Reforge CEO, Brian Balfour, on frameworks and communication

00;00;01;05 - 00;00;24;10

Patrick Campbell

Our world is full of problems. On the macro level, we have things like climate change, infectious diseases, hunger, poverty and the list unfortunately goes on. On our individual level, we have pushing and building our companies, finding fulfillment, and yes, dealing with Marcella and her antics. Yet you can't solve a problem. You can agree that something like climate change is a problem.

00;00;24;10 - 00;00;47;24

Patrick Campbell

And that took a while. But if you seek to solve the problem, you're doing the equivalent of throwing a bunch of stuff up against the wall and hoping something sticks. Instead, you need to break that problem down into root causes and impact climate change, for instance, has a multitude of causes, all with varying levels of impact. You have cow farts and burps which have less impact than factory emissions.

00;00;48;09 - 00;01;15;24

Patrick Campbell

One of these is also easier to solve than the other. Only when you've thought things through can you pick the right causes to focus on given the resources that you have. And when you solve for a cause, you truly find solutions to mitigate the systemic problem that you're going after. What we just use is something called problem cost solution, which is a framework, and frameworks work for getting everyone on the same page and ensuring you're prioritizing where you'll have the most impact.

00;01;16;06 - 00;01;47;00

Patrick Campbell

It's a way of thinking through a problem. Frameworks are all around us and the best amongst them tell us not only the how to get after mitigating a problem, but also the why. And perhaps no one is better at representing frameworks than the theory of frameworks himself known as Brian Belfour. Ryan's been a good friend of mine for a decade since we met in Boston and he's led growth at Zoom info HubSpot and is now the founder and CEO of Reforge, an education platform that helps those in tech accelerate their careers by teaching them the how and the why.

00;01;47;00 - 00;02;21;13

Patrick Campbell

The frameworks for thinking through businesses toughest problems. He's one of the deepest thinkers I know, and his thoughts on how you should think are coming up next from profit well recur it's protect the Hustle where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator. On today's episode, Brian Belfour advises you on how to avoid getting sucked into traps using perspective to get everyone on the same page, creating tools to reveal answers, the importance of shared language and understand nuances to unlock frameworks.

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Patrick Campbell

Let's start with what's the harshest feedback you've received in your life so far?

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Brian Balfour

I knew you'd start with this question.

00;02;33;20 - 00;02;36;01

Patrick Campbell

The most important one. I feel like it's the most exciting.

00;02;37;09 - 00;03;01;18

Brian Balfour

I'm sure I received some extremely harsh feedback when I was young, but the hardest feedback I received in my career was while at HubSpot and came from Brian Halligan, the CEO, for context. So I was brought into HubSpot when we just had the marketing product. I was supposed to help start this new division to help grow new products and new verticals, primarily the sales space.

00;03;02;03 - 00;03;29;25

Brian Balfour

And so when I started, we were like this new products division was like six people. So something like that, maybe maybe seven people. And there was like an initial product like MVP that we had. I remember getting in there and I had a couple of team members to start with, and the very first thing that I wanted to do was spend about 2 to 3 weeks just doing customer research and like defining like personas and some of the motivations and stuff.

00;03;29;25 - 00;03;47;06

Brian Balfour

Because I had never worked on I've never been a salesperson, I had never worked on sales software before and all of these things. There was a few other people on the team that were heavily pushback. They were like, That's like an F in waste of time. Like, Why are you doing that? And like, as, like my first few weeks, like that was.

00;03;48;04 - 00;03;48;18

Patrick Campbell

There are.

00;03;49;10 - 00;04;08;16

Brian Balfour

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My first few weeks I was like, you know, that's a big that's a big risk. Like, I feel like I was like already spending a trust chip, you know? I was like, No, no. Like, like we need to do this. So we did it anyways. Did it three weeks and did a little research, came up with personas.

00;04;08;16 - 00;04;35;12

Brian Balfour

It was great. Like, like aligning the team around a year into this product development, like into this product. We had grown it quite a bit, but we were at like a key critical crossroads and debate strategically as a team, as an executive team about where we wanted to take the direction of the product. There was some people on the team that felt like we weren't targeting the right customers and more importantly like the customers didn't.

00;04;35;12 - 00;04;55;25

Brian Balfour

That we were acquiring on this product didn't necessarily line with the Oracle customer base of like HubSpot. So I remember this meeting with Brian Halligan where he brought me in and he was like, you know, I feel like there was a critical mistake here and it was your mistake. You didn't really define the target audience for this product.

00;04;56;03 - 00;05;20;02

Brian Balfour

And I was like, and I was like, okay, so like, imagine you being I see like, like thinking back to those first few weeks, like having spent that trust trip and of course, naturally, like in the moment, I was angry, right? I was like, like I felt like I was taking I was taking the blame for something that, like I did and that like I fought for and like so on and so forth.

00;05;20;22 - 00;05;42;06

Brian Balfour

And so of course, like in the moment. Like in the moment, yeah, I was I was angry, I was emotional and all that kind of stuff. After getting some distance from that, I realized that his feedback wasn't necessarily you didn't do this thing. The thing that was behind that feedback was like, Yes, I did that thing, but I didn't like, communicate it in the best way that I could have.

00;05;42;06 - 00;06;01;25

Brian Balfour

I didn't alignment with the company. The historical company's strategy right? Like, I hadn't done the next few things. And like, that was the real message behind the message. It's not like Halligan had contact context to like every single thing that I did for like every single, single week. Like, like he just saw some, like, distant output of it other at all.

00;06;02;05 - 00;06;23;25

Brian Balfour

So I say that was like the harshest feedback just because of the amount of like effort in, like emotional buy in, in like how it just felt on the surface, but with some distance behind that. What I just realized with that feedback was, is usually with feedback when it feels wrong to you, there is like a message behind the message, right?

00;06;23;25 - 00;06;50;15

Brian Balfour

And it's up to you to like, actually figure out what that is. Right? It's probably something like that. You and I even think about even other experiences, same experiences of like maybe I did the work, maybe I did it the right way, but the communication, the alignment of strategy or like some other component wasn't there. And so in the end, it still feels like a failure and in some way in other people's eyes.

00;06;50;15 - 00;07;03;01

Brian Balfour

And so that was just a tough one for me to to take, especially from the CEO of your company. And yeah, so that was that was the one that, that stung for sure.

00;07;03;02 - 00;07;22;20

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, I didn't know that story. That's that's harsh, man. I think it's. But you bring up a really good thing with feedback. It's like we're kind of uncomfortable with it because especially when we feel like we did the thing that we're getting feedback on and then it's like, Oh, what you mean by this is X, y, Z, and I only did X and Y, right?

00;07;22;20 - 00;07;26;18

Patrick Campbell

Which is always is tough. What did you learn from your first job?

00;07;27;14 - 00;07;46;15

Brian Balfour

It really depends on how you define it. So like my first job were probably got like a W-2 statement was I was a caddie at a golf course. I'd probably say like the big lesson there, it was just like, like, don't be an asshole. So it sounds really simple, but I was a caddie at this golf course in Michigan.

00;07;46;24 - 00;08;06;26

Brian Balfour

It was like a country club for people who weren't really rich but wanted to think they were rich type of deal right? And so I caddied and was great. And but one day I was like double bagging. I was a seventh grader by the time I was like a skinny, weak seventh grader. Right? So like double carrying to golf the exact once on like a six mile long course.

00;08;06;26 - 00;08;29;28

Brian Balfour

It was brutal. So I was double bagging this one time. And this guy, I don't know, we were like on the sixth hole or something like that. And he had hit his shot into the sand trap. And I was standing there, uh, like with the bag and a gust of wind came along and there are these plastic tags on the wood covers that ended up clinking against the irons, the goats clink, clink.

00;08;29;28 - 00;08;42;28

Brian Balfour

Right as he was taking a shot. And he just like bullets at it over the green onto the other side. And he turns around to me and he's like, he's like, what? He just yells and he's like, What are you doing?

00;08;42;28 - 00;08;43;29

Patrick Campbell

I hit that bad shot.

00;08;43;29 - 00;08;50;24

Brian Balfour

Because of you, right? Like, you, like, blame the whole thing on me. I just. I walked off the course. That was my last day at the golf course.

00;08;50;26 - 00;08;53;12

Patrick Campbell

Oh, wow. Yeah, That's awesome.

00;08;53;26 - 00;09;18;16

Brian Balfour

I was. I was. I was just. I was so, like, I'm so done with that. But my parents were so mad at me that I did that. And you're like, How are you going to get another job? I was in seventh grade, right? Like, Yeah, I was just like one of those situations where I was just like, when somebody is working your ass off, when they're working here at their asshole for you, you have zero, right to be an asshole to them.

00;09;18;26 - 00;09;44;05

Brian Balfour

It just like left a big impression on me. And I see this in the tech industry now. There's just like I won't name names, but there's certain like successful VCs and investors or founders out there and I just see them publicly being assholes to people kind of because they can. And they kind of cover it up with like a thing of like, like, like I'm just like, brutally honest and I'm like, No, man, you're an asshole.

00;09;44;06 - 00;10;02;11

Brian Balfour

Yeah, like, you're successful, But it's just they're not the type of people that I want to invest in or spend my time on. Second, Listen, real quick, first job, real job post-college was I was a product manager at Zoom Info. This guy named Russell Glass hired me off my blog, which at the time was like his blog.

00;10;02;12 - 00;10;02;20

Patrick Campbell

Yeah.

00;10;03;02 - 00;10;26;12

Brian Balfour

Yeah, at the time, like I think myself and this other my friend Jeff Clark, who we also also hired off the blog we got in the Wall Street Journal because hiring somebody off a blog was so crazy at the time. Anyway. And I was like, Come on, guys. But I was a product manager at Zoom Info, and I remember about like six months in I received another job offer from another startup in Boston to become like a senior product manager.

00;10;26;26 - 00;10;45;10

Brian Balfour

I was like, like six months, Like I have been in a product like six months. And I remember I told him, I told my boss about it. Russell Glass about it at the time, and he was super honest and transparent with me. He was like, Look, you are not ready. You're not ready to become like a senior product manager.

00;10;45;10 - 00;11;07;28

Brian Balfour

You don't have enough experience and like all that kind of stuff. I was probably like trying to fast forward my career a little bit too much and that was like the really the first time where I sat back and valued it actually takes some real time to like learn and absorb and gain things in like the further I go in my career, the more I look back and I'm like, Wow, I really didn't know shit then.

00;11;07;28 - 00;11;37;11

Brian Balfour

I did not know and like, I did not know anything then. And so I just see it now, especially in Reforge of like not even not in Reforge, but I see like other people. For example, like the other day I was on LinkedIn, I saw somebody post, they got a product executive certificate from this like other professional education company and said that he was like looking for product leadership jobs, but he only had one year of product management experience.

00;11;37;17 - 00;12;05;08

Brian Balfour

I did it like people are selling these like certifications that almost feel like shortcuts and stuff. But I see like a lot of people just falling into that trap. I'm sorry, but like one year of product management experience and a certificate does not make you ready to be a qualified by product leader, right? Don't get sucked into the traps of the shortcuts because a lot of people are trying to sell them right now.

00;12;05;08 - 00;12;16;06

Patrick Campbell

What's the biggest risk you've taken so far in your career? And it can be with Reforge or, you know, with, you know, anything because you've had some you've had some doozies in the deep seats there.

00;12;16;06 - 00;12;34;17

Brian Balfour

I mean, look like this is my fourth startup or something like that. I mean, it's funny because I remember when I raised money for my first company, I called my parents and told them like, Hey, we just raised $5 million for this thing. And my mom said her immediate reply was like, Well, like, what are you like, How are you going to do that?

00;12;34;17 - 00;12;56;19

Brian Balfour

And keep your product manager job? It's, you know, like totally, totally different, didn't it? Did it click to her that, that like, hey, like this just became my job for like different different levels of like mentality around risk. I mean, I probably took some stupid stuff like in the moment that paid off, like I angel invested when I did not have that much money in the bank.

00;12;56;19 - 00;13;30;09

Brian Balfour

Right. Like that was probably a really dumb thing. Like, I left HubSpot a very good role. A lot of fucking money on the table to do Reforge and Reforge is still yet to play out. If it went to zero, that would be the most costly by a lot ever in my career. I actually think the biggest risk we are about to take, we are about to go through a very big I wouldn't call it pivot, but transformation for Reforge into a new model.

00;13;30;09 - 00;13;56;06

Brian Balfour

And it's tough for us because we're essentially putting an eight figure business on the line, like a working eight figure business to online work, just completely uprooting and changing it because we believe that there is like a bigger future in this like New model. But it could totally tank, it could total, it could totally tank, and it will be very hard to reverse.

00;13;56;19 - 00;14;17;06

Brian Balfour

And so, like, I don't know, maybe we can grow back to this in like six months to a year to see if it's like actually working. But I think all those things lined up. I left the HubSpot to start, Reforge left a lot on the table, built it to this point and now I'm we're about to like throw that all away again to take a totally different shot.

00;14;17;10 - 00;14;34;12

Brian Balfour

Yeah, I don't know. I think some people probably view that as, like, a very dumb thing to do, but ultimately at the end of the day, I'm doing this to take a shot at building something big. So I think there's we think there's like a bigger future in that. So I don't know. That's probably the biggest risk at the moment.

00;14;34;12 - 00;14;43;16

Patrick Campbell

I have some insight I won't share because I don't think it's ready for obviously, and that's your news. But I think you just have the founder Scaries. I actually think that. I don't.

00;14;43;16 - 00;14;45;29

Brian Balfour

Think so, which our real founder scares are really.

00;14;46;12 - 00;14;55;06

Patrick Campbell

Going to be wrong though. You're wrong. But I think it's I think it's one of those ideas that, yes, it's scary. It's a change. I actually don't think it would be that hard to roll back. I think.

00;14;55;21 - 00;14;56;14

Brian Balfour

Maybe not. I think you would.

00;14;56;14 - 00;15;14;08

Patrick Campbell

I think you would feel like, oh, my God, we just did something terrible. I think it's a lot more of a hedged decision than you think, but that's my opinion. And since we can't talk about it publicly or we can do it offline, but yeah, speaking of your parents, though, you mentioned your mom. They're like, what did your parents do and what did you learn from them?

00;15;15;20 - 00;15;42;15

Brian Balfour

So funny enough, both my parents were teachers and I told them I would never be committed. Yes, I, I told them I would never become a teacher. They would laugh at me now because it's essentially what, like Reforge is just in a very different form. Yeah. My mom taught basic various various levels of college math and my dad taught like various AP, like history and other types of classes in high school.

00;15;42;18 - 00;16;04;05

Brian Balfour

And so, yeah, I grew up in Michigan, Michigan, like middle class. And I think the biggest thing from my parents was obviously education was a very big thing in our household. But both my parents, yeah, they just grew up in a very different like going back to the story I mentioned earlier, just much more conservative around career and risk taking.

00;16;04;05 - 00;16;28;22

Brian Balfour

And it was probably wasn't until I was 31 and got married and had like at least some success right around these entrepreneurial paths that I think it finally clicked for them that like this was like a real battle, as I'm sure many parents now are probably struggling with watching their kids all want to be tik-tok influencers, right? Like they're like, Is that real?

00;16;28;22 - 00;17;04;18

Brian Balfour

Is that a real path? Right? Like it Maybe. Maybe it's not right. Like, maybe it's not, But it seems like this whole the creator economy has some real muscle behind it. So that conservative ness still influences me today, especially around things like money. I'm very good at picking apart things and finding the possible problems. And so it takes a lot for me to then like flip that view into a positive view of like how to how to solve those problems, like how to solve those problems or how to make those problems like our opportunities, like how to use that muscle for good.

00;17;04;18 - 00;17;20;17

Brian Balfour

Because I think going back to the founders theories right like that can very quickly, like spiral out of in a very negative direction of like, I see this problem, I see this problem, I see this problem where act like, like doomsday of that. Right. And you.

00;17;20;17 - 00;17;25;24

Patrick Campbell

Equally are like, but we're going to be $1,000,000,000 company like at the same time it's like a very.

00;17;25;29 - 00;17;55;17

Brian Balfour

Yeah. And so and what I've known is like I've gotten comfortable with seeing the problems, but that doesn't necessarily mean everybody in my team is in. So I have to be careful in the way that I like. I communicate them because like sometimes it comes across as a story to a doomsday story to them. But in my mind I'm just like listing them out, being like, Awesome, let's get them out there so that we can like, form a hypothesis, a point of view and, and or something else around that.

00;17;55;17 - 00;18;13;18

Brian Balfour

It kind of goes back to that alien story of like, I think people are it's not so much about how you do like what you do. It's like how do you put yourself in the view of the various other people's seeds to see like how you are coming off? Right? I think that's like a very hard thing for people to do.

00;18;13;18 - 00;18;34;14

Brian Balfour

And why, like most people are takes a long time for them to learn communication because they don't realize like how many times they need to repeat something, how they need to package it in a story, how to structure it as building blocks, like all these types of things. So I think my parents like heavily influenced me in like kind of roundabout way, in roundabout ways.

00;18;34;14 - 00;18;40;24

Brian Balfour

Like neither one of them were entrepreneurs, but a lot of their tendencies have obviously popped up in, in my life in later years.

00;18;41;15 - 00;18;50;23

Patrick Campbell

My dad still wants me to go to med school. So that's still happening. Yeah, that's like, you could be a good doctor. You should be a doctor. So. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty.

00;18;50;28 - 00;19;06;25

Brian Balfour

It's a pretty common story for every one. And I have like an 11 month old at home, so it's commonly on my mind of, like, how you like how to raise your kid in a more, like, less dictation type of environment however you want.

00;19;06;25 - 00;19;08;12

Patrick Campbell

But I also want to give you some direction.

00;19;08;12 - 00;19;12;14

Brian Balfour

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Don't be a tick tock influencer.

00;19;12;15 - 00;19;48;06

Patrick Campbell

Not reforge. The quality of the content I don't think people realize is so high because there's a lot of courses out there, right? There's a lot of like little courses that you can find on different sites. You know, some companies put together their own courses, but you guys actually spend like and I would say it's, it's, it's a, you know, MBA level semester compressed into six weeks and probably doesn't feel like it's, you know, too much but it's a you're really, really quick in quickening that path to learning.

00;19;48;15 - 00;20;31;08

Brian Balfour

Yeah we're trying to you I like I agree we spend a lot of time in the age of where we're at now. There's like where anybody can spin up a Twitter account or a substack newsletter and start like repeating other people's thoughts. Good information feels abundant and noise to signal ratio is much lower, is larger and growing. So more noise, less signal as part of that because real in-depth, actionable, hard earned insights takes many, many hours and repetitions of like synthesis, which is like the hardest part of like creation, in my opinion, is like that synthesis component.

00;20;31;08 - 00;20;50;27

Brian Balfour

Yeah, a lot of a lot of our students have said it's been the six weeks is more valuable than their Kellogg standard for each B.S. like MBA because we do. And at the same time, a lot of people think it's overwhelming. But that's what we're trying to do is like give like a super fast injection of a lot of of a lot of things.

00;20;50;27 - 00;21;12;29

Brian Balfour

So that you have the broader picture of things so that you can find the most impactful problem for you to work on in your organization. Because a lot of career success these days comes down to like being able to find the most impactful problems in, in, in your organization and then work on them and then share to like get recognition like internally and externally.

