YouSaid · the spoken record

Ada Chen Rekhi

lines on the record: 94
first: 2023-04-16
most recent: 2023-04-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“You can find me online on Twitter and LinkedIn. I'm Ada Chen, A-D-A-C-H-E-N. I have a website, adachen.com, and you can always just shoot me an email. Ada.chen at gmail.com. In terms of how listeners can be useful to me, Any feedback and sort of riffs on some of the ideas and topics that we've shared, I'm always eager to learn from other people. So, you know, don't feel free to drop a note and say hello. And if you're a founder and you're interested in learning more about coaching, I'm always happy to talk”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By really focusing on what's the number one thing and then just getting started on it a little bit. It just makes it really lightweight. And usually what I find is that five minutes turns into a solid hour just knocking that thing out early in my day. And I feel really accomplished. But it's a mental hurdle that I really struggle with.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figure out maybe the night before. One thing that you want to get done in your day. And then at the earliest opportunity, just try to give yourself five minutes on it. Just five minutes. And the reason why I say five minutes is that there is sort of this challenge that I experience and maybe other people experience as well, which is really just like productive procrastination. Even though I know something is really important that needs to get done, I will often do other things that are useful and need to get done simply because I'm avoiding that one thing. And then before you know it, it's the end of the day. And I'm like, I still have to go do that thing.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The new browser, and I'm actually really excited about its vision. I'm not sure if I'm going to work it into my workflow yet or how it fits in, but it's really beautiful and it's really cool to see someone iterating on the cluster that is browser tabs.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I can't go through this podcast without giving a shout out to Note Joy. So Notejoy is a fast and focused Notes app for individuals and teams. And so that's the company that I work on. So use it for everything from Nora product roadmaps to my coaching notes to even prepping for something like this podcast. I use NoteJoy all the time. Another one that I really use a lot is Captio. It's been around for a while, but it's a little iOS app. I don't know if it's on Android, but basically it's a blank notepad. Can dump your brain into it, and there's one button and it emails it to you. And so when I find that I'm really distracted or I just want to remember something, I use Captu all the time just to quickly capture my ideas and then I process it later in my inbox. And then something that I just downloaded this week is ARC.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's a common misconception people have about you? And I usually like to throw that in toward the end of the interview. And the reason why I think it's really useful is it's a way for me to kind of reset my bias. I may have had a certain impression about them. And this is sort of their opportunity to speak up and say, hey, a lot of people think this about me, but it's not true. And it's also kind of this reflection of their self-awareness.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so good. I mean, I think the thing I love about Star Trek is just that unlike some of the classic storylines that you see right now in TV coming out now, sometimes the episodes are just happy. Like they explore a planet, nothing bad happens. They see something really wondrous. They all leave happy. And, you know, they pat themselves on the back for having explored something. And it's something that's sort of missing in the genre of TV that they still have, this sort of happiness factor where sometimes life is good and sometimes life is bad.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Ted Lasso was back, so I'm watching that the newest season. And I am also a Star Trek nerd. So I'm watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great book. The next book that I also recommend is a book called Designing Your Life. And it's out of the Stanford Design School, and it's by, let me look, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. And they're two Stanford D-School professors. And what they're doing is they're applying design principles to life design. And so how do you actually map that next level career that's both meaningful and fulfilling and also, you know, achieves maybe some of the success factors that you really care about? And brainstorm and be really creative about it. And so when people are stuck or thinking about career strategy, that's actually one of the books that I always point out for them.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Persuasion by Robert Chaldini. I think it's a great book if you're a marketer, it's a great book if you're a founder, a product person, but it really kind of is a breakdown of what are the different strategies to get people to say yes and help persuade them towards things. And I think it really helps in terms of thinking through that and designing a product or business around it.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh gosh, they think I'm not good. They think I'm too lazy. I saw that look that they were giving me and, you know, sort of take it as this personal offense. So the ability to be really truth seeking and kind of take the most respectful interpretation when you're giving feedback to focus on trying to get to a smart, good outcome that benefits the business. I think that's actually one of the most crucial things that you have to think about if you're going to work with anyone, much less your partner or a close friend on starting a company and what's really worked for us.