Corey Pollock: The Full-Stack Human
“The best entrepreneur is the one that can spot a gold nugget in the crack of a busy sidewalk”
You know that kid who was good with computers in high school, maybe wasn’t the best academically but hella creative but quiet?
To me, that’s my understanding of Corey when he was around my age ( a teenager). I may be wrong, but who knows?
Quick Intro: Hey! I’m Gloria, a creator who loves creating, building, and constantly improving. Also a football (soccer) addict from Kenya :)
I’m a The Knowledge Society (TKS) Innovator working on blockchain research mainly, Web 3.0 finding ways to integrate it into women’s sports to create new sources of revenue to accelerate their growth!
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Don’t hesitate to say hi or give feedback! Thanks. Now back to the Corey!
A little context if you care to listen…
Corey Pollock is a builder with a good amount of experience.
He has co-founded four companies that have all been acquired. Apart from that, he was a Product Manager at Shopify for over 5 years and is currently the Head of Product at Pixel Union plus a really sweet guy!
From the 1 hour of upfront no fussy concise advice and general talk from the Serial Entrepreneur and Product Wizard’s perspective.
I’m so grateful and sharing key points with you. You’re welcome ;)
Growth Mindset
This is a key mindset Corey highlighted from the get-go. He believes that you can ALWAYS find an area to improve on, no matter what you’re doing. I agree with him. There is always room for improvement, you just need to look for it!
Figure It Out
Corey mentioned this at least 5 different times in the call and I get why. In life, you aren’t taught everything in a typical class setting and if you think so you need to take more risks.
Anyways, he talked about the importance of figuring it out in his journey with all his companies. Corey had to play all roles in these companies for a long time before he had to hire people. He figured things out like how to work as a financial officer, influencer for his products, marketer, etc for the benefit of his company during the early stages.
“Only hire when you’re desperate to.” Otherwise, figure things out and work.
Hiring tip from Corey: Work with potential candidates in the company to see how they would deal with problems & pressure before hiring them.
Getting The Reps In
Corey also mentioned this at least 5 different times within 1 hour.
An extremely common saying in The Knowledge Society (TKS). It made me think this was a set-up call by TKS staff to drill in these common effective terms in our innovative heads.
I digress. Throughout Corey’s builder career, his repetitions on projects while improving every single time possible got him to where is he now and still helping him improve.
Releasing a product is getting a rep in, building something you are passionate about, is getting a rep in and creating, in general, is getting the rep in. Just start building stuff, no matter how small. (I’m starting with this!) Create what success means to you or whatever you’re passionate in.
Go get those reps in, train that builder & creator muscle of yours through constantly improving, figuring it out and failing forward!
After building something, especially through a business/startup, you’ll get this special feeling (I’m yet to experience it) of random people online purchasing/buying your product/services and benefiting from it!
Takeaways:
- Learning how to learn is important.
- Assume your creation sucks and figure out why.
- “Failures are just succeilures”, fail often, fail frequently.
- Your ideas need to be painkillers (something in demand that everyone needs), not vitamins (little boosters).
- Learn how to be comfortable with dead air/silence, especially when asking for feedback since whoever you’re asking will eventually speak their mind and give true feedback.
- “You need to be a leader without being a superior.” Project Managers need to influence people, especially their team to push them beyond their limits but not to the point of burnout. You need to find the balance.
- Talking about Project Managers, Corey shared a medium article by Brandon Chu, The Black Box of Product Management. (Personally feel like Corey related to it though it's a funny insightful read. You should check it out!)
Bonus:
These are the questions I had for him:
1. Have you ever built a PC?
- Funnily, he did the Thursday before this call with his friends but got a hiccup while building. Before that, he was tinkering with his dad’s computer when he was around 13.
2. What attributes does he admire about Gil Greenburg (@gilgNY)?
- Corey admires Gil’s openness to his life experiences. He had talked about Gil’s “overnight success” tweet earlier in the call. Didn’t take me long to find the tweet and found it interesting.
3. What SEO (Search Engine Optimization) platform does he use?
- Sadly he didn’t answer this due to time so Corey Pollock, what’s the answer?
Fun fact I shared: Smaller content creators and early startup founders are so similar. From both playing all roles in their creations to constantly learning and improving every day, they’re basically the same to me.
As a future startup owner and current content creator, I don’t see much of a difference between the two and found it interesting!
If you are a Knowledge Society Innovator/Activator or community member, these terms aren’t new. You’ve probably heard them too much and there is a reason behind that so get those builder/content creation reps in, have a growth mindset & figure things out! Same to you non-TKS people!
Just BUILD THINGS (keeping it PG)
Thank you to Jessica Klein and Corey Pollock for the wonderful insights and your time. It was worth staying on the call till 2 a.m. and then getting he rep in, I mean, finishing this article at 4 am!
Hope you liked this, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!