The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG)

25:56Let's launching the app there at 25 and that's then. So I will know I am not ready until I have achieved 25 people that have told me, walked with me and said, I am now ready to put my reputation in the line. Sometimes I need to walk with 30 people or 50 people because the output is 25 reference customers. Because if Lennie is like, I don't love it enough or I don't feel comfortable, I'm not gonna customize for Lennie. I'm gonna find my single target market, talk to more people. but if I get 25, I have a sheen put up market fit. So interesting. It basically kicks in this word of mouth, flywheel, that everyone's always looking for.

26:33Is how do I get people to talk about? Build it for themselves, their problems, tell them that it exists. So you'd mention a bit about how you understand if it's actually what's called product market fit. If you have product market fit with these people that you ask them if they're gonna leave you a five -star view. For example, I guess what do you consider? This is good. I got one more person that's really happy with this. What tells you it's got product market fit with a person? If I were thinking about how I won't do this, so I mean, take the problem to solve. First of all, I have to know who I'm solving the problem for.

27:03I think in some indication that I want to validate that this, you know, this is actually a problem you do have. And I'm looking for a set some type of person, you know, I, you know, this early adopters in our world are broken up to technologies and early vangilists, you know, you know, technologies could be, you know, I love the new iPhone 16 is coming out and it's gonna have five cameras and I write the nautical and sub -tech review board super fast super slick all the design that's you just love new technology you you always job on new technology and Ali Vanjelis could be someone that says oh my I look great with the iPhone 15 it has three cameras I will look phenomenal with the iPhone 16 so I'm gonna go stand in line at the Apple store for three hours or overnight because I just can't wait to get my hands on the Apple 16.

27:53There may feel a little irrational, but those are the kind of people you're looking for. People that believe they have a problem soon, it's like you would try any steakhouse. In my example, you're just like, I love steak, I don't care if they are reviews or not, like, I'll try it. I'm trying to do years, I'm saying okay, then he loves steak, he wants to try steakhouse and I'm good to say letty. I'm trying to build a best steakhouse here. If I create a menu that you absolutely love, are you willing to tell people about it? That could be, you know, video testimonial, writes and reviews, stuff like that.

28:25And you know, it's okay, Len, if you don't love the first iteration of it, and stuff like that, I want to hear your feedback, I want you to walk with me in ensuring that I build the best thick house here, right? And that's kind of the idea. So I'm going to walk with 25 people that look like you, and I'm going to tweak in in this sense either reaching on the product and the menu until then it's like my goodness is the best thing house in the world. You know, I was like I'm just gonna write about it. You know, and I'm gonna get when I get 25 people that have all it's not a stick house. They love it enough because this is where you really get the shifting value because if I say let me go right me review a five -star view like I don't know if I feel comfortable about why not.

29:07You see I'm really going to get deeper feedback because people will say or do anything just to avoid hot signal feelings for us to get out of your face. So you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're giving a five -star review. But when I say do it, you're like, well, you know, I have this hesitation. Why? That's really where great discovery comes. But it's hard to do in a silo, you know, you have to be immersed with the person that has the problem. So put up market fit is when you kind of iterated in this discovery of discovered and delivered something so meaningful that these customers that are your target customers are willing to put their reputation on the line and be a reference.

29:46That's my indication. I imagine though, Christian, so charismatic comes to me and says, hey Lenny, would you leave me a five -star review for this product that I'm working on this? I'm trying to figure out if people want it. I would be like, yeah, or I'll leave you a five -star review. What do you do to kind of avoid that just like, I just want to be nice like, I don't care I'll leave a five star. It's one it's part of why I need 25 in B2C. You know, and don't get me wrong if I can convince 25 people in that I may have a marketing product and a car. It's a marketing marketing product. If that's all I needed to do was a good message and charisma to get people on it.

30:21The good benefit of this is that you can tackle risk very early because you can involve many other parts of your organization, marketing selves, you know, legal, finance. You know people often ask me like how do I come up with the marketing spill or the description I'm like I don't make that up You know if I actually any what do you feel about the products and he says well in school and it's a you know Very sleek and very nice the marketing department say we don't like those terms, you know Those are two we want to call it a comprehensive and you know and when you go out to To sell your product, people are going to be disappointed because the expectations are created by what's on the box.

31:04I only market exactly what customers don't. I have never been surprised about what customers will say when I release a product. Because in this technique, I already get their feedback and so I'm going to put exactly what then you said on the box. Hey, this product cool and sleek and easy to use. I've only launched a product that says super fast but difficult to read because the technology team said there was no way to change the font or something and it was just going to be difficult to read. And you know what everybody did when they got the product? Oh my goodness, it is super fast. All right, it is also difficult to read.

31:41It matched their expectations in some way. So what I do here is I learn how to sell the product with this technique. I learn how to market the product because I have real people that at the time we're not making assumptions. What's the best way to market this? How much learning? How would you find this? Does this language resonate with you? Does this properly described the menu? So that's kind of what you're doing when you use a technique like this. It feels heavy to people, but that's kind of part of the practice of it. If you do this a whole lot, you get really comfortable at involving, you're working with your customers to solve it.

32:18But for me, the fact that you will not have a product failure because you have a natural pivot out. Meaning if I can find 25 people that love steak, why in the world am I building the steak house? You know, so if you don't find it out, people that love this problem and are willing to help you, just like this, it's not a problem whatsoever. But more importantly, you really start to get, it's the fastest path to product market fit, the clearest definition for me, because I know where my product is ready. You know, I, I, I, when I've dotted those eyes and crossed those steaks, you know. I think your point there recruiting is itself a huge signal is really important.

32:54Can you find people that have this problem and care enough about this problem that they're going to talk to you and spend time exploring this thing that doesn't exist yet? I think that's super interesting. And then I think another key part of this is it's one solution that solves many people's problems that it can't be like a bunch of different things for a bunch of different people. That's right. That's right. If one person says I don't want this, what is this? Another person wants this, you don't do it. That's how you know you do the minimum. All 25 have to one the same thing. One person's heart, you just don't do it at all.

33:23And the reason that's powerful is because if I come to you and I say, hey, it's missing this feature. I say, well, yeah, 25 people that look like you that are very happy without it. You see, that's how if you think about what you do in a review, you see the five stars and you instantly, well, that's good enough. But if you have a question, what do you do? You cannot double click on the review to read and that's how people get convinced there's this social influence of like well you know I mean many school he likes the steakhouse actually like you know he's fine with this not being there so I should be fine with it so your references are super powerful in more than any company in influencing consumers on what they should choose on our shoes.

