Tiger Sisters - Everything I Learned at Harvard Business School in 90 Minutes

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Check out our matcha brand, Sisters Matcha at www.sistersmatcha.com Sign up for our newsletter here: https://cherieluo.substack.com/subscribeNot every lesson from Harvard Business School came from a case study.In this special Remix episode, we're bringing together some of the most valuable lessons Jean learned during her time at HBS.  From strategy and marketing to leadership and networking, these are the frameworks and mental models that continue to shape how we make decisions today.Tune in for in-depth breakdowns on:✅ Porter's Five Forces and how companies build lasting competitive advantages✅ Why the best brands don't try to serve everyone✅ The marketing framework behind companies like Warby Parker✅ How Netflix uses testing, customer feedback, and iteration to build better products✅ The finance concepts every business leader should understand✅ The difference between revenue, profit, cash flow, and valuation✅ Four leadership styles (and when each one works best)✅ How networking creates opportunities long before you need them✅ The leadership lessons that can shape your career, team, and company cultureTimestamps:00:00: Introduction & Why We're Revisiting These HBS Lessons02:06: Overview of Parts 1 and 2 and what to expect 04:52: Strategy 101: Porter's Five Forces Explained06:00: Starbucks Case Study: Competitive Advantage10:50: Cost Leadership vs. Differentiation13:12: Sisters Matcha & Building a Premium Brand15:08: Marketing 101: STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning)15:42: Warby Parker's Billion-Dollar Marketing Strategy20:40: The Rise of Conscious Consumer Brands21:52: Product Development & Innovation27:20: Revenue vs. Profit28:56: Understanding Unit Economics30:32: Runway, Forecasting & Valuation Metrics32:48: Jean & Cherie’s reflections on Part 133:17: Revisiting the Starbucks Case Study38:12: Blank Street Coffee & Gen Z Consumer Trends39:28: Jean reflects on Threat of Substitutes41:55: Part 2: Leadership & Networking Lessons from HBS43:33: The 4 Major Leadership Styles43:55: Servant Leadership (Howard Schultz & Starbucks)48:23: Transformational Leadership (Steve Jobs & Apple)51:20: Transactional Leadership (Jack Welch, Goldman Sachs & Sales Teams)57:16: Laissez-Faire Leadership (Valve & Radical Ownership)01:03:55: Choosing the Right Leadership Style01:10:30: Why Networking Is the Biggest MBA Advantage01:18:25: Jean’s reflections on Part 2 and leadership archetypes01:20:42: Reflecting on the importance of networking01:22:25: Closing thoughts 🐯👯‍♀️ We’re the Tiger Sisters — your Wall Street & Silicon Valley big sisters Decoding Money • Power • Love✨ New episodes every Monday | Shorts all week ✨💌 Want to partner with us? Sponsorships: [e-mail] trust us?▫️ Cherie Brooke Luo — 100M+ views demystifying tech, finance & MBAs▫️ Jean Luo — ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Snapchat exec, 50+ AI patents, startup investor▫️ Together: 4 Ivy League degrees • built billion-dollar products • two startups — decoded for youWhat you’ll get (and keep):▫️ 🚀 Ivy League cheat sheets — no $250K tuition▫️ Personal finance playbooks (salary, investing, negotiation)▫️ Networking scripts behind $100M+ deals & job offers▫️ Real conversations with CEOs, operators & investors▫️ Mindset resets — clarity without the pricey coach▫️ Systems for career, money, and long-term growth💛 LET’S CONNECT~ CHERIE ~Instagram — /cherie.brookeTikTok — /cherie.brookeSubstack — cherieluo.substack.comLinkedIn — /cherie-luo~ JEAN ~Instagram — /jeanluo_LinkedIn — /jeanluo👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. It takes 10 seconds and makes a massive difference in helping new people discover Tiger Sisters.🛍️ Items:🍵 Sisters Matcha — www.sistersmatcha.com🌀 Everything else — https://amzn.to/3z0dx5b

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Harvard Business School was two of the best years of my life. I learned so much in the classroom and outside of the classroom. And that's kind of the whole point of putting these two episodes together. Maybe we should go to a luck and coffee after this and do some market research. I went to one actually in China. I guess you weren't with me for some reason.

Oh. I get it. We talk about some topics that even in the past year have had a lot of developments and changed over time and make these topics worth revisiting. The archetype of an inspirational leader, we talked about Steve Jobs. Now we have the news that Tim Apple, Tim Cook, is leaving as of September 1st, and he's going to transition into the executive chairman role.

What is John Turnus like and what is his style of leadership? And how is that going to affect Apple? And how is that going to affect their product development? How is that going to affect their innovation? We are your Wall Street and Silicon Valley Big Sisters. And we're a top 10 business podcast bringing late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. We released these episodes about a year ago and they absolutely took off over a million views, so many comments about how helpful this content was.

So now we're bringing it back to you. It's our playbook. It's our frameworks that Gene learned at Harvard Business School and literally spent years in the classroom taking notes and we are bringing it to you live now. We're bringing you the debrief, our takeaways, and our updated thoughts on these videos. I'm so excited to bring this content to you guys because Harper Business School was two of the best years of my life where not only was it so much fun, but I learned so much in the classroom and outside of the classroom. And that's kind of the whole point of putting these two episodes

together. It's actually the first episode is more focused on concepts, frameworks, and really important elements that we learned in the classroom. And then part two is much more so the concepts that we learned outside of the classroom. And so putting these two parts together, plus adding all these extra notes now that we're one year out is kind of like the perfect playbook. So for this episode, part one is going to be about strategy, marketing, product development, and finance. And then part two is much more about leadership and kind of all the soft skills that I learned at HBS. And in my opinion, part two is actually more fun and interesting than part one. But part one is very much the foundational skills that you learn. So it's kind of like eating your vegetables

before you get to the dessert type of thing. So like I personally found part two more interesting. So if you're in a rush, you could just skip ahead to part two. But I do think part one, even I was listening to it this week. And I was like, oh yeah. Like I forgot about that term. It like really got me thinking. So I think it's useful to that. listen to both parts. So I think just listen to the whole episode through, but make sure you listen all the way to the end. And you know this is a Tiger Sisters episode because throughout part one and part two, we have case studies. We have many exercises. And we bring in examples from both our professional and personal lives so that you guys really understand the concepts and can apply it

to your own lives after you watch this. Let's get started with part one of everything I learned at Harvard Business School, the foundational skills. So if you're new to this channel, Gene is my older sister. She went to Harvard Business School. She's my role model, best friend. We have this podcast together. And just a little bit more background of who she is. She's an absolute badass, badass and biot. She started her career out at Goldman Sachs working in finance. And then she's pivoted to working in tech as a product manager at Zinga, the gaming company. And most recently at Snapchat as head of product for augmented reality monetization. And Gene went to Harvard Business School. She graduated in 2017. She has over 50 patents in AI, and I'm able to talk about this because she won't brag about

herself, and I have to brag about her. So as you know, we're talking about Harvard Business School, everything she learned there. I went to Stanford's Business School, and I just graduated a few months ago, so this is fresh on our minds. And we want to give you a crash course in the next 30 minutes. We're going to race through all these concepts, so buckle up. We're going to go through four main concepts. Strategy, marketing, product development, and finance. So what we're going to do throughout this episode is we're actually going to bring in examples for each of these sections so that we can talk through the company and you can really understand how these frameworks apply, just like we would in business school. I learned best

through examples, so I'm really glad we're going to put this to the test. And by the end of this episode, you're going to have a mini Harvard MBA basically saving you $250,000. That's right. We both spent $500,000 collectively on our MBAs and you're going to get this for free, not including not including the travel expenses. Fun and extraneous travel expenses. So let's get started with strategy. So strategy is where Harvard Business School really, I think, differentiates themselves, or at least where they strive to differentiate themselves.

And where they shine. Yeah. So at HBS, strategy is not just a buzzword. It's a roadmap for where to compete and how to win in a complex marketplace. And without a clear strategy, even the best products or the best companies will not able to succeed. A classic HBS tool is Michael Porter's Five Forces, which analyzes the five components of strategy. Porter's Five Forces was actually invented at HBS, so we bring it up all this time. Porter's Five Forces are as follows. Threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers,

bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitutes, and rivalry among existing competitors. So let's say we are going to use Starbucks as the example. Everyone knows Starbucks, and that's actually kind of like a classic business school company example. So let's start with Starbucks and threat of new entrance. So the way to think about the threat of new entrance is that from Starbucks perspective, one of the reasons why they're super successful is because it's really hard to start your own company and go against big people like Starbucks. Starbucks already is a pretty massive company.

