Get Unstuck in Your Career in 5 Steps | Ethan Evans (retired VP Amazon)

Trust is built slowly through positive events, and it's built more dramatically in negative events. The most classic case of trust is the trust between people at war, people in a foxhole. It's because I end up seeing you as risking your life for me, and I'm risking my life for you. And so that builds a sense of trust. Well, in work, it's usually not life or death, but in a crisis, a service outage, an angry boss incident, a custom crisis, that's where you have the chance to step up in a way that people are like, oh, see, I can rely on Peter. I can rely on Ethan. So crisis is the place where trust is built most quickly because there's a cost to you. A friend of mine once said in business development, a lot of it is deciding to jump off the cliff together. You're up there deciding, my company, your company, Are we going to shake hands and jump off the cliff together? Well, that's where trust is built.

My guest today is Ethan Evans, former VP at AM. Ethan rose to VP at Amazon over 15 years and then retired to make 700,000 a year teaching product leaders while only working 20 hours a week. Ethan and I talked about the Magic Loop to level up at any company and how to get unstuck, how to systematically build trust with your leadership team, and how to build a $700,000 business while working part time. Ethan is an incredible career coach and product leader. If you enjoy our conversation, please like and subscribe to support the podcast. All right, well, welcome, Ethan. It, it's great to see you again. You know, we briefly worked together at Twitch, and even back then, I, I, I feel like I learned a lot from you, from your talks, so. So it's great to learn from you again.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Peter. Talking at Twitch was kind of where I got started with the idea of teaching and coaching. I was piloting the process that became what I do today, internal. So you really were there for the first version of what I do now.

Yeah, well, the first version was already very good, so.

But yeah, thank you.

So, you know, you made some appearances on Lenny's podcast and other podcasts. I'd like to start by talking about the Magic Loop framework. Right. That you've used to help hundreds of people level up their career. Maybe you can just quickly recap the framework for us.

Yeah, of course. So I created an idea over the course of my lifetime by thinking about how I approached growing my own career and how I helped people on my team grow and how I advised people, and I ended up Giving it the name the magic loop, because the effect can be magical for someone's career. And I think of it in five steps. The first step is do your job well. You're. Before you can move up, you have to be seen as mastering what it is that you're doing today. Being good at it, being collaborative, meeting your goals, being high performance. And you do this by getting feedback from your manager and peers. Just asking, am I doing well? How am I doing? What can I improve? After you do that, you then go to your manager. Usually could be other stakeholders and ask, what else can I do? How else can I contribute? Because managers rarely get asked this, I verified this, and they love being asked this. And they always have something they need done. And so you take on a task for them. And this may mean temporarily you're doing more work, but this earns trust and it builds a relationship. And so step three is simply do what you're asked. If step two is ask, step three is do that thing. You may have to do steps two and three a couple times. But then step four is you talk to your manager and say, I would like to grow. I would like to change types of work I'm doing, or I would like to join this other team or get on a new project, or I would like to be promoted. I would like a raise. I've been helping you. How can I help you in a way that is aligned with my goal, that will help me achieve my goals? And most good managers will help you because you've been helping them. They'll say, oh, great, you still want to help. You want to contribute to what I'm doing. I will help you with your goal. Here's a challenging project or something that will get you visibility. That also helps our group. The final stage is just repeat. That's what makes it a loop. So you keep asking and doing, and sometimes you can suggest also, you don't always have to ask. You can say, I see this thing that needs to be done, or that seems to be valuable, or that interests me. Could I work on that? So that's the magic loop.

And where do you think people usually. I mean, it sounds very simple, but, like, where do you think people usually get stuck in this loop? Is it just doing their job well or.

So one place people get stuck is fear. They get stuck on the fear that they'll be exploited, the fear that it will be too much work. They come to me and say, but my boss doesn't want to cooperate or I'll just end up working harder without Getting any reward. They have negative stereotypes. And of course sometimes that is true. You might have an exploitative boss who's like, great, you're going to do more work. Here's a bunch more work. And they never do anything for you. But someone has to take the risk first. The key is if you want to build a relationship, it is a little bit like dating. Somebody has to ask for the date. It can be either person, but you only control you. And your manager may not be thinking of you as, oh, well, I'll ask Peter to do more and see if he steps up and try and grow Peter's career. That's not. You don't want to wait around for that. So just like, if you want to meet someone in life, you have to ask for the date. And I would say to those people, go ask. If then it doesn't work out, you can go find a different manager. The other place I think people get stuck is how to get rid of some of their old work. In other words, if they start doing more high value work, they may become overloaded. And that's where you have a conversation with your manager where you say, I'm really loving doing this for you and this with you, but I'm struggling to do it all. Plus do. And you pick the least valuable thing you do. It's still on my plate to write the weekly report. You ask, is there anyone else that I could have write the weekly report or that you could have write the weekly report? And you basically get their help in delegating away your least valuable tasks. And so that way you have time to do more things that they put high value on and you give away doing some of the low value stuff.

