Ep 1: Andrew Capland
Andrew Capland is the founder of DeliveringValue.co, and previously was the former Head of Growth at Postscript and Wistia. Andrew has built and led growth teams at some of the fastest-growing companies in the SaaS world, and has a ton of knowledge to share around the skills and processes you'll need if you want to be a successful head of growth.
Andrew joins the podcast to talk about becoming an effective head of growth, effectively managing growth teams, when to hire a head of growth and the skills you'll need to be a successful head of growth.
His new company DeliveringValue.co helps Heads of Growth working at product-led SaaS companies learn new skills and advance their careers.
Andrew also offers a 1:many video course helping newly hired heads of growth get off to a great start at their new company. You can find more info on that here.
Connect with Andrew:
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Spotify
Audio Transcription
Bill King 0:00
All right, let's do the intro. Welcome to episode number one of the growth theory optimal podcast. My name is Bill King, I'll be the host of the show. The whole goal of this show is that I want to interview the brightest minds behind the fastest growing companies and find out what it is that they're doing that separates them from everybody else. My first guest is Andrew Kaplan. Andrew is the founder of delivering value, and he was previously the head of growth at PostScript and Wistia. Andrew is a wealth of knowledge, all things on growth, especially growth leadership. On this episode, Andrew and I get into what it takes to be a successful head of growth, how he thinks about managing a growth team, when it's right for you as the founder to hire a head of growth. What early stage companies get wrong about hiring ahead of growth and what skills you'll need if you want to become a head of growth. Andrew recently launched a coaching advising and mentorship program for growth leaders working at early stage SaaS companies. If that sounds like something that you could benefit from visit delivering value.co or hit the link in the description to find out more before we get in the conversation. I just want to say thank you so much for watching and listening. If you could do me a favor and hit the subscribe and the like button it would help this show get off to a strong start. So without further ado, here's episode number one with Andrew Kaplan. Pro.
Bill King 1:38
All right, I am here with the legend Andrew Kaplan, the former head of growth at PostScript, now a new dad, which is the most exciting thing we could talk about. You just launched a brand new coaching training mentorship program for growth leaders working at tech startups, in early stage companies. It's called delivering value that's very, very specific. And we'll get into how that happened and everything like that. Then before that you were at Wistia. I remember when you first started with the I was really pumped for you. You helped like a bunch of different roles there. You were doing dementia at a startup for a little bit. But before that, we actually work together at HubSpot. And we were sitting within several feet of each other. And actually, there was a moment I don't know if you remember this, I remember it vividly. I was sitting down I think I'd start I started as like customer, no account management, and moved into customer success, success. And there was a moment where I was like on the phone with a customer and we were I was trying to help them with their SEO and stuff like that. You turn around and you go, Bill, you got that consulting swagger. I remember it vividly to this day because I was so terrified of how smart everybody was at HubSpot. And it was like a little confidence booster. And I was like damn Andrews. Awesome. And that moment has stuck in my head since.
Andrew Capland 2:54
I mean, that's awesome. I met you did have the swagger. And Dude, I totally hear you man. That was a really intimidating environment where, you know, it's like they hired the super smartest of the smartest people. And then you got there and you sort of felt like, Oh my god, I'm in way over my head. So Dude, I was right there with you, man. That's great.
Bill King 3:11
100% Yeah, I remember. So MK Getler. Shout out MK we both started in the same training class, I came in, I had never done marketing before. I just like started my own blog and build it up from the ground up. And they were like sweet, somebody knows how to do actual marketing would be great to add to the team. And so, so that was how it started there. But then before that you were at digitus. When I first met you, you had just come off digitized. And I think that was a phenomenal, probably career starter for you. Because I felt like you were much more polished on analytics and operations than anybody else on our team. And I remember thinking to myself, I was like, well damn Andrew, like, he's he's a leg ahead of most of the people that that I will release me at least I was like, Oh, he's got fundamentals there that I like had to catch up on the one of the things I wanted to ask you was like, Did growth find you? Or did you find growth? Or like, has all these things just been working together? And like, did you intentionally go into a growth role? Or was that like, just by a function of gravity as you build up skills?
Andrew Capland 4:12
It's a great question, I think is gravity for me, man. You know, my dad is an accountant. I sort of got my analytical, my analytical ability from him. But if you would talk to me when I was in high school, I would have thought I'd be a creative. Like when I was in high school, I was really into skateboarding and snowboarding and video editing is like a huge part of that lifestyle. And I was entrenched in that world. And I loved it, dude, like I was making all these websites on like geo cities, like, you know, shout out geo cities way back in the day on the terrible website builders they had, but that was the path that I was interested in. And then I went to college. And I was like, well, I'll be a marketing major that feels like the right thing for me to do. But I think because of who I was, and you know, the background that I had, I just naturally gravitated and I understood the analytical side of marketing better. It's like I really wanted to be a creative but I just wasn't that creative at my Core i was more analytical and it just kind of felt more natural to me. And what's kind of neat is the digitize thing happened totally by chance you know I was just like a new young college grad marketing major whatever the hell that means there was one online marketing class in my whole school even I was in the School of Business one online marketing class less the rest were like, you know about the four P's and all that stuff is applied to all these jobs and I got got got one at Digital's and I graduated in 2008. It was when banner ads and huge hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent on banner ads. It was the height of that it was like when all the banner ads like talk to each other and like read across the screen and did all that crazy stuff. I got lucky I got put on Disney was like my very first client ever like Dave Coronavirus? Yeah, super cool, right? And he would spend hundreds of millions of dollars. And at that spend, it was all like tracking and trying Pluto versus Mickey and seeing which one drove more hotel bookings, and which one drove more resort stays and all that stuff. So I just learned, I kind of paid attention. I just sort of learned the process of how big companies made decisions and use data and like, question their own ways of doing things. And I just kind of it resonated with me, it was like, oh, Disney doesn't care if they use Mickey or Pluto or Minnie or Princess, you know, Snow White, whatever it is. They just want to do whatever resonates with their customer base and drive more bookings. And I was like, Wow, that's really cool. And I understood how to do that at big companies. But like, dude, I was such a small cog in this huge machine that I wanted to go help small businesses, startups that were like my parents. So I left that world and went to HubSpot. And I had to deprogram a little bit, but I always kind of leaned back on what I learned there. Like, I learned that this system worked really well for the largest, most successful companies to problem solve, and to drive revenue and to drive volume and all that. And it was just kind of stuck with me. And so I've just sort of leaned in there. I guess it was a force of gravity for sure.