34:05Basically strive builds new products exactly this way they find new customers that have a problem and they work with very small number customers to build a product for them. And that's a lot of their new product. I think Rippling works like this too. So I think this is a really good lesson for everyone listening to try and build something new. Is there an example that comes to mind that would be an interesting detector of something you built that you worked through this process? Oh boy, I tell the example of kind of solving a problem when I was at the staff in company, a snagger job, they do hourly jobs and help people find kind of their best job or an hourly job.

34:44And I actually get a call here from the head of global staffing at Starbucks. Now, he called for me, you can see the benefit of this technique because I'm the person he calls when he has problems. I've used this technique, we do not have a previous company. He didn't even know I was a new company. And he calls me up and he says, you know, Christian, I have a problem. No, I say, well, don't we all have problems? You know, I say, well, you know, we just bought a bakery in the San Francisco Bay area. And as we're doing the paperwork to kind of take over this company or this acquisition, we realize that close to 800 of the employees may be undocumented workers.

35:22And I said, wow, that does sound like a problem. It's like, yeah, imagine if this breaks out in the news and all of that, but more importantly, we still need to get all the paperwork. So all these people are going to quit. And we will have a new bakery without employees. And I, you know, my first question to him, I said, put on guys like, wow, would you give me a million dollars to solve this problem? You know, it's like, no, seriously, I was like, 300 ,000. I'm showing out numbers. He's like, maybe I said, wow, you have my attention. I kind of go to my CEO, I tell him to call. I grab a designer and an engineer.

35:55I just say, hey, look, I love to work on a little project with you all. If you have some time, I kind of debrief them on the call. Now, the first thing I have to do is to try to define the problem, identify problems. What really is the problem going on? Yeah, we're breaking it down, we're talking through this. We say, well, at the end of the day, our box needs to hire like 800 people quickly. Because, you know, I mean, we can't fix getting everybody's people work. But they're going to lose this people, and they need to hire those quickly. I say, well, who else has this problem? You know, we're trying to try out, guess I'm like, what are we talking about?

36:27Let's go out. Everybody jumps in my car, and we start driving around. And this is where we're doing our product work from. You know, we're talking in the car, just out of the building, we see a new construction site for a new McDonald's kind of coming soon. And we know we are curious, we're like, well, let's go find out. We start talking to people on sites. Fortunately, the operations director is on site. And we ask him, we say, tell us about opening up a new McDonald's. He says, well, do you know, we need like 120 people on opening day? We're like, whoa, for McDonald's, I mean, really 120 people.

37:02He's like, yeah, do you know that most Most of the people in this industry don't show up to work on the very first day. And every day when construction were losing money, so the second, the bathrooms, the restrooms are done, we want to open up. We're like, wow, we didn't think about this new construction, a new store opening, they need to hire lots of people quickly. So I said, thank you very much. I give you my business card, you give me his, we jump back in the car, we just kept driving, we went to the mall, we started talking to people there, we talked to a manager at Macy's. And she said, oh look, we hire 20 ,000 people in the holiday season.

37:36Well, me too. Yeah, it's like nights, weekend, sheep, and stuff like this. We start hiring in the summer because of how painful it is. Now, all we're doing here is just validating that this is a real problem. You know, like other people will have the problem. So we go back to the office, we have brings them like, how will someone even go about solving this problem? We're thinking this was like, we're not really sure, but like, damn, I'm doing this guy was very desperate. I said, how is business going? You know, we start dreams of ideas where I call up the McDonald's person and I say look we just met with dogs Yes, like yeah, we would love to help you solve the problem.

38:10He said well, what do you have in mind? You know, well, I said we've been talking what if we just sent you some people to interview You know, and if you like them you will hire them So that seems fairly easy. He's like how do I pay for this? You know, we took a swag like maybe you pay us for everybody that's you hire I don't see much risk to that. This is great. Oh, like okay I mean, we have no sense of what to do. We are literally googling how do people find a job at McDonald's? You know, like, we go to colleges, we are sticking up flyers, we are putting ads in the newspaper back then, we are looking at different techniques to try to get people into a funnel and interest, like posting on Craigslist or things like that.

38:49You know, at the end of the week, we get about what do people that are interested to come to the interview? Like, we feel good for our fest try. You know, we call the manager up And we say look on Monday we will send you 40 people to interview, you know, it's so great You know one day I think my designer my engineer we are on site with the Manager nine o 'clock we expect like three people to show up for interviews nobody shows up You know 10 o 'clock at a not three like one person shows up I mean we go to the end of the day less than 20 people show up This might only has like four or five people We're like, we suck at this.

39:27This is terrible. You know, we go to the manager like, let's go and apologize for wasting your day and stuff. He starts to laugh. Well, like, what's going on? He said, look, I forgot to tell you. Folks in this industry don't have insurance interviews. This is like, we have my girls we pay minimum wage. People will leave us for 25 more cents an hour. They will leave us for a job that is one block closer to the house or like less than a mile closer to the home. Now, the engineer has been asked and he's thinking about it's like this is really interesting. About half of the people should hop he had like one in five.

40:02If you really want to solve this problem like playing a lot of averages, we want me to send this money like plus or 200 people. I mean we need to go bigger. So we're storming the office you know we call them the McDonald's guy again I said can we try again next Monday and he's like do I only pay for the people I hire? Well like sure I said go ahead and kill yourself on this. I mean it's a pain we've been trying all parts of things for years. Now we start doubling down on efforts. We start calling back all the people that didn't show up for interviews like what's going on. You know did you get lost?

40:32Don't you want to job? I mean what's wrong with you? We start figuring out what for us look well for us the last time. You know what was what we stood on money? How what what was the cost to acquire a person and you know we spend a week doubling our efforts on those channels we probably have about 120, 130 people on the list. The Sunday beforehand, we start calling them up. You know, like, please show up. Don't embarrass us. Don't you want to job? Do you need that address? Should I call you? Remind us. Set you alarm. I mean, we're trying all the techniques to try to get more people there. We go the next day.

41:04And at the end of the day, he has about 45 to 50 people. He comes to us. He shakes the head. He's like, whoa, the quality was excellent. All my recourses were engaged. the day was smooth and can help success to me. It's like I want to use you for every new McDonald's I open in the area. Now, I don't know I have a product. I just know I was able to help one person at McDonald's. But I feel like I have enough letting. So I called up my friend at a Starbucks and I said, hey, man, I remember the problem we talked about. He's like, yeah, it's like I'm rough to help you solve it. He said, okay, what do you have in mind?

