Seeking Wisdom with David Cancel

On today’s episode of #Build, host Maggie Crowley sits down with Joff Redfern, VP of Product at Atlassian. Together they talk through Joff’s time as VP of Product at LinkedIn, building a product org from 12 people to 650, the concept of a shipyard, why talent is priority 0, why he chose to join Atlassian and much more.

Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends!

Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @maggiecrowley, @drift , @seekingwisdomio, and @mejoff.

In this episode:

0:33 – Maggie introduces Joff

2:19 – Falling in love with the Atlassian vision, needing a calling

3:30 – How LinkedIn shaped Joff’s career

6:45 – Riding the double paradigm shift to mobile and social networks

7:48 – How to scale an organization...Building Your Shipyard

8:52 – Three pieces to a shipyard: values (8:59), people/talent (10:15), practices (10:43)

2:11 – What does it mean to be an Atlassian Product Manager?

15:40 – Having just one set of expectations for hiring, evaluating, and growing talent

19:15 – Keep it simple, because movements are built on slogans

21:52 – Creating autotomy and best practices across the organization

25:15 – Maggie shares about independent work with accountability at Drift

26:00 – Scaling really fast and incrementally improving

28:01 – Joff’s book list: Drive, Zero to One, Thinking Fast and Slow

30:18 – Don’t wait, don’t be afraid to look bad, and embrace creative confrontation

On this #Marketing edition of Seeking Wisdom, DG sits down with Jay Acunzo to unpack 5 lessons he learned from today's top B2B brands while working on season one of #Exceptions. Plus, get a behind-the-scenes look at the writing process for Jay's new book, the art of self-publishing and more.

How to convince an old-school CEO (of a legacy brand) to push forward with a rebrand

On this episode of Seeking Wisdom, DC and DG break down lessons from Daniel Kahneman’s classic book Thinking, Fast and Slow – and why this might be the most important book for anyone in sales and marketing. Topics on this episode: -Lessons from a recent outdoor ad campaign and American Eagle -Cognitive biases - Anchoring effect - The Halo Effect - What will DC be for Halloween? Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @davegerhardt, @dcancel and @seekingwisdomio. In this episode: 1:00 – Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 1:05 – Marketing lesson from blitz billboards in San Francisco YouTube 3:13 – How to get the referral and DC’s playbook 5:20 – Why DC loves Thinking, Fast and Slow…the third degree, black belt 6:16 – Blinkist app/website for book summary 7:38 – Why this is an important book for business people 8:13 – How we make decisions 8:38 – System 1 thinking – fast, intuitive, emotional, reptilian brain (DG!) 9:15 – System 2 thinking – slower, deliberate, logical thinker, DC’s sleep on it hack 9:59 – Learning how to modulate and create guardrails for yourself in biases 10:20 – Charlie Munger and realizing you don’t have control over biases 11:15 – Anchoring Effect 12:38 – Discounting as a form of anchoring 12:56 – DC’s trip to American Eagle with his daughter 13:43 – We’re all blind to this stuff 14:25 – The Halo Effect 15:12 – Shep Gordon, the master of the Halo Effect or Light Bulb Effect 15:54 – DG’s tips to understanding the magic in marketing 16:25 – Doing the work, practicing and applying what you learn 17:24 – What is Halloween?   Books mentioned in this episode: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Influence by Robert Cialdini

It’s a special episode of #Build. Host Maggie Crowley is joined by members of Drift’s Product and Engineering teams. Meet Alexa Nguyen, Senior Product Manager, Trevor Rundell, Director of Engineering, and Peter Karl II, Lead, Product Efficiency. The group chats through how product and engineering can work together most efficiently. That means breaking through the perception that engineers should be wholly removed from the customer. To tackle this problem at Drift, tech leads here are directly responsible for the outcomes of the products they’re working on (where at most organizations, that’s the Product Manager’s responsibility). This gives engineering more context around the products they're building. And empowers them. They’re expected to be on the front lines answering questions from customers. Because at Drift, it’s all about putting the customer first. Learn more about story time and how to get your engineering and products teams better aligned in today’s episode of #Build.  Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @maggiecrowley, @drift and @seekingwisdomio.   In This Episode 0:37 - Introductions of Alexa, Trevor, and Peter 1:44 - Tech Leads vs. Product Managers 3:48 - Creating a space of forward-thinking work called “Story Time” 5:50 - When to bring an engineer into a project 6:30 - Starting Story Time with a well-defined problem 7:44 - What does the customer want? 8:36 - The team discusses their first Story Time. 10:24 - Pencils Not Pixels 11:04 - How to communicate this idea with new engineers 12:00 - What is the role of conflict/disagreement? 12:34 - Do not mistake feedback for criticism. 14:00 - How to disagree with respect 14:36 - One-on-one meetings explained 16:19 - The best PM to work with 17:18 - Practice at work 18:12 - Experience working with Drift’s co-founder 20:26 - Advice to the listeners

On today's episode of Seeking Wisdom, DC and DG are joined by special guest and Drift co-founder and CTO, Elias Torres. Together, they talk through how to hire people who can go from individual contributor to VP. It comes down to 4 things. 1) Come from humble beginnings. You need to be hungry. 2) Ability to get sh*t done. Do the work. 3) The "It" factor. Uncommon charisma and presence. 4) Humility. Be Ego-free. Stay humble as you grow in your career. They break it all down in this episode of Seeking Wisdom. Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @davegerhardt, @dcancel, @eliast and @seekingwisdomio.   In This Episode: 0:53 - The Culture Code 1:38 - Consistency with Seeking Wisdom is coming. 2:30 - The team discusses their trips to Europe. 5:00 - Hiring Lessons from Elias Torres 6:12 - The value of coming from humble beginnings 7:04 - The ability to get sh*t done 7:17 - The “It” factor 8:15 - Ego-free individuals that have humility 9:12 - Elias Torres talks about his time starting at Drift. 10:42 - Hiring for Marketing 11:58 - DC’s Marketing background 14:00 - Looking beyond the profile for hiring 14:40 - Marketing’s need for someone who can grab your attention 17:50 - The dark ten years 19:00 - Do the work to find the right person. 19:27 - Put yourself in the right company. 20:30 - Read Blitzscaling 21:29 - Where would you find another DG? 23:50 - Be around people that push you. 24:55 - Recap   Books mentioned in this episode:  Blitzscaling: The Lightning-fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh and Bill Gates The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

A brand based on truth? That's what ProfitWell co-founder & CEO Patrick Campbell has set out to achieve. But what is a brand based on truth exactly? Well, it's about going deeper to cut through assumptions and push past egotistical decision making to find...the truth. With so many metrics, it's all too easy to pay attention to what makes us feel good, rather than what's actually good for our business. So how do you actually face the truth? We dive deeper in today’s episode of #Exceptions to find out.  In this episode: 1:40 - Introduction to ProfitWell 2:25 - What makes ProfitWell different? (The idea of Truth) 3:58 - Andy Cook’s experience using ProfitWell 6:14 - If ProfitWell were a person, who would it be? 7:30 - The fear of not making money vs. how to maximize your business 9:30 - Face the truth-Brand, Product and Content 12:00 - How many businesses start with a faulty foundation 13:54 - Build the foundation of your understanding first. 14:28 - Hear from ProfitWell’s founder and CEO, Patrick Campbell. 15:12 - Explore how brand is truth 17:00 - Understanding what you stand for is brand 18:33 - ProfitWell’s dashboard is free because it highlights problems. 19:40 - Solving the cause of the problem 21:20 - ProfitWell’s content 25:55 - Patrick’s take on building an audience 27:06 - Are you building your brand around a unified concept? 28:11 - What is the one simple idea that customers are really after? 28:23 - Can you package it as one simple story? 29:46 - Does your content actively pursue the truth about your customers’ problems? 30:54 - Have you actually found the truth? - Set aside your ego. Before you go, leave a 6-star review and be sure and share this podcast with your friends! And connect with us on Twitter. Follow @jayacunzo, @seekingwisdomio and @drift.

