Lessons From Running a Billion Dollar Business at 35 — Patty Azzarello

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[SPEAKER_00]: My idea about imposter syndrome is that it's not a sign of a weakness.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a sign that you're doing something right.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Because the only people who don't have imposter syndrome are the people who never try and do anything.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Jason Mark Campbell Business Podcast, where we explore what it really takes to sell, lead, and grow a business, and ultimately live well.

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[SPEAKER_01]: In every episode, we go beyond tactics to discover how entrepreneurs and leaders across different sectors are growing with love, impact, and integrity.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, everybody, to the Jason Mark Campbell podcast.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be having an amazing conversation today with a guess that's really going to help for those of you who are within the corporate world looking to really take your role to the next level, truly embrace your executive position or perhaps your at a time where

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a crossroads and you're looking to find a career that's more in alignment, more with a near purpose, but if you are a high achiever and you're really trying to embrace whatever is that path you want to take next, this conversation is truly going to be one about one's own career path and how she's been helping executives around the world really embrace their role and now also in her own path joining into the entrepreneurial field and see if that is a path you're looking to explore yourself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Patty Ezarello is joining me as the author of Why Is She Still Here, also move and rise three amazing books that have been helping executives and individuals who are navigating that feel.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She has been an executive bestselling author speaker and CEO advisor herself and she is teaching the corporates bill that you can reach the top without sacrificing your soul, your team, or your humanity to get there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She became the youngest GM at Hewitt Packard at 33,

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[SPEAKER_01]: And at 38 years old, it was CEO of a Silicon Valley company.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And as she put it, she did it all without turning herself into a self-centered, miserable jerk, which is often what you would notice for people that are at CEO position, at least the way we perceive.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Now today, she's the founder of Azarello Group, which works with the CEOs and leadership teams on strategy, execution, team performance, and for the last 25 years, she has been a helping high tech and businesses leadership roles from GM's marketing software development and truly bring a human first approach to how we lead.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Her latest book about why is she still here, really documents her own journey from where she's taken the lessons, what we can apply within our own lives.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and I look forward to this conversation so that we can bring this authenticity in our work of this vulnerability as a strength and see how we can manage in a much better way today.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll come patty to the show.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a pleasure to be here.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I find it funny before we were recording.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There was a moment where I was reading the bio completely and correctly.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought I would read that you went all the way to becoming a CEO where you truly embraced becoming self-centered and a jerk.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I've been speaking to this woman for about a dozen minutes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And she seems like a very kind, grounded person.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What happened?

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[SPEAKER_01]: But nonetheless, it's rather it's most people who go down this path in an aggressive way.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Embodies some of these negative,

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[SPEAKER_01]: traits, and I'd just be curious to see what you've witnessed in the field and how you were able to approach it differently.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a, there's a story in my book that starts with the phrase, who are your enemies?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And this was an interview question I faced over and over again, as I was advancing my career, and it finally occurred to me that this was, it just did make any sense.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like am I supposed to have enemies?

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I was like in my 20s, and I'm thinking, I don't

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I came to learn was that this was very reflective of a male idea of power, which is for me to win, you need to lose, and I need to see you lose.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I need to see it hurt you, and I thought,

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[SPEAKER_00]: Nope, I was told over and over again.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Corporations are aggressive.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Competitive nasty places.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be that way too.

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[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to succeed and that was the example I was being shown when I started there were not a lot of women around and that was what I was being told was necessary.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I just I had an allergic reaction to that and you know something else I talk about in the book is how I was really bullied is a child.

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[SPEAKER_00]: it was awful like it was awful awful awful and what they were telling me, you know, make enemies and be aggressive was they were telling me be a bully.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And as wasn't going to do it, I just absolutely was not going to do it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And do aggressive bullies get ahead in business?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that hard to spot them right there out there.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But what I learned is that it's not the only choice.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I decided to make a different choice.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There was no reason why you could not be both kind and strong and good at business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I had a couple of really important role models that showed me that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They're very powerful businessmen who were not aggressive assholes and I thought, okay.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This is the choice I'm going to make, and if that limits my career, so be it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what I did, and I developed my very kind of humanity focused approach to business and leadership.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that's something you can relate to in your own work.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in sales, oftentimes you think it's the A-hole who gets the highest quota.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And are there ways you can manipulate and aggressively push and maximize your closing rate, of course?