41:41I say, well, I think we need to send you about 3 ,000 people to interview. He said, 3000 people, I only need 800. I said, you know, in this industry, what people don't show up for interviews, right? Is that oh, why goodness, you know, our industry, well, I like this. I'm going to teach this up. I think we'll give you this contract. I take my designer, my engineer, we go to San Francisco. We're out there recruiting because this way it was based. I mean, we have to get a whole hotel, hire people. We are walking all the channels we knew, walked in here. Remember, we don't have any software, no technology, the design and each were doing this manually.

42:17Excel spreadsheets, phones, emails in that way. In one week, Starbucks hired 784 people. I get an email the next Monday morning. From the contact that Starbucks, he copied how it shows, then CEO of Starbucks, the email read, this guy's just saved our bots. I sent it to my CEO, but then I said, you know I only know that I can help on my journals and the Starbucks, but that doesn't mean I have a product You know, but I know have enough of problem definition I reached out to the head of marketing the head of sales I said tell us who has this problem if come across Because we need to work with more people to try to empower a solution that is scalable, maintainable, reliable or work -swap business You know, where do you know of the next Opportunity we had was the Los Angeles International Airport They will open up a new terminal, you know, and they said we need like 200 people to manage all the stores in the new terminal.

43:13And we're like 200 people, which is high and close to 800. We got this, you know, we go to LA for the briefing with the staff in group. And they tell us the people that walk on an international airport have to match the demographics of the travelers. We say, what? Yeah, we have 13 % Chinese speaking travelers. We need 13 % Chinese speaking employees. We say, sorry, you know, we've got 5 % Korean speaking. I mean, my team is in LA where in China, we're speaking. I've got trying to recruit people to come out, walk around the airport. If we expect like 10 people to show up, only one person shows up.

43:49We start calling job seekers up like what's going on? They say do you know what it means to walk on an airport? First I wake up at five o 'clock. I drive to the employee parking lot. I get into a boss, then I go through security. There was not like TSA printshack back then. You know, then I, if I want to break I go through security. Again, I pay me minimum wage. You know, it took us close to three months to staff this. We had to negotiate with the union to raise the price to like $15 an hour to run a track people. When we come back from that, you know what I'm saying? That is not our customer.

44:20Never again. We are never doing appboards. That's a pain You know as around this time was the holiday season so we reached out to the person like me See we told my partner a lot with my donalds say I would try this. I was trying to walk with them You can imagine through this the engineer is thinking how can I use technology? To improve this I always tell this to people like I never wrote the requirements documents I never wrote a story I never thought the designer is thinking how can we improve the end -to -end experience? Okay, we need a recuda experience, a job -sicker experience, we need a funnel.

44:52Oh, we need to build a scheduling tool to that they can scale the interview. Oh, what about notification? Maybe text message. Oh, we can send them a map so that they can know how to get to the... I mean, all of these things, because they were involved from the very beginning in defining the problem, they were immersed in the solution to the problem. It takes us about eight and a half, almost nine months to build this. When we launched this product in its first 90 days, It books 32 million dollars. It sales. Why? Because you know, you got McDonald's probably too today using this product to open up every new store.

45:27When Starbucks went to the global contract, we say, well, we've only done discovering the US. So I only know where it walks in this market. You know, and we started finding if you look at, if you look at NASCAR, some of these big spotting events, they have to bring a lot of people together very quickly for a short amount of time, you know, and this is the same kind of product they use to do that high volume hiring in a short amount of time. If you think about it, I was discovering who had the problem and developing the customers that have the problem. At the same time, I was discovering and delivering a solution to that problem.

46:01That's insane. You said you made 30 something million dollars to first share launching this thing. Yeah, that's unreal. I love the, how this is the you're pitting me of doing things that don't scale. You going hiring McDonald's employees and then Starbucks employees, and get a good employees. You do things that do scale and they do things that do scale, right? And it's so powerful when you discover how to do things that don't scale, when you actually know, right? Because it's the power of technologies, just the beauty of what it can do at scale. And to that point, it's easier said, like a lot of people talk about doing things that don't scale, Well, many people don't actually do anything like that.

46:40They're like, nah, let someone else figure that out or let's just actually think about the future of this versus just doing it and solving and finding problems. I love that also. You didn't do any other things we talked about. There's no fake door test. There's no opportunity solution trees. There's no user interview. You're talking to people. It wasn't like a user research interview comes down. I have questions. I said, there's nothing better in learning how to solve a problem than trying to solve the problem. You know, just stay. You will get all the answers. the research, the failure, the mistakes, all the evidence.

47:11You know, the difference between what people say, this is what they do. You validate and test. I mean, because at the end of the day, you know, what is statistically relevant? Like, you know, what is solving the problem is, the clearest indication that we've solved the problem and that we know how to solve the problem that. And so, yeah, very powerful technique. And I love that you didn't really know exactly where this was going to lead us, just kind of this exploratory. Let's see if there's something here. And you can just follow him and say, there's a problem. It looks like we found a way to solve it.

47:40Let's just see where else this can take us. Amazing. This time of year is prime for career reflection and setting goals for professional growth. I always like to spend this time reflecting on what I accomplished the previous year, but I hope to accomplish the next year. And whether this is the year, I look for a new opportunity. That's where today's sponsor, Teal, comes in. Teal provides you with the tools to run an amazing job search With an AI -powered resume builder, job tracker, cover letter generator, and Chrome extension that integrates with over 40 job boards, Teal is the all -in -one platform you need to run a more streamlined and efficient job search and stand out in this competitive market.

48:16There's a reason nearly 1 million people have trusted Teal to run their job search. If you're thinking of making a change in the new year, leverage Teal to grow your career on your own terms. Get started for free at TLHQ .com slash Lenny. That's TLHQ .com slash Lenny. I want to shift to a different topic. You spent a lot of time helping product leaders get better at coaching, get better at building relationships, get better at building trust with their teammates. Marty, can you actually show this quote with me when we're going to? He said that you can build trust with executives and product leaders faster than anyone else he knows.

48:53and the people you coach adore him like some kind of rock star. He's literally on speed dial for several of the CEOs of the largest companies in the world. Okay, so let me just ask you, what's your secret to coaching, to being a great coach, and how can people listening become better coaches to their reports, maybe colleagues? This topic is probably near and dear to my heart because, I mean, there are many ways that I think our corporate structures have failed creating high performance and stability in people. And I think one of them is actually in roll of leadership. And by leadership, the key component I often point to is coaching.

