People Developing People: Pros focus on process

Insights from Brian Albert, Managing Director, YouTube Media Partnerships & Creative Works

Electives Co-Founder, Jason Lavender, sat down with Brian Albert, who has spent over a decade building the business development and partnerships team at YouTube at Google. 

Today’s conversation covers what a competitive athletic career taught Brian about leadership, how a 30-day AI sprint changed his team and why his two favorite days of the year have nothing to do with revenue.

Key topics covered:

• How a decade of competitive athletics shaped a leadership philosophy
• The "care without being consumed" mantra Brian has carried for years
• What Mark Allen and Gabby Thomas taught his team about sustained performance
• Running a 30-day AI sprint built around mindset, toolset and skill set
• Why he measures his own success by other people's breakthroughs
• The unlearning that came with letting his team find their own path

Decades as a design principle

Brian Albert's career doesn't follow a straight line and he'd be the first to tell you that's the point. He structures his background through the lens of a Graham Weaver commencement speech at Stanford Business School, built around the idea of doing hard things for decades.

"It really started in high school, where I started playing tennis competitively for 10 years. After I graduated from law school, I competed in marathons and triathlons for 10 years. Then I had that 10-year period where I worked for 3 early-stage startups. Footnote, they all failed. And at Google, I've had the great pleasure of building my current team for the past 10 plus years."

Each chapter taught Brian something he carried forward. The pattern isn't accidental. It's a framework for how he thinks about growth, both personal and professional.

"My leadership blueprint today really revolves around a couple of things. Number one, just having a simple, iterative strategy that you can flawlessly execute - and by a team that is anchored in psych safety, so that you foster a high-performance culture, because you want your team members to feel comfortable taking risks, being vulnerable, ultimately performing to their highest potential."

Care without being consumed

The piece of advice Brian would give his earlier self didn't come from a book. A mentor shared it with him years ago and it's been sitting in his calendar ever since.

"I still have a Monday morning 7 a.m. calendar reminder that's literally been in place for years that says, ‘care without being consumed.’"

The idea is about staying objective. When you get too close to a problem, you anchor on one path at the expense of every other option available to you. Brian is candid about the fact that the reminder exists precisely because he doesn't always take the advice.

"When you're consumed. You often get so close to the problem or challenge that you're trying to solve that it's really difficult to remain objective. And given all of the nuance and complexity we're all trying to navigate, it's really tough when you anchor early on one potential path at the expense of all of the alternative paths which might be available."

Brian doesn't hold the advice up as wisdom that he has mastered. He holds it up as something he actively works at.

A lot of ordinary Wednesdays

Brian is a believer in the importance of sustaining performance, but he doesn't talk about it alone — he brings in people who have built entire careers around it. When he wanted his team to understand what it looked like, he went outside the building.

"Several years ago, we had Mark Allen, 6-time Ironman World Champion, talk to the team, and his mantra was all about giving 100% every day without any guarantee of success, because most people have longer-term goals, and how do you keep yourself in it for an extended period of time?"

Earlier this year, he brought in Gabby Thomas, Olympic gold medalist, to make the same point from her own experience.

"Her mantra was all about putting in a lot of ordinary Wednesdays, and I think that's what I'm really starting to anchor on the most, because oftentimes, to be the best YouTube seller on the planet, it's not all about glamour. It's a lot of ordinary Wednesdays where you're putting in the work - constant practice and preparation before every call, every meeting, every negotiation, role-playing scenarios, anticipating objections, trying to play chess, not checkers, all of that."

Brian connects this directly to his own athletic background - marathon training, Ironman preparation — neither works if you spend the whole time imagining the finish line.

"It's not comfortable to think about running 26.2 or completing an Ironman triathlon, but if you focus on what are you supposed to do that day to get yourself prepared, as opposed to fast-forwarding all the way to the finish line and trying to imagine yourself crossing it. It’s really hard, but when you literally are in the moment, focusing on, what am I going to do today that's going to make myself stronger for tomorrow. It's a much easier way of building toward a seemingly unattainable goal."

The 30-day AI sprint

Building a high performance culture also includes building an AI-first culture. In Q1, Brian participated in a 30-day AI sprint across his team and the broader team at Google, structured around three pillars: mindset, toolset and skill set.

"With mindset, it comes down to that intentional approach we talked about earlier to using AI. You can't avoid it. You know, you're not going to lose your job to AI, you're going to lose your job to someone who's using AI better than you, so you need an intentional approach."

The toolset was about reducing overwhelm — giving people specific drills with specific tools so they could build comfort rather than anxiety. The skill set was about application: getting those tools into real business use cases until it becomes part of the natural workflow.

"Personally, I have found that last part to be the most challenging. Because you almost need to get over the toothbrush test, where you're using these tools at least twice a day. Applied to real business use cases so that it's in your natural flow."

Brian doesn't coach this from a distance. He's still working on it himself.

"I honestly, I struggle with this myself, and I'm trying to, you know, reboot so that using AI every day becomes more of a personal habit versus just a novelty where I'm playing around with our new tools."

The sprint worked for some people, not all. He'll tell you that directly. What mattered was building the habit of carving out intentional time every day – even 15 minutes – to learn something new.

The two best days of the year

Ask Brian what excites him most about his work right now, and the answer doesn't involve his own scorecard.

"My two most favorite days of the year are when we promote people in the Spring and in the Fall, and I'm able to grab 15 minutes with them, just to celebrate the accomplishment. And all of the hard work that went into getting there."

In between those moments, it's watching people take on stretch assignments, step outside their comfort zone, do something they didn't think they were capable of. He's been building his team long enough to see clearly where he is in his career — and what that means for how he measures success.

"More so than what I'm accomplishing these days, I truly get the most satisfaction in seeing my team succeed."

The small gestures matter too. Not automated congratulations, but actual conversations.

"Honestly, Jason, it's the smallest things that never cease to surprise me. Sending someone a casual ping, or setting up these 15-minute congratulatory calls versus just sending an email. And the little things don't cost you anything, and they generally don't take that much time, it's just the thought to prioritize it."

Relationships that extend beyond the business

A few years ago, Brian's team took a group of top clients and their kids to Greenville, North Carolina to spend a weekend with Mr. Beast. More recently, a similar group went to Frisco, Texas for a weekend with Dude Perfect and Good Good Golf.

"It was a truly memorable, un-buyable experience. And it sort of harkens back to that famous Maya Angelou quote that people won't remember what you say, but they'll remember how you make them feel, and I've never lost that."

The philosophy isn't reserved for clients. It's the same instinct behind the 15-minute promotion calls and the casual pings.

"When you can share that. Not just with the people that you do business with, but with their families, it extends beyond and becomes even more powerful."

The unlearning

Years working at early-stage startups without a safety net hardwired Brian toward self-reliance. That instinct doesn't vanish when you join a large team. He's had to deliberately work against it.

"Because I spent so many years working at early-stage startups where you had no support and you basically had to do everything for yourself. That's sort of how I'm pre-wired even to this day. You know, I still book my own train and plane tickets because I'm so particular about when I travel and where I sit, that it's hard for me to give that up."

In the work itself, though, the shift has been intentional and real.

"What I've consistently found is people just want you to be super clear about what success looks like so that you're able to light up a North Star and just give them the autonomy to find their way. And it may not be the path I would have chosen. But so long as we get to that finish line. You know, it honestly never ceases to amaze me how many different ways. You can get to the same endpoint."

Focus on the process

Everything Brian talked about – the ordinary Wednesdays, the 15-minute calls, the Monday reminder, the AI sprint, the stretch assignments, the weekends with clients' families – traces back to the same conviction.

"Pros focus on the process. Amateurs focus on outcomes."

Outcomes matter. His team competes to win. But the daily work is where culture actually lives, and where results are built or lost. For any leader looking to develop people in a way that compounds over time, Brian Albert is a great example of someone who keeps showing up, keeps learning and keeps putting the people around him first.