Ep. 137 Adam Mosseri: What The Head of Instagram Really Thinks About Growth Hacks, Algorithms and Creation

0:00You open the fridge, there's nothing there. So what's it going to be? Greasy pizza? Sad drive-thru burgers? Dish by Blue Apron is for nights like that. These are the pre-made meals of your dreams. At least 20 grams of protein. No artificial flavors or colors. No chopping. No cleanup. No guilt. Keep the flavor. Ditch the subscription. Get 20 % off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com slash terms for more. The market's uncertain. revenues tied and hiring on hold that's why results driven companies are using upwork to keep work moving go to upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast no bulky overhead no rigid long-term contracts just the right expert right when you need them work smarter and faster with upwork go to upwork.com now and find your freelance expert that's upwork.com post a job for free and get started today Hi, friends.

1:03Grace from the Working Hard podcast here. When you're stretching every dollar, a little goes a long way and Walmart Business is here to help. They make it easy to order what you need from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials, all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax exempt purchasing for eligible organizations. Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.warmart.com to get started.

1:35What is up? I'm Grace Beverly and welcome back to Working Hard, the podcast-shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing, because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

1:49What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. Today is a very big one. I am speaking to categorically one of the most influential people in social media across the globe, Adam Museri, the head of Instagram and Threads. It's safe to say that Adam has helped shape the way that billions of us communicate, share and create online every single day. And I actually don't think it's an overstatement to say that every single guest that has been on this podcast has, in some shape or form, used Instagram to build their success or creatively share what's going on in their daily lives. Over his 20-year career, Adam has risen through the ranks at Meta and now in the top job, he is at the heart of the cultural conversation about creativity, connection and content.

2:28This episode is for anyone who's ever used Instagram for anything or wants to use it for anything to build anything. Anyone who wants to rise through the ranks in tech or a corporate role or learn how to harness their creativity.

2:45Adam Masseri, head of Instagram, are you currently more working hard or hardly working? Currently, I would say working hard, but I aspire to be hardly working. I'm constantly trying to balance the job, which is an amazing job. It demands a lot of time and then being a dad. And if I get, if I do decent at both of those things and I get a decent night's sleep, that's about as much as I can ask for in a day. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's fair enough. I think that, you know, I, I ask a lot of people that question and it's often the case that we're all aspiring for this hardly working, always feel like it's a little bit out of reach, but at the same time, we're trying to grapple with this balance.

3:22I had this idea about almost 10 years ago now that I'd really push hard for 10 years. I'd have kids, they'd be little, I'd work really hard, and then I would switch into a job that was maybe less intense. Now that I'm 10 years in, I'm thinking I might have underestimated how long, probably more like 20 or 30. Just because, you know, my kids are 9, 7, and almost 5, and it's not much easier than it was, you know, 8 years ago. Right. And the job is certainly not relaxing. So I think maybe I underestimated the push. So let's start there with working hard. What does a typical day-to-day look like for the head of Instagram and Threads?

4:00There's sort of two types of days. One is if I'm in California, I'm in San Francisco, you know, I go to the office. I get up. I'm in charge of breakfast for the boys at three. Every day? Yeah, pretty much. We have like a whole schedule so we don't have to fight about it. Like, you know, Monday is, what actually is, Monday's eggs and bagels, Tuesday's banana bread, Wednesday is waffles, Thursday's breakfast tacos, Friday's cereal, I think. So I'm in charge of breakfast, get some time in with the boys in the morning. If I'm lucky, I get a workout in and then I go to the office. And then it's just a lot of meetings.

4:38It's not glamorous. A lot of spreadsheets, presentations, emails, data, and meetings. Yeah. And then I go home. I try to get home to have dinner with the boys and then maybe have an hour to hang out with my wife before I go to bed. But then the other version of the day is something like this week and last week and three weeks and four weeks where it's just sort of almost chaos. I'm traveling like, you know, I came in from Milan last night. I go to Paris this evening, you know, do five, six, seven, maybe eight things in a day. Meet some creators, maybe some policy meetings, maybe do an interview or two.

5:15And it's just a whirlwind. Yeah. and that's like that is very different every day and then I'll go back to emails and spreadsheets and dashboards and so when you're having more of this kind of whirlwind time and you don't have your normal routine what are your non-negotiables that keep you feeling balanced and focused and like having a little bit of home and routine and when there's almost no routine I should have some non-negotiables actually I don't know that I have any I try and the one thing is maybe it's not a non-negotiable the one thing i do do is i try just to eat the local cuisine i feel like it's always nice even if it's not you know for work but even if it is with for work like go to a place that i might go to if i lived in that city because i'd like to get it's so hard because you get it's fun and amazing to meet all these people but you also want to get a sense for the local culture and i think food is an often great way to do that uh so i ask for that but i don't i wouldn't quite call I should have some non-negotiables.