So they spend a lot of money on brand awareness, supply chain efficiency, and they have a lot of money to spend on having the best real estate so they can have the best stores and the best locations. You might be able to open up a small coffee shop, but going against Starbucks for these reasons can be pretty hard. So then I would say threat of new entrance for Starbucks is actually pretty low. Yes. So the second is bargaining power of suppliers. Yeah, I feel like this is a pretty easy one because the scale of Starbucks is so massive

and obvious that they have incredible bargaining power with suppliers. they buy in a huge bulk volumes. So because of that, they can really control and push down the prices. Yeah. That's kind of similar to Walmart as a classic example that has incredible bargaining power. Windsom buyers. Also, Costco. Those are some of the other ones that get brought up a lot.

Yeah, the big names. Okay, Shri, what about the bargaining power of buyers? So the way to think about this is from the customer perspective, the customer can go to other brands out there of coffee places. Like you could go to Dunkin' Donuts. you go to Phil's or Pete's. But honestly, like, there is pretty high brand affinity for the customers. Starbucks has loyalty programs.

They have, like, cool seasonal drinks. Customers want to buy Starbucks. Starbucks has also invested a lot in this area through their technology investments. So creating the app where you deposit money into your Starbucks account ahead of time. Yeah. Kind of locks in the customer and sort of decreases the buyer bargaining power in some ways because they literally have. have a ledger with you. Yeah. And I guess the last part about Starbucks is that it was one of the bigger names to create a third space and now there's like so many other third spaces. But Starbucks

is really known for being like that place away from home where you can hang out, you bring a laptop, meet up with people. So in the customer's mind, like it's still like let's meet up at Starbucks. Yeah. It's ingrained after having been in your sort of routine and your go to third place for so many years ever since for us since high school or middle school even. Middle school. Middle school, not my caramel macchiato. Oh my gosh, it was the ultimate treat. It was so good sweet treat. Yes.

Before we knew about calories. Before I cared about calories, and the effects of caffeine on stunting my height as a 13-year-old in middle school, but I love that ice caramel macchiato. I felt like a queen drinking that. But we digress. Back to the lesson. Back to the lesson.

Okay. So the fourth force to talk about is the third. threat of substitutes. Yes. So if you think about coffee as a category, there are a lot of substitutes. You can make coffee at home. You can get coffee in the office, et cetera. But I think what Starbucks has done a really good job of is expanding into adjacent categories so that they sort of diversify their holdings and then decrease the threat of substitutes. So Starbucks also makes those little pods, right, coffee pods. They make coffee beans that you can buy. They make ground coffee. So they're not just a retailer of coffee in their retail locations only. They've done a really

good job of sort of mitigating the risk of substitutes. So I would say their risk of substitutes is moderate. Yeah. The last of Portes Five Forces is rivalry among competitors. So how does Starbucks line up here? So I mean, there's a bunch of different competitors in the coffee space, but Starbucks stands out because they're consistently delivering on the customer experience in store and setting itself apart with its premium pricing. There was an HBR piece recently on how Starbucks has gone above and beyond on customer service. And also, I know in the most recent years, there have been kind of some bad press that Starbucks has had recently, especially over the last like three years, but they've like completely jumped on top of that and tried to mitigate any of the bad press that they had recently.

the Starbucks like CEO slash president has gotten ahead of that. And so they're just really trying to put the customer service at the forefront. A Starbucks employee called police on these two men who were like these two black men sitting in Starbucks. I vaguely remember. And then they were arrested, even though they didn't do anything wrong. But then Starbucks like really put a forward an apology and we're just like, how do we make this right? Yeah. So that is the framework of Porter's Five Forces.

Anytime that you're thinking about a company, evaluating a company, you want to. to ask yourself these questions and go through this framework. And then that way you can understand their landscape and where they sit amongst all of their competitors. Another key HPS principle is choosing basically how you'll compete. So competitive positioning. Porter's generic strategies basically say that companies pursue one of two approaches, either cost leadership or differentiation. So cost leadership means being the low cost producer.

So again, the leader in the space is Walmart. They are all about getting the lowest price possible for you and doing anything they can and then also scaling back on other amenities so that they can always get you the lowest price. And that works for Walmart because that plays into their offering.

People go to Walmart for the cheapest. Like their logo is like everyday savings, right? That's their core value. Yeah, exactly. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel.

alike for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. Versus differentiation means offering something that is valuable to the customer that might be at a premium. So thinking about cost leadership and differentiation, which one do you think Starbucks falls into? Answer in three. Two, one. Differentiation. Differentiation.

Differentiation. So Starbucks offers more premium priced coffee and also because of the things that we just named before, like their focus on third spaces, their focus on customer service. They try to differentiate by giving you a better experience than just, you know, the lowest, cheapest experience. Yeah. The example that comes to mind for me is the writing the names on the cups, right? That is one extra step in their.

Yeah, it's like an extra step in their. operations that honestly is not really necessary for a generic experience, but it's caused so many, it means a lot to people, I think, to feel personalized. And also it causes some funny memes. Yeah. It's actually paid off in spades for them, I think. They've stopped, like, writing. I don't know if you've been to a Starbucks recently, but now they're, like, printing it out.

Like the names, yeah. Oh, sometimes they still write it. Maybe in my online orders, they just print it out. But then I think recently there's been a mandate. I saw this online. There's an article where like the employees of Starbucks were asked to like write more personalized messages on the cups. Exactly. I saw someone, someone I know wrote like, I love you so macha.

Or someone received a cup that said, I love you so match. And she actually posted it on her Instagram. She's like, oh, this totally made my day. Yeah. I mean, that's just one example of differentiation. Yeah. A high touch. So the one thing you can take away from this lesson is that you can't be the cheapest, the best, and the highest quality all at the same time, just like Starbucks.

They chose to be higher quality and more expensive. And one example that comes to mind for us is Sister's Macha, right? Sisters Macha, which is our company, is a ultra-premium matcha brand and it's ultra-premium product. So even if we wanted to offer it for less, we just couldn't because of our supplier costs. And the fact that the macha that we provide is the cultivar is called a kumidori, which only makes up 2% of all of the matra produced in Japan. So by definition, it is very rare. It's very hard to cultivate. It has to be handpicked.

Like all of these different reasons contribute to the fact that it's a premium product. So for us, we went the way of differentiation as opposed to cost. Yeah. Which makes sense for like the stuff, like who we are as well. Yeah. We enjoy nicer stuff. And we also like macha, like when we're drinking ceremonial grade first harvest macha, like you want it to be the good stuff that you're putting into your body.

Exactly. So for us, it wouldn't make sense to start a brand that is oriented on cost leadership because that doesn't align with our own personal brand or our own values for something that you are basically consuming every day and putting into your body. And that's meant to help you and improve your health. Very true. And also, it's just beautiful. And it tastes so freaking good.

But yeah, so these are things that, like, this is just another example for you guys to see. Like Starbucks is obviously a huge behemoth, but these are things that we've thought about when creating our own company, which is very, very small and is kind of a start. Yeah. And also just like breaking into the macho world. Like we were asking these questions of ourselves to each other, of our brand, and where do we want to sit and making these very intentional decisions so that, you know, we can be successful. So that concludes our mini lesson on Porter's Five Forces. Next, we're going to be talking about marketing. One of the first big concepts for marketing at HBS is STP, segmenting, targeting, and positioning.

STP is all about identifying specific customer groups, choosing the right customer group for you, and then crafting a message for that customer group specifically, and then making sure it sticks. So I think that all sounds pretty straightforward and simple, but it's the backbone of essentially any marketing campaign and any marketing go to market force. Okay, love that. One of the examples that we're going to use in our discussion and our mini case study is Warby Parker, which is one of the most recent big, big successes in the direct-to-consumer D to C world. Yeah, so Warby Parker actually is a really good example of a company that came in and disrupted a massive marketplace that was run by one behemoth, essentially Luxottica. So Luxottica was accounting for like 80 plus almost 90%

of the eyewear market, the obstacle eyewear market. Eye glasses. And they basically, any brand you could think of was produced by Luxottica. So they were essentially a monopoly. Which is crazy. By the way, if you guys don't know Luxottica, like look it up. Like they own like Raybans. They own like all the big names.

