Persuasive communication and managing up | Wes Kao (Maven, altMBA, Section4)

I think that most people assume that their boss has to manage them and they feel a little bit resentful that, you know, "Why should I manage my boss? Like, they're getting paid more. They are my manager. They have more responsibility." And you can continue to think that way and your career, you know, might be fine, but if you embrace that if you manage your boss, they're going to appreciate you much more, you're gonna get more opportunities, you're gonna have more trust with them. There's all these great things that happen when you decide to manage up.

(instrumental music) Wes Kao is the co-founder of Maven, a cohort-based learning platform that I used to create my own course on product management. But even more interestingly, she's helped folks like Seth Godin start his AltMBA course, which is legendary. She's also helped people like David Perell, Tiago Forte, Scott Galloway, and even Morning Brew build their cohort-based courses. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met on the art of teaching and I've learned a ton from her. And in our chat, we cover a concept I love called the super specific who. We talk about the state change method and how using this idea, you'll run better meetings. We look at a bunch of advice for why you should spend time managing up and how to manage up effectively. We talk about a bunch of ways to write better, tips for saying no, and a bunch of other really interesting topics. I always have such a good time chatting with Wes and I hope that you learn as much from this chat as I did. And with that, I bring you Wes Kao. This episode is brought to you by Modern Treasury. Modern Treasury is a next generation operating system for moving and tracking money. They're modernizing the developer tools and financial processes for companies managing complex payment flows. Think digital wallets, via crypto on-ramps, ride sharing marketplaces, instant lending, and more. They work with high growth companies like Gusto, Hype, ClassPass, and Marqeta. Modern Treasury's robust APIs allow engineering to build payment flows right into your product while finance can monitor and approve everything through a sleek and modern web dashboard, enabling real-time payments, automatic reconciliation, continuous accounting, and compliance solutions. Modern Treasury's platform is used to reconcile over three billion dollars per month. They're one of the hottest young fintech startups on the market today, having raised funding from top firms like Benchmark, Altimeter, SVB Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Y Combinator. Check them out at moderntreasury.com. This episode is brought to you by Berbix. Whether you're in the business of crypto or renting out vehicles or selling age-restricted goods, it's important to have the confidence that who you're selling to is who they say they are. With Berbix, businesses can quickly and easily verify someone's identity through their government-issued ID and real-time selfie. Unlike other identity verification software solutions, Berbix takes only seconds to verify an identity, helping you maximize conversion and mitigate fraud. With Berbix, you can grow revenue by instantly verifying a customer's driver's license, passport, or ID card. You can also deter fraud by customizing which transactions you want to accept or reject based on triggers like duplicate IDs, expiration dates, or a user session location. Get started quickly by setting up Berbix with no code, low code, or complete integration in as little as one afternoon. Visit berbix.com/start to get started. That's B-E-R-B-I-X dot-com slash start. Wes, I've learned so much from you over the years in so many different ways while building my course, through your writing, through your tweets, and generally, you're just a super fascinating human that I love this excuse to get to learn more about you and for listeners to learn more about you. And so with that, Wes, welcome to the podcast.