Leveraging growth advisors, mastering SEO, and honing your craft | Luc Levesque (Shopify, Meta)

We talk about the 10X engineer, and we don't really talk about the, the 10X growth, uh, advisor or 10X growth person, but the same dynamic applies. You could argue it applies even more, because the right growth advisor can have literally company-changing impact. Something I've experienced several times in hindsight when you're like, okay, here's the needle in the haystack, and then it's implemented, and you can see h- hundreds of percentages, sometimes over 1,000% lift when you get it right. It's one of those weird disciplines where the right person at the right time can literally say a sentence that changes the trajectory of your company, and you can't say that for a lot of different disciplines, but this is one of them.

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Luke Levesque. Luke is currently the chief growth officer at Shopify. Before this, he was recruited personally by Mark Zuckerberg to help grow Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. He's also VP of Growth and a GM at TripAdvisor. He's also been a growth advisor to companies like Twitter, Pinterest, Patreon, Thumbtack, and Canva. And in our conversation, Luke shares advice on how and when to think about getting a growth advisor, including how to structure the relationship and what to look for in an advisor. We also spent a ton of time on SEO, how to think about this as a growth channel, who it's well-suited for, and how everything is about to change in SEO with Bard and ChatGPT. Plus, Luke shares a ton of really interesting advice around the value of self-reflection, building routines, cold plunges, also a couple of amazing stories about working with Zuck and what he learned from him. This is such an insight-rich episode, and I know you will love it. With that, I bring you Luke Levesque after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Mixpanel. Get deep insights into what your users are doing at every stage of the funnel at a fair price that scales as you grow. Mixpanel gives you quick answers about your users from awareness, to acquisition, through retention. And by capturing website activity, ad data, and multi-touch attribution right in Mixpanel, you can improve every aspect of the full user funnel. Powered by first-party behavioral data instead of third-party cookies, Mixpanel is built to be more powerful and easier to use than Google Analytics. Explore plans for teams of every size and see what Mixpanel can do for you at mixpanel.com/friends/lenny. And while you're at it, they're also hiring, so check it out at mixpanel.com/friends/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Attio, a new type of CRM that's powerful, flexible, and built around your data. Traditional CRMs were built for a different era, with totally different speed, scale, and data demands. Attio is different. It allows you to quickly build a CRM that matches your unique workflows and data structures. Within minutes of connecting your email and calendar, you'll have a CRM that's already set up, complete with customer profiles and automatic data enrichment. You'll also have real-time dynamic reporting at your fingertips. No more slow deployments, outdated user experiences, or tedious manual data input. With Attio, you can build and adapt your CRM on the fly no matter your business model or company stage. Attio is the CRM for fast-growing startups. Get started today and get 15% off your first year at attio.com/lenny. That's A-T-T-I-o.com/lenny. Luke, welcome to the podcast.