -time job by the age of 16 and I was going to high school and I was in a tough situation.
And it was, I mean, it was transformative, Lenny.
It was transformative.
And did I feel like asking for help was a weakness?
I did. Did I think people were going to think less of me?
Absolutely. I thought all the things that people say.
And it is not what happens.
Now, there is a warning here.
If you ask for help poorly, and I'm going to design that, it does end up leading to bad consequences.
What do I mean by asking for help poorly?
I mean, if you don't do your homework, if you're asking for someone to do it for you rather than advise and support and give you perspective, we all know that, right?
Like, I get these emails, Lenny.
So when I started the product councils, Marissa Meyer was a founding member.
Marissa Meyer at Google and Marianne Mohit at Amazon.
And as Marissa's reputation grew, suddenly everybody wanted to talk to Marissa.
So I got all these random emails from people I've never met.
Oh, I've got software.
Would you please introduce me to Marissa?
I think she'd want to license it or buy it at Google.
I'm like, what? That is the dumbest.
Of course, I'm never going to answer that, right?
If they had reached out to me and said, I know you don't know me.
I have this small software company.
I'm not well connected.
But I would love your advice on how to grow this business and what you would do if you were in my shoes, which I have never received, Lenny, even though I've written about it and said about it.
I would have done that phone call.
And then if they have said, well, can I talk to Marissa?
I'm like, you have not earned that yet.
That's not a statement about your worth.
It's just you're not ready for that conversation.
So you can do it poorly, but if you do it well, if you've done your homework, you know, and you're open, oh my gosh, there's four counterintuitive rules here.
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness.
It's a sign of confidence.
It both requires confidence and strengthens it, Lenny.
That's number one. Two, it's not a taking activity.
It's a giving activity.
If you do it well, you're actually being giving to the people you ask.
This is really counterintuitive, Lenny.
This is what I teach in my product councils, right?
I'm like, you have to ask for help.
They're like, well, if you ask for help and you're open and vulnerable, you're a smart person.
So at one point, Marissa came in and said, listen, I'm developing a new product.
I want to present it to the board, but I'd like your feedback on it first and think, what do you guys think?
Am I approaching this in the right way?
People are like, what?
Google is already a public company at this point.
Wow, they were just blown away.
They were so happy to help, right?
So if you've done your homework and you ask someone who has some expertise in the area that you have and you do it in this way, I'd love your perspective and thoughts and how would you approach it?
People feel given to.
They feel given to.
And here's the thought experiment that'll prove it.
Imagine that somebody that you respect comes to you for help on an area that you have expertise.
And they ask you in this way, how are you going to feel?
How do you feel? Like they value my opinion.
Yeah, and you feel honored and you feel excited and you love giving.
Everyone loves giving.
It's a part of human activity.
And you learn more when you give, of course, because it helps you see something new.
So asking for help is not a sign of weakness.
It's not a taking activity.
It means you're becoming more independent, not independent, and it doesn't hurt your reputation.
It improves it. Something I did not understand when my mom was trying to tell me to do this, Lenny, and it took the experience to drill into my head.
And then I will tell you, I won't name names but one person that you asked who's a prominent product person who's worked at great companies, right?
He said, ask him about asking for help.
I think he would agree with this.
You've been a member of the product councils for a long time.
I think it took years before he really embraced it.
I've seen many people like they're like, Bill, I know you keep talking about this asking for help thing.
And I know there's something to it, but it is transformative, Lenny.
It is transformative.
If you learn to ask real well, and I can tell you about Brad Smith into it who you set, toppled the stock price there.
But he was a GM. He became a CEO.
He was a GM. He ran a project and he didn't do it well.
He lost $300 million to a company.
He thought, okay, that's over.
But they came to him and said, you know, what's your lesson here?
He said, I didn't ask for help.
You know, I was pink headed.
I didn't listen to my G.
Like, that's a great lesson.
