CMO Square, Lauren Weinberg: Self-made boss
Grit
English - May 09, 2022 07:30 - 1 hour - 140 MBEntrepreneurship Business Careers grit go to market gtm angela duckworth startup operators marketing sales ceo cro Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
As the CMO for Square, Lauren Weinberg spends a lot of her time talking to new and inexperienced small business owners — and she knows that each of them has wisdom that the others could benefit from. So, Lauren and her former colleague Jackie Reses wrote a book pooling all that wisdom into one place, Self-Made Boss: Advice, Hacks, and Lessons From Small Business Owners
In this episode, Lauren and Joubin discuss why Lauren never leaves home without sneakers post-9/11; how she maintains discipline in her schedule, and how her priorities have changed over the years; how Lauren overcame three back-to-back challenges in her personal life; why she took a job at Square — after initially turning them down; and the importance of competition for any business.
In this episode, we cover:
Weekend date nights and the best restaurants in New York City (10:04)How Lauren creates her own time and recharges (15:15)Moving to California to work at Yahoo, and finding a new community (19:32)“The worst year of my life” and going into “survival mode” (22:52)The difference between Square and its newly re-christened parent company, Block (30:22)Why our culture is galvanized by small business stories (36:05)What inspired Lauren and Jackie to write “Self-Made Boss,” and the surprising parts of publishing a book (39:52)Why Lauren includes sad or funny personal stories in every marketing email (42:26)Square’s secret superpower in the company’s early days (49:27)The planning “manifesto” Lauren sent to Square’s executive team shortly after joining (53:31)How Square “earns the right” to show up for social causes (56:50)Links:
Connect with LaurenTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: [email protected] Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm