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Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your 

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host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance 

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marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. 

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We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, 

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marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and 

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have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned. 

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Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I am 

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very happy today because I'm sitting down with Patrick Moran, 

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Talk Growth. Patrick, welcome. Thanks, Ty. Happy to be here. Happy 

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Thursday. Happy Thursday or Friday junior or Friday light depending on how you 

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wanna phrase it. I'll take it. I'll take either. Do you, do you have any 

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plans for the weekend? Yeah. I don't know I don't know. This this might sound controversial to a lot of college 

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football fans. I'm flying out to Ann Arbor to go watch to go watch Michigan 

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under the cloud of all of this sort of sign stealing sort of situations. 

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But, I don't know. It's not like I bought tickets knowing that this would 

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happen. So so I'm I'm more in it and I'm excited and, 

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we'll see how it goes. Hey. Like any true fan. Right? You're you're showing your, your support, 

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and, you can't control all the all the maneuverings they do to try to attempt to 

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win, whether it's real or accused. We'll see how this ages. We'll listen 

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to this podcast us from now and go look back. Yeah. Yeah. 

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With thoughts on whether this ended who ends well or not so well for whatever 

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school. We'll bring back the predictions at the end of the pod. How's that sound? It sounds good. Yeah. 

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Predictions. Well, I'm I'm super excited to talk to to Patrick today. 

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For the audience out there that doesn't know him, he was part of the Internet marketing team at eBay while 

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I was there. He's gone on to do some really impressive things in growth. 

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He's led performance marketing and growth for brands like Netflix, TiVo, 

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Spotify, House. He's currently at Robinhood. His his 

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resume and track record is speaks for itself. I also wanna add that 

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Patrick is part of the, just a great growth and product and marketing 

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community called Reforge, one of the best created in my view. I'm a longtime 

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student and participant, and he was also an entrepreneur in 

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resident at Reforge, teaching, counseling, sharing a lot of 

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really great insights and part of the the team that put together the curriculum for, 

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just some really powerful learnings in growth and and marketing and product. So 

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definitely check that out if you have not. Highly recommend it. And in 

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addition to that, Patrick has his own podcast called Finding Market 

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Fit, which you should also check out. So there's a lot going on. Did I did I miss 

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anything in there? No. No. I I that that's that's great. I mean, I at 

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this point now, I I hope I deliver some nuggets 

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at intro, but appreciate it. Thank you. It's it's well deserved. So growth 

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marketing, how has it evolved in your view? You've seen so many things change from your 

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Internet marketing days, which feel like ancient history at eBay to, you know, growing 

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teams, to building channels, to to looking at kind of like there's so many things 

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to talk about. But but how how you think growth marketing has evolved in your 

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view? I mean, it's a great question. I think it actually really mostly started as Internet marketing back in the 

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day when most folks would try to buy display banners and, to 

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to essentially sort of just advertise, their products. Right? And the form that it 

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took was mostly kind of like print magazine. Right? So I'm gonna go go 

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buy placements and I I get to sort of buy against eyeballs Mhmm. And things like that. 

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And then eventually sort of that that evolved into basically paying on a cost per click basis. 

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Right? So back before I think Google ended up buying this company called Overture, which is called 

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go dot com, where they were charging cost per click on search results. 

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And that, I think, sort of led to or the initiatives led to, okay. Well, now we can actually 

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track, you know, some of these initiatives. Right? As opposed to trying to make, you know, some type of 

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correlation between an increase in eyeballs to sales. Now it's like, okay. 

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Well, I can now correlate or derive a lot much stronger correlation 

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to clicks and sales. And then I think, obviously, from there, 

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the technology just got a lot more sophisticated. And then you had things like programmatic 

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display coming along where all of this inventory, right, from 

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display banners, sort of started to enter kind of like a stock exchange, and you had all of these 

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agencies bidding for some of this inventory practically real time. 

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I think the challenge 

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a a multi device sort of situation on a per user basis. Right? 

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So before, it was just I have a desktop, and then I potentially have a laptop at 

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home. Now it's like I have a desktop, potentially have laptop at home, and then now I have a phone. 