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I've always noticed that you seem to sacrifice every other relationship that then close on the spot to be antagonized as opposed to maybe not now.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd be curious to know about why do you think the culture of bullying made it so much of an easy path or at least a default path that people follow in,

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[SPEAKER_01]: for some reason you would think well that doesn't seem like it should work but it does like it's weird isn't it?

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[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it is and you know the idea of a strong man right as a leader is is an age old.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It goes back as far as we have time and stories and histories, but what I have discovered and myself and in my own work and just observing is that everyone is insecure.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has imposter syndrome and people deal with that differently and a lot of times when you get that strong man reaction to power

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just hiding and insecurity.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's another story in the book that I talk about when I saw this play out once.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a conference room and there was a bully executive who was just be raiding his employee in front of me and other people.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was so awful.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was just so, so awful.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just cringing because I know how that feels like when I was little I know I know how that feels and I just felt so bad for this man and later the executive walked me out of the building and we ran into his boss in the lobby and this strong bully executive turned into such a cowering suck up in front of his manager.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And it just made my stomach turn, but I thought in that moment, you know, if I still feel, you know, that little girl, that small scared insecure little girl, if I still feel like that on the inside, this guy probably does too.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And once I saw that, I couldn't unsee it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I see these aggressive bullies in the workplace or they're directing it at me or others, I just think it's so obvious.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I just see the scared little boy.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to go up when they're raging and just grab their forearm and say, ah, did somebody steal your ball?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Did you cry?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Did it make you cry?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Did your father yell at you for crying about it?

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[SPEAKER_00]: You poor thing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just, it's so obvious to me now.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there are so many men, women too, but I think it comes out differently with men because men are not taught.

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[SPEAKER_00]: emotional flexibility the way women are naturally taught.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So when they get cornered, when they get scared, when their inner little boy is like threatened,

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[SPEAKER_00]: anger and power are what comes out naturally, and as we talked about before, you can use anger and power to accomplish things.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's just a thing and we see it everywhere, not just in business, but in every element of society.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's almost like a, almost as an acknowledgment or a celebration of those who have that kind of like bulldozer mentality is like they'll achieve anything and destroy everything along the way and and then that's that's not always the most long term value generating thing, but

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you speak about this bully thing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's so obvious and I just was reading somebody talking about a theory.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was Mark Manson.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I just made a video talking about on the internet.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You get to become very accepting of everything you read on the internet, like particularly on the axes or the the Facebooks and you see like these comments and people are just like really intense, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a theory that everybody is 12.

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[SPEAKER_01]: If you realize on the internet, everybody is 12, you become much more like, oh, they're all 12.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have emotional self-regulation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And now that you say this, I'm like, the executives are the exact same.

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[SPEAKER_00]: All executive of the crowd.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I had a mentor once tell me I was I was having like a meltdown moment when I was in that

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[SPEAKER_00]: big job at 35 running this billion dollar organization.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I just had this moment where I, I felt in over my head and I went to my mentor and I'm like, ah, what am I, what am I going to do?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And he, he calmed me down and he said, Petty, you have to know all executives are bluffing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: All of us.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way in a job this big that you will ever know everything.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You just won't, and there are some situations where you just have to bluff your way through it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Please don't worry about this, and my idea about imposter syndrome is that it's not a sign of a weakness.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a sign that you're doing something right, because the only people who don't have imposter syndrome are the people who never try and do anything.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The people who just sit back and stay safe and say I'm not ready, I'll just wait for somebody to tap me on the shoulder and then if it's a job I'm ready for, then maybe I'll try it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're doing something big and interesting, you're going to have imposter syndrome.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so just congratulate yourself for trying it anyway.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, speak of congratulations.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, like, leading billion dollar companies by 35 is amazing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That takes us, but like, what kind of journey were you on?

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[SPEAKER_01]: That made you being like, raising your hands so young?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll be the general manager of, you'll look packer.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that sounds almost crazy.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And like, I'd love to unpack the story of how to held it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: How did you get that?