Bill King 6:58
That's interesting. Yeah. Cuz I think marketers usually or growth, people usually start in one way or the other, they either start quantitatively, and then they learn the creative, or they start with the like tactical, you know, creative side. And then they try to apply the quantitative and the more like, as my career goes on, I'm like, I would actually, I think, rather build the technical and analytics Foundation, and then slap on the other stuff. Because nowadays, a lot of it is, is data driven, right? Like, there's, there's creative aspects of it, and storytelling, which is definitely valuable. But it sounds like you hit that foundation was, at least for me, like watching, listening to your calls and watching how you were you were helping people, you were doing it in a way that was definitely rooted in like driving demand, driving revenue first and not understanding it and be able to prove it, which was something that is super valuable, you know what I mean, you're a small startup. And oftentimes, they don't have the right data. So I think I think we just said was really cool.
Andrew Capland 7:53
And when I also learned is that, well, I appreciate the kind words. And what I also learned is that nobody knew. So like every small business that I talked to, they would always say, Is this good? Is this success, OSHA wild west back then aiming for higher conversion rates or leave? Yeah, and so I just started realizing that if I could learn if it was good or not, and they use the data to help people understand problems, and how to solve them, that I could really impact their business, like the best creative ideas were gonna come from me. So I focused more on the other parts of the puzzle that I could, you know, that I understood and could really add value with. And I've just sort of tried to continue doing that in my career, and then slowly surrounded myself with more creative elements to basically fill in my flat sides, you know,
Bill King 8:36
yeah, that's really, that's really sharp, you drop the knowledge bomb, if you're listening, this is the first time you've heard Andrew talk, he'll he'll be doing that probably the entire time you're listening right now. But leaning into your strengths, and then surround yourself by people that can compliment those skills is something that, like, I've been learning just through process and kind of going through, evolve in my career, but the reality is, like, you can't be good at everything, but finding whatever it is, and then double down on it. Right. So what is what is the head of growth mean? Like? I think I hear that term. And like, I my thoughts about what growth is versus what the general public and or people who are in marketing sales, like I see roles now online that are like, revenue or like growth, business development type of roles? And so like, what is ahead of growth? Do?
Andrew Capland 9:24
That's a great question, right. And there's a lot of companies that are looking for growth people and they're really just looking for like a performance marketer and things like that. So to me, I think growth is two things. Growth is an approach to solving problems where you try many things and you do more of what works and less of what doesn't work and you have really a system for learning and accountability. So there's that side of growth. And then there's growth, the capability which is a really good fit like a product lead business, a company where people or a bulk of you know, the customer base can buy the product without talking through a traditional, you know, go through a traditional sales flow and talking to a sales rep and going through this inside or outside. Our outbound sales process. And so I think growth is both. It's somebody who sits in between marketing and product and data in sales and uses all of those cross functional tools at their disposal to drive more revenue. And there's that side of it. And that's often what startups are looking for. Right? There's these early stage startups that want to be product LED, they've heard about this product led movement, they want to stay lean and have a small sales team and sell to SMBs. And that's a really good fit for someone with my skill set, who can come in, who can help them solve conversion problems, scale, and drive more revenue. But I think that there also is a movement on the other side, for companies to hire someone to champion the growth approach to problem solving. And you see that more like, like drift does this really well, I got to chat with Matt bollati over there. And he does this where he's like, Look, I have a growth background. And he's like, I just take a growth approach to problem solving in my pm role. Now. I think that's really interesting as well. And I think there are growth marketers who are doing that on the marketing side. And I think it's good to do both. So to me ahead of growth, really is working at a product led company, and it's leading the growth capability, it's being part of the management team, it's, you know, it's leading this cross functional team to solve these problems to help the company scale, and drive more revenue.
Bill King 11:15
And I think like, some people might hear that and go get it makes sense. Some people might hear that and go, that sounds ambiguous. Give me an example of what somebody in growth would work on versus somebody who like, let's say, is in marketing, or let's say you're like a performance marketer today. And maybe you own just acquisition, like, what is the day of Andrew capital look like when he's running a growth team
Andrew Capland 11:37
can be a couple of different things. And so let's go off the acquisition side. Like I think about myself as someone who looks at the model more holistically, and says, Hey, rather than just being focused on acquisition, no matter what, or conversion to sales, no matter what, I'm going to look at the model from the top down and see where I find the biggest areas of opportunity, or maybe challenges today that I should problem solve. But let's say it's acquisition. Just for conversations sake, let's say the bottom of the funnel is really strong. retention is really high. Customer NPS is really high, we just need to fill the bucket with more people. So a traditional marketer would do things to attract more of an audience and build the brand, and potentially drive leads and nurture those leads and do all those types of things. But at some point in time, they'll be handcuffed by resources. And so the difference between my approach and like a growth approach versus a more traditional marketing approach might be the way that I solve those problems. So for me, I might look at an acquisition challenge and go, Wow, I wonder if we should build a free tool. And that's just a totally different thing than your typical performance marketer, or demand Gen person would think about and be able to take on in for me, you know, to kind of go on the other side, let's say the top a funnel is really strong, but we're not converting a lot of customers, a lot of those new installs into sales, a product person would look at that challenge and say, Wow, we need to make the product better. Or maybe I'll add this integration, or all do these things to just enhance the core value of the product. Or I might look at that and say, Wow, let's redo the user onboarding flow, it needs additional segments, maybe we should treat these two types of people differently in their first user experience. And that will increase conversion down the road, because their value is fundamentally different. And we're treating them all the same today. It's
Bill King 13:23
actually kind of similar to the role I had in avid exchange that in Charlotte, when I went down there, they, they had problems at the top of the funnel, that was pretty clear, we had a pretty good understanding of what that problem was. But then as I started poking around the organization, and we're looking at the data, and we're saying, Wow, there's actually a lot of problems here with retention, customer support processes about how they automate some of those things, or don't where they could. So what you just said, you said a couple different things that I want to dig into the first thing is that you mentioned or you referred to the, the model. So can you talk a little bit more about like, what, how that how important that is, to your, your role as a growth leader? And how do you approach modeling, let's say you're at like a startup, and they don't have data or like, everything's a mess, which is probably often times more the case than then not. So you need the data to be able to understand these these problems. Is that the first thing let's say you walk into a company day one, you need to get the data, right? Is that the first thing you look for?
