Kate Rouch of Coinbase
WHAT TRIGGERS YOU?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 240: Kate Rouch
Here’s a question. What triggers you?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I’m asked to help their leaders discover their full potential and maximize their impact on the business and its people.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Kate Rouch. She’s the Chief Marketing Officer at Coinbase.
October was Mental Health Month.
But the truth is, every month should be.
And when you’re the leader, every month is.
“To the extent that we're in reactivity, our field of vision narrows, right? I mean, there's a lot of science around how perception and the body kind of contracts in moments of stress. And so I think for me, I really, really try to be disciplined about peppering my day with practices that bring me back to a more grounded and neutral state.”
Leadership, at its best, is a selfless act. A desire to help others reach a future that is better than the present.
Many, many things can get in the way. Most of them we know about before we start. A few others show up along the way.
But the one that we all carry with us, often unrecognized or worse, ignored, is our mental health.
We focus on the challenges and outcomes, the trials and the tasks, believing what we’ve been told, that anything is possible. If you want it badly enough, and work for it hard enough, you can will that future into existence, so the story goes.
Except the story leaves out a crucial part - our neurobiology. The completely, utterly, entirely unique programming that makes us who we are.
Why does that music make you cry? Why do these words make you angry? Why does that response scare you, intrigue you, excite you? What is making you afraid?
The programming might come from this lifetime. A father that left, a sister that died, a dog that never left your side.
Or, as the evidence increasingly suggests, it might have been passed down to you from generations before, hard-wired into your DNA before birth, created by events you did not experience and pain you did not know firsthand.
And yet, we drive ourselves forward, determined to succeed, carrying baggage and burdens that would stun a herd of bison. Ignoring the fact that our programming controls us, causing our body to react and our mind to contract. During those few moments when we are triggered, we are out of control of our feelings. That’s not a lack of discipline or determination. It’s biology.
So, try this instead. Acknowledge your feelings. Find comfort in the absolute truth that you are not broken or inadequate or alone. Find confidence in the knowledge that with the right help, we have the ability to rewire our brains, if we want to.
So start to pay attention to what you feel and when.
It’s the beginning of the journey that matters most. Self discovery.
And from there, all things are possible.
Here’s Kate Rouch.
Charles (03:38):
Kate, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Kate Rouch (03:42):
Thank you so much for having me, Charles.
Charles (03:45):
When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious of creativity being a thing in your life?
Kate Rouch (03:52):
You know, for me, creativity I think really starts with listening. And any great storyteller really needs to be able to first be an observer. And I grew up in a family with two very different cultural backgrounds. So my mother is Greek, and very culturally Greek, grew up speaking Greek at home, and my father is an Irish American. He's an immigrant to the US. And I think as a child, just really picking up the differences between their cultures and then finding connections between them was itself a creative act. And probably the first experience I had with the role of the observer and making connections between two seemingly unlike objects, if you will.
Charles (04:49):
I think that that question about, you know, how do you put different ideas together is, you know, kind of obviously at the heart of unlocking creative thinking, innovation. How did you express yourself as a child? Because I think people with that ability often came to that early in life, didn't they?
Kate Rouch (05:04):
Yeah. So for me, I was a voracious reader as a child. So, you know, I often even think of the analogy of a magpie collecting shiny objects and bringing them back into their nest. I think for me, as a child, really seeing some of the cultural differences in my own home just sparked an intense curiosity about different ways of being in the world. And I really threw myself into books when I was young.
Charles (05:39):
And have you found that sort of… somebody else, actually, on the podcast a couple months ago described themselves as a magpie learner? Have you found that that continues into adulthood?
Kate Rouch (05:47):
Yes, absolutely. I have. I would say the information sources have, you know, been different. But I do think key to my process and my leadership style is really being an observer and really listening, ideally without judgment and ideally without emotional reaction to the different inputs that are coming in. I think when people really, truly feel like you understand them and are truly listening to them without pushback, that's, I think, really the genesis of starting to get to some really interesting creative thinking.
Charles (06:34):
How do you hold your own emotions at bay in those situations? I mean, I think the ability to really hear and really listen is definitely influenced by the voice inside our own heads. How are you able to control that and to allow other people's voices to come through so you can really sit there and understand and take that in.