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[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's what this current book is about.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm glad you're interested in learning that story.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great question for us to talk about because that was a real, there was a journey in there was a moment.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so my journey was coming from the middle of nowhere and I had to choose following men as role models because what I was seeing the women doing

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[SPEAKER_00]: their people, the women are people, the men are people, I like what the men are doing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a person, I can do that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I just very early age thought, I'm going to go do that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not as wacky or wonderful as it might sound because it's such an unusual thought to have because my mom from a very early age was like, you're going to get a good education, you're going to go to college, you're going to get a good job, you're going to support yourself, never expect a man to support you, that's your job.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So,

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[SPEAKER_00]: I had like a lot of women do not get that from their families.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite the opposite.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I had my mom like encouraging me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Then when I got to school, I survived the bullying by just making a decision to be an excellent student.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'm going to be miserable here, but she can't take that away from me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm just going to be

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[SPEAKER_00]: excellent.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So then that sort of super student personality just followed me through my my whole life.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, my career growth was in some ways less of a plan and more of just chasing or following an increasing number of gold stars.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Had I could win if I could

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[SPEAKER_01]: kept pushing myself forward as a as a super student.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So there are so many stories in the book where I had to like step forward, raise my hand, do crazy things, negotiate things like, you know, why are you paying them anymore?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like there were so many moments along that journey that was the reason I wanted to write the book was to share all those stories to encourage others to go after

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[SPEAKER_00]: When you mentioned how on earth did I become the head 35 of running a billion dollar software business?

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[SPEAKER_00]: This is such an important story because I almost didn't show up for that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I almost did not show up for the biggest breakthrough of my entire career and it was because I was scared.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and it was because I didn't think I was ready, I didn't think I was qualified.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I looked at that job opportunity and I thought, wow, like that is, that is the job that I want, that is the job that I aspire to and that's exactly the kind of job I want someday.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't put myself on the list.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had a number of mentors just all descend on me and say, Patty, what is wrong with you?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't I see your name on this list?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, who me?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not, are you kidding me?

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not ready for that job.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That job is so big.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was a general manager of a much smaller business at the time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like Patty put your name on the list and they showed me the list of other people who put their own names on that list to interview for that job all of them were men and most of them had far less experience than me and had never been a general manager at all and I'm thinking are you freaking kidding me like if they if they are not embarrassed to go for this job I am putting my name on this list and so I got my name on the list.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I got to the interview.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I had come to an insight along the way about how important it is to really lean into your strengths and work in your area of greatest natural strengths and not worry so much about your weaknesses.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got to this interview and the hiring manager, this was a network management business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the hiring manager said, Patty, why are you here?

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[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have any network management experience.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a moment for me to either crumble or get weird and defensive or try to convince them of something or just lean forward.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought about it, and I said to him,

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have 3,000 people in this business that are experts in network management.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need another one.

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[SPEAKER_00]: What you need is me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason you need me is that you have a business that is losing market share in a growing market.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's really bad.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason you're losing market share and the growing market is because your organization structure is messed up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You have conflicting, competing internal strategies.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody is pointed in the same direction.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And what you need me is to sort all of that out because that's what I'm good at.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good at building organizations, clarifying strategy and executing and that's what this business needs.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got through that interview and I was like,

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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, like, what did I do?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that was such a big swing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I walked out and I literally hit in the ladies room.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I sat in the ladies room for like half an hour just coming down from that experience, but I got the job.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the moral of the story here, which I have in all caps, the number of times throughout the book, is just because something scares you, does not mean you're disqualified and never disqualify yourself.

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[SPEAKER_00]: because you're scared.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Let other people disqualify you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But never pull yourself out because you're scared, because everyone is scared.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That was just such a big lesson for me because I had disqualified myself.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if my mentors didn't push me, I would've missed the biggest breakthrough in my career.

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[SPEAKER_01]: have two questions related to that is one, how often do you see that people are self-disqualifying themselves so much that it's sabotaging their own career?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And number two, how important is that you've mentioned mentors so many times that they've seemed to have played a pivotal role in helping you, you know, continuously achieve and push forward, the critical role that a mentor plays for somebody to not disqualify themselves in opportunities.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, um, you're right on the money on both those questions all the time, people disqualify themselves all the time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not ready.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not ready.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Women do this more than men.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I've had women who were super qualified say, well, that role requires 10 kinds of skills and I have a lot of experience and five of them in a little experience and two of them, but in three, I don't have any experience at all.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and a man who has like no experience in any of them will come to me and say, sign me up on your man.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

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[SPEAKER_00]: We need more of that energy.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Sign me up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm the one, it breaks my heart.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I see so many people disqualifying themselves because they're scared.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, mentors, outside of my own efforts, mentors played the biggest role in everything I've ever done.

18:19.094 --> 18:22.935
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, any big thing I've ever done, I had helped from a mentor.

