MJ Jastrebski: How to build resilience and stay buoyant as a CPO

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:53]:

MJ, officially. Welcome to the party. How are you doing?

MJ Jastrebski [00:01:58]:

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Skotzko [00:02:01]:

For sure, for sure. So we were chatting about a lot of different things before we hit record on this one, and it was funny. We started having this cold conversation about like, well, what weird icebreakers should we do in this conversation? And there's an excellent one that you came up with we're going to come back to at the end of this conversation. So that's going to be the tease to you, dear listener, but I think what would be fun to start with is your path into product, right? I don't know about you, but it seems like everybody I know in product, there's almost no such thing as the standard story. And so one of my favorite questions to ask product people is, what did you actually want to be when you grew up?

MJ Jastrebski [00:02:35]:

I love that question. I really had no stinking idea I was thinking about being a chef at one point. I went to Emory in Atlanta for undergrad, and I was a math and econ double. I, like, super geeked out on math. I love math and just came really naturally to me. But I was like, I don't know what I do with, like, what is this as a job? And I really like cooking. And so I had a hot minute there where I thought I was exactly. I really had no idea. I'm like, I don't want to teach. And, like, where else would I use math? My dad kept telling me, well, go into banking. And I'm like, I had a nose ring and a dog collar. I don't fit in banking. Nobody wants me there. So, yeah, I thought it was super. So for a hot minute, I was like, oh, I'm going to quit school. I'm going to go to New York, and I'm going to be a chef. That didn't really last very long, so I stuck it out with mathematics and economics. And when I came out of school with that, I really did look at banking a lot. I tried to look at investment banks. I was looking at being a trader, and the culture, for me, really didn't work. So I ended up it was the beginning of the there was this big boom, and I'm like, what's this tech thing? This tech thing seems really super cool. And that really started me on my path. Maybe not so much product, but very much in this space of technology, where, especially at that time, it was a whole crew of crazy, maybe one might say misfits. And I like that culture. I like the idea of just like, hey, we could be who we are, and we're going to go solve these challenges. And technology at the time was super fascinating. Still is. Still fantastic, but very super fascinating, being at the cusp of the growth of this industry where it is now being.

Andrew Skotzko [00:04:28]:

A big math geek and also being into technology. Have you gone down the rabbit hole of Carlota Perez's work?

MJ Jastrebski [00:04:34]:

No, I haven't. Okay. Am I just completely missing this?

Andrew Skotzko [00:04:40]:

A super that's a super niche reference, and I can't decide if I should either congratulate you for having a life or apologize for probably destroying your next two weekends because you're probably being a math and econ geek about to go hard down a rabbit hole here. So Carlada Perez is an economist who wrote a book that I'm blanking the name of, but it's something like Technological Revolutions in Financial Capital, and she studies the long term cycles of how finance and capital flow into technological revolutions and how there's sort of these subsequent waves of development and deployment of technology into societies and mapping those against the financial outcomes in the economy. And so I don't know when you settle that. I was like, okay, this is either like the best gift I'm ever going to give you or I've destroyed a weekend and I'm sorry.

MJ Jastrebski [00:05:23]:

Yeah, I think it actually speaks more to your life and how much life.

Andrew Skotzko [00:05:27]:

You have right now lack their own professional nerd. So that's okay.

MJ Jastrebski [00:05:34]:

No, you probably just destroyed my next two weekends. But I love it. I love it. I'd much rather do that than watch succession, which just makes me sad.

Andrew Skotzko [00:05:42]:

You know what, I've been watching The Crown recently and every time I watch more than one episode of that back to back, I just feel emotionally wounded. So I think this is probably a better use of time. I just walk away from those shows, I feel worse about everything.

MJ Jastrebski [00:05:55]:

About everything. Everybody. I'm a consummate geek. All I want to do is learn. I just kind of want to dork out on like I'll watch nature videos all day long because that is infinitely more fascinating to me than manufactured artificial scenarios that make me feel sad about my life or my people, all the people around me.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:17]:

Totally. Yes. I think this is one of the areas where you and I really connected, was like we're basically both just obsessed with learning stuff and therefore interesting conversations always abound. So now that we've both fully revealed our geekery, let's talk a little bit more about this weird thing called product.

MJ Jastrebski [00:06:34]:

I think there's a lot more room to I think there's a lot more room to fully reveal.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:38]:

Well, we have a whole episode MJ we have so much time. We don't have to rush it. Let it breathe a little bit. So one of the things that I think we're going to spend a fair amount of time in this conversation probably revealing our mutual geekery is talking about how product and product companies change throughout their lifecycle, particularly in the growth stage where you're operating now. So I think a great place to start would be if you could start to talk about how you see the progression of one's role in product, starting at where everybody starts as a PM. But then how does that change as you go to being a senior PM, a director, a VP, a CPO? And let's just kind of see where that takes us.

MJ Jastrebski [00:07:20]:

Yeah, I can jam out on that plenty. I think a way to think about it, you can use titles as proxies, so PM, director, et cetera. And we should get to that. We should talk about that. But I do think that there's a little bit more about what is the nature of the work and how do you move through that. And then the titles kind of they come depending on the company, depending on the size of the company, the size of organization. You can be a director at a very large organization, have huge amount of impact and you can be a VP at a much smaller organization and be much more limited. So just putting that aside for a hot second, I do think it's this idea for me like product out of the gate, like everybody listening to this hopefully are just as much product geeks as we are. But product is very much this function in my mind that operates deeply in strategy, deeply in execution and deeply in both at all times, right? And we can talk about the three lenses and talk about user experience and user desirability. Business feasibility, I'm sorry, business viability and solution feasibility, right? So hopefully if you haven't looked that up, go look up three lenses of innovation. It's fantastic in that world though. It's like we're always operating and going through kind of all these switching of those three areas and making sure that we have a strong answer on them. And early in your product career, you're learning how to assess each one of those areas. You might not have ownership of each one of those areas, but what you're trying to do is discover and figure out how much do we know in each one of those areas? How do we assemble that in terms of understanding what the pain point is that we're solving for? And then how do we come up with an opinion and perspective on how we move through it? Do we go build something? How much do we go build and what's the ROI on the other side of it? And so I do think so much of what you do early on and even later. I'm always learning, I always have an opportunity to do better. But it's very much understanding. Like how much is signal, how much is known, what do you need to ask to form an opinion? And then that opinion is your perspective that you then go advocate for. Product is a role of influence, it's not a role of ownership. And so you have to be influencing at all times, who are you influencing into what? How do you build that credibility to then go do that influence? And if you show up and say, hey, go do this thing, folks are smart, they're going to push back at you and say hey, why? And if you don't have the answer, if you don't have the why, then you're not going to be able to get things done. You're not going to be able to move things forward. So when I think about early in your career, oftentimes you are very much more an order taker. You oftentimes have more senior people above you saying, hey, this is the thing that we're going to go do. So go figure out this one feature. Is the button green or yellow, go run some tests, et cetera. But ultimately what you're trying to do is just start take on more ownership of those bigger questions and then push yourself to figure out like, well, do we even need a button here? Do we even need this functionality? Is this functionality serving folks? And I think a lot about, or I say folks, but users, I think a lot about if we as product people can orient hard on the problem and articulating the problem and then flow through kind of all the rest of it, I think that that sets us up well for success. So kind of as you grow in your career, you're going from order taker to order maker because you have a better understanding of the problem and problem set of really, what are we trying to accomplish? And always orienting to the user business outcomes. It's not just like we got to generate new sales, but it's like, well, we got to go solve a problem. If we solve a problem, then sales will be there. Ideally perfect world. So going from order taker to order maker, understanding the problem, and then ultimately it's getting ahead of that into vision setter, right? And thinking more broadly out of imagine a world where if, imagine a world where we could go solve this thing. Imagine there's an emerging general market level pain point that seems to be something that we need to go tackle. How might we do that at a much bigger level? And then that's where you really start to influence organizational level change and organizational level features and product capabilities, et cetera. It's not easy. It's not easy and it's not always straightforward. I think when you go through those motions where you deploy what I know where I messed up a little bit in my career where I needed to be much more opinionated about the vision and I was ready to take orders. And I didn't realize that people were waiting for me to have a stronger opinion about where we should go and what we should be doing. And I missed some opportunities and then vice versa. I was younger. I used to work at Orbitz a long time ago. It was fantastic. It was a great company to work for. And I had this strong opinion that we needed open APIs. Like, open APIs are going to solve everything. If Expedia has them, we should do it. And I realize now behind my back, the CTO was super. He was so fantastic. I can imagine him figuratively patting me on my head and being like, oh MJ, you're so cute, we're not going to go do that. I was completely missed the level of where the vision should be setting and they're like, yeah, that's cute. Please just go back and deliver this one feature. So you're always kind of feeling it out. Like throughout your career you're learning how to flex through what is the right level to enter the conversation on. And then as you get more experience, you're more comfortable at switching amongst all of those.

