Adam Grenier: belief

Transcript context

…So, I think first and foremost, it obviously depends on the stage. Anything let's say C or below, comfortable with chaos and willingness to go do something they have not done for probably 15 years are two huge signals for me, because every company I've been part of at every scale now, which is all of them basically, that's the thing that a lot of people coming from more traditional marketing environments into startup worlds, it's a pace and just the unpredictability and change and those kinds of things are just at such a higher rate than they've seen for a long time that it can be really jarring for people. And I think it's totally reasonable. It's crazy, right? If anybody that's had the exposure on both sides. And then the willingness to go do the work. People are churning constantly and the challenges are different every week and those types of things. And so it's like every now and then you've got to go write an email or you've got to go open up Facebook and get into the weeds with it with your team, into the data of it and that type of stuff. And that's stuff that I don't want to do, personally, me. I'm past the point where I should be in Facebook. But man, when I need to, I'm willing to, and I'll go get in the weeds with it and I'll use my time to just be like, "Look, we have to figure this out now." And I'm going to go do the things that I thought I was done with in my career. So, those are pretty big ones. I think then generally speaking, one of the exercises I like to take founders through when they're hiring a marketing leader is every marketer is going to have a T-shaped career. Everybody came from something they probably became awesome at and then over time just expanded their purview. So, for me it was mobile. I got into mobile. My first client ever was on Sun Microsystems early 2000s, getting Java developers to make apps for flip phones. So, I just knew digital mobile world really, really well before a lot of people did. But then eventually I'm like, "Great, now I'm running an entire digital marketing team. Now I'm running an entire marketing team. Now I'm getting into growth. Now I want to learn product," and I've expanded. And so typically it's going through that exercise of find out their T, find out their strength, and then spend time figuring out how they make up for those other things. So, for me, at Lambda school I ran our PR team for a while. I am not a PR person, but I make it a goal in my life to get to the valley of despair of the Dunning-Kruger effect, to be like, "Great, I just need to know how bad I am at PR," because if I still think I'm good at it, that's not a good place for me to be. But once I know how bad it is, I now know I need to go hire the right person to come in and I'm going to listen to them. I'm not going to assume that I'm smarter than them, and those types of things. But once I know how bad it is, I now know I need to go hire the right person to come in and I'm going to listen to them. I'm not going to assume that I'm smarter than them, and those types of things. And so I think the same thing with product questions and data questions and experimentation questions for this concept of a Growth CMO is like, well, somebody's coming from a world where they've not had to work really closely with the product team, spend time with them to figure out how they plan on adapting to that. My guess is most won't have thought of that. The good ones will be able to figure it out together with you in that interview, or afterwards, or whatever it might be. Awesome. Maybe one day we'll do a follow-up chat just to dive into hiring a marketing person. I know that's a whole deep topic.…

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