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And so it's like, okay. Well, am I, you know, overlapping? Am I hitting the same person over and over 

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again? And I think that was a challenge with programmatic display. And so until Facebook and Google came along, you know, like, 

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you know what? We're gonna tie this all to your email address. And I think that's how 

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that's one of the reasons I'm not saying the only reason, but one of the reasons why they became so 

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massive is because they were able to sort of generate all of these properties 

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with, significant levels of traffic and then marry essentially desktop and 

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mobile together. And then so now that's sort of proliferated, and now you have, like, a handful of 

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different other platforms like TikTok and Snap. And it's certainly gotten a lot more 

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The the the advertising space has gotten a lot more sophisticated, but that's that's the acquisition portion. 

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I mean, there's also the retention portion that I think over the course of the last five or so years has 

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also started to grow when, you had companies like Braze and 

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Iterable and some of these messaging platforms come through the ranks. Because 

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before then you had a lot of these b to b email only platforms. And so once you started to 

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introduce, like, algorithmic type messaging and things like that, and you're on Instagram and you 

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get a certain message on a certain periods of time, it now ties to sort of retention. So now 

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you kinda see full funnel where it started out, I think, as an acquisition play or an advertising play from, you 

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know, something like the Procter and Gamble's of the world back in the day to now where it's actually like, okay. Well, 

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it's much more data driven, and things like that. So, hopefully, that's helpful. I mean, there's a lot of information there, 

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but that's Yeah. Absolutely. You kinda touch on the acquisition and retention 

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areas of of growth, if you will. And maybe it would be interesting to 

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hear how you've viewed those and maybe where 

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retention's an interesting one where I think it didn't get enough airtime 

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until perhaps later than it should have from some marketers. And 

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I'm maybe curious to hear your perspective on retention, how you've approached 

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it, maybe some of the the folks that seem to be getting it right. Obviously, it's become kind of a 

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a table stakes requirement in growth, but maybe you can elaborate a little bit on 

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retention because I don't think it gets maybe enough airtime on this pod. I don't know if it 

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gets enough airtime for some brands and some individual marketers, but I'm curious 

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to know what your thoughts are on on it. So I guess if you take a step back, right, and you try to sort 

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of define, the formula for growth, it really is 

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I mean, in at its most simplest form, acquisition 

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plus retention minus churn over periods of time. 

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Right? So over one period versus another period, and that's your essentially, your net growth. If you look at 

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subscription services, or other software, more SaaS, level 

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companies, maybe you can kind of, like, take a little bit of a different approach for ecommerce. 

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But for a lot of those companies, that's generally speaking, that's the formula. Now, I mean, you could you could certainly make it 

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a lot more sophisticated. You could say, like, MQLs and then SalesLend and then 

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activation Mhmm. Engagement, then you can break out engagement to various cohorts, and then you can 

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have various churn rates by cohort, etcetera, etcetera. But generally speaking, at the highest level, it's acquisition 

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plus the people who came back minus the people who left, that's growth. And so 

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generally speaking, for the most part, on the acquisition side, just 

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advertising and marketing were just so synonymous synonymous with each other that that's really the world that they played 

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in. And for the most part, product owner retention. Right? So whatever that meant. Right? Whether 

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it's you're communicating to your users on the platform, you're sending them emails, you're sending them push notifications, 

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because it's very much part of the product experience. And so as you 

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see, like, the growth of, like, CDPs and MarTech 

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infrastructure, and some of these messaging platforms, it started to 

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take a little bit more of, the feel of, like, paid media 

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sans the dollars, where the way that you would test would be fairly similar, the 

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way that you would assess activity would be fairly similar, and things like that. And so you now 

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had kind of, like, acquisition people expanding into retention 

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and product retention people expanding into acquisition. Right? And so I think you've 

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seen that now over the course of, you know, sort of the last several years. And it's just a lot of also 

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just new people coming into the space who are not Internet marketers at eBay back 

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in back during our days. Right? I mean, they they didn't see that world. So they're capable of coming into 

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this world where it's like, okay. Yeah. This makes sense to me. There's no you know, we're not gonna optimize for 

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eyeballs anymore. Right? So I think that's that's how it sort of evolved. And I think then you 

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had programs like Reforge and and other programs that basically have just doubled down on the 

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fact that, look, in order to drive acquisition, 

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you need strong product market fit. And the unit economics 

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actually define that. Right? So if you look at an LTV CAC situation, you're I mean, 

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if you want to optimize to an ROI of one or at least one, your LTV has to 

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be equal to your CAC, you know, given a certain payback period. 

