Taking control of your career | Ethan Evans (Amazon)

0:00 people think invention takes all this time but you only need two hours once a month the thing is once you have one good idea it often takes years to express that so you had the idea to have a newsletter I know some of the history of your newsletter you've been working on the expression of that idea for years now Jeff and Amazon had ideas like let's have Prime shipping Prime is still getting better and still being worked on

0:24 it's a 20-some year old idea you know the Kindle a decades old idea now still getting better the point here is you don't need very many good ideas to be seen as tremendously invented today my guest is Ethan Evans Ethan is a former vice president at Amazon executive coach and course creator focused on helping leaders grow into Executives Ethan spent 15 years at Amazon helped invent and run Prime video the Amazon app store Prime gaming and

0:55 twitch Commerce which alone is a billion doll business for Amazon he led Global teams of over 800 helped draft one of Amazon's 14 core leadership principles holds over 70 patents and currently spends us time Executive coaching and running courses to help people advance in their career build leadership skills and succeed in senior roles in her conversation Ethan shares an amazing story of when he failed on an important project for Jeff Bezos and what he learned from that experience we spent

1:22 some time on something called the magic loop which is a very simple idea that I guarantee will help you get promoted in advance in your career we also get into a bunch of other career advice primarily for senior ic's and managers we get into advice for standing out in interviews plus some of Amazon's most important and impactful Leadership principles and much more I learned a lot from Ethan and I'm excited to bring you this episode with

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4:15 spri.com Lenny to learn more and get 10% off that's sp.com Lenny Ethan thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podast Lenny thank you a ton for having me I'm super excited to talk about some of the things we have teed up today and to help people the first thing I thought we could chat about is the magic loop so you wrote this guest post for my newsletter sometime earlier this year it

4:45 is I don't know if you know this but it's currently the sixth most popular post of all time on my newsletter across 300 plus posts did you expect this advice to resonate the way that it did and why do you think it resonated as much as it did so uh you know the competitive part of me really wants to analyze spots one to five and figure out like do they have an unfair advantage that they had more time you know yeah

5:10 but I was very hopeful that the advice would resonate that way because I put a lot of work into simplifying it and making it really easy to understand and follow um so I'm very pleased it has but I was hopeful it would do so well well I will say sometimes they keep growing so this isn't necessarily the terminal point for the post the final position yeah okay so for people that haven't read this post or maybe for folks that

5:34 have and maybe could use a refresher let's spend a little time here could you just briefly describe this this idea of the magic loop that you wrote about yeah absolutely so the magic loop is how to grow your career in almost any circumstance even with a somewhat difficult manager it does assume that you're working in some environment uh you know normally as an entrepreneur or with a boss but the basic idea of the magic loop is five step apps and they're

6:00 very easy the first one is you have to be doing your current job well it's not possible to really grow your career if you're not considered at least performing at a solid level now it doesn't mean you have to be the star on the team at this point but what you can't have is your boss wishing that you were different like oh you know Ethan's not very good so you have to talk to your manager and find out how you're

6:24 doing and address any problems so Step One is do your job well then step two is ask your boss how you can help you know speaking as a manager and I've talked to hundreds of managers very few people go and ask their manager what can I do to help you what do you need and so just asking sets you apart and it begins to build a relationship that we're on the same team that I'm here as a part of your organization to

6:50 make you successful not just myself step three is whatever they say do it so uh you dig a big hole if you say uh what could I do to help you and they saywell we really need someone to like take out the trash each day and you're like oh I didn't mean that I I I wanted exciting work I don't want to do you know sort of this um maintenance work or whatever so do what they ask

7:11 help out even if it's not your favorite work once you've done that though and maybe you do that a couple times the fourth step is where the magic comes in you go back to your manager and say hey I'm really enjoying working with you I'm wondering uh is there some way I could help you that would also help me reach my goal and whether that goal is to change roles or get a raise or get a

7:34 promotion you say you know my goal is I really like to learn this new skill is there something you need that would also help me learn this new skill and the reason this works is managers help those who help them it's just human nature we all do that generally they're very open to meeting you halfway and saying sure you know I need this we can rearrange it um we can find a way to meet your goals over time

8:04 now for step four to work you do have to know what is your goal so you have to be clear on what it is you want well that part's up to you and then step five is the easiest step of all it's just repeat so like lather rinse repeat with your shampoo step five is once you're working with your manager towards your goal and discussing where you're going and you're helping each other the magic of the Loop

8:29 is just go around and around I was going to ask you why is it that you call it the magic loop also we kind of dived right in but what is the goal of this I guess it's pretty clear maybe at this point of just this helps you advance in your career but whatever you want to share along those lines yeah okay very fair so I called it the magic loop because I pioneered it with uh my

8:50 audience a few years ago and it worked so well that people were writing back in and saying how do I turn this off like like I'm I'm in over my head now my boss is ask me to do all these cool things and I feel like I can't catch up and I've already been promoted once and I need time to like digest it and it just seemed like it worked like magic it worked in almost every circumstance

9:14 there are of course exceptions where you have very exploitative managers who are like oh it's great you're working harder keep doing that and they won't do anything for you but those are rare and then the purpose yeah it's to help you get satisfaction in your career a lot lot of people are unhappy with their jobs many people want to move up a level or get paid more not everyone some people want to change what they're doing

9:38 they're bored this is a path to all of that because it's forming a partnership with your leadership to say look I'll help you but I need you also to help me and most good managers are very open to that when we were working on this one of the piece of feedback I had was I feel like I could just tell my manager hey I want to grow my career what can we work on to help me get there and your

10:02 feedback was like most managers were not are not that good and not that thoughtful about their employees careers can you just talk a little bit about that because people may be hearing this and be like why do I need to do this this seems like a lot of work you know if you have a great manager you may not need to do nearly as much formality they may have given you good feedback so you don't need to ask for feedback they may

10:23 have offered you opportunities to step up and you've said yes to some and maybe no to others that's fantastic I designed a magic loop for the people who either don't know what to do or their manager is either not that good or just very busy remember lots of managers have great intentions to help their employees but they get busy with their own lives their own work all the things they're focused on and also their own career the manager is often busy

10:51 thinking about their own needs and so they just they mean to get to you next week and next week drifts on for a year what has come up since this has come out that you would want to either add to or tweak or help people better understand I imagine a lot of there's some criticism I imagine there's a lot of yes yes yes this really works two things I'd love to clarify the first is many people ask me

11:17 well why why do I have to do this shouldn't my manager notice what I'm doing shouldn't my manager help with my career shouldn't my manager be planning for me you know and what I say about that is what your manager should do and $4 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks the point of this Loop is it's in your control it is true that a good manager would do all those things I just mentioned but not all managers are good