And if you really internalize that, then it's worth it because you're great in other ways.
And he ended up getting to the CEO role.
And what did he do?
He joined a council, right?
And he asked for help.
Boom, boom, boom. Stock price goes up seven acts in his tenure.
Okay. Ken Chenault in American Express joins in the 1980s.
One of the few African Americans in professional roles there ends up as a CEO and chairman of the board.
First African American chairman of the Fortune 50 company, right?
You asked Ken Chenault as I did, how'd you get there?
He asked for help. And by the way, what did he do once he became CEO?
He got on a CEO council.
You know? And by the way, who asked for help?
Well, this is going to blow your mind.
Warren Buffett. People think Warren Buffett only listens to himself at Charlie Munger who passed away last year.
That guy asked for help.
Well, he doesn't ask anybody for help.
He asks people, he respects and so on.
But that guy asked for help.
Every single leader I've ever worked with that has done well asked for help.
And I have data in the book.
85 % of the people get to a senior role, credit asking for help, help get them there.
85 % of the people in a junior role say they're afraid to ask for help because they think it's a sign of weakness.
Perfect. It's literally the same number if he can believe that.
I couldn't believe it when I did the data.
I was like, what? But it's really, and guess what?
If you don't learn to ask for help and you're a junior person, you're going to remain a junior person most likely.
When you say ask for help, what are some examples and common times and uses of asking for help?
You know, because it could be like, hey, can you just look at this email for me?
Or is it like, I'm struggling with this project?
Like, what are some things that you've seen when people think ask for help do this?
One of the things that Ken Chenall talks about is what he calls defining reality.
So it's the CEO at American Express.
He was constantly just going around and asking different people in the company and outside the company.
How do you see things?
What are you seeing?
What are you thinking?
Help me understand your perspective.
Right? So that's a form of asking for help for sure.
Reviewing my email absolutely is a great form of asking for help.
If you're sending a good email, an important email, let's say, and let's say you have a history of maybe sending emails that don't get well received, you can ask for help.
And by the way, I have a whole workshop where I teach people how to use chat GPT with some communication models to help you with that email.
So there's ways to do that with chat GPT.
But I still, if it's a really important email and once you have eyes on it, right?
There's a woman who became the president of a digital retailer in the United States about five years ago.
And then she realized that she had significant technical debt and the project that they were trying to build a new platform and it was stuck.
They were... So we convened what we call a peer coaching call.
And I also talked about this in the book.
We got three other presidents of retailers, online retailers who had re -platformed and spent an hour, just one hour with her, asking them for help.
What would you do if you were in my position?
I mean, bing, bang, bull.
So when people get a new job, by the way, I tell them do a first 90 days peer coaching call.
I want you to talk to people who are in that role today, not at that company necessarily, but they're a director of product, they're a VP of product, whatever it might be.
And I want you to say, hey, I'm starting this job.
Here's my job mission with OKRs.
What would you do if you were in my shoes?
What mistakes have you seen others or yourself make that I need to avoid?
What should I focus on?
Here's what I'm thinking for my 30, 60, 90, whatever it might be.
I want you to do a first 90 days call.
Now, let's say you're a director of product and a job is going well, and you want to get to a VP of product role.
Well, then I want you to do a career revolution fall where you're talking to VPs of product.
Okay, I'm a director.
I want to become a VP.
How do I get from A to B?
Will you tell me? And that's another peer coaching call, right?
So these are the things we do in the paid community in the product councils and stuff, but you can do these on your own, right?
And I tell people how to do them on their own in the job search councils, right?
So are these helpful answers?
Absolutely. I think all these examples you're sharing is exactly.
I think what people are wondering, just like, okay, I see.
Can I share one more?
That's so great. So Bradley Horowitz joined Google in 2008 as director of product, right?
So he had come from Yahoo, but he was initially intimidated.
He had a weekly meeting with Jonathan Rosenberg, who was the FVP of product with Susan Wojcicki.
