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

I think historically, I've gotten really caught in this trap, where at any moment in Reforge, it's like, "Ah, if I just solve this one thing, this X problem, everything's gonna get easier." That might be landing, like, some big hire, some executive hire or figuring out, you know, some major lever or defining, like, some strategy. But the reality is, is that the opposite is true. The more problems you solve, you just end up taking on bigger and bigger problems over time. And hoping it gets easier is the thing that just sets you up for this frustration, this anxiety, this stress. And I think switching to that mentality of, like, getting rid of that hope and more of like, "Hmm, if I solve this thing, I get to take on an even harder (laughs) thing," I think is the thing that actually reduces the stress.

(instrumental music) Today, my guest is Brian Balfour. Brian is the founder and CEO of Reforge, which is by far the best place in the world to get in-depth training on growth and product and related topics. Previously, Brian was VP of Growth at HubSpot, co-founder of three other startups. And in my mind, Brian is the sensei of growth. With Brian on the podcast, I wanted to do something special. So instead of going into the typical stuff that he writes about and speaks about, we instead talked through 10 of the biggest and most interesting lessons Brian has learned from his career and from his life. These come from a list that he keeps where he gathers lessons that he learns over time, which turns out is over a hundred. We only have time for 10. There is so much gold in this episode, and I believe there is something for everyone. I can't wait for you to listen to it and to hear what you think. With that, I bring you Brian Balfour after a short word from our sponsors. You fell in love with building products for a reason. But sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates, and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and road mapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds. And it's all built on Jira, where your engineering teams are already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Coda. You've heard me talk about how Coda is the doc that brings it all together, and how it can help your team run smoother and be more efficient. I know this firsthand because Coda does that for me. I use Coda every day to wrangle my newsletter content calendar, my interview notes for podcasts, and to coordinate my sponsors. More recently, I actually wrote a whole post on how Coda's product team operates. And within that post, they shared a dozen templates that they use internally to run their product team, including managing the roadmap, their OKR process, getting internal feedback, and essentially their whole product development process is done within Coda. If your team's work is spread out across different documents and spreadsheets and a stack of workflow tools, that's why you need Coda. Coda puts data in one centralized location regardless of format, eliminating roadblocks that can slow your team down. Coda allows your team to operate on the same information and collaborate in one place. Take advantage of this special limited time offer just for startups. Sign up today at coda.io/lenny and get $1,000 startup credit on your first statement. That's C-O-D-A dot I-O slash Lenny to sign up, and get a startup credit of $1,000. Coda.io/lenny. Brian, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.