From school to startup (Braden McCarthy & Ben Grynol)

Many young college graduates feel pressured to pursue a traditional career path like finance or law. But what about those who take the path less trodden, such as joining a startup? In this episode we speak with Braden McCarthy, a member of the Operations team at Levels, who joined the company right after graduation. No matter where you begin your career, it can be easy to feel imposter syndrome. But as Braden’s journey shows, the best way to begin is to jump in feet first and determine where you can start adding value from day one.

Find an opportunity that resonates

After coming across Levels on Twitter, Braden couldn’t get it out of his head.

I first came across Levels on Twitter and just immediately resonated with me so strongly. I was tracking my sleep exercise, but nutrition had been something I was experimenting with and couldn’t get that same feedback on. And it just felt like the hardest one to intuitively know and the biggest gap in where we can get feedback and learn how to improve. So that’s what initially struck me. And I looked for career opportunities, didn’t see anything, but just couldn’t stop thinking about Levels and it hit me. I might as well just reach out to Josh who had sent out an email for the waitlist. I think I just responded to that email saying, I can’t stop thinking about what you’re doing, I think it’s going to be super impactful and I would love to help in any way possible. And, yeah, after a few months, one thing led to another and I came on board.

Don’t rush into a job blindly

Ironically, thanks to Covid Braden had a buffer of time to fully consider his post-graduation career options.

Finance was a very established career path that I thought was right to go down without really thinking about why. And when reflecting on it more, startups seemed like a better fit. And it was also kind of a strange time in the spring of 2020 where not as many people were getting jobs immediately after school. So there was a little more – it felt like there was a little more time to be patient and find the right thing. I think it just became very clear to me that I was going down a path I wasn’t interested in and it’s worthwhile to spend time thinking about what I really wanted to be doing and search for those opportunities.

Take the career path less trodden

Few of Braden’s friends were joining startups, and even fewer were talking about things like metabolic health. That didn’t stop Braden from pursuing it himself.

For context, I graduated from school in April and I didn’t actually get started with Levels until around October. So there was a bit of a gap, but yeah, when getting started with Levels, definitely the notion of metabolic fitness among people of my age is not a commonly talked about thing. Or even just getting to startups, I wasn’t too exposed to that during school and didn’t really have the background based on following other people’s paths where I was to learn from. And so it is definitely a bit of a different route, but something I felt pretty confident I want to pursue.

Battle imposter syndrome & add value

The best way to feel like you belong is to jump in and find ways to help people.

Miz just joined as head of operations. He set up these support systems and he needed to move on to other things. So that’s really where I fit in at first to take that off his plate and free up bandwidth. And yeah, it was definitely just such an exciting opportunity and I really couldn’t believe that I’d gotten that opportunity. But it was also accompanied by this sense of imposter syndrome looking around at this incredibly talented team and small team at the time of people who were really great at what they do. Then there was myself coming in with no experience and not really being sure where if I could add value at that time. And I distinctly remember my first day. At the end of my first day, I had a zoom with Miss, where we went through the support queue for the first time. And we probably spent about a half hour on support and I might have struggled through three questions during that time. And it was a really quick realization for me that I would have to start learning quickly and developing skills if I was going to be able to contribute and do well at Levels.

Develop new skills quickly

In a startup environment, there is no shortage of opportunities to learn and grow.

One realization I had pretty early on was we’re at this company that’s growing really fast and there’s no shortage of opportunities and there are way more opportunities than we have the team bandwidth to pursue. So just sticking with what I was currently comfortable with and doing wasn’t really enough to contribute the team and grow individually and be part of the company growing. So I think that was really a driving factor of just continually being on a path to seeking out opportunities where I could develop more skills and contribute to in higher level ways than currently was, and make sure that I was hoping other people do the same thing.

The forcing function of asynchronous work

When you have a plethora of async documentation at your fingertips, there is no excuse to get a crash course on company operations.

To progress, you’re always going to be put in positions where you’re doing new things and not quite comfortable, but overcoming them and developing those new skills is also very exciting and fulfilling and it doesn’t need to be quite as like nerve-wracking as it was getting started. And I think the other thing was just, which was probably counterintuitive to what I would’ve expected coming in, is that the remote asynchronous nature of our company was really just like a forcing function to learn and do things the right way. So there’s all the documentation that we had that was just invaluable to not just learn how to do certain processes, but also learn why decisions were made, what our strategy was, and get that context to continue learning new things across the company. And then, yeah, I think the other thing was just mentorship by not even explicit membership or structured mentorship from anyone on team, but just learning from observing such like high performance people every day and seeing how other people are doing things and making decisions was just so valuable to you get to where I’m at.

Everybody starts at square one

It’s easy to get intimidated by smart people, but just remind yourself that they all started where you are right now.