Susan just passed away tragically.
Absolutely fabulous person, by the way.
If people don't know her, go learn about her.
Marissa Meyer, and also another director of product named Sundar Pichai, right?
Who is now the CEO of Google.
And Bradley was like, he was nervous.
He didn't know how to be in that meeting, right?
And one of the things I tell people, when you ask for help, use your emotional intelligence, use your product council if you're in a job or your job search council if you're looking to get feedback on like, am I thinking about this well?
Because I don't want you to ask the wrong people for help.
Right? Someone who's going to take advantage of that, right?
You have to be thoughtful about this.
He was picking up vibes from Sundar that he was very approachable, that he lacked guile.
Bradley told me, Sundar just made it easy for him to say, hey, after one of these meetings, could I ask you a couple of questions?
And, you know, he says, the first question he has is, is this meeting, is it just me or is this meeting intense?
You know, and Sundar was like, oh, no, no, this is intense.
I feel the same way you do, and I've been here for a couple of years, right?
So they start to build a bond, you know, that's a form of asking for help.
It's like, you're checking, like, is your experience the same as mine?
Or, you know, am I missing something?
And then, you know, Horowitz, who felt relieved at this point, felt more trust with Sundar, decided to ask him another question.
And this question, and by the way, now Bradley, he's kind of embarrassed that he asked this question, although I'm really happy that he did.
I told him this, and he asked this question.
He basically said, you know, I haven't been here very long, but you, Sundar, you strike me as a really thoughtful person and great leader.
Why is your remit just working on a tool bar for Melissa, for Marisa, right?
And like, whoa, you know, that's part the wrong way.
That could sound like an insult or something rather than an honest attempt to understand the culture of Google and how it operates.
But again, he had trust with Sundar at this point, and he had established, you know, so he decided, and it was an open and vulnerable question.
And it was great. Sundar, the pitch I basically said, listen, I don't worry about title or scope or any of that.
I've really been focused on just doing good work and letting the right things happen.
That's the culture of Google.
I will tell you that that was more true of the culture of Google in a way.
That's not something I think I can, you know, you have to be a little more politically aware of Google today, okay?
But the point is not so much the exact question he asked, but that he was open and vulnerable.
He was thoughtful about who he asked.
And it really made a difference in terms of his entry into Google and eventually led him to the VP product role.
Of course, Sundar came into the CEO role down the road.
But that's what I'm talking about, right?
But you need, you know, he was part of the product councils, Bradley, like you need to have that sounding board so you can be thoughtful about it.
And, you know, I teach people how to map and figure out who their allies are and their blockers and play what I call positive politics.
That's all in my next book, by the way.
Never Lead Alone. Just to give a little, you know, wearing at least a year away.
When I write a book, I do, I did 400 drafts of Never Search Alone.
I had a couple of thousand people help me with it and 200 people read it and use it.
I had 2 ,500 comments and 400 drafts.
I like to really dog shoot this stuff, okay?
And I'm doing the same with Never Lead Alone.
That's how I know it works, by the way.
I'm a product person, Lenny.
I mean, that's what we do.
That's a good rating.
That's amazing. Let me ask one last question around the art of asking for help.
Yeah. So we've talked about when to ask for help a little bit.
What are just like a couple tips for how to do it well?
Like, you know, if people come to me and like, hey, can you look at this email?
I'd be like, no, I'm really, I'm pretty busy.
I don't know if I have time to look at an email.
I have to think about the relationship, right?
Like again, showing that this random small software company wanted to talk to Marissa Meyer.
I didn't know them.
They didn't know me and they didn't know Marissa.
That's not going to happen, right?
Lenny, if your mom, you know, or your close friend or your colleague who you work closely with says, I want you to look at this email, you're going to respond in one way.
If some person, you know, let's say in your podcast community, which is great, wants you to do it.
I mean, you know, you have thousands of people there.