00;21;12;29 - 00;21;29;07

Brian Balfour

Like that's kind of like it's kind of a loop and never ending loop that you go through. Finding those meaningful, impactful problems is hard for a lot of people because they don't have like the full landscape or there's like a bunch of unknown unknowns. And so what we're trying to do is like, let's fill in that map super quick, right?

00;21;29;07 - 00;21;50;29

Brian Balfour

And so and turn those unknown unknowns into like, I don't know what part of the framework that goes in. Now they're known unknowns or something like knowing things that you know, their problems. And as part of that, you've just taken a giant step in being able to navigate inquiry and back for yourself. And so like, that's kind of the that's kind of the whole goal of these programs.

00;21;50;29 - 00;21;55;20

Brian Balfour

But yeah, they take hundreds of hours of, of custom research to create. Do you have.

00;21;55;20 - 00;22;23;03

Patrick Campbell

A pricing monetization course, you have a retention course. These types of things, but your core core course, you know, room growth, is it safe to say and you might not characterize it this way, but I think you're teaching people how to think. And I think that there is this gap, unfortunately, unless you choose specific college, you know, undergrads or, you know, specific, you know, high school courses, these types of things that you don't you don't learn how to think.

00;22;23;03 - 00;22;37;25

Patrick Campbell

And what I what I've found from a lot of your content is it teaches you not only how to think in the way that you just said, like how do you identify things? How do you put them in an unknown bucket, Don't bucket, but also then you have an actual practical application of, you know, how to run a growth framework, you know, inside of an organization.

00;22;37;25 - 00;22;39;05

Patrick Campbell

Like what? What are your thoughts on that?

00;22;39;05 - 00;23;00;10

Brian Balfour

Something that we talk internally a lot about is like how do we create the tools, not the answers? One of the most impactful things that I think you can learn is like have like a set of tools in a tool belt and know how to match the right tool to the right problem and be able to use that tool across multiple things.

00;23;00;10 - 00;23;20;27

Brian Balfour

But I'll just give an example of like one that everybody is probably aware of for like a design sprint, right? That is essentially a tool to solve a very specific type of problem that a product team might face. But that is like one of many, many tools, but a lot of people get distracted by like trying to seek out the answer, right?

00;23;20;27 - 00;23;38;24

Brian Balfour

Like they have this problem. And yes, you need to get to the answer. That is the ultimate and goal. And they try to seek out that answer by like asking other people or reading a bunch of other content online. That's like saying like, here's the top ten things to do. That's even if you like, find the quote unquote answer, apply it and it works.

00;23;38;29 - 00;24;00;13

Brian Balfour

That doesn't actually help you solve a similar challenge. Like the next time it comes around. It's almost viewed like more is luck because you actually don't understand what was like the why behind the problem. Why is this thing why is this thing working specifically within this context, context of this audience in this product, in this monetization model, like whatever, whatever it is?

00;24;00;13 - 00;24;24;19

Brian Balfour

And so instead, like, rather than trying to give people like the answers, we say, okay, like we spend a lot of time basically reverse engineering things that like Frontier leaders have done to think about into power, to figure out like, how do they think about the problem and package it into like a repeatable methodology or a framework. And that framework becomes the tool that you can then apply to a bunch of different contexts.

00;24;24;19 - 00;24;48;29

Brian Balfour

So we give them the tool and then we give four or five examples of like how the tool could apply to a freemium business, DTC subscription business, like whatever it is to show the tool in action in a bunch of different ways. Ultimately that ends up being much bigger impact, especially in a world where I think less and less people are going to spend their entire careers in like a single category, like spending your whole career as a B2B marketer.

00;24;48;29 - 00;25;10;22

Brian Balfour

I think people will switch and flip between categories. And so like learning how to navigate these flips I think is much more is much more important. Using that tool is like, how do they think through a problem in themselves, in their own, in their own unique context, with their own unique set of variables?

00;25;10;22 - 00;25;13;26

Patrick Campbell

You built a lot of tools and you've built a lot of tools. Frameworks.

00;25;13;26 - 00;25;14;01

Brian Balfour

Yeah.

00;25;14;09 - 00;25;36;07

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, frameworks. A lot of frameworks. Like how how do you do that, Right? Because, you know, is it, is it Oh, I know the two by two. So let me figure out how to make it right. But you've also done, you know I think the market product fit conversation that you kind of sparked was really, really good. There's a lot of things that you've built that I think a lot of people have used.

00;25;36;20 - 00;25;48;05

Patrick Campbell

Obviously, them building their own tools for their own situations is important. So like, how do you build frameworks? Like how do you think through this? Because I think you're you're probably one of the better ones out there in terms of that synthesis, which I think you're really, really good at.

00;25;48;11 - 00;26;18;01

Brian Balfour

I don't know if I have the exact answer. I think there's a few things that have helped me over time, so I have not always been good at this. Number one, it's something that I feel like I've learned accidentally over time. But I think the first thing is like, okay, like why is a framework or tool important? Not only is it like a tool that helps you solve problems in a much different context, but most importantly, it helps you communicate to a bunch of other people and establish a shared language that sounds like, I think, like a little fluffy, like a shared language.