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Satin does product design and engineering. I focus on marketing, operations, finance, kind of everything else on the business side. And because of that, it's really clear that we take input from each other, but ultimately who makes the call and who's driving and owning that project. So that was really helpful for us. And then the big part that I think is sort of the murky mire for couples and maybe even for close friends working together is how do you engage in constructive conflict? How do you get to the point where you're attacking the problem and not each other? And so if your partner comes to you and says that work was not good, Marketing plan or that product roadmap that you put together not good. Do you take it as The plan is not good, and let's talk about what we can actually do to fix it, or do you take it as”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's been phenomenal. The thing that I would say really helps us in terms of making it a successful relationship was. Kind of things that I think apply to anyone that's thinking about should you work with a person and should you be a co founder with this person? We had a very, very good set of complementary domains and skill sets. So we had really clear decision-making rights.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of played it out and said, well, okay, now we're going to walk around being obsessed about two completely different things. We may never see each other. And so why not try the same thing? And so our first experiment was actually trying it together. And we were kind of nuts. I actually had a 30-60 and 90 day plan where we would have check-ins and some of the explicit questions in the check-in is, is this affecting our relationship? Because I just wanted to make sure we were putting our relationship first. And it worked well for us to the extent that we've done two companies together. And then when we were at LinkedIn, we actually moved across multiple teams in the company and continued to be counterparts in product and marketing together.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my personal experience is I love it. My partner, Sachin and I work really well together. And the main benefit that we have is that the act of founding is such an active obsession that you spend so much of your time thinking about your business and the concepts of your business and whatever problem you happen to be facing. That when I had this thesis of I want to be a founder too,”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it really just goes back to what I was talking about earlier where being a founder is such a traumatic and crazy experience with all these intense highs and lows and lack of structure that when you throw romance into the mix, it's just this really volatile combination. And so what I found is that it seems like it either goes really well or it goes really badly. And there's kind of no in-between. And asterisks are there because we've actually had a couple friends try it. And it's been such a mixed bag of results.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you had asked me when I first started the company, it would have been an enthusiastic, hell yes, I totally recommend. Now I have a couple asterisks on top of it.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just write for them. I think that's really helpful. And it kind of helps us with. The problem of getting in over your skis, right? Like really overfixating on the outcome of I did a post and I didn't get my 5,000 followers. And instead, just thinking about I did a post because I wanted to share an interesting idea and then how cool some people resonated with it.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find that really helpful as well. One piece of advice that's similar to that I've heard is write for an audience of one. Like imagine you're just talking to a friend or you're trying to talk to someone that's a trusted colleague.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, modern networking is finding people that are really interesting on the internet and then finding some way to connect with them. It takes a certain amount of extroversion in that case to start meeting up with people and having conversations with them. So forcing yourself in some way to really think about, well, instead of having one outreach and then failing at it and saying, I'm never doing that again. Do I actually create a pattern where I can learn or a sequence of trying to do this 10 or 12 times? And see what I get out of it because that's really how you learn and how you grow”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so there are actually a few of them. A lot of them around content creation because it's just so hard. So, you know, one of them that comes to mind is I know a lot of people have talked about doing a LinkedIn 30. And so 30 days of posting something on LinkedIn in terms of content every day for 30 days straight and just getting past that barrier of sharing and then looking at it over time and seeing out of the things that you posted, what really resonated. I also think it's helpful to start thinking about things like getting into DMs, right? Like it takes a lot of work to sort of think about, oh, this person's really smart, let me DM them, let me try to strike up a conversation because we're well out of the world of physical business cards. I don't think anyone has those anymore.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of this relationships now from that first job and those first couple months are pretty much foundational to the network and sort of the people that I know today. And so it really paid off for me because I really focused on eating my vegetables and kind of powering through that initial discomfort. And so to kind of tidle back when it comes to thinking about how do you progress in your career, think about the obvious things that maybe you're not very good at. Then think about what are some of the actions that you can do to kind of be very deliberate and intentional about practicing it to get to the point where you have some faculty at it because it's just really important in some cases to be good at certain skills.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I did that a couple weeks in a row, and it was horrible. It was really awful. But it got a lot better. And what I realized about that was actually two things. One, that as I started going and I saw familiar faces, it became a lot easier for me to just break in and meet people just by seeing who people I knew already were talking to. And then second, I got a lot better at just breaking in and introducing myself and kind of understanding how this intro and sort of networking thing worked in terms of meeting people and moving through a crowd.