Land your dream job in today’s market: negotiation tactics, job search councils, and more | Phyl Terry (Author, “Never Search Alone”)

24:49We're our skills and experience. That's the product that we're bringing to markets. And we have to go see what the market wants. We know now we have a session where we want, but when is the market going? And what are some of our trusted friends? What do they think about what I want and what I'm a citizen? And what do they think I'm a fit for now? Given the market conditions that we have. Right? I will tell you, people are terrified to do the listening to it. They're like, I don't know. What am I going to hear for people? Because I asked them to ask a golden question. You know what? If you were in my shoes, how would you approach this?

25:21I call that the golden question. It's such a creative question. It really opens the conversation. But they're thinking, oh, no, people can tell me all this stuff. No, lots of people telling you this. It's worth the while you get a helpful piece of critique. Oh, you're, you make everything a priority in which case nothing is. Yeah. 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 love, I mean, the people who are in jobs, they love, they love helping others if it's done well. Because guess what?

25:56They're also anxious themselves. And they want to give back. They want to feel like, you know, they're supporting people. And that 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 sort of 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 on that specific point, so this listening tour, you write this manookan, manookan two -pager, which basically describes what you want, what you don't want, goals you have, what you hate.

26:44And 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 you're going to go. Yeah. And what, and what they're seeing in the market, what they think you're fit. I see. God, it's like, oh, this is unrealistic. You're not going to get this job. That's right. Like looking for that. And we see both things, Lenny. So some people underestimate, you know, 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.

27:17One, I call reverse exit interviews. This is what people you used to work with before, right? Go ask them. Hey, what, 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 using. 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, here, this is, this is an important hack. Recruiters don't like being barraged with getting me a job. They do like someone saying him, what do you think I'm a fit for?

27:58asking their advice. And this is especially true if you've pre -built a relationship with the 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 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 it. Okay. So part of what we're doing with the never -search alone community is we're building a recruiter network.

28:39We're finding recruiters who are willing to, in a protected way, do a couple of conversations of months helping people think about their candidate market fit. And if anyone listening to the show's recruiter, please come join us and volunteer. We need more recruiters. I know many of you want to get back and you don't know how. You tell me this. Here's a way to give it. I love that. Okay. And so the intent of this is that you're trying to figure out one, what does the market want? Yeah. How do I be honest about what it wants? Because it may not be what you want, may not exist right now. And then to help you refine your pitch and how you're approaching and who you're talking to.

29:21Is there anything else that comes out of doing this exercise? Because I think people might be hearing us like, not so much work. I have enough work to do all these interviews. I have a chance of people. I got kids and family like 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 now you turn people on as listening posts. So you light up your network in a way that you, you know, if you just put, if you just, if you just send an email saying, I want a job or if you say, hey, if you're in my shoes, how would you approach this?

29:57And what do you think? You know, if you were me, you know, I should be looking for them. What do you see in the market? Well, 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, we're going to create a very simple narrow focus candidate market fit statement at the end of the listening tour. So once you've now turned this listening tour, now you need to create a focus candidate market fit. And this is tough. And this isn't, look, again, this is why you need a job search counsel.

30:27You 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. Like you could have a conversation. You know, I, I, I, a number of women that I have worked with over the years who gone and done conversations and they've gotten like, frankly, sexist feedback. That was not helpful. You know, you're too poised or you're not poised enough. Yeah. It's just like this strange set of stuff. So you need your, your counsel's, I'm sorry, help you.

30:58Carse out and interpret what people are telling you. And at the end of this listening tour, and you never, 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 expensive to want it to be broad. Remember, we're product people, at least those of us in the Linney's podcast community. What happens when we're building a product? Same thing, right? We want, we can, we want this product to be for everyone.

31:31But we've learned with product market fit. That doesn't work. Right. We need a narrow, clear focus. Same thing with candidate market set. So I say to people, and we have this whole grid that we give them. You know, I am, I'm looking for a director of product role in a healthcare series beast in San Francisco. You know, 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 net. With a net, everything slips through. Now, part two of this, people are expensive, but not reductive. What are you talking about, Phil?

32:14Here's what I mean. If you give them a specific, if I say to you, Lenny, I'm looking for a director of product role in a healthcare startup that's a series B in San Francisco. Well, if you see another like financial search, a FinTech startup that's a, 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? Fuel 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.

32:51And I'll tell you, Lenny, this is so hard for people, you know, and this is why again, you need that counsel and you need that broader community. And every week, we 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, approaching this like a product person, and this is very much like a product person thinks about new products is there should be a very narrow audience to start with kind of a wedge or an ICP.

33:24When 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. Now, you know, 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 looking for that doesn't have design or looking to reboot design, you're going to think of her immediately.

34:05Because 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 posted on LinkedIn, you're like, tell the whole world, right? Now, will that candidate market fit change over time? Yeah, 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. Did it get a bit like two weeks ago, the market, the stock market was convinced we're going into a recession and everything crashed two weeks later.

34:48I'm like, oh no, we're not going into a recession. And that affects the psychology of hiring managers and companies, not just psychology, they're willing us to open up recs 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 it a little bit more, when someone is, someone's thinking right now, like, okay, what are my attributes?

35:17What are the, what's on that grid? Roughly their stage of company. I imagine there's a lot of industry level of role and function, of course, and culture. Is there like a set of options you have a type of culture? Basically, everyone wants a good culture. And it's so so culture. I mean, sometimes it can be very specific. Like I need a company that has a particular kind of policy for kids or whenever, 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 -cent 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 o -lending, looking for cheap product, or all.

36:10Yeah, it's exactly like you want your product to feel too. Exactly. I need a sock to complain. So I'm going to think that's a much clearer. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I'm thinking through this list here. So I think so level and role, I imagine people kind of get a pretty good sense of where they want to be stage. 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 jobs, search counsel, your network, and your own experience.

36:48And it becomes pretty people usually have a pretty good sense. Like, who was I talking to recently? I just need a big, you know, whereas maybe I don't want that one, the startup. Okay. 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 okay, in the tech world for product people. That's where new job creation has been happening. It's slower than it was before, but it's the big companies, they've just been shedding people. They've just been, you know, throwing them off, right? Whereas the smaller companies, there's more opportunity there.

37:27Now that doesn't mean that if you can't stand working at a startup, you should, 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, right? Like, we were talking to someone recently, they were, 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. Okay. And they're like, okay, I need to get a job. I said, I've got you yet, sure, you know, just know that it, you know, if you're going to get any job just to have while you still look for a long, the job you really want, there's just know that that's a heart, that's a hard pin.

38:05I 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 counsel. You know, because otherwise you're going to, 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, you know, you know, economy, old media company. It was not, you know, 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 cold assacco.

38:43And by the way, that company's had layoffs and like they would have. So they decided they wanted to go work for a company like Netflix or Apple TV, right? But and there's someone who ran hundreds of people, quarter office, limo, first class, you know what I mean? In the airplane. What was their cannon market bid? They went out and did this their cannon market fit. If they were going to join a top streamer was as an individual contributor. Lenny, that was the, because those kind of like they didn't respect much of what they brought from traditional media. And if he had done this search alone, he would not have done the two is credit, he decided to take that and it's foreign just career.

39:24There's not something who had a lot of management experience, but also tied down with one of the top streamers. He's just, he's just done incredibly well. But that is really hard to do. So in this example, when you talk about cannon market fittings, my 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. That's right. 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.

39:55This can be hard in nearly any time to figure out. We had another person who was a cheap 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 her cannon market fit? It was nice. It was nice. He was a nice role individual contributor role in a larger, you know, tech company. And to her credit, she realized that was the right path for her learning. You know, and she did this before the shoot.

40:31They didn't really hit the fan. I'm in the tech world. Fortunately, just not swear. So this, you know, I talked about this in the book. Like sometimes you need a two step strategy. Like let's say you want to be a VP of product at a top streaming company or whatever it is. You know, but you're not a fit for that today. So the question is how do you step there? I tell a story of the book about guy who had been a VP of product. He wanted a CO low 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 tour. They came back to me and said, I don't care.

41:05I want to see a role. So he interviewed 50 companies, right? 50. Can you imagine who took him a year and the 50th company hired him 10 days later, your public company, massive fraud, and they went bankrupt. I said, okay, like you are the market is clearly only see a role you're a fit for. Is it probably that's about to go bankrupt? Like, and you're 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 passes do it from that job inside a company. Okay. And that's what he ended up doing. It was a two step strategy.

41:44He couldn't go straight there. I'm not talking about people's innate worth, Lenny. I believe every human is 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, how many people have you seen Lenny who gets stuck? They, you know, they get stuck in a bad job. They're not learning. And then they keep going from there.

42:18They get into their 40s and 50s. And it is tough. A number of people in the jobs research 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. So 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, you're going to find yourself stuck.

42:54I love your Ben diagram of just like warmth and support and belonging and also just like straight real talk. Here's the reality. Yeah. What a combo. How's that? Such a 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? Like, okay, maybe I really should be looking for a nice 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.