18:23.275 --> 18:24.615
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't get any of the

18:29.157 --> 18:40.126
[SPEAKER_00]: And while in my book, I have a lot of very compared to rise and move, this one has a lot more sex and violence in it, because it's my personal story.

18:40.686 --> 18:52.336
[SPEAKER_00]: So in addition to all of the things that, you know, I've put in the category of men behaving badly that made my career more difficult and more challenging and more threatening and various ways.

18:53.898 --> 19:02.769
[SPEAKER_00]: There were good men, and the good men helped me, and I could not have done any of the big things that I had done without those good men who helped me.

19:05.397 --> 19:10.479
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be curious to know for anybody who hasn't ever had a kind of mentor-menty relationship.

19:10.939 --> 19:13.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any story about how you ended up finding your first mentor?

19:13.599 --> 19:24.323
[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing I will say is I've often had conversations with people that do encourage the practice of finding a mentor, but I've always find that the advice was quite biased because they had their own mentoring program.

19:24.683 --> 19:33.185
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'd be curious to just know, you know, from your perspective in a very career-oriented way, like how do you find your first mentors, how does somebody go about doing that,

19:36.544 --> 19:53.688
[SPEAKER_00]: So, my very first mentor found me, I was dating his brother-in-law, I was 19, and he saw the, you know, eager, super student, my potential patty, and he decided I'm going to mentor her, and he has remained my mentor to this day.

19:53.908 --> 19:56.189
[SPEAKER_00]: We still have a very close relationship.

19:56.729 --> 20:04.150
[SPEAKER_00]: My second mentor was somebody that I worked for, and I stood out, standing out is a good way to attract

20:06.633 --> 20:09.390
[SPEAKER_00]: And that gets me to a whole other topic of

20:10.457 --> 20:12.278
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work to be invisible.

20:12.438 --> 20:17.900
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to find ways to stand out in a positive way and that absolutely helps you attract mentors.

20:18.340 --> 20:25.883
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I do have an addition to that, a practice that I've used over and over again to find and secure mentors.

20:26.003 --> 20:28.024
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's actually quite simple.

20:28.184 --> 20:32.166
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I think this will have extraordinary parallels to your work in sales.

20:32.826 --> 20:37.628
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, I just became like a heat-sinking missile to find smart people.

20:38.728 --> 20:43.753
[SPEAKER_00]: No agenda in my mind, except I want to keep learning from smart people.

20:43.894 --> 20:49.580
[SPEAKER_00]: So anytime I met a smart person, I asked if I could get five or ten minutes on their calendar, I had a question for them.

20:49.880 --> 20:56.987
[SPEAKER_00]: They almost always said yes, and sometimes as conversations were a little awkward, sometimes they were fine, but sometimes they went really great.

20:57.785 --> 21:02.808
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the ones that went really great, I was like, hey, do you mind if I get on your calendar again sometime?

21:02.848 --> 21:04.169
[SPEAKER_00]: This was so useful for me.

21:04.790 --> 21:06.331
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would implement their advice.

21:06.451 --> 21:08.692
[SPEAKER_00]: I would follow up, say, I did what you said.

21:08.712 --> 21:09.393
[SPEAKER_00]: It was great.

21:09.573 --> 21:10.773
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I talked to them again.

21:10.934 --> 21:16.937
[SPEAKER_00]: And after like three or four really good meetings with this smart person, I would simply say,

21:17.838 --> 21:22.964
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I gotta tell you, these meetings have been so valuable, and the advice you gave has been so helpful.

21:23.004 --> 21:26.368
[SPEAKER_00]: I have accomplished these big things because of you.

21:26.508 --> 21:27.369
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for that.

21:27.970 --> 21:31.253
[SPEAKER_00]: I was wondering, would you mind if we made this a regular thing?

21:31.774 --> 21:34.437
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got on your calendar for 30 minutes, one some month.

21:35.438 --> 22:04.104
[SPEAKER_00]: and it wasn't a lot like I would say out of let's say 60 finding a smart person maybe three of them ended up on this turning into mentors but they turned into real mentors for me and you know a lot of people build this up in their mind like in awkward marriage proposal like how do I ask somebody to be my mentor and it just it can be very natural just building rapport over time and letting them know how much you appreciate their help and saying can we make it a regular gig

22:04.564 --> 22:06.625
[SPEAKER_00]: and then suddenly you've got a mentor who cares about you.