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And your LTV is a function of retention. Right? It's a function of retention and monetization. 

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And so from that standpoint, I think that's where you're now seeing kind of, like, people 

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who or marketers who kind of now are much stronger 

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partners with product and much stronger partners with finance who can actually 

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truly see full funnel and how their activity sort of impact growth and monetization 

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much more holistically than when you're just looking at acquisition. Yeah. There's so much good 

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stuff in there, and I think it really outlines how things have 

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evolved and I think gotten more sophisticated. And in some ways, 

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at a macro level, have gotten, I think, a little less slightly less siloed is the 

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theme I'm picking up. The combination of the partnership between product and 

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finance and and marketing seems to be very powerful one. Maybe that'd be 

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a good topic to kinda delve into. You've had so many great experiences 

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and so many interesting consumer brands. What are some kind of 

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best practices that you recommend people listening around? If you're a marketer, 

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how do you best partner with product and finance? So there's 

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a couple couple of things that may maybe I'll start with product. Right? I think the challenges or at least, yeah, 

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some of the challenges I've always seen with working with with product is 

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that usually product products lens is optimizing towards 

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user like usage and marketing's lens is optimizing 

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towards a p and l or towards a budget. And those two things 

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usually come together. But oftentimes, when you drill down into the people 

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who are actually executing, you know, you start to that's where things start to 

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go kinda like awry. Right? And again, when you're the acquisition focus, you're 

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working towards, you know, some level of efficiency. And when you're completely 

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usage focused, you're working towards, okay. Why aren't you bringing me more more 

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users or more qualified users? Right? And, you know, generally speaking, I mean, obviously, that's a very 

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simplistic sort of perspective, but generally speaking, it kind of has that 

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flavor. But over over the course of time, you know, you've seen now 

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a lot of companies and, actually, mostly started with Facebook, but you've seen a lot of companies 

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now give product and marketing, put them in the same team, and then you 

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have the same KPIs. Right? Just like, okay. Well, we need to grow x 

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users or monetization by this amount over this period. 

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Go do it. And when you sort of pair teams together, they'll be forced to come up with a 

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solution and understand the trade offs that come with that solution. And so 

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now it's not it's no longer kind of like this. Well, it's no no longer, like, okay, 

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marketing is gonna throw something over the fence. And then product is like, you know, was, like, gonna volleyball it 

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back. Right? Now it's it's kinda, like, part of, like, the same same group of folks. And and I 

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think I've just found that I've just found that extremely helpful. And I think so 

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that's the first thing. The second thing to get slightly more tactical is that 

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when you have marketing and product in the same team, you're forced to come up 

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with kind of like an objective growth model where 

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it's an accounting of how users are flowing in and out of the product and the 

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dollars that are associated with that. And once you have a holistic 

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and kind of, like, objective map or model that both teams can work 

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against, then you're now working off the same map. 

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Right? You're not you're not just working off of the product strategy map or the brand strategy or the marketing strategy map. 

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You're working off of the same map. Right? So and Reforged, actually, in the growth series talks a lot about, 

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like, the growth model. There's the quantitative growth model, which is an accounting of how users flow in and out, 

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and then this qualitative growth model, which is a description of how, you know, your your product growth. 

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And once you have that map, then it's a lot easier to sort 

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of, as a team, you know, kind of point to opportunity areas and areas that that you 

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wanna prioritize. So, I mean, I think I think those are kind of, like, you know, really good 

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things about product and again Absolutely. Yeah. And again, like, it's just over 

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time, you're now seeing a lot more people coming to the workforce or coming to the 

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space who have a much more, who have a stronger understanding of product and 

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marketing in this way, as opposed to kind of, like, you know, sort of sort of the the other ways. But I'll 

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pause there. Yeah. I think it's, sometimes challenging for folks to 

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unlearn certain things. And so your notion of, you know, people coming in with a coming 

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in with a fresh perspective or not having to unlearn some of those things and may 

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maybe coming with some basic understanding of how, you know, modern growth 

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teams operate is an interesting one for sure. And then, yeah, happy to dive into finance. Like how 

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yeah. Just to restate, like, how does marketing best work with finance in your in your experience? 