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, you know, to make it a little bit real, if we think about the world of podcasts, Lenny, I think it's something like 75 or 80% of podcasts never make it past the first podcast. And you have to do things a number of times before you really develop an affinity for it because the first time you do it, you're just not going to be good. And so, you know, my mini example of that was early on in my career, I was really awkward and not very good at networking. And I moved to Silicon Valley. And one of the things that people told me about Silicon Valley was that it's really important to grow your network. It's all about the people. Totally agree about that. However, I didn't know anyone. And I didn't really understand this networking thing. So I gave myself this rule where I had to go out once a week for a couple months, go to an external event, and I would count out 10 business cards. And the rule was I had to hand out all 10 of those business cards by introducing myself to people that were new and touch the back wall of the venue of that event, and then I could leave.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest piece of advice that I have that comes to mind is really around trying to be really thoughtful on something I call eating your vegetables. Like, I have all these branded terms for things. And so the researchers say expose kids to vegetables 10 or 12 times, even if they don't like it, because that's what it takes to get someone to like something. And so when I think about career strategy, and when I think about improving yourself, and I kind of think about, you know, how do we look for some of the hard feedback, eating your vegetables is this really important component of it because it's about how do you identify dislike for something because you're bad at it or you're new to it or you've never done it before compared to genuine dislike where you've done it and you really don't like it.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great story. I think Cheryl Sandberg took her aside after one of her meetings and basically told her that. If you say it makes you sound stupid. And she didn't take that well But at the same time, later on in retrospect, you know, she reflected that it was so brave and so helpful of someone like Cheryl to go give that feedback because there's a real cost to it. There's real risk to it.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. But I think on the topic of being female or on the topic of physical appearance, or maybe even some of the topics around being an immigrant, right? If you're in a position where you can give that feedback, I think the struggle is often Be well received. And that's where the feedback comes from me from the curiosity loop for this piece, which was There's almost no winning in doing it because the upside is something great happens for them. But there's just so many downsides to giving advice or giving someone input like that that the default course is just to avoid. But then that person never learns the rules of the game.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was so nervous. I actually almost didn't do it. Took a deep breath and then decided what the heck. I think she's great. I think she would really benefit from doing it. And I gave it. And even in a position where I'm in a relationship with her where I can have that trust, it was super, super difficult. So I can only imagine how hard it is for people to give feedback like that in another context. But how else are people going to hear it?”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turn to her friends and did, you know, kind of like a mini makeover. And amped up her appearance, and she came back and she reported a lot of people have been giving me really positive feedback that something about me feels more confident and more energetic and they can't figure out why. But actually she was getting like a ton of people noticing that something was really different about her in a positive way simply because, you know, I was in this great position as a coach to give her some of these pieces of hard feedback that she had never heard before. So it's really on us to try to find those and then try to kind of adapt ourselves to play that game if you want to play at that level.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turn to a young woman on the team and say, Here, let me give you feedback on your physical appearance and how it affects your competence and how you're perceived in the workforce, that the vast majority of them will just never do it. Because there's no winning, which is similar to the feedback that I got. And so, you know, where I kind of lean in is to say we're not powerless. And there's something that all of us can do if we're in a position where we feel like not even about being female. It's about being perceived as too young or too old, too tall, too short, not the right race, you know, whatever reason that you feel people may be disqualifying you or not seeing you, we're not powerless even though this game is rigged, right? We can study the game. We can help each other and we can actually start to call out some of those rules and then find ways around them. And, you know, in this case for the founder in this example, she really”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, this is sort of, I think, one of the big challenges of being a woman in Silicon Valley because getting to an executive role or getting to a funded founder role, it's kind of like an Olympic level sport. You have to get all the way through the funnel and become one of the few that are really chosen to do that. But the difficulty of this game is that no one tells you the rules of the game. Actually, don't really know what are the rules on how to get intros or give intros. What's the right way to follow up? You know, what are the impressions that people have about you? And it turns out that in a career context, it's so unsafe for your manager to”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And her reaction was like, oh my God, Ada, no one has ever connected the dots for me. Thank you so much. It has never explicitly been told to me that some of these elements which you describe and they're very easy for me to fix. And I'm motivated to fix them are things that might actually trigger certain impressions or biases. And like no one's actually said it to me before. And I'm about to go into fundraising. And it's actually super helpful for me to hear this, that these are controllable elements of my physical attire or my parents that might actually just affect the way that people perceive me. And then it gives me this extra hump to get over in terms of getting to this point of credibility for them to see me as a seasoned operator that I am. And she took it so well, but what was interesting about it was actually that she'd made it all this way in her career. She'd even raised funding. And no one had ever given her this feedback.