Emojis That Describe What It Is Like to Work in Growth
See how 13 growth leaders used emoji's to describe their role.
👋 Hey subscribers and readers! Life is crazy for me right now! I moved across the country recently and haven’t been able to sit down and write. And you know… COVID can really take the wind out of your sails. With that said I got reenergized by reaching out to people on growth and I’d love to share with you what they shared with me
Subscribe & share as I’d love to connect with more like-minded people!
My motivation to write a post recently has been 😩.
Writing should be fun, right? In an effort to kickstart my inspiration I decided to reach out to my network and get their thoughts on “What it’s like to work in Growth”.
So I drafted up a message and started reaching out with the following:
👋 Hey {First Name}!
I’m writing a post on what it’s like to be in ‘growth’. I wanted to reach out to you to see if you’d be willing to help! Here is what I was thinking:
Choose a few emojis on what it’s like to work in growth
Add a tweet-length description
I’d love to highlight you in this post! If you could send me your quick thoughts I’ll 100% add it in!
Hope all is well during this rollercoaster ride of 2020 🙃
I’d like to thank everyone for taking the time and reenergizing my writing. I have so much respect for everyone who responded, they are leaders in growth at their respective companies and truly understand the ups and downs of working in the space.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
Terrence Kwok, Director of Growth Marketing at Vidyard
Terrence is a killer in the growth space at Vidyard in Kitchener, ON. I’ve been lucky enough to connect with Terrence on a few occasions over my posts and look forward to continuing to learn from each other. Here are his thoughts:
😬🚵♀️😭🥳
“Working in growth is about coming to terms with the fact that you probably have no idea what you're doing. There is no set playbook that will guarantee success and that's okay. It's about putting your head down and being methodical about experimentation. Getting comfortable with constant failure helps you appreciate the odd win that much more.”
Vivek Bala, Director of Growth at WaveHQ
Vivek was somebody I reached out to over 4 years ago to nerd out on demand gen, campaigns, and paid marketing. He was at Shopify at the time and we have both since moved into the Growth space that looks at not only marketing but product activation & monetization. Here are his thoughts:
🎢
"Working in Growth is nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. It’s the constant pursuit of the unknown, feeling comfortable in uncharted territories yet learning to trust the process. The ride becomes more adventurous when you have to shepherd the teams and get them excited”
Ramli John, Product Growth for SaaS
Why didn’t I put a specific title in for Ramli? BECAUSE HE HAS TOO MANY! This guy is a workhorse and I remember when we met at Jimmy’s Coffee in Toronto where we could have talked for hours. I was lucky enough to do be on his Growth Marketing Today podcast and he drew the short straw having to listen to me talk at an unhealthy speed. Ramli is amazing, please check out everything he is doing with the Product Led Institute.
👋🤝🛠🏆
“Working in growth has been about partnering with other functions and working with them to build and run experiments. That’s how you win. Growth isn’t a solo mission but a team sport.”
Elizabeth Houde, Growth Manager at FlipGive
Elizabeth and I have never met! In my goal to connect with more people in growth, she was generous enough to accept my invitation. Even so, a quick glance at her profile and you will quickly see that she has jumped projects across activation & monetization building onboarding experiences alongside new pricing & packaging. I love her perspective on what it’s like to work in growth:
🧪👩🏻🎨📈🔎
“Working in growth requires a seamless blend of science and art. Yes, you must ground every decision in data, but you also have to be willing to dig for the real insights, talk to your customers, ask thoughtful questions, and get super creative with your copy and design.”
Greg Leach, Product Marketing Manager
Okay, Greg is a growth machine. We met at a Starbucks on Adelaide Street one day and we got so excited talking about growth I swear we weren’t even sitting in our seats by the end of our chat. I thought I would never meet someone that can match my speed. For folks sitting near us, I can only imagine what they were thinking! I was lucky enough to also be on his podcast “The Growth Equation” and I’m grateful for the connection. Here are his thoughts:
🙄😲🔎💡
"What does growth really mean? To me, it is about solving problems for both the business and its customers. It is about following a process and focusing on learning. Understanding the problem, being hypothesis-driven focused on the learnings will lead to the best outcome. Use experiments as a way to inform rapid decision making."
