3min snip

Brian Balfour: 10 lessons on career, growth, and life

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

notes

NOTE

Finding Opportunity by Doing the Opposite

The early days of Reforge were all about doing the opposite of what everyone else was doing. While online courses were becoming popular and affordable, Reforge took a different approach. They limited the number of participants, included in-person components, set a high price, and had live interactions. This counterintuitive strategy paid off, and Reforge became successful. The lesson here is that to gain traction, it's important to look at what everyone else is doing and then do the opposite. This applies not only in education but also in advertising and other areas where standing out and being different is key.

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Transcript

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Brought to you by Jira Product Discovery—Atlassian’s new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams | Coda—Meet the evolution of docs | Wix Studio—The web creation platform built for agencies

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Brian Balfour is the founder and CEO of Reforge. Prior to Reforge, he was the VP of Growth at HubSpot and co-founded three other startups. In today’s episode, Brian shares 10 lessons from his career, growth, and life:

• Lesson 1: Inspect the work, not the person.

• Lesson 2: Tell me what it takes to win; then tell me the cost.

• Lesson 3: Problems never end (and that’s okay).

• Lesson 4: The year is made in the first six months.

• Lesson 5: Growth is a system between acquisition, retention, and monetization. Change one and you affect them all.

• Lesson 6: Do the opposite.

• Lesson 7: Use cases, not personas.

• Lesson 8: Solving for everyone is solving for no one.

• Lesson 9: Find sparring partners, not mentors or coaches.

• Lesson 10: 2x+ the activation energy for things that need to change.

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/brian-balfour-10-lessons-on-career-growth-and-life/