You're like, oh, I thought Rayban was itself. Nope. It's owned by this like one company. And if you guys remember buying glasses, optical glasses in the 90s or the 2000s, it was a really big deal. Like you would pick out a pair of glasses. you would get them made and it was always 300 plus dollars if you wanted anything that was remotely cute yeah it's a it's a really expensive and so warby parker came in they like completely

shook up the model their deed to see and mostly like started online so they started with their like try on phase you can try on a bunch of glasses they would mail it to you it was also much cheaper than what you would get originally with the other model okay so good summary so let's talk about how they used STP to break into this market. So the first part is segmenting. So what they did was they looked at the market and they said, okay, they're actually multiple different types of buyers for glasses, right? There are people who are super high end and they want really, really fancy glasses. Maybe that's not really us because they just want brand names. They want Prada. Gucci. Versace. I want Gucci. I want Prada. Anyway. And then there's another market,

which is cost conscious. So people who just want to, the lowest possible, Right? Kind of like what we talked about before. And then they identified a third market, which was essentially millennials. People who wanted something that was trendy and still looked good. But not necessarily, didn't necessarily have to be the specific brand name. Right. So the T in STP is targeting. So after they identified these different segments, they decided which segment to actually target. You can't do all of them really well. In fact, if you try that, you're probably going to do a pretty bad job. you should be very focused on which segment you target. And so then they ended up choosing the third segment, which is the cost-conscious millennials who want something cute, but something not too expensive. And so then Warby Parker, after they chose their segment, they basically created their company around this target segment.

And basically, what does this target segment care about? And how can they cater to their needs? And so the first thing is that this target segment is online first. Like millennials are very comfortable buying things on. line, having things shipped to their house, then like previous generations. The second thing we just mentioned is price and fashion. Warby Parker started around $95 to $100, and this is a very affordable price range that millennials are willing to opt into. And the last is like social impact.

Millennials are more conscious about the impact that they're leaving in this world. And Warby Parker, like, created a program knowing this where they like, you know, it's buy a pair of glasses, give a pair of glasses. and so they were able to tap into these three sentiments that this segment really cares about. Great description. So the last part of STP is P, which is positioning, which is essentially Warvi-Parker asking the question and answering it. How do we want customers to see our brand? So the answer to this was one, they wanted people to see their brand as modern, chic, and accessible.

Two, they wanted customers to see their brand as digital first. So everything basically started with the website. And then from the website, you could pick which glasses you wanted to try on. They would mail it to your house. And then you can select your glasses from there. And then three, they also leaned very heavily on this sort of sustainability and helping other people in the world narrative. So that they really tied that into pretty much all of their branding and all of their marketing. Yeah.

Another company that I think about that fell into this category, although it's like not really popular anymore, but it's like catered towards millennials was Tom's. If you remember those shoes, like 10, 15 years ago, they were all the rage. When they first started out, everyone wanted a pair of tombs, which is a pair of flats, a pair of canvas cloth flats. But the biggest part of their campaign that's seared into my mind is that you buy a pair of shoes, they give a pair of shoes to a child in need in a developing country. And so it was just like really interesting that like 10, 15 years ago, I think that's also when Warby Parker also started. And do. Like there was such a huge focus on these companies to have a sustainability bend.

Yeah. And it was also a very novel concept that. Doing good in the world. Sort of. That your company would be have that as part of this company ethos. True. And so then that also I think elicited a lot of people who became brand loyalists for that reason because they wanted to feel like, hey, this brand represents my morals, represents

how I move in this world. Yeah. Conscious consumerism actually. Yeah, that's so interesting. That was new at the time. Yeah, I think also coming out of that where companies were like Rothies, another shoe company that, you know, it was like conscious, eco. They don't have like a give and get program, but like they try to do recycled water bottle shoes. Sustainability. Sustainability. Sustainability. Blueland. Sustainability Bend. So it's really interesting. I'm sure there's another case study out there about like the trickle effects of these giant companies establishing themselves and how people follow that trend. Yeah. Maybe it's kind of more. it's almost like taken for granted now that that's sort of part of a lot of the DNA of a lot of companies. Yeah. So now Warby Parker is valued at more than a billion dollars. They have so many cute little boutiques in like basically every major city and they're doing super well. And the main conclusion from this discussion from STP is that you should choose a target segment and

be hyper focused on the population, the community that you want to serve. Because if you're trying to serve everyone. You're really serving no one and you're not going to be doing a good job. You really need to be focused on your target segment. So if you're launching your own brand, you want to ask who specifically do I want to serve? And then what you do is you actually think about these people and then you build your entire brand and your strategy around their hopes, their dreams, their frustrations, and their values. The best products that I've ever used are the ones that are like hyper-focused on their customers and understanding them super deeply. All right.

That concludes this section. We're moving on. Hey, guys. So it's come to my attention that many of you don't know, Gene and I have a matcha brand called Sisters Macha that we created and founded ourselves. What? No way. A Mata brand?

Yeah. We started it in October 24. Gene and I have worked and lived on this Macha farm in Japan. It's sourced from Wazoo. Japan, which is an hour and a half outside of Kyoto, and the brand means the world to us. It is a small family-owned farm, and we actually travel back to the farm and handpick the matcha ourselves. So you can find out more about Sisters Macha to try it, check it out, buy it, buy it. At sistersmacha.com. That's sistersmacha.com. And already, back to the show.

Okay, so the next section we're going to talk about is product innovation. So for product development and innovation between the two of us, we've worked on this for almost 20 years. Crazy. Put together. So we could probably talk about this for a thousand hours. So we'll just go really, really quickly into the main takeaway. The number one thing to know about product development that we learned at HBS is that you can't just guess at what a person's problem is.

You have to really very specifically identify the customer's problem and work to solve specifically that. And the example we're going to use is Netflix. There's actually a lot of business school cases written about. Netflix. Yeah. Actually, I met Reed Hastings because he came to Stanford GSB last year when I was a student and he gave a speech. Oh, nice. Yeah. And I read his book and I've done like a book report on on him. So a book report. I literally did a book report. How old were you? This was last year when I was a student at Stanford. So you're obsessed with him. Kind of. So I'm really excited to talk about this.

Oh, good. The main takeaway here and it's kind of related to our previous section, but it's getting to know your audience and your customers super deeply. And we're just going to give you two specific tactics on how to do that. And the first is user feedback and iteration. One way to do this is AB testing. Famously, Netflix ran a bunch of AB tests, meaning they ran like two different types of products with their customers to see which ones they liked better. All of this is in service of getting to know their customers and what their customers prefer. Yeah, Netflix is in. infamously known for always A-B testing every single little thing. So one example that you may or may not notice is if you compare your Netflix account with

your friend's Netflix account and you look at the same title that's being presented to you, you may have a different photo for the title. You may have a different thumbnail. So for example, one thing I noticed is that I think Netflix has identified that I like handsome Asian men. Who doesn't though? Because for shows that, for example, if there's like a movie with Henry Golding in it, they'll always show Henry Golding as the thumbnail versus for someone else. They'll show the other main character who's actually the main character when Henry Golding is more like a secondary character. I want to see Henry Golding in every thumbnail.

So they know that I'm more likely to click into the movie when they're showing me Henry Golding versus the actual main character who's not him. This is my cue to promote our dating episode podcast. So if you guys are new to our podcast here, Tiger Sisters, we also talk about lots of other things outside of Henry Golding. So check out our dating podcasts. So the main takeaway from this section is to really understand the problem that you're trying to solve. iterate like crazy and don't be afraid to pivot when you get new data and information. Whoa. And test, test, test, test.

And our last and final section in this episode. is on finance, here are some terms that you should know, and also like, how to not feel dumb in these conversations. Yeah, and the HBS approach to finance that they would always tell us over and over is not that every single student at HBS is supposed to graduate as some sort of financial genius and be able to actually run DCF models on your own all the time. It's actually more so that you want to graduate with the ability to run your own company or be a CEO somewhere and have conversations with the CFO and with the board where they talk about finance and you understand everything that they're saying. So that's really the goal. I actually like that approach because I

don't personally enjoy being in the weeds of finance and actually putting together all the models myself, but I love to talk with my counterparts in the financial group about how things are going and like adjusting the projections and getting more money. I mean, but also it goes to say like if you are a CEO or a leader of a company, like it's not your job to be the expert. Like, that's the CFO. That's like your right hand man or woman who is supposed to better understand it as the expert and like help you make decisions with that information. Right. But you need to understand what they're presenting to you so that you can make those decisions with confidence. And then also represent all those decisions to the board. True.