6:11What are your non-negotiables? I think my non-negotiables, especially when traveling and working at the same time. So there's a lot going on and you're kind of, I always really struggle with keeping up to date with the team back home and trying to make sure I'm constantly checking in and constantly making sure, you know, I'm helping there whilst also being present in the place I'm in, which I find pretty difficult. I think my non-negotiables in that way, probably a little bit boring, but I try and make sure that I have scheduled blocks of whether it's an email block or an approvals block to just make sure that I know within that day that I can be present because I know that, do you know what, in two hours I do have an approvals block.

6:49So anything that's coming into my phone now, I can leave it. It's going to be worked through. And I think to me, that gives me a lot of headspace because rather than it being headspace where I'm just thinking, do you know what, it's all fine. My headspace is more about knowing that I'm definitely going to be able to get something done and that for me is very um it helps me to kind of stay present yeah so that I'm not constantly thinking about all of the things that I'm not doing I do that at home I don't do that on the road I should I I jam through emails on the car between meetings like actually on the way here I just went through probably like 20 or 30 try to make sure no one was blocked on anything yeah so I'll try to I'll steal that idea when you're doing your emails is it something that you try and get back to them throughout the day or do you do it specifically in blocks because I'm a big blocks person.

7:33I feel like if I give myself permission to go back to emails at every moment during the day, obviously if there's any urgent one, then I'll go back to it. But if I give myself permission to do that, then I'm never quite present in the meeting I'm in or the, you know, whatever it might be. I do both, which is messy, but I'm always afraid that I'm, well, one is I try to push as many decisions down into the team as possible. I'd rather the team make 10 decisions without me and I disagree with one, then, you know, make three decisions with me over the same period of time. I don't want to become a bottleneck for progress.

8:06So, but I'm also, so that's sort of like a fear of mine. And so I do check during the day and not like during in the middle of meetings, but you know, you know, when I have, you know, a commute because I'm always worried that I don't want anyone to be sitting and waiting around because they need a decision or guidance for me. But I try not to make that many decisions. I actually now have a counter. This is a new weird Adam thing in my office where I count every decision I make in a week. And I try to keep that number as low as possible. It doesn't mean I don't get a lot of questions or asks. I just try to delegate them as much as possible and be like, here's what I would do.

8:43But this is actually Ashley's call or Max's call or Jenny's call. So I'm trying to empower my team as much as possible. I find that so useful. I think one of the things that I've really struggled with over the past few years as my teams have got bigger, I'm 10 years into being a founder and I still don't think I've nailed the kind of delegation and decision aspect part of it. I really struggle between whether something would be negligent of me not to be the person making the decision versus taking away someone's autonomy and also building a crutch versus actually helping the team. If you take some more time and you explain how you think about a space or what you value or what the strategy might be, it takes longer than just making the call.

9:29But maybe they'll be able to make the next five calls without you and that'll actually save you time. So, you know, teach a man to fish or give him a fish kind of idea. So you've been in tech for approximately 20 years. What originally drew you to that world? I was living in New York. I was going to NYU. And my parents were helping with tuition, and I got a bunch of credits from high school. I took a bunch of college classes. But I needed to make money for food and for rent in New York City. This was in 2001 to 2005. And so I just started doing freelance work. Of course, it was bartending and waiting tables, but I started doing freelance design work.

10:06And we found some of the better jobs were doing website design. So I started, I taught myself to program and I was sort of learning to design at school. And so I was just freelancing and then I started a small design firm. I started working with a guy named Sidney Blank, a really wonderful man who was 10 years my senior. I was 19, he was 29 and his gray hair added an air of credibility to the whole operation. But it was just, you know, my rent was due on the 15th of the month. It was 1300 bucks. I'd look at my bank account, there'd be$150. and I'd be like, I got 14 days, you know, and I need to make$11.50 and eat.

10:43So that's kind of where I started. And then that grew. I moved out west, opened up an office, and then I had a bunch of friends start in companies like Facebook. And eventually they convinced me to join. And do you think, because I guess then you were almost starting as a founder before you went into a more corporate background. Do you think that gave you a more intense kind of learning process that you were able to bring into the corporate world? So much learning. Facebook was 400 people maybe when I joined in 2008. And it was by far the largest place I'd ever worked. You know, 20 times as big as the last startup I was at, which was a tech startup, which was maybe 20 by the time I left.