Got it. And what are some like, you know, I've had many managers in the past. I find it awkward. Maybe it's like human nature. If they're giving a lot of really good feedback and like, you know, saying you're doing a good job, I find it awkward to actually ask like, okay, but what am I not doing well? Or like, hey, can you tell me where I can improving? Like, do you have some like words that people can use both to ask your manager and to people that you work with to get this information out of them?

Yeah, one thing you can do is you can turn it to your positives as a start and you can say, of the things I do well, you told me I do several things well. Which is most valuable or which do you think is a superpower I should lean into? Because people do get promoted not for Having no weaknesses, but for having some skill at which they're great. And so you can just ask which thing that I do is most valuable that you wish you saw even more of? That's a different way to phrase the question. The other way that might help is you can just ask, are there any. I appreciate all your good feedback. Is there anything holding me back from the next level? Are there any remaining gaps? In other words, you can let them say no, you don't have to force them to come up with a weakness. But that, are there any remaining gaps? Is good because if they say no, your follow up is, well, that's fantastic. Then if I don't have remaining gaps, when am I getting promoted? I mean, you be a little more subtle than that, but that's where that question goes.

What about you mentioned like, you know, dedicating the work or asking your manager to help dedicate the work. That's like, least impactful. Right. I'm curious about your philosophy as a leader on, like, how much should you dive deep and how do you decide what to dive deep on? And how do you increase your scope without having things fall off the rails? You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. So philosophically, I didn't dive deep as much as some other leaders, and I'm not saying that's a strength sometimes that got me burnt. So diving deep, auditing. Diving deep is a word for auditing. It's a word for checking in. And because you can't be deep all the time. Right. Why are you diving deep? It literally is a phrase that comes from the fact that we're normally on the surface of the water. And to dive takes effort and we can't do it everywhere all the time. So it's this balance of picking when to do that. Because if you're deep all the time, you're back to being like an individual contributor or an architect or something. So I, number one, I got better in my career at asking questions. Asking questions is your first way to detect problems. Asking people, what are you worried about? What's keeping you up at night? What should I be worried about? Is this. And then digging, if you need to, you dig more deeply on tell me exactly the plan or. And you develop this sixth sense for is this person? Because leading people is a sixth sense kind of emotional relationship. You develop this ability to look at someone or to listen to someone and tell are they really confident or not. Right. And so I always thought of it as, where there's smoke, there's usually fire. If things start to look fuzzy and feel squishy. And I see a few signs of things are a little bit late or not quite. Then I took the perspective that said, okay, now I need to go dive in and dig in because something's not right and I don't know what, but that was my sign of when to go dig.

Got it, Got it. Okay, got it. But it's also the case where someone could be doing a really great job, but they might not just like express they want to do more. Right? Like it's like, you know, helping the people who need help versus the people who like your A players on your team. So I guess there's like a balance between the two.

Yeah. So I view much, I mean, not surprisingly, given now that I've change my career essentially to online teacher, career teacher, I view the role of a leader as to always be teaching and developing their team. And I not only view it that way because philosophically I like to teach. It's also that was the best way to scale my team. And so I would try with everyone who reported to me and even down a level if I could, so a skip level to understand what did those people want to do and where were they willing to step up and in some cases to push them. I tend to think in forceful words. You could say simply encourage or elicit or inspire. If someone has the ability and the willingness, but maybe not the confidence, then I'm trying to pull that out of them. Push can have the negative connotation that maybe you have someone on your team who's reached a level where they have their work life in balance and they don't want more right now. And I didn't, I didn't try to go to them and say like, no, you should destroy your home life to produce more. For me, that, like, that isn't what I mean. But I did try to push people in terms of know your goals, explain your goals, and let's have a plan for your goals. If your goal is stay where you are and have a good work life balance, then great, but let's at least have that discussion.

Got it, Got it. Okay, that makes sense. You just understand everybody wants different things, right? So just understand what they want and help them.

Different stages of life, different career aspirations, so find out what those are. But I saw my role as a leader and a need as a leader to grow people. And there was a part of that was purely selfish. The good news is sometimes you can be selfish and selfless at the same time. By growing other people, I made my own job easier so it was when the more capable my team, the more remember your draining boring challenge is someone else's amazing new work because they've never done it. You've done it 50 times. This isn't perfectly true. There is work that kind of just isn't rewarding for anyone, but that isn't very common, usually for a leader, anyway. Some things that you've done 50 times, there's still somebody on your team who's like, wow, I could write the annual report. And you're like, yes, please. But for them, it's new.

It's opportunity. Yeah, got it. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Yeah.