So we're going to go really quickly through five concepts. The first one is revenue versus profit. Shri, can you start us off with revenue versus profit? Okay, guys, this is the first concept you really need to know. you've heard of revenue, you've heard of profit, how are they different? And we're going to use the example of Netflix. Revenue is how much money is coming through the door. And with Netflix, it's basically like their subscription fees. Profit is what's left after all the bills are paid. So Netflix is a tech company. They probably have a lot of servers. They have employees. They need to pay all those costs. Profit is after all those costs are covered. This is really important because you can have billions of dollars of revenue. Like you can bring in a lot of cash.

but if you have really high costs, you might still not be a profitable company. The next concept we're going to talk about is cash flow. Gene, can you explain this? Sure. So cash flow is essentially the closest item to, I think, your bank account. So if you think about Netflix, what they do is they invest billions of dollars up front to actually produce the shows that they produce in-house. So those shows are actually marked as a asset. So it can seem like you actually have that money on hand in terms of your balance sheet, but you don't actually have the cash on hand. So that's why it's really important to differentiate between cash flow and revenue versus profit.

Yeah. And something they say in business school, when they're like evaluating businesses, some businesses might be cash poor. They might just not have a lot of cash on them. Yeah. And then some businesses seem very, very boring, but they actually throw off cash in a very recurring manner. And then the third concept to talk about is unit economics.

This is a really important term to know and to understand because whenever you're evaluating a company, like it will always inevitably come up. People will ask about the unit economics. So the unit economics actually just refers to the cost per unit. And in this case of Netflix, it's the cost per subscriber. For Netflix, it's like the margin that you get per subscriber. So for example, each subscription cost $10. you get that money in, but then for Netflix, they have to, like, create movies and TV shows.

And if they're able to, like, figure out each subscriber actually cost them $12, then they're, like, losing money. Yeah, it makes sense. I think also in terms of marketing, a lot of times people look at the cost for marketing versus your lifetime value of the subscriber. So you need to make sure that the amount you're spending to get each incremental subscriber or per each in economics makes sense in terms of how much you think that they're worth. So that's actually a lot of times companies such as Netflix, I know for sure actually Netflix, spends a ton of time doing this analysis with their hordes of data scientists. Yeah. And I guess for us for sisters matcha, for our matcha brand, something we think about is unit economics.

So basically for our brand, the example is like breaking it down per customer. If they're ostensibly, if they're a first time customer, they're buying one. How much does it cost for us to, you know, make the can per can? What is it if we're shipping all these cans, just bringing it down to the most basic unit of just one can. Well, per can, per can. Exactly. Yeah. So the fourth finance term you should know is forecast and runway.

Yeah. So this one's pretty simple. Runway is basically how much money do you have left if you continue to spend at your existing burn right? So if you're spending, for example, $100,000 per year, how much money do you have? If you only have $200,000 a year, your runway is two years. After that, you will run out of money. So as a CEO, you have to always be looking out for your run rate to make sure that you can stay afloat. And the last group of finance terms you need to know are valuation metrics.

These are terms that you've probably heard about or read about somewhere, maybe the Wall Street Journal. For example, price to earnings ratio or EV to EBITDA, that's enterprise value to EBITDA. These are all things that essentially are projecting what the worth or value of your company is. Don't be afraid of these acronyms because it's just a way for investors who express the value of your company. And the actual number itself doesn't really mean anything unless you look at it within the context of what your category is. So if you look at a company and you say, oh, they have a price to earnings of 20. That can mean that they're doing amazingly or can actually mean that they're really below the bar, depending on what category they're in.

So it's like tech versus, you know, industrials, for example. So we can talk about this for way, way, way more, but we're not going to. We're just going to leave it at that. And let us know if you have any questions in the comments. And if you want us to do a longer episode on this. Yeah. So that wraps up the HBS hard skills you need to know. There's so much more we can talk about the soft skills on leadership and networking,

which is honestly what HBS and business school is known for. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode. Please leave comments about what you want to learn more about. And we'll create a follow up episode on that. And please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. And please leave five-star reviews on Spotify. and also Apple Podcasts. It helps us so much and it keeps our podcast alive. If you enjoy this podcast episode, please share it with someone who might find it helpful and leave any questions

you guys have in the comments. This is honestly one of our first like explainer episodes. And if you want to see more stuff like this, please let us know and give us suggestions. We read every single comment. Thanks for tuning in. Bye. All right, guys, that was part one of everything I learned at Harvard Business School. what did you think? We gave you a lot of frameworks to think through. Gene, what is your follow-up thought? Okay, so one thing that I think is really interesting is that even though it's only one year later, so much stuff has happened in the actual world so that like our case studies, which actually we originally picked these specific case studies because they are very much evergreen case studies

that they do year over year at Harvard Business School, that there's like more to talk about one year later. So for example, we used Starbucks as a case study, which is a super classic case study. They talk about all the time at Harvard Business School. And there's already like new things to say about it. So some of the things I was thinking about is we talked about, so we went through kind of Porter's Five Forces and we graded Starbucks based on like how they're doing on each of them. And one of the ones we talked about was competitive advantage. And we said, you know, Starbucks is actually like pretty strong in terms of competitive advantage. They don't have that many like really super strong competitors because they are a global force and because they carve this like really niche

place for themselves in the marketplace. Now one year later, I think there's a really, a lot of really interesting things happening in the market. So we have Luckin Coffee, which is a Chinese-based coffee company, which I really think is starting to give Starbucks a run for its money. So compared to Starbucks, Luckin is a $10 billion market cap company versus Starbucks is $110 billion in market cap value. but Luckin already has 31,000 stores, including 10 that are now in the United States for the first time versus Starbucks has around 30,000 stores worldwide. So this is already a company that's like, there's a lot of chatter about it. And like people are starting to kind of prefer Luckin versus Starbucks because they have a lot of very

novel drinks. Like they have this like coconut latte, a velvet latte. It's a new development in the last year since we filmed. And I think it's really interesting to look into. Yeah, maybe we should go to a Luckin coffee after this and do some market research. I've been to Luckin. I've never been to Luckin. I've seen it around or like I've seen a coffee shop, a looking coffee shop around,

but I've actually never been inside. I'm really curious if it is like a Chinese company, like what their menu items are. Oh, well, I can tell you. Sounds really good. Okay, so there's, I went to one actually in China. I guess you weren't with me for some reason. Oh. I was in China and then our uncle was like, oh, there's luck in coffee here. You got to try it. Like, it's the hot new thing. And they, what they're famous for is they made this coffee called the Mao Tai coffee, which is a coffee that has alcohol in it that is like the famous Chinese, like, heritage, you know, Baiju alcohol. I would say it's like very much touching on like a Chinese theme and heritage that I don't know how much it would translate to.

I was going to say, do they even have that in the U.S. Or is that a China-only? I actually don't know if they have it in the U.S. Probably not because it's alcohol. The equivalent would be like putting Tito's in your coffee. No, even more. It's like putting like Bacardi 141 or whatever it's called, right? 151.

It's like the strongest alcohol in the United States. Don't, don't have it. I thought the strongest alcohol was ever clear. I don't know. Don't have it. You'll like black out or something. But anyway, so it is interesting that that is how they kind of got big in China abroad is because of this very unique product that they created. Cool.

And like it'll be interesting to sort of follow along and see how that translates in markets that don't know about this like Mao Tai drink that they had originally created. Like they don't have that like heritage and like cultural connection to it. I'd be interested to look at the US menu for Starbucks side by side with a luck and coffee menu. because I feel like something that would set a new entrant or coffee spot apart is how quickly they're able to iterate on their menu and how good their drinks are. Because honestly, I'm a little tired of Starbucks. Like Starbucks is not really for me. I was a caramel macchiato girl, as you heard in part one in eighth grade.

But I think I've like evolved. Like I don't have a frappuccino. I do like the refresher drinks. Oh, me too. Like the dragon, the dragonberry dragon fruit refresher. Because there's no sugar. I don't know. Definitely sugar. It's very, very sweet. But like, I'm not a Frappuccino type of girl,

but like if there was something kind of like a little bit more special, like a coconut latte or like a coconut foam, like sea salt, like maple. Like I feel like those are more like common in smaller cafes or smaller, you know, coffee shops. So I'm like if Luckin is able to iterate and do something a little bit more of a spoken special like that, I think it would really put. Starbucks in a pinch. Okay, I wanted to bring up one more potential competitor. So Blank Street Coffee, which is reportedly valued at $500 million as of last year, is allegedly in talks to raise another $100 million in funding, which would value it at around a billion dollars. So that is more so of a homegrown, like, U.S.-based brand that is also starting to grow and take market share from Starbucks.