43:31So that's a big thing. If that just is not you, there's not totally 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 things I tell, 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 one that 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'm reference to Merleys Cheap Procter Officer, he's a note on LinkedIn today, he said, you know, Phil told me to keep people updated and I didn't do it enough and don't make that mistake.

44:10You got to do that. Lenny, I met with a group of about 50 job seekers recently who've been in the never -searchal 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 network. 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.

44:46One of the concepts in I -in village, and the I -in village is that when I'm saying you've got to ask for help, you've got to be a part of job search council to me, 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. Joining council, bring people on board with you, update people on your progress.

45:21Like, these are the things that break you out of that monk that you're probably in. And it will still be hard. It will still be hard. I wish that weren't true, Lenny. Now, this will - now, I will tell you that, look, what's the difference between now and the .com depression of 2000, 2001 and 2002? The difference is that we were a much smaller industry than it. 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 it out here. Have never seen a market like this. We've never seen a tech market like this.

45:57It will improve at some point. But right now, it's tough and I can't change it, 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 you're going to resist the narrowness of it. It 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 and Nike, I met him through Marty and Chris at Silicon Valley product group.

46:45He joined one of our product councils. And then he decided to leave. And he was like, Phil, I love you, but this Canada market fits stuff. No, you're wrong. It needs to be Brian. 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 put that. So he redid it. Bam, bam, bam. I tell another story in the book about Dee Dee. She was a cheap data officer. She of a large company. She wanted to be a CTO. She had a technology and engineering background as well as data.

47:24She spent a year spending her wheels alone. I said, join the job search accounts. She figured out her candidate market fit. It turned out she was a great sit for a midsize regional bank CTO, right? And within three weeks, she had three offers. A year and nothing within three weeks, three offers. So I can't guarantee that you're going to get three offers within three weeks, right? I'm not saying that. Some of you might take you six months or 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 Chipotle. Who just became the CEO of Starbucks.

48:03I know you're creating a page that we're going to link people to, which is I think, oh, is it filled out org slash Lenny? Yes. Okay. Cool. And is it going to have this template to help you work out your kind of market fit? There'll be a link to where you can download not only that template, but all the templates. You only even have to join a job search counsel get all this stuff. I hope you do. Again, it's free. People like, I will say early on, people like, let'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?

48:37Because one, I can, which is cool. Second, this is an 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, 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.

49:10And I think within that, there's this kind of okay R in 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. Okay. 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 Ophila saying that I've got to be a ruthless negotiator.

49:56If anyone who knows me, I'm like, ruthless is just not, not, I am, you know, at least in this sense. And no, no, I'm like, what I want you to do. And it's it's it's it's great. 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, and your listeners who aren't involved, who you 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 do it privately, Lenny. And I want you to create what I call a job mission with OCRs.

50:37Now 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 OCRs. This is key. It needs to be with OCRs. Now your audience knows what an OCR is. Adject isn't 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, right? At the company that you join.

51:14At 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 a 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?

51:49I don't want you to email it. I want you to phone call Zoom or coffee or whatever. And Lenny, can you imagine how hiring managers feel when they get this job issue with OTRs? I was talking to a senior guy at Amazon who's hired more than 2 ,000 product leaders and others. He said, Phil, no one in this was he's part of our product count. 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, the civil metal sucks. At the Olympics, Hey, it's pretty good.

52:28You get me on the podium. But guess what? Civil matter is it's almost worse than and 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 gold has been doing the job mission with OTRs. Companies say, this is what distinguished you. This is what let we were like, who is this person? They're already thinking about what they're accountable in the outcomes and naturally they're thinking about it better than I am, which is fantastic. So it raises the odds. But it also does something. If you present it again, Lenny, you're the hiring manager.

53:03I show you my job. And you're like, Oh, this is fantastic. We also, you know, this thing you have here, this is a care. 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 ahead of you taking the job A that turned out to be job B. Everybody just raised their hands. Lenny, so this helps to address that, right? You've got. So, and then if you get the offer and again, negotiate what I call the four legs of the negotiations tool.

53:46This 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 see your manager. Um, if, you know, maybe it's an 800 base, if you're more senior, whatever it might be, I want you to go and talk to the hiring manager if possible. Not there, hopefully not the recruiter that 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 see heat in this room.

54:26Like, 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 CPO's. Both interviewing at private equity firms is about that private equity companies, about the same size, sounds companies. One had tech debt of 20 million, one had tech debt of 10. I told them both, you got to get that, you know, talk about that in the, so one talked about it in the negotiation and the company was like, oh, that's great. They wrote a check on day one.

54:59Six 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 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.