I guess the last question I have for the Magic loop is like, the fourth step, right, Is to ask your manager if you can help in a way that also grows your skills. But what happens if, like, you want to grow your skills in an area that's not necessarily in your manager's purview? Like, for example, I think you made a choice to move from Amazon to Twitch, to move from managing, like, hundreds of people to just be a starting. Starting again as ic so how do you have that conversation with your manager? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that. That is a good example. Because my manager didn't want me to move. He very much. Because I was highly valuable in the role I was in. He very much wanted me to stay. And in fact, he controlled my access to the other role. And he said, no, you can't have it. And in that case, I actually had to explain. You seem to be. It took me a while to figure out the problem, but I was able to explain by example. You seem to be thinking that you have a choice, manager, between me staying in this role and me going to Twitch. What you don't understand is your actual choice is me going to twitch and still being a part of your org, or me leaving your org entirely for a new challenge. Once I reframed it, as you don't. The thing you want isn't a thing you get to have. It's these other choices. He moved me to the new role the next day. Like, once he understood the choice he actually had, which was keep me or lose me, then he. His whole attitude changed in 24 hours because he realized, oh, the thing I want, which is keep you in this role, is actually not available to me. I see. Because I had other offers within the company to go to third groups. And I said, look, if I go, tell this person I had offers from other senior vice presidents. And I said, you know, once I tell that person, yes, you know, I Can't back down for it. So like today is the last day you can let me have this role I want because tomorrow I'm telling them I'm taking that role.

Got it.

So coming back to your question, short of this forcefulness, the discussion you want to have is, look, everyone leaves teams. You want to have the discussion with a manager of I can be a feather in your cap if I migrate to this org where I can do the work I want. But they will know you mentored me. I was your disciple. You create great talent. Is it what you want? Which is I stay on your team? No, but it's still positive for you because I will go reflect well on you. And so that's part of that discussion. The other question, normally it's not as black and white as what you've said. In other words, how can I spend the next six months doing the things in our team that prepare me for this role? And yes, eventually I will have to leave, but I can still be a star for you while you feed me tasks. The other thing you can do is you can brainstorm with them of we create a role that neither of us sees right now. How do we get a new project in our team that meets my needs? In other words, these things aren't always fixed or closed. You can create new roles.

Yeah, it sounds like to have that kind of discussion with your manager, you really have to be like, have a really strong relationship. Like they basically have to love you the work you do and they wanting to just like make it happen. Right.

So yeah, but here's the key. Every manager has these people almost. I'm sure there are tyrannical, terrible managers who truly have no friends and treat everyone under them like, I don't know, very poorly. But if you look around, a piece of advice I give more and more often is study your manager and see who's doing really well with them. Because there's almost some, there's almost always someone who's an intimate or that they are investing in. Now the next thing I hear on that is, yeah, that person's a suck up. You know, be careful with that. That person gets along really well with your manager because they figured out how to fit with the manager. But you can figure that out too. Because managers, they don't wake up and say like, oh, I want my whole team to hate me and I want to keep them at a distance. Right. Management is a lonely job and so they want friends and allies. So sure, you do need to be a friend and an ally, but you can count on the fact that most humans don't want to come to work every day and be hated.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. It's kind of human psychology at the end of the day, right?

Just like which is human psychology is a huge part of leadership and careers. People believe over and over again it's about their personal technical prowess, Whether it's their prowess as a software coder or as a product manager, or as an artist or a lawyer, but it's just not. It's. We know that emotional intelligence ultimately has more to do with career success than intellectual intelligence. Those other things are important and they form a minority of your ability. But, you know, you ask where people get stuck. Where so many people get stuck is, well, but I do good work. Why should I have to do any of this? Well, you don't. If you don't want to move up quickly, you don't, you know, like, you will move up at some pace for doing good work. But I call that strategy. Work hard and hope to be noticed. And it's like a low level strategy, but people get mad about it, which is like, well, I shouldn't have to promote myself or talk about my work like, that's my manager's job. Or that's not fair. Okay. It's not fair. I'm not here, Peter, you know me well enough. Other people may not. I'm not here about what's fair. I'm here about what works.

Kind of a interesting parallel to our creator lives. Right? Like, you can have the best course on something, but if you don't post on LinkedIn every day, no one's gonna know about it. You're gonna have to promote yourself in some way.

Yeah, that's right. I'm sure you know, both you and I of courses that we offer, probably there is someone out there who's way better than we are and no one knows about them because they don't share that in an effective way.

Yeah, this is a good segue to our second topic, like building trust internally. Maybe you can define what it means. Like, what does build trust mean exactly? Like, what is the currency of trust?

This is such a hard question. Trust is a really hard word to actually define in terms of actions, things you can do. But trust literally seems to mean from practical viewpoint that I have faith or I believe in what you will do without having heard it from you or yet seen it. That I believe that I can rely on you in certain ways, that your actions will follow a pattern that I can predict. So trust is this combination of predictability and consistency and so on. So I've seen it defined as, trust is consistency over time.