One thing to think is people all started more or less at the same place. So if someone’s really good at something, they probably were in the position that you were originally and it takes time to develop the skills and changing your mindset from feeling that imposter syndrome to learning and like persisting through learning different opportunities to get to where they’re at. And there’s really no better way to do that, I think, than being constantly involved day to day with those people that have gotten to that point and are so good at what they do whatever it may be.

Build your trust “battery”

As you show what you’re capable of, there is a flywheel effect where you are quickly trusted with more tasks and higher-level work.

There’s definitely this flywheel effect of where if you can execute on even just like very small tasks and communicate them, then you’ll gain new skills and people will trust you and then they’ll trust you with higher-level more complex work and with less oversight and over time that’s like expanded to do things to take on the responsible individual project now. And yeah, I think similarly, it’s just like saying yes to opportunities that came my way. I think how this specific project came on board was it had been on the ops general to do list to reorganize our engineering and asks our priority list asks. And it was something that was on the backlog. And I just one afternoon just we organized that notion page and our priorities and that eventually led to being given the responsible individual project to start working on a new list for operations on tasks that where we could use engineering help as we scale. So yeah, I’m excited to be digging into that project

Customer support is under-rated

Braden values his work in customer support, which helped him learn about Levels on the front lines.

Customer support, it’s probably not the most sought after all or one now is even like super excited to dig into when I started. But I’ve grown to really appreciate how transferable a lot of those skills are and valuable across the company. I think you’re really on the front lines hearing what the Levels members want, what their problems they’re running into, how they use the product. And that context is really valuable in a product sense and really across the company. So that’s one way, I think one thing I’ve really grown to appreciate about my experience in customer support. And also just working with engineering in that capacity, even just from a small bug report to product feature request and learning how to communicate effectively with engineering from that perspective.

Don’t wait for a job posting to apply

If Braden could give one piece of advice to other young professionals, it would be to take the initiative and approach specific companies that you are passionate about.

I think a common approach to finding a job at a school is to send out bulk applications to every entry-level position on LinkedIn or Indeed. And that’s pro probably not the best approach if you want to find something that you enjoy doing and where you’ll have a good experience. I think once you have that short list of companies that you’re interested in, it’s probably even better if there aren’t any open positions and just don’t be afraid to reach out. There’s almost no downside to reaching out to someone and you’re way more likely to stand out in a position that’s not publicly listed than something that’s available on LinkedIn. So just putting yourself to be at the right place at the right time, there’s no guarantees, but you might hit the right place. So that’d be my advice.

Braden McCarthy: I distinctly remember my first day, I had a zoom with Miz, where we went through the support queue for the first time, and we probably spent about a half hour on support. And I might have struggled through three questions during that time. It was a really quick realization for me that I would have to start learning quickly and developing skills if I was going to be able to contribute and do all at Levels.

Ben Grynol: I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health. And this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is a whole new level.

Ben Grynol: From school to startup, somewhat of a non-traditional path, given that when people go through school, post secondary, that is, even high school, a lot of times people aren’t aware of what they want to do with their lives, where they want to invest their time making an impact in the world. What they want to work on for Braden McCarthy. Braden is part of our ops team and he came right out of post-secondary education and went into a startup, came to Levels. For a lot of the time he spent in school, his classmates were, like many people, influenced by traditional career paths. That being finance, that being consulting, that being you name a typical profession that somebody who goes to university would go into and that’s what they think they should do. But for Braden he spent some time as an analyst, he worked in the world of finance and it just didn’t sit quite well with him.

Ben Grynol: He wasn’t really sure of what he wanted to do, but he’s always been focused on his own health and wellness. Things like diving into the biohacking world and community. And so when he came across Levels, he was on Twitter, like many people who follow the tech world, tech Twitter. Well, he ended up reaching out to Josh Clemente early on, and he just wanted to find a way that he could get involved in the company where he felt that he could add value. And rather than asking how to add value, he just started digging in. He started doing some work and he began as a contractor part-time. He wanted to make an impact. And early on, he got some advice and it’s something that resonated with him and stuck with him to this day. Something that he passes along to fellow team members, something that inspires us in the way that he works, and that is find a way to take work off of people’s plates.

Ben Grynol: Now, regardless of the level that somebody is at, not to get hierarchical about it because we’re very flat at levels, but whether somebody is 25 years into a career or just starting out, taking work off of other people’s plates is always a way to make an impact. It’s a way to build that foundation of trust and to give Toby Lukey, founder Shopify, a little hat tip the trust battery. It’s something that he talks about often. The sense of building up the battery of trust with others so that it’s always as full as possible. And when Braden first joined Levels, he put his head down and he started working. He found ways to even if they were small tasks to take them off of other people’s plates so that he could free up their time and they could continue to make an impact in different respective areas of the company.