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I think, having sort of a good understanding of what your dollars can 

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deliver and what it can't deliver is always sort of a good place to start. And, 

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usually, that's predicated off of a couple of things. One is 

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having a clear understanding of what your unit economics are and what you're baking 

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into your CAC and what you're baking into your LTV. Right? So a lot of 

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companies just bake revenue into their LTV, which is fine. I mean, it depends on the stage of the 

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company, but other companies bake in contribution margin and things like that. Right? And so 

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it's that's important for finance perspective because they care about cash flow. They want to know when their returns 

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are coming. Is it coming in six months? Is it coming in three months? Or is it coming in two years? And then the same thing is 

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is baked in the CAC. And so I think you understand your economics and then payback period is usually a 

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good starting point. The next one is, okay, well, marginal returns. 

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Right? So I think one of the things maybe that finance typically 

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doesn't necessarily fully appreciate sometimes is that just 

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because you give more budget or less budget that the 

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impact is linear either way. And at some point, there's going to be a 

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curve. Right? So if you give me more budget, I'm going to hit some level of 

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marginal returns. And if you completely strike some of my budget, that's gonna impact 

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one, operational capabilities. But two, the feedback loop that I 

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send back to Facebook and Google and some of these other publishers is now diminished. 

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So I think just understanding kind of like the impact of increase and decreasing 

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spend, I think is really important. And then the third thing, which will always 

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sort of be a little bit of a stress point, especially when marketing 

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is optimizing for upper funnel advertising and making investments in sort of 

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brand development, is just, okay, well, how are we going to derive the effectiveness of our 

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of our initiatives? Right? And I can speak all day about the effectiveness of advertising. 

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Right? You know, where you can use whatever, and then and AB testing or whatever. 

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But then there's other stuff that, you know, marketing will wanna invest in to to sort of double down on the 

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brand. And I think those things, you would have to take much more of a business and 

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strategic approach. And I think that alignment is pretty critical at the highest level in order 

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for budget to trickle down, effectively and for the teams to sort 

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of understand what what's going on. But generally speaking, I think that's, you know, those two teams, I think, 

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have been really important product and finance. I mean, I have not been in b two b. I'm sure sales is equally 

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just as important in in b two b, but for me, it's it's it's always been product. That's super interesting. 

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And maybe maybe switching gears a little bit with with some of the experiences you've 

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had, What are some of the things that kinda yielded the biggest 

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moments or learnings for the growth team? And you don't have to give 

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maybe every last detail of, like, an experiment run, but, you know, thinking about 

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personnel, experimentation, media mix, 

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test, like, what was something that just kinda, like, knocked your socks off in terms of, 

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wow, I didn't think it was gonna actually be that good, or conversely, wow, I didn't think 

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it was actually gonna perform that poorly. Maybe some some larger 

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moments for you and your experience in testing and in growth? I think 

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for any growth marketing person, maybe even for any professional 

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at for for that standpoint, we're always trying to balance being a first 

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principle thinker and being objective about things and biased. Mhmm. I 

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just don't believe that you can completely get rid of bias because bias is Mhmm. 

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Is the the the fruit of all of your learnings. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, obviously, the 

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other end of that spectrum is that you don't wanna be completely biased with your activities. Right? 

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And so I think for me, consistently, some of the bigger learnings that I've had 

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are things like, well, this channel worked for my other 

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company in this way. Therefore, it's going to work just as 

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effectively for this new company in this other way. That's 

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consistently been kind of like, you know, one of the things. Right? So I 

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think channel and then even when you get to MarTech. Oh, you know what? 

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This MarTech stack worked for us really well. You know, and I'll give you an 

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example. Like, this MarTech stack worked really well for us at Netflix. Therefore, 

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this is the same MarTech stack we should use at Spotify. And as 

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similar as those companies might seem at the surface, they're two very different companies. 