Andrew Capland 14:28
I actually do it in the interview process. But yeah, it's foundational, because without it, you're just guessing and checking or you're focusing on one area, but not understanding why or the amount of leverage that it might give you in it. The way I think about especially an early stage company is from from the second you start, you don't have enough time, right? It's just how it is that early stage companies there's always more to do. It's just Yeah, I just think my my strength isn't that I'm gonna outwork every other person around me. Like maybe Seven years ago, Andrew Madden said that, but now it is the way that I think about it is I want to be the best at working on the right problem and saying no to everything else. And so to be able to prioritize effectively, you need information, you qualitative information and quantitative information. If I'm interviewing for a new head of growth job, or I'm mentoring or coaching somebody who's interviewing for a head of growth job, that's like, one of the main things I want to know is, what kind of business? is this? And what will my growth job be? Is it going to be an acquisition job? Because they're because their volume is so low, and they just need to fill the bucket? Or is this a really high growth environment, and it's going to be about testing and iterating. And, you know, finding 5% pockets of incremental improvement here or there. And I just think you need to know that. So no company has all the data. From day zero, your job is to figure out what information do you need? And what information do you want? Because you always want more, you always want to be able to segment more, you always want to be able to filter more, there's always some questions, somebody's going to ask you that you're not going to know the answer to because you don't have the data. So I just assume that's a given. And I think through what information do I need to make a decision that I can act on this week, or this month, or if you're brand new, maybe it's a focus for this quarter, and I start at the highest level, and I try to identify gaps in the funnel right off the bat that I know are foundational to my approach into at least identifying the area to focus on. And then I kind of go in from there, because there's always there's always more depth you can go into.
Bill King 16:27
That makes sense. Yeah. So you've got, like predefined kind of ideas that at different areas of the funnel, because you've been around, you've done this before you've built that muscle. But it starts with identifying and understanding what the problems actually are. And that starts not on day one, it starts in the conversation previous. And so you're almost re interviewing the team, because you want to understand, can you have an impact quickly? And understand? Is this something that you walk in, you could have a big impact out of the gate. And if you don't get to a place where you think that you can have an impact? Or maybe the that they're not in the place for that? Does that make the conversation easier is both for yourself and also with the company as well, which is like, Hey, listen, it sounds like this might be too early, maybe like I'm not the right person for the job? Is that the type of conversation you have?
Andrew Capland 17:18
Yeah, and I think that that's, it seems like that's increasing. Because like, it seems like recently, I've been seeing a ton of early stage companies looking for a head of growth. It's like the growth community is growing, this idea of somebody who focuses on growth is growing in popularity, and there's more product led growth, businesses popping up left and right. And they're all looking for a head of growth. But until you have a certain level of scale, I don't think it's probably not the right fit, you should probably just get a marketer or like a mid level growth marketer to come in, and just set a bunch of stuff up and help you to figure out product market fit and all that because it's probably too early to bring on someone focused on growth. You know, I feel like a growth leader is really, really effective when there's some signs of scale, and some signs of product market fit, then you have someone who can come in, you've got a strong foundation, hopefully, you've got a nice growth trajectory over the last maybe rolling three months or something like that, that's been increasing mechanically. And then you have someone come in who can really organize, manage that scale, and then do a bunch of experimentation and iteration to increase at all. That's kind of how I think about it. But yeah, I think that that's why there's a challenge for some of these early stage companies, because they want someone to focus on growth. But when I think when an experienced growth person learns more about the business, they suss it out pretty quick, and they go, Wow, this company's looking for a head of growth, but they've got 5000 or 500 people on their website every month, they've got 15 new installs, and they're getting to customers each month, geez, I'm going to join that companies ahead of growth, but really, they just need Product Marketing help, and maybe some content marketing help. And it's going to be the year of that before I'm really ready to flex my core growth muscles. So that's my 10 cents on that.
Bill King 18:55
That's that's a I think that's a great point. I mean, you need you need sample, you need good data, you need to have the pieces there in order to justify a growth, investment, right? Even if you don't have the enough scale, it doesn't matter how good of a growth person you are. If you don't have a sample, it's pretty hard to make decisions. And so that compounds on top of itself, right?