Ben Grynol: And eventually as Braden did more and more of this, the team started to recognize that he could really make an impact anywhere where he was given a chance to. Like everyone at levels, he operated very much with a sense of autonomy and trust. And he made this impact now to the point where he’s early on in his career, he is one year into working with Levels. He just hit one year in October 2021. And he’s already been given a lot of responsibility that pertaining to reaching out to global thought leaders in the metabolic health space, having conversations directly with them either through email or even sometimes through phone so that he can organize different projects, undertake different initiatives and he is really the point person. Well, now these skills have evolved into a sense of being an early product manager, something that we’re testing out with what we call the responsible individual process.

Ben Grynol: It’s an RI as we refer to them internally, but it’s somebody who leads and runs a project autonomously. And that’s what Braden has undertaken. But regardless of that, there’s a sense of imposter syndrome that naturally comes for anybody who is high performance, anybody who is working hard and feels like they’re just on the edge of their skillset. Maybe they feel like they’re tricking somebody, tricking a group of people, maybe tricking a team, tricking others which they aren’t, but it’s natural to feel that they’re tricking other people into thinking that they’re good enough to take on a role. And so we chatted about imposter syndrome because regardless of someone’s role, there’s always a sense of, am I good enough? Am I doing a good enough job? Regardless of the outlook, if you make an impact, you put your head down, you take work off people’s plates, well, you sure build up that trust battery. Here’s where we kick things off.

Ben Grynol: You had an interesting path into Levels. You went from graduating, you were in school and you went from graduating university to being part of one of the fastest-growing startups in health tech. And I think your path in was like a lot of people, where you become immersed or so interested and invested in everything going on with Levels that you had reached out to – was it Josh?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah, it was Josh.

Ben Grynol: So what was that process? Because you were in school and how did you hear about Levels and then… How did you hear about Levels and then take the initiative to find Josh’s email or whatever it was to actually make that first connection?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah, sure. So I think a little background, I wanted to school thinking that I wanted to get into finance. And in my sophomore year, I did an internship at a university endowment that invested in venture capital among other things. And I didn’t really enjoy the role, but it was my first exposure to the tech ecosystem and startup ecosystem. And that interest really stuck with me. And it took another year to confirm that the structure of the finance world wasn’t really for me. And to come into my senior year, really interested in joining a startup and trying to figure out how to break in and follow a lot of people in the space. So I think I first came across Levels on Twitter and just immediately resonated with me so strongly. I was tracking my sleep exercise, but nutrition had been something I was experimenting with and couldn’t get that same feedback on.

Braden McCarthy: And it just felt like the hardest one to intuitively know and the biggest gap in where we can get feedback and learn how to improve. So that’s what initially struck me. And I looked for career opportunities, didn’t see anything, but just couldn’t stop thinking about Levels and it hit me. I might as well just reach out to Josh who had sent out an email for the waitlist. I think I just responded to that email saying, I can’t stop thinking about what you’re doing, I think it’s going to be super impactful and I would love to help in any way possible. And, yeah, after a few months, one thing led to another and I came on board.

Ben Grynol: And so that must have been interesting because you’re surrounded, you’re in school, everyone you are going to school with is about to jump into the career world with their first real like “their first real job,” right? And I think when people are going through post secondary education and they’re trying to figure out like, what do I want to do with my life? What is my career path? There’s I think this sentiment that people think I have to go be a doctor, a lawyer, in finance, a dentist. There has to be some label to a career path. And then there’s this black box of this thing called startups that people have no idea what it means or what the outcome is it of it is. But you must have been a bit of an outlier in that sense if you told your friends like, “Hey man, I’m going to go work with a startup.”

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. So I think it was pretty slow process. I kind of knew it was what I wanted to be doing. There’s definitely… Finance was a very established career path that I thought was right to go down without really thinking about why. And when reflecting on it more, startups seemed like a better fit. And it was also kind of a strange time in the spring of 2020 where not as many people were getting jobs immediately after school. So there was a little more… It felt like there was a little more time to be patient and find the right thing. I think it just became very clear to me that I was going down a path I wasn’t interested in and it’s worthwhile to spend time thinking about what I really wanted to be doing and search for those opportunities.

Ben Grynol: When you talked to friends about it, did they have any idea what Levels was or what a startup was or did you just keep it to yourself and figured your own path in?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. So for context, I graduated from school in April and I didn’t actually get started with Levels until around October. So there was a bit of a gap, but yeah, when getting started with Levels, definitely the notion of metabolic fitness among people of my age is not a commonly talked about thing. Or even just getting to startups, I wasn’t too exposed to that during school and didn’t really have the background based on following other people’s paths where I was to learn from. And so it is definitely a bit of a different route, but something I felt pretty confident I want to pursue.

Ben Grynol: And so then how did you actually get… How did you come to the point where you had this lens on startups that you were immersing yourself in, we’ll call it tech Twitter, but this whole world of tech and startups, what was it that drew you to it if it wasn’t such a common thing?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think it was just people solving problems that they were interested in and that concept didn’t quite exist from where I was in the finance world. It felt more of an established path where you did your time and progressed up the career, but you weren’t quite doing things that you were interested in or solving problems. And I think seeing the scope of the metabolic health crisis and learning about how Levels was approaching it was just so powerful to me and solving problems through building stuff was just such a cool concept.

Ben Grynol: And when you first joined, you came in, was the intent that, hey, Braden… So you and Josh talked, you and Sam, you and, we’ll say, Casey, Andrew, David, you talked with the team would’ve been, I guess, October that’s around when, shortly after Miz had come on board. So the team was at whatever 13, 14 people around that time. Was the intent that you were going to start in ops and be part of the ops team?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. So I initially came on as in a contract role. I think the title was business operations, but I was almost exclusively doing customer support. Yeah, so Miz just joined as head of operations. He set up these support systems and he needed to move on to other things. So that’s really where I fit in at first to take that off his plate and free up bandwidth. And yeah, it was definitely just such an exciting opportunity and I really couldn’t believe that I’d gotten that opportunity. But it was also accompanied by this sense of imposter syndrome looking around at this incredibly talented team and small team at the time of people who were really great at what they do.

Braden McCarthy: Then there was myself coming in with no experience and not really being sure where if I could add value at that time. And I distinctly remember my first day. At the end of my first day, I had a zoom with Miz, where we went through the support queue for the first time. And we probably spent about a half hour on support and I might have struggled through three questions during that time. And it was a really quick realization for me that I would have to start learning quickly and developing skills if I was going to be able to contribute and do well at Levels.

Ben Grynol: So was it, I guess, intrinsically that drove you to say, hey, I guess the way I can help is by just taking things off of Miz’s plate or the team’s plate. Was it that I guess gave you that sense of the insight to do it, and then the drive and willingness to be like, I’ll just start helping out where I can?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think it came up in early conversations with both Sam and Tom, where if you’re able to… One of your goals when joining should be to take things off of the plate of people that you’re working with and make their lives easier. And if you’re able to do that, then you’re going to be providing a lot of value on the team and people are going to want you to stick around. So I kind of made that one of my main focuses of when and I joined just one to start taking support off of Miz’s plate. So he didn’t feel like he needed to check in day to day and felt like we had it covered and then to seek out other opportunities to help people on the team make their lives easier and find ways that I could help them.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. I mean, that’s something that you and Jesse Levine, the two of you have started to ramp up in what we call an RI, the responsible individual process. But just this idea of saying, hey, what else can I do? And it might sound really easy and mindless to be like, well, of course, help people out, that’s what we do. But it’s not always that way. Sometimes people need probing to say, “Hey, Braden, it would be good if you helped out with X, Y, Z.” But you and Jesse and Mike D a number of these individuals have started to just ramp up and say, what can I do to make everybody’s job easier?

Ben Grynol: And I think it’s this tone that… You’ve really set the tone being an early team member, but this tone of everyone feels a sense of trying to help each other out. So trying to help Sam do his job better, or Josh do his job better. And Josh is trying to help you do your job better. It’s very much reciprocated amongst the teams. So everybody is working to their strengths to make each other’s jobs easier. So how did you… Think about that. When you started doing it, was that just the MO that you’re like, if I can do this, then I know that I’m going to be contributing to the organization?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. So I think one realization I had pretty early on was we’re at this company that’s growing really fast and there’s no shortage of opportunities and there are way more opportunities than we have the team bandwidth to pursue. So just sticking with what I was currently comfortable with and doing wasn’t really enough to contribute the team and grow individually and be part of the company growing. So I think that was really a driving factor of just continually being on a path to seeking out opportunities where I could develop more skills and contribute to in higher level ways than currently was, and make sure that I was hoping other people do the same thing.

Braden McCarthy: And yeah, I think the culture of Levels, they really aren’t any divisions between departments or… Departments isn’t even really the right word, because I wouldn’t say it that way. At least-

Ben Grynol: Teams.

Braden McCarthy: Teams. Yeah. So I think I was empowered to work with Tom, with you and just other people across the team to really learn a lot and gain a lot of context quickly to be able to help. And you working on new things to help new people.

Ben Grynol: And so where did the feeling of this imposter syndrome come from then? Was it because of being early in the career? Or was it because of being around people you respect? Or was it because the work was actually on the bridge of skillset, which is… I’m going to mess up the quote, but there’s something along the lines of you truly grow when you’re just on the edge of challenge and skillset. When you’re just on the brink of being outside of your skillset and you have a challenge to take on, you make it happen, but that’s when you truly grow. So what was it that made you feel the sense of imposter syndrome?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah, I think it was just like, there’s such a high talent bar at the company that I felt coming in like very excited about it, but also coming in with really no experience in anything I was doing and no experience even at a startup. So it was really just like being forced to do something new that wasn’t in my comfort zone and need to figure things out on the fly to be able to contribute and fit into the company.

