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Luc Levesque

Episode #184

Chief Growth Officer

Shopify

👥Team & Culture🚀Career & Leadership🎯Product Strategy

📝Full Transcript

16,582 words
Luc Levesque (00:00:00): We talk about the 10X engineer and we don't really talk about the 10X growth advisor or 10X growth person, but the same dynamic applies. You could argue it applies even more because the right growth advisor can have literally company changing impact. Something I've experienced several times in hindsight when you're like, "Okay, here's the needle in the haystack." And then it's implemented and you can see hundreds of percentages, sometimes over a thousand percent lift when you get it right. It's one of those weird disciplines where the right person at the right time can literally say a sentence that changes the trajectory of your company. You can't say that for a lot of different disciplines, but this is one of them. Lenny (00:00:36): Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard one experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Luc Levesque. Luc is currently the chief growth officer at Shopify. Before this, he was recruited personally by Mark Zuckerberg to help grow Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. He's also VP of Growth and a GM at Tripadvisor. He's also been a growth advisor to companies like Twitter, Pinterest, Patreon, Thumbtack, and Canva. Lenny (00:01:05): In our conversation, Luc shares advice on how and when to think about getting a growth advisor, including how to structure the relationship and what to look for in an advisor. We also spent a ton of time on SEO, how to think about this as a growth channel, who it's well suited for, and how everything is about to change in SEO with Bard and ChatGPT. Plus Luc shares a ton of really interesting advice around the value of self-reflection, building routines, cold plunges, also a couple of amazing stories about working with Zuck and what you learned from him. This is such an insight rich episode and I know you'll love it. With that, I bring you Luc Levesque after a sh...

💡 Key Takeaways

  • 1Hire based on 'Signs of Excellence': Look for repeated exceptional achievements in any field, not just work history.
  • 2Structure advisor deals with a 3-month cliff to de-risk the relationship and align incentives via equity.
  • 3SEO strategy depends on site architecture: distinguish between 'editorial' sites and 'programmatic/UGC' sites.
  • 4The 'Poaching Signal': A candidate whose former boss tries to hire them back is a massive indicator of quality.
  • 5Focus relentlessly on 'Impact' over activity; iterate strategies until the North Star metric moves.
  • 6Implement a 'Bootloader' morning routine involving exercise and structured strategic reflection.
  • 7Prepare for the shift in Search (SGE/ChatGPT) where answers are provided directly, reducing click-throughs for informational queries.

📚Methodologies (4)

👥 Team & Culture

A hiring heuristic that predicts future performance based on past outlier achievements. It looks for evidence of repeated success in diverse areas (work, sports, hobbies) and specific social signals like former bosses attempting to re-hire the candidate.

Core Principles

  • 1.Seek 3 Signs of Excellence: Look for repeated wins, awards, or exceptional grit in any domain (e.g., Olympic medals, successful exits).
  • 2.The Poaching Signal: Verify if a former manager left a company and immediately tried to poach the candidate (strongest signal of value).
  • 3.Involve the Spouse/Family: For senior hires, engage the family to align personal and professional incentives early.

"The best predictor of future performance is past performance. I'm looking for signs of excellence... repeated success, not just once."

#'signs#excellence'#hiring
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🚀 Career & Leadership

A structural framework for engaging advisors that prioritizes equity over cash to align outcomes. It includes strict performance cliffs and long exercise windows to ensure the advisor is committed to the company's long-term success.

Core Principles

  • 1.The 3-Month Cliff: Structure the deal so both parties can walk away risk-free after 3 months if no value is added.
  • 2.Equity Alignment: Use equity vesting to align the advisor's success with the company's exit/success.
  • 3.Knowledge Transfer Goal: The advisor's primary goal should be to train the internal team so the advisor eventually becomes obsolete.

"The right growth advisor can have literally company changing impact... you can see hundreds of percentages, sometimes over a thousand percent lift when you get it right."

#growth#advisor#equity
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🎯 Product Strategy

A classification framework that dictates SEO strategy based on page generation mechanics. It distinguishes between editorial/static sites (harder to scale) and programmatic/UGC sites (massive scale potential).

Core Principles

  • 1.Bucket 1 (Editorial): Few pages (e.g., SaaS homepage). Strategy requires manual content creation and answering user questions (blogging).
  • 2.Bucket 2 (Programmatic/UGC): Millions of pages generated by users or data (e.g., Pinterest, LinkedIn). Strategy focuses on technical scalability and indexation loops.
  • 3.Single Keyword Dominance: Recognize that entire businesses can be built on ranking #1 for a single high-intent keyword.

"Entire industries are based off of single keywords... getting that number one spot is not like, 'Oh, it's a little bit of traffic.' You can literally build an entire business around that first spot."

#two-bucket#strategy#product
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🚀 Career & Leadership

A disciplined morning routine designed to 'boot up' the leader's brain and iterate on performance. It combines physical priming (exercise/cold plunge) with structured, dashboard-based analytical reflection.

Core Principles

  • 1.Physical Priming: Use intense exercise and cold exposure to optimize neurochemistry before work.
  • 2.Structured Dashboarding: Maintain a 'Life Dashboard' (Father, Husband, Leader) with Red/Yellow/Green status indicators.
  • 3.Iterative Feedback: Don't just reflect; actively ask for feedback (e.g., asking kids how to be a better dad) and schedule fixes immediately.

"I dedicate an hour aside to really think about... 'What am I screwing up? Why am I screwing it up?' As long as you're learning and iterating every day, then you're just making constant progress."

#'bootloader'#self-reflection#routine
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