Andrew Capland 19:17
I read something that Brian Balfour, who's the king of growth, I think, right conference legend, shout out Brian, huge fan. He has been someone I've I've looked up to and been able to chat with a few times I've gotten a ton of advice from and he said something along the lines of like, you can't grow somebody that doesn't have product market fit. And that always stuck with me. And so I know product market fit is super nebulous and whatever. But it makes sense until there's a little bit of momentum. It's too early for someone to focus on growth full
Bill King 19:48
time. Makes sense. Makes sense. The natural next question is you said some really interesting things like I would be the person who's taking on those bigger bets. Let's say you're at a company that has perfect you know, perfect product market fit your story. To see great retention rates acquisitions starting to pick up, how does growth fit into an organization like PostScript and or Wistia? And when does it become a bro a growth project versus a marketing or sales? Or in operations type of thing? Like, where does growth come in? is it all about the size of the bet? Is it more you come up with a roadmap of ideas and you go to the executive team, you say, Hey, listen, looks like we have a problem with acquisition. I think we can build these free tools and then scale up SEO or paid or like, like, how does that? How does that fit into the organizational structure? And how do you navigate those things? Because I've, from what I hear and also observe, sometimes there's a little bit of like tension and friction in especially orgs that are already at scale, and they have existing team members that are that are contributing to these different channels. How do you approach that
Andrew Capland 20:54
delicately, is think about it from a couple different angles. And I've navigated this a few times now and helped a few folks navigate this. So I think that growth at a lot of companies starts, it starts very locally. Like for me working at Wistia, I didn't mean to work on growth, I joined focused on user acquisition and eventually started doing what I didn't know at the time. But what really was conversion rate optimization, we had been sending a lot of traffic from all these different paid sources and partnership sources and things like that. And it just really wasn't converting when you looked at the site, it was kind of clear, even from the pages where people were shopping, they weren't converting all that well. And so I started this approach to trying to get more installs that worked. And over time, we got more installs, but they weren't turning to customers. And so I took the same approach. And I applied it to this new user experience thing. And we started doing user onboarding work. And we ended up scaling this growth team that took on all kinds of stuff, a product led business, you've got a sales team that works on one on one with a small percentage of customers. And they're, you know, they're driving revenue. And they're trying to close deals, and they're trying to bring on good customers that retain and upsell and use the product in great ways. But no one really is doing that, on the one to many side, the self service side. And at a product led company, maybe three quarters of the customers that you get never talked to a sales rep. And so you need someone or some team that is basically like e commerce, but for SAS, and I think about that is like really what I did at Wistia is a lot of what I did at PostScript, I was responsible for a revenue number and it was that self service bucket. But then to your point over time, growth ends up consulting on other stuff. So because you get this reputation as being a team that knows how to work cross functionally, and drives towards success, you end up getting pulled in on other projects that don't quite fit perfectly into other teams, like pricing is a really good one. When pricing needs to be done or iterated on, it makes sense to pull the growth team in, obviously working alongside those other teams. And then even like even at Wistia, after a while, we were getting ready, I remember towards the end of my time there to redo the like the overall product user experience. And that was something that we saw, we were like, Hey, we fundamentally think for us to continue to scale. There's not many more 3% 5% 4% wins that we can get. We think we do incremental growth, and we need to redo the user experience. And they said great, our core product team is going to own that project. that's a that's a product team project. But we need your help. How should we approach it? How should we think about success, and we ended up getting to consult on some of those types of projects. So I think about it from those three angles, like one you can land and expand as you get a little bit of momentum to you can own self service revenue. And I think that makes sense at these product lead companies. And then three, you can consult on those bigger bets with other teams help them have a little bit more rigor and accountability.
Bill King 23:50
Yeah, I mean, obviously, to get to a consulting standpoint, you have to have that trust, right with the team. You know, they need to know that they can come to you, and you're not just going to come in there and you know, mess up their their process or like, you know, take away the shine of the project or whatever those things are. But I think one of the things you you mentioned that was really interesting was kind of like the three different approaches of how you would build that that camaraderie, right, you would either build political capital by getting wins, or you would act like a person who's there to help. And I think that one of the mentioned, one of the actual use cases you mentioned, which is really interesting, and something I've gone through myself, is the idea of pricing, right? pricing seems like it's a simple test, but it is not. It is a tremendous amount of work both operationally and also getting executive buy in and sign off by many, many parties of the organization. So it sounds like in that case, where you're saying I I know by being Andrew and working at these different places that we we have observed a problem you already come in you said something really interesting earlier, which was like, you know, we saw that the conversion rate was was poor. So you have some intimate knowledge of what should Be a good pricing, or conversion rate or pricing model, etc. And so that helps you make the decisions on where to prioritize those things. But the the pricing thing is a as an example, take me through like how you would how you would approach that type of problem. If you're the head of growth. And you've got a marketing team, you've got a product team, like how does how does a pricing conversation happen? Where does growth usually come in? Is it more operational? Is it more like observing the problem and then saying, here's the solution, and you guys carried out? Like, how does that happen?
Andrew Capland 25:32
Before growth gets brought in, it has to be bought, or there has to be buying at the executive level. So like, sales has got to be in on it. marketing's got to be in on it finance and operations. And like probably the CEO or CEO probably has to sign off on it before, it would make sense for somebody to take on. I've done it a few times, it did a few times at Wistia. And then a little bit at PostScript as well. And the way I think about my role in pricing is a little bit more operational. So certainly, I'm part of identifying the problem and thinking through potential solutions. But really, that needs to be that needs to be weighed in on from a broader stakeholder group, given how important it is. And I really want to make sure that you identify the unknown unknowns, like, hey, if we do this, is this gonna cannibalize our customer success team's ability to upsell or if we implement this, are we gonna get inundated with support, and we need to rethink fundamentally how we're offering support to these customers. And on the sales side, if we go in this direction, and it changes one of our levers, does that all of a sudden change the conversation with our competitors and things like that. So I think you need to make sure that there's buy in conceptually, and then once you're close on the solution is usually when I kind of get brought in to sort of take over, typically what I do is, you know, we put together what makes sense on paper. And then we go to implement it into a lot of user testing is what I've learned is the secret sauce for a problem like this. Because there's really subtle nuances between what you think you're communicating and the way that people perceive it. And if people don't understand your pricing, even if it's just like 1%, confusing, it's friction, and friction is the enemy of conversion. And so like to give you like a real example, we saw this at Wistia, where we were redoing our pricing model, we had been trying a few different things, some had been working some, you know, we had moved on from quicker. But when we did user testing, we had seen that someone had said something like, you know, the price was $100. And I think 10 videos were included. And we listened to people go through and look at the page and give us their feedback. And every single person said, oh, wow, 10 bucks a video. I don't know if my videos are worth 10 bucks. That that was the sentiment. And then we had the exact same pricing model. And we said, Hey, your first 10 videos are included in the plan, they come for free, any extra videos cost, whatever they cost. And then people go, Oh, 100 bucks for a plan. Oh, I don't even need to ask for approval for that no problem. And so it's the same thing. But the way that people ingest it is just totally different. And so you can't figure that stuff out just with an A B test, you need to gather, you know, a little bit gather a little bit more qualitative information. So I think about that being a core part of the process as well.