Ben Grynol: So then what is it or was it, if at all that made you comfortable with it? Because I think there’s the sense of maybe you could say imposter syndromes driven by insecurity of not feeling like a person has the right skills for a role, but then naturally the higher performing a person, like this just happens, Barack Obama has imposter syndrome that he should not be the president of the United States. I think that there’s a certain amount of humility that comes when ego is pushed aside and people are very talented, but they’re put into a position and they’re like, man, why am I doing this? There’s so many other more talented people. So what is it that made you overcome that? Or is it something that you still think about like, “Hey, am I good enough to be doing this? How do you think about it now given that you are a year in? A year to the day basically.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think that ties back into what you were saying about challenges. And to progress, you’re always going to be put in positions where you’re doing new things and not quite comfortable, but overcoming them and developing those new skills is also very exciting and fulfilling and it doesn’t need to be quite as like nerve-wracking as it was getting started. And I think the other thing was just, which was probably counterintuitive to what I would’ve expected coming in, is that the remote asynchronous nature of our company was really just like a forcing function to learn and do things the right way.

Braden McCarthy: So there’s all the documentation that we had that was just invaluable to not just learn how to do certain processes, but also learn why decisions were made, what our strategy was, and get that context to continue learning new things across the company. And then, yeah, I think the other thing was just mentorship by not even explicit membership or structured mentorship from anyone on team, but just learning from observing such like high-performance people every day and seeing how other people are doing things and making decisions was just so valuable to you get to where I’m at.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. The interesting thing about the whole sentiment of imposter syndrome is that Casey and I have talked about this and Josh and I have rift on it a little bit too, where when surrounded by people who have so much talent, even if you recognize, there’s always going to be some sense of like, “Oh my goodness, Braden is so good at…” I think out that all the time. “Braden is so good at X, Y, and Z. I’m so glad Braden’s doing the metabolical book club.” Like he just feel the sense of trust, but where it comes down to is the sense of admiration that isn’t manufactured internally. So it’s really easy to look up to Helena and be like, I have so much admiration for Helena’s lens on data. And you can just extrapolate this. Like name a teammate name, a single person, and you’ll have the same lens on how good JM is at knocking projects out of the park end to end. Just name a team member.

Ben Grynol: And so this sense of admiration is I think, where getting all the way back to imposter syndrome. That’s where I think a lot of people will have this similar lens where you appreciate people that you are around that have a sense of talent that you go, they are so good at what they do, I have immense respect for them. And it’s natural to feel like, oh my gosh, they’re so smart. I’m 10 light years behind them, but I think that everybody looks at each other with a sense of admiration of like, gosh, Braden’s really good at X, Y, and Z. So it’s funny to think that, but how do you think about that as far as admiration versus imposter syndrome?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of things on that. A lot of it, one thing to think is people all started more or less at the same place. So if someone’s really good at something, they probably were in the position that you were originally and it takes time to develop the skills and changing your mindset from feeling that imposter syndrome to learning and like persisting through learning different opportunities to get to where they’re at. And there’s really no better way to do that, I think, than being constantly involved day to day with those people that have gotten to that point and are so good at what they do whatever it may be.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. You did such a good job with building up this foundation of trust. And I think trust is a very… it’s not necessarily hard to build if you take the right actions that is communicating a lot, being very transparent, giving updates when things are going great, giving updates even more frequently if things are not going great. Just always having a cadence to keep people in the loop. And it’s not about micro-management, it’s absolutely about keeping a high degree of visibility of a lot of projects that are going on simultaneously across the company. Because then people go, oh, like I actually don’t even need to see what’s going on with the metabolical book club because I have so much trust in Braden that it’s getting done. It’s just like if I were to check in at any point to be like, hey, what’s the date of that again? And it was like a week away.

Ben Grynol: The answer wouldn’t be like, oh my gosh, I forgot to ship people books. It’s just like, you could go into a thread asynchronously and look at the updates because you know all the documentation is there. Or if you were to have a specific question, like somebody could just reach out. So you did such a great job of building this foundation of trust, but it’s really hard to do remotely and asynchronously or so people think, and I think that isn’t necessarily a true statement. I think that you can do it. You just have to take the right actions.