Got it. And what about. So this is more like a. I. I guess so. A lot of times, like you mentioned, people just do really great work. They do really good execution. A lot of the feedback that I hear PMs and product managers get is, you know, they need to communicate and think more strategically. And I think you wrote about, like, how you wish you made more bets in your career or something. Right. So maybe you can give an example of making, like, a bet that actually worked out and, like, what it means to think strategically.

Of course. So one thing I want to say about trust, before we go into what you ask is, trust is built slowly through positive events, and it's built more dramatically in negative events. And what I mean there is, when times are good, you and I may interact, but we're not really relying on people. The most classic case of trust is the trust between people at war, people in a foxhole. And why? It's because I end up seeing you as risking your life for me, and I'm risking my life for you. And so that builds a sense of trust. Well, in work, it's usually not life or death, but in a crisis, a service outage, an angry boss incident, a customer crisis, that's where you have the chance to step up in a way that people are like, oh, see, I can rely on Peter. I can rely on Ethan. So crisis is the place where trust is built most quickly because there's a cost to you. See, if we just work together and you're doing good work and I'm doing good work. I may think you normally do good work, but I'm not sure how much I can trust you, because so far, you haven't had to sacrifice. Trust is normally built when you have to sacrifice or when I think you are. So then you ask about taking risks, and I have said, I wish I had taken more risk. These things go together, right? Risk leads to crisis or challenge, which leads to trust. Because when I take a risk, you have to decide if you're the boss, for example, am I okay? Because if I'm your boss and you take a risk and it goes wrong, I may end up owning that problem. So that's where we make a decision together. To jump. You know, a friend of mine once said in business development, a lot of it is deciding to jump off the cliff together. You're. You're up there deciding, you know, my company, your company, are we going to shake hands and jump off the cliff together, well, that's where trust is built. Hopefully there's water at the bottom, right? So, taking risk. I have taken risks. The classic story of risk I tell is one where I was working on the early version of Prime Video and a project proposal came up to work with TiVo, the DVR company. And our management team was very split on it. And in the end, our senior vice president, a guy named Steve Kessel, came into the room and said, well, I wouldn't do this deal because I think it distracts us from working on our own, focusing only on our own service. But I see it's a reasonable deal. And so I'm going to leave it to the team. Now, my manager, the vice president, had said, ethan, I want you to take more ownership of the product. He had been, I was a pure engineering manager and he was encouraging me to think more like a product manager. And so I wanted to do this project and I had studied what resources it would take. And I said the specific words I said is, well, this is only going to take 7% of my team's resources, a small amount and a specific amount. And unless you order me not to, I'm going to do it. So I stood up and counter to him, said, unless you tell me point blank no, I'm going to do it. Nobody told me no, we did the project, it worked, and customers loved it. So not only did I deliver it in time, but it had an unusually positive customer reception. That was the gamble. And then what happened after that was other smart TV manufacturers said, hey, will you do that for us? And so the thing I didn't anticipate is it actually expanded our business. And the reason I talk about this risk is on the one hand, it had this dramatic moment of declaring I was going to do it against the advice of my senior vice president. And on the other hand, it showed up then in my promotion document to director, where the main reason given for my promotion was, well, if we didn't have Ethan, we wouldn't have had TiVo, because they could see very clearly that I was the one who made it happen. And it turned out to be a great decision. And so that built their trust enough to say, see, he should be a director. He leads at that level, which goes to your strategic thinking. Now, luckily for me, they were like backfitting a curve, assuming that I had all these thoughts. Maybe part of it was just I saw the potential of the project as a project and then it got a bigger impact for me. But I did have this strategic at least Enough strategic vision to say, well, we can expand.

Got it. Did you, in the beginning, when you made this decision to just go for it, did you have to kind of explain to the SVP why you want to go for it or you just did it?

I think we had covered that in the meeting. No, we had covered that in the meeting to that point. The specific reasoning was, at that point, Amazon's video service was only onto PCs. It was tied to Windows Media Player, and people don't watch movies on their PCs, particularly not 15 years ago, when there were fewer laptops and they were like big boxes in an office. So it was a very niche service. And getting first on DVRs and then, as it turned out on smart TVs was a way to move the service to the living room, where people wanted to be. And so the strategic reason was, how do we get out of the office and into the living room? And that worked.

I find that sometimes if a CEO or SVP tells you to do something and you do it and then it doesn't work, a lot of times they're not going to blame themselves, they're going to blame you. So it's just like, that's for sure.

True. But they may still own the mess cleanup. So that, in other words, if I take a risk, let's say, for example, in that TiVo case, it would have gone very badly and, I don't know, TiVo would have sued us, for example. Well, then I might have been fired. Right. They may have blamed me and halted my career or dismissed me, but the SVP still owns the problem. And so that's where, by allowing me the space to make that decision. Yeah, he was still involved in the risk I took. He couldn't fully distance himself from it.

Got it. But I guess he's trusted you and your manager enough to make the right decision. And then he just kind of empowered you guys, yeah, go do it.