You can't do that. And people come to me for job search advice in the job search community.
I said, I can't do that.
I can't scale that.
That's what the job search council and the Slack community is there for.
You know, I appreciate you asking, but, you know, that's what the deal is there.
You got to think about the relationship.
You've got to understand, listen to your emotions.
This is where, again, emotions are really important for decision making.
If your emotions are telling you, I don't know if I trust this person, don't don't get all open and vulnerable with them.
You know, I want you to learn to ask for help in a council format where it's really safe.
You can flail around, you know, you can ask in concocted ways.
You know, there's there's ways to ask for help where it's like, where have you experienced this, Lenny, where I want you to do me a favor.
Okay. But I'm, but I'm actually acting like I'm doing you a favor.
Lenny, I have this person to talk to, I know is really going to be great for you to talk to, but really, I'm trying to, you know, do get you to give me, whereas I should have said, Lenny, I have a favor to ask, would you be willing to do this?
You just say yes or no.
You know, there's the other, I really want you to be honest with people about what you're asking.
I never want you to hide the atlas.
That is really good advice.
Yeah. A lot of times it's just, yeah.
Okay. This is just a favor for you.
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if people would say to me, you know, I have a favor to ask, you know, would you be like, yeah, most of the time I'm going to say yes to that, you know, but have you, do you get cold introductions, Lenny?
Where people introduce me to someone else without asking.
It's like, it's not super common, but it does happen for sure.
It almost never is someone you want to talk to.
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
It's not like, hey, let me introduce you to Sergey Brin.
You know, it's not bad.
It's like they're trying to help somebody and you're doing them a favor, but they're not being honest.
Okay. That's amazing advice.
Phil, we could talk for hours about so many things.
You're involved in so many other things I want to hear about, but maybe one last question before we start to close out our chat, just a broad question.
Is there anything else that you think would be valuable for people to know or leave with as kind of a final note around either job hunting, asking for help, anything else?
And then I'm going to ask you to share all the things that you do for people that maybe could benefit from one of these other programs.
When my book came out, we did a book party in New York and the host of it, a senior product person, got up and said, the most important thing about this book that I learned, and they run a job search council was, and I said this earlier, but I want to come back to it.
Everyone feels anxious and insecure in the job search.
Lenny, hey, everyone, it's built into the fabric of how capitalism operates.
It's not something problematic in your head.
It's the instability of the system, which gives it its dynamism, but which also creates trends, insecurity, and fear.
Everyone feels that Lenny, you are not alone.
And just discovering, but my saying that is not enough.
What I say in the book is that this book is like a cookbook.
You don't get the calories from reading it.
You got to actually pick the dishes, right?
So to experience what I'm saying, you need a job search council and you need to go like, oh my gosh, it's really true, I'm not alone.
Even Lenny, Lenny feels this.
Holy, and Lenny, wow, look at everything Lenny has done and created.
And he feels this way.
Maybe I'm not crazy.
There's so much else to this, but that is such a core point.
That's such an important point to leave with.
And just to build on exactly what you just said about me, this strange life that I've created for myself, I originally called it Project Avoid Getting a Real Job because I was worried about that.
Like I forced myself to try something else instead.
That's amazing. That's amazing.
That's great. Well, thank you.
Because you have created something that's really meaningful to a lot of people in it.
Thanks, Phil. So have you.
I'm so thankful that you made time to share so much advice.
I think this is going to be one of the most popular episodes I've done.
I think it's going to help a ton of people, but we're not done yet.
Tell us about some of the other stuff that you've got going on.
You've mentioned product councils.
You've got coaching, just so people know what else might benefit them.
21 years ago, I started these product councils.
And by the way, I like to show this kind of...
Marty Kagan and I go back to the late 90s early.
He was actually a client of mine when he was at eBay.
And I'll tell you what happened.
We were about to sign a project and he decided...
He called me up. I literally were signing that day.
He called me up until I got back.