Kate Rouch (06:55):
It's a practice, I think, and some days better than others, but to me it's really about creating spaciousness and being able to really ground, to really be able to sort of manage your own - and I know this can sound a little airy fairy, but I really believe this - in terms of being able to manage your own emotional, physical, spiritual self, so that you can truly show up and receive information. You know, to the extent that we're in reactivity, our field of vision narrows. I mean, there's a lot of science around how perception and the body kind of contracts in moments of stress. And so I think for me, I really, really try to be disciplined about peppering my day with practices that bring me back to a more grounded and neutral state. Whether that's going for a quick walk outside, with my dog, whether that's, you know, taking five minutes between meetings to listen to a song that I like. I mean, I do think so many times we think of these practices as some, you know, big eat your vegetables, I need to go on a 10 day silent meditation retreat. And in fact, I really find that a daily practice of really just trying to come back to yourself and the present is more effective, at least for me.
Charles (08:25):
Do you calendar that time, or is this just instinctive, like, oh, I'm at a moment. I feel this way. I've got 10 minutes before my next Zoom or whatever, I'm going to actually do that.
Kate Rouch (08:37):
I think for me, it's a combination of both scheduled and then kind of more serendipitous practices. So I really do try to schedule, you know, I'm the mom of two very young children and have a busy job. So if I don't schedule at least some baseline, you know, time for myself, it's just, it's hard to have it happen. So I do, you know, exercise on a regular basis and really have that as sacred time in my calendar. But for some of the other kind of, almost, when I think of it like, as like confetti throughout your day, like these little moments of presence or joy, I try to set it up so that it's easy to do. Like I have a book of poetry on my desk from a poet that I really love, so it's just easy to pick it up instead of doom scrolling on the internet if I find myself with five minutes of spare time. So I do try to engineer my workspace in a way that makes it easy, to make a choice that will bring me back to presence as opposed to maybe one that would lead me to distraction or overwhelm. And I, again, I think it's like a daily, it's a daily, it's a daily fight. So some days better than others, but I try.
Charles (09:46):
And has your ability to do that changed during COVID? I mean, are you working from home part of the time?
Kate Rouch (09:52):
Yeah, so I would say COVID was really transformational for me and sort of helped empower a much more creative space for me as a leader. I was working from home throughout COVID at that time I was working at Meta, and I now run marketing at Coinbase, which is a remote first company. So I actually almost exclusively work from home. and you know, I think people have different opinions and feelings about working from home, but for me it's been really a gift, frankly, in terms of control of my time and ability to sort of weave in some of these practices in a more regular way.
Charles (10:34):
Did you always want to lead?
Kate Rouch (10:37):
No. And in fact, I think I was a quite reluctant leader, actually. Maybe as part of more naturally being an observer and sort of shy and reserved, that was never a role that I naturally saw myself in, frankly, and was really encouraged by different leaders and mentors that I worked for to take on that role. But it was never an explicit goal of mine.
Charles (11:16):
And how did you adapt to it when it first came along?
Kate Rouch (11:21):
So I think I love doing work that I feel is important and meaningful. And I think so many times when you are a leader, you have the privilege and opportunity to work at that level and to be part of the conversation and actually really get to direct the strategy of the work or help cultivate the work in a meaningful way. And so for me, that was the motivation for doing the parts of it and the job that felt much less comfortable and natural to me, which were learning how to manage people that in many cases were much more experienced and older than me. At Meta I went through a journey of being an individual contributor and then within five years managing a thousand people. So it was very much a humbling and challenging journey.
Charles (12:16):
If you look back at that specific evolution from being a solo practitioner to managing a thousand people, do you now look at that and see stages of your leadership evolution? I know that's a hard question to ask on the fly, and I'm sure you haven't ever analyzed it through that lens, but I'm curious, just instinctively if you look back, do you see stages of leadership? Because I remember when we built our business, which was never a thousand people, but we went from totally intimate connection with everybody around us to multiple offices, more distant relationships, learning how to be in those situations and those environments and those dynamics. How do you look at your leadership now going through that phase?