Andrew Skotzko [00:13:00]:

What's the new important thing at each level as you move up? Like when you go to a senior PM from a PM, what's the new really important thing? And then same question when you go to director, VP, CPO?

MJ Jastrebski [00:13:10]:

Yeah, this is my rubric. I'm sure it's different in lots of places, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb that I have, or at least it's worked for me. So when I think about PM and SPM, I think about you're delivering a feature, right? It's not an epic capability, et cetera. Again, the sizing depends on where you work at. But here's a problem, a user pain point, how do we go solve for it? And so how do we make sure that we really articulate what the specific pain point is? The scope of these things probably if you're a PM or SPM is probably about a three month set of work. Like you're not really working on six or eight or twelve or ten long term vision things. It's really within a quarter are you delivering something? And you should be able to start to finish deliver that thing. And what I mean by deliver is who's the user, what's the pain point, what's the context? What are they facing? What are their alternatives? If we solve it, what does success look like? What are success metrics? How might it impact the business you're operating in? And then what's a solution look like? So what is your tech stack and how do you think about all the parts of the tech stack and also how do you take it to market? And so in this world, product management really isn't a product marketing function. But then how do we influence product marketing in that regard? So roughly, like PM, SPM should pretty confidently be able to deliver a quarter's worth of product work. Soup to nuts. When I think about director, directors influence directors should open up into two things, two areas. It's people management and so all the strengths or the pros and cons that come with people management people manage is really hard. It's really hard. But at a director level you should be performing or able to manage at least a handful of people. I also think that you start to influence process. And so the process of product I think is really important, especially when you're working in multistack functionality or where you have multiple product lines, et cetera. How are you working with if you have some sort of initiative within your area but it requires some other dev team or something else to go deliver a key part of the functionality, how do you make sure that you think through how that works? And how relative priority works. So director level, definitely you should get to some level of mastery of people management and you should be some level of mastery of process management. So that's really where, to me, the process of product starts to really click in in terms of ownership. From there, VP, VP level is where you start to influence strategy and business outcomes and probably marketing outcomes a little bit more as well. So you're looking farther out in terms of timelines. Like director level, you're also farther out in terms of strategy. It should be anywhere from like, let's say rolling six to nine months probably into a year perspective. You should be pretty comfortable in that. And then at the VP level, like I said, you're influencing business metrics and marketing metrics and really having a stronger story that is more probably outwardly facing, market facing. And so you're actually helping drive true outcome for the business. And you're probably working very cross functionally in some of these other teams. So a sales team, a marketing team, an account team, a client management team, et cetera. And then you probably are managing multiple product lines, multiple product teams, and your roadmaps are you should have anywhere from like one to two years out in terms of perspective and where you're influencing the market. And it could go farther than that. All of us should have a little bit of push there. And then when I think about CPO and the level of CPO, this is where my accountability is just as much to our sales team and our marketing team and our client team as it is to our product team. I have to very intimately understand, as CPO at Styleytics, I have to very intimately understand I might not know all the details of our sales pipeline, but who are we going after and why? And what is our business model and what is our revenue model and what are the blockers and why is our sales team not able to close or not able to close? Why are people saying yes or no our growth team? How am I equipping our growth team to be successful? And, oh, by the way, it's not just like, hey, let me go tell growth team that we've got this new product feature. It's how do I think about the whole process of product marketing go to market? We're in a B to B to C space. And so at any given time, I'm thinking about 100, 200 different retailers as clients of our products and our products are on their websites that go to millions upon millions of shoppers. So I've got to keep all of those things in mind when I think about how do I weave through a multi year strategy to make sure that we have for any given product category, what is the revenue attribution that I estimate against each of these categories? And how do I think about a three year life cycle in terms of growth beyond that. So that to me is where I'm now really very accountable to the business. And I'm also thinking about how do I build a team that takes care of the process, the day to day process and the sprint process, the agile process, and just making sure that I have a strong team around me that can also do the delivery on top of the strategy and vision that I'm working on.

Andrew Skotzko [00:18:55]:

Thank you for explaining that. One of the things that I'd love to hear you unpack a little more is this shift that you alluded to when moving to like let's just call it the executive level of the company, right? Where in that framing it was sort of going from VP to CPO. And one way I've heard that put is like, who your first team is changes. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that and how do you do it, what's hard about it? Where do people get tripped up in that?