11:46 and some of them need some help and the thing I would just say about the magic loop is it's in your control and so you can be sort of upset that your manager isn't perfect but move on from that and take control of your own situation that's the first thing I'd say the other big extension I would make is look if you are a manager or a leader of any type you can initiate the magic loop from your side so you can

12:14 talk to your employees and say hey what are your career goals you know would you like to form a partnership where you step up to new challenges and I help you get to your goals I had a lot of success forming this kind of part partnership with my employees where as they saw growth and success they really leaned in and like oh the system works you're actually investing in me now I'll work extra hard and I'm like yes and we can grow your

12:42 team or grow your opportunity and it was very win-win to give people a little bit of social proof you mentioned some of the folks you've worked with on this can you share some stories or stats or anything to help people understand how helpful this ended up being to folks you've worked with yeah absolutely Ely I'll I'll tell one story from each end of the spectrum and what I mean there is entry-level people and then sort of high

13:05 level executive leaders I had uh an entrylevel person write me back and say look when I when I learned about the magic loop I was at a company and not doing very well I started applying it they offered me a $30,000 raise and a bigger job and I turned it down because I got hired at this other company that was offering me even more and I went there and they've promoted me also and

13:36 he was one of the people who wrote in and said you know uh his exact words were a year ago I was made redundant so he's in the UK redundant is their word for for laid off a year ago I was made redundant I got this first job and I got an offer for an increased salary and then I got this second job and I got an increase when I join that was even bigger and he was in that situation of

14:00 like now I need to sort of slow down and digest all of that on the complete other end um one of my uh best people I ever worked with joined my team at Amazon as what we would call an sde2 which in Amazon is a level five employee he grew with me kind of following this process to a senior engineer then he switched to management and ran a small team then he became a senior manager and he relocated with my my

14:32 organization he opened a new office in another city was eventually promoted to director um running his own office of a couple hundred people and this was over the course of about 8 years he went from a mid-level engineer to an executive with a team of 800 people we had this now he was a very hard worker but over this eight years we just saw all this progress and then eventually he moved on he founded his own startup uh sold that

15:02 and now works as an Executive Vice President at one of the uh major sort of online banks and so you know his career in some sense has exceeded mine but during that eight-year span he just grew so much and this is the process we followed wow those are excellent examples what levels does this help you with at what level is this most use and then does it kind of taper out I don't know if you get to VP level do you still

15:31 try using magic loop so I think it works anywhere from the start of your career to pretty far into it I think at you know my level I I finished my career as a vice president at Amazon it does Peter out in the sense of the active and what I mean by that is you're still doing the same thing but you don't have to talk about it your managers are expecting you to step up and recognize challenges

15:55 they're expecting you to ask for resources when you need them and you don't sort of have this level of explicit conversation around what can I help you with they're expecting you to anticipate what's needed so in the newsletter we did together I wrote about how over time you go from asking your manager how can I help to suggesting to your manager these are some things I see that seem like they need to be done would you like me to do them to just

16:25 seeing what needs to be done and sort of keeping your lead in the loop and saying hey I noticed that we have this problem I fixed it I noticed we have this opportunity I've started program against it I think at the executive level it's much more you being proactive and just sort of keeping your leader in the loop I think in the post the way you described this step is this is advanced mode don't jump straight to this don't

16:49 just start suggesting things because you may you may get it wrong yeah it's well it's all a matter of Rapport and trust a huge part of Career Success is how much trust you have have mutual respect with your leadership when they get to they're confident that you're going to make the right decisions they're confident to let you go but yeah you know when you're brand new or you're new to a manager if you just jump in you may either not work

17:12 on the things they value or even find yourself working across purposes and that that isn't the right place to start awesome okay just to close out this conversation maybe just you touched on this but why is it that you think this is so important and effective why do you think this works so well people may not recognize like I see this is the key to this well I think it's two things first I mentioned how rare it is managers uh

17:37 how rare it is for managers to be offered help if you're a manager you'll recognize this if not feel free to talk to any manager you know whether you're own or somebody else ask them how much they worry and how much they feel overwhelmed and wish someone would give them a hand management can be a lonely job because you feel like you're responsible for everything you know so having an ally it's just a huge weight off people's shoulders and then I think

18:02 a lot about social engineering the social engineering here is just the simple you help me I'll help you like it doesn't have to be exploitative it's just we help those people who help us and that's built into sort of human survival and I think this Loop works so well because it's just leaning a little bit into that behavior um so many relationships with managers are oppositional oh you tell me what to do and I kind of I'm kind of like a kid in

18:35 high school who's trying to figure out how do I skip as many classes as possible and turn in as little homework and still get by with a d that relationship won't build your career some people approach their jobs as my goal is to do the least I can and still collect my paycheck that's an approach if you're okay with like where you are it's not what I coach though I assume people want to grow okay so maybe just

19:03 as a closing question for people that are listening and want to start putting this into practice slash are stuck in their career and are just like okay I see here's something I can do could you just again just summarize the loop briefly sure so step one make sure you're doing your current job well the way I explain this is when you go to your manager and ask what could I do to help you don't want their answer even if

19:25 they don't say it quite so bluntly to be do your f job like you need to be doing that already so be doing a good job and unfortunately you know a good job is in the eyes of your manager in this case you may think I'm doing great work but if your manager doesn't they're the one sort of you need to build as an ally here once you have that go ask how you can help do whatever you're ask and then

19:51 go back to your manager and suggest or ask I would like to meet this goal can I keep helping you or what could I take on that you need that would also help me meet this goal and that's where you start to try to bring your two sets of aims together what do you need done but how can I get to my goal and let's do those things together and then you just repeat this Loop you build trust you

20:13 build a relationship and with all good managers and even a lot of moderate managers they appreciate the help so much they really lean into that I think there's two like really important elements of this that you haven't even mentioned necessarily that think are part of the reason this works so well one is this forces you and your manager to identify the gaps that are keeping you from The Next Level which a lot of is like a like it's often vague and then

20:39 you get to performance review and then your manager's like you didn't you're still not good on this and this and that and you're like you never told me that that's the things you're looking for for me to get promoted so I think there's this implicit like here's what you need to work on to get to the next level which I think is part of step for and then you actually did touch on this that it's important to share your goal to

20:57 your manager here is what I want I want to get promoted a lot of times they don't know that and you helping them understand here's what I want help me get there goes a long way so there's a lot yeah managers often fall into the Trap they chose to become managers so they assume one of two things about you they either assume that you want to keep doing exactly what you're doing forever just maybe make a little more money so

21:16 you're an artist you want to keep doing you know you want to keep drawing forever uh you know you're a lawyer you want to keep writing contracts forever or they assume that hey I became a manager I'm very proud of my career that must be what you want and these assumptions are natural right we tend we tend to view by default that like our path is great and everyone would want to be us now of course some good managers