11:26But I learned a lot from the design years, from running the small agency, or consultancy really, you know, learning how to talk about money, learning how to advocate for self-worth, learning how to negotiate contracts, learning how to communicate ideas to clients, learning how to communicate about the creative process and create structure around something that is fundamentally ephemeral or sort of hard to pin down, you know, learning how to work hard, learning how to be accountable you know having employees at 19 or 20 and feeling responsible you know you know i had one or two on visas and i was like if i mess this up they have to go home like that's crazy um i remember we our first year as a proper company we paid out a bonus sydney and i um to we only had like probably two or three employees and you know we had a little extra money in the bank from the in the corporation so we paid it out as bonuses to ourselves and everybody else and we didn't realize that new york city had a nine nine percent city tax so we had completely miscalculated and we had all of a sudden like we needed to ask for the money back we couldn't do that to our employees so we gave all of our money back and then forego i think salary for a little bit because we're like we can't give someone a bonus and then yeah but like learning which then taught you about thinking ahead and making mistakes and taking accountability.

12:54So, so many, so many lessons that I really deeply appreciate despite how wildly chaotic and stressful those early years were. Yeah, absolutely. And did you have big aspirations for leadership at the beginning of your career? I didn't really think about the long term. I was trying to just pay rent. I loved design. I loved building things. We did graphic design, branding work, exhibitions for museums, websites kiosks at exhibits sometimes you go to an exhibit and there's like a computer program you work with like I used to build those but no I was not thinking about the long term what skills would you say then you think have contributed most to your career progression considering it wasn't necessarily something that you were looking at and being like okay I want to be the top of a company like meta yeah um I'm not great at anything uh what really helped me was I have a lot of range I can do a lot of things reasonably well um and that really helps because as a designer at Facebook in the early years before it was meta I was middle of the pack but I worked really hard and you know I communicated well and I kind of worked my way up but my career really took off when I switched over to what we call PM which is product management so you're coordinating all all of the different teams.

14:13And that really catered to my strength. And it's not actually what I would want. I romanticize the specialist, the amazing machine learning engineer or product designer or anything, like carpenter or watchmaker, fashion designer, the person who does one thing better than anybody. I think that's the coolest. But it's just not me. And when I switched to focus on a role that was more about a generalist profile, about doing a lot of things. That's when my career took off. Yeah, that's so interesting because I do think that, I mean, we've spoken on this podcast before about how you become more and more generalist as you move up, especially a corporate career.

14:56But understanding how to be generalist and also how to be a good manager and also how to understand other people's roles is difficult. It's something that you don't necessarily always have the right learning to do at each stage where you're pushed to the next stage of your career. so what really strikes me and what you've said is actually what helped you a lot was an awareness of what you were good at and what you weren't necessarily really strong at but i got lucky i think that's a really good thing for people to do you want to understand what do you love doing what are you good at and where is there good work to do or you know if you're a large company what's valuable to the company if you're starting something what is there demand for in the world but it has to be at the intersection of those things.

15:36I got lucky because I had a, I had a really talented boss, um, who has done a bunch of good big things since named Brett Taylor. He was even the co-CEO of Salesforce for a while after he left. Um, but when he left, there was a big vacuum. So I sort of just declared myself a PM because there was this project that needed a PM and there was no one to do it. You can't do that anymore. You can't just be like, I'm a PM now. Like you have to like apply and do go interviews and all those things. but I did it out of need but it happened to be a better fit but I think people who are more intentional can make a lot more progress by being okay being honest about what you're good at honest about what you love and what matters to you and realistic about what matters from a business perspective to the company or to the market can really help but I would be lying if I said I had that foresight and that self-awareness that when I make that switch, I was probably 29.

16:33Yeah, I do think, though, that yes, absolutely, there's always an aspect of right place, right time. But at the same time, what you're describing is making sure that in each situation you make opportunity out of it. You can make your own luck. There's no guarantees, but you can definitely be, if you're self-aware and you've got hustle and you're a quick learner, you can do anything over time. So I don't mean to be at all dismissing that idea. I'm just, I don't want to claim that I had that foresight at 29 because I didn't. So maybe the thing to do is to make sure you're constantly taking every opportunity and putting yourself into situations because you don't know which is the one that's going to take you to the next level.

17:10yeah i mean i think on some cadence not every week because that's probably just exhausting think about you know like okay if you're at a large company or if you're i'll do large company and a startup differently if you're at a large company okay what what do you want and like what are your aspirations what matters to you maybe it's what you learn maybe it's the impact you have in the world maybe it's who you work with maybe it's how much money you make just be honest and then that's an articulation of what you care about and then if you're at a large company what does the company care about and then make sure you shape your role to be at the intersection of both because if you love it and it's aligned with your strengths but the company doesn't care about it that's not going to work and the company loves it or cares about it and it has nothing to do with your aspirations or your values you're going to just burn out and so you got to be at that intersection and managers by the way should be always making sure their people are at that working at that overlap.