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Old t shirt, hair back in a claw, bra straps were showing, and she was just incredibly casual in terms of her physical appearance. And it took me almost like a little bit of a step back to kind of reevaluate and think, oh, you know, this is the same person, but she actually just presents so differently. And so then I took this step after we met. And I gave her that feedback in one of our next coaching sessions where we invited each other to give each other feedback. And I shared a lot of my impressions with her and I told her. I respect you so much as an operator, and I want to tell you that in the physical meeting that we had together, there was kind of like this disparity on how I would have potentially perceived you when I first met you in person versus what I've come to know from about you from the months that we spent together.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great respect for her competences as an operator and sort of the way that she thought and took apart problems and then acted on them. And then we met together for the first time in person at lunch. And the disparity, and I feel almost nervous talking about this here, the disparity between sort of my sense of who she was as an operator and how she came across to me initially at this lunch was really striking in that it was a weekday lunch and she was kind of dressed as if she was hanging out on the weekend.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a really Delicate subject, and it's interesting because when I try to decompose why people gave me the feedback they gave me on this topic, I think a big piece of it is just that you want to have respect for the inherent challenges of being, you know, sort of a non-stereotypically great fit for leadership roles or certain career success roles in Silicon Valley and acknowledge that. And also, you know, try to push for some of the agency of the things that you can do. So I'm going to start with just like this quick story about someone that I worked with who's given me permission to share this in a coaching context and then sort of back out. So I was working with this seed stage founder and she's so smart. She is really dynamic, very, very focused, really, really great at taking feedback and actioning it. She's one of those people that is just stellar. And I have no doubt that she's going to make a huge dent in the universe. And we've been working together on Zoom for”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, yes, I know of multiple people that I've talked to, usually CEOs, that either have had a series of coaches. Or have multiple coaches. And, you know, it makes a lot more sense, Lenny, when you think about someone who's getting a pitch coach because they're about to get into fundraising.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, makes sense when you're really performing at a high level to consider having coaches that work with you on shorter term basis to really just work on your speaking or help you with getting into your groove on writing or help you achieve a specific goal and you shouldn't think about it as sort of this long-term commitment to stay with one person, but instead more choosing off of a menu and thinking about what goal are you trying to achieve right now.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How deeply you would explore with them and how well they got you and sort of remembered the pieces of the conversation and help you put it together way more than potentially some experiences that they'd had where this person had the perfect background, but they just never really kind of connected on that level. So it was unintuitive to me that there was such a big piece of it that was around personal connection, which is why I now push people to try to talk to a couple different people. And then the other thing which kind of comes back to the sports coaching analogy is that there are different coaches that are really good at different things. And so just like how if you're a star tennis player, you might actually have multiple coaches working with you, maybe like an offensive coach or a defensive coach or working on a particular swing.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought that credentials and sort of the relevant experience of the coach was a huge factor in terms of how you should go about your coach selection. But part of the interviews that I did was talking to founders that had had experiences with coaches and asking them to reflect back. And these founders and executives, when they thought about it, they actually said so much more about it was actually this amorphous sense of vibe with the person, how safe you felt with them.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that's a totally fine way to go find a coach, but I would actually really just urge people to talk to a couple because what works for your friend may not work for you. And just being able to see some of the variants in terms of the style and how people get along, I think that can make a huge difference in terms of, you know, kind of this reflection of how do you learn best when you think about acquiring a new skill. Do you love structure? Do you not like structure? Do you like it when someone really teaches you and walks you through specific examples or do you like frameworks? Coaches kind of come in all of those different flavors. And so I think it's really worth it to kind of explore before you get into such a deep relationship with someone, just so that both people can feel really sure about it.