YouSaid · the spoken record

Sarah Jones Simmer

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69
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2022-04-19
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2022-04-19
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  1. “Yeah, I think the quick answer to your first question is I do feel like I got an up close and personal view of the healthcare system. The good, bad, and otherwise. But I'm incredibly grateful to the team of providers that I had the privilege of working with here in Austin at MD Anderson, you know, UT Neurosciences. And so just unbelievably grateful for that. It does change you. I hate that it takes something like this to give us that level of perspective, but that genuinely is the silver lining for me. I just think there's a level of gratitude that I have for the simple things and an understanding and clarity of purpose.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “But part of the reason that I've had nine surgeries on a cancer journey is that two of them were related to my brain and making sure that we could address the aneurysm.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “I never tell this part of the story because I feel like it sounds like so crazy. But in a strange way, cancer may have saved my life. So as a result of how advanced the cancer was when they found it, they did a bunch of additional scans to check my bones, lungs liver, the places that this typically metastasizes. And the kind of cancer I have often metastasizes to the brain. So they check my brain and came back and said, well, we've got good news and bad news. Good news is there's no tumor. The bad news is you have an unrupt aneurysm that's effectively a ticking time bomb. And on the one hand, it's actually great that we know about that, the likelihood that that would have ruptured is fairly high. And so I've subsequently had it stented.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Mostly that by women across city, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, even our internal team that was supportive of things like putting my major surgeries on the calendar and working deadlines around that. And so it was really empowering to not be relegated to patient status and to be able to lean into that process. And then by the way, when I did get to a point where because radiation was daily and I just needed more time, I felt truly empowered to take a leave. And I know that not everyone gets to be in that situation. And I certainly do wish that level of agency for more folks facing something like this. But I think the chance to really lean into something that meant so much to me professionally while I was struggling with something in terms of illness, it just felt really powerful. I think I needed that.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I mean, first of all, I felt like I had to work. I did not want to be a full time patient. I love work. I get so much joy from it. If that was also taken away from me, in addition to what surgery was going to take away, what chemo was going to take away, I did not want to lose my ability to lean in intellectually and build something that we were continue to be so proud of at Bumble. So I knew I wanted to do it.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Through that process. But one of the things I felt like I realized pretty quickly is that I didn't have the same degree of emotional bandwidth as I might have before. I can specifically remember being getting a biopsy and like awaiting the results and then going through my inbox on my phone and like I couldn't even process some of the things that were coming up and like this person's title and like when are these performance reviews and when like I just didn't have the brain space I needed to focus my emotional bandwidth on myself, my family and so I had a conversation with Witten and we constructed this narrower deeper role as chief strategy officer that would enable me to go from a team of like 150 to 40 and that would take on transformative strategic projects across the business and the first one would be the IPO which may sound counterintuitive to want to take on something like that during a cancer journey but”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Yeah, yeah, I am. I would say I used to not be and then I think what's been eye-opening for me is so many people go through a version of a health challenge and are trying to think about how to navigate their career while they go through it. And when I did finally start sharing my story, I was touched by how many people reached out and were experiencing something similar. And I think there's so much solidarity in that shared experience. So in May of 2020, I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. I didn't have a family history. I had no reason to suspect that I would have it. And so it was very blindsiding. And this was shortly after Bumble had been acquired by Blackstone. I was loving and thriving working with the private equity team, restructuring the business, working through the hundred-day plan. It was terrifying. And Whitney was one of the first people that I told. And she was an unbelievable supporter.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “For 20 years or even five, right, if it's through a high growth period. And I think that is a big lesson that I learned both as an individual and as a manager.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “To that, so I think even the people that we felt like maybe weren't growing at the same speed of the business, like their imprint on the business was indelible and it wouldn't have been the same business otherwise. This is a really funny reference. But I remember reading an interview with Brad Pitt at one point and someone asked him about his quote unquote failed marriage to Jennifer Andison. And he said it wasn't a failed marriage. It was a great marriage while it lasted. And then it was over. And then obviously he has written some subsequent chapters. But point being like, it doesn't have to last forever for it to be great, for both you as the employee and for the business. And I think getting to a place where as business leaders and as employees, we accept that careers are going to come in chapters gives both sides a lot more freedom to have then the harder conversations when it's necessary. There shouldn't be this pressure to stay in the same business or same.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “And I think that what we also have to give ourselves permission for is like maybe the goal shouldn't be to grow with the pace of the business. Maybe it should be to like write the chapter that you need to and enable you to pass the baton to the right person who's going to write the next chapter. And look, I think this is the lesson I learned from myself as well. Like once Bumble went public, I really had this urge to go build again. And it took a minute for me to give myself permission to sort of sign off and admit that my sweet spot is the early stuff. Like I wanted to go build infrastructure again, the conversation that we were just having. And I think there's such a push in the business world to be able to like endlessly scale as the business scales. And we've got to give ourselves permission to be like, where do I find joy? What is my sweet spot? Where am I the biggest force multiplier in the business? And I'm going to go find a role that matches.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Thought that I had the privilege to work with at Bumble. So I think there's obviously the technical functions of the business where you can get leverage, but I think a big piece of it is finding the people who are going to give you that because at those early stages, it's not about stay in your lane. It's like own accountability for your lane, but how do you flex and help the business grow? And probably the single biggest thing that you can do to get leverage is hire well.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Interesting. You know, I think part of that is actually in the leaders that you hire, you know, there's been conversation about this concept of T-shaped leaders because every hire you make, especially in the early days, is going to shape the trajectory of the business, right? So how do you find people who are T-shaped in the sense that they can cover a broad range of things, but they can go really deep on one or two things and own that, but have the chance to kind of grow and flex and again, give you leverage. So one example I'll think of is we had a finance leader that I brought on and obviously the immediate need was like, we got to get the books closed on time, we got to be driving insights from our accounting purposes. But he was such a sharp forward thinker as well that he could become a partner to performance marketing and help them really think about their strategy differently. He could flex across other areas of the business. And I can think of dozens of leaders like.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Allowed us to build on top of it. And then, of course, spend a ton of time on the commercial engine of the business that kind of intersection of marketing and product, this like how do we really dig into knowing the unit economics? How do we understand what those look like in a scaled market versus something earlier stage? There was a time when I was so obsessively discussing this with Witt that she bought me a birthday cake that said LTV to CAC ratio. And I, you know, I still have a picture of it on my phone. And I think one, it just speaks to like the kind of human she was. But when you believe deeply enough in that, I think that the scale is an outgrowth of that, you have to build the infrastructure, but it's really about letting the heart come through.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Hires that I think helped us to develop the art and science of the business and create that mirror that everybody else could use for their growth. And then moved on to some things like legal, finance, HR, like building that kind of operational backbone that would enable scale elsewhere. The people are ultimately the heart of any business and they're the greatest asset that you have. And so investing heavily in not just HR from a cover your processes get the benefits in 401k working. But like, how do you build a performance review cycle? How do you actually think about culture and communication? And in a team that's growing so fast, how are we equipping emerging managers? And I don't think we got everything right, but I think we had so much intention around that and understood how that was again going to create that scaffolding.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Company. So it's been a lot of time listening and building relationships and building trust. And then kind of thought systematically about the pieces of the business that would unlock the most horsepower the most quickly. And so something like analytics, right? coming in and helping to build an analytics function that could surface real insights and just help every other part of the business get smarter about the work that they were doing. And so I spent a lot of time in those early days like recruiting and trying to build that muscle because it was going to be this enormous amount of leverage and unlock for the rest of the business. And I think thinking about an analytics function as a true growth multiplier, you know, this isn't like bean counters and just throwing out numbers, but how do they partner with the people who are controlling budget, who are controlling different activities? How do we give everybody a layer of insight? And Mason really wonderful.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “In my mind, especially as I think about my early days, there were my job to build scaffolding, right? To set people up for success. And so they knew where the walls could go and grow and they understood their role in building it. But I had to do it in a really systematic way so that the way of process didn't crush this like absolute heart and energy and passion and joy that the business was bringing into the world. And so some of it was very methodical and tactical. I spent a lot of time listening, understanding the business, building real trust with the people who had gotten the business that far. And I think that's a lesson that I've taken to every project, every role since then is like build the foundation of trust. Otherwise, you're not, you can't go back and re-engineer that, right? You get one shot at the beginning of really getting people to trust you and how you're going to layer in your vision to the growth of the.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “So, yeah, I joined Bumble in 2017. It was about 30 people in a two bedroom apartment at that point. There was more creative energy and passion and just clarity of purpose. And I think I'd ever experienced at a business in my life. And this was an interesting learning for me because I think I've seen other instances where, you know, the business model was there, the financial models work. There's this beautiful detailed Excel model that like the infrastructure is there and the heart isn't. And Mumble was the exact inverse, right? Like there was this incredible heart. There was such clarity. There was really clear competitive positioning. There was product market fit. Women who were trying the product were falling in love with it because it met their needs in a way that nothing else in the market had. And so that made my job easy around scale, to be honest, because when you have that beating heart of something that's so clear, then it's just about setting up the infrastructure for scale, but doing it in a way that doesn't crush the magic. I have this visual.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Strength training. I've gotten really into lifting heavy weights. There's something that's so cathartic about just like picking up a huge kettlebell and swinging it many times. And I feel like I've had various chapters with fitness in my life and mostly lean towards endurance stuff like long distance swimming, running. I did, I did do an Iron Man at one point, but had never really gotten into strength training until for health reasons, I was told, you know, my bones are at risk. So I need to pound them basically and make them stronger. And started working with someone who's really helped me with that. And they love it. I do it twice a week. It's like the highlight of my week. So I would say I'm obsessed with training.”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “I had this moment in our treatment journey where the doctor was worried about metastasis and she said, look, worst case I can get you five years. And there's something very special about that five-year timeframe. You know, if you had 30 days, you would change everything. And on the other end of the spectrum, all of us live right now like we've got infinity in front of us. But what if you had five years? What would you do differently? You do a lot more changing on the margin. And the reality is we should all be thinking that way every day. You know, what are the things that I would drop if I actually only had five years? Would I be so disappointed that I didn't do if I only had five years?”

    2022-04-19 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Sarah Jones Simmer: The Foundation of Trust · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT