Hey guys, happy Sunday. Hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend and enjoying football. Hope your team won. Go Jets! This week was great. I was lucky enough to have Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, on the Marketing Upgraders podcast, and also had a friend, Kat Cole, CEO of Athletic Green, speak to our team about leadership and feedback.
I've been reflecting about both this weekend and wanted to share my takeaways from these two incredible leaders and friends. Unfortunately, the Kat talk was amazing, but it is private and just for our team. However, you will have the opportunity to hear Harley nerd out about e-commerce, Shopify, and Founder Mode on an upcoming episode of Marketing Operators, so stay tuned.
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There are three big things that stood out to me. Number one, they are both really customer obsessed. They had some great moments and lines, and both highlighted the importance of having customer obsession as your mission, and your critical North Star. Doing so is probably the best way to align teams and incentives, especially in a growing organization and during tough times. No company, as great as Shopify or Athletic Greens, is immune from challenges, so that was a great reminder to be customer focused.
For example, Harley has his own side hustle, a tea brand, and he frequently reviews TikTok ads performance and is in the Shopify dashboard, truly embodying the principle of eating your own dog food. Kat is also very customer obsessed, evident in their marketing, products, and customer service. She emphasizes what is best for the customer when decisions have to be made, especially when teams may not agree. This is a great principle, and it's something we've been trying to implement. We're having every employee in our company work in our stores a few times a year, which has been a really fun initiative. So, the first takeaway is to be customer obsessed.
Number two, be in the details. Founder mode strikes again. A lot of traditional management advice suggests hiring good people and getting out of their way, which doesn't always work in a fast growing startup. This is why the founder mode essay by Paul Graham went viral. All of these great leaders at fast-growing companies have really high standards and enforce them as part of their culture. They are also in the details and know far more about their organizations than many founders who struggle with ads and lack knowledge about their tech, gross margins, or top-selling SKUs. They may not have logged into their dashboards in months.
Not only are they not customer obsessed, but they are also not detail obsessed. You need high standards and should not over-delegate. While delegation is important, you must choose moments and parts of your business to dive into and improve. If you're a founder or just passionate about your role, no one will care as much as you do. As you grow and scale, things can get watered down, so it's your job to maintain quality and high standards, focusing on the customer.
Now number three was about setting expectations and creating a feedback culture. This is something Kat and Harlley may do slightly different tactically, but from a principle level it's all the same. First, expectations need to be crystal clear especially when things are moving a million miles a minute. At Shopify, employees are told they need to re-qualify for their jobs every year because the company is growing 25% a year, so their roles become that much larger each year. We've certainly had that happen, you hire someone when the business is now x size, and a year later it's way bigger and the demands of the role are so much more than what they originally were. It sounds cutthroat, but people really do need to constantly grow to keep up. Myself included.
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Man I am beat, and need to rest up before another way too busy week. Hope you enjoyed this!
-Cody