I think especially amongst like Gen Z and some millennials. Like in my mind, Blank Street Coffee is very much like a like a dime square like New York City based kind of brand that has that sort of maybe younger cachet that Starbucks, you know, struggles to kind of like tap into. Interesting. Now my brain is going into like a thousand different places of all these different coffee shops and which one's growing, which one's shrinking and which ones honestly. innovating the most. Like, I haven't heard of Blue Bottle innovating in a long time. Like, I think it's very

much, in my mind, like a Bay Area or, like, a coastal thing. So I'm, I'm so curious to hear about this. Do you guys want to know a wisdom that my mother told me about growing up? Yeah. If you enjoyed our Tiger Sisters podcast episode on Parenting and Motherhood with our hilarious guests, Natasha Legerro and Sabrina Jalise, make sure to check out their podcast Good Enough. New episodes drop every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Together, they explore the messy and funny middle ground between old school and modern parenting. Okay, now back to the show. Okay, the second topic I wanted to touch upon with a Starbucks case study example is the idea of threat of substitutes, which is expanding into adjacent categories. So I know you were saying that you're not that

impressed by the drinks that Starbucks has been creating, but I will say they continue to innovate. And that's a big part of their holding onto their market chair in my mind. So they have all these like macha drinks, right? They've jumped onto the matcha craze. Yes. Right? Like there are no sister's matcha. There's no one like sisters matcha.

Our brand. Yeah. But, you know, they're doing their own like matcha drinks so that people who want to drink matcha can still get it at Starbucks. But I will say it's not very good at Starbucks. And if that's your first introduction into matcha, I'm sorry because then you will not like matcha. You have to try good matcha first. I will never get the match at Starbucks. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, yeah, that might be true. But I am, I mean, you know, for a mass market,

like they are, I see what your point. They created a matcha drink for mass appeal. Yeah, for mass appeal. At the price point, right, that makes sense for a Starbucks drink. Exactly. And I just want to say that Starbucks over the last few years has come under a lot of public. like scrutiny. The company has been involved in quite a few international and domestic issues. That being said, it is a company that so many business schools look at as a business to because they are constantly innovating on their products and serve millions and millions of people worldwide. Yeah, and I just don't want it to come across that we are like defending Starbucks in any way or we're like huge Starbucks corporation stands. I think it's more so that this is a classic case study.

And the fact that they are embroiled in these sort of like sociopolitical and global issues makes it even more interesting of a case study. And I actually think that the current case studies that they have should be updated with these elements. And these should be incorporated in the examination of Starbucks in the classroom because now as a corporation, you can't really shy away from these issues. Right. These are things that investors and more importantly, buyers or I guess customers, take into account when they're making their everyday decisions of whether or not to buy your coffee. Yeah, for sure. I think it's now a great example of a company that is embroiled in crisis management

in addition to all the business innovation we just talked about. All right. So now here we go into part two of everything we learned at Harvard Business School. And in part two, we are going to talk about different leadership styles and also the power of networking. Welcome to part two of everything we learned at Harvard Business School. In our last episode, we talked about the hard skills that Gene learned at HBS, which includes strategy, finance, product, and marketing. In today's episode, we're going to go over the soft skills.

Some of the skills that HBS is really known for and famous for, like leadership and networking. Harvard Business School is renowned for creating leaders, and a lot of times people say that the true value of the education at HBS is learning your own leadership style and then also all the networking that you do. Okay, now let's get started on leadership. It is one of the biggest pillars at HBS, if not the biggest pillar. We studied all sorts of leadership theory at HBS from the classic command and control style to the more modern servant leadership style. And we're going to dive into the top styles of leadership today, how they affect different companies. walking through examples of different leaders at different companies and also kind of talk about how you can apply it in your life too. I am so excited to talk about this because it seems kind of like squishy, you know, but there are four common leadership styles that we're going to outline.

And it's like actually really important because different leadership styles directly impact the culture of a company that you work for, how people think about performance and how they grow in their career. So this is actually really important to talk about. And performance translates to stop, right? Enter the... Enter HBO. Cha-ching. Sound effect. Yeah.

So the first style of leadership we're going to talk about is servant leadership. Gene, why don't you kick us off? So the idea of servant leadership is to actually sort of flip the idea of leadership on its head and kind of subverting the hierarchy where when you're the leader, you approach leadership as serving everyone who actually works for you. So what does that mean? One really good example, we used Starbucks in our previous episode. Let's use Starbucks again.

So Howard Schultz, who was the CEO, longtime CEO of Starbucks, left. They brought him back. Like, he's kind of a legend. Yeah, iconic. He's iconic. And he's also iconic for sort of being the star of a lot of HBO cases, actually. But Howard Schultz is a pretty famous instance of servant leadership. And he really employed servant leadership, not only in the way that he actually led his

employees from the day and day to day, but also in how he structured the policies of his company. So he was one of the very first people to give benefits to even part-time baristas. And that was very much aligned with the company values and the company culture of creating the idea of a third space. So he wanted to create a third space not only for his customers, but he wanted his employees to feel that as well. And he was like, they can't feel that. And they can't create that sort of comfortable space for customers unless they also have amazing benefits.

Yeah. I feel like this is the epitome when people are like leaders eat last. Like this is the actual. Did people say that? It's the name of a very famous book. But also people say like people who are talking about servant leadership are like leaders should eat last. And a lot of my classmates who came from the military actually have this mindset as well. Like I think a lot of military folks come out of their training and they're like.

like, okay, this is the type of, there's the leadership where you're like up in the front, like, leading people. But then also it's actually more empowering at times when you're like leading from the back too because then you're empowering your employees or your team to drive forward your mission. Like you don't even have to be at the front and like be, you know, dictating anything. Yeah. It's actually very powerful when employees, especially a lot of employees see you doing the things and see you also like changing the printer cartridge or like doing simple things that sort of illustrate, hey, I'm in here in the trenches with you guys. Like, I'm not above any one task just because I'm your boss.

I'm here doing it with you too. It's actually the type of leadership that I enjoy the most. Yeah. Like when I was working with my engineering team and my design team at LinkedIn, it's not like I was just like telling people what to do. I was doing it with them. So we're like co-creating together. And actually one of my bosses at LinkedIn, Albert, he also employed servant leadership. And as like a gift to me when I got promoted. is that he gave me two terracotta soldiers. What? Like, you know, like, from China.

Like, from China. They're at home here somewhere, but, like, they're, like, these small miniature soldiers that, like, one was standing up and one was, like, kneeling down. And he's like, I give these to you. Congratulations on your promotion. Like, remember, sir, and leadership is how we serve. What? I know.

So, like, this is such good lore. I don't even remember. I don't think you've ever told me this story. And I had it on my desk for the longest time out at work. So it's, this is actually very meaningful for me. So I'm glad he's such a W boss. I know. He's such a good boss.

He gave me two terracotta soldier statues, like literally miniature. And they sat at my desk to remind me of like, servant leadership. Oh, that's so beautiful. So I think it's also like a really hot phrase nowadays. So if you're taking anything away from this episode, like you should know like servant leadership is kind of like very buzzy and people are very excited about it. Yeah. It's a good term to like throw into the conversation.

actually, if you're talking about leadership. Oh, service leadership. But back to the example of Starbucks, not only does servant leadership help foster a better environment for the employees. Where servant leadership also comes in for the bottom line is that once you have employees who are more invested in the company, they do a better job at their job. They also go above and beyond at creating a better customer experience, which then in turns translates to more profit and a better bottom line. So think increased brand loyalty and increase revenue growth. Yeah. So if the experience is better for the employee, like the outcome is like 10 times greater for the customer itself.

So this is really a great leadership style to lean into. This is a good example where it translates pretty directly. Starbucks. Tell us why I like this example. Okay. So the second style of leadership is called transformational leadership. Shariq, can you tell us about that? So the classic example for transformational leadership is thinking about,

a leader who just has like the most insane vision and is like super compelling and you're like ohmg i definitely want to follow this person a classic example is steve jobs if you guys have seen any of his you know on stage product announcements he is just like a visionary that people think obviously he's really great at speaking really great at presenting but he's also really gifted at creating a compelling vision that everyone wants to buy into his vision definitely energizes employees and helps them dream up what they could possibly achieve together. Yeah. And I think in turn, it also translates into a cult following of fans, right? Like, what other brand has so much cashé and brand power and loyalty aside from Apple? Yeah. People love, I mean, people love their Apple products.