Will Bradley, Head of Growth at PolicyMe
I’ve never met Will! He started subscribing to nuffshoptalk and we were able to connect over LinkedIn. I hope to speak with him in person about his amazing experience wearing so many different hats. From driving an ambulance in the army to heading up Growth (now that’s a headline!), you can tell he is a willing learner and is constantly looking to GO GO GO! Here are his thoughts:
🕵️ 📔🙅🥳
“Solving each growth challenge is like playing detective while reading a crime novel. Each experiment is a chapter that unveils more insights into the characters (customers). Despite what the data says, you're often more wrong than right, and that's what makes working in growth so much fun!”
Bukhtar Khan, Head of Growth, Jack/Jill/Cover Health
Bukhtar is another growth leader I haven’t had the chance to meet, but it’s rare to see someone wear so many different hats in growth from the beginning of their career up to today. I’d love to pick his brain on how he applies growth principles to the healthcare industry! Bukhtar cuts through the shop talk with his one-liner and I absolutely love it:
🧪📐📈⚖️🔬
“You are only good at growth if you manufacture profit - otherwise, you are just growing losses. X-ray your funnel.”
Andrew Capland, Head of Growth at Postscript
I reached out to Andrew to learn more about scaling growth teams a few years ago. Over time we’ve been able to connect on a more recurring basis and it was wild to recognize the similar opportunities and challenges we all have in this space. Andrew just launched a podcast with Product Led and I was lucky enough to be his first guest and I highly recommend giving him a follow. Some of the best advice I’ve ever received!
👷🔨🚧💡
“In my experience, working in growth comes down to two basic principles that are incredibly difficult to get right.
1. Understanding what’s valuable to your users
2. Finding creative ways to deliver that value as quickly as possible.
There are no hacks or shortcuts along the way, just a lot of hard work.”
Joseph Wilkinson, Director of Growth at Polly
At the same time I connected with Andrew, I was fortunate enough to chat with Joe. His work at LucidChart really resonated with the work I’m doing at Jobber. I remember he would start laughing as I described the problems we were facing because he had faced the exact same problems a year earlier! Joe is a strong leader in the growth space and I highly recommend connecting with him:
⚙️🎨🧬⏱
"Working in growth is developing a process that embraces art and science to get consistent results over time. Growth has to be a balance of all four of those elements and figuring out what of those four to add more of or to take out makes it exhilarating."
Alex Shipillo, Director of Growth Marketing at Clio
Alex & I connected through Growth Toronto and instantly shared our passion for growth. Both Clio & Jobber target the SMB market and we were able to share common challenges and geek out on the opportunities ahead. He is one of the top respected growth marketers in Toronto and has a boatload of knowledge:
🤑 👀👂📊 🚀
“Great growth marketers are hyper-focused on driving revenue. They excel at capturing insights and turning those into hypotheses. If you're doing it right, it feels like a rocket ship. It can be a bumpy ride, but there's no other place that you'd rather be!”
Hailey Friedman, Co-Founder at Growth Marketing Pro & GrowthBar
Hailey has quickly established herself as an expert in the growth marketing industry. She has an amazing library of content and has an SEO tool that is amazing for any growth marketer out there. Here are her thoughts:
💡💡🌱🚀
"Working in Growth is fun because you get to come up with creative ideas and test them out. When you find something that works -- it's thrilling. It feels like you just won a video game. And when you find what works you can double down and turn that little seedling into a rocketship. Though be careful, it's easy to waste time and money on the wrong things. The key is prioritizing the right channels."-
Deb Mukherjee, Head of Marketing at DelightChat
Deb is a virtual connection through the Product Led Slack Community, he brings a marketing lens to growth, and his description resonated with me and I’m sure others as we navigate the heavy waters of growth:
😅🧐🙄🔥
"Working in growth feels like I'm on a boat in the middle of a storm and I can see the lighthouse light from afar but I have to reach there amidst the storm. My work demands switching my thinking between in-the-box & out-of-the-box; experiment but doesn't break what's working. It's stringing together data analysis, customer interviews, gut feeling, and a bit of luck to execute campaigns.”
Me :), Manager of Growth at Jobber
I instantly found the rollercoaster emoji and plugged it in. Experimentation keeps me engaged and locked into my work, and the speed and uncertainty keep me on my toes. All of these experiments create a ton of emotions for me and I choose to embrace them with the team to enjoy the process and have fun with it!
🧪🎢 = 🤯🤔😆🙃🤩🤑🥴😭😫
"Working in growth is a rollercoaster ride of emotions that moves you from highs to lows in the blink of an eye. Your work demands a commitment to unpacking problems through experimentation & data, but it also demands a willing attitude to jump into ambiguity and madness!"