Discussion of 'Bird by Bird' and 'Alchemy', the importance of mentorship and a light approach to advisory work

I recently interviewed Kevan Lee, the former VP of Marketing at Buffer and currently Senior VP of Marketing at Oyster.

Kevan is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to leading tech startups to significant growth. To give you an example, he helped Buffer go from $5m to $20m in annual revenue and 100,000 new customers acquisitions per month.

In his first year at Oyster, he helped the company 20x its revenue and build a marketing team comprising over 50 people. He's also involved as an educator and advisor with Reforge, On Deck, as well as a past contributor to ProductLed, and more.

In this interview, Kevan and I explore the realm of advisory work.

We cover topics like:

1. How he approaches advisory work while having a full-time gig
2. How he views mentorship and why it's important to him
3. How he prices his advice—and what he's learning in the process
4. His experience on the buyer side of equity for advice compensation discussions
5. How he packages his ideas into a playbook that he shares with paying Substack subscribers
6. And a lot more...

This conversation was a fun exploration of the world of advisory work. And like all of us, Kevan is still figuring out what works best for him.

You can follow Kevan on Twitter at @kevanlee and subscribe to his Substack at kevanlee.substack.com.

Give this a listen and subscribe to get more interviews like this in the future.

—k