Leveraging mentors to uplevel your career | Jules Walter (YouTube, Slack)

If you give me feedback, I'll be like, "Hey, thank you so much. This is super helpful." Because people are like, "Oh, he actually likes the feedback." Now, in- inside, my heart might be melting, you know? And I'm like, "Oh, I thought I was dead at this." You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But externally I'm like, "Hey, thank you," and I mean it. And I think that's the key that most people don't focus on. And if you get more feedback, then you'll just get better at the things.

(Intro music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. Today my guest is Jules Walter. Jules is a product leader at YouTube. Before that, he spent four and a half years at Slack, where he was their first growth PM, and then went on to lead their monetization teams and also their mobile team. He's also the co-founder and a board member of the Black Product Managers Network and Code Path, both of which are nonprofits that aim to increase diversity within tech. Jules and I have collaborated on a number of projects over the years, including a killer guest post on building product sense that continues to be one of the most shared and beloved posts in my newsletter. In our conversation, we focused on what skills matter most in advancing a PM's career, and more importantly, all the ways Jules has found to build those skills. We also go deep on mentorship, how to find a mentor, what to look for in a mentor, how to get someone to agree to be a mentor, and a lot more. I super enjoyed this conversation, which I'm sure you can tell. And Jules is such a gem of a human. I can't wait for you to hear this episode. With that, I bring you Jules Walter after a short word from our sponsors. (Upbeat music) This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth. If your business stores any data in the cloud, then you've likely been asked or you're gonna be asked about your SOC 2 compliance. SOC 2 is a way to prove your company is taking proper security measures to protect customer data, and builds trust with customers and partners, especially those with serious security requirements. Also, if you want to sell to the enterprise, proving security is essential. SOC 2 can either open the door for bigger and better deals, or it can put your business on hold. If you don't have a SOC 2, there's a good chance you won't even get a seat at the table. But getting a SOC 2 report can be a huge burden, especially for startups. It's time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discount. Get started today. This episode is brought to you by Notion. If you haven't heard of Notion, where have you been? I use Notion to coordinate this very podcast, including my content calendar, my sponsors, and prepping guests for launch of each episode. Notion is an all-in-one team collaboration tool that combines notetaking, document sharing, wikis, project management, and much more into one space that's simple, powerful, and beautifully designed. And not only does it allow you to be more efficient in your work life, but you can easily transition to using it in your personal life, which is another feature that truly sets Notion apart. The other day, I started a home project and immediately opened up Notion to help me organize it all. Learn more and get started for free at notion.com/lennyspod. Take the first step towards an organized, happy team today, again, at notion.com/lennyspod. Jules, welcome to the podcast.