MJ Jastrebski [00:19:22]:

Yeah, I've heard that too. I've done a bunch of leadership training across a handful of the Exec teams that I've been on and there is very much like your first accountability on the Exec team is supposed to be amongst the Execs, right. It's not to your team that reports up to you, it's to your peer set. And as humans, I think we flip and flop. Some days I feel really connected to my product team and some days my CTO, my CMO are the people that I talk to most and feel most connected to. But I think that's right. That feels right to me and I don't want to undervalue at all the relationship that I have with my product team. My product team is fantastic and I really get so much value out of working with them and having them challenge me. I tell them all the time, tell me where I'm wrong because I'm wrong plenty of the time. Tell me what my blind spots are and they're great at telling me, which is good. But I think ultimately my success is not measured in quarters, but it's probably six months to a year. And I'm new to scialytics. I started about six months ago and I keep telling people right now I want to walk the walk, not talk the talk. Right now, give it a year, give it a year. It's going to be very different in a year. And I'm the only one in the company that really can, that operates within product, like on that timescale, but then can also be influential at that timescale. And so for me, I have to be very mindful about not getting too drawn down into the day to day because there's always day to day things that happen. What I have to do is always keep an eye towards looking out and across the organization and trying to see around corners. And if I see that we're going to be going and committing to market a whole new product line, then I have to think through like, how and when is the product team going to be ready to go work on that and go deliver it? And how do I see around corners when I see, hey, you know what? I don't know if we're doing the best job equipping our client, facing teams with all the information they have and am I the one writing the docs? No. Am I the one training people? No. But what I see is it shows up in maybe we're not as strong from a growth perspective in some of our numbers because the product team has an equipped growth. And so it's me partnering very deeply with sales and very deeply with marketing to figure out where do we step on the gas, where do we step on the brake, where's my team have an opportunity to go influence and drive forward? Where are we not getting the right feedback loops? How do we hear what's coming back from clients and what's coming back from shoppers and vice versa? And so I think about it's. Just my timescale is very different and my need in my role, I need to be patient and need to kind of orient towards those longer timescales and just be mindful, just recognize and be buoyant and help the team. Weather kind of the bumps that come along day to day, month to month. And that to me is then where the relationship? My relationship with my executive team is really, really important because we support each other through those types of things because everybody has that. But ultimately it's going to be us. If we're not aligned, if sales isn't aligned with product, how the heck are you going to have a chance to get ahead? If marketing is not aligned with product, how the heck are you going to have a chance to get that if engineering isn't so truly in these product led companies? Being product led doesn't mean that product management dictates. Being product led means we all are infused with this idea that we have products that we're selling that provide value and that we're all aligned behind that. And so if we're not aligned at an executive level, then there's no chance that the rest of the company is going to get it. So it's pretty important to make sure that we're operating from the same playbook.

Andrew Skotzko [00:23:23]:

How do you know that word alignment? I agree with you. It is essential and it really is a deal breaker for everybody. My question is how do you know you really have it?

MJ Jastrebski [00:23:35]:

Well, now, that's just existential. I don't know. How do you know if you're happy? I don't know.

Andrew Skotzko [00:23:43]:

Maybe it's one of those like if you're asking a question, that's your answer.

MJ Jastrebski [00:23:46]:

Yeah, right. Gosh. I think probably a better question here is you have to assume that you don't or you have to assume that you're not getting it right somewhere. And that's what I keep telling my team. I'm like, yeah, sorry, this is aside a little bit of an anecdote, but we're just getting a strong roadmapping process going. I put out a roadmap at the beginning of Q One and I was like, y'all, this roadmap stinks. It's not the best, but it's a roadmap, it's a starting point and that's what we're going to build from. And I took absolutely 100% accountability. It was mine. And I'm like, this is not my best work, but it is a starting point and it's what we're going to work from. And so we went through the process again, q Two, it's a little bit better. I already have ideas in terms of Q Three, we're going to do even better. We need more storytelling, we need more linkbacks, it's too noisy, blah blah, blah, blah blah, doesn't matter. But ultimately process is an Iterative process just as much as product is. And so when I think about whether or not we're aligned as an executive team, I 100% subscribe to, we have annual goals and we have quarterly goals and we have to do the true ups and we have to have the dialogue. And there is no one point in time where everybody's always aligned ever. Or if you are like, you have no idea. But what it means is that you're committing to the process and you're committing to the communication. You're always coming back to trueing up. This is my understanding. Is this your understanding? This is what we're doing? Is that what you're doing? And it's never like, here's a fixed roadmap, we don't have to touch it again. It's a living breathing function. And organizations are made up of humans. Humans are fallible, humans forget, humans miss things, et cetera. And so you have to kind of accept a degree of sway and you have to accept that there's probably a little bit of where it's not aligned. But then if you just commit to trueing Up and commit to I love those timescales. I have no problem with annual and quarterly. I think they're perfect. They seem to be right. And then there's all the mechanisms, right? There's all quarterly goals and OKRs and tracking and metrics and there's a ton of different frameworks that you can go follow and get those conversations going. But I think it's a matter of just committing to it and doing it. So that's a wishywashy answer, probably high level. Specifically, if I think about what does it feel like if it's not aligned? I mean, there's lagging indicators in revenue very much. And that to me is where, like leading indicators, how do I know if we're pitching the right thing or selling the right thing or bringing the right thing to market? And that's where you have to look at engagement numbers, you have to look at feedback, you have to look at qualitative and quantitative. Information and just see. I'm also working on trying to get myself out in market quite a bit. I was just on the phone with a client earlier today, and I was like, here's some slides. They're ugly. I'm so sorry. Here's a Whimsical, and it's got some data structures on it. If you're okay with it, we're just going to go through it and you're going to recognize that it's ugly, but here's the communication. And she's fantastic. She's like, yeah, let's do it. And so I think it's a matter of not being so precious about the feedback, and it's a matter of, like, you just have to get yourself out there and you have to do the work, and you have to be willing to get beat up left and right. And then you've got to see what outcomes are of that. Are you getting the conversations? Are people re upping? Are they engaging with you? Are they using you? I don't know. Does that give an answer?

Andrew Skotzko [00:27:29]:

No, it does in a different way than I expected, which I really appreciate, actually, because what it sounds like you're pointing to is for some reason, the metaphor coming to mind, it's like entropy, right? It's just like there's entropy in these organizations. Things are always going towards chaos unless we add more energy. And so I think the real reframe that I'm appreciating in what you were saying there is people often talk about alignment. I'm using air quotes here as it's like a point in time. It's a destination, right? Like, we are aligned. Yay. It's this outcome. But really what it is is it's a never ending process of continually realigning and reducing that sort of that entropy, that chaos, and that's what you're actually signing up for. In the same way, if you're in a long term relationship, you sign up to keep repairing and reconnecting and evolving. It's never done. So that's actually what it sounds like to me, which seems very realistic and I think probably a better way.

MJ Jastrebski [00:28:27]:

You just said it a lot better than I did. Yeah. Thank you. One other way. Gosh. I've got a couple of podcasts that are coming to mind. I'm going to try to remember them, and I can reference them better. But one other way that I also think about it. Like, my last company that I worked for, I headed up Growth. So I had a really fantastic sidebar part of my career where before this and I love product. I'm a product person through and through. I know it. I'm committed to it. And I had a really cool opportunity to run Growth for a super cool firm in Chicago based out of Chicago. They're actually nationwide, but that does product consulting, product innovation consulting. So the idea of not the cold start, but like, zero to one, how do you take an idea from concept to reality? So the company is fantastic. I got to run sales, account management, marketing, and I had never done that before, but we were selling to me, selling to product people. And so the idea is, I know the pain point on the other side. And what I got to learn was I think of it, it's just ratios. It's just ratios, it's just numbers. It's all about having with sales and with marketing, it's MQLs to SQLs and you just got to figure out your ratios and then you got to keep trying and tweaking and hopefully making it a little more efficient. But there's no way around it. There's no magic. You got to make your calls. And so just product is no different and then exec team work is no different. You got to make the calls, you've got to have the conversation. I got to be in dialogue with my salesperson, my marketing person, my CTO, like my tech person all the time. And we've always got to be having those combos and re upping. And then I got to be looking at like, okay, what are the outcomes? What's happening? What's happening on the other side? And are we getting things delivered? Are we getting things to market? Is it resonating? Are we getting the right communication? And then the more successful you are at that, just the more the playing field gets bigger, the sooner you can learn the rigor and just the commitment and again, the buoyancy, the shit's hard. Sales is hard. You get more no's than yeses. Gosh, I love this word. I'm glad that you asked that. It's hard. The fact that I think about product as we are inventing things, we are doing things that have never existed before, right? That's the crux of this role is we're again, like I said at the beginning, it's the intersection of strategy and execution. And we sit at that intersection and it takes some real fortitude to be able to stand up day in and day out and be like, we're going to go do this thing that's never been done before. And it's probably going to work because we did some of these things over here. But I'm pretty sure that we've missed a lot of stuff. And so we're also kind of hoping and wishing and praying that it's going to also work on the other side. And so I think about just being able to just keep trying and keep thinking through what are the angles I'm missing. That didn't work. Why didn't it work? Taking your ego out of it and just continually showing up from a place of creativity and commitment. And that to me, there are rough days, there are hard things you put out there and it's like that just tanked. That did not work. And I just asked a team of 40 to go follow me into this battle and we lost. That's not good. But that's the job. That's our job. And so for me, the buoyancy matters because it is not easy. It is not clear, and especially from a product leadership perspective, you're the one leading the charge. And if you get beaten down by the waves, if you get beaten down by the wind, if you get beaten down, we're social creatures. Humans read humans. And if you're the one that people are looking to to say, yeah, this is good. This is the thing we're going to go do, and then you show up and you don't have that and you're missing it, they're going to feel it and they're going to respond, and the power and the mobilization of teams and the excitement of what we get to do as a product, people, it starts to dissolve. And so I just think buoyancy is one of you can use the word resiliency, but I like the idea of Bobbing. Every now and then, you get pulled under the water, but you pop back up. And that idea, like, resiliency as a tree, I think is good, but buoyancy is a much more fun metaphor for me.

Andrew Skotzko [00:33:00]:

No, I like that it also opens up all kinds of fun surfing metaphors. Like, you got to ride the waves and let it take you. And I'm just imagining Bobbing floaty thing, and I'm like, oh, that's my new metaphor now for Prodigy, it's like, almost if you attached a sailboat, that's a terrible metaphor. Never mind.

MJ Jastrebski [00:33:18]:

Yeah, yours is better. I'll stop you. Okay, thanks. Can I make one more comment?

Andrew Skotzko [00:33:24]:

Oh, please. Yes.

MJ Jastrebski [00:33:24]:

Oh, my God, you cracked me up. One more comment. I actually think that buoyancy, maybe it's just like it's more light hearted. It also kind of resonates for me, like, as a balloon. But, oh, my God, I try to laugh so much in my job, and it is fun. I mean, we're seeing all this data come out where humor and work matters. If people who have joy in their work do better job, do a better job, et cetera, and I'm like, I don't have to look that hard to know that that feels true. I'm like, do I like my life better when I get to laugh? Do I like my life better when I get to go and be a goofball with my team and people around me? Yeah, of course. And work is too hard. We put too much time to work for it to be serious or for you to be on your back foot or for you to be defensive. And the buoyancy, for me, the buoyancy metaphor is there's above the line. Below the line. That leadership mantra as well. But the buoyancy is, Holy crap, I feel like shit. I don't feel like showing up today. And, okay, I can wrap that up, push it aside, and pop back up and be like, you know what? Let's go have fun. Because if I show up and I'm attacking or if I'm angry or if I'm worried or I show that, then the team is going to feel it. People are going to feel it and who wants to work with somebody like that? It's not to say that I don't show up as a whole human. Like I have bad days, everybody has bad days. But I do think again, especially as a leader and especially as a product leader, it's like always orienting to well that just happened. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to deal with this? And being able to just roll up your sleeves and suppress ego and suppress emotionality. And look at the problem with how do we get creative, how do we get fun and how do we move forward given the circumstance that we now have more information? That's the world I want to work in, that's the human I want to be, and that's the leader I want to be. And I don't know, that's where the fun comes in.

Andrew Skotzko [00:35:28]:

I think that's fantastic and beautiful. Thank you for naming that one of the questions. I so resonate with everything you just said and I think that's a beautifully articulated model to aspire to and it's one that I'm going to take with me from this conversation for sure. I guess my question is that's something I've grappled with at times in the past is getting like when things feel like it's too heavy, right? And when speaking for myself in those moments I have a really hard time getting back to a place of buoyancy, of expansiveness, of lightness, whatever word you want to use. What do you do? How do you do it?

MJ Jastrebski [00:36:07]:

I walk away. I walk away. When I can't control myself, I try to walk away.

Andrew Skotzko [00:36:14]:

Probably good rule for life.

MJ Jastrebski [00:36:17]:

And I can't say I'm successful. And again, there's no tricks to this, but I find, I mean we've all rage slacked, right? Rage emails or any other fortunately and unfortunately it's like, yeah, I'm human. And when I start to feel me be like and as I said before, I'm like oop trigger, you can type it, walk away from it and just walk away. And so in those moments I have really tried again, not always successful with it, but I really try to catch my feelings. This is where all of the meditation and mindfulness and stuff really matters when it comes to being a leader. And it can be a little woo woo. But again, we amplify like as leaders of organizations, we are watched. Our humans are social creatures, they pick up on social cues. So if I am showing up, people are watching me. And if I am being attacking to my peers, to my leader, to my team, et cetera, or if I'm not thoughtful about my words, then it is observed. And that has been now something put out in terms of like is that okay from a culture perspective? And I'm like, no it's not. I don't want to work in that. I don't want to put that out there I've been on my back foot. I don't want to put other people on their back foot. I'm also human and I can rage slack with the best of them and I do not want to do that. It is a constant battle for me or a constant work in progress of just like the moment I feel triggered is the moment that I'm like, do not send it. Be mindful of your words. Catch your words. And there's a woman I used to work with. Her name was Claire. She works at TXi and she is just fantastic at being very thoughtful and diplomatic about her words without backing know she always was able to represent multiple sides or is always able to. I shouldn't say was she is she's a I have so cheesy. I have what would like I really want to actually get one of those cheesy bracelets at some point where it's like, WWCD. But in my head, Claire is the person that I aspire to be. And it's like, what would you know? So that is one of the moments where in the moment, in the rage moment, I try to just catch and be like, what would Claire do? Okay, Claire would not do this. Whatever I'm about to do, Claire would not do that. And then the second thing that I do, my second personal mantra, is just what if? What if it works? Like, imagine that space. And I try to really force myself to be like, is it really that bad? Is it just crash and burn? Like everything is on fire terrible? No. And so am I reacting in the moment? And is my reaction going to make this better or worse? Oh, it's probably going to make it worse. It's probably going to put up walls. People aren't going to want to talk to me. I don't want that. And imagine a world where it does work out. Imagine a world where this human on the other side is just doing the best they can. And there's a lot of internal dialogue. Nobody needs to be the more we can learn these lessons as humans, I think of leadership as stewardship. I am directing the work of hundreds of people right now. And it's not directly they don't report to me, but I'm impacting their lives and I'm creating their careers. And I'm giving them opportunities to go put on their LinkedIn and be proud to their parents and go claim to their friends like, oh my gosh, I got to do this thing. And then this is a point in time where they get to go do that. And in a few years they're going to reference that and be like, I got to do this. And now I get to go do a bigger thing and I get a better job and I get more money and I get more responsibility because I got to do these things. That is a huge amount of responsibility that people give me, they gift this to me. They choose to work at this team, on this team, at this company. And so you're not working for me, I'm working for you. I'm creating these opportunities and I can't do my job without you. So that is, again, as a leader, I try to look across timelines, across time frames, across conversations, and operate at that level and then catch the dialogue, catch the moment before you react too hard in it.