00;26;18;01 - 00;26;37;22

Brian Balfour

But most problems I feel like stemmed from the fact that you say one thing and you think the other person is thinking about it in the same way as you are. But actually you're just talking apples and oranges, right? And so, like that shared language is actually an important and so like a framework is really helpful because you can just get up on the whiteboard, draw it out a line around like a shared language, a shared way of thinking about it.

00;26;37;23 - 00;26;55;11

Brian Balfour

So like, how do you how do you get there? You collect a ton of raw information, but then you think about what is the shape of this information. So you joked about the two by two, right? But there's like, I don't know, I have this like deck of like 40 different shapes could be like a two by two could be a pyramid.

00;26;55;18 - 00;27;22;08

Brian Balfour

It could be a loop or a flywheel. Right? The main thing is like I just start thinking about what is literally the visual, the shape of this information. And usually I have like a couple, there's like a few kind of a merge and I try to fit the information into that shape. And what ends up happening when I do that is like it either exposes like new insights of like how things connect to each other or it exposes holes.

00;27;22;22 - 00;27;52;27

Brian Balfour

And I'm like, like this doesn't feel right. Like, I feel like I'm using a hammer when I need a wrench. There's like a weird feeling. And so then it goes back to the drawing board of like finding a different shape or finding like, what is the missing piece of information that connects all of the dots? And then after that, you pressure test it against a bunch of different situations and oftentimes when you pressure test that so like every forge will press pressure testing was everything that we come up with against like a product like Pinterest and a product like Slack and a product like HubSpot and a product like Airbnb, like all different categories of

00;27;52;27 - 00;28;19;14

Brian Balfour

products. And when you press for test that, it does the same thing. It either exposes new holes and new nuances or it exposes like new insights that that you didn't realize on the surface. So that's like the very rough process. But those three steps is a lot of work in repetitive cycles. And so we joke internally at Reforge is like when we onboard a new team lead who takes on a lot of this work is like by week for week five.

00;28;19;14 - 00;28;49;18

Brian Balfour

They're almost all essentially dreaming in like information. And so like the team lead the strategy lead on monetization of pricing for example, like she just would come back every week and be like, Well, yeah, I was dreaming about adding a new use case and how willingness to pay connects like whatever, right? Like or like I Yeah, like so and that's when you really know that your mind is like trying to connect all of the dots over time.

00;28;49;18 - 00;29;03;09

Brian Balfour

And so sometimes you just like you hit a hole and you just like need to put it aside and then wait for the dots to connect is kind of is kind of part of it. We're getting this down to more and more of a science, but I don't think it's I don't think we have it there just yet.

00;29;03;09 - 00;29;18;22

Brian Balfour

But but the unlock for me was having a set of shapes that I could go back to for some reason, and I could start to like try to pattern match, like how this information fits into a current shape and then it things like start to unlock for me.

00;29;19;18 - 00;29;39;12

Patrick Campbell

I'm really I'm very glad that you just told me all this because I've been trying to teach this. I don't know. I don't know what you went to school for, but I at least I went for economics. And so you learn a lot of the shapes, you know, in economics at least, and especially business classes. Right. And I think what's kind of fascinating is it's really hard to teach first principle thinking.

00;29;39;12 - 00;30;07;05

Patrick Campbell

It's really hard to teach categorical framework thinking, because you finally have a moment in your life where there is that synthesis and you kind of forget all the steps up to it because you were basically like guessing and checking until it finally, like unlocked. So now like a K, you know, the, I believe the team leader referencing like, you know, if you put her on to another thing, like she's already thinking in this way, like if she was already predisposed probably to do this, but she's now cool.

00;30;07;05 - 00;30;22;25

Patrick Campbell

What's my shape, What's this, what's that? And it's a little bit more of a formula, but I think the shape part is probably the important part. And I always find it funny when I think of the person who took the two by two and then applied, Oh, we don't just need to have dots, we could have different sized dots.

00;30;23;09 - 00;30;32;05

Patrick Campbell

The person who is like, Oh, we can only have different sized dots, we can have different colored dots to write. Like the person who just kept advancing the framework because of some other like hole in there.

00;30;32;06 - 00;30;57;08

Brian Balfour

Yeah, totally. I would say the other thing is, like most people just don't collect enough raw material. They try to jump to the answer too quickly. So we probably only use like less than half of the raw material that we gather. After the research is done. We typically have like thousands of pages of research and that gets boiled down into, I don't know, maybe 1/10 of that.

00;30;57;26 - 00;31;06;15

Brian Balfour

So, yeah, there's just a lot of to connect all of the dots, you've got to explore as many surface areas and angles as possible as a starting point.

00;31;06;15 - 00;31;20;00

Patrick Campbell

That's what I typically find too, is that a lot of people so when I've been trying to help some people with this type of thinking, because I think as you get higher in a company, the problems get grayer and the problems get, you know, more. They need more frameworks, right? Kind of and the.