55:34Now, again, don't hear this as antagonistic. We're not antagonistic here. We're trying to say, whoops, going to help me succeed. So once CPO recently was negotiating, like, I'm not just talking about budget and I'm for tech debt or whatever. Like, if you're a senior person, like, do you think that 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, he, the company's like, you don't negotiate any the training budget of the team that you don't even run yet. Well, we're talking about your salary. We're lying.

56:06What will you love you? We're going to pay you even more. That'd be he - it's like, 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, 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 a really cool advice. I want to make sure people super understand it. So an example of tech debt.

56:37So this person asked, I need 10 million dollars budget in order to address this tech debt. Yeah. I see. So it's not like, I believe we will save 10 million dollars if we spend on time. It's like, here's how much this team will need and I will need to send them over. I'm in a needy check for 10 million dollars on day one. I guess you would be shy to ask you for that. Or that was 20 million actually. That was the one that asked for those the 20 million. That was right. And again, it was not yet people feel really shy about this. But the company was like, love that they understood what it was going to take.

57:11I 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 to hire three more ICs. Or the design function is weak or whatever it might be. And then 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 finished negotiating your salary. And this is so counterintuitive, Lenny. I'm serving the queen of counterintuitive stuff.

57:54Can't it market city is chakras, but intuitive, right? But this is as well. People think people think they're going to lose the opportunity when it actually wins them. Now, of course, if they march in and said, damn it, you have to do X and Y, that's all I'm talking about. Hey, here's how I see it. This is the 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, 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.

58:30You're like, well, especially if you need a job, right? But you're now going in ice -white 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, vice 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's less negotiating room today than there was two years ago because of the market that we're in.

59:07And the data bears that out. We see that. But here's 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 Hyremet. This is this is this is how this thing connects together, right? It's like Legos. And then 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're, see, Lenny, the problem that every hiring manager has is distinguishing someone between someone who is a good talker and someone who can actually make things happen. You know this, right?

59:45And this is true every from, you know, individual contributor to CEO by doing the job mission with the 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 and the salary 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 then let's talk money. Now 87 % of the time, Lenny, when you ask for more money, you get it.

1:00:22Now that's a long 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, you know, M &A negotiators, whatever. No, like, you know, are you open unless there'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, you know, up to 100 % whatever in some RSUs or options, blah, blah. And you really wanted 450. Lenny, you can say, hey, are you open to 450?

1:01:08That was really what I was hoping for when I think, you know, 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 even get you, they may not get you to 450. They're like, you know, yes, thank you. We could let me get back to you, you know, or we could go to 420. Does that work? You know, great. You make it sound very easy. I do too. And I talked about this in the book and Jason free here, you know, so, you know, Jason Freetz got this great thing where they have all very clear bands 37 signals. Well, at base camp, he was like, there's no one's trained in negotiation.

1:01:45I from me, 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 nature are 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 every bone in your body is going to say, I'm not going to negotiate. That's going to, 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. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about collaborative conversation.

1:02:15I'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've signed up for. And then asking, you know, are you open to it? You know, if they didn't quite hit your range. Yeah. Like the way you phrase it make it make it very very low risk to ask. Yeah. Do you have any specific advice on doing this over email over 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.

1:02:50Now, 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, that even if it's to say, hey, I just want to run by you some of the things I think I need to succeed in the role, you know, before we talk money, you know, with the hiring manager, whatever, with the recruiter I mean. And they'll go to bad for you behind the scenes if you do that. And 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.

1:03:27That's right. Have some companies like, 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. It's okay. Our is 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.

1:03:58Every step of the way. This episode is brought to you by Dovetail, the customer insight 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 and 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 insight hub that automates end -to -end qualitative data analysis and insight discovery. The 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.

1:04:42And when you need quick clarity on a decision, you can use Dovetail's AI -powered semantic search to retrieve supporting data from or cross 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 comp is there anything else there that you might want to share that might be helpful to people?

1:05:18In the book, before you do the listening to her, I ask 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. What, whoever we are, that you know, even even the kermit and the devil was born to a mother, okay? And they did not make it themselves for the first several years of their lives, right?

1:05:58We all are born of mothers. We all are born as families and communities, some better or worse. I had a pretty tough childhood, but you know, there was love and 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 last year. You might not talk to your third grade teacher, but you'll talk to them. Now, when you're going into interview, I ask people to take a moment and re -re -re -re -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 counsel, of course, and everyone you've talked to your listening tour, you're walking in with 50 people, Lenny, okay?

1:06:47Even people will 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 cockamany ideas about what happened. We think we did terribly when we did, wow, we think, yeah, and we need to talk it through with someone else who can help us like parse exactly what happened and really where we're at, you know.