Ben Grynol: And so you built this foundation of trust and that led to you getting less, you’re still heavily involved in operations, but less involved from the tactical day to day and more involved in taking on these projects as we call it, the RI, the responsible individual. So what did that look like as far as… What was that process and how did you feel about it as you started to say, hey, I can own a small project end to end. And now you’re taking on full product management projects which are things that people work very long in their career to get to that point?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think there’s definitely this flywheel effect of where if you can execute on even just like very small tasks and communicate them, then you’ll gain new skills and people will trust you and then they’ll trust you with higher-level more complex work and with less oversight and over time that’s like expanded to do things to take on the responsible individual project now. And yeah, I think similarly, it’s just like saying yes to opportunities that came my way. I think how this specific project came on board was it had been on the ops general to do list to reorganize our engineering and asks our priority list asks. And it was something that was on the backlog. And I just one afternoon just we organized that notion page and our priorities and that eventually led to being given the responsible individual project to start working on a new list for operations on tasks that where we could use engineering help as we scale. So yeah, I’m excited to be digging into that project and leveling up my products of course with David and working with taking on ownership of my first cross-functional project.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. And there’s a lot of learning that comes with… Like you went from finance to ops to now working in product. And so product having a sense of how engineers work, what their skillsets are, what they can do, what they can accomplish across a gamut of things. So learning that, learning what product is, because product has the application of product, actually thinking through product from a strategic lens, like how it will function from a UX and UI perspective, how to build things out based on what engineers can build and then scoping it and just project managing.

Ben Grynol: So the project managing part, that one’s in the bag, you got, that’s easy. All these other things you are starting at this new foundation and saying, hey, I have to build up these skills. So it’s almost like going to school again, but learning 10 times faster than ever to get ramped up. So what resources are you digging into or what steps are you taking to say, hey, I’m going to figure out running point on product and learning about engineering, given that it’s not a traditional background that you came from.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think one thing is, like customer support, it’s probably not the most sought after all or one now is even like super excited to dig into when I started. But I’ve grown to really appreciate how transferable a lot of those skills are and valuable across the company. I think you’re really on the front lines hearing what the Levels members want, what their problems they’re running into, how they use the product. And that context is really valuable in a product sense and really across the company. So that’s one way, I think one thing I’ve really grown to appreciate about my experience in customer support. And also just working with engineering in that capacity, even just from a small bug report to product feature request and learning how to communicate effectively with engineering from that perspective, and now taking that to a new level and the responsible individual role and figuring out things as I go. But also knowing that there’s so many great resources across the team and David specifically, who’s helping me out along the way.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. It’s all those micro inputs like you said. So you’re getting the lens on qualitative UX research, like user experience research, or just qualitative feedback. You’re getting it directly from members. So that, and how it applies to product, it gives you such a good lens objectively to say, hey, we have heard this insight so many times, that is the score makes me feel a certain way. We’ve heard that through enough emails or subscriptions are broken, whatever it might be, that you can come into a project and you’ve got that lens because you’ve been on the front lines. So it becomes easier to rationalize what to work on or how a feature need to unfold or be developed. And then the other side of it is engineering time is so expensive. Sam talks about it all the time, how important it is that we are efficient with engineering time and that we don’t waste time.

Ben Grynol: One of the things that waste a ton of engineering time in companies is just poor documentation and poor reporting and poor communication between teams. So that being we’re lucky in the sense that we have great documentation, everything is done very thoroughly, the communication paths are clear and open. But you don’t get the typical, I have a bug, an engineer replies a like what’s the bug. The button doesn’t work. That is time wasted. So even you having that lens of knowing if I’m going to report a bug, here’s the exact process that makes it most efficient. So it becomes a ticket for engineering as opposed to a two-way dialogue to figure out that it’s actually a minor issue that only needed a phone reset or an app update of all things. But that’s really the way to look at it. So it’s like you’re getting that information, you’re getting that, I guess, foundation we’ll call it, so early on that it sets you up to be able to understand how these teams work together.

Braden McCarthy: Definitely. And I think I’ve learned that specific example firsthand of reporting things that maybe even weren’t bugs or just like user mistakes or confusion. So yeah, learning one thing about Levels is like you’re really empowered to figure things out yourself and come to decisions, people trust is high level trust across the team for people to make decisions. And I think that’s been, I’ve really learned so much by being able to empower to learn things myself and problem solve and that’s come with mistakes, but it’s also come with a lot of learnings about how to do things the right way, like communicating with the engineering team.

Ben Grynol: So then what were some of those mistakes? Walk through those. What were some of the mistakes and what was the outcome? What happened?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. So I think a general mistake was just our bug reporting process wasn’t very dialed in. It was really a fire hose of anything that we heard that wasn’t working was getting thrown engineering’s way at any time of day without any clear owners. So people didn’t know if they should look at it. And the end result was everyone was swarming to look at these issues and it was very distracting. And as you said, time’s expensive and it was just not a great process. And something that’s changed recently is adding more structure to that process. Understanding when something really is a bug, what information is needed to resolve it, and really triaging that priority of the bug, knowing that some things are going to be a little junky where we’re at now and not everything is going to get immediate attention from other projects. So being able to make sure that we’re alerting the team to the issues that need attention and that don’t need has been a learning for me.