21:40 don't do that but if you clarify and express your goals you remove that ambiguity I actually had a period in my career where I specifically did not want to get promoted I was very happy where I was and I just wanted to keep doing this awesome IC role is that something at all you see where people just like I'm good I don't need to get a promoted and then is this helpful in that in any way or is

22:00 it like not as big a deal so first I reached a point in my career where I was no longer pursuing promotion either and I wanted to do other things and so I've lived that myself and I've used the same Loop but I used it to go do what I wanted to say this is now what I want and how do we get there how do we create a role where I'm adding value appropriate to my level but I'm doing

22:21 this other work that's fun I moved into gaming and I really wanted to do that second I think it is still helpful because there's something you want probably maybe you want to work on different kinds of projects or maybe you want to work with a different higher performance team or maybe you want to rebalance your life and say hey I love what I'm doing but I you know how can I be a star performer for you but Within

22:46 These boundaries so you know if you if you truly have the perfect job is just as it is you may not need the magic loop but I know so few people who feel like nope there's absolutely nothing I could improve about my role yeah I think that your point about your goal doesn't have to be promotion it could be work on a different part of the org try something totally maybe transition into a new function that could be part of your goal

23:09 awesome okay so along the same lines of career progression you work with a lot of senior manager types kind of the level of like L7 M1 M2 is and you shared with me that one of the most frustrating parts of their job in that specific portion of their careers they get stuck at that level and they don't move up and it becomes really annoying and they're not sure how to break out of that what advice do you share with folks like that

23:34 that may be listening yeah so it's common to get stuck there and there are a few reasons for it first there are a lot of senior managers if you think of your average director uh they may have six to eight reports how many more directors are needed so there's a choke point second uh that choke point is worse in the current economy and in the past maybe a lot of companies Amazon Google Apple Etc were growing very

24:01 rapidly and so it wasn't just you were waiting for some other director to leave the teams were getting bigger I experienced this at Amazon where over a nine-year period I went from managing six people to 800 and so I went from a senior manager all the way to a vice president and I I describe I was in some sense just riding the elevator like the elevator was going up and as long as I managed to stay on it I was going to

24:27 arrive at Vice president but uh the other thing that causes people to get stuck is the difference between a senior manager and a director is kind of how you lead and the work you're doing and you can get as far as senior manager by being really strong in your function and being really good at getting things done as a director it becomes much more and as a VP beyond that it becomes much more about influence coordination with others

24:54 and letting go of sort of being in all the details yourself and so senior managers really have to change some Behavior I often reference the book by Marshall gold smith what got you here won't get you there not only because it's a great book classically on this problem but because the title tells the story all the great traits that got you to this one level kind of won't get you to the next level where you're more

25:20 expected to be thinking in strategic terms thinking longer term so to someone that may be in that role today and they're not moving up is there anything they can do this point about just like there's no roles for you like there's only so much you can do there is it is the advice just like wait until an opportunity arrives does it run this magic loop until something happens is there anything you can do I would be

25:43 honest with people and say some patience is required you know uh at this level there is some notion of do we need a director do we need a vice president do we have a challenge at that level that needs that person and so promotions of this level I often teach have two components the first component is can i e do that job am am I qualified do I have the skills but the second piece is do we have such a job that needs that

26:09 however there is a lot you can do a lot is in your control and what is in your control is to start practicing those Next Level skills start working with your leadership on where can I take on a strategic project how can I become more of an inventor I teach some about how to sort of systematically be invented it's not pure magic you know Edison said it's what 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration you can learn the 99% and the 1% isn't

26:40 as hard then so you start showing those Next Level trades and as I describe it most succinctly how do you make yourself the person who will be chosen out of the eight and you can be chosen there are several ways to move up your boss can leave or be let go they can be promoted to another role but another way is I have several I coach now and I have several clients recently I was just talking to a client

27:07 yesterday her two peers were let go they were all the same level her two peers were let go and she was given their teams and you know she expressed that her boss had been told you have too many you have too many senior managers for the size of the organization we need to do some some change in the organization clean house and put all your people under the folks who have potential well obviously she must be one of those

27:35 people because she still has her job and has more people and more to do and unfortunately her peers are shopping for new employment so be that person and that's where the magic loop comes in be that person I was just talking actually to a senior PM leader who pointed out that with this kind of lean environment of a lot of flattening of orgs and a lot of layoffs it this is becoming increasingly hard exactly what you're

28:01 describing there's just less spots because companies are running more lean and so you just kind of have to wait I think part of this advice you just shared which is the classic Dem do the job before you have the job makes all the sense in the world because once people see that you can do it obviously they will feel a lot more comfortable putting you in that position and they'll be looking you know I always remind

28:20 people as a leader I want the best people under me I can have it's not that I don't wish to promote you if you think about my job this helps people right I have selfish motivation to Pro promote you a lot of people think like oh the bosses they're holding me down well maybe some bosses are but why wouldn't I want stronger more capable direct reports why wouldn't I want people under me who could do more of my job frankly

28:44 that's the only way I can do less of my job plus this pressure you're always getting from your reports are like hey I'm ready to get promoted um is this time yet you mentioned this word inventiveness and I was just listening to Jeff BAS on Lex Freedman and I don't know if you heard this but he Jeff Bezos described himself most as an inventor more than anything else that he does is that something that you think about is

29:07 that is that influenced by Jeff Bezos in any way that idea of being an inventor as a as a leader I'll say a couple things about that first I know you talked to my old boss Bill Carr who wrote working backwards yeah what I don't know is if he shared with you that after he published it he actually realized there there was a better title h wishes that he had called the book The Invention machine because what Jeff was

29:33 trying to do with Amazon was create the most inventive Company the company that would systematically out invent others and so while working backwards is a great title bill and Jeff think they should have called it the invention machine when I joined Amazon I did not think of myself as an inventor but I saw that we had these leadership principles think big and invent and simplify that pushed on that and I said I'm in trouble I don't know how to do this and I sat

30:04 down and thought about that like what am I going to do it seems like that's required and I figured out how to become systematically inventive so I now hold over 70 patents as one Benchmark of inventiveness and they were all uh created during my 15 years at Amazon and the way I did that inventiveness actually isn't that hard I teach about this and to invent systematically first you do need to be somewhat of an expert in whatever area you want to invent so

30:34 like Lenny if you and I say let's get together and we're going to invent Cancer drugs we have the problem that we're neither of us as far as I know is a biologist a doctor you know we don't have the right background we don't know what we're doing so we would just be fumbling around I guess with a bathtub full of chemicals hoping it's probably not going to work out that well so you have to be something of a knowledgeable