1:07:29I had a woman who said director of product, she was interviewing for VP of Pronec roles, she texted me after the interview. Oh, I screwed it up. This isn't that. This isn't 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. Like this is just your own imposter syndrome and inner critic. That's another exercise we ask people to do, by the way, is what we call the inner critic exercise. Name the critic. You know, mine is tub tour. I was overweight when I was a kid. My dad caught me tub tour. I learned that tactic from Julie Cameron from the artist's way.

1:08:07She recommends that. Yes, she's great. Love that book. By the way, it's on my bookshelf back there. Love that. I think I called mine Jim. Yeah, we had a really good episode on Afisao Joe Hudson. He has a whole series of advice on your inner critic and has pointed out point to it is your inner critic is always lying to you. Yeah, I did see that episode. I love it. We all have it. People think all right. Yeah, like everyone. That's what I love about this moment. We're into Lenny. You know, I started at therapy in the 1980s. In the 1980s, you did not share that you were in therapy. Okay. Today, we have tennis stars talking about their emotional well -being and their therapy and how they're doing.

1:08:53Like we have proof. You know, it's beginning to normalize in some really important ways that, you know, emotions are, they're not bad. And they're actually really important to the decision making system. But they can also, they can go off in certain ways that they can, they can really hurt us. And it feels like these councils are like a light therapy. Yes. I wouldn't say that I wouldn't never want to say that we're at therapy because of course that implies certification and training. But there's a therapeutic aspect to it. I feel comfortable saying that. Yeah. Okay. So in this gratitude house was coming back there real quick.

1:09:31Yeah. The reason that is powerful is that gives you confidence to ask for stuff to believe in yourself. Give yourself confidence to walk in there is who you are. Lenny, not as you're inner critic, but as the whole good person that you are. You know, and that's, and when you show up, this is one of the reasons jobs search councils are so important because if your anxiety and fear starts to run away and erode at your confidence, it will hurt your interview. You will not show up well. You know, so you're not going to even even in a down market, you're going to get even, you know, you won't even get the jobs that, you know, your candidate market fits, adjust your good for in that down market.

1:10:09You're going to get slide down a few more notches, you know, 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, 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. I got tingles when you said that. That was a really powerful message.

1:10:44I'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 just be really, I just, 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 let it. So when I asked a lot of people what 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.

1:11:25So let's talk about it. Talk about why this is so important. Why why you spend so much time on this topic. First I'm going to shout out my mom again. So my mom's name her nickname was chick CHIC. 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. 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.

1:12:04I was I was alcoholic at the age of 12 learning 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 oh, M G. Let me I mean, it just, you know, 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 and high school Karen Kavanaugh whose family had very few resources. They were struggling. But they 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, you know, I was I was, I was, you know, I worked a full time job by the age of 16.

1:13:00And 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. You know, 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, there is a warning here. If you ask for help poorly, and I'm going to decide that, it does end up leading to bad consequences. What do I mean by asking you, bro? I mean, if you don't do your homework, if you're asking for someone to do it for you, rather than advise and supporting you to be prospective, we all know that.

1:13:44Right. Like I get, I get these emails. Lenny, so when I started the product councils, Merissa Meyer was a founding man. Right. Merissa Meyer, Google and Mary and Mojita Amazon. And as Merissa's reputation grew, certainly, I really wanted to talk to Merissa. If I got all these random emails, if you'll have never met, I've got software. Would you please introduce me to Merissa? I think she'd want to, you know, license it or, you know, buy a Google. You know, I'm like, who are you? 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.

1:14:17I have this small software company. I'm not well connected. But I, 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. You know, and then they have said, well, can I talk to Merissa? I'm like, you have not earned that yet. That's not, 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, in your open, oh my gosh, there's four counterintuitive rules here.

1:14:58Asking 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've got to ask for help. I'm like, well, if you ask for help and you're open and vulnerable, you're a smart person. So at one point, Merissa 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?

1:15:36Am I approaching this in the right way? People like, what? You know, Google's already a public company at this point. Like, wow, they were like, they were just blown away. They were so happy. How? Right. So if you 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 will prove it. Imagine that somebody that you respect comes to you for help on an area that you have expertise.

1:16:12And they ask you in this way, how are you going to feel? Lenny? How do you feel? I like the value. Like the value of my opinion and you feel honored. And you feel excited and you love giving. Everyone loves giving. This is it's the 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 side of weakness. It's not a taking activity. It means you're becoming more independent and 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.

1:16:45And it took the experience to drill into my head. And then I will tell you like I will, I won't name names because one person that you asked who's prominent product person has worked a great company. He said, tell ask him about ask you for help. I think he would agree with this. You've been a member of the Prodigy Council 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 and I know there's something to it, but it is transformative, Lenny. It is transformative. If you learned to ask real well, and you know, I can tell you about Brad Smith, it into it, who set, toppled the stock price there.

1:17:32But 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 for a company. He thought, okay, that's over. But they came to him and said, what's your lesson here? He said they didn't ask, I didn't ask for help. You know, I was p -catted, I didn't listen to my G. 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 into 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 action in his tenure, okay?

1:18:08Kinshinole, an American Express, joins in the 1980s, one of the few African Americans in professional roles there, ends up as a CEO chairman of the board, okay? First African -American chairman of the Fortune 50 company, right? You asked Kinshinole, as I did. How did 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 if you Warren Buffett. People think Warren Buffett only listens to himself at Charlie Munger, who passed away last year. That guy asked for help.

1:18:45Well, I didn't ask anybody for help. Yes, 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 updated in the book, 85 % of people get to a senior role, credit, ask people for help, get help, get them there. 85 % of 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 really the same number of people believe that I couldn't believe it when I did the data. I was like, what? But it's really is, and guess what? If you don't learn to ask for help in your junior person, you're going to remain a junior person most likely.

1:19:19When you say ask for help, what are some examples and common times and uses of asking for help? 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? What are some things that you've seen when people think ask for help to this? One of the things that Kinsh and I'll talk about is what he calls defining reality. So it's a 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 do you see? And what do you think? Help me understand your perspective.

1:19:49So that's a form of asking for help, for sure. Okay. Reviewing my email absolutely is a great form of asking for help. If you're, 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, that's for help. You know, 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. Okay. But I still, if it's really important email, 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.

1:20:27And Lenny, she realized that she had significant technical debt. And the project that they were, they were trying to build a new platform that was stuck. They were, so we convened what we call it peer coaching call. And I also talked about this in the book. We got three other presidents of retailers, online retailers who would re -platform and spend an hour, just one hour with her asking them for help. What would you do if you were in my position? I mean, Bing, Bing, Boole. 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.

1:21:04You know, not at that company necessarily, but, you know, they're a director product. They're a VP product, whatever it might be. And I want you to say, Hey, I'm starting this job. You know, here's my job mission with OCRs. What would you do if you were in my shoes? What mistakes have you seen others or your self -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 product in a job is going, well, and you want to get to a VP product role. Well, then I want you to do a career revolution fall where you're talking to VP's product.

1:21:37Okay, I'm a director. I want to become a VP. How do I get for me to be? Will you tell me? And that's another peer coach you call. So these are the things we do in the paid community in the product councils. So, 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 is these helpful answers? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think all these examples you're sharing is exactly. I think what people are wondering. Just like, okay, I see. Yeah. I can share one more. That's so great. So Bradley Horowitz joined Google in 2008 is director product.

1:22:08Right. So he'd come from Yahoo. But there's, you know, he was, he was initially intimidating. He had a weekly meeting with Jonathan Rosenberg who was the FVP product with Susan Wajitski. Susan, you know, just passed away tragically. Absolutely fabulous person. By the way, people don't know or go go learn about her. Marissa Meyer. And also another director of product named Sundar Pichai, right? Who is now the CEO of Google? And you know, Bradley was like, you know, 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?

1:22:52Because 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. They was very approachable. That he lacked guile. He, you know, 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 to the first question he has is, is this meeting, is it just me or is this meeting intense? You know, I 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.

1:23:29So they start to build a bond, you know, and that's a form of asking for help. It's like you're checking like it is your experience the same as mine or my, you know, my 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, you know, Sundar, you strike me as a really thoughtful person and great leader.

1:24:06Why is your remit just working on a toolbar for Melissa, for Marissa, right? And like, whoa, you know, that's per 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 operate. But again, he had trust, the 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. So, no, pitch, I basically said, listen, ah, I don't worry about title or scope or any of that. I really been focused on just doing good work and letting the right things happen.

1:24:38That's a culture of Google. That will tell you that that was more true of the culture of Google. And away, that's not so, I think I can't, 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 a part of the product council's Bradley.

1:25:11Like you, you need to have that sounding board so you can be thoughtful about. 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, but never lead alone. Just to give a little, worrying at least a year away. When I write a book, I do, I did 400 drafts of never search I had a couple of thousand people help me with it and 200 people read it and use it. I had two 2500 comments and foreign drafts. I like to really dog through this stuff. Okay. And I'm going to end doing the same with never lead alone.

1:25:49That's that's how I know it works. Either way, I'm a friend at first. Lenny, I mean, that's what we do. That's good. 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 a couple of 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 the email? I'm 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 Merissa Meyer.