He was like, what are you talking about?
Now, Marty, come on.
I'm leaving and I'm starting something.
And he started the Silicon Valley Product Group.
Why am I saying that?
Because that was around the time that I started the councils.
And I started with Marissa.
Basically, I went out and did a listening tour, Lenny.
And I said, listen, I think for those of us left in the digital world after this depression, I think we need a place to come together.
There's not a conference with sponsors and people are all trying to sell each other.
We need a private, safe, secure environment to really talk.
Does that resonate with you?
Do you want that? And they were like, yes.
So I started this thing and Marty has been involved from day one.
He has sent me something like 30 % of all the members we've had over the years.
We've had a couple thousand members.
He just sends people over, which has been amazing.
And so we have product councils for VPs and CPOs.
We also have an associate council program for ICs and new managers.
We started that a couple of years ago.
It focuses on women and people of color and LGBTQ, but not exclusively.
So you can be a white guy who's straight, whatever, and you're a product manager.
What we care most about is if you're willing to ask for help and you're really committed to being there for each other and being a part of this community and active.
And so that's what I've been doing for years.
And I have a great team and amazing month.
Teresa Torres was one of the moderators of our private councils, by the way.
And, you know, great friend and it's been on the podcast here.
As you know, obviously great trend of yours.
She asked me to really emphasize asking for help and share some of the stories that I did.
She's just been such an important part of my life.
I can't say enough about her.
And so we've got those and we have CEO groups and we have UX groups.
That's my day job. That's sort of what pays the bills and I've been doing for 20 plus years now.
But then I also have a series of other learning communities, right?
So I'm one of these people.
I read, if you ask me like, if you had one job title, what would be reader?
I read, Lenny. Books are machines to think with.
Books are machines to think with.
And I'm on a campaign to get more people reading more.
You know, because product leaders need to read more.
I have a whole bunch of book recommendations on my Lenny page, by the way, that are for product leaders.
And we can talk about a few of those.
But I also run something called the Reading Odyssey, which is a partnership between scholars and readers at Harvard, Cambridge for Lifelong Learning and Curiosity.
I run the World Business Reading Group for high school students.
It's a high school business literacy, not financial literacy, business literacy program based on the philosophy of Warren Buffett and Charlie Mutter.
And taught by really senior executives like partners at venture capital firms, hedge funds, and I'm an investor.
Like we have this amazing faculty.
It's pro bono. We're all volunteer.
We have a small charge for middle class families and it's free for anyone who can't afford it.
And it's a summer program and it's going gangbusters.
What else? Oh, slow art day.
So one of the things I teach people is that you need to develop mentors.
Most people do not have mentors, Lenny.
95 % of the people in my community of senior product leaders do not have mentors.
And mentorship programs is like the typewriter.
Our parents or grandparents had them, but we don't have them.
The companies don't offer.
One of the ways that everyone listening to this podcast today can get a mentor.
You can get what I call a dead or distant mentor.
Like Warren Buffett is my mentor.
He just doesn't know it.
Okay. Which is great.
I don't have to listen to everything he says.
All right. And he doesn't have to take my calls.
Steve Jobs is my mentor.
And when I talk about mentor, I don't mean just, hey, I'm a fan or I like the products or I read the biography.
I mean, really study, right?
So if you really study jobs, you have to come to 1997.
He's interim CEO. So, you know, he was fired from Apple in 84, 85, actually after the Mac came out.
He wandered the wilderness for 10 years.
He created a company called Next, which wasn't Next.
And then in 95, 96, Apple buys the operating system from Next and makes Steve...
And the company is in really bad shape.
It makes Steve the interim CEO.
Interim. It wouldn't give him the full title.
They're like, the business is so terrible.
You're going to destroy it anyway with whatever.
You'll be intro. And he does a bunch of stuff, but he gives a talk in 1997.
He's got tattered whole jeans.
There's 300 people at the, you know, developers conference.