DG is traveling around Europe this week, sharing the good word on brand building. So for today's episode of Seeking Wisdom, we're throwing it back to one of our favorite episodes...on ideas. You don't need more of them, you need better execution. Learn how to pick out the good from the bad and how to actually execute. In this episode: 00:18 - Ranting about “ideas” 01:02 - Ideas that put you to sleep 01:30 - Why “ideas” hold no value 01:55 - Why NOW is the only real idea 02:30 - How to filter your ideas 03:09 - Synthesizing brings success 03:30 - Powerful ideas need immediate action 04:05 - Always trust your gut 04:35 - “Interesting” isn’t always worthy of action 04:45 - Real ideas always require implementation 05:15 - If you move the ball, you can move your mouth Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on ideas and execution on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @davegerhardt, @dcancel and @seekingwisdomio.

Pluralsight's Nate Walkingshaw literally wrote the book on product leadership. On this episode of Build, Nate dives into the importance of empathy in product and how his own background as an EMT helped him build more empathetic, more intuitive products. Plus, Nate shares his framework for the "product heart" – all of the key elements for what a healthy product should look like. In this episode: 00:35 - Nate’s journey from EMT to Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Pluralsight 1:48 - Inventing products to solve EMT problem 3:25 - Nate’s work at Stryker 4:09 - The transition from hardware to software development 4:45 - Nate’s work at Strava 6:20 - Launching Strava’s first commerce based app 6:47 - Nate’s work as Head of Tanner Labs at O.C. Tanner 8:00 - The Mission of Pluralsight: Democratizing Technology Skills 8:30 - Joining Pluralsight   9:45 - How to develop a great product that impacts people 10:27 - Why “why” matters 11:25 - Direct Discovery: Mission, Vision and , & The Client 12:17 - Hearing the voice of the customer 12:50 - Customer Preference Testing (CPT) & Customer Confirmation Testing (CCT) 14:40 - Merely sSolving problems vs. creating meaningful outcomes 16:22 - Leveraging key performance indicators for product design 17:19 - Outcome and  & the customer’s success 19:15 - How you can benefit from switching to output focus 23:17 - How Nate taught his team about output focus 25:30 - How Nate’s team stays available & engages customers 29:50 - Care for the craft (and popularity will follow) 30:35 - The value of listening in a distracted world Books & Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Read Nate’s book on Product Leadership https://www.amazon.com/Product-Leadership-Managers-Products-Successful/dp/1491960604 Check out more of Nate’s wisdom https://medium.com/@nwalkingshaw Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! And be sure to check out more insights on product development on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @maggiecrowley, @drift and @seekingwisdomio.

Seeking Wisdom is back to discuss the importance of 1:1 meetings – what they are, why you and your team need them, the best 1:1 formats and more. Hint: As a manager, these meetings are all about listening and roadblock removal. Also in this episode, “skip 1 meetings” plus go inside DC and DG’s own 1:1 meetings – and DC’s format to steal for your own company. In this episode: Format Tips for Successful 1:1s Strive for weekly 1:1s with direct reports, every other week if you have to Embrace “skip 1 meetings” where you meet every two weeks or once a month with anyone else on the team Keep them casual – go for a walk to get coffee or a juice, get in a room to whiteboard, don’t write everything down, listen instead – this is not an interrogation! Encourage your direct reports to talk by embracing the silence, give them the room they need to talk. Tips for Direct Reports: Come to the meeting prepared with agenda – DG uses Evernote Notebooks to record what he wants to talk about. Go to the meeting with the top 3 things you want to discuss. If it’s nothing specific, but you want a check in, go for a walk. If you don’t have anything particular, it’s okay to skip these meetings occasionally. Books mentioned in this episode: High Output Management by Andrew Grove Before you go: Join the B2B Marketing Mastermind group on Facebook! Email [email protected] to get on the list. Leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on 1:1 meetings on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @davegerhardt, @dcancel and @seekingwisdomio.