1:26:24I didn't know them. They didn't know me and they didn't know where it's like 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'm going to look at the email, you're going to respond in one way. If if some person, you know, let's say in your podcast, we, which is great, want 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 and the job search company and 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.

1:26:58You know, I appreciate you asking, but you know, that's what the deal is there. You've 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 Focac to 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.

1:27:37Okay. But I'm, but I'm actually acting like I'm doing you will say Lenny, I have this person to talk to. I know it's really going to be great for you to talk to when really I'm trying to, you know, do get you to give me, whereas I should 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 a, 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, the 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 called introductions Lenny where people introduce me to someone else with that ask?

1:28:20Yeah. It's like, it's not it's super common, but it does happen for sure. It almost never is someone you want to touch it. Yeah, that's right. It's not like, hey, let me, let me introduce you to Sergei Brant, you know, it's not that. No. It's like they're trying to help somebody and you're doing them a favor, but they're not being honest. Yeah. Okay. That's amazing advice. Um, 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. Uh, 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?

1:29:00And then I'm going to ask you to share all the things that you do for people that maybe could benefit from when these other programs. When when my book came out, we did a we did a book party in New York and the host of it, very 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, everyone. It's built into the fabric of how capitalism operates. It's not something problematic in your head.

1:29:42It's it's it's the instability of the system, which gives it its dynamism, but which also creates trends in security and fear. Everyone feels that Lenny, you're not alone and just discovering it, but but my saying that is not enough. What I say in the book is that this is this book is like a cookbook. You don't get the calories from reading. 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 drawn out. Even Lenny, Lenny feels this holy, I'm just letting me, you know, wow, look at everything Lenny has done and created and he feels this way.

1:30:28Maybe maybe I'm not crazy. You know, so I, you know, 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 a 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've created something that's really meaningful to a lot of people. Thanks Phil. So have you. I'm so thankful that you made time to share so much advice.

1:31:04I think this is going to be one of those popular episodes I've done. I think it's going to help a ton of people. We're not done yet. Tell us about some of the other stuff that you've got going on. You've mentioned Prada councils. You've got you do coaching just so people know what else might benefit them. 21 years ago, I started these Prada councils, right? 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. He was a DBA. Okay. Wow. And I'm sure he would have we were about to sign a project and he decided he'd call me up.

1:31:37I literally were signing that day. He called me up. So I got that news. I mean, what are you talking about? I'm leaving. I'm leaving and I'm starting something and he started the Silicon Valley Prada group. But why am I saying that? Because that was around the time that I started the councils. And I started with meris. I basically I went out and did a listening to her. 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 and we need a private, safe, secure environment to really talk.

1:32:14Does that resonate with you? Do you want that? And they were like, yeah, that is right. So I started this thing and Martin has been involved from day one. He has sent me something like 30 % involved in members we've had over the years. We've had a couple thousand members. He just he just sends people over which has been amazing. And so we had Prada councils for VPs and CPO's. 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.

1:32:51And 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. An amazing, Teresa Torres was one of the moderators of our private councils by the way. And great friend and it's been on the podcast here. You know, obviously great trying to be yours. She asked me to really emphasize asking for help and share some of the stories that I did. She's just been such such an important part of my life. I can't say enough about her.

1:33:27And so that's what we've got those own and we have CEO groups and we have UX groups. That's my that's my day job. That's sort of what what 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've just I'm you know, I'm one of these I like I read. I'm if you have to be like what what what if you had one job title, what would be reader. I am I read Lenny. Books are machines to think with. Books are machines to think with. And I'm on a you know campaign to get more people reading more. You know, because and product leaders need to read more.

1:34:05I 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. Okay, which for life, long 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 mother 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 is pro bono.

1:34:44We're all volunteer. We have a small charge for middle class families and it's free for anyone who can't afford it. And that's a summer program and it's going gangbusters. What else will slow our day. So one of these 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. Okay, I and mentorship programs is like it's like the typewriter, our parents or grandparents had them, but we don't have them that companies don't offer. One of the ways that you everyone listening to this podcast today can get a mentor.

1:35:24You can get when I call the 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 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 pay 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 King. He wandered the wilderness for 10 years. He created a company called Next, which wasn't next.

1:36:04And then in 95, 96, Apple buys the operating system from Next and makes Steve and the company is really bad shape and makes Steve the interim CEO. It's room. It wouldn't give him the full title. They're like, you're, you're, the business is so terrible. You're going to destroy it anyway with whatever you'll be interim. And he does a bunch of stuff. But he gives a talk in 1997. He got tattered whole genes. There's 300 people at the, 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.

1:36:42And 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 then we'll help you think about design if you create great products. So I started company, something I'll slow our day.