Andrew Skotzko [00:40:42]:

I think that's terrific. I'm so glad you spoke to that. So thank you. You know where I want to go with this is I think you've opened up something really beautiful here around it's, what I'm recently taking to calling the rest of the iceberg. Kind of going with that like iceberg metaphor that everybody knows. There's all the stuff you see above the waterline, there's everything below the waterline. And more and more I'm convinced that the real conversation that needs to be happening amongst product leaders and in product leadership and on podcasts like this is about what's below the waterline, like the rest of the iceberg. And yeah, it gets woo woo, it gets fuzzy, it gets into all kinds of weird territories, but that's where the real stuff is from everything I can tell and based on everything I'm seeing and people I talk to. So I just a so appreciate you opening that up. I'd love to kind of from that lens talk a little bit about the messy multidimensional process of scaling right? Because Stylitics is in growth stage right now and we were speaking about this before, I think a lot of folks there's so much content out there and that's great, but so much of it is really it's almost bimodal. Right. There's a ton that's in the super early stage, like zero to one find product market fit and that's great, we need that. And then there's a ton that's really more applicable to much later stage or enterprise or something like that. But there's a bit of a gap in the middle here, which is where I'm especially interested right now. So I'd love to hear your perspective and just kind of like how this is showing up in reality and how you're living it. What are the realities of going through this sort of time in a company's life, particularly from this know, the harder stuff, the stuff you can't copy and paste is how I like to say.

MJ Jastrebski [00:42:20]:

The stuff you can't ask chat GPT about exactly. And have it give you I can't.

Andrew Skotzko [00:42:26]:

Get a template from Lenny's podcast or whatever and those are great, I love those things, but it's all of sudden.

MJ Jastrebski [00:42:32]:

A you can't get a template for it. Yeah, right. I keep asking Chad GBT about what my roadmap should be and I keep not getting great answers. So I realize I suck as a prompt engineer.

Andrew Skotzko [00:42:45]:

It's like but MJ my knowledge ends at September 2021. Well, what good are you chat GBT? What have you done for me lately?

MJ Jastrebski [00:42:56]:

You're really not delivering. Seriously. GPT four. I need GPT 400. Anyway, back to you. I'm sorry, back to me, back to me, back to us, back to Stylitics. Back to this just quick. Yeah, stylytics is this really cool phase of growth. So as we were talking about initial product market fit, we operate in the styling world for retailers, for online retailers. So we style outfits at scale for the world's biggest retailers. So we have Walmart and Macy's and Nike and J. Crew and Crane Barrel and know lots.

Andrew Skotzko [00:43:38]:

Of brands, you've heard know you might.

MJ Jastrebski [00:43:41]:

Have heard a couple of them. So just fantastic brands. Oh, my gosh, fantastic brands. And they're doing really cool stuff. And, oh, by the way, if you buy a product for them, let's say a sweater and you're like, well, how would I wear this sweater? Like, what pants, jacket, shoe might I wear with that? Oh, well, we can answer that question for you. The reason why it's super cool is before us, people have to do it manually. How do you assemble an outfit? And so for these retailers, it's like, well, I have an image of how our clothing like, think J. Crew, like, how our clothing should work this style or work this season. But then now I have to manually to help create that inspiration and that sense of discovery on shoppers, on the website. We've been able to build it at scale. So that's super cool. We have, I want to say about 40 stylists or so, but we're doing a million outfits a month plus. And that's amazing. That scale of the true AI ML that we have going on here is bananas. And then teaser, I'll come on in a few months and we can talk about our next level roadmap, like where we're going. There's quite a bit of machinery that we're wiring up right now and we're going to continue to build out. So we're truly like a retail tech company with a lot of data science under the hood. And that's the only way in this world, it's the only way we can go accomplish doing this at scale. And I think about it as like, retailer style at scale. How would you even answer that? Where do you even start? Right. Style feels so amorphous, but there's actually quite a bit of heuristics behind under the hood. And I think about retailer style at scale. And what we're also thinking about and building out now is shopper style at scale. So what's your own personal style and what do you want that to be and how do you want that to be represented and how do you find that online? I look at the world at where we are from an e commerce perspective right now. And we've locked up transactional commerce. Right, no problem. Shopify, great magento, great demand. We're salesforce e commerce cloud, like great I can have a product inventory count, no problem. I can price things, I can buy things I can transact. But it has only gotten worse for shoppers. It's only gotten worse for you and me in terms of discovery. And where am I getting inspired nowadays? It's not on retailer sites. It's on TikTok and it's on Instagram. And people are shopping sorry. They're indicating with their eyes. They're voting with their eyes and, like, their mind share. So anyway, sorry, quick blurb on Stylitics. So that's kind of the context. That's the context in which we work.

Andrew Skotzko [00:46:19]:

Beautiful. Thank you for the context.

MJ Jastrebski [00:46:20]:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Plug to this company that it's just really just, I think, so highly of, and I feel very honored to work for them.

Andrew Skotzko [00:46:27]:

We were chatting before we hit record about there's this whole new game that happens once you get Product Market Fit. Once you know, it's almost like there every startup is laser focused on getting Product Market Fit, getting to someplace of, you know, default alive, and then it's almost like you just can't see beyond that. But then what happens is, once you get there, oh, wow, guess what? Now you have a shot to actually be in the real game, or like, a whole new ball game, which is where you are now, and Stylitics is now. So how is that game different not just from the company building, but from product? How is it different in terms of the way you think about what you're building and how you're building it? I'd love to hear you kind of talk about that because I imagine it's feeling like pushing on all fronts at once, which is that's hard in any arena.