Like nothing else to pairs. Yeah. And also part of it is the idea of like the cult of the leader. That really plays into it too, right? People like back in the day, I don't know if people were remember this, but people used to line up for hours, like overnight, waiting for the new iPhone to come out. And it wasn't just because the iPhone was so revolutionary every time. It was because people wanted to be the first to get their hands on whatever Steve Jobs had dreamed up. Yeah. He was really special and amazing and drove not only a lot of that innovation, but also kind of the concept of the entire company was like really wrapped up in him. Yeah. I mean, it's not even just the customers. I think the employees, like this is like leadership, transformational leadership for the

employees. I think people like were really afraid of him, but also so enamored by him. Yeah. People would talk about how he was so magnetic. And when he like looked you in the eye, he could compel you to do anything. Like just by like looking at you in the eye and you'd be like, Steve, that's not possible. I cannot possibly make that deadline. He would look you in the eye. Be like, Shri. Yes, you can. I believe in you. Hey, I'm over. here. What are you here? I was looking into my camera. But then people would make the impossible happen. Yeah. And then a more like modern day example of this, a lot of people say that working for Elon Musk also felt the same at times. And he's kind of created that sort of

cult following within his own company as well. But there are downsides. Yeah. I mean, there are downsides because like, for example, with Steve Jobs passing away, I think there's a big question mark of like when that happened, who would take over and would they even have the same effect on the company? Tim Apple doesn't have the same lives. Tim Apple's a little bit different. You don't get that Steve Job risk. He doesn't hit the same.

But I mean, Apple is still a very wildly successful company. But I think as that chapter ended with Steve Jobs, stepping away, stepping down, a part of the company changed as well. And I'm sure for the employees on the inside. So the last takeaway is that transformation. leaders spark massive innovation and they can change entire industries, but they must have strong management teams behind them in order to maintain stability. Okay, so the third style of leadership we're going to talk about is transactional leadership. Gene, can you let us know a little bit more about this?

Yes, transactional leadership is kind of the tried and true classic standard of leadership. It's also sometimes called carrot and stick leadership. And I think the most famous original example is Jack Welch at GE in the 80s and the 90s. And what this leadership style is is creating very clear rewards, structures, and penalties. Jack Welch was one of the very first CEOs to implement what he called a rank and yank system where the bottom 10% of performers were let go every single year. And then he also rewarded outperformers in an outsized way. So if you were the top 10% performers, you got a major bonus way more than anyone else, you know, was not in the top 10%. This worked really, really well.

GE was massively successful in the 80s and 90s, outperformed a ton. And that's why this kind of became the standard for a lot of different companies. So I worked at Goldman, Sherey mentioned right out of undergrad. And that's what we did at Goldman. The bottom 10% of people were let go every single year. Yeah. And I thought it was normal because it was my first job out of school. I mean, the thing is, I don't know how I feel about the style of leadership.

because the culture that it creates, it's like extremely cutthroat. It can be a very successful method to incentivize and reward people for doing the best work. But yes, it's incredibly cutthroat and competitive. Yeah. And I would say like a lot of financial industries like working in investment banking, private equity, sometimes consulting. It is like an up or out system instead of rank or yank, like the new phrasing is upper out. is up or out, like you either get promoted or you got to go, you're fired. I think it puts a lot of stress, especially on young people.

Like when I was like fresh out of school and my friends were working in investment banking, they were so nervous about their like performance review if they were going to be promoted or not. Didn't that make them work harder? And it made them perform better. Yeah. And they made them, it made them hate their co-workers like their coworkers at the expense of their mental health. Yes, exactly. The thing is like my initial reaction is to label this as toxic.

And like that's just like me. being like Gen Z, like, oh my God, that's such a toxic work environment. But I do think this works for certain industries because even in tech, the sales org within, if you have like a sales team within your tech company, which many of them do, like if you're working in B2B SaaS, like a lot of sales orgs have up or out rank or rank or yank type of structures to incentivize salespeople. Well, yeah, I mean, it's purely numbers driven. In a sales org, the main saying is you kill what you eat or you eat what you kill.

Have you ever heard that? No. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, you eat what you kill. So basically everything you do is accretive to you. But you don't really get any necessarily like benefit of the doubt otherwise. It's like bring in the money or leave.

Yeah. The reason you're here is to hit your quota or exceed your quota. It's just like so numbers driven that at the end of the day they haven't hit their metrics. Yeah. or closed a certain number of deals. Yeah, there's just no like allowance for, I guess, extenuating circumstance. Yeah, the way that I feel like other organizations within a certain company might have. Yeah, I think also, you know why?

It's because in other parts of the org, like in product or engineering or whatnot, they work on much longer term projects, which take longer than a quarter can take longer than two quarters, can even take multiple years to see results. so it's harder to judge them on such discrete metrics versus a lot of times most of the times sales orgs are judged within the quarter yes that's right it's within the quarter so you have you live and die by your numbers yeah um at lincoln and at a lot of companies that have sales teams the top like one percent i think of people of top performers would have an incentive and it's called club and they would bring like top performers. This is just the lore. I've obviously never been,

but my friends who worked in sales would tell me about it. He weren't in the club. I wasn't in the club. She literally was not in the club. Well, I wasn't on the sales team. Number one. So she wasn't in the club.

And many people who were on the sales team were not in the club anyways. Just like you. But they would bring them to like Bali or something or like something crazy. It would go to club. Yeah. Yeah.

It was kind of similar at Zinga. The number one performing studio each quarter would get a massive reward. So the entire studio, it would be like 60 to like 120 people, would all go on a trip together. So that's why I went to Hawaii multiple times with my team as a reward trip. We went to Vegas multiple times as reward trips, went on ski trips together. But that doesn't really happen as much anymore. I feel like people are really clamped down on it.

But anyways, the glory days are over. I have one more kind of lore story. Is that at Snap at the very beginning, we sold ads at Snap. And at the very beginning, the way that the incentive structure was, was that salespeople would literally get 1% of what they sold. Which is insane. Like if you just run the numbers, some of those sales leaders made out like bandits. Like did so, so well for themselves. But that is very, very much back to what we're saying, carrot and stick, the ultimate carrot.

You get to keep 1% of the revenue of your ad sales. Yeah, you literally eat when you kill. It's actually like very powerful. Money, money, money. Money. So yeah, so that is transactional leadership. Now we shake hands. So the last and final form of leadership we're going to talk about is laissez-faire,

also known as hands-off leadership. I thought it was pronounced laissez-faire. Lase-fair. Lese-fair. Lese-fair. Lazy-fair. Lez-e-faire. Lez-faire.

Anyway, yeah, this is actually a very controversial leadership style. And it's basically the idea that there is no official hierarchy and everyone in the team will self-organize around the most important goals. And those will be self-identified. And that's what people are going to sort of gravitate towards and work on. And so one really famous example of this is this company called Valve. There's definitely HBO cases written about them. I did a case about them once. I learned about this at Stanford as well.

With an HBS case? Probably. At Stanford's cases are all HBS cases. Okay. So Valve is the video game developer behind Steam. And the idea behind them doing Lazy Fair leadership is that they think it unleashes a massive amount of creativity. And the idea that people can sort of socialize and put their energy into whatever

projects they deem the most important, that kind of creates this like massive, you know, explosion of creativity. and people are doing all these things that never would have been sort of come up with if you had ahead of time done like a major strategy exercise and you know sort of had top down leadership deciding what people focus on yeah so it's pretty controversial I think yeah my two cents nobody asked my two cents what are your two cents sherry my two cents on this leadership I'm like when I first learned about this I was like this is dumb I was like why would anyone do this obviously it's worked well but I think it's just so dependent on the company at the

company culture. Obviously, like, the style leadership affects the culture, the culture affects the leadership. But like, it really requires like fast moving people and people who take extreme ownership and want to like, if, you know, if there's no one telling you what to do, you need the type of personalities working at the company who will then take the initiative and take it on. I think coming from a big tech company, my experience is that like it can feel very complacent. And if you don't have people on the team who are like willing to step us. rise up and take responsibility then it like everyone's kind of like looking around and be like what do we do and so like I've worked on teams like that and I'm like I just don't see this happening

on like the teams that I've worked on however like in a different circumstance different people different industry it could come together but my initial reaction was like what nothing would get done she said rise up rise up rise on your knees you rise up anyway I think I could take the devil's abit devil's advocate to down a little bit. I love being devil. I love being the devil. In smaller teams, it can work really, really well. Smaller teams where you have a lot of trust and there isn't any hierarchy. And what I'll say is maybe in our company, in a lot of ways, we are laissez-faire leadership. Yeah, a company of two people. I agree. Yeah. But like, it's not like I am in control of what you do and you're in control of what I do. So if you expand that, even beyond us, like let's say there were six more people

in our company that were sort of equivalent to you and me, where we have the same level of trust in their competence. And we can say like, hey, this is your area of ownership and go ahead and run at it. You could see how this could eventually expand. This takes extreme, extreme ownership and extreme trust. Yeah. And extreme delegation. And I think it is extremely fragile. There's no delegation. The point is that there's zero delegation. You just delegate to yourself. Sorry. Then I take back delegation. Extreme collaboration, I guess. No, I guess extreme delegation is what I mean. But I see your point where I'm just like, I'm not going to handle this. You handle it. And then they go running with it. But I wouldn't even be telling someone to