Kate Rouch (12:57):
It's a good, it's a really good question, and frankly, what I should reflect on more and will, I'm sure after this conversation. You know, my answer first on this would be when I was a much less experienced manager, the journey was really about how do I go from having control over everything as an individual contributor to meaningfully empowering the people and teams working for me. And I would say that was really the main theme of my management journey at Meta. What's been interesting, I would say is sort of in the most recent phase, probably in the last years of my time at Meta and now at Coinbase, there's actually been a discovery about how and when to really lean in as a leader and really touch the metal. And that actually, yes, you need to empower your teams, but you also need to make sure that when you have an instinct or, especially if it's a maybe a counterpoint to the thinking in the organization or some, you know, something unique that you're really leaning into make sure that that is being communicated and that the team really understands that and your point of view is actually being reflected, you know, in the work.
And so it's almost been an arc, I would say, in that way of releasing control and then almost kind of coming back to take a little bit more of an assertive point of view.
Charles (14:41):
I think learning trust is challenging, isn't it? In those situations where you come from, it's just you, you had to rely on yourself for your success and your career. Suddenly you're given people to be responsible for, you realize this, when you get scale of the kind you've described that your personal intervention doesn't work anymore. You literally can't get all this stuff done. I'm always impressed by chief creative officers are a really good example at ad agencies, I think, where their, their own contribution to the work. I mean, their, their, their creation of the work itself is how they get to the point where they're given the job and then suddenly they've got multiple offices and hundreds, if not thousands of people working for them, and they have to give up all that control because they can't look at the work before it goes out. So they have to view the work with qualities through other people. what was your journey like as you developed trust in other people?
Kate Rouch (15:32):
So, I've been so fortunate to have really incredible teams. And that was true at Meta where frankly, so many of my direct reports, especially in my earlier years as a manager, frankly, had more experience than me and came in a lot of times from CPG and other, industries outside of tech where they kind of came and frankly taught me a lot about marketing, and the core marketing skill set and were very generous in doing that. And I think in turn I was really able to help them understand how to be successful working within the context of a founder-led tech company. And so I think that sort of mutual kind of symbiotic relationship was very helpful. Um, you're also in a situation where you're going through really volatile times, and a lot of change. You know, at Meta when I started my career there, there were 1500 people in the organization when I left, there were 86,000 people in the organization.
So being on that kind of intense journey of scale and change, I think really just bonds you. You sort of have no option if you don't trust the people, you can't do the job, I think at the end of the day. Coinbase has been an example sort of on the other side of that equation where, you know, we've gone through a really tough bear market. And it's sort of also been an example of without trust and, you know, the, we're dead in the water because we don't have the budget to, you know, just pay for work that's gonna be seen. We have to make work that's breaking through. And you can't do that, especially in those kinds of conditions without a team that really, really trusts each other.
Charles (17:28):
How have you gone about building that kind of trust in an environment where you're not together very often? What have you found is necessary and what have you found that works?
Kate Rouch (17:38):
You know, the first thing is just, I have just such an incredible Chief Creative Officer that's really my partner in everything I do. He came from tech. He had spent the last roughly, seven or eight years building out Google's in-house studio. And before that had an, you know, worked in a variety of agencies including Wieden. So he just really understands both breakthrough creativity and then how to get that work within the context of a tech company. And I think we just have a partnership, I think, where we both really understand our roles. We also have a lot of shared context. You know, the industry is not big, so we have a lot of people in all of our, both of our lives who we've had decades long relationships with that are very close to the other. So I think it's just having that shared context, I think is honestly critical. I think it would've been very difficult to form that type of relationship if we were both totally unknown entities to each other, prior to working together. And I think honestly, those existing relationships across a variety of folks on my team at Coinbase are really what has helped establish that kind of trust and team coming in.
Charles (19:06):
Do you ever get together in person with people that work for you?
Kate Rouch (19:10):
We do. We try to get together roughly once a quarter. And then obviously if we're producing creative work, we'll be on, you know, site together for the production. So, you know, we absolutely do see each other. It's just a very different dynamic than, you know, in the office every day at the same time, you know, for a company like that's at the scale of a meta or a Google. A lot of times you can even be on the same city, let alone the same, you know, company and never see people. You know, in Meta, the campus was so large that oftentimes even if you were meeting with someone in Menlo Park, you would video call them because you didn't have enough time with your back-to-back sort of meetings to go over to the building they were in. So, it's been less disruptive frankly, than I would've thought. And ironically, the work that I'm most proud of in my career has happened, the creative work, in a remote context, which I'm still trying to wrap my head around, but is definitely true.