MJ Jastrebski [00:47:12]:

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. So initial product market fit. Great. Our value proposition is fantastic, and we're continuing to expand, so we have a pretty strong foothold, and I'll circle back to the answer specifically in your question, but I want to give some reference points. So we've done fantastic in the US. And we're expanding internationally. So we now have a team in the UK, and we're starting to make some real great progress in Europe. So you might imagine kind of us into Europe. That's a really cool way to expand, a really big opportunity. A second way that we're expanding is when I think about verticals. So we got our start in apparel. We've moved into home and home goods, and one might think, like, oh, well, how you might bundle these things, it's not so different. But in the world for apparel, I might buy five jeans and send four back, but I'm not going to buy five sofas and send four back. So the use occasion and the thought process that shoppers go through is a little bit different. We have our eye on additional verticals, and then we have a handful of clients that big clients, like I said, Macy's and Kohl's and Walmart that are all multi category, multi Vertical. And so there's very much an interest in, like well, how do you actually create discovery, cross category lines, et cetera? So we're moving internationally. We're moving cross category, which is super cool. And then for me, the way that we're thinking about not thinking, but the way we're executing on expanding is very much like we've got retailer style at Scale. We are doing really great job there. How do we think about the shopper? And how do we do shopper style at scale? And the word personalization has been overused for as long as I've been working. So it's been a part of my career for years and years and years. We have our own take on our own perspective. But I do really think this degradation of the internet and how hard it is to navigate it's, why we're seeing things like Chad GBT or 3d commerce or AR VR, et cetera. It's just like there's a world in which we can discover things in human form, in real form, like in the store, but that doesn't translate directly to online. When you have the volume upon volume upon volume of product and experience that you can click through. So I think we're trying to solve for that. We're trying to solve for. Like, we as an industry and we as an company are trying to solve for that. But anyway, I share those things because our original core value proposition was Retailer and Apparel. And that's where we got our start. And so how do we know where to expand? We've won the right. We've earned the right. We've hit that next vista. We've gone from one to zero to one. Really focused on this initial value proposition. Did a great job. We won the right to now stand at a higher level. And we're now on this vista, and we're looking out. We're like, holy cow. There is a muscle that we probably need to build. Next on How Do We choose? Because we didn't have the luxury of choice before we knew what we were doing. And now we're at this point where it's like, oh, crud. There's a lot of different directions we could go. And what does that look like for us as a company? And where do we go? And so that, to me, is the thing that I'm thinking really hard about. Some of the mantras that I've come in with the team is right now, what matters most I care less about. Absolutely. Nailing it with every product thing that goes out the door. What I care more about is building the muscle of just delivery. Like product ships, right? Product ships. We ship. That is the better, faster, more effective, not even more effective. The more that you can ship, the more chances you get. And so product ships. And so that's the muscle, like, coming into the company. I'm like. You know what? We're Now In This Multiproduct World, multi Category world we got to get faster and more effective at shipping. And I'm worried less about making sure that that thing is the maximal value thing that everybody's going to use and be fantastic and it's going to be the silver bullet. It's more about how do I actually build the team muscle? And that is almost fundamentally more important to me of this product. This team learns how to ship. And then what I can do is if that muzzle gets built or when that muscle gets built, as it gets built, then I can tweak the, nozles, I can tweak the knobs and dial in kind of what are we delivering? Why are we delivering it? And then also, again, it's all iteration. Like get the first version out the door and then just learn, be buoyant, be resilient, get that feedback. So those are the things, like when I think about coming into an organization, zero to one, you're just trying to get to product, market fit. It doesn't even matter what your process is. And the team is so small that you can rely a lot on cultural norms and just informal behavior. When you're now working in a company that's 100, 200, 300 people, a lot of those people have been brought on, oh, say the last year or two. You now have a lot of people that just don't have cultural common knowledge or they're coming with a whole bunch of other knowledge of how other companies have worked. Oh, by the way, it's also post pandemic and most of us are remote. And so you don't have the in office experience of just like, let's chitchat, let's get to know each other. Am I crazy? Did that meeting go weird? You just don't have a lot of those opportunities to have those more informal conversations. And so what I'm thinking hard about now is like the one to two phase of this company is how do we not only deliver pride on process, because the process that I define now and oh, by the way, my team's going to, we're going to add more people over the next few months and years. The process I have now is not going to be relevant probably in six to twelve months or it's not entirely going to work. We're going to have to iterate on that and the process in six months and the process in twelve months is going to have to be iterated on too. So process, what you're doing here again is perfection is the enemy of good. You've got to iterate on product, get product out the door. You've got to iterate on process and then be pretty nimble and hire people that are willing to help, look at a blank sheet of paper and figure out this is where we go next, is what we do. And then also not have so much ego tied or so much stricture tightness tied to like, well, I laid out the process, we're following. The process because then it becomes a function. And so you've got to have people that are open with that blank sheet of paper, go figure it out, and then also let it go the moment you see that whatever you just figured out is actually not working anymore either. And then iterate from there.

Andrew Skotzko [00:53:54]:

Totally.

MJ Jastrebski [00:53:55]:

And I also find, like, in this world, reporting lines are also a little like in larger companies. It's like, well, that person doesn't report to me, so I can't influence. And within this organization, there are so many people that don't report to me that I'm like, you, you're going to come be in this meeting, and you're going to be in this meeting a lot. Come on over and you over here. I need your help, so come help me. And it's not about reporting lines. It's about skill sets and what is it going to take to get things out the door with minimal, trying to not disrupt things too much. But ultimately, we still got to ship. We still got to get things out the door.

Andrew Skotzko [00:54:32]:

Totally. So talking about this core idea, right, of product ships, and especially being the first CPO of the company, and talking about that sort of cross functional, cross department trust that we were speaking to earlier, trust is like the bedrock of this whole thing. Without that, do not pass go, do not collect $200 million, nothing else is going to happen. Never mind. Point is, trust matters. And that shipping does seem to be like that's job one, to earn trust in product. So my question really quick here is a lot of times we end up shipping things that don't work. And that's even with good discovery, right? Even with good discovery, most stuff doesn't work. How do you think about that? Of managing the ongoing maintenance costs of like, if we're shipping, how big are you thinking about? How big are the things that we're biting off that we're going to ship in order to build the trust? Because on the one hand, you got to build trust, and to do that, you got to ship. But on the other hand, if you ship too much of the wrong thing, you then have to carry that and you're losing time. Things are getting more sluggish, it's hard to turn the ship, et cetera, et cetera. How do you think about that tension?

MJ Jastrebski [00:55:38]:

Yeah, the way that I think about that tension, there's a couple of backstops that I think you have to put in place to create the expectation, like set the expectation, but then also not set it so tight that if something that goes sideways, it doesn't just destroy the whole plan. So the way that I am thinking about it, the way we're setting it up at Stylitics is I don't know that we've come up with an official term, but we've been thinking about it as like, product packaging or product families. And there's a rough equivalent of pain point aligned to those families and there's lots of different ways to solve some of those pain points. So I've been calling it core. But like our core functionality today is core outfitting on an apparel retailer's product details page. That's where we sit. That's like our core product. So great that's one set of product family. There's a world in which there's lots of images and lots of outfits all throughout an apparel website and so why are those not also being addressed? Why couldn't I actually shop all of those sites? And so there's a lot of really cool tech out there that might be able to solve for that. And so that's a secondary product family that we're working on. There's another product family that we're working on that goes to our merchandisers and helping merchandisers with sell through. And so how do you think about all the places that we're on a site and is there a way that we can maybe create different bundle packages to help merchandisers sell product that might be lagging but that also still seemed to be really popular. So again, those packages don't matter ultimately to this audience. But what I'm trying to do or what we're trying to do is really articulate. There's relative pain point associated to each one and then there's lots of different solves. And so what I'm doing is making a commitment to my sales team, I'm making a commitment to my marketing team and ultimately to the market against these categories and against these pain points. And then what I'm doing is setting up product behind each one of them with alpha, beta and ga. And we're in a little bit again in a different world where we're b to b to C and so in a B to C world. I could launch stuff and then hold 10% of traffic back, and I could do all sorts of A B testing. Blah, blah. In a B to B world I could launch different releases specifically to my users and SaaS based solution. But we're in this really super weird world where best of worst of both, I build product ultimately for shopper experience. But I have to get it in the hands of the retailers first. And so a lot of it is just about what is the narrative, what is the capability and then also setting expectations like creating more walls, not walls but definition around what an alpha program is and setting expectations around it. We came out with something a few months ago, it didn't work and we had to go back to our retailers and be like didn't work. And we're going to learn, we're going to iterate on it. And you all are part of this alpha program. So I hope you set your expectations appropriately. But in this world of if we can do a good job setting expectations around overall, these are the pain points we're going to go solve. We're committing to iterating and solving we know not every idea is going to work. And so what we're going to do is protect against the downside and go through alpha beta ga and make sure we know numbers and make sure we know outcomes and measurable outcomes across the and then also show up. Very transparently and very it's being trustworthy like setting retailer expectations in a very clear way of like, this is what we're hoping to gain. We need your feedback in the process. And the moment we know something different, we're going to be honest with you and tell you and we have really great relationships with our retailers and we work really hard at it because that trust matters. And the way that I think about it is we're effectively like an innovation arm of lots of these retailers. We can do things they can't and we have a level of freedom that they don't have. And so it's mutually beneficial for us to create that really great relationship. Also, a retailer isn't a retailer isn't a retailer in this world, right? Like, if I'm talking about Macy's and J. Crew, the nature of those two brands are very different. Macy's a retailer, J. Crew's brand. And so there's different worlds in which different products fit different companies. And so I have to have enough of an opinion on the market to be able to say, okay, this type of product seems to be working better here's. Luxury apparel which might not fit so well for the Coles customer. So how do I think about then the experience for the shopper and then what the retailer is trying to accomplish and then be more specific about how we might bundle up Alpha Beta Ga and who we're talking to about what and what exactly we're trying to accomplish. So there's a whole world of products that might fit everybody and then there's a whole world of products that are very probably much more specific. High value for the right client, but it wires up a little bit differently. But it's hard, it's easy for me to say all of these things, but this is where I keep talking about the gearing. The gearing of this type of company is just it is difficult to keep it all aligned. And again, just kind of always a process that we're going to work at.

Andrew Skotzko [01:01:09]:

Yeah, I appreciate the candor about that because one of the beliefs I hold is that the ultimate product is actually the company itself. And it's like, why don't we look at our companies and the way we work as companies the same way we look at iterating on our products? We tend to treat the company and the context and the system as almost like a fixed entity, but then we assume that that entity will just iterate really rapidly on products and those products will evolve in all these sorts of ways. I'm like same thing, it's the exact same thing. So I appreciate you actually sort of speaking openly about that.

MJ Jastrebski [01:01:49]:

There's an article I don't know if you can post. I think you can post articles after this. I will share it for our beautiful listeners.

Andrew Skotzko [01:01:57]:

Yeah, I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes.

MJ Jastrebski [01:01:59]:

Go. Look up. First round Legos. And I can't remember the title of it, but I think you and I might have talked about this article before.

Andrew Skotzko [01:02:06]:

Yeah, it's like, give away all your Legos or something.

MJ Jastrebski [01:02:08]:

Give away all your Legos, especially as the intrepid leader, right? Or you're the first out of the boat. You are carving the path of like, should we go this direction? Should we go this direction? Should we go this direction? And once we're like, Yep, we're going to go this direction. Then you've got to build that's then where scale comes in, right? So just like alpha, beta, ga with alpha, you're not validating scale. You're validating usefulness. You're validating usefulness. Like beta and ga is when you start to get into Uzi and optimization and scale. And so that is true for process, that is true for teams, that is true for how might we grow and expand and figure out what's the next level of doing things then? Oh, that's going to work, or, oh, by the way, that's not going to work. But you have to have that intrepid first person or first set of people going and trying it. And so this article, the First Round article, Legos, is all about the person who wrote it. Every six months, her job changed, and it's like, okay, this was my job now, and I got it going. And then I handed it off. And it was really hard because my identity was the thing I was doing. And if I handed it off, then what was my identity? What did I have? And actually, that's what I'm having to do. I had to do it. It was really interesting. It's what I had to do at this last company that I worked for, where I was the first salesperson head of growth that wasn't the CEO. And I was like, okay, well, I got to learn the ropes on the sales thing. So I did the sales job, and then I hired somebody to come help me with sales. And then I was like, okay, great. He's got at least kind of first touch, first call, then I got to go figure out marketing. Okay, let me go figure out marketing. Okay, let me go do that, and then let me hire a marketer and hand off most everything to her. And then what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? I'm making it sound really linear. We don't always have that luxury. A lot of times these things overlap, but we tend to want to get into habitual behavior and be like, this is my day. This is the thing I do. I do all these things. And if we're not actually revisiting and checking our own behavior and seeing where we're operating in the team and figuring out is it actually serving the team the way I'm showing up for the team now. Because this is what I've always been doing. If it's not serving it, I got to do something different. And ultimately what I'm trying to do is build my way out of a job and go tackle the next job.

Andrew Skotzko [01:04:30]:

Totally.

MJ Jastrebski [01:04:30]:

And if I hang on to the job too long, then it does nobody any good. In true fact, literally talking to a handful of my team today where I'm like, I'm trying to get into the details and I'm checking my behavior, and I'm like, I think you all should be doing this. And they're like, yes, we think we should. And I'm like, damn it, you're right. I need to get out of that detail. It serves nobody. But we're doers. Like, product people are doers. We want to go do shit. We want to go do cool shit. So I tell my team all the time, tell me the back the fuck off. Please tell me. And I will not take it wrong. We have to be a team in this, and you've got to check me and make sure we're kind of in our lanes in terms of where we best serve the team.

Andrew Skotzko [01:05:17]:

I love so many things you just said, and there's two things I want to underscore specifically just because as you were saying them, I went like, oh, wow, you just connected those dots up in a way I hadn't quite heard before. The first one was the way you were laying out like Alpha Beta Ga and how that's not just a thing we do with products and software. It's also a thing we can do organizationally with process and with structure. I had never heard it put that way. And I love that. And I just want to specifically underscore that for people because that in some ways is exactly like the principle at play behind pilot teams. Like most transformations that are going on out there, everybody says start with the pilot team, find a bright spot, land and expand from there, right? And that's true. We've seen enough times. And I was always like going, Why is that? And I think it's actually what you just named is that we're implicitly going through this Alpha Beta Ga process organizationally, validating and demonstrating the usefulness first before we ask for more trust, before we ask for more scale, more optimization, et cetera. So that was thing one and thing two that I wanted to highlight and just underscore that I thought was terrific in there was we've danced around or touched on this topic of ego a number of times and what a through line that is in leadership, right? We all have egos, and we all have to learn to manage them and deal with that and everything. And I think it's that link to identity that is so key and for the listener, if you want to go deeper on that specifically, go listen to the episode I did with Mike Soloyo from Huddle, which was kind of like all about that.

MJ Jastrebski [01:06:45]:

Oh, great.

Andrew Skotzko [01:06:46]:

And specifically, the thing I want to call out is we talked a lot about the ability to have difficult conversations, to have our ideas challenged, to let go of stuff that isn't working, to be buoyant, to go back to your excellent word. And I think it's the identity piece that makes that's what makes or breaks that a little bit is like, what am I latching my identity onto? If I'm latching my sense of identity onto being right, having the right answer, being the person who comes up with the answers, something like this, I'm not going to be buoyant. At least not very much. I just thought that was great. I just wanted to reflect that back and highlight that.

MJ Jastrebski [01:07:25]:

I love it. I've been listening to a book on a recommendation recently called Multipliers, and it's all about as a leader, are you a multiplier, are you a diminisher? And it's very much like, what are your own behaviors? How do you show up as a leader that can prevent people from doing their best? And again, in this world, especially in the startup world or growth world, where limited time, money, resources, et cetera, you don't have extra. So how do you get more out of what you've got? Just highly recommend. Go read it. Awesome.

Andrew Skotzko [01:07:53]:

Thank you.

MJ Jastrebski [01:07:53]:

I was going to say I have a couple pivot points in my career. Not pivot points, but like punctuation points in my career. I was at Orbitz for six years. It was my first product job. And I loved like I loved being in Travel. It was so much fun. And the things that I got to do, like the things that people, responsibilities people gave me, I'm like, this is bananas. You should never give me this. But this is fantastic and I'm very grateful. It was a great, really great opportunity.

Andrew Skotzko [01:08:23]:

I'll take it. But really?

MJ Jastrebski [01:08:24]:

I know, right? That's exactly it. I'm like, all right, your choice, not mine. But I left that job because I was in my head about I am successful here because I know this company. Am I successful? Kind of outside of that, in a more abstract way, can I be successful anywhere? And I didn't know the answer, and I really wanted to challenge myself and move to a new company to be like, am I as smart as I think I am? And again, we're all ego led. I have just as much of ego as the rest of them, but I realize over trial and error that I learned a lot and I really wasn't as good as I thought I was. And I really stunk it up when I was putting myself into new circumstances. I did not do well. And the first time I managed people, I was such a terrible manager. It's easy for me to sit here today and be like, yes, you've got to be mindful, and you've got to cut your feelings. It's because I was an asshole. I was a terrible boss. I was terrible to people, and I was reacting out of fear, and I was attacking and things like that. And I look back and I'm not proud of that behavior. I'm not proud that I did it. And for me, I had to learn through it. I had to go do that. And so in my mind right now, I had these pictures of these moments in my career. I look back and I'm like, gosh, I don't want to be that person. I don't like that person. And I really hold deeply in terms of when I have felt that way. I want to say people have treated me that way. I don't want to create that feeling in anybody else again. Imagine if we could all feel love and support and kindness in our mistakes, in our learnings, in the things as we're growing, and the only way to get better is to be willing to be bad. And so that is the thing that I keep kind of holding back or holding up front in my head of like, I'm never going to get better if I'm not willing to be bad at it. And I encounter new things every day in my career, every day in what I do. And I'm going to suck at it. I'm going to be honest about it. And I think I'm now off track, but it's okay a little bit my mantra.

Andrew Skotzko [01:10:40]:

No, I really like that because what I actually hear in that is you're sharing how you actually maintain a growth mindset and how you view things. Right? Which is if we think about our role as leaders, as stewards, going back to that word you used earlier, which I love, is great word, how are we stewarding this environment? What is in this environment? What are we modeling? What are we rewarding? What are we punishing? One of the questions I like to ask organizations when I'm getting to know them is one way you could define culture is the blend of what is rewarded, punished, and tolerated. And I ask, what's that look like here?

MJ Jastrebski [01:11:19]:

I've heard that. I love that.

Andrew Skotzko [01:11:21]:

And the implicit answer to that is very different when the leader is modeling and looking at things from the lens you just offered, as opposed to something a little different.

MJ Jastrebski [01:11:30]:

Yeah, 100%. It's so much that what we're doing requires psychological safety because we're inventing and ultimately innovation. Right? Innovation is invention plus commercialization. But ultimately what we're doing, it's never been built before. And that requires a certain level of like, you have to be a little bit ego ridden to put yourself out there and be like, this is the thing. Follow me, people. But you also have to have a high level of psychological safety that if you take a risk and stick your neck out, it's not going to get cut off. And I think about it as a leader. I am always calibrating. I'm always surveying what's going on at the edges, what's happening? What are the fires that are burning? What are the things that are boiling here and there, boiling up? And if I feel like I am not if I have created a toxic environment where people are scared to put their neck out, they are not going to give me information. They're not going to share with me their feelings. And if I don't get that information, then I have less information. If they don't share with me their feelings, then I have less information on which to make a decision. And again, I go back to organizations, and companies are made up of humans. And so where we fail, it's like human error. Like, most flights, right? Like most planes go down not because of equipment failure, but because of human failure. Most companies are not successful because the idea is wrong. It's because of the people. It's like somehow there's something that's gone wrong with the structure. So it's like strategy, then structure. You got to get the structure part right. And so for me, creating a sense of psychological safety is a way of creating information and knowledge within the organization to where people feel free to take risks. They know that the downside, we will minimize the downside. We win as a team, we lose as a team. We will work through it, and we're going to learn from it. We're going to take new bets in the future. There's always bets that you probably shouldn't take, but generally that should be the place in which we're operating from. And if we can do that, then what couldn't we do? What innovation couldn't we go tackle as a team? And again, I go back to that's what I want to do, that's what drives me. I want to go win, but I want to win as a team, and I want to win laughing all the way. And when I think about my career and think about the things that I want to look back at and the things that I want to be proud of, it's not just like, oh, hell yeah, I had an exit and made a gazillion dollars. I mean, that's fantastic. I care so much also about the nature of the work and how we got the work done and the amplification of I've had hundreds of people over my career report to me, what are they going and doing? Where do they feel enabled and empowered to go do their career, and what are they going to impact? And the better I can show up and the better I can do, I think the more successful they are. And I feel just as proud of that as anything else. I've done.

Andrew Skotzko [01:14:20]:

I love that. Thank you so much. Well, we're definitely going to have to have you back for a future conversation to go deeper on this and so much more because we didn't even get into Decision Velocity and so many fun topics that we've already geeked out on. We're going to have to just tee those up for next time. All right, well, MJ, it has been such pleasure. Thanks for hanging out today.

MJ Jastrebski [01:14:40]:

Oh, my God. Anytime. And pleasure is all mine This is fantastic.