When enough is enough | Andy Johns (ex-FB, Twitter, Quora)

Th- there are day-to-day stresses that are normal and we just have to put up with, you know? (laughs) But then there's the other stuff that's kind of the, the flashing red alarm. Again, and you can go back to animals, it's like when their fundamental functions, when their core behaviors of diet, exercise, playfulness, socialization, sleep, when those things get disrupted, it, it's a sign that there is something going on here that you need to take a look at. And so the, the same is true with people. If your sleep always sucks, if your relationships are constantly strained or frequently strained, if your physical health is failing, you know? (laughs) There's so many ways that, that can be measured. So there's really no excuse for that, to say like, "Oh, I just didn't know." I'd say it's to look at those things. Like when those are suffering or when they're really out of whack, it's undeniable that there is something that is detrimental to your well-being that's going on right now, and your body is telling you, like, "Stop. Something needs to change."

(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 Andy Johns. This is gonna be a very different type of episode and maybe the most meaningful and important episode of the podcast. Andy was a legendary product and growth leader at Facebook, Twitter, Quora and Wealthfront where he was VP of Growth and VP of Product and then President and as you'll hear, was in line to be CEO of Wealthfront until he came to realize that this path was not right for him. And after a lot of internal reflection and hard self-work, he changed his entire life's path to becoming a mental health advocate and helping burned out high achievers and also veterans with their mental health journey. In our conversation, Andy shares his personal story, what true burnout looks like, and when you should pay attention to your mental health, talks about the process of deep personal transformation, and the four steps involved in making lasting change in your life. He also shares how to actually allow change to happen in your life, tactics for moving down this path, and a lot of advice and real talk on mental health and tech. There's a lot of struggle happening in the world right now, including in tech, and so I hope this conversation helps you with your own journey. You can check out Andy's work at clues.life. With that, I bring you Andy Johns after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Mercury, who I also happen to use for my business checking account. I've tried a lot of business banks and there's nothing even close to the experience you get with Mercury. I moved cash over from another bank and it literally took less than half an hour to set up the account and wire money over at no cost. They kinda make you want to use the site more often, which I've never felt with another banking site. Mercury is banking engineered for the startup journey. A modern solution to help your company become the best version of itself and Mercury isn't just a place to hold and send money. It's software built to help you scale with safety and stability whether you're a team of two or a team of 1,000. Mercury also goes beyond banking to provide you with access to the foremost investors, operators and tools. Visit mercury.com to join over 100 startups on Mercury, the powerful and intuitive way for ambitious companies to bank. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust. Members FDIC. 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 road blocks 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 starter credit on your first statement. That's coda.io/lenny to sign up and get a starter credit of $1,000. Coda.io/lenny. Andy, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.