00;31;20;00 - 00;31;41;11

Brian Balfour

More the skill is important. Right? Because you because there's two things that happen, right? The more senior you get an organization, the more you have to get better at expert cleaning what you and your team does to other people who do not have functional knowledge. The best piece of engineering know how to explain technical problems to like the people in the other executives in the organization.

00;31;41;11 - 00;32;02;17

Brian Balfour

They have no technical knowledge. There's one of the keys of how you get to that type of level. So that happens. And then the other thing that happens is that you spend way more of your time communicating important concepts and problems to a broader group of people who how are farther away from the thing that you are working on your entire like team and stuff.

00;32;02;17 - 00;32;18;29

Brian Balfour

And so you have to figure out how to, how to communicate those things in, in like just much simpler ways. Michael Peachy, who's at HubSpot, is now the VP of product revenue there. I remember like a couple of years ago when he first stepped into like the director or VP role. I asked him like, what are you spending your time on?

00;32;18;29 - 00;32;39;03

Brian Balfour

He's like, Man, all I do is spend my time on drawn boxes, boxes of PowerPoints, boxes on whiteboards like all that. I just like I am like the VP of drone boxes. And and it was he was joking to me, but it was kind of serious at the same time. And yeah, that that's what a lot of your job and that's for.

00;32;43;18 - 00;33;01;12

Patrick Campbell

I always saw you know people are struggling with this it's like spend 80% of your time like if you look at a project, right, Like how are we going to implement this new system or what's the system look like? 80% should be on collecting data and synthesizing it through frameworks, right? And coming up with the the the thing that you're talking about.

00;33;01;12 - 00;33;17;17

Patrick Campbell

And it's kind of ironic because they teach you not to reason for metaphor, right? Like not to just copy what other people are doing, but then literally you're using metaphors to explain, I don't know, there's a meta point in here somewhere that I'm probably not going to come up with.

00;33;17;26 - 00;33;40;09

Brian Balfour

We do think through analogies quite a bit because they you have to get to the depth of understanding, like the very extreme nuances, right? So like one concept we teach in Reforge our growth loops, we've defined about 20 different growth loops. Of course, like one of them being, we call it a financial viral loop, but a lot of people just referred to as like incentivize referrals on the surface.

00;33;40;09 - 00;34;12;18

Brian Balfour

A lot of people think about that as like they all look at the same on the surface, but there is actually like a crazy amount of the incentivized viral loop at the meditation app. Com works totally differently than the incentivized viral loop for like Uber drivers, which works fundamentally different for a different type of product. A lot of people are like, I'm just going to copy and paste this type of thing, but they don't understand like who the target audience is, what are the motivations, how those motivations were manifested in different ways at different steps of the loop, right?

00;34;12;18 - 00;34;42;09

Brian Balfour

Like all of these different, very specific, very specific nuances. But once you understand the nuances, then you can play with those nuances and it tends those tend to be like the unlock things. Lenny Rochinski and Dan Hock in my ear just did this excellent post on first round about I think it's a validate commit scale in what they're essentially saying is like a lot of people and I see this all the time as like a lot of startups get or a lot of people earlier in their career get stuck in the validation phase.

00;34;42;09 - 00;35;03;02

Brian Balfour

They try a lot of things, they validate it and then they move on to like the next thing. But the big unlocks in companies are, when you like, truly commit to one thing and in their case, like commit to one channel. And they went through some like examples and a lot of people just don't see beyond like the validation phase of like what's there.

00;35;03;18 - 00;35;27;22

Brian Balfour

But like, look like Airbnb had at least one product team. I think multiple product teams iterating on their incentivized viral loop for years. So like you add that up of what that probably cost and product managers and engineers, you're talking millions and millions of dollars of resources going on like that one thing, right? And that's because the the depth of these things is much deeper than we all realize.

00;35;27;22 - 00;35;28;17

Brian Balfour

Like on the surface.

00;35;28;24 - 00;35;49;06

Patrick Campbell

Do you think that's because most growth teams and by and large marketing teams, is it because of this ABC marketing like style of like, let's just copy and paste what Uber did, Kaam did. Oh, that'll work for our B2B enterprise software. Like, like is that is that the trouble with a lot of folks have with growth?

00;35;49;19 - 00;36;07;06

Brian Balfour

I mean, it's definitely a big part of it, right? Like there's a lot of things out there that make us think that that works right or that's how things happened. And other companies, I think kind of going back to the old adage of what you said you were saying before, but you should be spending way more time on like defining the problem than you should on the solution.

00;36;07;06 - 00;36;32;02

Brian Balfour

And that unfortunately does end up being true. But I think that's actually hard to do in most practical environments when you're dealing with like hitting quarterly. OKRs and you're doing these team and weekly updates, all the, all those things. And so I go back to my story with Halligan, right? Like it took me some serious trust chips to buy myself the time to do that type of research, right?