Charles (20:22):
You've been part of such revolutionary businesses through this one particular perspective of remote working versus in person, which is obviously, if not the big debate at the moment, it's certainly one of, and one of the big challenges that leadership leaders across the entire creative industries are facing, obviously. But if you roll forward five years, where do you think the general consensus is netted out in terms of how you build a creatively driven business in terms of being together versus being remote? What do you think the standard looks like?
Kate Rouch (20:55):
It's tricky. It's so tricky. You know, I really think that for businesses that truly are seeking breakthrough creativity as a core to how they operate, they will follow the talent. I just believe that to be true. For us, we have a very strong, young, creative team. And frankly, a lot of the ways that I'm able to get them to sign on to, you know, a tricky space, is one, the creative opportunity and the, the willingness that we have to take creative risk, and to really put work that is trying to say something in the world. But the other is, frankly, the flexibility to work where they wanna work, and not feel like they have to come in to get their homework checked every day, by someone in a corporate office. And so I think a fully remote model is probably not the future. I think a fully in-person model is probably not the future. And so I think figuring out that right flexibility for teams is going to be the way that where we end up, it's going to be somewhere in the middle. I know that's maybe not that insightful, but I do think that's true.
Charles (22:15):
It's interesting, actually, because you're making me think about the fact that rather than looking for a model or a prototype, I think you're right, that if talent is the thing that determines it, companies will be defined structurally by the kind of talent that they attract and what those people want. And so what you'll start to see and what, what will ultimately happen is that the things that used to separate companies used to be more limited, right? I mean, I guess compensation, I guess creative opportunity, access benefits. There was obviously a lot of investment in physical space for some companies. But, probably what we'll see actually is that how a company works will become as big a distinguishing feature as anything else. You know, here we do it this way. And so talent, the best talent will shop around to find not just an opportunity fit, but actually a structural organizational fit that feels like a reflection of who they are, and the kind of life they want to lead. Does that resonate?
Kate Rouch (23:11):
It really does resonate. Yeah. I think that's my guess is, if you peel back even at some of the biggest companies in the world, you'll find that's already true. My creative partner at Coinbase, he's out of Portland, you know, from his Wieden and Kennedy days. Yes, he worked at Google. But again, I think the big guys are going to make it work for the best talent.
Charles (23:39):
What's your relationship with fear? How does fear show up in your life and your leadership?
Kate Rouch (23:46):
Good question. Crypto has given me the opportunity to face fear in a pretty stark way. I have a poster, which you can't see right behind me that says ‘Doubt your doubts’. So I feel like I have a very daily relationship with fear, and its role in my life and in the work. That started from day one of my tenure at Coinbase, you know, it was a situation where the company was in kind of an arms race around crypto advertising. There was a very frothy market, billions of dollars being spent, and the company had purchased a Super Bowl ad. But, that was sort of where it ended. And we were a couple months out from the Super Bowl. I was the first CMO for the company. I was a first time CMO, and we ended up with a concept that was very risky, just in the sense of no one had done this before.
Not what you do if you're guaranteeing yourself a home run for your first time at bat. I think if that hadn't worked, I would've been really embarrassed, you know, it's like the first thing I've done as a leader. It was 100% on me and, you know, my recommendation, and I just really was trying to channel then, and really have continued to try to channel sort of, I mean, it's a little crude, but like an “f— it” attitude. Like, this is what I believe in. Life's too short. I'm going to take the swing that I believe in, and if it doesn't work, dust myself off and try again.
I think there's so much stuff that gets made that just doesn't say anything. And I think for me, and maybe being a mom has kind of contributed to this, but if I'm going to be in the game, I'm going to try to do something that matters and that I believe in. And it's not going to work every time, but having an outsized outcome requires taking risk, and everybody's afraid of risk. I mean, I think anyone that tells you they're not afraid when they are doing something that is counter to the norms and received wisdom about what you should be doing is, I don't think telling you the truth. Like you get an outsized result because the risk is real and you very well may fall flat on your face. Frankly, you know, having a career in crypto is not at this moment the most obvious choice. But it's something that I really believe in, and I think I'm just willing to try, I guess.
Charles (27:17):
For decades, leaders have been taught to put their fear in a box and not reveal it. You used to have to be all knowing all the answers, fully confident, stronger than the next person. Obviously that's changed a lot, particularly I think in a COVID and post-COVID world. How does that show up for you? How comfortable are you these days with being more vulnerable and being more open with your team about what you are dealing with?
Kate Rouch (27:46):
I try to be very open about it. My team right now, we're all in the same boat in the sense of, many of them came on at kind of the height of the crypto bull market, and then it was almost like running as the interest rate environment tightened up and the economy tightened up, the regulatory picture kind of changed. It was a little bit like running 180 miles into a brick wall. I mean, that's like the felt sense. So I think as a leader, you can't BS people if you want them to trust you. If you want them to stretch and take risks, like you have to be real with them. And so I think I've tried to be very open with my assessment of the situation, my own fear, and then really tried to honestly use it as an opportunity.
Charles (28:46):
I haven't asked this question for a while, but I think within the context of the experience that you are having from a leadership standpoint, both in terms of the industry you're working in, the company you're working in, and the fact that you are remote, where do you get feedback from? When we were all in an office and you could walk into somebody else's office, there was a different dynamic, right? There was a different sort of fluidity to the energy. So you could ride that if the moment occurred to you, if you had a feeling that this was something you wanted to find out, or you could walk into somebody's office you felt comfortable with and just say, “Hey, can we just chat? I just have a question.” So the energy behind it would be dissipated or at least not quite as structured. In this environment. I think it's hard for leaders to actually get feedback unless you're in a more formal structure. How do you go about getting feedback to how you're doing?
Kate Rouch (29:34):
Yeah, it's a good question. One, Coinbase itself is very feedback heavy. So that I think was a bit of a surprise to me when I came in, in the sense that you can really fail at Coinbase. I think there are a lot of businesses where, okay, maybe if you're not performing super well, you sort of get shunted to the side and maybe you're a little bit less relevant in the most important projects, but you're not going to really openly fail, at least quickly. So usually, you know, they might give you as a new leader a year or two years to work it out. Coinbase is not like that. So, the feedback that I received was like, pretty explicit from day one. Like, I always know exactly where I stand.
And then with the team, I mean, I do miss hallway conversations. I do miss the desk side interactions. I do think the work can suffer from that. I don't want to, I don't want to say that I don't because I really do. So what we try to do is just kind of make sure I have more informal touch points with my leadership team, give them a quick call, try to test things out and, you know, prototype ideas. But I do think it suffers a bit in a remote context.
Charles (31:07):
If you look back to your early days at Meta when you had one person reporting to you or three people, if you could go back to that person today, what would you tell them that you've learned along the way that you think would be really invaluable for them to know about leadership?
Kate Rouch (31:28):
Probably, I’d talk about prototyping ideas. I think it is so easy as a leader to get stuck in conceptual frameworks and planning and whatever, whatever it is. And that so often really good ideas just carry the day. So it's almost like maybe reductively show, not tell, just go make work that is good. And that will get you to alignment a million times faster than asking for permission or trying to get alignment at like these high level framework type levels.
Charles (32:26):
And last two questions for you. How do you lead?
Kate Rouch (32:33):
I really try to lead as a service leader, and to really, I think, connect my creative teams, frankly, to the right briefs. And again, I think that goes back to this concept of really trying to listen. So many times I feel like because leaders want to insert their own agenda, which is totally human, you can just really get your team off on the wrong foot. Michelangelo talked about, you know, when he saw a stone, he would think about receding the stone away from a figure that was already there. And that's like very much what I try to give my teams, which is to try to pull away the noise and the stuff around what the brand is already, is already we're not making something, we're we're bringing something that's already there to life in a way that will resonate. And so that's really, I think it's almost connecting them to that authentic thing that's already there, is what I try to do as a leader.
Charles (33:55):
What are you afraid of as you look at the future?
Kate Rouch (33:59):
I think it's easy to stop taking risks. The more experienced and successful you are, I think it can be really hard to kind of burn it down and treat every day as day one. You have more to lose. And I think I just, I'm afraid of stagnation more than anything.
Charles (34:32):
It's true of the best creators, isn't it? That the status quo is an anathema to them?
Kate Rouch (34:38):
Yes, I think, I think anyone, you know, we always have to keep going.
Charles (34:46):
I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so grateful to you for your thoughtfulness and it's so clear that your humanity and just introspection, I think are such clear foundations of the success that you've had from a leadership standpoint. And I really am grateful to you for coming on and sharing today.
Kate Rouch (35:03):
Thank you so much, Charles. I really enjoyed it.
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