Bill King 28:13
Yeah, it's interesting, because typically, when you're talking about growth with folks, they either take one of two approaches, they take approach where they have a bunch of hypotheses, and then they do their best to prioritize what they think will be the best one. Or you could just literally ask your customers, like, what do you think about this? What are the you know, what is causing you to stop and make that process a lot easier than you running 20 tests to maybe gets to some correlation, where you're like, Okay, I know this is working, but I don't know why. So you're taking the approach, you're saying, I want to know why first, what is stopping them? And then we need to marry that to the quantitative tests and validate that that is true, right?
Andrew Capland 28:52
Exactly. Yeah. I want to know what's stopping someone from converting today. And then I've got confidence that eventually we can brainstorm a creative solution to solving that problem. And so someone just might say, like, Oh, I don't understand it, or I need help calculating the new pricing in this new model with X number of, you know, whatever the thing is that you're selling. And so if you understand that, that's a problem, then you can think about well, can I solve that with copy? can I solve that with like, a quick little video explainer on the page? Can I set up maybe some kind of a calculator self service calculator that people can use, you know, just sort of unlock all of this? You know, good brainstorming? And who knows, right? Who knows what's gonna work and resonate? And that's where I think you can marry like the qualitative feedback with the experimental hypothesis driven approach, and then just see what works.
Bill King 29:39
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, there's probably some people listening right now and they're like, God, this sounds so much fun. I can't wait to like go hire somebody to lead my growth team, which as you know, we touched on this before. But I'm curious on what your your your full thoughts on this. What startups get wrong about growth, like they're probably listening in, they're going damn came Wait to find somebody like Andrew, like, let's go find somebody to go test our pricing page and break, you know, have all these breakthrough experiments. But like, we talked about the data, we talked about achieving a level of sample where it actually matters. But what are some things that you see that startups get wrong when they start growth in general, IRL, too early? Like, I just love to hear about that.
Andrew Capland 30:23
I think the two, I guess there's three challenges that I've seen. One is that they think it's gonna be easy, and that they bring on a, you know, somewhere to focus on growth, and they're like, Oh, this is gonna be the solution to our problems. And then it's not easy, you know, we're talking about some of the fun things, and it can be a lot of fun. But if it was easy, you probably would have done it already really understood the problem, it was an easy one to solve, you would already done it. And so I think that there's a misconception that, like, it's some kind of a Savior, you know, it's like the cleanup hitter in baseball, it's like, I'll just put them in and he'll knock it out. It's just not, it's not like that. It's really hard. It's iterative, it might take six months of work to get one big win, but there might be a bunch of misses along the way. And so I think it's just understanding what they're signing up for. And, and being excited about that process. And not, you know, not trying to put too much pressure to like, you know, get this incremental wins straight off the jump, which everybody would like. So I think that's one, I think, not not being ready organizationally to bring on a growth person. So not having a culture that welcomes experimentation and feedback, and breaking, you know, someone who's going to break the norms and try different approaches, it can be uncomfortable, it's a little bit of a shift. And most companies have never had someone focused on growth before. And so they don't really know what it will be like until the person's there, and then it's kind of too late, you know, that person's coming in. And either they're going to be blocked out of important work that they need to be able to do to be effective, or they won't. And so ideally, you can kind of work on the cultural change beforehand. And then I think the third thing that companies get wrong is that is that they don't resource growth properly. They just think, hey, I've got this person who I'm going to hire, they're going to be focused on growth, and there'll be good. And it's like, the reality is, there's only so much you can do as a lone wolf. And you can layer on some tools and things like that. But that's kind of duct taping on top of whatever isn't working, the companies that get a lot of value out of having growth, make it a growth team. And they resource it with one or two engineers, at least to start and a designer so that the team can move fast, they can get focused on problems, and they have the autonomy and the ability to execute on a wide variety of problems. Those are like the three that I see there's probably some other hidden landmines, you know?
Bill King 32:43
Yeah, I mean, like, I guess the the nice part about being at a startup is that you don't have the luxury of worrying about political problems or not acting on things that could be a big win, because you don't know if your lights will be on in 12 months. So oftentimes, it's like a race, right? You're you're racing to get results. And growth, I think early on, can be part of the fabric early on, if everybody's down to, to test in doesn't have an ego. As you scale up, there's a lot of legacy people and processes and things that you need to change, or otherwise, you won't be able to get to wins, and maybe nothing gets to the finish line. And so oftentimes, I see folks that actually struggle with that, where they have all the right skills, they have all the right resources, but they're unable to get things done organizationally, which is still a failure. Like, I don't care how great you are at growth, you get if you can't get the finish, you know, the experiments to actually roll out and get to sample and show data. It doesn't matter, right? I'm sure you see that.
Andrew Capland 33:44
I mean, yes, I mean, in general, I totally agree with that. It is super hard. And it's, it's something that needs to come from the top down, right like that. That message that being open to new ideas, and new ways of thinking has to be built in your DNA. There's more specialization as time goes on, too. And so sometimes, even with the best of intentions, you get blocked out of work that you know, you can impact because someone says, hey, that's my job. No, no, no, this is the way that we do it. This is the way that we do it here. Now we, I know that you're suggesting this new thing, but that's not gonna work here. For x y&z reason, when in reality, oftentimes you're brought you're being brought in, because you're willing to ask those questions and you're willing to question and seeing if your new approach can break through some plateau that's been in place.
Bill King 34:27
100% I think if I look back at my career, and you know, I'm not done. But I think the the, like the biggest mistakes I've made and the biggest learning lessons, were in thinking about how to solve the problem in my own lane first, and then worrying about how everybody feels about it and trying to drive that change, versus starting with actually getting those things in place. First, do you believe that this is the best thing we should work on? If so, can we actually make this change happen? What if people push back? Like what are the mechanisms that you can use to drive that change? I didn't really think about that deeply enough. Until I got into the point, right, it had to be there. But there are a lot of opportunities where I think if you're listening right now and like you're, you're starting your career, you need to, you need to push yourself into those uncomfortable places and have those conversations. Because if you don't, you're always going to be at the level where you're, you're just the individual contributor, and it never scales. Totally dude. And
Andrew Capland 35:18
what a cool lesson. You know, like, I feel like the biggest gains that I've picked up in my career is when I've had some kind of a realization like that, right? Either you get some feedback from somebody who ends up having a big impact on your career, who points it out to you, or you have an experience that doesn't go the way that you were hoping it would go in either way. Ideally, you can get to a point where you can reflect on that. But yeah, I mean, I've seen it a bunch.