49:37This idea of what truly is the job of a leader. And I tell people, yeah, it's context and culture at the highest level. Like, why are we here? Where are we going? in how do we organize ourselves to get there with simple terms, just kinds of things and the environment in which we do it. But there's a people element because you recognize that you want an outcome and you need people walking together to that outcome. So I now have to staff those people and I have to, you know, hire and train them and equip them and then I point them to what those things are. But many of those things are one off, like meaning in a creative vision, I create a strategy, you know, they are some things, you know, I hire a person.

50:19They're something that is everyday. And that's coaching. That's like the day job of managers. Like, and if I think about high performing teams in the world, and you can pick sports is one of those actors, and they have coaches and managers like this and everyday thing. And the idea is that, you know, when I explain these to people, I say, you know, like doing product management is a product managers job. But getting better at product management is the manager's job is the coaches job and people tend to misunderstand how the dynamic works. You see, if you're playing a game, you're in the game. The coaches are on the sideline watching you play the game and getting you better at playing the game.

51:05You know, your job, maybe to take a passable all of that, you know, you need a competence level. but somebody's job is every day looking for ways for you to be better at your job. The number one reason most people don't give good coaching is because they've never experienced good coaching themselves. And most people can only give to other people what has been given to them, what experiences they've seen, what I was in an executive meeting with a CEO and he gets up in the meeting and he just is screaming and crossing out everybody, just like chewing up and I said, whoa, whoa, I said, you know, come eat the outside.

51:43You know, they pick him outside. I was like, first of all, I don't even think I can walk with you anymore, giving this environment to your creating. But I need to understand why. You are talking to your team like that. And he says to me, he says, Christian, well, you know, my boss used to scream at me like this and look at me and I will see you. I got it. I understand it. Yeah, grownups, they can understand it too. And I said, well, tell me what you're trying to communicate. And he explained to me and stuff. And I said, is it okay if I show you an alternative we have communicating that? It says, what do you mean?

52:16I said, well, you know, is it first of all see for me to do this with the team? So I go back to the team, I said, look, I'm going to try to see what the CEO was trying to see again. He's giving me permission for you to speak freely and candidly. I want you honest opinion as to what was way effective and why. And I took a stab at kind of representing what he was trying to say. And I asked him, and it's like, yeah, he's the same thing, kind of message. But you know, when he tells us this stuff, we just go do it. We get it. We go do it. But the way you described it right now to us, I can think of four other things I need to do.

52:52I even understand some other things that may be missing that we need to. And now go tackle. And you know, the CEO is kind of like really taking a back. And it's kind of in some ways he has never seen an alternative. And he's never seen if an unopenedating be effective. Most people need to see something that they need to do it before they kind of teach it. In some ways, the biggest examples. Now I've seen this all because I need to make a very strong argument for people understanding coaching it. And in some ways I probably did not know that I was probably good at coaching. I coached my kids in soccer for like eight years and we always like won the championship, my boy's team and I had like low -witting list of people and I thought I had a fundamental flaw in understanding it you know because when my kids were all like four years old you know when you have the kids run around the soccer field just kicking the ball anyway my team always had like plays they all have strategy that mean so you know yeah winning against like 10 to 0 you know other kids and I thought you know I'm like ah maybe I was born in another country I didn't know you were just meant to let them play and I was like really coaching kids and I was treating for your roles like adults you know we're watching video watching tape having real good you know I grew like me but it's so so funny when you see them execute when they failed what I've kind of always had this mentality about the truest forms like companies cannot care for people people care for people and the representation of what is acceptable an environment or what we do is by the leaders.

54:26Now there's some different dynamic to why that's not happening with how we promote people and the whole core structure around that. But fundamentally trust is a keypad of doing this. And I think when I tell these people, I say, look, most people don't know that you know something onto the test you. We do it a whole lot in our environment. I ask you a question, I see how you answer, and it's like, I'm an actually what's one plus one, like it's two. And now I know that you know one plus one is two. You know, I don't care when you lent it. I just, I need you to know that it's to do my work. So you know, so it happens in every day environment.

55:09And what people feel to do is to do the learning. So they get the question wrong and they lose trust. So people don't be you know, and trust is based on competence and character and their other values like communication and concern and care. But most corporate environments is a competency thing. That's why you see so many companies accept, you know, people with bad communication, bad care, bad because they are very good at their job. So, if you can demonstrate competence, you will end some trust, at least the trust of competence for people. So I kind of explained to people a whole lot that the real core of their job at test is to learn, to seek to understand before they are understood, to know what you don't know, that humility and ego only lasts a small minute.

55:59The most powerful way I have found to get trust with very people is to have them accountable for an outcome of mine wishes to know. So if I went to do a salary trust with Lenny, I will actually need to teach me. Now, you know, and I say this, I say it's like an emotional intelligence black belt technique here. But many environments, if you get into environment, it's very quickly for you to identify the power in an environment, whose influential, who has allowed his voice and all. And there's something behind why they are powerful. Yes, it is title, but if you think about why someone is called a CEO, it's because there is some competence that means someone give them the title.

56:46You know, they are great at green businesses. I have a good strategy. Whatever it is. So what you do To build trust is you want that person To trust you Okay, but if only with that person who know that they trust you should they test you And unfortunately many environments they do that publicly. I'm in the mid -sehen. I asked any a question He he bobs a presentation like oh put up my pictures. I use last our person doesn't know anything So yes, what I do when I want to build trust You know, I, I, if Lenny's a new hire in my company, I take Lenny to the most, the loudest, most influential person in the company and I say, look, I just hired Lenny, super rock star, did all of this.

57:27But you know, he knows nothing about our business, nothing about how we walk and stuff. I will love for you to teach him some things. Now, maybe like I'm super busy, I'm involved as he, look, Lenny should just hang with you for the, you know, I've played his calendar for the whole week. He's just good to sit in meetings you are quiet, observe, just by observing you, he will be your rock star. No stress, nothing to give. Now, it's impossible for this leader to sit with you for a whole week without saying things like, oh, where are you from? What do you do? Tell me about yourself. What have I known about our first relationship between a very powerful trustworthy influential person and somebody else that doesn't have it?

58:08If you are walking around the company with this person, what is everybody going to say? Oh my goodness, you're friends with that person. You're able to know Lani because you know we can never get him to agree on it. So if I know Lani, I'll be close with it. Lani's more accessible is new but how did Lani break in? I'm extending somebody else's trust to you. Now, by also making that person share in their accountability of training you or teaching you in some ways, I am not making them accountable for your growth. It's impossible two months from now for that person to say, oh, Lenny doesn't do anything why?