00;36;32;04 - 00;36;46;04

Patrick Campbell

It's hard to know, like what expert level looks like because it's hard to see that because most of the expert level people aren't the ones writing the blog post out there publicly. They're the ones who are like, you know, clocking in and clocking out and, you know, controlling their focus.

00;36;46;04 - 00;37;00;27

Brian Balfour

So it's interests. Most of them don't have the incentives to sort of like do that stuff. Right. It's a little bit what we've been trying to do with the report. I think there's just some other things do it, especially in the product space. I have this hypothesis that product management is going to go.

00;37;00;27 - 00;37;01;16

Patrick Campbell

Through.

00;37;02;01 - 00;37;27;23

Brian Balfour

A pretty big wave of specialization over the next 3 to 5 years. So if you think about the other functions like engineering, design, marketing, they have all gone through specialization waves, right? So like in marketing, we now have performance marketers, content marketers, brand marketers are like all these different types of marketers. And in engineering, we have front engineers, we have back engineers, we have full stack engineers, we have like all these other specializations.

00;37;28;26 - 00;37;47;02

Brian Balfour

But most people view product management as like there's product managers, right? Like one big bucket. And what this leads to is like at least specifically in that function, this feeling that it's overwhelm, I need to know everything. And what that leads to is knowing a little a little bit about everything, but not a lot of any like one thing.

00;37;47;02 - 00;38;07;06

Brian Balfour

And so I think growth was part of this first wave of specialization where you now see growth PMS who kind of specialize in a particular type of product problem. And I think you're starting to see that with like data products as well. So like how to use data to create user value through like machine learning, like all that kind of stuff.

00;38;08;01 - 00;38;29;17

Brian Balfour

And so I don't know what exactly the specializations are going to be, but I do think the specialization titles and paths help drive people towards depth in a specific area where we have not seen that specifically on the product management function. And so it's kind of like I need to know mentality, which is impossible, right? Yeah, it would take you decades to learn.

00;38;29;17 - 00;38;30;26

Brian Balfour

Or do you think that that ends.

00;38;30;26 - 00;38;34;10

Patrick Campbell

Up merging growth and product together as one unit?

00;38;35;03 - 00;38;58;13

Brian Balfour

Well, the best teams already have growth under products Pinterest, HubSpot, Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, like whatever it is, all of their growth teams are centered on, centered on the product and none of them are centered under marketing. And that's just because I think there's very few meaningful problems to solve and unlocks that don't involve some type of product or engineering.

00;38;58;25 - 00;39;26;04

Brian Balfour

That doesn't mean that marketing is useless. That's actually opposite of what I'm saying. I actually think marketers bring an amazing set of skills to the table that product managers and engineers and designers don't have either. It's just that in most organizations they end up being siloed, often in some way, shape or form, and it creates like these really tough, tough canyons to bridge within an organization and all the best teams already have all their like growth under product.

00;39;26;04 - 00;39;44;26

Brian Balfour

And that will continue with the exception of companies where 90% of their growth machine is driven by sales and marketing. So primarily big enterprise types of accounts, we all like to say like how talking to customers is the key. But like most people actually talk to customers that much.

00;39;45;00 - 00;39;47;23

Patrick Campbell

So I don't get is there just laziness alone at least?

00;39;47;23 - 00;40;16;20

Brian Balfour

Resistance is definitely a lot of work. We're working on this new customer insights program. We're working with this awesome person. His name's out. He's the former head of user research at Slack and he was at Facebook before that. We're talking through all these examples right now, and it's been increasingly clear to me that, like customer research is one of these topics that we all probably feel like we're like out of ten on the scale when we're like probably really two or two or three.

00;40;17;02 - 00;40;38;07

Brian Balfour

So I will put myself in that bucket for sure. And I don't know exactly what it like, what causes that, because maybe it's just like thinking, like having talked to a lot of customers equates to being good at that. But it's very clear in like the research and looking at a bunch of his examples of his past work that that is 100% not true.

00;40;38;07 - 00;41;13;10

Brian Balfour

Like that is not true at all. And there's actually many different methods of customer research to execute them well, figure to know how to combine them in the right combinations like to do that sense making and synthesis. Like all of those things, there's like a ton of depth, there's a lot of depth there over, over time. So what creates that mentality of like we think we're all 8 to 8 out of ten is when we're really 2 to 2 or three is I'm not I'm not really sure, but it's something that I've become aware of as like, as, as like we put put together this, this new program.

00;41;13;10 - 00;41;34;02

Patrick Campbell

It's a huge thank you to Brian Balfour for his time and this interview. Now you've got the tools to make the company tune harmoniously. We talked about how to avoid getting sucked into traps using perspective to get everyone on the same page, creating tools to reveal answers, the importance of shared language and understanding nuance to unlock frameworks. Thanks for listening.

00;41;34;12 - 00;42;57;03

Patrick Campbell

Make sure you subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle. A podcast from Prophet will recur the largest, fastest growing media network dedicated to the world of subscriptions.