And, yeah, you know, I built a huge amount of trust from that because, again, to your point it was, or to the point we discussed, it was a crucible moment with a very clear choice. And, you know, it also creates ownership, of course, which you worked at Twitch. Amazon loves ownership. Clearly, once I said, I'm going to do this unless you tell me no, from their viewpoint, I was clearly going to view myself as responsible because I knew I had signed up for it on my own. Right, that. So this was a common. This is a relatively common way that some leaders make decisions. Jeff Bezos apparently said. I say apparently because I've heard This, but I wasn't there that he would not give up on a project until the last high judgment person on his team gave up on it. Because his viewpoint was if there was a high judgment person, someone whose judgment he trusted, who still believed in it, then he felt that their sense of ownership had a good chance of carrying it through, even if it wasn't a perfect idea. Because it's not only good ideas that win, it's also sort of mediocre ideas pushed really hard. You know, you'll probably want an example of that, I bet. A case. I don't want to insult anyone who's ever worked on it, but a case I would say of like a mediocre idea eventually becoming good. The first one I can call to mind is Amazon's music services. Amazon Music was begun the same time as prime video in 2005. And it really went nowhere for over 10 years. It was very small, it was very lightly used. And then finally Alexa came out and suddenly there was a speaker that could put it in everybody's home. And that moved it up a whole level and kind of brought it back, gave it more clout in Hollywood and so on. And now it's a more credible service. It may still not be Spotify, but it's moved up. And that's really, I would say at some level the first 10 years were a mediocre service that no one quit on and that finally positioned it in a place to take off. And there's probably other examples of the same idea.

Yeah, like a lot of those, A lot of successful companies and founder stories are all about like going at it for five years, 10 years and then it works out, right? It's kind of.

Yeah. In fact, since you and I were talking right before we started recording, I think we may have been talking about Nvidia. And I know you've posted today about Jensen. Nvidia right now is the hottest thing out there. But they're not a new company. And so they've been somewhat quietly doing what they do for decades. And then AI brought the world to their door. ML and AI brought the world to their door in a sense. And, and so they're seeing. Because I could tell, I'm sure, you know, five years ago no one was interviewing Jensen and you know, the so called Magnificent Seven was Fang and Fang Ma. And there, there wasn't an Nvidia in the letters. So. But they existed. They're not a new company.

That's why I think they made a bunch of really good strategic choices. I'm sure. But part of it is just, they just survived to fight another day. Right. They didn't run out of money. Yeah. So I think that's like really important.

Yeah. And, and this is important to remember, which is sometimes the path to victory is still being on the field when the opportunity opens up. It is a longevity strategy and that's really hard to take. It's actually good advice for people. Right now I have a lot of people I coach that are feeling frustrated because they can't get any new headcount. They're seeing layoffs around them, promotions are frozen, careers are long. You're going to work 25, 30, 35 years. Yes. 2024 and 2023 are not great years, but a little bit there is a survival piece of am I building my core capabilities? Am I building my trust? Am I honing my skills so that when the opportunity is there again, I'm able to seize it?

That, that's awesome. Yeah, I totally agree. Do you mind just like closing the trust discussion, sharing example where like you, you like personally screwed up somewhere and then you had to like, as you mentioned, sometimes a screw up is actually a really great way to build trust. Right. So do you have an example of that? Yeah.