58:46Because he makes them a bad teacher. So they are always going to defend people like, oh yeah, Lenny, let's have a conversation. Don't do it like this in this way. Don't prep you because it makes them look bad if you're not competent. Now, this technique accelerates relationships and trust. It's the help me teach me type of technique. It also allows them to observe the dynamics within the company, but it accelerates relationships. Because it's impossible for you to be in a meeting with a leader all the time, without the person saying something like, oh, yeah, hey, folks, let me introduce you to Lani.

59:20Now, that person is now the one introducing you to more connections within the company. Fastest way to build is now feels like it's expected. Well, this is the job of a coach. You are designing a very specific playbook to help people achieve the outcomes we want and thus by getting them competent at their job and then their potential where they need to go next. That's some Jedi ninja tricks right there. I love that. I've never heard this advice before makes so much sense and it's so easy to implement. Yeah. Amazing. For someone that maybe doesn't have a question around as a coach or manager that isn't at this level, what advice to give people that are looking for a coach or someone that could help them along these lines to learn to build trust and learn to, you know, just generally improve?

1:00:09Boy, you know, I like I say with everything you don't get mastery by avoidance and one of the things that good coaches do that, you know, most, when I say corporations, fail companies, is it on create space for practice? You know, I see people complain to me about people all the time. Oh, this person is not good. You know, they presented this was terrible. And I asked them, what did they do at practice? They said, what do you mean? I said, when they were practicing the list, what did they do? So they didn't practice. I told them to prepare I said, think about what happens at practice. Any practice of any sport, any game, any, you can stop.

1:00:46You can make corrections. You can give feedback. What you do at practice, you do it in the game. Product management, you say, what time, game time kind of role? Every day is what, so when do people practice? And so what I tell people like in the absence of getting good coaching, you need to find practice arenas. You know, it's kind of like if you don't, you're letting a new sport or basketball, you're gonna go to the gym. So it's a practice arena, you can play a shoot around and then maybe some people have pickup games that you join and stuff like this in some ways. And I so I always advise put up managers like, you need to join a lot of pickup games, which are kind of, you know, they are low barriers to entry, low evaluation reward, low and restarting the go volunteer at the nonprofit, walking with the team, go volunteer, you know your community events or church or whatever you go to go party but now what am I trying to do with this things?

1:01:42Fine places where people do collaborative problem solving. We did do, now that's what you're doing as a productive. It's more likely in a high -performance environment you'll find a good coach. You will find like somebody out there but what you're also doing is you're observing other people play. Most people let a lot of skills by you know you watch TV like, oh, I like that move. And then you go to the gym and you practice that move. You see what you do? So it's like you're saying that you're doing it in some ways. So you need to see good put up work. So that you can do good put up work. So that you can teach good put up work.

1:02:18So if you don't have the benefits of having a good coach directly, you've got to find environments where you see good coaching happening. And a good indication of good coaching is actually good outcomes over and over again, winning teams. You know, winning performances, great products. Great products come from great product teams. They probably have good leaders. Or a good leader, within a bad culture. Yeah. So essentially, it's get a bunch of reps in is a big part of this advice. Just get reps in. And I think what you just said is such an important part of it is collaborative problem solving is the key thing to look for.

1:02:55I was going to ask you how you recommend people get into product management. Imagine this is a very similar answer. it's just fine opportunities to collaboratively prop up some problem solved. That's right. And I differentiate that because you know, there are all those guys that are I know I'd like to change a light bulb or they can walk individually or think her and stuff. And I kind of differentiate that problem solving from the people that are very good at walking with other people to solve a problem. And there's so many of those buckets. You're getting reps in. You know, when you're talking, so you've had this with us, just tell you stories of don't work in the problem.

1:03:29I can see how they will help me. They're not to use data, they're not to use insights, they're not afraid of talking to people. How are you going to get those reps? Because you come into my company and ask you a question like, oh, I don't know, where do I find it? But if you've done the problem so with a team, sometimes you may not even know how to get the answer, but you know who to go to to get the answer. That's a gift too. I love that so much of your advice comes back to being the person that knows the most or has learned the most or even looking like they are spending the time to learn the most.

1:04:01Which makes so much sense. The people you want to entrust or the people that happen to have the answers and the answer will know. It just makes sense. Something else you talk about is people getting promoted too early. Leaders getting promoted too early, not doing well. Vendor Blaming others when really they were not actually ready for this new position. Can you talk about why you think that happens and then just how maybe as that person that might be in that position right now feeling like oh shit maybe it's not my fault. I don't know how to make an appeal to corporations and this one. It's probably the similar appeal in the light of coaching too as well.

1:04:39Most people are promoted to a point of incompetency or still, but I kind of described the dynamic this way. It's kind of like Lenny is a fantastic engineer. If you think about it, he wins engineer of the year awards. If you go to the office, his picture is on the wall, everybody knows him, he's feeling good. But it's like one year, two years, maybe eight years in. Lenny's feeling like, am I really growing in my career? Am I really challenging my career? He looks at the engineering career ladder. The next role, you know, from his senior engineer role, is engineering manager. You know, the leadership team, HR, they look at the same thing, that's true.

1:05:17We love Lenny. We don't want to lose Lenny. We need to promote him. And the next step is engineering manager or product manager manager. However I want to use the rule here. As we do what we promote Lenny. He feels good at the moment. Compositions and your promotion. You post the nice polls. We're going to keep Lenny there for a long time now because he's promoted. No, Lenny has never been a manager in his whole life. He's never interviewed people, fired people, driven, wind coach people, had done any of those things directly. After a couple of months, Lenny starts to recognize an interesting pattern.

1:05:51Nobody is clapping for him and company meetings anymore. In short, he's thickened out his picture from the wall because he's no longer an engineer, he's a manager, so he's now somebody else, he's not the engineer of the year, he's a club employee meeting, he's like, you know, he doesn't feel recognized or seen anymore, he's just the guy now behind the scenes, you know, kind of thing. Then in a couple of weeks, go by then, they have a big engineering problem. I know what Lenny does, he jumps in and he solves the problem. Lenny did not recognize that his job has changed. His job is no longer to solve the problem directly but to get a team of other people good at solving problems.

1:06:30This is because he is a great engineer but not a good manager. This story or this dynamic have told us probably the most common origin story of what people will see or deem as micro management. In many cases, here, this individual knows how to do engineering. They don't know how to do engineering management. They don't see the shift in their dynamic being changed. We see bad patterns where it's like the second you become an manager or a leader. You cannot say things like, I don't know. I'm not sure. I need help. I you say who told us those things but it's like such an expectation that our leaders must have the answers Must know the right things must do the right things and so what do we see people do rather than any acts for help He goes to Google and searches how to do an interview How to write a review are you saying he reads different articles like this one looks cool and then he does it and Nobody dies nothing breaks.

