Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Launching and growing a podcast | Chris Hutchins (All the Hacks, Wealthfront, Google)

December 18, 2022

AI Summary

5 min read

Chris Hutchins shares lessons from his career as a product manager at Google and Wealthfront—where he led the Autopilot feature for automating financial tasks—and his rapid growth of the All the Hacks podcast, now a top business show after 18 months and nearly 100 weekly episodes. He emphasizes persistence, authentic content, and internal persuasion as keys to success in products and podcasts alike.

Lessons from product innovation

At Wealthfront, Hutchins prototyped Autopilot to automate savings, bill payments, and investments by monitoring bank accounts and sweeping excess funds into priorities like Roth IRAs or emergency funds. It boosted retention and savings metrics within the ecosystem but lacked explosive growth, highlighting the gap between stated desires in interviews and actual adoption for high-trust automations. Key mechanisms for big bets in companies include deep customer immersion beyond formal research, crafting emotional benefits (e.g., "no weekly money worries") over features, and relentless vision-sharing in all-hands to build buy-in. Stating intent upfront—"I care only about company success"—reduces perceptions of self-interest when pushing bold ideas.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:00) **Podcast Landscape and Intro**`
2 `* (00:01:15) **Chris's Career Background**`
3 `* (00:07:02) **Building Wealthfront's Autopilot (Self-Driving Money)**`
4 `* (00:12:18) **Innovating with Big Bets in Companies**`
5 `* (00:21:52) **Why Start a Podcast? Benefits and Commitment Test**`
6 `* (00:30:47) **Launch Strategy and Early Growth**`
7 `* (00:37:09) **Picking Topics and Building Initial Audience**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Chris Hutchins recently left his position as Head of New Product Strategy at Wealthfront to focus full-time on his podcast, All the Hacks. If you’re thinking about starting your own podcast or are simply interested in the process, be sure to check out today’s episode. We dive deep on all things podcasting: the pros and cons, how to climb the charts, and how much time you should expect to spend on each episode from start to finish. We talk in-depth about the process, from pre-production to publication, and share all of the products we use for recording, editing, and publishing. Chris also offers some important tips and tricks on how to get your first subscribers and how to market and grow your podcast, as well as some incredible money-saving hacks that you can start implementing today.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/launching-and-growing-a-podcast-chris

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting this podcast:

• Notion—One workspace. Every team: https://www.notion.com/lennyspod

• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny

• Lenny’s Job Board—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs: https://www.lennysjobs.com/talent

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Where to find Chris Hutchins:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/hutchins

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishutchins/

• Website: https://chrishutchins.com/