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You know, one is a pure subscription company. The other one is a freemium subscription company. The other one is a freemium company. The 

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other one, you know, optimizes towards a ten foot screen, like, a screen 

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that's ten feet away from you, and then the other one optimizes for a handheld device. Right? Like, it just there's 

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you know, once you dig in and then there are different stages. Right? There when I was at Netflix, they 

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were, you know, I don't know how many years old. And when I was at Spotify, they they was pre public. Right? 

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So it just what works for something does not necessarily work for so I think that's that's 

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one. The second is especially when you're 

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planning. The level of bias on how quickly 

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you assume you can execute perfectly is is one of the things 

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that I'm always kind of like on the lookout for, which forces prioritization. 

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Right? Because I know that we're not gonna be able to, you know, optimize ten channels at the same 

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time including email and push, but maybe we can, you know, get push off the 

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ground in a quarter or something like that. And this leads to a lot of sort of 

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consternation because it's like, oh, you know what? We tested TV. It didn't work. Well, did you 

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really test it? I mean or did you just reuse some YouTube videos, 

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port it over to the trade desk, and then, you know, essentially get, you know, 

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some optimal sort of results. Right? Like, these are things like so and then the same thing, like, 

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with TikTok. Like, though TikTok's not working. Well, did you really test it, or 

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did you just sort of reuse, you know, Instagram Reels content 

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and then didn't give TikTok enough time. So, like so I think that's that's maybe kind of 

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like a second one. And then I think the third 

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maybe sort of surprises, I guess, or or sort of maybe 

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mistakes is, and this goes both ways, how far we can 

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push marginal ROI. That that has always I've not gotten that consistently 

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right. I mean, I've I'll I'll sporadically get it right, but not consistently right. There 

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are times where it's like, oh my god. Like, we can push this even 

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more. Like, we can push spend, you know, two, three x more and 

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still get decent returns. And it's because, you know, may maybe we didn't take into consideration seasonality fat 

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factors. Maybe we didn't take into consideration, like, you know, the product team just made, you know, some 

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optimal, changes to conversion rates or whatever it is. And at the same token, 

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there's been situations where it's like, wow, we can't spend any more. Like 

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we've hit the ceiling already. We've gotta go figure, you know, something else. So I think 

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I think those are maybe some of the things that consistently That's amazing. Those 

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are those are some really interesting learnings, and that might be interesting to just kinda double clip on 

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a couple of those to to learn more. So the notion 

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of kinda like forecasting and that and I'd love to hear when building out 

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plans, models, forecasts for a level of accuracy 

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to set expectations, managing up, managing to finance, managing to 

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other stakeholders. How do you mitigate some of those biases 

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that you reference? How do you mitigate some of that overpromise that 

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you referenced? So I think at the highest level, 

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I think for the most part, everyone understands that when you have a forecast that 

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it's only as good as your guess for that day. Mhmm. I think everybody also 

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understands that what happened last week is old news and what's happening this week is new news. Right? So, like Mhmm. 

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Things change so quickly. So I think a forecast 

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has to be paired with strategic direction relative 

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to your vision. Right? So this forecast is a reflection of our best guess 

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of what we're able to achieve, but, really, it's in service of what we want to 

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achieve as a business. And I think those two things have to be sort of 

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paired together. And then from there, I think it's 

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also the more effective, I guess, situations that I've 

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been in were situations where you're revisiting the forecast 

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on a monthly basis. Because, again, things change. So it's not fixed. 

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It's kind of like, you know, sort of a dynamic situation. Totally agree. 

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Yeah. And you kinda referenced something earlier about trying something and then kind of 

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assessing and saying, what Did we really try this? Did we really give it the honest 

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chance to succeed and learn properly? I think that's a really interesting concept. Is 

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there a way that you recommend people think about 

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if a tactic or a channel or a campaign was given an honest chance to succeed 

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before kind of calling it a loss and a learning and moving on? It depends on 

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what the goals are. So if the goal so let's just take paid, for example. Right? So 

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if the goal for the channel is to be a supplement to your 

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two big channels, then from that standpoint, maybe your bar 

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for, you know, accomplishment or whatever is maybe not as high. And so from that 

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standpoint, maybe you give it, you know, three weeks, two weeks, you know, a month. Let it simmer. And 

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then from there, be like, okay. Well, if we were able to two x this, if we're able to three 

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x this, would it meet our goals? And if not, you know, maybe let's move on and 

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and do something else. But if you're trying to figure 

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out your second biggest channel because you're hitting marginal returns on your first biggest 

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channel, then your level of investment into trying to figure out how to make that channel 

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work then has to increase. So from then from that standpoint, it's like, okay. Well, what exactly 

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it is that we need to make this work? Creative. We need to understand the 

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dynamics of channel. We need to understand whether or not we can target audiences against it in the way that we need 

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we need to. We need to understand whether we can test against it in the way that we need to and things 

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like that. Right? So I think that's that's probably one of the things that I I 

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so I think consideration is is just contextually, you know, how important or what exactly 

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is it that we're expecting out of this channel. So and it's a very sort of performance 

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driven lens. I mean, there's also kind of, like, a much more upper funnel, lens as well that 

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that I'll take into some of these things. And mean, I could talk about it later, but but generally speaking, 

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that's that's how much time I'll give it. Yeah. No. That's fantastic. You you kinda brought 

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up creative. Obviously, you know, in the last I don't know. You we could 

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probably land on the last five years, maybe maybe more. You know, paid social in particular 

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has kind of demanded it. The ability to kind of 

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immediate buyer way to success has diminished where creative has really 

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been elevated in the importance of the factors in getting paid social, specifically 

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to perform well. Not to get too minute, but you kinda mentioned creative. I'm just 

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wondering from like a it obviously can span into multichannel, right, not just paid 

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social. But, like, how have you leading acquisition, leading growth, 

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how have you kind of set up for success to kind of think about creative in the right way, in the 

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right volume, with the right types of tests? I'm I'm curious to hear maybe how you've approached 

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that or how you are approaching that. Yeah. So creative's definitely been a lot more important, 

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especially over the last few years for for a few reasons. One, on the publisher side, they're taking 

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on much more of the algorithmic bid bidding. So back in our day at eBay, 

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we were doing our own bidding on a per keyword basis, you know, and taking that control out of Google. Now 

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Google's like, you know what? We have this thing called smart bidding. You can't do that anymore. We will essentially dictate 

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where your inventory is gonna go, etcetera, etcetera. You give us our parameter. You give us your parameters and your 

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campaign structures and etcetera. The same thing with Facebook. So creative's definitely been, you know, really important from 

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that standpoint. So there's a couple of things. One is that I 

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think there's maybe a dozen or so creatives that can run 

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at the same time on paid social. And ultimately, 

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platforms like Facebook or even TikTok will optimize towards the best serving creatives. 

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So from that standpoint, you're just pumping in creatives over maybe 

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two or three week standpoint or, you know, sort of frame, and then it just continues to 

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learn until it starts to get stale and then, you know, then you kind of, 

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like, replace it. I mean, there's you can break it out between video and static and some 

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of the best sort of creative performance, creative agencies out there, especially for video, 

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are able to split your video into, you know, three or four parts and then 

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iterate on each part. Right? So the entire video is maybe thirty seconds or 

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fifteen seconds, but they have different versions of the first five seconds, different versions of 

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the next ten seconds, and then different versions of, you know, the last, you know, whatever, fifteen seconds, right, or 

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whatever it is. So I think a lot of companies have gotten really good at this 

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or a lot of, like, sort of creative agencies have gotten really good at this. And I think it's just a matter of being able to sort 

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of being able to sort of test a lot of this as well. Right? So I think that's that's really important. The other 

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thing is people come to different platforms for different reasons. And so 

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what might work for the same person on Instagram 

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might work or not work for the same person on TikTok just because expectations are a little bit different. 

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So I think being able to tailor your creatives, relative to to sort of channel 

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behavior, I think is is gonna be is is pretty. So, yeah, I can't stress 

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enough the importance of creative, especially these days. And it's it's interesting 

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because you're now forcing or it's now kinda like a forcing function for marketers to really think about the 

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brand more than they have before, and it's not just sort of a set of numbers. But you know? 

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Yeah. Is there a trend or tactical or or channel that you're you're kind of, 

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you think is maybe underutilized or underrated? I know 

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that's a bit of a general and it's hard to apply to all brands, but just generally, is 

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there one that you kinda think people sleep on a little bit and don't realize its 

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value from a channel or tactic or or campaign perspective? 

