How I built a 1M+ subscriber newsletter and top 10 tech podcast | Lenny Rachitsky
In this unique episode, Michelle Rial interviews her husband, Lenny Rachitsky, about his journey building a million-subscriber newsletter and top-tier podcast. They discuss the origins of his work, managing stress, creative processes, and personal life moments, including a harrowing birth experience.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction and Interview Role Reversal
Lenny's Career Path and Newsletter Origins
The 'Indiana Jones Boulder' of Weekly Content
Lenny's Stress Management, Misophonia, and Happiness
Psychedelic Experience and Newsletter Confidence
Michelle Rial's Chart Virality and Creative Process
The Origin of Lenny's Name and Public Recognition
Lenny's Early Side Projects and Startup Experiences
Relationship Dynamics and Missing Office Culture
Lenny's Face Blindness (Prosopagnosia) and Social Interactions
High-Stress Moments: Business Fraud and Childbirth Emergency
Michelle's Optimal Creative Environment and Process
Lenny's Favorite Children's Books and Parenting Insights
Defining Product Management and Its Relevance
Michelle's Pivot to Children's Books
The Power of Iteration and Real-Life Experience
6 Key Concepts
Lindy Effect
This concept suggests that for certain non-perishable things, the longer they have been in existence, the longer they are likely to continue to exist in the future.
Ikigai
Mentioned as a concept involving multiple factors, including enjoying what you do, being good at it, and others valuing it, which can lead to a fulfilling life or career.
Misophonia
A neurological disorder where certain sounds trigger strong emotional or physiological responses, such as anger or disgust. For Lenny, this includes sounds like open-mouth chewing.
Baseline Level of Happiness
Everyone has a natural, default level of happiness to which they tend to return after significant positive or negative life events. This baseline can be improved through practices like optimistic thinking.
Bomber Peak (of Coffee)
A concept, adapted from XKCD's 'Bommer Peak' for alcohol, referring to the optimal amount of coffee that makes someone feel most insightful and creative before becoming erratic or anxious.
Face Blindness (Prosopagnosia)
A brain disorder that impairs a person's ability to recognize familiar faces, even those of close friends or family. Lenny describes struggling to remember people's names and faces.
11 Questions Answered
He believes he would likely be struggling with another startup venture that would probably fail, eventually leading him to join a company as a Product Manager.
He finds it incredibly fulfilling and interesting, but also experiences constant pressure due to the weekly publishing schedule, likening it to an 'Indiana Jones boulder' chasing him.
A psychedelic experience in Joshua Tree where he repeatedly felt the phrase 'I have wisdom to share' coming through him, which gave him the confidence to believe in his ability to share insights.
Based on a University of Pennsylvania course, one can improve their baseline happiness by consciously thinking more positively and optimistically, which helps them return to a higher emotional state after life events.
Her charts are simple, quick to digest, often make people laugh or feel something, and present familiar ideas in a novel way that people haven't considered before.
His official first name in the U.S. was Leonid after moving from Ukraine, but everyone called him Lenny, so his parents legally changed it to just Lenny when they became citizens.
He generally likes it a lot, finds it flattering, and appreciates that people are usually very nice and considerate when they approach him.
A $100 million fraud attack on his product pass launch, where fraud rings from China exploited API vulnerabilities, requiring his engineer to work tirelessly for a week to shut them down.
Michelle's childbirth emergency, where an epidural went the wrong direction, stopping her heart and lungs, requiring emergency intubation and causing him immense fear and uncertainty.
Ideas come from living life, observing many things, and often emerge during meditation, which helps her observe her own thinking and anxieties, leading to new insights.
She wanted to create children's books using charts to teach early learning concepts like opposites, colors, and shapes, and found that her experience as a parent significantly improved her ability to write effectively for children.
12 Actionable Insights
1. Pursue Enjoyable Valued Work
Identify activities you genuinely enjoy and that others find valuable, then double down on those. This rare intersection (the ‘Venn diagram’) is often a strong indicator of a fulfilling and potentially successful path, as it was for Lenny starting his newsletter.
2. Base Content on Real Experience
Create content and share advice that stems directly from real-life practice and experience, rather than theoretical pontification. The most impactful insights come from practitioners ‘doing the thing for real,’ which resonates more deeply with an audience.
3. Maintain Consistent Creative Output
Commit to a consistent schedule for your creative work, such as publishing weekly, to build momentum and audience trust. This consistent effort, even when challenging, is crucial for long-term sustainability and growth, as per the Lindy effect.
4. Iterate Extensively for Quality
Dedicate significant time to refining and improving your work, iterating through it many times (e.g., 50+ times for a written piece). A high bar for quality and thorough editing are essential for making content truly excellent and impactful.
5. Cultivate an Optimistic Mindset
Actively work on adjusting your thinking to be more optimistic and positive, as this can raise your baseline level of happiness and reduce stress. Don’t let your mind spiral into negative thoughts; consciously choose a positive outlook.
6. Use Exercise to Combat Negativity
Engage in regular exercise not necessarily to increase happiness, but to mitigate negative emotional states. Exercise can help bring you out of a negative mental space, effectively moving you from ’negative one to zero’ and preventing depression.
7. Live Life for Creative Ideas
Actively engage in diverse life experiences and observe the world around you to generate new ideas for creative projects. Focusing too much on work can stifle creativity; living a full life provides the raw material for unique insights.
8. Optimize Coffee for Creativity
Find your ‘Ballmer Peak’ for coffee intake, where you consume just enough to feel insightful and creative without becoming erratic or anxious. For some, a single shot of espresso can provide the ideal neuro-stimulation for focused work.
9. Set Deadlines for Creative Flow
Introduce time limits or external deadlines for creative tasks to foster a sense of urgency and machine-like focus. Having a specific endpoint can help channel creative energy and prevent excessive overthinking.
10. Simplify Complex Visualizations
When creating visual content like charts, strive to simplify ideas as much as possible, making them easy to digest and quickly understandable. This approach caters to shorter attention spans and helps convey complex concepts effectively.
11. Be Selective with Commitments
Carefully consider new opportunities and commitments to avoid creating a job or life you dislike. It’s easy to build a complicated, undesirable situation by chasing every ‘big’ opportunity; prioritize simplicity and alignment with your true passions.
12. Communicate Simply and Succinctly
Practice communicating points clearly and concisely so that others can easily grasp your message. Effective communication involves distilling complex information into simple, understandable terms.
7 Key Quotes
The visual I always have is the Indiana Jones boulder is chasing me constantly.
Lenny
How often do you enjoy something and people value it? And maybe there's a way to make money in the future.
Lee Jacobs (recounted by Lenny)
I have wisdom to share coming through me over and over and over.
Lenny
You can create a job for yourself that you hate by doing things that people want you to do or by following opportunities that feel big.
Lenny
Exercise doesn't make you happier, but it brings you out of the negative.
Lenny
The best stuff comes from doing the thing and then sharing your advice versus just thinking, you know what you're doing and communicating it simply.
Lenny
It's like people texting you from a new number. I'm like, who is this?
Lenny
1 Protocols
Michelle Rial's Optimal Creative Environment for Charts
Michelle Rial- Consume a single shot latte to reach the 'Bomber Peak' of coffee for creativity.
- Work with a time limit, ideally two hours, and a deadline to be somewhere.
- Ensure a good night of sleep beforehand to avoid frantic mental energy.
- Write down ideas as they appear while living life and observing the world.
- Visualize the idea in the simplest way possible on paper, focusing on clarity.