Grit9 Maj 2022

CMO Square, Lauren Weinberg: Self-made boss

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 Lauren
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

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