Rachel Conlan, Global CMO at Binance, wants to get to the bottom of whether a candidate wants a job at Binance or not. She lays the cards out – the pros and the cons – and waits for an answer. Rachel’s approach may surprise many. But she’s creating a way towards clarity, to unlock stamina for work-life that runs on the fast lane. In this candid reflection, Rachel writes about this journey to clarity, why it matters, and how it builds trust before Day One.

I interview (try to) every person who joins my marketing team at Binance. Not as a final sign-off, but as an actual conversation. At some point in that conversation, I do something that surprises most candidates: I deliberately spend ten minutes trying to convince them not to take this job. I tell them the truth.

The hours are unpredictable. The feedback is direct, sometimes uncomfortably so. The pace doesn’t slow down for planning cycles or personal calendars. You miss personal commitments. Crypto is volatile, scrutinised, and constantly misunderstood. Some weeks, the news cycle will work against everything you’re building. You’ll ship work that gets challenged internally before it ever sees the light of day. That’s Binance culture: high standards, high velocity, and direct feedback.

Then I ask one question: Do you still want this?

Why I Do the “Anti-Pitch”

I’ve been on the other side of a bad fit. Early in my career, I took roles that sounded right in the interview and felt wrong within months. The job description was polished. The reality was slow, political, and strangely empty. I was busy, but I wasn’t building anything that mattered.

That kind of mismatch is painful for the person and for the team. I don’t want to do that to anyone. The anti-pitch isn’t a stress test or a tactic designed to intimidate. It’s the opposite. It’s a leadership choice. It’s me saying: I respect you enough to tell you the truth before you make this decision to work at Binance.

Some people hear the list and realise this isn’t what they’re looking for right now. That’s not failure, that’s clarity. I’d rather someone walk away informed than stay and feel stuck.

The “Corporate Athlete” Mindset

I learned this framework long before crypto. Years ago, I worked at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where I spent time alongside some of the world’s top athletes. Not just representing them, but watching how they trained, how they thought, how they sustained excellence over years, not just moments. What struck me wasn’t the talent. It was the mindset.

Elite athletes don’t see hard workouts as punishment. They see them as the price of getting better. They don’t avoid feedback; they hunt for it. They have coaches studying their form, nutritionists managing their recovery, and psychologists helping them handle pressure.

The intensity is high, but it’s held inside a system designed to make that intensity sustainable.

And here’s the part most people miss: they chose it. Every morning, every rep, every film session. They chose the hard path because they wanted what was on the other side of it. That’s what I took with me when I left.

I think about my team as corporate athletes. Not as a metaphor for long hours, but as a framework for sustainable high performance. Yes, the work pace at Binance is fast. Yes, the feedback is direct. But my job isn’t just to set a high bar and see who clears it. My job is to help people build the stamina, the skill, and the resilience to perform at this level without redlining every single week. That means watching for fatigue before it becomes burnout. It means being honest when someone needs to recover, not just push through. It means being upfront when their journey is coming to an end. It means celebrating the wins, not just sprinting immediately to the next deadline.

The anti-pitch is part of this, actually. Athletes know exactly what they’re signing up for when they pursue elite competition. I want the people joining my team to have that same clarity so they can choose it fully, prepare for it, and build the capacity to thrive. Not just survive.

Lessons I Learned Building My Team

Three things:

1)-Fit Isn’t Credentials – It’s Appetite

I’ve hired people with flawless resumes who struggled with direct feedback. I’ve hired people with unconventional paths who flourish in ambiguity.  The anti-pitch doesn’t measure experience. It surfaces something harder to interview for: Do you actually want this kind of work?

2)-Honesty builds trust before day one

When someone joins after hearing every reason not to, they arrive differently. They’re not waiting to discover what the culture is “really like.” They already know. That changes how they show up: less guarded, more ready to move.

3)-Protecting the Team Is Part of Leadership

Every wrong hire costs the people already here. They carry the extra weight, provide the context, feel the drag when someone isn’t thriving. Being honest upfront isn’t just kind to candidates, it’s how I take care of the team that’s already building.

The Question Behind “Do You Still Want This?”

When I ask “Do you still want this?”, I’m really asking something deeper:

Do you want comfort right now, or do you want to grow faster than feels easy?

Do you want clear lanes, or do you want the kind of ownership that’s genuinely yours?

Do you want to be managed, or do you want to build something you’re proud of?

There’s no wrong answer. Different people need different things at different stages of their careers, and I mean that. But there’s a right answer here, and I’d rather we both figure that out before the contract is signed.

Why I’m Still on This Journey

People ask me that sometimes why I stay in crypto after all the scrutiny, the scepticism, the headlines, the sleepless nights.

He Yi, our Co-Founder and co-CEO, once said something that stuck with me: “Everyone at Binance is part of customer support, starting from day one. In our industry, there is no success without taking responsibility for the community.”

That’s not a slogan. I’ve watched her operate, responding to users directly, pushing back on campaigns that didn’t serve them, and making calls that prioritised long-term trust over short-term wins. She treats this work like it matters because it does.

When your leadership shows up that way, it changes what “marketing” even means. We’re not selling a product people don’t need. We’re building access to financial tools that actually matter, and the people using them let us know immediately when we get it wrong. That’s the kind of pressure I wanted. That’s why I’m still here.

I get to build a team of people who chose the hard version on purpose. Who knew exactly what they were walking into and wanted it anyway. Who challenge each other, ship fast, take feedback without flinching, and make the work sharper every single week.

I’ve led comfortable teams. I’ve led impressive-on-paper teams. This is different. This is a team of athletes who trained for this and chose to stay on the field, and I am grateful for how they show up every day.

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