18:07If you're doing your own thing, it's the same idea, but instead of what matters to the company, it's like what matters to the world or in the world? Where is there demand? Where is there business to be had? Where is there something that should exist that doesn't? And doing that on some regular cadence, I think is really healthy and much easier said than done. Knowing what you care about is not something most people do. You ask a lot of people, what matters to you most? And it's hard for them to answer truthfully and concisely. They'll list like seven things that all matter to them yeah uh it's you know you feel lucky it'll just occur to you in the shower one morning but most of us have to work at it um talk to friends that care about it right out to organize your thoughts i like to pretend say what matters to me most is who i work with and then does that feel honest or does it feel disingenuous you know just like role play almost we all have our own tactics but figuring that out is really important yeah And you've worked with Mark Zuckerberg at Meta for 17 years now.

19:02Since 2008. So what would you say makes a good leader at such a big company? For at Meta or for Mark? Or both? Either. I mean, I think the styles of leaders that do well at Meta vary a lot. There's a lot of different styles at the senior most management team. at meta specifically i think if there's there's a few things that are kind of consistent i think strong communication skills is really important i think really um structured thinking and analytical thinking is really important uh and being quick on your feet is actually really important because it's pretty chaotic uh but we have different strengths some are much stronger organizational leaders some are much stronger strategically some are more strategic about business versus product versus design.

19:53There's a different range. Some are extroverts, some are introverts, some are loud, some are quiet. Some have changed. But those are probably the themes. But that's because the company values speed, values focus, values impact. And so being able to understand what matters, communicate it effectively, and will progress into existence are just going to be disproportionately important at other companies. Not that they're not important at other companies. Whereas a different company will have a different set of values, a different set of different environment, and maybe different types of people will sort of last the longest and get to the most senior levels.

20:35Yeah, so really being able to get clear on what the company values are as well so that other people can execute in that direction. I think so, yeah. Now, if you're a leader or you aspire to be a leader, I think it's about being intentional about what kind of leader you want to be, right? There are leaders who are very visionary and strategic and directive. There are leaders who are very thoughtful and insightful but lead from behind and are more introverted and less alpha. There are leaders who are really supportive and really lean into this idea of taking care of their people. They're leaders who spend no time or energy on that, right?

21:15There's different merits to all of these different leadership styles. And the truth is, if you're in one of these roles, you do need to move in and out of these different styles, depending on what the company and the team needs. But it's good to be thoughtful about what's your style and why, or what are your styles and why, and then when are you acting in which capacity? Yeah. And for someone who's listening to this who might not yet be head of Instagram, but they might be in their first leadership role, so their first managerial role, for example, what would you recommend to them in terms of actually really honing that skill?

21:48Because I think a lot of workplaces have great training schemes. A lot of workplaces don't. I think most don't. Yeah. And I think that that's one of the issues that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is how do you actually progress your career whilst also making sure you're building the appropriate skills to perform and ensure your team is performing as well so that you can progress in the direction you want to? What would you recommend to people in that position who want to hone those skills but maybe don't necessarily have the right training? I think, I mean, a couple different things.

22:18Maybe a little bit separate from leadership skills, but sort of the standard mistakes first-time managers make. One is under delegation, right? So we talked about this a little bit before, but like a lot of really talented people get into their first management job and they just try to do everything themselves. And you can do that, but you're going to be less effective than if you manage to get your team to be, to grow your team's abilities over time, which is related to another one, which is often first-time managers are hesitant to hire or mentor people up who are going to be as strong or close to as strong or even stronger than them it's a classic mistake I love having people work for me who are way smarter than me and better than me at things it's the best because then I can learn from them and I've managed so many people through this transition and they've been like I don't know if we really need the senior person and then they I'm like just try it And then if they land that person, like every time, I'm like, this is amazing.

23:16I run ideas by her. She gives me advice. She drags me along. It's like another standard mistake. And the third mistake that comes to mind when I think about first-time managers is trying to manage everyone the same way. There's this idea of fairness in management, but the truth is everyone's needs are different. And if you're going to get the most out of your people, you need to understand their specific needs. There are consistencies, like the overlap I talked about before. So what matters to the company? Understand what matters to the individual? The answer to those things will be different, but do that for each person.

23:49But some people need to be challenged. Some people need more support. Some people need really direct, frank feedback, and they're comfortable taking that in public. For other people, that'll completely blow back or blow up in your face. You have to understand the individual's needs and then manage to those needs. so for first time managers i would say like look out for those because i just it's seven out of eight make all three of those mistakes yeah um at least for some period of time and then as you get more senior then it's about thinking a little bit about what kind of leader do you want to be what's your style um and whatever it is it's okay like you can but you but you have to be honest about what your wants are and what your strengths are.

24:35Yeah. Because if it's not aligned with one of those, it's not going to. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Post a job for free and get started today. When too much work bogs you down, Asana helps you handle it. AI makes it easy to hand off routine tasks and stay focused on important work.

25:22That's how work gets handled. Visit us at Asana.com. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

26:25tangles. And we get a lot of flack for evolving Instagram forward. And I understand that it's annoying when things change, especially if you use them. And I take it as a sign of a good sign that people are invested in our product. But if we didn't evolve, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And in my time, I guess, on Instagram, I feel like I felt every algorithm change, every feature change, every kind of really having businesses on there and being a creator on there, it's been really important for me to be very close to that and work out what that means to the business every single time.