30:55 expert but then the second thing people don't do is they don't spend dedicated time actually thinking they feel like oh invention is just going to come to me when I want to invent I get away from all my devices I go in a room with the problem I have and I force myself to actually concentrate on what do I know and how can I invent and the most straightforward way to invent is not to somehow come up with something

31:22 completely new but instead to put together two things that exist and so my example of this I have a patent I talk about a lot uh for a drone delivery for Amazon but the the Drone doesn't fly from the warehouse instead a truck with no top drives slowly around the neighborhood and the drones go back and forth from the truck as opposed to the driver stopping at every house you can have four or six drones hitting

31:52 everything in the neighborhood and the way I came up with this idea is one day I was thinking about drones and delivery but I I loved military history and so I was thinking also about an aircraft carrier and I was thinking like is there a way to have an aircraft carrier for drones and from that it was very quick for the lightfall to go on and say well what about a truck and you know so I have this patent and

32:21 we haven't seen this become reality yet you know I'm waiting for the my my idea to be become part of Amazon's drone delivery system but I think ultimately it will that is badass I'm imagining Returns come back to the truck we using that rope thing that just like captures them with that little hook yeah well there's no reason that you know same thing when you want to return something as opposed to taking it to the UPS store or whatever you just

32:49 put it on your porch and then on your phone on your app you know maybe you take a picture of it so that the Drone can recognize the box or you put it in designated spot and you push a button and the Drone takes your return away like yes there's no reason can't wait for that and take takes your dog backd in sometimes all part of it my dog's too heavy think my dog's not there's like an owl in our backyard that

33:13 we sometimes or he's going to come grab our dog on this idea of invention this is really interesting I didn't plan to talk about this but for someone like say a PM on a team that wants to get better at invention Innovation big thinking is there practice you find helpful here like is it block off two hours get a pen and paper and just think about it the specific two adjacent things working together so that's part of the process

33:36 is put in dedicated time the interesting thing I would say is you don't need that much time two hours is great but you only need two hours once a month people think invention takes all this time the thing is once you have one good idea it often takes years to express that so you had the idea to have a newsletter I know some of the history of your newsletter you've been working on the expression of that idea for years now Jeff and Amazon

34:02 had ideas like let's have Prime shipping well Prime is still getting better and still being worked on it's a 20-some year old idea you know the Kindle a decades old idea now still getting better so the point here is you don't need very many good ideas to be seen as tremendously invented like Elon Musk Tesla he can kind of like bu off his hands and be like I am now you know an Edison like inventor so he keeps doing

34:32 it but you don't need that many inventions this touches on something else Jeff Bezos shared on the podcast that most of his Innovation and work is in the optimizing phase it's not the here's the idea it's the making it cheaper and better and faster and that's where most of the good stuff comes from like in this point of Tesla Elon had this idea and now the the hard work is actually making it scalable and cheap enough for people to use n just like an

34:57 electric car with the idea of Jeff saying that invention is really a lot of the incremental and optimization I completely agree with that that to invent well you need a base idea but then there's so much of the work is making that idea real and again prime is a great example of this the Amazon Prime program was a great example of okay we want fast free shipping we want this program that was a one-time idea that

35:28 they did build but now Prime has expanded first it was two Day in the US then one day in the US now it's Same Day in the US but also they added Prime video Prime music Prime gaming there's actually something like 25 things you get free with prime most people have no idea because you get free photo storage and this ongoing list and all of that is that incremental optimization to make it better better better better uh and of

35:55 course Jeff skull which you probably heard him say was to make prime a no-brainer to where you know you would be irresponsible really not to be a member I know you have an awesome Jeff bezo story that I want to get to but before we do that one more question along this line of career advice and progression so I read somewhere that you've interviewed over 2 200 people over the course of your career and so kind of going back to the beginning of a

36:20 career or at least getting a job what have you found is most helpful in standing out as as a candidate when you're interviewing and just essentially getting hired what advice do you have for people that may be going through an interview process right now there's a lot of evidence that suggests that um the number one and two factors in any interview are appearance and enthusiasm and it doesn't mean you have to be beautiful but you know show up somewhere

36:45 looking like you're interested in the job not in your pajamas and most importantly be enthusiastic people want to work with people that want to work with them so if you seem very judged judgmental of the company and like you have to sell me on it you're going to turn them off I look at every interview of whether or not I really want this job I might have decided I don't want the job I still want the offer and so I come

37:11 to any interview I do leaned in and talking about how excited I am to be a part of this opportunity and what I know about the company Beyond those Cosmetics the biggest thing I see particularly at higher levels is people talk about what they have done but not why it mattered they don't talk about the impact see a leader is not hiring someone to just do work they're hiring someone because they have a problem or a

37:39 need and so if you can show them look here's the things I've done that have made a difference here's the things I've done that have helped my past employers where I've had an impact so I didn't just do work that makes you a worker someone who has an impact is more of a leader and leader doesn't need to mean people manager just a higher level right that I have done something that solved the big problem and here's how it

38:07 changed the company or customer Outlook that's what I'm looking for in an interview is are you bringing me an understanding of the business that shows you contributed to the business or are you just telling me how hard you worked awesome on that first piece now that most interviews I imagine are over zoom in terms of enthusiasm and looking professional is there anything you've found that you people may not be thinking about in those two buckets well

38:33 yeah uh you know show the person full-time dedication so unless you really don't have any choice don't take an interview from a car don't have your camera off you know eye contact is still a real thing body language is still a real thing gestures like I'm making now with my hands they're they're part of your presentation and so be fully present and try to project through the camera a little bit of I'm excited to be a part of this and I appreciate the

39:02 opportunity you know I often tell people the best way to prep for an interview might be a good night's sleep and a and a pot of coffee that that being you know fully engaged and energetic is a huge lever awesome and I think basically the feedback there is don't over obsess with the content there's a lot of value in just how you come across yeah 100% let me tell you about a product called arcade arcade is an

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40:31 ready to tell more engaging product stories that drive results head to arcade. software Lenny and get 50% off your first 3 months that's arcade. software SL Lenny now let's take a little trip to failure Corner this is something that I do more more and more on this podcast talk about people's failures in their career and their learnings and you have a apparently you have a great story of failing the great Jeff BAS and surviving to tell the tale

40:58 could you share that story I do um you know it's both like a highlight and a low light so I had been at Amazon about six years I had become a director and I was responsible for launching Amazon's App Store and so we were building an Android based app store to go on Google phones and eventually on the Kindle tablets and we got to launch day and at that time Jeff used to write a letter

41:29 introducing new products he would write a letter that said dear customers today Amazon's proud to launch blah blah blah and it's got these great features and I hope you really enjoy it thanks Jeff and we would take down all the sales stuff on www.amazon.com and that letter would fill the whole screen and so he had written a Jeff letter and this Jeff letter emphasized a particular feature of our product that he really liked so that something that

41:58 made it a little different and that specific thing was we had a button called test drive that you could click on and it would open the app in a simulator in your uh web browser so you could check out the app and interact with it before putting it on your phone so he thought this was really cool and he was all about it well my team had built all this technology we had test drive working uh was kind of a hard

42:24 piece of technology if you think about simulating any of thousands of of arbitrary apps and we worked all night to launch it and it wasn't quite working at 6: a.m. we were still debugging now you know Engineers very well and I'm sure most of your listeners know about engineers even if that's not their discipline we always think we're this close to finding the last bug so about 6:15 amm I get a message from Jeff that says uh hey I woke up where's the letter

42:58 because it was supposed to go live at 6:00 a.m. right after the markets in um New York would have opened at 9:00 am Eastern and he says where's the letter and I write him back and I say well we're working on a few problems and what I'm thinking in my head is get in the shower get in the shower I just need 20 minutes get in the shower for Jeff to get in the shower yeah and like 30

43:22 seconds later I have an email back that says what problems and at this point I have to start explaining and you know I end up explaining that we're having a problem with the database uh and we're not we're debugging this database problem and he's like wait there's a database in your design we're trying to eliminate all Oracle databases and move to AWS why do you even have this and you know he's just getting more and more frustrated

43:48 and angry and he starts copying in my boss and my boss's boss who's with Jeff Wilkey the CEO of retail and they start asking me questions and it's just this snowballing you know by like 7:30 in the morning Jeff is clearly angry and there's this list of other people waking up and feeling like well Jeff is angry so my job is to be even more angry and it's just raining in on me oh man so what did I do the

44:16 interesting is what do you do when the when you know when the uh future richest man in the world is mad at you he wasn't quite richest man in the world yet but he was headed there so the first thing I did was I owned it I said yes it's it's it's not working it's my fault I will deal with it I took ownership and the second thing I did was start updating him very proactively and

44:42 saying here's where we are like 8 AM this is exactly where we are this is what we're going to do in the next hour and this is when you'll get your next update like I will update you again at 9:00 am. so here's our plan and even though Jeff had sort of lost trust in me like it's down and it's not right and I'm mad given that he agreed with the plan he was willing to give me 60 minutes and

45:06 then I would update him again and say okay this is what we've done and this is what we're gonna do and uh we'll update you again at 10: a.m so I was buying life one hour at a time now the other thing I did and this is a good thing about Amazon as more and more leaders got copied into this angry thread they started reaching out in in back Channel and saying we've all been under Jeff's

45:31 eye of Sauron we know it's miserable what can we do to help and uh essentially Andy jass's organization which was AWS at that time and his CTO a a guy named verer Vogal said you're having a database problem let's get you some principal Engineers from the AWS database team and these principal Engineers showed up up at 9:00 a.m. roughly and they looked at our our design we had made some fundamental mistakes in our database

46:02 usage and they said you know it's too complicated to fix this we're just going to give you like 500 AWS machines so that your crappy design will run anyway uh like that's the immediate fix and I'm like okay well I guess if you have 500 databases lying around because you're AWS is a great solution that's what they did so the next step is we fixed the problem a bunch of us worked together very hard

46:33 to get the problem all fixed now it took all day and Jeff was still frustrated because the opportunity to sort of control the messaging in the media by having his letter up had passed people had noticed our launch and the Articles had been written and so Jeff was still very mad so we fixed the problem but Jeff je now had no trust trust in us the weekend went by he was using the system like looking for bugs because he's like

47:03 oh this team's not reliable now Ethan's not reliable I better check it myself so you have the CEO checking on you and I he found a problem and emailed me like Saturday night at nine o'clock like I was doing this and it broke and luckily I was able to tell him exactly what happened by like 9:30 anyway the next part of the story is that following week I had a meeting with him on another topic so I was part of

47:33 this small group uh that was trying to figure out how to build a competing browser you may not remember but Amazon had a browser called Silk for a while and I was invited to this meeting but I wasn't a critical participant so you may know this idea from scrum where they say some people are pigs and some are chickens and the chickens are sort of observers I was a chicken in this meeting and that turns out to be a great analogy

47:58 because I was thinking should I chicken out and not go like I could skip this meeting with the CEO who's angry at me but when I had that thought I realized you know if I can't face the CEO I'd better pack my desk like that's the end so I went to this meeting early and I Jeff always sat in the same chair so I knew where he would sit when he came in so I sat down right next to his chair

48:21 and I thought I don't know let's find out and so the meeting goes by and of course in my mind Jeff is totally ignoring me like not even looking at me but I think that's just me projecting because remember I wasn't Central to the meeting so at the end of the meeting everybody gets up to leave he turns and looks at me and says so how are you doing I bet it's been a hard week and I

48:42 thought oh okay we're gonna talk and I said yeah you know I just sort of answered him with of course it's been hard but here's what we're doing and here's what we're going to do in the future and we had very human conversation and I didn't believe Jeff would have forgotten that I let him down but it was clear he had forgiven it so I was still going to have to as it turns out re earn

49:08 his trust but the thing I did that's key for people to learn from is it's really easy to Flame he had been flaming me right writing angry emails angry emails are easy stitting free feet from someone and being angry with them face to face is hard and when faced with I can either start ranting at this person who reports to me or I can say something nice he chose to say something nice and that rebuilds our

49:41 relationship so the end of the story is two years later I was promoted to vice president so even though I had failed the CEO on this very public launch where he was very defin itely mad at me I re earned the trust I showed I had learned the lessons of how to launch more reliably without outages and I was promoted and so I share that story because I think it it what I want people

50:12 to understand is if I can get away with publicly failing one of the richest and most famous inventors on Earth and then get promoted and finish my career at Amazon very successfully you can dig out of any hole you just have to manage it right that is an amazing story okay so there's a lot of lessons that I want to pull on here one is just if you get caught in a situation like this where something completely

50:39 fails what I took down as you were talking one is admit yes this is a huge problem own it this is nothing like don't try to deflect two is the way I describe what you did here is something I call prioritizing and communicating where you prioritize here's what we need to do and then communicate here's our priorities and I love that you have this like every hour here's the latest here's the latest so make it make people

51:02 understand you are on it and you will continue to keep them updated because I imagine one of the worst yours is I have no idea what's happening here I'm going to go in and start micromanaging you're exactly right I'm trying to hold off micromanagement I'm trying to give them like okay I believe with this and I can wait an hour and then I can wait another hour because that team seems to be on it so I'm trying to rebuild trust one hour

51:24 at a time and avid void having three or four levels of management all come in and start helping and then I love this other piece of advice of kind of meet them in person try to take it off offline essentially which I know you did later but that's such a good point that it's hard to be as mad and angry and like flamy in person right people are just going to be like okay I get it