They all are pissed off.
And he gets up there and he says, you have to start with the customer, not with the technology.
And that's what we're doing it up.
And you can't, you know, people like talk about that customer.
Like if you really study jobs, that's what he did.
And what does that mean?
Because I can tell you there's a lot of product people, Lenny, who talk about customer and don't really focus.
You know? And if you really study that moment and study what Jobs did, it can inform your decisions and actions.
So one of the things that Jobs also talked about was the power of art and that everyone needs to go to art museums and that you need to be inspired and it will help you think about design if you create great products.
So I started a company, something called Slow Art Day, right?
Which has now been in 1 ,500 museums around the world.
It teaches people how to slow down and look.
And especially for Lenny's podcast, I am making free both the teacher materials, the leader materials and the participant materials, so that all of your podcast listeners who are running product teams can go to the local museum and do an offsite and develop more visual literacy, empathy, connection with each
other and an understanding of art that will help them be better product.
That is amazing. I'm going to try to do that myself.
It will blow your mind.
So you mentioned Marty Kagan and Christian a couple times and Marty Kagan described Chris as the most interesting person in the world.
I feel like you deserve that title.
You're doing so much and so much good and so much variety of things.
It's really impressive and the amount of impact you're having is wild.
Thank you. It really means a lot.
I'm just saying how it is.
I'm really thankful you shared so much wisdom on this podcast with everyone.
I think that's going to help so many people.
We're also not done yet.
We reached our very exciting lightning round.
Phil, are you ready?
I am ready for lightning round.
Here we go. And you've talked about books.
I imagine you're going to have an answer for this.
Yes. What are two or three books that you recommended most to other people?
Of course, I've recommended hundreds.
But right now, what I recommend is creative destruction.
And I'm going to give your listeners the link to the right book is by a group of French economists.
It's a little bit academic, but it's so important.
It's so important for product people to understand.
It is so important.
It makes more jobs get created because of creative destruction.
There's not net job loss.
There's more jobs created.
AI is going to create more jobs, not destroy.
Everybody got that wrong.
Almost everybody. Except the people who understood creative destruction.
But you have to be close to the frontier.
That's where the job creation happens.
And product people, you've got to be close to the frontier.
You got to do whatever you get.
If you're at a company that's not close to the frontier, do stuff at...
You know, I've been working at Moody's Investor Service.
I built one of the first 2 ,000 websites back in the early 90s, Lenny.
I was doing all this stuff outside of work.
That was bringing me closer to the technical frontier and was changing my candidate market.
So I recommend that book.
I also, of course, I recommend Marty's books.
Now, I want to just say again, I don't want you to just read Marty's books, listen to his podcast, the great interview you guys did here at Lenny's.
I want you to read and reread those books as if he's your mentor.
And I want you... And rereading is important, Lenny.
And people said, oh, I listened two or three times speed on the audiobook.
I mean, you are not going to have that deeply inform your decision -making.
Now, what I'll do is I'll read a book and then I'll listen to it as a reinforcement, or I'll read it and listen to it at the same time.
But you gotta, you know, for the important books, Lenny, you gotta read them more.
And Marty's books are important.
The last book I'll recommend is The Manual.
It's a short introduction to stoicism.
People misunderstand stoicism.
They think stoicism means repressing your feelings.
That is not what stoicism means.
It means understanding and accepting your feelings, but not necessarily always being driven by them.
Incorporating them.
Your feelings are an important part of your decision -making system, but they shouldn't rule you.
And it's a really important book.
I recommend... I have driven a lot of sales with that book because I really hammer it home in my book.
So if you go on Amazon, you'll see the book that's most bad along with my book is that book, right?
I have other books I recommend that are on my website, but those are two or three.
Amazing. On the listening to things at fast speed, I sometimes meet folks that listen to the podcast and they're like, oh, this is what you sound like at regular speed.
Because I just listen to every podcast fast.
Second question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?
