"I think historically I've gotten really caught in this trap where at any moment in reforge it's like ah if I just solve this one thing this x problem Everything's Gonna Get Easier that might be landin..."

"sets you up for this frustration this anxiety this stress and I think switching to that mentality of like getting rid of that hope and more of like if I solve this thing I get to take on an even harde..."

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"Brian thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast thanks for having me so instead of going deep on the typical topics you go into growth loops and Frameworks and all that kind of stuff..."

"or something else I kind of returned to this to this notion doc and usually it's like two or three lessons jump out to me as relevant to that specific situation and help either unblock me or guide me ..."

"that's that ends up being the key amazing okay well let's just get into it what is lesson number one I think the first ones we're going to cover are more related to startups founder life company which..."

"instead of trying to just inspect the person from the conversation it's like how do you go to the work like how do you how do you see what their output is the things that they've either historically c..."

"trying to judge a person or come to a decision just from a conversation on the surface almost always misleads you and instead it's really like just how do you just go look at the work the actual asset..."

"different way as well similar to like open source code on artifacts how do people find that you can just go to reforge.com and sign up it's right there on the on the home page you can also just go to ..."

"one inspect the work not the person what is lesson two lesson two tell me what it takes to win then tell me the costs and I couldn't remember quite where I picked this up the language for this up it m..."

"conversation I want to be having but if I've got to be pushing the team of like hey like this is too conservative or this isn't going to be enough or I don't know if it's going to be worth the resourc..."

"version of yearly planning than what most people do with okrs and stuff I think most people would be better served just working in product visuals saying oh how might we want the product or the user t..."

"and we had so many smart people around the table who had gone through these processes before but I think when you're in that incredibly fast growing stage or you're in the earliest stage where you're ..."

"can't scale because you're going to change it anyway right like the way I thought about planning always just like it's like the best idea you have at the time let's just do it this way yes org and str..."

"that's gonna help you update whatever that new ideal and state will be in the future there's all these bonus lessons that are coming up as we're going through these lessons but just to close the loop ..."

"number three lessons number three is like uh hard one that I've I've learned the hard way and I'm still like trying to improve that myself and this one's very much for Founders which is just problems ..."

"is the thing that actually reduces the stress and so this was a one that I've also felt like for many many years but had a tough time finding the words for and then Ray dalio had this passage in one o..."

"them because they don't like it uh um both both of those things end up being true and a lot of that has just been driven by our construct of how people think they have what they have to do in order to..."

"one of those things that's really bothered me for a long time is that you as you just you end up on this manager death cycle where when people think that's the only way that they can progress or the o..."

"stuff but I would also say I would go as far to say is I think this is where the world is headed all of this AI tooling is going to give these like super ICS these Captain level ICS even more leverage..."

"but there's also these incentives that just drive companies to hire it's like oh right we could do more why don't we hire more Engineers oh we could build this team we could go faster it is so hard th..."

"seeded each of those Bets with a very limited amount of funding in a very small team like there was still the constraints involved and I think where the mistake ends up happening is like you kind of h..."

"way is that this is particularly relevant as that everybody's probably going through yearly planning right now he's like I see I've seen a lot of plans where you realize in the in the first three to s..."

"think about when they're thinking through the next like the next year and so anyways if you want to hit your year number it's all about the first six months otherwise you're being a little bit unreali..."

"the other one but it's also understanding like when you have a problem in one area sometimes the solution is in a different part of the system right so a lot of times retention problems are created be..."

"think the thing that separates the great from the good even more so in Marketplace and network products because the System Dynamics are you know amped up multiple time degrees Yeah I'm curious if ther..."

"and that's because look like sales people are there they're cranking right they're just trying to close close deals which he'd write is like that's what their role there is for and so at some point we..."

"going to create bad word of mouth and so I think to me that's a really good example of that in action yep okay lesson five if I can summarize is basically that growth is a system between acquisition r..."

"right lesson number six lesson six oh uh I like this one do the opposite so I think uh a story from very early reforge days so when when we started to reforge the the norm in the education space like ..."