51:45 let's try to figure this out amazing is there anything else those are the three that I took away just like if you're caught in that situation in the moment is there anything else that you found to be really helpful um I I mean work hard and fast right you do have to fix the problem yeah you know my team had been up all night I had to start sending people home to sleep and shifts we had to pull in all this help

52:07 and so it was a very hard weekend uh you know when you have a mistake it's on you to pull out the stops even if it's uncomfortable to recover from it and and again this is not the time to be like well you know it's the weekend now and my team you know we'll we'll hit it Monday like that would have been like I'd have been out the door so fast you know I would have had like the comic Wy

52:31 coyote skid marks as I bumped down the street so I would say that's important it's just it's part of showing ownership the other part of this is something I went through for a while when I was starting to become a more senior leader is I had a lot of impostor syndrome and this fear that if I messed up everything would crumble people would see that I don't actually know what I'm doing and I'm not really ready for this level of

52:55 of seniority and so there's a sphere of like one big mistake it's over clearly this was an example of a huge mistake and it was not over for you is there any lessons there that you take away of just like you can mess up and still do well even if it's this level of mistake I think a lot of people in my position would have quit they would have let the shame I was just a little bit bullheaded

53:17 where I'm like yeah I messed up but like I'm still I know I'm still a good person and a good worker yes I made a mistake but I'm going to move on you know part of the story I haven't told that you might enjoy is I mentioned that Jeff wilky was Jeff's number two at that point Jeff Bezos number two person and he was my skip level well he during this process he came physically into our

53:43 offices and he wanted to talk to me and my manager who was vice president said hey Jeff this is my team I own it if you have any criticism say it to me you know you don't mean to talk to my team and Jeff Wilkey said to my boss whose name was Paul Paul that's excellent leadership I really appreci appreciate what you're doing please step out of the way I want to talk to Ethan like you're doing a great job Paul

54:11 and now step aside and then he kind of read me the riot acts and the rest of that funny story is I was so happy with how well my meeting with Jeff Bezos went I patted myself on the back and like I'm going to go face Jeff Wilkey now I'm going to schedule a meeting with him and do the same thing you know I've got this down so I go to meet with Jeff Wilkey figuring like I'm GNA run the same

54:34 Playbook I'm gonna look him in the eye and all will be forgiven and Jeff Wilkey looks at me and says Ethan when you launched this did you know you were gambling with the result did you know it might not work and I said yes we had a media commitment to launch on that day and I thought shooting for the date was more important than perfect certainty and he saidwell two things first you were wrong you were wrong to prioritize

55:00 date over over our reputation you let Amazon down in public and that was a mistake he said second though at least you knew you were gambling if you hadn't known you were gambling we'd be discussing your departure and I'm like okay here I thought I was rolling in this meeting like I'm going to run my relationship Playbook and he's evaluating whether or not to keep me the bullheadedness is even after he had told me he had been considering firing me I'm

55:32 like well he isn't so I'm just going to go forward and a lot of that that that stubbornness of sure I made a mistake but like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna live in shame about it I think is what people can take away I think a lot of people feel they're more dead in the water than they are because everybody makes mistakes right Jeff's I mean Jeff and firefoam which you know it's like his that'll be an albatross around his

56:01 neck you know Jeff and Fir phone will be a phrase of anybody who knows Amazon for the rest of his life yeah we talked about on the working backwards podcast and why did working backwards work for the fir phone we talked about it I love that these uh quotes and lines are so seared in your brain you can remember it like word for word exactly what they were I've relived that moment many times and then just along the lines of working

56:27 your way out of that hole is the is essentially what you did just succeed for two years and do great and that's that was the key there I know I think I did have to learn I've always been sort of an operational Cowboy meaning I like to go fast and loose I prioritize speed and I really had to step back and say okay Amazon um Amazon at this level and scale doesn't like that so I taught

56:51 myself a new phrase which was Fear The New York Times headline like be aware that if Amazon is down it goes up on every News website immediately and so if Amazon has some kind of mistake it's on Wall Street Journal and CNN and and so as a leader I had to think is what I'm doing going to generate a New York Times headline because if it is i' better be really careful and that's that's what I taught

57:19 myself is like you can't be paralyzed but you do I taught my whole team like we don't want to be in the New York Times for the wrong thing and that was the lesson along lines of lessons last question here just what's something that you took away from the way you approached it that you shouldn't should have changed or should have done differently that you just you've done differently since you know obviously like don't like you mentioned this idea

57:47 of don't promise a date that you're not that certain you're going to hit I guess is there anything along those lines I have two things here first Amazon love in the past they love surprise launches they love the idea of we're going to be quiet quiet quiet because basically it was a reaction I think to Microsoft where they felt Microsoft always talked about what was coming and then pushed the dates back and so there was this

58:09 whole thing about vaporware and Amazon wanted to be the other way which is we won't say anything and then it will just be there the problem I came to say is the biggest thing I learned with surprise launches is that you're surprised by what doesn't work and so I shifted approach to let's do a lot of beta testing we always even if others don't agree fight and say you're right we're not going to have a surprise

58:34 launch some of our beta testers even if they sign ndas are going to leak and that's a that's a better outcome than launching something that doesn't work uh that's one lesson the other lesson is this thing that broke in front of Jeff Bezos ultimately it was a new college graduate engineer who wrote that code and he had been left alone to write part

59:04 of our user interface but he had written it in such a way that it didn't scale now we didn't give him any help or oversight we left him on his own because we were busy focusing on other pieces of the problem and shortly after the disaster he left the company and the mistake I made was not reaching out to him and really reassuring him of like yes you wrote the bug but that's not on you like the system failed you

59:35 and we don't see you bugs happen so the thing I regret in this whole thing is not realizing that even though no one in the team ever yelled at him or whatever he knew it was his bug and he obviously saw me and others sort of taking a beating and so he left and I I wish he hadn't done that and I wish more than that I had stepped in I didn't realize what he was feeling it's interesting the

60:06 lesson there isn't catch that person sooner and notice these links in the chain that may break but it's more just be there for that human that had this challenge that people may not be focusing on because I we lost a good person and you know he he probably felt very bad about it and you know we all feel bad when we make mistakes that can be prevented but he felt undue responsibility I think and and that that I really regret this is

60:36 actually a really good example of of ownership you mentioned this term ownership and that connects to Amazon has these leadership principles I think there's 14 of them one of them is around ownership and apparently you help craft the actual language for that principle which I think I think is a a huge deal with an Amazon I imagine very few people have a say over how to define and describe and Def and say these principles could you just talk about

61:02 this principle that you contributed to how it came to be that you helped actually write it Amazon is now kind of on its fourth version in my mind maybe there's more but it's Fourth major revision of its leadership principles over its 25 plus year history and when it was going from version one to version two Jeff and his leadership team sat down together and actually in version one there were three different lists there were like leadership principles