1:37:16Right. Which has now been in 1500 museums who are not the world. It teaches people how to slow down and look. And especially for Lenny's podcast, I am making pre 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 off site 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 blur your mind. So you mentioned Marty Kagan and Christian a couple times.

1:37:54And Marty Kagan described Chris as the most interesting person in the world. I feel like you deserve that title. It was just so 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. You're ready. Here we go. And you've talked about books.

1:38:32I 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.

1:39:05Everybody 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 John Creation happens. And product people, you've got to be close to the frontier. You've got to do whatever you get. If you're at a company that's not close to the frontier, do stuff that I've working at Moody's Investor Service. I built one of the first 2000 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.

1:39:36I 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. Okay. And I want you and rereading is important. And people said, oh, I listened two or three times speed on the audio book. I mean, you are not going to have that deeply informed your decision made. 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 got to, you know, for the important books, Len, you got to read them more.

1:40:18And 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 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 of that book because I really hammer it at home in my book. So if you go on to Amazon, you'll see the book this most bad along with my book is that book, right?

1:40:53I have other books I recommend that are on my website that those are those are two or three. Amazing. On the listening to things I 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. But that just listens 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 Azulets. Las Azulets, the Blues. It's about the first women recruited onto the police force of Mexico City in 1971 or two.

1:41:34And it's, you know, of course it speaks to me because 1970s these are women in the, you know, my mom and how close I was to her and what I saw the world through my mother's eyes, Lenny, and it really shaped me. But it's a great, it's a great TV show. I love that. Of course I love to show that, you know, 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 um, oh, 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?

1:42:14The character Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso. Thank you. So the kindness in there. And by the way, a great message you're around asking for help in that. The last thing I'll say of course is the inside out movies that the second one came out this summer. Just the way it's normalizing emotions again and helping us start to talk about emotions. You'll 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 an interview better.

1:42:46I'm curious if there's like a question that you've heard that you really like. If you are the interviewee, right, 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 the senior level person and it's and what? Because they often fail bringing senior level people in to companies. So ask them what happened and why and figure out how can we avoid that outcome? Okay. 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 and you want to check references, I have the most amazing question, the most amazing question.

1:43:30This, 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. It is, if you're, if you're, 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. Okay. 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.

1:44:04And it's, it's just, it cuts through a 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 from back from them, they're not necessarily amazing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So it's, you know, you're leaving that space there. And, and by the way, I love doing that for Betchem. So I want, when you've started job, or when you are accepting an offer, or interviewing, I want you to back channel that possible. Talk to people who work with them, if you can't use your network. And I said, you know, would you work with this person? And, 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've called me back?

1:44:43He'd know. And so you can do a four of it that way. You have a 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 get, but I'm hoping you and your community will appreciate this. So I did recently discovered, but I'm going to talk about a book, Lenny. So 25 years ago, got in Robert Strasser, 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 Herodidus and DuCity's expert. And they couldn't get it.

1:45:19And 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 it with 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.

1:46:01You 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 on masterpiece language, the landmark series, landmark, either 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, and I want product people any 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 that, you know, because I don't want you all looking at the same stuff because you're going to just create the same stuff.

1:46:55So I love, you know, I love tools like Calon Lee, 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 lady page, but he's, he get on the amp if you do landmark carotidists or landmark the cities. 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?

1:47:27Of course, we talked about Ask You 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 talked about this all the time, we have to be thinking. And if we, and people do it, and I coach people, I was like, 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, but it'll help and shift your perspectives, 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.

1:48:04That'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 fill .org and sign up for a job search council. There you go. It's free and it will transform your search. Is it going to answer or relooking 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.

1:48:44Yeah. So there's fill .org and then there's fill .org slash Lenny, which has a lot of the templates and things that you're referenced. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Final, actual question. How can listeners be useful to you? That's such a lovely question. So on the Lenny page that filled on to work, I outlined some ways. So we're going to, we're raising $100 ,000 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 A .I. and I'm taking all my speaking fees and putting it to this. But people can also make a donation just to that.

1:49:19They can also volunteer and we're looking for, if anyone's a sales force admin, I'd love to have you volunteer with us. If any, if you have really good PHP experience, let me know. If any of you are really good at type foreign 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 where 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 building.

1:50:06People ask me like, is this good in the hard, this is born out of hard moments. This in a great job market, it's easier to say, 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 our moment to be there for people. This is what, and I would love so many people still don't know this. Let it, 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.

1:50:46We are changing this negative consequence of creative destruction that people just been left to fend with on their own. Well, I'm excited to be helping spread the word. Feel 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.

1:51:25See you in the next episode.