26:57But I want to know from you what it is like going through so many iterations of a business, because I can imagine you're making changes almost daily. It's pretty wild. I mean, every year gets a little bit crazier. I mean, look, I would say it depends on the type of work. So like one thing people ask a lot about is how ranking works, about the algorithm. They call it the algorithm. There's many, many algorithms. But how does ranking work fundamentally uh and so but the way we work on that is very iterative we make small tiny changes every day uh very rarely if ever do you see major changes so some people say like oh something clearly changed last week my reach went way down it's like that actually almost never happened it could be that your account got flagged and you could see that in account status and undo that but it wasn't some major ranking change could be that something happened in the world maybe it was you know champions of the game and there's a lot more competition with your followers.

27:52But so managing that is much more about long-term, what's the goal? What's the best measurement for the goal? Make sure that the metric isn't the goal, but it's a proxy for it, that the incentives are, and the guardrails are clear and that team can iterate for it. So supporting that work is totally different than building a new product, right? Like we're working on an app called Edits right now for video editing. And to support that team, it's not about metrics or guardrails or, you know, GPUs or revenue budgets. It's about making space for creativity. It's about understanding how we might differentiate.

28:27It's about the art of knowing when to push the team to keep exploring new ideas and then when to switch to push the idea, the team to start to focus on less and less of ideas and double down on the ones that are the strongest. is uh it's what's giving them space um so again what the work demands is very different based on the type of work and over time the more teams you manage of more types you start to build your own sense of those patterns those archetypes and then you manage each of those teams based on what's going to get the most out of the people and the best results yeah and there's obviously an extraordinary amount of creativity on Instagram I think I've seen some Instagram feeds that should be like in a gallery yeah yeah um and that obviously means especially when we're talking about all of these different iterations of Instagram that have happened over the past kind of 15 or so years there's a huge breadth of different creativity there's kind of this off-the-cuff posting and whatever it might be and there's also I'm sure you know things that someone spent 100 days creating in order to get up on Instagram are you kind of able to keep all of those creators in mind when building new features and when releasing new parts of the app?

29:41We try to. It's challenging. I mean, one of the things that I worry about is that people are sometimes are often too precious about what they share. We're here to support creativity, but we want to support what we internally call everyday creativity, right? If you have an amazing idea or you can take an amazing photo or shoot an amazing video in 20 seconds, you should feel comfortable posting that that's great for other people they post once a month and that's all that they need and that works for them too and that's great too we want to support all creatives not just ones who spend 100 days on one post um so we try to develop different products right so um and people spend more time making a reel that's two minutes long than they do posting a photo into stories and they do sending something in dms as a even an image actually one thing people forget is they don't even realize is there's way forget texts there's way more photos and videos posted in dms every day than there are to stories and there are way more photos and videos posted into stories than to feed but when you ask most people to think of instagram they think of feed but it's not the most important surface in terms of where people share and it's not the most important surface in terms of where people actually consume content it's third or fourth That's very interesting.

31:00And I can imagine that's incredibly interesting when you're looking at how you actually build the app itself and understanding how people are genuinely using it day to day. Like, yes, they're consuming the feed, but actually if you're understanding that they're consuming messages more or they're consuming stories more or whatever, I can imagine that. Young people spend more time in DMs. They spend more time in stories. They spend more time in the Reels tab than they do in feed. That's very interesting. and you do a lot of building in public and I speak to a lot of founders on this podcast who are doing exactly that they're building in public they're they're using social media to be able to share the journey and show the kind of good the bad and the ugly you do a lot of ask me anything every every Friday and and what spurred you to do that because that's not a classic kind of more, I don't know, you don't expect that from a huge organization.

31:54I mean, I used to manage newsfeed on the Facebook app, and there was a lot of conversations about how ranking worked, given how big Facebook was and how influential it was around the world. And my take back then was, these conversations are going to happen with or without us, and so we might as well participate, provide context. And basically, the idea is to explain what we're doing and why we're doing it. Maybe humanize us a little bit because a lot of people didn't even think anyone worked at Facebook back in the day. It was just Mark just like coding away, I guess, on his laptop. And so I started doing that in the Facebook days.

32:28And then when I moved over to Instagram, it just seemed natural to continue doing so. And I just think in a world where we're going to be under this much scrutiny and there's going to be this many people who use our app and this many people who rely on our app to do what they do for a living or to at least amplify what they do for a living, I just think the conversations are going to happen. And so my hope is to, for the rest of us or for the rest of everyone, to just, if you're interested, to explain what we do and how we do it. The other benefit though for me is because we care so much about creators because power is continuing to shift to individuals from institutions across all these industries around the world.