Ben Grynol: One of the things too, is that because we’re so async, there’s figuring out when there is a fire drill versus figuring out if it’s just standard reporting, right? So fire drill being… Actually, you’ve been super good about this where you let people know if there is a serious issue. Hey, it looks like there is an issue with the platform, let’s make up the scenario right now so we don’t get too granular, but hey, it looks like there is an issue with data syncing to the app. Support is getting blown up with tickets and we got to get this to resolve very quickly. So you alert the team.

Ben Grynol: Where we can be asynchronous, which is counterintuitive to most, I guess the way a lot of teams work to begin with whether remote or not, and it’s probably worse in office, but oh my gosh, there’s a bug. I have to walk over to Billy’s desk and tap Billy on the shoulder and let Billy know that there’s poor padding between the text when this aspect ratio of an image pops up. And it’s like, that is not a high priority bug to fix. Even though aesthetically it might look painful for some people to look at if it’s not actually affecting anything functionally, then it’s not a priority. But that’s where you get distractions, is like every bug has equal importance and we have to communicate it to everybody right now. That’s where teams get into this cyclical trouble of not ever being able to recover from just supporting a product versus building new things.

Braden McCarthy: Definitely. Yeah, no, I definitely very strongly resonate with that.

Ben Grynol: So you had this opportunity. Like you could have come and worked on growth projects, you could have stayed in ops, you can work more with product, like being the generalist that you are in having the foundation of trust that’s been built up with the team in such a short period of time too, like a year in a startup is 10 years, but it’s also not that long as far as a calendar goes, right? Like a year in just a company is not super long, but you’ve managed to build up this trust and you had the opportunity to work with pretty much any team you wanted. It was more, hey, Braden, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go? So as you think about making an impact with what we’re doing, what is it that interests you moving forward and where do you want to invest your time?

Braden McCarthy: Yeah, I think not really going in with a concrete plan or an end state of where I want to be, and it’s more being going along a path where I feel like I’m continually learning and developing new skills where I can contribute in higher-value ways, I think coming into this role, I would’ve had no idea what most of these positions really look like in a day to day. And I think things are changing at the company. Products changing. There’s so many things happening that it’d be not even me to think I know what I want next. There’s so many variables up in the air. So it’s really just about following a path of things that I’m interested in doing and pursuing opportunities and developing more skills so I have the skillset to contribute in higher level ways.

Ben Grynol: So if you think back to Braden of 2019, you’re getting close to graduating, late Q4 of 2019 two years ago, you can go back in time. What advice would you have for yourself or anyone else who is just starting, or maybe graduating school and wanting to get involved in a startup? How would you get them to start to think about startups or the space or Levels? What could they do to surround themselves with the right information and opportunities.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think there’s definitely a few things, piece of advice that I wish I had when I was in that position. And the first one was really just focus on companies that you’re are solving problems, you’re interested in and beyond that seems you have a high level of talent and a great culture year. I think those are probably the biggest determinants of your success and your experience at that company. More so than the role, especially coming into an entry level position. I think a common approach to finding a job at a school is to send out bulk applications to every entry level position on LinkedIn or Indeed. And that’s pro probably not the best approach if you want to find something that you enjoy doing and where you’ll have a good experience.

Braden McCarthy: I think once you have that short list of companies that you’re interested in, it’s probably even better if there aren’t any open positions and just don’t be afraid to reach out. There’s almost no downside to reaching out to someone and you’re way more likely to stand out in a position that’s not publicly listed than something that’s available on LinkedIn. So just putting yourself to be at the right place at the right time, there’s no guarantees, but you might hit the right place. So that’d be my advice.

Ben Grynol: There’s this thing around documentation too, where a lot of people who’ve come on board have immersed themselves in everything we are doing. And I say it with a smile because it’s so unbelievable to see and so cool at the same time. Chris Jones is a great example where Chris was a Levels member, part of the community and participated in various calls. And we had some member journaling. I think you had actually helped out with the member journaling. I believe where we undertook that UXR, the user experience research initiative, to have individuals produce looms and little videos of themselves walking through a journal a day in the life of using Levels. And so Chris had participated in all these things and then he sent this very long and detailed list of all this feedback and thoughts on Levels.

