They say “never meet your heroes!”, but I disagree.

I want to meet them all. If there weren’t worth meeting, then I’d be in big trouble for choosing the wrong path.

Talking to people I look up to, exploring their thought process and discovering how they handle challenges can have a powerful effect. What’s more, having the opportunity to do so can only happen through generosity, openness, and empathy.

It takes time and energy to dig deep and answer questions from a stranger on the other side of the world (and bearing through her incessant use of “indeed” that has the potential to become a game like the one in How I Met Your Mother).

The guest on How do you know? episode 6 embodies all these qualities and more! Talking to Kevan Lee, Director of Marketing at Buffer, is a bit of a dream come true because his work has been a key resource for learning how to become a better marketer, leader, and human.

Kevan and I took the conversation a lot farther than I anticipated, speaking about work, meaning, life, death and personal experiences in handling everything in between:

  • the unique perspective he added to the Buffer team and how his early experiences there shaped him
  • the slow web movement
  • his work ethic
  • the results you can get from combining solitude (working remotely), focus (very few distractions), a healthy work ethic and being a key member in a growing tech company
  • the abundance mindset
  • Buffer’s culture of self-improvement
  • productivity and experimentation
  • fear and the pervasive imposter syndrome – “every time you change roles, it’s like you have to start over with imposter syndrome” is something Kevan mentioned that I empathized with immediately
  • family decisions
  • rejection as an opportunity for reflection
  • minimalism
  • working remotely and team decision-making
  • how you can have a huge impact with just 8 people in the marketing team
  • empathy and objectivity in making better choices and a lot more.

Kevan’s focused efforts create a context for making better, wiser choices. That’s why I hope you’ll learn from him as much as I did and continue to do.

As a human, Kevan walks the talk and lives by strong, clear principles, following through on them consistently.

Throughout our talk, he was incredibly honest and transparent about his failures and successes, just as you’d imagine Kevan is from reading many of his posts, either on the Buffer blog or on his personal one.

Although we may choose “different paths to accomplish things”, there’s a quote I found in one of Kevan’s articles that stuck with me:

If you give freely, there will always be more.

So here is the list of books and resources Kevan and I talked about in this episode. I hope they will make a tiny dent in your universe, nudging you to share more when it’s your turn (and it’s always your turn).

You can get in touch with Kevin on Twitter, read his blogposts and subscribe to his newsletter.

I can guarantee that going through this list without listening to the episode is not the same. Hearing Kevan talk might prompt you to reevaluate some of your decisions, try to improve your context to create more opportunities and, as a result, have more, better choices to pick from.

Alternatively, play the episode in your favorite apps:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Simplecast | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Player.fm

Thank you for listening!