33:07It's very helpful for me to experience what it's like to be a creator on the platform. trying to create content that breaks through trying to manage my comments and my dms trying to load things when they don't load properly it's really helpful for me to build some empathy and then to better manage the team because nobody on the team has millions of followers or almost nobody um and so it's it's very helpful for me it's funny because i well my latest company i'm currently building an ai talent agency for creators and the one place that I've been almost avoiding building in public, despite the fact that I've built every other of my companies in public, has been Instagram, because I'm almost worried about the creators seeing what we're currently building and what might work and what might not work.

33:54And actually, it might not make sense for you to do that. But actually, that's one of the things that I've realized recently has been a mistake in our journey. And actually, you know, I'm going to start making sure I'm having a lot more of those conversations, because a lot of the things I think we built that didn't work for the creators we probably could have found out a lot sooner if we were building in public and were getting that kind of direct yeah and constant feedback loop i think that's great i think one of the things though is we almost have to build in public now because when we run a test you know there might be 10 million people in the test so it's going to get covered somewhere by somebody um but if you're going to build in public whether you're big or small you need to go in eyes wide open and you need to make sure you have a thick skin it's good to get the feedback um but there's can be more noise than feedback invariably.

34:40Unfortunately, that's just how the world works. And it's our job to sift through all of that and find the signal and ignore the noise. And, you know, if you see my DMs or my comments, they can get pretty nirly and pretty angry. But I need to sort of accept that, but still go through it because I do find gems in there consistently every week. But you need to know what you're getting into and you need to make sure you have a thick skin because there's a lot of critics out there. And so I just think it's just important to be conscious of that as you get involved. And for anyone trying to build their Instagram or maybe their business's Instagram, is there a optimal amount of times to be posting?

35:22Because I have seen all sorts of theories out there on kind of how many times you should be posting stories a day. Yeah, there isn't. There are a couple of things to consider. I mean, And one of them is just, so it's like, same thing about managing people. It's similar for creators and using Instagram. The question, again, with this idea of like a Venn diagram. So what are your goals? Like, okay, you want to grow and get reached, but to what end? Are you trying to sell a product? Are you trying to build a brand? Are you trying to evangelize a cause? Are you, you know, what are you trying to build a community?

35:51What are you trying to do? So then you have to identify that goal. And then you also have to figure out what is a creative strategy or a content strategy that's actually going to resonate, that's going to do well. Yes, by understanding ranking, but more by understanding what people are interested in. Because ranking is just a proxy for people's interests. And then you got to just try things and find things at that overlap. And so I think that that's kind of where it starts, which is you need to sort of identify that overlap. All questions like optimal time to post, you view through that lens. so it might be that you are a museum curator and you're trying to drive ticket sales and you probably should post a bunch when there's a new exhibit coming out in order to build up some demand but it doesn't make sense to post a bunch all the time and so maybe it's maybe the answer to that question changes maybe you're you know one of these creators that does incredible and post one thing a month.

36:51For a lot of people, it's more valuable to post more often because it gives you more shots on goals, so to speak. I mean, we're here in a soccer, I'm sorry, a football arena. But the thing there I'd be careful about is burnout because let's say it is optimal from a reach perspective to post two things a day or three things a day or four things a day. But if that's not aligned with your goals, because you can't keep that up, don't do it. You have to come up with a different thing that is both good for engagement, but also aligned with you, your goals and your constraints. So it's not a really satisfying answer because everyone has to kind of find their own journey.

37:31For me, I have found that more important than frequency is having patterns or series. So I don't have to think about what am I going to do. I just know on Fridays, I do not ask me anything on stories. I try to post at least one video a week about either a new feature or an explainer or what I call a hidden gem. So a cool thing you might not know about. And, you know, if I have time, two or three, but I do at least one a week. And then if I'm on the road, I just post stories all day long. Right. That way I don't have to think about it. And then if I have a new idea, I'll try it and maybe that'll become a series or maybe it'll go away.

38:05yeah and what i really like about what you've just said is essentially the optimal cadence of posting is the one that you can be consistent with and the one that allows you to do the rest of your job because a lot of people have different parts of their job aside from social to maximize my reach i should probably post a reel at least once a day i cannot do that actually doesn't even take me that time much time to create a reel but my life is so hectic right now not just the whole job but also the kids that i just can't do that so i don't i post one two maybe from lucky three times a week because that's what I can sustain over the long run.

38:38You've just launched Edits. How do you see that being able to help people create content and grow their brand? The hope with Edits is that it will be a tool that allows people who create videos today to create more videos and better videos, but also one that allows people who might not have created before start to create. It's not for a power editor who uses a desktop and Adobe Premiere and two monitors to edit their videos. And it's not for someone who just posts pictures of their kids or, you know, I know videos of, you know, where it's just standstill. There's no editing that needs to be done.