So there's a great new TV show on Apple TV that is not getting the audience that it deserves.
It's called Las Azules, The Blues.
It's about the first women recruited onto the police force of Mexico City in 1971 or two.
And of course, it speaks to me because 1970s, these are women.
My mom and how close I was to her and what I...
I saw the world through my mother's eyes, Lenny, and it really shaped me.
But it's a great TV show.
I love that. Of course, I love the show that I've always recommended.
Everyone's now seen it, I hope, if they haven't.
It's been out for a while, but it's...
The name just escaped me.
The American football coach who goes to England and becomes a soccer coach.
Oh, yeah. How can I forget this?
I've recommended it so many times.
That's the guy's name, right?
The character Ted Lasso.
Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso, thank you.
The kindness in there.
And by the way, a great message around asking for help in that.
The last thing I'll say, of course, is the inside out movies.
The second one came out this summer.
Just the way it's normalizing emotions, again, and helping us start to talk about emotions.
Really love that. Okay.
What else in the light in your round?
So there's this next question that I cut.
I stopped. I moved to other questions, but I wanted to bring it back with you.
It's about your favorite interview question.
You help a lot of people interview and interview better.
I'm curious if there's a question that you've heard that you really like.
If you are interviewee for a job and it's a senior level job, I want you to ask, tell me about a time that you, the company brought in a senior level person and it failed.
And why? Because they often fail bringing senior level people into companies.
So ask them what happened and why and figure out how can we avoid that outcome.
And hopefully they're going to have a good answer.
I have a whole bunch of questions in my book, but I love that one.
I also love, if you are on the other side, if you're hiring and you want to get, you want to check references, I have the most amazing question.
The most amazing question.
By the way, this is the best thing I learned in my two years at the Harvard Business School.
I learned this in my running and growing a small business class.
It's like the best thing I've learned.
If you want to get references, what you do is you want to leave a voicemail or you could send an email, whatever.
But you don't want, and you want to say, I'm about to hire Lenny.
If it would be a huge mistake if I didn't bring him on, if you think he's amazing, they call me back.
Otherwise, don't bother.
And that gets around all the legal blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's just, it cuts through.
I love that question.
I don't know if that resonates with you as much.
Yeah. So it's the idea, if you don't hear back from them, they're not necessarily amazing.
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So it's, you know, you're leaving that space there.
And by the way, I love doing that for bet channel.
So I want you, when you start a job or when you are accepting an offer or interviewing, I want you to back channel that boss a little, talk to people who've worked with them.
If you can't use your network and ask them, you know, would you work with this person and even say, Hey, if I, if I called you and told me I was interviewing with this guy, you should only call me back.
If, if you thought I should take the job, would you have called me back?
You'd know. And so you can do a form of it that way.
Your favorite product you recently discovered, you really love whether it's like a digital app.
I'm going to give you a very different kind of answer than I would normally give, but I'm hoping you and your community will appreciate this.
So I didn't recently discovered it, but I'm going to talk about a book, Lenny.
So 25 years ago, a guy named Robert Strassler, who was a business guy, he started teaching at a special high school for kids who were dropping out and he was teaching them some of the classics like Herodotus and Thucydides expert, and they couldn't get it.
And the books were terrible because there was no context.
So he spent 10 years and he reinvented the, the, the format of a history book.
There are 120 maps.
Each of them he drew specifically and they're only relevant to the previous one or two pages.
Okay. There's a margin summary in plain English for each paragraph.
Describe you what that paragraph just said.
He got the top scholars in the world to write two page appendices on their expert topic, things they've written, hundreds of books about, you know, hundreds of pages about, you have to do it in two pages.
This thing completely, and by the way, the publishing world wouldn't back it.
You know, he funded it himself.
He hand drew the maps.
He spent two years creating a concept index, you know, not just a keyword index and the, and it's just blown apart the whole industry, completely disrupted.
He sold hundreds of thousands of copies of these books.