Ben Grynol: And it was just so clear that was invested deeply in what we are doing. And I think that’s been thematic across a number of people who have come on board, basically most of the team where intrinsically people just start documenting information and sending it along. And it sounds like… I mean, that’s what Tom did. It sounds like that’s what you did too, where you reach out, you find ways to add value and add feedback, asking nothing in return and keep doing that. And then it becomes very clear that you want to be there for the right reasons. You want to be part of the mission. And that’s how opportunities unlock. It’s not just, hey, there’s a posting up on Indeed or whatever job plot somebody finds a job on because we don’t think of roles as just being these transactional jobs. Everybody who’s part of this team is so invested in what we’re doing, that it really makes it feel special.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. I think, especially coming right out of school for most people at least you’re not going to be differentiated on your past experience and you have to find some other way to stand out. So going through these unorthodox channels and really showing that you’re interested in what they’re doing and are spending time thinking about it is one of the best ways to do that.

Ben Grynol: One of the ways too is not… Because I’ve seen this before, guarantee you have been guilty of it probably at some point early in my career path, but reaching out to people and saying like, hey, what can I do to help you? Let me know how I can help. And as soon as you flip the switch and you give people the idea for what you’re going to do. So let’s remove it from career. I knock on my neighbor door, my neighbor’s 82 years old and I say, “Hey, Heva what can I do to help?” And she says, “Well, I don’t know. What can you do to help?” I’m not sure.” But if you go over and you say, “Hey, Heva, it looks like your grass is pretty long. I’d be happy to cut it for you if that’s helpful.” You give her the thing, the one thing you’re going to do to be helpful.

Ben Grynol: And then she goes, “Well, it is pretty long. And I was thinking that I need to get it cut. If you’re willing to do it that would be great.” And I think if you just take that heuristic and you apply it to the work world, it becomes pretty easy to start to think about ways where you can find areas to help. It doesn’t need to be this long mission-driven strategy that you have to write for a company. It can be as simple as, “Hey, it looks like you have pixelated logos on your social platforms. I’d be happy to vector up those logos and send you the right aspect ratio of assets if that’s helpful to you.” And somebody like nine times out of 10, people are going to be like, “That’s super helpful. I appreciate that.” And that is what opens up the relationship.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. Definitely. I think finding ways to provide value without asking for anything in return, that also really applies to you once you’re in a company and trying to help out other people on the team. If you have to ask what you need to be doing to help them out, then they have to spend time on communicating with you and getting everything set up and watching over it, then you’re not actually being that helpful in the end. And just finding ways to provide value first is the best approach.

Ben Grynol: That’s exactly it. You find these areas where it seems like it might not be as efficient a use of time for a person, and you say, “I’m really interested in taking this on. Let’s keep going back to the book club.” You recognize the book club is something that needs to be worked on and you say, “Hey, I’d really like to take this on if that would be helpful to you.” And there are very few times where people are going to say like, “No, it’s not helpful at all. I’d rather just keep doing all of these things myself.” Because there’s so many things that we get involved in. And then what happens is you take it on, you get it ramped up.

Ben Grynol: And the next layer of people come in and the people, as far as layer being tenure, we’ll just call it tenure. People come in and somebody newer joints that let’s say they’re starting out in their career and they say, “Hey, Braden, it looks like you’re doing all these book club things. Is there any way I can be involved in that? If possible, I’ll take the whole thing off your plate. Just let me know if that’s helpful.” You’re going to be like, “Yeah, take the whole thing. Or if you can do 50% of this, that really helps me out.” And that’s how this iterative founding really gets built and it just keeps growing and growing and growing.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. Definitely. And I think taking on those things is you’re helping out with other person, but especially even things like the book club, which there’s a lot of tasks and all that, which I hadn’t been exposed to before and doing those new things are very valuable for developing new skills and learning new things as well. So it’s really like a win-win and as you get more comfortable with them and you’re able to pass it off to someone new, I think, that’s always helpful.

Ben Grynol: And in doing so, like you are not the… I mean, let’s really paint the picture. So you’re running point on, this is the second book club, it is October 15th, 2021 and you are a running point on the second book club that we’re going to do in December, exactly two months from now, basically. You’re not just pushing pixels or organizing information, you’re not teeing up emails so that somebody else can send them to these world thought leaders, these aren’t just any people. These are global thought leaders, Dr. Robert Lestig, Dr. David Sinclair. These are people that have a ton of clout in the world and you’re just emailing them directly. “Hey David, Dr. Sinclair,” depending on the way you address it, “Hey David, it’s Braden wondering about the book club.” That is now your relationship. You’re building a relationship with a thought leader and a world expert. So that’s also the thing, is very much a sense of ownership. You’re not just the means for everybody else to take part in the transaction. You are actually building every aspect of what’s going on.

Braden McCarthy: Yeah. That goes back to just being at Levels, you really are empowered to take those opportunities and ownership. Once you have that level of trust and being able to take a project from start to finish, is really fulfilling.

Ben Grynol: Where are you right now?

Braden McCarthy: I am in Porto, Escondido, Mexico. I’m working, I’m surfing, enjoying great food. Yeah. Great lifestyle.