61:30 and core values and something else I don't remember and they were like three lists is stupid let's make one list well ownership the term had been a part of one of those lists but when they merged everything they took it out and this guy Jeff Wilkey I mentioned the number two and the leader of retail he brought a bunch of us a bunch of his directors he brought the the proposed list to us in a meeting and said hey this is the

61:59 proposed new version do you have any comment and we all sat around and talked and said where's ownership ownership is missing so we we told him we said look ownership is missing we think it should be there and he said well why don't you propose a draft and so about a half dozen of us sat around and roughed out a draft of how we felt ownership should be written and I propose these six words which are an owner never says that's not

62:30 my job uh maybe that's seven words um so I propose this specific language as a part of it and we sent off this draft and months go by we hear nothing and then one day the leadership principles are announced and ownership is back in it's been modified but that an owner never says that's not my job is a part part of the leadership principle and it's remained to this dead and uh what I love about that is it's probably the

63:01 most because Amazon has you know one and a half million employees who live by these leadership principles it's probably the most impactful thing I've ever written wow so those seven words are the most impactful thing you've ever written I love that and I totally get that I'm looking at the principles right now and it comes right at the end of that principle link to the 14 leadership principles is there another principle that you really love or or one or two I

63:26 don't know it's probably hard to pick your favorites I'm a huge proponent in bias for Action bias for Action says speed matters in business and you know many decisions are reversible and so it's important to go faster and I think people don't understand that in a competitive environment being right is good but being quick is necessary because if there are 10 startups working on an idea some of them will Gamble and they'll make bad gambles and they'll go

63:55 out of business but some of them will Gamble and make an early bet and be right and if you're not moving quickly you'll be beaten by the people who maybe got lucky and so you've got to have a process that that values speed values what can we do today what can we commit to today so I really like bias for Action now that is what got me in trouble with Jeff right I was I was willing to gamble so it has to be in

64:21 Balance but that's my other favorite I was uh again that Jeff bezos's interview with Lex Freedman he was talking about how with his with blue origin his with the way Amazon he thought about Amazon as customer Obsession that was like the core goal and and differentiator of Amazon with blue origin he wants it to be decisiveness basically leaning into this bias reaction like fully which is really interesting yeah I I I saw that part of the interview and I thought wow you know

64:47 that's exactly right because again Rockets blow up and they have people on them like you've got to get it right but you also have to keep moving because there's always one more thing you can safy test so how do you balance it yeah it's interesting with rockets if like that's the one that you pick it's it's a pretty bold to be all uh move forward kind of thing I'm reading so this principle again going back to

65:14 ownership so you basically suggested this phrase you didn't hear anything and all a sudden of becomes part of the whole thing do that feel weird that they never told you or I don't know if they give you credit for that or it's like no great yeah you know I wouldn't even claim credit for it except I kept a copy of the email that says Ethan thinks it should say blah like I have the written proof um because it's not about the

65:39 credit uh I'm very happy and proud that those words were kept but you know in Amazon I doubt if Jeff knows I wrote those words you know it's not like I've ever told him like Hey do you know you kept my words like that's not appropriate it's just a fun anecdote and it does show I guess something people can learn from that though you can influence way up in a company if your ideas are good you know

66:05 and also when we challenge Jeff wilky was a strong opinionated leader who didn't necessarily always love being challenged and so when we first told him like well we think you're missing ownership he was like you know like you're you're saying that the whole s team can't get its lead ership principles right I mean it wasn't exactly that way but he was very much like well is this really necessary why do you think it's necessary and his

66:32 challenge to us to write it was kind of framed as like well if you're so sure it's good show us right and so you know but again I'm stubborn and I'm like all right let's write it and we did that's funny that's that's not a great example of leadership where he's like hey guys I have I need your feedback on this thing but like no don't don't actually don't actually tell me anything's wrong well yeah yeah I mean for a bunch of

67:00 directors to kind of critique the work of people two levels higher uh he wanted it but you know then he's sort of naturally resistant to it if we're kind of you know poking at his baby it's unlikely that there's something huge missing and it turns out there was yeah and I guess just on these principles people may not know this but this is where disagreeing comes from it's actually have backbone disagreeing commit we talked about this on the

67:28 podcast about working backwards I also love leaders are right a lot that comes up a lot and I love that just like to be successful you need to be right you can't just you know project confidence you can't just be in a bunch of meetings and ship things you need to be right to be successful and that one's been Rewritten to carefully say you know it's always interesting what is the history of the edits which you wish you could

67:48 see the edit history on these that one got modified to say leaders something about leaders ERS work to discon actively work to disconfirm their beliefs and the key there is it was trying to get at the idea that you've got to be very open and always be questioning yes I think I'm right but what's the new evidence what am I learning what's changing and in fact that active It also says they seek to diverse

68:19 perspectives and that was a way of getting at what's called uh you know Dei diversity equity and inclusion that's a subtle nod towards if everyone in the room is a 50-year-old white man you may not really be making the right overall decision for Amazon's customer base you may be making the one for like 50-year-old white Suburban seattleites right and so it's just some of these every word in those has been studied as an individual word inside the

68:51 company amazing okay let's move on to the final area I wanted to spend a little time on and this is called contrarian corner I'm curious if you have any contrarian opinions about things basically that other people believe that you don't believe something you see that many people don't see is there anything that comes to mind yeah I think a place where I'm currently very contrarian is the return to office movement you know many leaders at my

69:19 level appear or publicly favor the to get back into the office potentially fulltime and uh I'm contrarian on this because of innovation specifically I looked it up you can check my facts on Wikipedia the first purpose-built office the first building ever built to be an office was built in 1726 in London and so we're about 300 years into learning how to use offices well and

69:51 what that means is offices aren't going to get much better like what's the last major thing you can think of that got better in offices you might say well open offices but a lot of people say that's not even a good idea these big rows of desks and Loud pits with working from home we've only been doing that for a few years since the pandemic began and at all since the internet started 20 years ago which one is likely to have

70:17 more opportunity for improvement there's so many things we haven't explored with remote work and I think uh the people who say oh you know back to the office it's because we know it works well we know what it is but I have so much more faith in the opportunity to improve the remote experience and so I think long term it's going to tr up the one other place where I'm a huge contrarian is doing business on a handshake I

70:45 understand companies need lawyers and you know I have an attorney for certain things but you know I coach people most of the people I coach there's no no NBA in place there's no contract in place they pay me through PayPal and I do good coaching for them like I think too much of the world is contract driven and we've lost the idea of your word being your bond and like you can actually trust me to follow through on my

71:12 commitments and I'm a contrarian there I realize I will occasionally get burnt someone will behave in a way you know they'll they'll let me down but I think when we're always with suspicious of people that's a high cost and uh the other place I'm contrarian is just doing business on faith that reminds me Sam Alman has a similar philosophy of just like trust people and assume it'll all be okay sometimes you'll get burned but on balance it'll end up being much

71:40 better for you and everyone around you I didn't know that salmon said that but I strongly agree with it yeah although he had some challenges recently I don't know if it's if it's working great but ended UPG great for him so anyway okay we've actually reached our very exciting lightting round before we get there is there anything else you wanted to touch on or share or leave listeners with no I I've really enjoyed this conversation you know I could talk about careers

72:05 forever uh and I love doing that but uh I think we've covered a ton today that will really help people so I'm good let's hit the lightning round all right with that we reached our very exciting lightning round are you ready I'm ready Ethan what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people uh two or three books my number one recommendation is a book called decisive it's by chip and Dan fief and

72:30 it's about the science of making better decisions the reason I recommend it so much is it will make your career better because leaders are decision makers but also your personal life so I apply it at least as much in my personal life as I do in my professional life my second book uh my second most recommended book is leadership and self-deception much less known than deci cisive a little bit harder to approach it's by a group a

72:56 research group called The arbinger Institute and it's about how to the self-deception is we cause a lot of our interpersonal problems while blaming them on others and it walks through how are you part of the problem you're having with somebody else and what can you do about it the third and final book uh was recently brought to me by uh someone I work with that you know Jason yum that book is the almanac of racan and uh Nal racan is an angel

73:28 investor responsible for Angels list but what I love about that book is he has a recipe he he really boils down how to be successful while loving what you do and he says no one can be a better version of you don't try to copy me and be oh I'm gonna be like Ethan or I'm going to be like Lenny instead figure out what you uniquely do best that you love because no one can copy you being you

73:56 and that's your defensible sort of uh career value and I I really like that mental M yeah nval has so many insightful messages and you can read all these on his Twitter we'll link to his Twitter and someone just made a book out of his tweets basically he's such an interesting dude yes that's right awesome what is a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed so I grew up on a farm and so all the Taylor

74:22 Sheridan uh you know um 1923 and Yellowstone and I I all of those series of we've watched everything he's put out you know we do kind of laugh like wow if you are you familiar with Yellowstone at all absolutely a lot of lot of death yeah we we at one point my wife and I were watching it we would start betting like so the episode is starting how many people will die in this episode you know like yeah this

74:49 Ranch in Montana but yet somehow you know they're always killing people how does this work that's that's what your life was like is what I'm hearing favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates I think my favorite interview question is tell me about a time where you needed to disagree with your management where you needed to stand up or you know fight for a position against higher leadership or people in power because I think that's

75:18 really hard to do I'm normally interviewing leaders and I think uh you know having a bunch of of people who just say yes isn't helpful you need people have you know as you said have backbone disagree and commit so I that's what I'm normally looking for awesome is your favorite product you recently discovered that you really love it's it's silly um but uh my favorite product that I've discovered recently is the Chuck it which you use to whip a ball

75:48 for your dog like a quarter mile it basically extends your arm and it's just fun to send a ball soaring like way further than you could ever throw it and you feel like wow look at me like I'm a mjor leag pcture it's because I have this three three foot lever arm and I understand physics you know if we look at Tech products uh there's so many I love it it's too easy to say chat GPT and stuff so I won't go

76:15 there awesome I my dog does not love chasing balls so I haven't had a reason to buy that but I I've never thought about just the joy of flinging a ball really far do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to share with folks find useful in work or in life I happen to be a Christian and the motto that I think about the most is to whom much has been given from him much will be

76:38 required and so I think a lot about what is my social responsibility what you know I've been very lucky I grew up on a farm in Ohio and I wasn't a farm boy my father was a chemist but I grew up you know in like upper middle class settings and I've ended up being extremely successful able to retire from my job at 50 to kind of coach and teach what do I owe to pay forward so those words are uh

77:03 you know uh obviously ancient spiritual texts but they're the ones I take away and think the most about what's my responsibility as an example of someone that to whom much has been given but because he's worked so hard Jeff Bezos is starting a space business as you know if you had the chance to go to space would you would you go uh well I of course saw his interview where he talked about how he thought about the safety

77:26 and the conversation he had to have with his mother I would like to go to space I'm not willing to pay what I think the current tickets are but yeah I I would take the risk so you know what's the risk of that ride one in 100 one in 50 even more that you won't come back I would probably take the gamble so you being an early adopter like where along that curve would you be early adopter

77:49 lagard well I'm old enough that I remember when the space shuttle exploded and I said you know I would get on the next one uh and I said they're never going to be more careful than the next one so I'll get i'll get on the next one so uh you know I think I would I would get on uh anyone I was offered because of the chance unlike Jeff who claims he wasn't scared I would probably

78:15 be really terrified at least it lifted off right so me while you're up there it's great everything either goes wrong going up or coming down it's not the middle Ethan I think we're going to help a lot of people with their career I think we're going to help them work through failure become better owners thank you so much for being here two final questions work can folks find you online if they want to reach out also

78:36 just share what you do now in case uh people could use that help and then how can listeners be useful to you so the best place to find me online I do all my writing on LinkedIn it's where the professional Community is so uh Ethan Evans on LinkedIn my actual handle there is Ethan Evans VP from my history as a vice president that's the best place to find me I do have a substack newsletter I do teach through the maven platform

79:00 but all of those are linked off LinkedIn and really how readers help me they comment on what I write because I miss things I am one person's perspective and so I actually have a process where I take in all the comments people write all the different perspectives all the different exceptions or special cases or examples and that's how I improved my own thinking is I read every comment and think okay what did I miss what could I

79:26 have said better how can I incorporate this if I ever talk about this again just to give you another opportunity to plug the stuff you do now what do you help people with in case people could value could use the stuff that you offer you said you coach you have a course what sort of stuff I focus on two topics uh Career Development so how do you grow in your career the the whole magic loop and how do you uh attain promotion or

79:49 attain a new role of raise if that's your goal and then leadership specifically I teach a course that's been very popular called stuck at senior manager breaking through to Executive which is how to get out of that sort of stuck I'm working really hard I'm pretty good I'm managing 25 or 50 people but how do I get to the big chair how do I get to the you know the division level leadership and what do I need to change

80:13 it's that whole what got you here won't get you there and I'd love to see people succeed at that you know people write me back and say I did get a job I did get promoted I did did get a raise and that's that's my fulfillment amazing Ethan thank you so much for being here thank you Lenny and I got to say you are very good at this you're so smooth and uh you just do a great job interviewing

80:35 it's been really been a pleasure I really appreciate that and so are you thank you bye everyone bye everyone thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please pleas consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenp

81:02 podcast.com see you in the next episode