Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Leveraging growth advisors, hiring well, mastering SEO, and honing your craft | Luc Levesque (Shopify, Meta, TripAdvisor)

June 15, 2023

AI Summary

5 min read

Luc Levesque, chief growth officer at Shopify and former growth leader at Meta and TripAdvisor, discusses principles for driving impact in growth, hiring top talent, structuring advisorships, mastering SEO, and personal routines for sustained performance.

Prioritizing Impact Over Activity

Levesque emphasizes impact as the core metric at high-execution companies like Meta and Shopify, illustrated by his early experience presenting a draft strategy to Mark Zuckerberg, who immediately asked for results. Cultures succeed by evaluating outcomes in reviews, strategies, and performance, not effort or hours. In growth, this means aligning all work to a north star metric, reviewing strategies rigorously, and measuring clear results, avoiding distractions from activity.

Hiring Playbook and Closing Talent

Hiring becomes the key skill for leaders scaling teams, with Levesque's playbook divided into finding, assessing, and closing. Seek "signs of excellence"—repeated high achievements, like being poached by a former boss—even for junior roles (e.g., founders, award winners). For closing, involve the executive team, engage the candidate's family to address personal barriers, and persist relentlessly, as in his seven-month recruitment by Zuckerberg or ten-year discussions before joining Shopify. Share a "blueprint" of personal quirks upon onboarding for quick alignment.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:36) **Intro and Zuck's Impact Focus at Facebook**`
2 `* (09:20) **Zuck's Personal Recruiting and Hiring Lessons**`
3 `* (13:33) **Hiring Playbook: Finding, Assessing, Closing Talent**`
4 `* (18:01) **Growth Advisors: When, Vetting, Structuring Deals**`
5 `* (24:25) **Advisor Impact Examples and Becoming One**`
6 `* (42:55) **SEO Mastery: Playbooks for Any Company**`
7 `* (49:38) **Growth Loops/Channels and AI Shifts**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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Luc Levesque is Chief Growth Officer at Shopify and has advised companies like Canva, Twitter, Pinterest, and Patreon on growth and product strategy. Previously he served as an executive at TripAdvisor, where he built and led the growth team that helped it become the world’s largest travel site. Luc was then recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to Facebook, where he was an executive and held senior product and engineering leadership roles. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Why you need to become world-class at hiring

• Tips for finding a great growth advisor and assessing their impact

• Why truly great companies focus on impact

• Common mistakes to avoid when building a growth team

• The importance of passion and continuous self-improvement

• Signs your company should explore SEO as a growth channel, and strategies to do so

• Why Mark Zuckerberg personally recruited Luc and what it taught him about the recruiting process

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/leveraging-growth-advisors-hiring

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Where to find Luc Levesque:

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