Bill King 35:42
Yeah. And like, you have to be willing to make mistakes and understand, like, you know, if you make mistakes, learn from it, that's the only rule, the Golden Rule of Life is, you know, you want to push yourself to the point that you're making mistakes, and you get into that uncomfortable place, but learn from it and act on it afterwards. And you know, if you do that, that is also turns out the way that you grow companies faster, is learning in doing things in fixing it and learning from it, you know, so, in general, if we were getting super esoteric here and go down the rabbit hole, like I like to do every so often. Don't be afraid to try new things, put yourself in spots where you might not be 100% qualified or like you, the learnings will far exceed whatever the pain is that you deal with temporarily.
Andrew Capland 36:25
Yeah, do what a powerful lesson. There's a really interesting thing that I've kind of realized this past year, because of the pandemic, I've gotten the opportunity to just network a lot more. I don't know if you've been doing the same, but I just feel like because everybody has been remote. Yeah, we do the barriers of saying, Hey, could I could I pick your brain for 10 minutes? Could we grab a virtual coffee is so much less than if you say, Hey, can we meet up for a beer at five o'clock on this Tuesday, and then all of a sudden, it's a three hour endeavor when you do the commute both ways, especially for a new dad, especially, especially. It's a one of the things that I've learned after chatting with some folks who are further along than I am, is that they very intentionally treat their career in the same iterative way that we're talking about in terms of growth projects. And it's like kind of a powerful thing, when you realize nobody has it figured out. Everybody's trying a bunch of stuff, seeing what works and doing more of it. And just moving on from the failures and learning from them quickly. And it was kind of a empowering lesson for me to learn after chatting with these people who I just thought were better than me. And it's like another Well, they are better than me. But the way that they got there is by trying a bunch of stuff and staying humble, and just following the same approach to problem solving for the for their life. You know, it's like really interesting.
Bill King 37:39
Yeah, I mean, if I had like, if I had followed the gut feeling when I walked into HubSpot, day one and said, Oh, my God, everybody's better at marketing than me, everybody's better at everything, I would have walked right out the front door. And, you know, like, there's just too many people that are better at everything than you. But if you don't think that way, like, watch, you know, find what people are good at, and then extract some learnings from it. Like, what how do they approach problems? Like I remember we first met, I was like, how he thinks about things differently than I do. So like, how do I extract the value from these conversations and take something away from it?
Andrew Capland 38:11
Nobody? Nobody knows. Like, it's just the thing that I've picked up over the years, nobody has the right answers. Some people who are really, really smart can tell you what not to do, because they've already made the mistakes in the past. But like, nobody really knows the playbook. Nobody has all the answers. Maybe Steve Jobs or like Elon Musk, or one of those sort of visionaries thinks that they do. But for the rest of us, we just got to try a bunch of stuff and stay humble and just continue to learn and get better. Everybody has imposter syndrome. It's it's almost comforting to know that if you have it, you're right where you're supposed to be because everybody has it. I feel like once you get to a certain level and you feel like you should know more be able to do more than you, you know, that you feel like you currently are. And it's it's part of the process. I think just getting comfortable with that is an important career step.
Bill King 38:54
Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, you brought up like the idea. You know, Tesla, obviously, I was a huge fan invested early was all bought in on it. The thing I think I understood, and I think we probably both saw in that in that company early on, was that if you are a true technology company, and they are oftentimes there is a million failures that never make it to your to your eyes, like the fact that these guys were able to build a car company that hasn't been done and what 100 years, it's 100% has to do with the fact that they test and iterate and learn faster than anybody else. I mean, is that not the core foundation foundations of growth? I mean, they're they're literally a huge growth team. Just working every single day to solve problems. That's just, you know, are more about Yeah, it's crazy. Um, so, uh, Andrew, if you were starting your career over again, today's question that I was probably like, most pumped to ask you about if you wanted to build Andrew Kaplan 2.0 you're starting today with everything you know, what are the things you would do what would you learn? What skills would you build? What experiences would you go hard after what are the types of Things you would give somebody starting their career right now? Or maybe they're like in a marketing manager role, and they're like, Damn, this sounds pretty cool. I want to work on growth. What's the playbook?
Andrew Capland 40:09
I don't know, the playbook. I'm still learning it every day just like everybody else. But if I could go back in time, things that I would do differently,
Bill King 40:16
or what would you like, if you could build like the perfect if you could build the perfect leader of growth? And you've seen a ton of companies, you've seen what works, right? You've seen like, amazing things. You've also built an incredible skill set? Like how would you build a perfect head of growth?