22:07.846 --> 22:24.833
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll make an assumption or a hypothesis, which is I think the best types of mentor relationships are often like non-compensation one and I think the biggest compensation that the mentor taking his own time to mentor somebody or her own time to mentor somebody.

22:25.353 --> 22:34.179
[SPEAKER_01]: He's really to be able to work with somebody who actually does what they suggest and has results with it is probably being like I have value.

22:34.239 --> 22:50.829
[SPEAKER_01]: I've given my advice and somebody actually dig it where the majority of people who are seeking mentorship are basically trying to hire a personal trainer in the gym But they don't want to go they basically want to find someone who will motivate them to go live weight versus getting somebody who's like you could do these exercise and you come back Super Jack.

22:51.490 --> 22:51.610
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep

22:52.200 --> 22:56.499
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you witnessed that this is often the main thing that attracts the best quality of mentors?

22:57.685 --> 23:00.146
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I mean, I've been a mentor forever.

23:00.586 --> 23:09.268
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was like assigned, you know, in a big company, when I was at HP, and I was assigned people to mentor, the spectrum was tremendous.

23:09.629 --> 23:14.710
[SPEAKER_00]: From the kind of person you described to the person, you would just cancel the meetings at the last minute and didn't give a damn.

23:15.230 --> 23:19.351
[SPEAKER_00]: And then people who you give them advice and they're like, well, that'll never work for me.

23:20.032 --> 23:20.992
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's funny.

23:21.132 --> 23:23.673
[SPEAKER_00]: I have people who hire me as an executive coach.

23:24.693 --> 23:32.839
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and they come to me, and they've paid me the money, and then they won't admit they have any problems or struggles, and it's like, why are we here?

23:33.519 --> 23:47.809
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fascinating, or they'll give them advice, and they'll just talk me out of it, and it's like, well, you know, I don't get it, but yeah, there's a whole range, but when you are a mentor, I know why, I know why they're 12 years old.

23:48.150 --> 23:48.510
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there.

23:52.137 --> 23:55.098
[SPEAKER_01]: We all go back to 12, we're feeling so secure.

23:55.198 --> 23:57.559
[SPEAKER_00]: You are so, so right about that.

23:57.800 --> 23:58.520
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so funny.

23:59.640 --> 24:10.865
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I did want to pull the string on something you said earlier, and it might just be like a sidebar, but you know, this whole witnessing a bully manager and you're like, oh, he's like a 12 year old, or she's like a 12 year old.

24:11.285 --> 24:17.048
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was wondering if you had a strategy for anybody who might be in that kind of environment, might witness that.

24:17.108 --> 24:21.530
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming the best strategy is not to just laugh at them in front of everyone and being like,

24:21.750 --> 24:23.951
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, you're acting like a 12-year-old.

24:24.091 --> 24:26.471
[SPEAKER_01]: There are probably more nuance ways.

24:26.772 --> 24:29.592
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it something that's worth defusing, calling out?

24:29.632 --> 24:31.693
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a certain way or is it step away?

24:31.753 --> 24:33.514
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your usual tactic around that?

24:34.334 --> 24:34.614
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

24:34.974 --> 24:36.294
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I just wrote an article.

24:36.314 --> 24:44.297
[SPEAKER_00]: I just published an article about this, which is the one thing that works better than anything else is say I'll get back to you on that.

24:45.797 --> 25:04.152
[SPEAKER_00]: like if they're just berating you that what you did isn't good enough for that just being demanding or being unreasonable just recognize that as as my mom taught me when I was being bullied it's never about you it's always about them and a bully feels really bad on the inside and they need to make you feel worse than they do

25:04.852 --> 25:11.035
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what you want to do when you're face to face with a bully is just get out of there, just step aside.

25:11.195 --> 25:16.937
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I found is to take their input is though you think that's it's very thoughtful and important.

25:16.957 --> 25:18.198
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you raise a good point.

25:19.154 --> 25:20.275
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me get back to you on that.

25:20.315 --> 25:21.837
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to put some real thought into this.

25:21.877 --> 25:24.720
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to put some thought into improving this so it's exactly what you want.

25:24.960 --> 25:29.385
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll get back to you tomorrow and just get yourself out of the line of fire.

25:30.025 --> 25:35.011
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the best way to deal with the bully because it has nothing to do with you.

25:35.071 --> 25:36.792
[SPEAKER_00]: It has nothing to do with your work.