39:20It's for those that middle, and there's tens of millions of people in that middle. And the hope is that it will not only be a video editor, but it'll actually help with the entire creative process from finding inspiration to keeping track of your ideas to yes editing the video and hopefully doing some pretty fun cutting things with ai in order to make more interesting and wonderful uh storytelling stories to actually seeing how the video does and looking for patterns in your insights that sort of entire creative journey and i will see and this is just the beginning and it's going to take time.

39:59But that's the aspiration and it's one that I'm very, very excited. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today.

40:37Which creators do you think are really killing it at the moment on the app? Ooh, I just, I love how there's so many different types of creators that do well and have completely different strategies. you know so uh like on one end of the spectrum there's like you know hailey bailey who does this comedy she's based out of new york city she posts five times a day reels but she also posts five videos on every other platform she uses that is an insane amount of content production she is prolific i do not encourage everyone to try to aspire to that amount of production but for her it's just natural and then on the other end of this picture there's rick rubin who only has one thing on his profile at a time.

41:17And when he posts another one, which might be once every week or two, he deletes the last one. And it's this kind of his Zen take on creativity that fortnight. And so that's kind of the fun bit is seeing people find things, ways to be creative, to express themselves, but that are really aligned with their identities, their values, their stories. So for me, it's always kind of fun to see. For me, my Instagram is a lot of, you know, design content. So I'm really into architecture and furniture. It's a lot of, you know, there's men's fashion. There's a lot of football, which we call soccer in the States, some basketball and some watches.

42:03But for everyone, it's different. So if I named the creators in those markets, they would just be probably completely uninteresting to somebody else. And what do you think entrepreneurs are getting wrong and getting right on Instagram at the moment? I think too often entrepreneurs and business owners and creators are focused too much on reach. And to be clear, I'm not saying reach doesn't matter. Of course it matters. If you post and no one sees it, then what's the point of posting? But again, the question is reach to what end. If you get great reach, but you're trying to sell shoes and none of your reach is actually helping you send any shoes, then there's no point to it.

42:43And I think that's a common problem is you get over-focused on ranking and the algorithm and how to get more likes or how to get more views or more reach, and you lose sight of why you're there in the first place. It's better to have a smaller following and reach less people, but have them actually, in my weird example, effectively sell your shoes than to reach more people and sell none. That particularly delights me is when people come up with creative ways to connect the dots between the different things that we build. I've met people who follow a different group of accounts every month based on a theme.

43:17They're focused on causes. So, you know, maybe it's climate this month, maybe it's women education next month, maybe it's something else. So that's a cool thing. That's a hack. But what they should also do, and I've seen people do this, is create a video explaining that. So now you've got a reel that explains what you're doing and you've got your following list which actually points people in the direction and you've sort of you have a you know one plus one equals three kind of thing and so if you can think about how can you use reels and stories and who you follow and your grid and your dms or your channel you can't be not everyone can be using all of these tools so i'm not trying to say that but if there's creative ways to amplify your stories by using two or three and having them interact, I think that's always particularly exciting.

44:02And what would you say generally for creators is the most important metric to track on Instagram? So the measure of how, I mean, reach is probably the output that matters. But if you're trying to understand why your reach is what it is, the things to look at most are likes per reach. So, you know, if a thousand people saw it, how many liked it? sends per reach and if you're posting a video watch time average watch time those three matter the most okay for reals what about posts in general and for posts obviously uh do you watch time isn't relevant if it's a photo but likes per reach and sends per reach for stories you know obviously you can't do there's there's different things you can interact with for channels it's different but for the main posts those are the three things that matter most and i'm personally obsessed with productivity and making sure that I'm getting that.

44:58I really give off that. So am I. Intense. I should introduce you to my OCD palace later on my phone. I'll just show you how to keep all my notes and all my to do's. Well, I show you my productivity method, which is a step by step process for good to do lists. Oh, yes. I love this. Yeah. It's a it's it's a really good one, if I do say so myself. But I wanted to know your productivity non-negotiables. So if you sat down and you know you have an obscene amount of work to get through? What are your kind of non-negotiables or what is your process in really tackling that to-do list? So I have a running to-do list that's organized and I always mark things, there's a small subset of things that absolutely have to get done today.

45:39And I try to be really intense about not putting too many things marked as it has to get done today that don't actually have to get done today. because at the end of the, you know, at the end of the day, inevitably something comes up, you know, we'll have a press cycle or a kid will fall at school and I have to pick them up early and my day will get blown up. So I have to have a short list of what needs to get done at any given, in any given day so that when, when my time gets compressed, I know where to focus first. That I think is as much about peace of mind as it is actually about prioritization.

46:17Yeah, I completely agree with that. My big thing is that I think that we often have this big to do list that feels more terrifying than it is because it's not weighted in terms of importance or time. Like I'm I categorize my to do list by time. I have three different sections by time. Yeah, I find it gets everything done so much quicker. But that's that's exactly the thing is if you have a spare five minutes and you look at your to do list, you're probably going to get nothing done because of the paradox of choice. and you're kind of thinking there are all these things. Whereas if you have it separated into things that take under five minutes, you're going to be able to get through them super quickly.

46:50So it's like this illusion of just being able to skim things down and work out which are the priorities. As long as we're nerding out on productivity, I've met someone who does this thing I wish I could do. I think my list is too long. Who doesn't do to-do lists as like a list. He puts it in the calendar for the amount of time he thinks it's going to take. Yes. And so if you give him another thing to do, he's like, he'll look at his calendar and I'll be like, all right, I can do that. That's going to take about an hour. I'll do it tomorrow from 11 to 12. Yeah. But if it's not, if he doesn't have a window and it's going to take an hour until next week, he's like, you're not going to get it till next week.

47:27And so he's actually, and he's built up a lot of good intuition over the years about how long all these different tasks take. My to-do list is so long. I don't know how, I don't have so many meetings that my calendar is already a little bit, triggering just to look at. So I'm not sure I could do that. But I love that idea. So mine's a combo of those two things. I have the to-do list split into three, which is under five minutes, five to 30 minutes and 30 minutes plus. And then I write out my fixed commitments for the day. So all my meetings or when I'm going to the gym or whatever it might be.

47:57And then I slot them in specifically because they're already in time. So I take, I've already, you know, I've flagged my non-negotiables. This is the beginning of a long relationship of productivity hacks being DM'd to each other. fantastic honestly i would love absolutely nothing more um and i yeah i'm just obsessed with it i feel like i when you talk about being obsessed with productivity i think people think that you want to be working all the time rather than the fact that you want to be working for less time so that is why you need to effectively anyway i feel like we could talk about this for a long time just to finish i feel like i have found the real common ground here um just to finish i would love to know what the best piece of advice is that you've ever been given oh man a big one i've been given a i've been lucky i've been getting a lot of good advice um in the early years my mother started ran an architecture firm for the longest time and so when i started a design firm in new york when i was young in uni uh one amazing piece of advice she gave me was always talk about the money openly and early and that got me very comfortable talking about money.

49:08And I think a lot of people struggle with that. And that's not only relevant if you're a business owner. I mean, a report, I work at a big company. Actually, sorry, I'm trying to say it's both. So if you're running a company, and you're, especially if it's in service, being like, hey, we build websites. The smallest job we've ever done was, you know, 5 ,000 pounds. So if that's too high for you, you know, that's totally okay. But this isn't going to work. And I just want you to know that up front and being comfortable saying that up front and saving people some time and giving a sense of what their expectations should be.

49:41It's also about being confident in your self-worth. Similarly, if you're working at a large company, being able to self-advocate, right? So being able to say, hey, this is what matters to me. I care about compensation and here's why. Here's what I think is fair. Be okay with not necessarily getting what you ask for, but you're going to get more if you ask for it. And so this comfort with talking about money, which is almost like a dirty subject for a lot of people, I think served me really well in the early years um in the middle years and I don't I can't think of the latest I think I mean my first manager at Facebook was a woman maybe she was my second named Rebecca Cox really intense really talented designer and I thought I was like doing great like I said I was I was a little overconfident in my 20s and she's like you need to focus which is a very simple thing to say but in my 20s i was like working around the clock i thought i was crushing it but the work wasn't great and it wasn't great because i was doing too many things and i and that sort of idea of do less things and do them better i think is one that is almost always valuable to consider at least and so she really pushed me and humbled me a little bit she's like you're unfocused you're all over the place i was never used to hearing that because i never had a boss before um so i don't know i could go on and on but those those two jump out to me from my mom and from Rebecca well thank you so much you've been fantastic thank you for all of the help on how to use Instagram and also just the general I feel like people will learn a lot from your corporate experience and your career so thank you so much thanks for having me I don't usually get to talk about management and organizational leadership and that's just a piece of my obsession this is just me trying to get some advice no it's great no it's great I mean I would love to more I don't know if anyone usually cares so I'm excited amazing well let's do it cheers Thank you.

51:5910-person team, even if it's just you. So you don't need superpowers to get everything done. You just need Wix. Try it now for free at Wix.com. Surprise! Beach day. No excuses. I'm in. Gimme five. With Bixolet Glide Razor, you'll have hydrated, smooth skin that's ready to go on the fly. No shave cream needed. You can prep, shave, and hydrate all in one step, thanks to moisture bars that hydrate your skin during and after shaving. Five flexible blades hug your skin for a close shave. Glide into smooth. It's your time to shine with Bixolet. Buy now at Amazon and Walmart. Ready. Your skin looks amazing.

52:36So smooth and beach ready. Let's go. At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. Thank you.