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go to my site, I actually have this guide that I've written over time on both. My take on how do you find a coach? And the TLDR there is actually that I strongly recommend to everyone if you're thinking about getting a coach, talk to two or three different coaches. Really get a sense of their vibe and how well you get to know them, and it's surprising because I did this piece of research, which I also wrote about and we could link to. But I talked to over 80 people about their experiences with a coach. I talk including coaches, including founders, including executives. And there's this sort of shocking data point in there where half of people that found their coach literally went with the first coach that they talked to. It's that your buddy said, I work with this great coach, and then you go and you hire your buddy's coach.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or it's something very sensitive, like people issues and interpersonal conflicts, coaches can be especially helpful in those cases because it's this really safe space for you to work through things, but also have someone who's really rational to help guide you through them with potentially some frameworks and extra advice.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's really intense highs and lows. And so for a founder, it might make a lot of sense to get a coach because they have to learn a lot of stuff really quickly and time is of the essence. And so a coach might be a really helpful shortcut for them to get there. Related to that, I think it's also really helpful on sensitive topics. So there are a lot of things that we want to be coached on where either it takes a lot of time for us to work through and sort of like, you know, progress because it's a long-term project, for example.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't be a coach if I didn't think that it wasn't important and valuable. I think that in In certain contexts, it can be super helpful. So when you have situations where you're in a state of hypergrowth and you need very accelerated learning and you kind of need someone who can point you in the right direction, I think coaches can be really helpful. So I work with founders, for example, and founders are just kind of in this unique state where everything is chaos. They have no structure. They don't know what their jobs are. They have fully justified imposter syndrome where no one in their right mind would objectively have hired them for the position that they're in.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the first things that I do when people talk to me about coaching is I challenge them and say, Have you explored all of these other opportunities first? And do you really need a coach? And is a coach actually the best option for you, kind of like an anti-cell, just so that they know what they're getting themselves into, because I don't necessarily think that it's useful for all things, even though it can be helpful.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's actually way better to run a curiosity loop, for example, and get the benefit of a couple different minds on a specific topic and hit their wheelhouse of things that they know about than to go ask one person, what do you think I should do in this situation? If you're trying to learn about a topic in a really robust way, let's say you want to learn about growth, maybe you should take a reforge course and get access to all of the resources and the insights of the EIRs and the growth advisors that reforge and get sort of an overview and survey of the landscape instead of one person's experience and the handful of companies that they might have worked with. And likewise, you know, if you're just feeling like you're a little emotionally overcome, I think coaches are sort of this great resource around that, but it's actually better to kind of pay it forward and build a tribe and a community of people around you that you can rely on for support because that's the kind of thing that lasts you for years and years, right? And so.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what have you accomplished? And you're just, it's like a home run. And then look at all of the potential alternatives in terms of how you could have spent your valuable time. And often pricey fees to achieve the same goal, but maybe in a better way. And the thing that people don't really think about is if you're looking for a mentor, a coach is actually a terrible mentor in some ways because it's this one person's opinion.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll have a hot take on this, and it's something that I share to people when I talk to them about coaching. My hot take is that for the vast majority of people, they probably do not need a coach And what I often push people on is if you're thinking about getting a coach, which is usually an indication that they have a feeling of being stuck or they have a problem that they're trying to solve. I ask them, what are your goals? When it comes to coaching, like roll it forward six months. What have you gotten done in your coaching experience?”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think really thinking about it in that lens kind of helps you sort of trade off against some of that external pressure and the ego monster.”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the ego monster is a great way to put it. I use Something that Warren Buffett has talked about, which is inner scorecard versus outer scorecard. He talks about how there's an outer scorecard, which is how the rest of the world evaluates you, how you keep score in terms of external factors. So top 10 lists, wealth, status, title, maybe things that people really care about. And then your inner scorecard is things that actually matter to you. Know how you spent your day, how good of a person you are. Did you have an adventure today, Lenny? Were you kind? And there are a lot of things that maybe are in opposition to each other. So really thinking about did you win at the cost of kindness? Did you succeed at the cost of losing access to the adventure that you really wanted?”
2023-04-16 · Lenny's Podcast · How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source