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

I think this is actually the biggest change since the inception of Google actually. I don't think we've seen something as profound as what's coming with AI and search.

You don't want to focus too much on growth until you have product market fit. If you start growing a product that doesn't have product market fit, you're actually doing more damage than good because you have a product that is now being exposed to the market through growth levers that is giving a bad experience with your product.

The art of self-reflection and coaches. I've had coaches my whole career. You're constantly iterating, experimenting, and becoming the best you can be in your career also as a dad and as a husband.

I dedicate an hour aside to really think about, 'What's going well? What's not going well? What am I screwing up? Why am I screwing it up?' which is often more important than 'What am I screwing up?' And 'What am I going to do about it?'

I think there's an SEO play in any company. Google is such a large funnel of existing demand for your product or your product area that there's usually an angle to get some SEO traffic there.

Entire industries are based off of single keywords. Companies were bought and sold based on one keyword rank. So it's not like, 'Oh, it's a little bit of traffic.' You can literally build an entire business around that first spot.

For me, growth equals whatever it takes to move the needle. That could be zero to one building a new product. It could be M&A, it could be SEO, it could be social, it could be onboarding.

You don't want to focus too much on growth until you have product market fit. If you start growing a product that doesn't have product market fit, you're actually doing more damage than good because you have a product that is now being exposed to the market through growth levers that is giving a bad experience with your product.