They are a masterpiece, Lenny.
They have Landmark series, Landmark, they have new ones coming out.
Every product person, in my opinion, should go look at this and look at the product design of this book.
It is masterful and it teaches you a lot about usability and reader experience.
And I want product people, Lenny, to get out, who are doing digital work, to get out of the digital world and look at products outside the digital world for inspiration and thinking.
Because I don't want you all looking at the same stuff, because you're going to just create the same stuff.
So I love, you know, I love tools like Calendly, which I just didn't, you know, I've been using for years, but no one could get it right until they got it right.
Those are great, but that's my, how's that for an answer?
That's incredible. So what is it called again and where do you find it?
And it's going to be on the, on the Lenny page, but it's, if you get an IM, if you do Landmark Herodotus or Landmark Thucydides, either one you'll get, you'll get there.
Yeah. Oh my God. Sounds incredible.
Great, great choice.
Do you have a favorite life motto that you often like to think back to and share with friends or family?
Of course, we talked about asking for help.
And I say that a lot, but I also love, and I said this earlier, books are machines to think with.
And as product people, Marty and I talk about this all the time, we have to be thinking.
And if we, and people, and I coach people all the time, how can I think more?
You've got to read more because books are machines to think with good books.
There's a lot of bad books in the business world, but good books, you know, good books, thoughtful books, books that will help and shift your perspective, whether it's history or science.
Like I read, I read widely and I want you to do the same, you know, books are machines to think with.
That's, that's, that's probably one of my greatest life.
Final question. Usually I try to make this fun, but I wanted to come back to something practical for people.
So to leave people with something they could do this week to help them find a job or help them improve the chances of finding their job.
What's something you'd recommend?
I have one very simple thing.
Go to Phil .org and sign up for a job search council.
There we go. It's free and it will transform your search.
Is it making an answer or are we looking for something different, Lenny?
That's an incredible, beautiful answer.
It also is exactly what I would have asked you next, which is just where do people go find the stuff you're up to and learn more about things that we've been talking about.
So there's Phil .org and then there's Phil .org slash Lenny, which has a lot of the templates and things that you referenced.
Amazing. Final actual question.
How can listeners be useful to you?
That's such a lovely question.
So on the Lenny page at Phil .org, I outlined some ways.
So we're gonna, we're raising a hundred thousand dollars right now to build a platform for job seekers.
It will remain free for job seekers.
Part of what I'm doing is I'm doing a speaking tour on AI and I'm taking all my speaking fees and putting it to this, but people can also make a donation just to that.
They can also volunteer.
And we're looking for, if anyone's a Salesforce admin, I'd love to have you volunteer with us.
If any of you have really good PHP experience, let me know.
If any of you are really good at type form or form site, which is a tool I don't like much, by the way, if anyone from form site is listening, your tool sucks.
You need to really improve the product there.
There's a lot of different ways that you can help, but those are some of those, some of the things, but you can also, but most importantly, tell someone who you know in your life is looking for a job that there's a community here for you.
That's free. That has all these smart tools and resources and people who are genuinely here to help you and who will help transform your search in this very hard moment.
People ask me like, is this good in the hard moment?
This is born out of hard moments.
This, in a great job market, it's easier to say, oh, just take, you know, I can just grab a job.
You need to be more thoughtful in the down market.
Now I think you should be in the up market too, but this is what this, this is, this is our, this is our moment to be there for people.
This is what, and I would love so many people still don't know.
Lenny, we want millions of people.
We want to help millions of people.
We have this great, we have 20 ,000 hours of volunteer time already.
We want to have millions of hours of volunteer time.
We are changing something about the way capitalism works with this community.
We are changing this negative consequence of creative destruction that people have just been left to fend with on their own.
Well, I'm excited to be helping spread the word.
Phil, you're wonderful.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Lenny. Bye, everyone.
Bye. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you found this valuable, you can subscribe 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.