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Yeah. I mean, I think it it would really depend on that that really depends on the company and the 

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competitive set of that company. I guess, you know, if you wanna take a sort of a broad brush, right, 

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I mean, obviously, most companies from a from an acquisition or a paid media standpoint will 

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always use Google and Facebook to some degree, and then you have usual suspects, right, with TikTok and what 

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have you. Mhmm. But, I mean, remember, people still listen to the radio. You 

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know? People still see billboards outside. Right? And so, 

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you know, people still get mail. And I'm not saying those work all the time. I'm 

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just saying that Mhmm. There are other ways that people consume information. People could also, 

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consume information through podcasts and through newsletters, and things like that. Right? 

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So there are other ways to reach your consumers. I guess just 

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having a true understanding of your the behaviors of consumers, I think is is extremely 

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important, so that you're not just sort of relying on Google and Facebook a hundred 

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percent of the time. Yeah. But the programmatic nature 

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of some of these channels, I think, has allowed people to buy them with much more 

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conviction. Yeah. I love that. Very cool. You know, in Reforge, 

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there's a lot of discussion around kind of alignment across teams, 

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getting buy in from leadership, the notion of managing up. Before we get 

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into some funner, topics, I'd love to maybe wrap up with this question of 

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how have you found success in managing up and aligning expectations 

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around shared vision, language, maps as you 

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referenced earlier. Love to hear how you've approached that and how you recommend 

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people approach that. One of the mistakes that I made 

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for many years is assuming that 

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what my boss tells me is the only thing that matters. And what 

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I've started to better understand is 

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contextually, where is my boss in 

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his or her career journey? How is he or she 

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positioned within the company? And if I were in that position, what would 

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be important to me? And then I'll layer on the verbal communication. 

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And but then at the same time, that gives me more context into understanding 

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what's important or trying to understand what's important. I think having that level of empathy 

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is so critical because at the end of the day, 

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she or he is also just a person who is also just trying to be successful. 

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Right? So I think that's important. And then I think layered on to that, 

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it's just and it's one of the reasons why I've had a really great 

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time at bForge and doing this podcast is because I get 

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a view of what exceptional marketing looks like from other 

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marketers. So then when I layer that on to what 

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my boss is trying to do, it's a lot clearer to me. 

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Right? And so from there, I have a better way to provide support. 

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And then I do the same thing with finance and product and with the 

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founder. It's like, okay, well, now that I have a marketing lens, what's 

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important to them? Right? So is it the product roadmap? Is it growth? 

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Is it combating seasonality? Is it you know? So I think, you know, having and and 

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and you'll you'll you'll get a glimpse of this. Right? I mean, you'll get a glimpse of it from from the plans. You'll get a glimpse of 

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it from, you know, conversations, but you'll also get a glimpse of it of when you go 

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through kind of, like, executive discussions, executive meetings, what bubbles up. Right? 

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And why is that important? Right? So I think having contextual understanding of where 

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the business is, where, leaders wanna be in their careers, And 

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then, having a true critical understanding of what marketing can do and how that might impact 

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this business, has been, I think, really critical in sort of trying to understand how to best 

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manage them. Patrick, what you shared on that front was amazing. I I 

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love that of, like, thinking about what is important to them, where are they at in their journey, 

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what are the needs that are kind of pulling and pushing on them specifically? And 

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I think it's such a place of empathy, place of leadership. It's you're you're 

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asking questions to understand those things. It reminds me of some of the 

431
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a a lot of Reforge, but I'll also, like, admired leadership principles. I don't know if you're you've come across that. 