handle it. It's not delegation. It's ownership. Yeah. It's extreme self-ownership. This makes me want to throw up. She's so big techified. I know. She's so all she knows is structure. And she just wants to be told like, how do I excel? And she wants everyone to just, play their role. Well, actually, I don't think that's quite it. I think it's more that I'm just cynical. I think I've just seen a lot of people rest and vest. And so if I were working on a smaller team where everyone's in it and everyone's collaborating and has as much to win and to lose, I would feel much more safe. I've worked with people who are just like, who made her feel unsafe. Who are complacent. And I'm like, we're not hungry. I'm, I'm freaking hungry to like win and to get

it. And if you're not hungry, then I'm like, then this is not going to work. She hates complacent people. Complacent people. Show yourselves. I mean, this is just who I am. And if you want to work with Tiger Sisters, AKA, you want to work with us. If you want to work with Tiger Sisters, A.k.a. Sistrater's Mata. You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding. Anyways, we're going, we're going home. Okay, no, one thing I will say is that the way that this is presented is it's very black or white, which is also not the case in the real world, right? Sure. I will. I will. say a lot of companies will have elements of laissez-faire leadership within the company. And I actually think when I worked at Zinga, there were a lot of elements of laissez-faire leadership. And I've said

before that the company motto at Zinga would be your own CEO. And the way that the company was structured is that there were a lot of different gaming studios. So each game had its own GM. So basically each game had its own president under the CEO. And so all of these different studios were run completely separately. They had their own GMs. They had their own CTOs. They had their own head of product, like chief product officer within the, within the studio. Yeah. And so that in some ways is sort of laissez-faire applied in a different way. Yeah. I can see that. I think just lazy fair, it unleashes a lot of creativity. Yes. Gives a lot of ownership to the individual team, but it also requires a lot of self-discipline and a lot of self-management. Okay. So,

the main takeaway of all of this is that there are many different styles of leadership, and it's not like a one-size-fits-all. As you can see, Gene and I, as we're talking through each style, we're like, oh, we've seen some of this, we've seen some of that. Like, sometimes it's a combination of all these different styles put together. Different styles call for different approaches, and sometimes the best leaders are able to weave all these different styles together to create a culture and approach of their own. Yeah, and I think the point of actually learning about this framework of all these different styles. is so that you can draw from each of them and pull in which elements make sense to you,

which one works for your company culture that you're trying to create. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that it's not one size fits all for even the company, right? So depending on what stage your company is in, let's say you're a really early startup, like Shari and I, it actually makes sense to be laissez-faire, right? Like we don't need to create some crazy structure between the two of us because when's my bonus coming? you will you kill because it's just the two of us yeah but once we start growing and we have more

people then maybe we do want to transition to transactional because then there's actually a rubric and people understand what they have to do in order to be perceived as or to be measured as successful right and then maybe from there that's what sets up the base where you can actually have transformational leadership come in right that's when you say when people really understand what their roles are and what they're supposed to do, then you could say, this is what we're aiming for. Like we are sort of aiming for the stars. This is we're trying to do something that's never been done before. And we need you guys to actually go above and beyond what is stated in your roles in order for us to all do that together.

So, yeah, depending on the stage of your company, depending on the industry of your company, depending on your own personal style, the idea is to take all this, what you've learned and then use it for yourself. Okay, now moving on to our next section, which is networking. networking is often considered the biggest intangible benefit of an MBA, especially at Harvard. The idea is that at HBS or at GSP or wherever you are, you're surrounded by peers who are all investors, future leaders, operational kind of experts, and you're just building these organic relationships with them. And the idea is that you kind of start building together in the future. Quick pause.

One thing we've been hearing more and more is that Tiger Sisters is the group chat that you always wish you had. Yeah, it's the group chat where someone's talking about venture capital. Another person is talking about attachment issues. And then another person comes in and gives you the framework that completely changes how you think about your career. Sounds like a great group chat. So subscribe wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. And big news, we have a Tiger Sisters newsletter dropping soon. So sign up to get more group chat energy.

The link is in the description. Now back to the show. I mean, a lot of people go to get their MBA because of the network. And this is like, I'm going to give you kind of one example of how that might play out and how it has played out with our startup, Tiger Sisters Podcast, which is what we're building together. When you're going to get your MBA, there are like three things you should think about, especially you are starting a company of your own. First is the network of your classmates.

The second is the network of the faculty and professors you're surrounded by. And third is the network of alums and potential investors. So for the first category of like network is like your classmates. These are like Jean mentioned like brilliant people who have been like so highly vetted and have done amazing things in their career before coming to business school. Like for example, since I started this podcast, the idea of podcasting when I was in business school, I was able to ask my classmates to be on my first ever podcast, which was Cherie's Corner before we had Tiger sisters. And because of that, like, I was able to figure out the kinks of podcasting. I was able to

reach out to my community of classmates as my first, like, beta testers for my podcast before, you know, we hit the big leagues. They were so helpful, so kind. And each time I iterated with them, I was able to learn something new so that Jean and I are able to now work on this full time, relatively seamlessly. The second network that is super helpful and useful, actually invaluable at business school, is faculty support and also professors. So in my last few quarters of business school, there's like two examples that come to mine. Like one, I was able to ask these incredible lecturers and professors, Joel Peterson, Glenn Kraman, who are iconic professors of mine who I've had the privilege to learn from, but they were on my podcast, which was so amazing. And also the second example is that I worked with

another professor, lecturer at Stanford, Alison Kluger, whose specialty is in media and entertainment. And so she and I were able to work really closely over my last few quarters as I pitched her the idea of, you know, working with my sister in entertainment after graduating. And so they were their advice, their experiences. Like, I don't know how else I would have been connected to such amazing industry professionals. Yeah. Outside of Stanford's business school program. And the third type of networking that people usually do at business school is with alums and investors.

Many times the alums are the investors. Yeah, another example that happened just last week is that recently some companies have reached out to Shri and I with different business opportunities of ways they want us to collaborate and work with them together. And they were in industries that candidly we know nothing about. As you guys know, we have sisters matcha, but that's all. been totally new to us. Neither of us have ever worked in CBG or made anything remotely that you can hold in your hand. So last week, I actually was like, who do I know that's in this industry? And I

realized one of my really, really good friends is, I want to say one of the foremost experts in this kind of newish industry. And I literally just texted her. And I was like, hey, can I show you this contract that they sent us and get your thoughts on this. And like, this is what they offer. This is what they had in mind. This is what seems weird to me based off of my business intuition. This is what I think I'm surprised by. This is what. And I just, we just basically texted. She looked it over. She even made a tiny little spreadsheet for me in like five seconds and sent it over. And she was like, hey, this is how I think the math would work out. And I was like, wait. So you did like, they didn't include this in the like the profit aspect. Anyway, I'm not telling the story well. But the whole point is,

that I was able to text her and she came back to me and she was like the most valuable advisor I could have possibly had in the world. Like it's just so cool. And I was like, oh my God, thank you so much. This is so so helpful. And she's like, yeah, no problem. Like I'm sure I'll ask you for help sometime in the future too. And I'm like, hey, y'all's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair. Yay.

Way fair, every style, every home. Yeah, I'm sure you will. I mean, I think it's also not only just having access to this network, too. It's really how you kind of make use of it. And not only like you receiving help, but also providing help to the network as well. And so it's like awesome to hear that you and your friend have kept in touch and are able to lift each other up in different ways. Yeah, totally. And I think it's not just access.

It's very casual access. right like this person that I texted she's my good friend and I didn't really think twice about texting her I wasn't like oh like should I reach out should I not reach out I was like hey dude look what do you think you know and it's actually fun to help each other with areas of your own expertise like if somebody texted me something and I was the exact perfect person to help them with their problem I would be really excited to lend my expertise to them you know it's actually like really fun to help your friends out and fun to help them succeed and vice versa. So it kind of goes back to remember when we interviewed Imran Khan and he said,

you're not really my friend unless I can just text you. Unless I have your phone number and I can text you any time and you respond to me pretty much right away. Yeah. That's kind of the case here. I think that's also why it's powerful. It's like not just having these people in your like second, third degree network. It's having all these people that are really impressive and amazing.

just being able to reach out very easily and casually and knowing that it's reciprocal. Absolutely. Okay. So, Shari, can we get a little bit tactical here? So how do you actually go through the process of, I guess, like, networking? Even if you've met these people, how do you be more intentional, intentional about maintain your relationships? Yeah, I think networking is all about intentionality. It's like so easy to kind of sit back and just like wait for it to happen, but you have to like

be very mindful of how you go about it. And it's honestly one of the things I really enjoy, which is kind of like sick of me. But like I really like it. So like whenever it's her personality. It's kind of my personality. Like whenever I have like I'm reading an article and I was like, oh my God, this would be perfect for Glenn Cremont. Like my one of my lecturers who I'm like super close with, he was the former editor of the New York Times for like 36, 37 years. Yeah.

