Leveraging mentors to uplevel your career | Jules Walter (YouTube, Slack)

**Jules Walter** (0:00)
If you give me feedback, I'll be like, hey, thank you so much. This is super helpful.
Because people are like, oh, he actually likes the feedback. Now, inside, my heart might be melting. You know, I'm like, oh, I thought I got better at this. You know what I mean? But externally, I'm like, hey, thank you. And I mean it. And I think that's the key that most people don't focus on.
And if you get more feedback, then you'll just get better at the things.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:26)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. Today, my guest is Jules Walter. Jules is a product leader at YouTube. Before that, he spent four and a half years at Slack, where he was their first growth PM, and then went on to lead their monetization teams and also their mobile team. He's also the co-founder and a board member of the Black Product Managers Network and CodePath, both of which are nonprofits that aim to increase diversity within tech. Jules and I have collaborated on a number of projects over the years, including a killer guest post on building product sense that continues to be one of the most shared and beloved posts in my newsletter. In our conversation, we focus on what skills matter most in advancing a PM's career, and more importantly, all the ways Jules has found to build those skills. We also go deep on mentorship. How to find a mentor, what to look for in a mentor, how to get someone to agree to be a mentor, and a lot more.
I super enjoyed this conversation, which I'm sure you can tell, and Jules is such a gem of a human, I can't wait for you to hear this episode. With that, I bring you Jules Walter, after a short word from our sponsors.
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Jules, welcome to the podcast.

**Jules Walter** (3:51)
Hey Lenny, thanks for having me. I'm real excited.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:54)
I am even more excited. This chat has been a long time coming. I've been hoping to get you on this podcast ever since this podcast even launched. And then in the meantime, while we've been waiting to schedule it, a number of guests have mentioned how useful you've been to them in their career.
And so I'm just really excited to finally have you on.

**Jules Walter** (4:11)
Yeah, same here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:12)
Let's just start with a quick overview of your background. Could you share some of the wonderful places you worked, some of the wonderful projects you worked on, and then just a bit about what you're working on today?