432
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I'm sure you have. I really love that. It's one of my favorite parts of this conversation. I just think 

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that it's human eye everyone can kind of feel like that that everyone on the team is very 

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much a human dealing with their own things in their career and and 

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personally. And I think, coming from it from that lens makes you probably 

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much more effective at managing up and supporting one another. Yeah. I mean, 

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I think one of the biggest mistakes I've made in the past was just trying to enforce my 

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mental map on what the leadership team should be doing based 

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off of books that I've read or discussions that I've had or what have you. But the thing 

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is, like, you have to understand or at least I've consistently realized 

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that this is a dynamic place. They're also people and just 

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getting a true understanding of of contextual relevance and, you know, 

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where they are. Yeah. I have a lot of respect for that empathy and also 

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just intellectual flexibility. You're not trying to enforce an app on someone else. That's a really 

445
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awesome thought. So much learning, so much candor, and appreciate you 

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sharing. I'd love to jump into some fun topics maybe to wrap up. Your the 

447
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Michigan football is top of mind. You're going there this weekend. Are they gonna 

448
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get are they gonna get penalized for cheating? Yes or no? 

449
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:10,900
That's a trick question because as of now, there is no, 

450
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there is evidence. There's there's, alleged 

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evidence of them, cheating, but there's nothing I don't know that there's 

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sort of empirical proof. I think there's investigations that are still ongoing. I will say that there's a 

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lot of smoke. So whether how how big that fire is, I guess nobody 

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really knows. Now will they get, will they get punished for it? 

455
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It depends on what comes up. Right? Depends on Yeah. On that level of I what I 

456
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will say, however, is that if there is evidence that 

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other schools are doing the same thing, then I think the 

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reaction of the big ten or the NCAA or whatever should 

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be appropriate to, a lot of these things. But Yeah. I'm just 

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a person who is completely You're just a fan. Reading whatever I can read 

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from ESPN, whatever other sources. Are they gonna silence the haters and win it 

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all this year? Yeah. I think so. I I again, this might age. This might 

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age, but but but I I I think so. I have not seen them this good now. 

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Again, people can argue, well, the reason why they're good is because they're stealing signs or what 

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have you. But, I guess as a fan and as a biased fan for that, I will say 

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that I think I think they're the best country. They're the best team in the country. I'd love to 

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see it. Love to see it. Maybe, maybe a UT Michigan showdown would be, I I wouldn't 

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hate that just personally. I think there's there might be a slight possibility that that could 

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happen. I guess it depends, on what happens with with the top four with, you 

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know, some of the top conferences coming into the playoffs, but I wouldn't mind that at all. 

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I think that would be awesome. Is, is Harbaugh gonna be a long 

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term Michigan coach? Do you think he's gonna go back to the NFL? Depends on what they find. 

473
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If he if he wins if he wins, he stays. If he cheats, he goes. 

474
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Oh, wait. If he doesn't win, he's I don't know. I apparently, they have he he's he 

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they they already have an extension in a long term like, a a an extension contract or 

476
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a long term contract for him. So which he hasn't just he hasn't yet signed because of all of these sort 

477
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of allegations. So but I don't know. Yeah. Your best you're Stay tuned. 

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Mine. Patrick will be on, the next episodes to, maybe in a few 

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months from now or later on to see how it ages and to revisit these predictions. 

480
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Love it. Love it. Thank you so much for joining, Patrick. I really appreciate it. It 

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was awesome to talk with you. Tons of really, I think, actionable, 

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learnings from your rich experience. And for folks that wanna learn 

483
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more about you, what what would you suggest? Where could they find you and learn 

484
00:40:01,500 --> 00:40:05,900
more? Yeah. You could find me on LinkedIn, Patrick c Moran. 

485
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:11,300
So I've been, yeah, I've been I'm currently at Robinhood. I was at Netflix and Spotify. The only reason why I 

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give those companies is because there is another Patrick Moran, who, by the way, is much more of an 

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amazing marketer than I am, and he was the CMO of Calendly. So that is not who 

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I am. However, I know of him. I've pinged him a couple of times because, you 

489
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know, I've I've been asked to join some boards, and I've been asked to, like, you know, 

490
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interview for some of these b two b CMO companies. I'm just like, that's that's a different Patrick 

491
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:40,400
Moran. But, anyway, I have the Patrick Moran who is more on the consumer side, who is currently at 

492
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Robinhood and has spent time at Spotify. How is it Netflix? Amazing. And definitely 

493
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:50,200
check out the podcast. I highly recommend it. Some really great growth 

494
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:55,100
practitioners there as well. Yep. Finding market fit. Finding market fit. 

495
00:40:55,100 --> 00:41:00,000
Very cool. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure and, go go blue this 

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weekend. Go blue.