1:07:32So he thinks feels a good framework and a good button and And you know, we have this dysfunctional culture of everybody doing different things, whatever works for anybody, you know, and that is the cycle that repeats itself. Now, a person that works for Lenny sees that he used this framework and thinks it must be a good framework. My boss didn't, and you see how that cycle repeats itself. Because Lenny didn't actually get coached to be a manager. You know, if you add to anybody that works for me, it will come to me and say, oh, I need to get promoted to be a director. You know what I say? I say go appear director.

1:08:08You don't need a title. Let me tell you what a director does. You know, and you're going to walk with me over the next couple of months to do those things because I am promoting you to do the job, not to learn the job. You see where it falls apart in promotions? We promote people and it's like, you're now a VP. Do VP dates. And you're like, I have never done VP things before. But I cannot tell people I've never done VP things because it makes me looking competent. But I see the job description. I should do some VP things. What do you mind? VP do those things. I don't say. I you say, but the best place to learn how to be a VP is when you're not a VP.

1:08:49Because this is, that's where you practice being a VP. That's where you get feedback on because they when you become a VP, you are done those things before. It's like why it's a fast time you're done a interview when you're not a VP? Come in and do an interview with me. Observe me, do an interview. Ask questions. See what works. Get feedback. That's why I love those group product manager rules. So a group, because those are actually meant to be designed as ways for people to make a decision if they want to be a manager or they want to just be in the discipline. But people use them as, why would you give somebody for direct reports if they have proven if they have no evidence, they can manage one?

1:09:26So what I do is I give you one. But you might tell me, I hate people. That's so, we can talk about that. But he's like, let me give you four. And you're just gonna practice the bad behavior before. So this is what often happens in company. We promote them into incompetence. It's not their fault because we are not coaching them. What we need to do is create a safe environment for people to practice leadership before they become leaders. Before we promote them, we have to have the good coaching programs for leaders to say, if there's a succession plan, I want Lenny to be a new manager. I don't wait till it's time to promote him then I teach him management because then apparently he cannot see things like I don't know I have to teach him Leadership or management before he becomes a leader or a manager I love this idea of just doing VP things.

1:10:11I just picture someone walking around and doing VP things I'm gonna really think all of that my suit on live But what will be the thing I'm saying you think? Think another added benefit of doing these things before your say your VP is that is the best way to get promoted to VP is You are already doing the job. That's right. And nobody bites you on it. You see that? And you're not even surprised by it. And it's very safe because when you're not in the job, you can make mistakes and nobody blames you. He's not a VP. Look at him trying to do VP things. You see? But the second you have VP, it is such a...

1:10:45There's so much leverage in the role that your mistake is serious because it impacts everybody. But when you're not, it's like, you get coverage, you get protection. Nobody's as mad at you. He was just trying to take a stab at it. Let's coach him on that. But that was the best time to know those things. It's before your in it. Before your in it. To give companies and leaders something to do with this advice, you talk about helping them train and practice before they do this. How do you do that? Is it bring on like, I don't know, is it work with Silicon Valley Prada Group to help train and coach?

1:11:17There are many great product coaches out there. There are many leadership coaches out there. I think there's some recognition. people have to have the humility and the self awareness to recognize the opportunities for them to get better as a leader. And like put up management, you need to see your experience, good leadership. You need to, you know, you need the reps of good leadership. We do it in every way. We probably talk to people about strategy. And what did they do? They outsource it all the time. Tell somebody else to do it. And that cycle feeds itself because you never do it. You only know how to help sausage.

1:11:50said, you never learn how to do it. You see? And so it's kind of a many people outsource, oh, we'll get a mentor. Good, take a treating class, you know, and don't think that they are outsourcing coaching in that way. It's like, I just could take a communication class. I'm like, okay, if they come back from the class and they punch you in the face, and like, why did you punch me the class? Talk me to punch you in the face. You paid money for me to learn how to punch you in the face. I see, go to the communication class with the employee, because they I continue to practice the communication. So if you learn what they are learning, both of you now will practice it together so that they can get better at communication.

1:12:26A communication class doesn't get you better at communication, communicating better. It's an indication that you're better at communication. You need to practice it. And I need to create a safe place for you to practice. I need to give you feedback that you're communicating better. It's how all patterns in coaching that many leaders have just don't have. these tools and techniques to do it. So I do teach a lot of leaders how to coach. I do a lot of people walk with leaders. There's not a singular put up problem. You know, people, you see all problems, have people problems. There's not a singular put up problem that I have not seen coaching address.

1:13:02Yeah. So what I hear is essentially the biggest burden is on the manager to be a great coach to their reports and for a manager to get good at this. Essentially a coach is a really good method. putting someone in that could work with you one on one on a lot of these things. Awesome. That's a very actionable, very solvable. Everyone's always gonna ask, how do I find an awesome coach? Difficult. I guess I don't know. What do you tell people to go find a coach? Is there anything you could recommend just like how do you go find a coach? You know, you've got to find people that have generated good outcomes.

1:13:32I don't know how, you know, people are like, how you find a good consultant. I get people teaching people a lot that haven't done the job. Don't get me wrong. You know, you look at American football teams. Yeah, some coaches that have played the game before and you know you feel good that they can coach you and there are also some coaches that have not played the game but if you look at the pedigree they've lent from good coaches they've walked under good coaches so yeah like same thing with product i said they are only two parts you know a good coach is someone that has played the game before and has generated good outcomes but and the second is that they've lent from good product coaches so you want to find you know people with a strong pedigree you see that you know you You worked at Amazon this year.

1:14:15You worked at this company. You worked at Stripe. Did you have good results? How did you do that? Oh, my environment was great. The culture was great. Who taught you? Who coached you? Do pick up games with the people that they coached. They will tell you what patterns they coached to all them. So what do you have? You do that. My coach told me to do this. And you're going to learn from them. I say, oh, you know, important things. Amazing. OK, final area. I want to spend a little time on is the work you do in Africa. Yeah. Marty said that you're the foremost expert in introducing product and technology into worlds developing countries.

1:14:48I know you spent a lot of time in Africa specifically. Can you just talk about the work you do there? And also just maybe the opportunities and challenges you run into when you're working folks there? Yeah, I mean, I have an African background and my family is there. And I used to have this false notion that the things we've done in North America, Europe, Asia, like the problems we've solved have been solved in this markets. You know, I remember talking to someone in Africa years ago and he said to me, oh, I said, I, we just got a new job. Where did you find the job? It's like, oh, I found it in newspaper.

1:15:23I said, newspaper. What do you mean, find the job? I was like, I just, I remember participating solving that exact problem in like 1998 to like, I was walking with the team to solve that. And I had this false assumption that because I solved it year, of Of course, it solved everywhere. And I started to see patterns like this in Africa where they just took things were trended, one so many, the poor use of technology and enabling technologies to solve problems and to the difficulty in actually solving problems in these markets, in these emerging markets. And one of the things we take for granted, I always tell people the government is probably the biggest public -private product platform.

1:16:09In the world, in all countries, they all have this public, because they provide the infrastructure and the architecture that is enabling for people. Imagine if you were trying to code and you didn't have power. Now you're thinking there are markets where you have to solve the problem of getting power before you then get in access to a computer and then get in access to the right type of software to be able to code something. I mean look at all the different things you have to solve many problems just before you can start to solve the problem in a Means way and it's a very big reflection of the dynamic in Africa The second pattern of what we see is because of this challenge We see two things one people Make a lot of money on a problem then from solving the problem You know this is whole society that people are very good at walking around problems You know, we've got an electricity problem we'll just buy generators.

1:17:05We've got a road problem. We're gonna buy bigger cars. You know, I was, you know, talking to the conference and I was driving and I saw a Tesla with a portable generator at the back of it, you know, like they will stop and you know, charge the Tesla and they keep going on the road. In some ways, that's a whole society, but it's never been a society that didn't have creative people. Just an amazing tremendous amount of talent. It's a very young population. I talked to people all the time and said, look, so I told me, well, Africa, you know, seven of the age most under developed places in Africa, in the world, I'm Africa.

1:17:40And I said, well, you know, they were talking about the discovery of the internet. It's like less than 10 % of Africa has discovered the internet. And I tell them, wow, and we created seven unicorns from that. Imagine if 50%, 75 % discovered the internet. Like, we need to understand the opportunities, the youngest population of fastest growing, some of the fastest growing economies in these markets, some of the problems are so basic. And the opportunities are so huge. And so I had to kill all these assumptions, one that I needed permission to come into to solve problems there. And two that we didn't have the means to equip and educate people.

1:18:23So we don't have a talent problem or resource problem. What the biggest opportunity I found is to really empower a continent with enabling technology and the mindset and the skills to be able to leverage technology solving problems. So this led to me starting a nonprofit in Africa, the innovative Africa foundation and we are kind of committed to this education of people on the continent. This enablement with technology. We did a FESC conference last year. It's my Africa conference and just blew my mind. I'm so humbled when I can see a thousand people from that's one different countries in Africa.

1:19:03Come with a hunger and an eagerness to learn how to do peric work, to learn how to do the... I mean, and it's not cheap by any means for them to do that. You know, and what moved me the most is looking at the future generation. We had a 13 -year -old and an 11 -year -old in the workshop. You know, the 11 -year -old was a robotics engineer. The 13 -year -old was a CEO of a small startup that keeps healthcare records on it. And I'm like, if I can help these people learn how to do product well, this is the whole generation for Africa. This is the future of people that want to leverage technology in a meaningful way.

1:19:41So I spent a lot of my time in Africa coaching, advising, and teaching teams how to use technology, how to do product, how to organize themselves, how to solve problems, and really to create a boldness within the continent for them to go after problems and solve them, then walk around the problems, make money on them. If people want to learn more about this, maybe support the work you're doing, what's the best way to find out more? You can visit the nonprofit website. It's inovatedafrica -foundation .org. You can follow our walk on SVPG or the inspireafrica -conference .com. I know I will be doing a lot more next year.

1:20:23In January, I am going to be launching a fund, the Inovatedafrica fund. And I want it to be a fund funded by the put -up community for Africa. It's an angel investment fund. One of the problems I recognize is that so many of the startups they are not ready for institutional investment. And they are forced into it in some ways. They say, you know, people are giving up a lot of equity when they just need cash flow. And so I really want to focus on the phone for the community to enable people to get product market fit in those markets. So that will be launching in January. I will probably do an announcement about it.

1:20:58I'm super excited about that work and to really try to promote more of product -centric thinking on the content. That's right. You should call this one reference customers or something along those lines. Yeah. You could go to help them find product marketing. That's right. There will be a lot of that. Christian, is there anything else you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round? I've always been an appeal to the product community, to really have a sense of what they do beyond the job of a product team, a product manager. And I always try to encourage people to see that.

1:21:38Like at the very core of what you do is really solving a problem. And that's creating, you know, when you do that, create value in the wall, you're making a dent in the wall. Like people that participate in trying to make things better, or trying to solve problems. And we should not shy from that definition of our job. You know, it might feel like a fluffy one. It might feel like too lightweight, like meaningful, but I think where people take too hard, that that's really what the essence of products is or product work is. They bring to work a different passion, they bring to work a different sense of empathy, they bring to work a different sense of customer centrality, and all of those things lead to good outcomes.

1:22:21So I always make that appeal to put up people, I was like, yeah, all the frameworks techniques, all the stuff, just think truly about what you're trying to do. You're trying to care enough about a problem to solve it on someone's behalf and do it so well that it gives us something every time. I really love that last point of just that's how you know if you built something people care about they give you something or turn and one of those things can be actually telling other people about it. That's right. That's our reference customers. Yes. Amazing. Well with that we reached our very exciting lightning round.

1:22:51Are you ready? And I don't have a choice. Nope. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? Oh boy. In this discipline, probably all of our books inspired and powered and we've come in outfit one in March transformed. I see that t -shirt there. I see the promo happening. Yes, it's happening. It's happening, but it's really a reflection of so many tickets of love and passion for product work and I have not found I always told Maddie that you write the books after I've gone through the failure like you know it's like I feel that leadership now there's a book on it you know I feel that product now there's a book on it and it reflects really the heart of good product work so I love a Ben said the heart thing about heart things I love I mean there's some books that really describe the mindset and culture that good product work is done in I always recommend those people.

1:23:43Just on this topic of transformer or on it, when is it coming out and can you give just like an elevator pitch for the book just so people know what it'll be about? And so on this coming out March next year or God just three months. Some people should have got some shipping dates on their books if you pre -ordered it now. But it really talks about how to move to the product model or the product operating model. Which is really this set of beliefs and principles that the best companies work here. We share stories of companies that have transformed into this, that are not your traditional, bond digital or bond tech companies that have made this transition.

1:24:18We tell stories of what companies can do. If it's anything, it's an appeal that there is a better way of walking and solving problems and that companies can walk in this way, regardless of where you are underjury. All right. We'll have to have you back once the book comes out to get more people aware of what is happening. amazing. Okay, I'll keep going. Favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed? I jumped on this succession battle wagon and I enjoyed it. I used to love Billions too as well. I love good writing and kind of really just intellectual media writing, kind of business.

1:24:54So probably succession and billions will be too. Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask when you're interviewing candidates? Well, I always give them a problem to solve. That is probably my favorite question and it's not a traditional problem. I probably will see something like, you know, hey Lenny, I have a friend. He's been legally, therefore, year in impaired his whole life and he just got a new job that requires him to wake up significantly earlier that he normally does. And as you can imagine, traditional alarm clocks will not do it or not solve the problem. man, I would love to give that problem to you.

1:25:32You know, what be true? How you go about tackling this or solving this. And for me, I like that question because it gives me a sense of how you think. It gives me a sense of how you solve problems. It gives me a sense of how you know what you do not know and how you go about knowing the things you need to know, what you need to solve a problem. And there's no magical right or wrong answer. I do have a lot of people that say, I have no clue what to do. I'm more curious and because I want to know what you do when you don't have a clue, you know, or people that are Lots jump straight to solutions.

1:26:04I'm more engineering centric people that jump straight to it You can I can kind of get a sense of who you are when I give you a problem that requires you to do some thinking You know and you're doing this live in an interview It's not like go home and think about this and oh, I'm doing this right in the right way Okay, and then what's a sign that they're on the right track like what is it? What do you look for? That's like yes That's what I want to see. Well, remember, I think about when I think about what makes a good product manager, I look about collaborative problem solving, you know, there are people that feel like I'm just going to solve the whole thing myself.

1:26:35This is what we should do. We should do it like no evidence, no data, no kind of stuff in the ads. Very interesting. But people that are saying, no, what? I would need problem work and engineer and designer. We might need to put it that you know, I look for intellectual curiosity in some ways, you know, people that are have problem questions in their head. and people that are very quick to see things that they're doing. I will talk to 20 of them and say, how are you going to do that? Do you know sign language? And they're like, oh my God, I'm going to talk to them. But there are people that are like, I'm going to need a lot of help to try to figure this out.

1:27:04I don't know a lot about your friend, but I know community. There are people that kind of, some people have frameworks they run to. It exposes that. You know, they are married to one way of walking. Or, you know, it's more about knowing what you can't know. I'm looking for empathy, humility in some sense. It is a competence thing because most of them I can teach I can coach a lot of things But you know that arrogance that ego those kinds of things those you know I walk alone no like those things are very very challenging Had disruptive to a team culture You have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really like either an app or something physical Anything that's like oh, this is really cool my eldest son is into spots He loves all kinds of stuff, sports apps, all the kinds of things.

1:27:49He got me on this app called Real. Like Real Spots. And it's really cool. It shows cause of different games, but it's really driven by social influence. So you know, like all of your Twitter posts who get there like, oh my god, cool punch down. And it's almost like real time, but not real time. It's like, you know, and you're getting real time with reactions of people around you and your communities. And it's a very different way of checking on a score than I've ever seen. And I thought it was just really, really powerful in how, you know, I like, I want to share reaction to touchdown with 50 people around the world that care about, you know, my favorite team just going to touchdown.

1:28:31And you're all like share reactions at the same time. And the first person that saw it, you can see it. So it's very simple. I guess it's like a scores for games, but these days I don't check my scores anywhere else. What on it? The favorite live motto that you often repeat yourself, share with friends, either in work or in life. They find useful. Wow. Oh, I have said a lot in this talk about people don't care about, companies don't care about you, people care about you. It's never too late to be what you want to be. But, you know, Elliot, my final always tell me, you know, show up. You know, show up on your head like 80 % of the people in the free world show up on time and you are ahead of 85 % of the people in the free world.

1:29:14Show up on time with a plan and you are ahead of 90 % of the people in the free world. And if somehow you have the guts to put that plan to action with a smile, then you probably will have a great chance of success. And if you do that over and over again, every aspect of your life, it can at least need to successful outcomes. And I think that's a lot of some mental definition for me every day. amazing. I love that. Final question as maybe the most interesting man in the world. Is there anything people may not know about you or would be surprised to hear about? Wow. I hope this there are no most surprises about me in that kind of case in that way, but I went to a gifted until into school.

1:30:01I was out of my house at 12 and I went to kind of boarding school and I've kind of never been back home since then so I've kind of been on my own. But we we're kind of in the middle of nowhere, probably eight miles from any form of civilization and stuff in the middle of the jungle, no water, no pot of water, no pot of electricity. So you kind of had to get water yourself, generate your own power, probably the most interesting time in my life to ship my worldview, you, kind of surviving at 12 to 16 on my own in the middle of the jungle. So very intriguing parts of my life. Very different from your life these days.

1:30:42Actually one more question. I think you're the fourth, you're from Nigeria, right? Your family's from Nigeria. Yes. You're the fourth Nigerian guest on this podcast. I realized, look, and I always like to ask, what's your favorite Nigerian food? Slash, which food should people seek out if they were to try to find some good Nigerian food. And my favorite Nigerian meal is super duper cultural and native. It's like starch and poh -wo su. You can't really find that anywhere. It's like you've got to come from mom's cooking. Madi Kagan has tried it. He came to my hometown, my parents almost and had it.

1:31:13But if you're discovering Nigerian food, you know, stuck with a variation of like rice, which everybody has. Gelov rice. And yes, people I'm going to say this. Gelov fries, Nigerian love is better than Ghanaian love. It's a war, but it's okay. We already claimed victory and we will move on. Well, that was your fries as elementary, but then you have to try and swallow like a pounded yum with a soup. You know, they are many different variations of that. And you get a pounded yum with pounded cassava and you eat that with a soup. And you will love it. Some controversy over here, competition. That's right.

1:31:47For it, who's got the best rice? amazing. Christian, I am now a huge fan of yours. I'm so happy we did this. Thank you so much for making time for this. Two final questions working folks, fine if they want to reach out. And how can listeners be useful to you? You can find me on LinkedIn as well. You can reach out to us on our website, asvpg .com. I tell people the best things to be useful to us is to do good work using these principles. And all the things we teach people over and over again. We care about outcomes, We care about good product working the world. I will love your support with the walk I'm doing in Africa I have always reached out to the product community around the world to help Developing countries and communities.

1:32:29So please follow our walk. Please support our walking Africa in building a product community And what is the website for that again specifically the nonprofit started innovate Africa foundation dot org Amazing Christian. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me Lenny such a pleasure. Bye everyone 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 a leaving review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'sPotcast .com.

1:33:09See you in the next episode!