đȘ Start with understanding you, Launch, catch-up, overtake, ...
I listen to 10 hours of podcasts a week, so you donât have to.
This is the 51st edition of Best Business Podcasts, featuring In Depth, 20VC, and Lennyâs Podcast.
What you need to know
đ„ What do customers actually want?
đ Launch, catch-up, overtake
đȘ Start with understanding you
đ„ What do customers actually want?
đ„ Third place (2 min read vs 55 mins listening)
Understanding your customer's needs is key to success. However, it's not always clear how to interpret and act on their feedback. Bryant Chou, co-founder of Webflow, shares a simple but powerful framework called the 5 Whys that can help you get to the root of customer (and other stakeholder) needs.
What they say
Unpacking the 5 Whys
My mentor taught me a very simple framework for how you get to the root of what your customers are saying.
Itâs called the 5 Whys. You just ask the customer why 5 times in a row, no matter what their answer is.
A question could be âHey Webflow, I want you to build a Wordpress plugin.â
Weâd respond with why. Theyâd say âWell, itâs because I want to use Webflow and Wordpress together.â
Keep asking why. Go down the chain far enough and youâll get to the root of what theyâre asking.
Ultimately, they wanted to display dynamic information on their Webflow site. So, we didnât build a Wordpress plugin. Instead, we built the worldâs first visual CMS.
I try to coach my team on walking a mile in our customerâs shoes and use root cause analysis to really pinpoint what actions you should take based off customer feedback.
Bryant Chou
What I say
Why it matters:Â A customer's stated preference can be very different to their revealed preference. By asking why 5 times in a row, you can peel away the layers of superficial answers and uncover their real problem. Youâll avoid making assumptions about what your customers want, and instead build products that solve for their true needs.
Between the lines:Â 5 Whys can be applied to a myriad of stakeholders, from candidates and team members to suppliers and investors. You can reveal the underlying motivations and reasons behind their decisions. Let's take investors as an example:
Why didn't you invest? You're too early for us
Why? Because we like to see more traction before investing
Why? Because we want to minimize our risk
Why? Because we've invested in a similar startup before that failed
Why? Because we didn't do enough due diligence on the business model and we lost our investment
The lesson? This exercise can help you to solicit valuable insights and build better relationships. You can then use this to get what you want.
đLaunch, catch-up, overtake
đ„ Second place (3 min read vs 49 mins listening)
It's not enough to have a great idea. You have to execute with speed and precision. But how do you catch up to competitors who are ahead of you? According to Alex Schultz, CMO at Meta, you should unashamedly copy them. Being second is okay as long as you launch, catch up, and then overtake with innovation.
What they say
Unashamedly copy competitors
I think it's okay to be second. We're totally fine catching up on the basics and then trying to out innovate competitors. You just don't want to be third or fourth.
Launch, catch up, overtake with innovation. I think that's a very, very good model. But, when a competitor has reached product market fit, you really need to move fast.
The pace of learning matters. The first version of Reels failed. We tried to put it in the stories spot but it failed. But we were out before YouTube and Snap.
With our second and third iteration of Reels we learned a lot. Now, we're innovating and adding cool things that people aren't trying other than us.
Alex Schultz
What I say
Why it matters:Â Thereâs a time and a place for copying competitors:
When youâre just getting started
When competitors experience a step change in performance
Let me unpack this. Firstly, when youâre just starting out, you donât need to reinvent the wheel. Most of the things you do should be a copy and paste job. The exception is spending time on what makes you different, likely your product or service. For everything else - HR, legal, finance, operations, and in most cases sales and marketing - copy competitors or successful companies similar to you. Do whatever it takes to launch ASAP.
Secondly, when your competitor starts to gain traction quickly, ask yourself why. In Metaâs case, TikTok stole market share with its short form videos. It became apparent this format would dominate our eyeballs, similar to Snap stories in 2013. So, what did Meta do? They followed their tried and tested playbook: copy, catch up, overtake.
Between the lines:Â What are your red lines? I believe most people are too conservative. Copying competitors can be seen as dirty. People view it as unimaginative, unethical, and unbecoming of true entrepreneurs.
I totally disagree. Sure, there are people who go too far. You should never outright lie to your investors, customers, or your employees. But copying competitors? Or learning from their mistakes? Thatâs okay. Thereâs a time and a place for when this makes strategic sense, but itâs not the ethical minefield that itâs made out to be.
đȘStart with understanding you
đ„ First place (4 min read vs 1 hour 21 mins listening)
âPut your mask on before helping othersâ. We hear it every time we board a plane. Why? Because we can't help anyone else if we run out of oxygen. This concept applies to leadership as well. Without knowing our personal values, tendencies, and operating principles, we can end up blindly leading others. Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe, explores why self-awareness is key to building successful companies.
What they say
Self-awareness is key
It would be easy to build companies if there weren't humans involved. Humans are complicated. I'm complicated. You're complicated.
There are things that motivate us. There are things that demotivate us. They're different for different people.
People think management starts with the product, the team or the company. It actually starts with you.
Self-awareness is the most fundamental thing you need to crack if you're going to succeed at company building or management. This is my strong opinion strongly held.
The more you can seek feedback, understand your motivators, your strengths, your blind spots, your tendencies, and take that on board and expose it to others, the more effective you can be as a company builder and manager.
Claire Hughes Johnson
Tools you can use
You can crystallize your personal values by taking a whole menu of 70 or 80 different values (you can find these online) and then force yourself to only pick 3 of them.
It's good to do this in a dialogue with someone that you've worked with or you know well. It's good to explain why you picked your values.
If you can get to the point of telling the story behind why your values are so important to you, then you're starting to be in a mode of self-discovery.
There are also these work style assessments - Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram - I would take all of them.
You're just taking on data. A lot of them come down to are you introverted or extroverted and are you more task or people orientated.
I would plot yourself and say 'If this is my default and this is my value system, what are the ways that I operate that really make up who I am?' These becomes your operating principles.
Claire Hughes Johnson
What I say
Why it matters:Â Self-awareness is the ability to understand your personality, emotions, and motivations, and how they impact your behavior and decision-making. By defining your operating principles, you can make decisions that align with your values and have rules to live by when navigating chaos.
The tools mentioned by Claire can be helpful, but self-awareness is ultimately a continuous journey of reflection. It requires an open mind, a willingness to seek feedback, and a commitment to ongoing personal growth.
Between the lines:Â I experienced a similar values exercise with my coach a couple of years ago. We discussed a bunch of values before I whittled it down to three: family, health, and trust. This exercise helped me reclaim a better work-life balance to focus on the first two. The latter, trust, was born out of the polarizing characters Iâve worked with. I can be my weird and wonderful self around people I trust. I can feel comfortable being direct. I have no anxieties about individual or company performance. The opposite is true when trust is broken. Now, I put more emphasis on rebuilding trust when it becomes shaken. This is a helpful exercise I encourage everyone to do.
Shoutouts
When I find newsletters, podcasts, or books worth sharing, Iâll feature them here:
The first 1,000 newsletter subscribers are the hardest. That's why Dylan from Growth Currency created the 1KS Roadmap: a free 5-day email course to help you get your first 1k subscribers. Subscribe here.
Chenell Basilio reverse engineers how top creators grew their email list from 0 to 50k+. She sends you the roadmap to replicate their successes. Subscribe here.
Note, these quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Some sentences were left out to make the narrative clearer and more concise. Podup is not associated or affiliated with any podcast (unless otherwise stated). All roundups are independently written and do not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the podcast.