Andrew Capland 40:32
Yeah, I mean, I guess what I would do is so similar to what we were just talking about, I would go and I would work at a variety of companies. But I would probably start at a larger company. And I would look for mentors, like this would be a core part of my approach, I got lucky early on, and then I worked for some really great people that mentored me, I would go in, I would, I would go to a survey monkey, I would go to a Squarespace, I would go to a MailChimp, I would go to one of those companies. And I would try to get in to whatever their growth team is. And I would see if I can get a mentor and learn how the best of the best do it, then what I would do is I would work there for a few years, I would soak up as much knowledge as possible. And then I would go somewhere early stage that has product market fit, where they have a high degree of encouraging failures, as long as you're learning. And then I would go and I would take this playbook that I thought I just learned, and I would see if it was real. And I would stress test it. And I would make all the mistakes and make all the leadership mistakes that every new leader makes and do all those things in a company that is growing, because it's always easier to do all that stuff when the company is growing. And then the other thing that I would do is work on my personal brand, like one of my bigger lessons as as you know, as a person in the internet, but certainly as a growth leader is is like to share more of what I'm learning and to see how it resonates with other folks and to get other people's opinions on the stuff that I'm working on. Because I feel like I learned so much just by sharing things that I'm learning and hearing how it resonates or differs from what other people are. And so I think finding systems, I guess sharing and growing your personal brand is one way to do it. And then just like really making sure that you're networking, and just meeting and sharing ideas with other people that are in your space. And from all different levels. Right? It's great to work with people that are further along, they can certainly mentor you and give you some advice. I also think it's just as helpful to have people who are like in the weeds working on the stuff because they sort of if you ask them, Hey, what do you think we're overlooking? Or what are we missing? A lot of times they know intuitively because they're just so in the weeds and dialed in that sharp. Yeah,
Bill King 42:27
I mean, it sounds like the playbook though, of all the people that we know that have like made something out of their career like that have really excelled is they weren't afraid to make mistakes, they worked at companies where the pace of innovation was faster. I started to HubSpot as a count per account manager, just calling people off trying to get renewals. And I was like, you know, burning the midnight oil, talking to people at night learning from them and like taking any project on I could, I don't think that that was by design. Now looking back on it, that's exactly what I would do again, because I realized that you have to have that actual experience. Because I think a lot of people today like there's so many resources online, they probably gonna listen to a conversation like this, or they're gonna go to another course and they're gonna, they're gonna go, Okay, I have purchased this information and this experience, but actually doing it is a total different thing. Like, the one of my favorite books is the courage to be disliked. And like the sometimes the friction that happens when you're trying to make, you know, big changes that are that are at large organizations at scale, etc. Those are the muscles that you need to build just by through experience just going through the motions. And I think the others actually agree.
Andrew Capland 43:33
And I think the other thing you kind of talked about it is, if you can't execute on those things in your own role, because you learn way more by hearing about the theory and then finding a way to like, actually execute it. And so if you're not at a company where you feel like you can do that side projects, I feel like I've learned just as much from having interesting side projects, and just doing all the kooky things that just didn't make sense for whatever company I was working at at the time, you learn just as much if not more than that. And whenever I meet more junior people who are interested in the growth space, that just don't work at a company that has a culture of experimentation and trying lots of different ideas. I try to encourage them to get involved in other things where they can flex that muscle. And there's a million things you could volunteer for your local political organization, and they usually do some online paid ads, you could try tons of experimentation with that stuff. Like there's a million ways that you could learn this skill set. Do it on the side.
Bill King 44:26
Yeah, today's like, it's so easy to get information overload nowadays, like, you learn a bunch of things, but you don't actually apply them right. And like the thing that I think if I look back, jeez, a long time ago. Now, the thing that actually helped me accelerate my career was by starting a blog that literally nobody was reading. And I'm doing the same thing right now. This is episode number one of my podcast and I have no worries about it whatsoever. I'm like, I'm just gonna go in, do it the way I think it's, you know what I mean? I'm gonna have fun with it and enjoy it. The same thing. If you're really interested in this is something you're really passionate about it just Go do it, start something. And I think the, the more important thing is to like is if you want to do growth, pick something that you love and then do growth to it, don't go, I want to do growth and then do growth and then figure out what it is that you that you want to do, because it's a lot easier to get started when you love it. Right? Totally.
Andrew Capland 45:17
Because in the early days, I mean, a lot of the ways that you and I learned were after hours, but I remember going home and watching YouTube recordings of these old growth talks that people gave at some random conference in San Francisco or Palo Alto or somewhere, and you know, reading books about how to copyright and do things like that. And so you have to love it. And if you don't love it, it's not gonna work. 100% Yeah,
Bill King 45:39
my, my place I used to, I used to hang out in a Panera Bread, I get a, I was. So this is my story. I sold billboards door to door after poker, kind of like, I'll talk about that on the podcast, at some point, this way too much information. But after that kind of, you know, situation change. I was selling billboards door to door in Boston, in a suit, walking in car dealers, and asking them to pay $20,000 a month for a billboard on the highway that had zero data. Nobody knows what's going on, there's no way to justify it. And so I'm getting thrown out of literally thrown out of front doors of businesses. And so I had one guy that was really cool. And he sits down and he's like, Look, I can't spend the money. And I'm like, Okay, do you mind if I ask you? Why? Like, what are you spending your budget on? He's like, well, we got this guy who does web marketing, and he's got that he can show me what the investment you know, the payback is where it comes from this and that. And I was like, Oh, interesting. What platforms is he using? Like, what what? Like, what types of reports is he building for you? And that's it. And as soon as he told me, I was burning Midnight Oil at Panera Bread until they threw me out. And I was like, I'm not getting out of this place until I figured out what that guy said yes to and that was it. I just followed that, that wrench for the rest of the time and of my career, and I haven't stopped, right, there's gonna be a next next car dealer that's gonna throw me out. And I'll figure it out. That's cool, man. And what a cool story. We're almost at time here. So tell me a little bit more about delivering value because full disclosure, I actually came to you looking for advice, because I thought to myself, well, Andrews, awesome. This is before I even knew that you were building this. And I just wanted some advice, kind of like on like what to do in my next job in between jobs. Tell me like what you observed in the market. And you know, you've had a ton of conversations like this with people talking about their their career and stuff, like, what made you start that? And like, what are you seeing in the world that makes you think that this is something that people will get a ton of value from?
Andrew Capland 47:36
I started it by accident. I was working at Wistia, I was leading the growth team. And people were just reaching out to me. And they were saying, Hey, I know you're leading growth at Wistia, I read this random article that you wrote about how you run the growth team. That's cool. I'm trying to do something similar at my company, were further you know, back then you were not, we're not quite at the maturity level that Wistia is at, could I pick your brain. And I'd be like, Oh, me, I'm just, I'm just a guy figuring it out. I don't have anything solved, I'd be happy to share. And I loved it, man. It just felt so good. And I realized that I really had figured out a little bit more than I thought that I had. And I truly was adding value in giving them some roadmaps to some things that they could do differently, think about differently skill sets that they could explore, and really just being someone that they could bounce ideas off of. And it gave me incredible energy. In addition to my dad, being an accountant, my mom is a professional coach, she's been an executive coach my whole life, giving back and helping other people develop is in my it's in my nature. And so I kind of started by accident. And over the years, more and more people have reached out and it's encouraged me to share more of my growth journey and the lessons that I've learned online in various ways. And I realized somewhere along the line, that there was a business there that enough people were interested that I could probably charge and make a little bit of money, but more so create a system of accountability, where if I had, if I had these folks that were paying, they would be more likely to show up and to take it seriously and evaluate and to implement my advice and to do all those things that make it more valuable. And so I started doing it full time. And I started learning more about coaching and the the tools of coaching and the types of challenges that it seems like everybody is facing who works in early stage, you know, b2b SaaS companies. And I've just continued on this journey. And so I'm at the point now where, you know, I've had dozens of people reach out over the last year for advice. And I love helping them. It gives me just like incredible joy to give them just like the tools and mentorship and somebody else they can bounce ideas off of to grow their career and grow their businesses. And so that's what I've been doing. I'm just, you know, I just left my job to pursue this full time. So I'm nervous and scared and all kinds of excited, and that's kind of where I'm headed man.
Bill King 49:55
Well, if I can say anything, I can say that if you're if you're in of your career where you've, you've got an opportunity or you're trying to pursue one of those opportunities, there's no, there's no better person to talk to, I think, I think the way that you approach problems, it's less about tactical. And it's more about like, how do you set yourself up for success. And through my own career, like I didn't even start, I don't even major in marketing. It was like a journalism major in a failed musician. Had I pursued mentorship and coaching earlier on, I always think about that. I'm trying to look backwards, all, but it's like, what is the most valuable life hack you can possibly do? Instead of making mistakes that you are ultimately going to do? At some point? Why don't you talk to people that have already been there and gone through those problems in level yourself up? If like, if you can afford that, and you think of it as an investment, not as a cost center? To me, I think to myself, like, wouldn't I rather learn from someone who's been there and made those mistakes and gone through these different processes and gotten these awesome wins? So to me, I think the coaching, it's like therapy, you know, some people look at it, they're like, oh, man, what's wrong with you? And you're like, actually, No, I'm not. This, everything's fine. I'm just working on myself, right? I think about it, like, it's not like, something's wrong, it's like, for coaching, it's like, try to extract as much possible value that you can from that person, it also builds a relationship with someone who's got a deep experience in the field. And a lot of people don't think about that, right?
Andrew Capland 51:20
Absolutely, man. And what I've learned is, this is common in marketing and growth, and probably some other fields as well. But you get, you get experience, and you move up the career ladder based on your technical ability, and usually how fast and like thoroughly you do the thing that you're focused on, right, if you're working in growth, you get promotions, because you're growing the area of the company that you're responsible for, and you're executing well, and people like working with you. And eventually you get promoted. And then all of a sudden, you're in a leadership position. And you need to participate at the leadership level and have conversations around resourcing and have talks in setting okrs and communicating those to other teams. And thinking not just in the next quarter, but thinking two, three quarters out, it's a totally different thing. And no one really played, you know, preps you for it. And it tends to be more jarring when you leave a company when you're mid level. And you take that next step. And all of a sudden, you're the head of director level, whatever it is at an early stage company, and you just need some help, and some guidance and some mentorship. Those are the people that I like working with the most are the people that are in those situations, I've been there, I made all of us digs you could possibly make, I've made it out somewhat unscathed. And so I just tried to point out a few of the landmines before people step on them, and then share a few of the soft skills in like, you know, once in a while, some of the tactical stuff as well to help you identify flat sides, like nobody is always perfect, everyone's working on getting better. The best athletes in the world have coaching. And that's kind of how I think about it, just within the growth space.
Bill King 52:50
That's, that's a perfect way to say it. Like if the if everybody who's in elite positions, has mentors and coaches, it's probably because it helps. It's not because it doesn't help. So one of the things that is really interesting to think about is like when you start in these new roles, like you said, it's a new job number one, and it's new skills, number two, so it doesn't transfer, whatever you were doing before doesn't necessarily transfer into people management or process management. And also, additionally, it's like, your first 90 days in these roles is so important. Like, if you are able to come in and make an impact right away versus just humming along, doing your thing. It's like these guys went to bat for you, they created a lot of resources for you to do that. They're expecting you to come in and make an impact. Not like if you don't, if you strike out, it's like you're gonna get fired. Sometimes. I guess that's true. But the more important thing is like, do you have the tools, both quantitative and qualitatively, to be successful in those first 90 days, and I think what you're doing helps people get set up for success. And I couldn't say more amazing things about what you're doing, because a lot of education doesn't prepare you for these kind of situations. So
Andrew Capland 54:01
Well, thank you, man, I really appreciate that. I think it's tools. And then I also think it's having a plan. So I mean, even if you have all the tools, if you show up in this new situation, and you don't have a plan for how you're going to learn the you know, the domain knowledge and how you're going to learn about the funnel and how you're going to put together your roadmap and how you're going to develop trust cross functionally, it's really tough to fail, even if you have or it's really tough to succeed. Even if you have all the technical ability in the world. Those are the other things that really you need to establish a strong brand in that first 90 days. And it just doesn't happen by accident. Or at least at a certain level. It won't happen as easily by accident. And so a lot of the people that I work with are in a new situation, and they're trying to figure out how to how to do this. I helped them set up a learning roadmap. We talked through quick win identification, how to create roadmaps, all that good stuff. And I didn't come here to plug my course. But I actually did make a course that anyone could buy. It's a one to many course online that that takes people through their first 90 days in a growth leadership role for exactly this reason, because it's what everybody struggles with. Yeah.
Bill King 54:59
I mean, if you guys want to check that out, go to delivering value that co You can also find Andrew on twitter at @capland. Thank you. Like, this has been an awesome conversation. I hope some people, when they listen to this, they aren't terrified by the idea of going through this process because there are tools and there are resources out there to help you navigate this job more than just yourself like that. You know, there's a lot of expertise you can tap into. So thank you so much, Andrew. It's been a pleasure, man. I appreciate you having me on. This was a blast. Awesome. All right. Sounds good. Andrew Caplin, episode number one. Thank you guys for listening. We'll talk to you soon, but Bill's not really your first episode. Yeah.