Yes. So my biggest example of screwing up is, is I was trying to launch Amazon's app store and there was a key feature that Jeff Bezos really liked and thought was cool and wanted to be the centerpiece of the launch. So it came time to launch that and my team worked all night to launch it on the appointed date. And in the morning Jeff woke up and we had problems. And so the announcement wasn't out. His letter that he had written that would take over the Amazon homepage wasn't there. And so he emailed me, copied all my leadership above me, and said, hey, where's the announcement? And I had to write him back and say there are some problems working on it. And I'm thinking in my head, like at 6:00am, get in the shower. Because as an engineer you always believe you almost have it solved. Now it turns out we didn't, but we thought we did. Well, anyway, he writes me right back and starts asking questions and it all unravels and he gets quite mad. So now we talk about how I handled this because I was a director and I had a vice president above me, a senior vice president, and then Jeff Bezos. And Jeff Bezos is kind of personally mad at me that his feature isn't launching. So it's kind of as bad as you can get. How did I re earn trust? The steps I took are number one. I started communicating very clearly what we were doing on an hourly basis. So I would write him an email that said, here's where we're at, here's what we're doing, here's what we're going to do in the next hour. And you will get your next report at 8am and then I would do this at 8am, you'll get next report at 9am and so I'm only asking for trust. I've lost trust. So I'm asking for the smallest unit of trust, which is you're reading this at 8:05, give me 55 minutes. And from his viewpoint, I believe I haven't been able to interview him on this. He's like, okay, he's got a good plan. And there's other people, like, watching this for me now his manager and his manager are watching. I can wait 55 minutes because he's doing the right things and then I'm doing the right things in the next hour and the next hour. So that was thing one. Thing two is then we worked really hard to fix it. Like, we worked around the clock. And thing three was we humbly accepted help. So one thing that was great about Amazon is the principal engineering community got alerted that we were having a disaster when they all woke up and, you know, a launch failure. And the email went out like, who are the right principal engineers to help this team immediately? And these people dropped their days and came and fixed our problem. Now, ironically, the way they fixed it, we had a database problem I won't go into. They basically came and said, ethan, your database design is terrible, but we don't have time to rewrite it today. So we're just going to put enough AWS hardware behind it that your terrible design will scale for one day. And, you know, they just fixed it by like massive machine power. But I didn't care. Like, at that moment, I'll take, you know, whatever. They could have fixed it by killing chickens. I. So the problem got fixed. Then what I did that I think is critical is got everything fixed, communicated it all dealt with my management being upset at me. But I had a meeting with Jeff, like five days later in a conference room that was very small and I was optional for this meeting. So I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn't go. Like, this guy's mad. It's been a bad week, we blew his launch, shouldn't go. And then I had the second thought, if I can't face him, I better Pack my desk. Like, if I can't go to meetings with CEO, I'm admitting defeat. So I chose to go. And I sat. He always sat in the same chair. So I sat right next to where he would be sitting and he came in. And it did seem to me like he was kind of giving me the cold shoulder. But I wonder how much of this is just in my mind because again, I. I wasn't the key person in the meeting. But what happened was I sat right next to him and while he had been flaming me an email. It's a lot harder to flame people right next to you. And so at the end of the meeting, he turned towards me for whatever his reasons were and said, so how are you doing? It must have been a long week, right? A like supportive, empathetic comment. And that, number one, told me that he was over being mad. He wasn't yelling at me or anything. And number two, it gave me a chance to re engage the relationship. So this is a story of where things went really wrong, how I handled it in the short term. And then there is a long term piece. The long term piece is just because he forgave didn't mean he forgot. I had to do a couple years of pretty diligent work on showing that I was operationally sound and reliable before the whole chain of management above me was willing to promote me to vice president. But in the end, it is a success story in that I failed. I was the primary technical leader on a major public launch that failed at launch and I was promoted to vice president anyway. So it is. It shows that this is possible.

Yeah, yeah. Sounds like to kind of. You took ownership right off bat. You communicate on a super regular, frequent basis.

Public launch that failed at launch and I was promoted to vice president anyway. So it is, it shows that this is possible.

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like to kind of. You took ownership right off the bat. You communicate on a super regular, frequent basis and you had the guts to just like show up and like talk to him directly afterwards.

Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you brought in the word ownership because usually when I tell that story, I emphasize that I made myself the face of the problem. I was the main. By being the communicator putting out the plan, I didn't hide from the fact that this is my team. We're going to fix it. Here's what we're doing. And always being the visible leader, for better or worse. At the moment it felt quite worse. But, you know, it worked out.

Yeah, that makes sense. All right, well, in our remaining time, let's chat about your new career. So you've been, I think you've been retired for three years now. Three years, that's right. And you posted that you're making, you know, like 7, 700K a year and only working 20 hours a week. Sounds like a pretty good life. And I'm sure as a VP at Amazon, you're making, you know, more, but you know, in hindsight, how. What are your reflections on these two careers? Like, do you kind of wish that you started this new path sooner or what are your, what's your reflection?

Yeah, you know, I've talked about taking risk. I was very risk averse to step away from my nice role as a vice president at Amazon. So I waited until I felt very confident that I could do that. You know, I'm making money today. Technically, I don't need to. In other words, I do have enough that I feel I could live out my life quite comfortably without making more money. So the money, in a sense, is a side effect of what I do. People value it and are willing to give me money quite happily, so I accept it. But what I can say is, as much as I was happy at Amazon, I love what I do today. Because the benefit of running your own business, if people value what you do, is you can sculpt your business to doing kind of only what you want to do. And in a corporate world, you're still doing what other people want at the end of the day. You may propose it, you may design it to some degree, but you're doing what Amazon needs. And in Amazon's way. Whereas now I'm doing what Ethan needs in Ethan's way, and that's better.

Got it. Yeah. So even as a VP at Amazon, you couldn't just do the work that you love.

Right.

You have to send like email updates and stuff or whatever you like to do. Yeah.

And you know, Amazon, and I think not just Amazon, most high performance companies, even if you're doing the work you love, they're very high pressure because they sort of are designed to ask, can you do more with less? Can you do more with less? Is there a way to go faster, better? Because that's just they have people paid to look at efficiency and to ask those questions. And so you always have some of those pressures. And then it's also very rare, extremely rare, that what you're being asked to do for a company is exactly what you would do with your own life. I'm sure a few people find that whatever they're I don't know. But they have perfect alignment with the company direction. But most people, they're working in an area they find interesting, hopefully and challenging. But it's not what they would do if they were billionaires and could go do whatever they wanted. It's just not. And so if you can build your own business though, you may be able to get closer to that. And in my case, I'm lucky enough to be doing what I would choose because my other option is don't do it. Like I don't have to.