Dude, I love Glenn Cremont. He's so badass. He is a legend. He's like truly so cool. I've only met him once. but I love him. He's like legendary in so many ways. But like if I like read an article, I'm like, oh, this is interesting. Glenn would love this. Like I'll send him that article. And in that vein, like when I'm sending him that article, it's like a correspondence where I could be

like updating him on some of the stuff that my sister and I are working on. I mean, I do that all the time for the professors that I stay in contact with just because like they're my friends. And like I'm constantly like reminded of ways that I'm like, oh, he would find this interesting or she would find this interesting. But like it takes that like little extra step of intentionality, not only having the thought, but whenever you have the thought, just like go and do it and send an email. And it doesn't have to be like a 20 minute exercise where you're like reading your email over like 15 times. Be like, oh my God, should I have written this? No, just be like, hi, like dear so and so like was reading this article and I thought of you, thought you might like it for this reason.

Then just, you know, wrap up the email and send it. Yeah, this is, shri is very, very good at this. I think like naturally it also, I think it's a skill that can be built. and it's a muscle that can be built up over time. So if you do it a few times, then you kind of get into the habit of doing it. And it doesn't feel like scary each time. Yeah. I think it's more natural to you than me because for me, and probably a lot of people out there,

it's more I feel like I have to think more about the email and like make sure it's written the right way. So then I create this barrier for myself to even send it. What I could do is maybe just have a more casual mindset about it. I mean, unless you're emailing like the prime minister of Norway, like, you know what I mean? I'm like, hey. Kind of how actually kind of how you're texting your friend is the mindset which you should approach these like intentional networking discussions.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's actually a great way to look at it. And I'm trying to do that more. is to just treat more people like they are your friends because I think generally people want to be friends with you. And if you just treat people as your friend, then they'll treat you

as their friend. I love it. Okay. So last question on this topic is that how could you replicate this without having an Ivy League degree or without actually going to business school? Yeah. I think the most important principle is to make sure that you're offering help first before like receiving help that is like one of the most important things about networking i think networking gets such a bad reputation because in in my mind like a lot of people are like take take take take take take take take take and like that is not what networking is at all networking is so much more about giving than it is about receiving you have to be willing and open to give help and open up your own network open up your own resources before you even receive help at all it's kind of

of how I think about mentorship as well. A lot of people, I think, go into mentorship being like, dear so-and-so, you're amazing, please mentor me. But mentorship is very much a two-way street. And before you ask someone for help, you also have to give help. Someone who's watching this might be thinking, like, well, I'm just little-o-me, like, what do I have to offer? Like, how can I actually help this person that is, you know, five steps ahead of me in their career? And one example I would give is like even for you sending an email, you know, of like, hey, I read this article. I think you would really enjoy it for X, Y, Z reasons. That's already kind of an overture.

That's like offering help to someone in a way that anyone can do, right? Like, Glenn Kremont doesn't actually need you to like for anything. No, but actually this really worked out because I read an article. Yeah, wait, this is such a good story. So Glenn Kremont, one of my writing professors at Stanford, he has. a class on like LinkedIn and like how to make your LinkedIn how to spruce it up how to have the right LinkedIn introduction all this stuff and there was like an article that was written about like LinkedIn specifically the topic um that he like talks about in his lecture and so I read the article

and I sent it to him and he responded within like 15 minutes he's like thank you so much I'm going to include this in my next lecture like you know it was just that was co-professor it's such an easy way yeah to offer up yeah help yeah and offer up that, hey, I'm thinking about you. And it made a tangible difference in how he runs his life. Yeah. I mean, that's such a good example because, like, you could be like, oh, what could, you know, Sharias, her, his former student possibly offer this, like, world renowned lecturer.

Yeah. Who was also a world renowned. Times editor. New York Times editor. Yeah. And like, literally you helped him with his lesson plan. Exactly. Exactly.

So. And it wasn't like I, like, moved mountains or like, I, like, completely like, changed, turned his world upside. down. It was just like a little little thing. And it helped. And that's, I think just it builds goodwill. I wasn't even trying to build goodwill. I was like, hey, I thought of you. This is helpful. Yeah. I love that example. It's such a good example. Yeah. Nice. Love you, Glenn. Okay, guys, that's pretty much everything I learned at Harvard Business School about leadership and networking in 30 minutes. What a good overview and the fact that you paid over $250,000. But you guys get it for free.

And in 30 minutes is great. Okay, so that was part two of everything we learned at Harvard Business School. Like Jean said in the beginning, I also love part two, maybe a little bit more than part one. But Gene, what has been your biggest takeaway or updated thinking? Yeah, I think one thing that's interesting is that similar to part one, in part two, we talk about some topics that have, even in the past year, have had a lot of developments and changed over time and make these topics worth revisiting. So, for example, we talked about for the archetype of an,

an inspirational leader. We talked about Steve Jobs, who is obviously like the number one archetype for that. And we were kind of talking about like, oh, now we have, you know, Tim Apple. We have Tim Cook. Like he's very different from Steve Jobs, but he's very operationally focused. And that's what he's kind of like brought to bear for Apple. And that's what his like leadership style has been like. And then now we have the news that Tim Apple, Tim Cook, is.

leaving as of September 1st and he's going to transition into the executive chairman role where he's going to be focusing on policy and global relationships. And he's going to be succeeded by John Ternis, who is currently the SVP of hardware engineering. So it's kind of just like interesting. We want to revisit the topic again. It's kind of like, what is John Ternis like and what is his style of leadership and how is that going to affect Apple and how is that going to affect their product development. How is that going to affect their innovation? Yeah. It's a really good point and also crazy how much can change in a year. Well, I just am curious. It's like, does anyone know the T about John Ternis? Like, what is he like as a manager? What is he like as a leader? What do you guys

think he's going to bring to the role of CEO that is different than Tim Cook? And I would just love to know any sort of predictions on how this sort of changes the path for Apple going forward. Or is he very much like a stay the path sort of guy? And he's like, I'm just going to execute on everything that, you know, Tim and even Steve had set out many years ago. It's, yeah, it's really interesting because the CEO is the captain of the ship. And really, you know, even his temperament, can his temperament, his innovation or lack there of, like, his strategy. He's, you know, his strategy can really turn the ship in a different direction. And something else we discussed in part two is the power of networking. And so, Gene, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So I think one thing that

was really interesting, like listening back to this episode, is that Cherie gave the example of how being at Stanford Business School was really helpful for her first iteration of her podcast, which was Cherie's Corner, where she interviewed classmates, she interviewed people in Silicon Valley, who had went to Stanford Business School, and she interviewed professors. And it's just really funny because I was going back and looking at Cherie's Corner. And one of the people that you interviewed was your classmate and friend, Chad Janice, who is the CEO and founder of Grooons, which is like a vitamin company that has now since sold to Unilever for a reported $1.2 billion in just three years of development and growth. Yeah, I was there.

I was in there first with the interview. I got the first interview of Grooons at the very beginning while Chad was a classmate student and friend of mine. I did not invest in that though, but I did invest in him and spotlighted him on Cherie's Corner. Who knows how much that is worth? Definitely not $1.2 billion from Unilever. But yeah, it's kind of amazing to see and to bear witness to Chad is one of many friends of mine and many classmates of mine who have started their own entrepreneurial journey and are absolutely killing it, fundraising from institutions, growing their team. And so it's amazing to see and be so close to it when it is one of your classmates and friends who is running the world

and doing amazing things with their own business. Yeah, I mean, all I have to say to that is Tiger Sisters slash Cherie's Corner. You heard it here first. And the last thing I want to say before we wrap up is that if you are not currently driving, please take two seconds to subscribe to our newsletter, which we are relaunching. You can either go to the link in the description or just go to www. www.tigeresterspodcast.com and then scroll to the bottom and subscribe. Thank you guys so much for watching this mash-up episode of everything we learned at Harbor Business School part one and part two. please remember to comment and also subscribe to our podcast if you aren't already. Oh, and the last thing is, should we do more episodes about what we learned at Harvard Business School,

please comment in the description about which of these topics you want us to deep dive into more because, as you know, we read all of the comments, and that is actually how we create our slate a lot of times. Cool. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you next time. Bye.