"in here is that if you want to gain traction around something you often should be looking at what everybody is doing and then try and the purpose of looking at what everybody is doing is not to necess..."

"but most things have these gravitational forces where everything converges right there used to be this meme where like every SAS product had the same exact uh like character design that like slack had..."

"figure something out and you do the opposite of some pieces some other people are going to start to copy you and then you got to take a step back and be like well what is everybody doing and how do I ..."

"that uh of that behavior I love this one I feel like you need to write a book Brian I feel like there's so many so much depth to each of these lessons that we don't have time to cover this makes me th..."

"content so you know I thought that was like another interesting recent example of somebody I've seen doing something very clearly distinctly opposite of what everybody else is doing what's interesting..."

"space so amazing uh how do people find that podcast that's awesome let's make sure people know how to find it yeah if you just Google unsolicited feedback podcast it'll come up you can also go to refo..."

"different use cases what are the different use cases that we're trying to build against and then we might go ask the question who has those problems who has those use cases and most of the time we've ..."

"a reforge course it's this one which is solving for everyone is solving for no one I think this extends to everything in life and I have a couple interesting examples from this so let me let me start ..."

"places hiring culture being one of the biggest ones and I've seen so many super generic culture statements and they end up being generic because they are trying to accommodate for everybody and so the..."

"with this have you have you gotten better at identifying the the groups to be like you know what I'm I'm making this trade off and that's okay mostly I'm like no I'm not leave me alone it's all I don'..."

"building a product for themselves essentially right right now right that product is designed for modern software development teams you know who are most used by like engineers and designers so it make..."

"coaches as you can imagine kind of being in the l d space I get asked for you know referrals to mentors and coaches quite a bit and I've had mentors and coaches in in my career my imagine you have two..."

"that I've found have pushed me to a much deeper level than somebody kind of giving me some advice from the outside most mentorship programs are extremely forced and and not very fluid you also tend to..."

"amount of work oftentimes these end up being co-founders relationships you know and starting a company there's a lot of times your co-founders are a sparring partner for you most recently though I I b..."

"entire year at this point and so I think there's actually a lot of ways to solve this but what I often find is that when somebody is like looking when they come to me looking for a mentor or a coach t..."

"right right like it's like that type of react it's like that type of reaction usually when people say something and you're angry it's because there's a sense of Truth in it and the question is is like..."

"like here are some of like the types of things that we're we're going to cover and stuff but that first dinner combo it's like always myself or a few people who have been there before who are the firs..."

"sounds like an amazing group Brian I don't want this podcast and but we're on our very final lesson let me summarize lesson nine real quick find sparring partners not mentors or coaches what is lesson..."

"change the mistake is like a lot of times people lean into new things they kind of Dibble dabble they they dip their toes in it and they take it in like super super incrementally along the way but let..."

"actually achieve your ultimate goal which is diversify away from this channel now the hard part about this is kind of going back to our earlier one which is like you don't pile all of this activation ..."

"yeah this is especially prevalent when you're going from single to multi-product or you're going through like a messaging and positioning change right because you've probably invested in a one type of..."

"yeah that's always the fear people have when they're starting start with a wedge and just like we're gonna win this one thing and expand and just like oh but maybe people only think of us for that suc..."

"check that out with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round Brian what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people after having two kids I get barely any time to r..."

"I thought it was just like a very interesting structured way of thinking I don't agree with all of it in there but there's I think a lot that I've taken away from that of course like Peter thiel01 boo..."

"walked away with the most next question what is a favorite recent movie or TV show my favorite movies for some weird reason are all the movies around uh like the great financial crisis so um why I hav..."

"question what is a favorite interview question you like to ask candidates ah you find I actually don't like as we talked earlier I don't like questions I just like looking at the work um but when I lo..."

"do they do underwear I think so I I yeah I'm pretty sure or they do like boxer they also have the shorts with the liner in them that's the ultimate life hack you just reduce one piece of clothing yeah..."

"I think exactly the same way with this podcast I try really hard to stick to people that are have done the thing and when Casey Winters came on the podcast after he's just like Lenny make sure you sta..."