Yeah, you can just be playing golf or something.

Yeah, I'm. Well, I'm a skier. Yeah. So I could be skiing, I could be hiking, I could be traveling, you know, but the thing about this worth covering, those things are super pleasurable, but they don't have much impact or meaning. And in the end there's plenty of stories of people with lots of money, seeking lots of pleasure and ending up very unhappy because there's no depth to it. And so yeah, I say I don't have to do this work, I don't have to do it financially. I feel like I do have to do it to have self respect, to believe that I'm contributing to the world.

What were some like key growth levers or moments in your 3 year journey to 700k? Like what were some things that really drove the growth?

Yeah, there were several. One of them clearly was I have a partner, an operating partner, Jason Young, who found me. He was attracted by my content and he reached out and said, I think you're really under exploiting this content. Some other people have great newsletters and I think your content would make a great newsletter. Can I work with you to create a newsletter? So we talked and built trust because I was entrusting him with my brand and that he would follow through. But we built that trust and that was a huge lever because suddenly there was a second smart brain in the room. And in this case it was someone that has nearly perfect alignment with me because he looked, there are thousands of creators and he looked and said, your content is what I believe. It's the content I want to work with. And so of all the creators, he found someone that he was highly aligned with. And so that was, that's probably the single biggest lever because he helped me both make a newsletter and he also was part of figuring out that live courses would resonate with my audience as well as recorded courses. And so it sort of created both of those opportunities. The second big pillar was then as I just kept posting consistently LinkedIn noticed me, and so they reached out and invited me to a workshop on how to write better on the platform, how to be more effective and reach more people. And so these were small tweaks. It wasn't changing my core content, but it was sort of changing what I'll call the packaging or the window dressing. And that was very effective because it caused me to reach more people, which has always been my goal. So those are probably two really big levers.

That's something. The first one is something I really need help with, man. Like, my problem is I don't have any time to do a lot of this stuff, so. And for some reason the people who reach out to me are, I don't know, they're like scammers or people. They're not Jason.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I bet though you have a big following, there is someone out there waiting for an invitation. Jason didn't wait for an invitation. But I actually, a lot of the support of my content comes from volunteers, and I do take chances on volunteers that some others wouldn't. And I have had a couple of situations where that definitely hasn't worked out. And I've had to end volunteer relationships that were, if not scammers, at least, let's just say, incompatible. So I call the packaging or the window dressing. And that was very effective because it. It caused me to re inch into these relationships of, let's test this, let's test that. But that has generally found me help. And there is someone in your audience, I'm sure, who, remember we talked earlier about what you don't have time for is still a huge opportunity for them. Each more people, which has always been my goal. So those are probably two really big levers.

That's something.

There's something you need done that for them would be a great growth opportunity to showcase their ability and build their skills.

The first one is something I really need help with, man. Like, my problem is I don't have any time to do a lot of this stuff, so. And for some reason, the people who reach out to me are, I don't know, they're like scammers or people. They're not Jason.

Yeah. And aligns with what they love to do. And so hopefully you can find a couple of those people and not get burned too often.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cool. I guess the last question is, you know, now that you had these two career paths, you teach a lot about advancing your career in your company. Right. And like, I'm curious, like, but what about advancing your career publicly or like, you know, having more optionality so that you don't just get burned by a layoff or some. Something, you know, like. Like, do you have to be like an Amazon VP to do this stuff that we're doing? Or like, how do people get started with this? How do tech professionals get started?

Yeah. Well, I bet though you have a big following, there is someone out there waiting for an invitation, part of this stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I become a huge advocate if there's like one message I wish I could pound through. Jason didn't wait for an invitation, but I actually a lot of the support of my content people's brains, it's go build your network by sharing something you love. And I learned this at Twitch comes from volunteers. And I do take chances on volunteers that some others wouldn't. And I have had a couple of situations where that definitely hasn't worked out and I've had to end volunteer relations. You and I share Twitch. What Twitch taught me was there is a niche audience for every single person. And yet that niche audience, because the Internet now has several billion people on it, can be quite large and powerful. So the example I talk about theoretically is if you think Wookiees from Star Trek are the coolest thing on earth, there's several thousand other people who love Wookiees and Wookiee culture just as much as you do. And you can find them and become their voice or talk to them. And when you need them, your fellow Wookie lovers, they still have jobs, they still have other connections, they can come through for you. Now if you think this is absurd, you know, go to Twitch and see all the different niche communities and realize that whatever your passion chips that were, if not scammers, at least, let's just say incompatible. So I inched into these relationships of let's test this, let's test that. But that has generally share that, and you can collect other people who share it. And if you're giving to them and creating value for them and being their friends or enthusiasing with them or talking with them or somehow adding to that community, those people will line up behind you and support you when you need them. And I think every single person should be doing this. And I also think it's relatively easy because they found me help. And there is someone in your audience, I'm sure, who, remember we talked earlier about what you don't have time for is still a huge opportunity for them. You don't a. You don't have to use LinkedIn. You can use lots of different networks and B, it doesn't have to be your work, it can be something else you love. It's just a matter of choosing to build a network of people that share your passion.

Yeah. The key word is like something you love. Right. And like from my experience, this stuff does take a couple years to get off the ground. So I think the earlier you kind of start doing it, the the better.

Yeah, yeah. And the reason love is important is because it will take a couple years. You have to love it enough to do it for the long term. It has to be something that if you just calculate in your head and say oh, I too should talk about Gen AI because it's hot, I don't really care about it but like I'm going to be another Gen AI voice and try that. You won't sustain, you won't see instant. There's something you need done that for them would be a great growth opportunity to showcase their ability and build their skill and aligns with what they love to do. And so hopefully you can find a couple of those people and not get burnt too often.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Results. And you'll get tired and lazy because that's human. I happen to love leadership theory and careers and so talking about them every day, you know, I have hundreds of posts.

Cool. I guess the last question is, you know, now that you had these two career paths, you teach a lot about advance your career.

You know, it's partly written that like I'll never get around to finishing them all because I can't post them fast enough. People can't read all of that.

Yeah.

But the love is boiling out of me faster than the opportunities to share it are there. Right?

Yeah. Same thing for a company man. Like you gotta love a company. Right. And like I'm curious like but what about advancing your career publicly or climbing a ladder or you gotta love going to the next level, otherwise it's hard.

To do it if you don't want it. Someone else wants it more than you and they'll put in the effort because it's a role they can see themselves in and you just have a wish, not a true desire. Everyone wishes whether they should or not.

Like you know, having more optionality so that you don't get burned by a layoff or some something, you know, like.

Almost everyone wishes to be rich for example. Yeah, but like some people wish to be rich and then they flip on cable and some people wish to be rich and they go start a company and those are different people.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay. I think that's A great note to close on. All right, Ethan, well, thanks so much for the conversation. Yeah, thank you. Where can people find you? Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Oh, you were saying, where can people find me? Of course they can find me. In LinkedIn. I'm Ethan Evans, VP. I think I'm, you know, the sort of.

Do you have to be, like, an Amazon VP to do this stuff that we're doing? Or, like, how do people get started with this? How do tech professionals get started with this stuff?

Yeah, yeah. So I've become a huge advocate. If there's, like, one message I wish I could pound through. Easiest search result there. My website's ethanevans.com and I'm on substack as well.

Awesome. All right, thanks so much.

Yeah, my pleasure. People's brains, it's go build your network by sharing something you love. And I learned this at Twitch. You and I share Twitch. What Twitch taught me was there is a niche audience for every single person. And yet that niche audience, because the Internet now has several billion people on it, can be quite large and powerful. So the example I talk about theoretically is if you think Wookiees from Star Trek are the coolest thing on Earth, there's several thousand other people who love Wookiees and Wookiee culture just as much as you do, and you can find them and become their voice or talk to them, and when you need them, your fellow Wookiee lovers, they still have jobs, they still have other connections. They can come through for you. Now, if you think this is absurd, you know, go to Twitch and see all the different niche communities and realize that whatever your passion is, share that, and you can collect other people who share it. And if you're giving to them and creating value for them and being their friends or enthusiasing with them or talking with them or somehow adding to that community, those people will line up behind you and support you when you need them. And I think every single person should be doing this. And I also think it's relatively easy because you don't. A, you don't have to use LinkedIn, you can use lots of different networks. And B, it doesn't have to be your work. It can be something else you love. It's just a matter of choosing to build a network of people that share your passion.

Yeah, the key word is like, something you love. Right. And, like, from my experience, this stuff does take a couple years to get off the ground. So I think the earlier you kind of start doing it, the better.

Yeah, yeah. And the reason love is important is because it will take a couple years. You have to love it enough to do it for the long term. It has to be something that if you just calculate in your head and say, oh, I too should talk about Gen AI because it's hot, I don't really care about it, but like, I'm going to be another Gen AI voice and try that, you won't sustain, you won't see instant results, and you'll get tired and lazy because that's human. I happen to love leadership theory and careers and so talking about them every day, you know, I have hundreds of posts partly written that like, I'll never get around to finishing them all because I can't post them fast enough. People can't read all of that. Yeah, but the love is boiling out of me faster than the opportunities to share it are there. Right?

Yeah. Same thing for a company man. Like, you gotta love climbing the ladder or you gotta love going to the next level. Otherwise it's hard to do it if.

You don't want it. Someone else wants it more than you and they'll put in the effort because it's a role they can see themselves in and you just have a.