25:37.453 --> 25:38.813
[SPEAKER_00]: they just need to hurt somebody.

25:39.453 --> 25:47.415
[SPEAKER_00]: And once you recognize, once you recognize there are 12-year-olds, and once you recognize that they just need to hurt somebody, just step aside.

25:47.675 --> 25:50.716
[SPEAKER_00]: And by flattering them by saying, that's a really good point.

25:50.736 --> 25:52.556
[SPEAKER_00]: You really did catch me off guard here.

25:52.576 --> 25:55.536
[SPEAKER_00]: I will get back to you on that and just get out of there.

25:56.717 --> 25:58.997
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we're responding like we're Chad Gft.

25:59.297 --> 26:00.817
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you caught me on that.

26:01.018 --> 26:01.938
[SPEAKER_01]: You make a fair point.

26:02.498 --> 26:03.338
[SPEAKER_01]: But it kind of works.

26:04.670 --> 26:13.993
[SPEAKER_01]: gosh, I had a curiosity question just because gosh, you went with like, you know, HP GM, you're being see of like this billion dollar software company.

26:14.293 --> 26:20.656
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, like, what was the most amount of people that had to report to you and like, how does one

26:22.256 --> 26:26.841
[SPEAKER_01]: like how did you build a muscle to have like so many humans that are reporting to it?

26:27.001 --> 26:37.092
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like I've only worked in small organization with biggest one that had like under two, I think 200 people and I did work for the government of Canada, but I was just like a little cog in this machine, right?

26:37.753 --> 26:42.594
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you, obviously there's an imposter syndrome because that's something you've never done it before and now you're doing it.

26:43.334 --> 26:44.195
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, what?

26:44.495 --> 26:45.015
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious.

26:45.535 --> 26:45.795
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

26:46.535 --> 26:51.637
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was 3,000 people in my organization that was across the, across the globe.

26:51.657 --> 26:56.118
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also had a lot of sales partners, partner organizations all over the world.

26:56.258 --> 26:58.658
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were, they were part of the community.

26:58.738 --> 27:04.600
[SPEAKER_00]: So the number of people that I needed to be a leader for was actually a much bigger number than that.

27:05.660 --> 27:20.887
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, there's another story in the book specifically about the imposter syndrome of specifically stepping into that role, but one thing one thing I will share is that I had a mentor when I had my first.

27:21.727 --> 27:37.882
[SPEAKER_00]: executive role where I had, there were a hundred people in my organization with multiple levels of management, even then I felt in over my head and like an imposter because I'd never run of an organization with multiple levels of management before, and my boss said, talk to everyone, and you'll know what to do.

27:39.324 --> 27:40.345
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, what do you mean?

27:40.386 --> 27:42.028
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, talk to every single person.

27:42.488 --> 27:43.810
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, but that's 100 people.

27:43.870 --> 27:46.273
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I'll give you the first two weeks to just do that.

27:46.293 --> 27:47.454
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to do anything else.

27:47.655 --> 27:48.956
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk to every single person.

27:49.537 --> 27:51.299
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tell you, after I did that,

27:52.356 --> 27:54.157
[SPEAKER_00]: I've just felt like I had a superpower.

27:54.377 --> 27:55.398
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I knew everything.

27:55.458 --> 27:56.499
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew what my job was.

27:56.559 --> 27:57.800
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew what I needed to do.

27:57.860 --> 28:00.301
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed, I knew what order I needed to do it in.

28:00.982 --> 28:09.407
[SPEAKER_00]: And more importantly, I had a hundred people who wanted to help me go do whatever I decided because I took the time to respect them and to really listen to them.

28:10.588 --> 28:22.452
[SPEAKER_00]: and that just became foundational to my humanity forward leadership is just listen and care actually care about the people that are in your organization.

28:22.812 --> 28:29.655
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I got to 3,000 people I obviously couldn't have 3,000 one-on-one meetings, but I did spend the first

28:30.878 --> 28:46.835
[SPEAKER_00]: couple of months doing lots of conference calls and travel and talking to, you know, the marketing team and every region and the sales team and every region and all of the departmental teams and then I came up with ways for people to have one-on-one conversations with me.

28:46.875 --> 28:49.338
[SPEAKER_00]: I scheduled office hours that anybody could sign up for.

28:50.038 --> 28:53.401
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a web page that people could submit questions to.

28:53.421 --> 28:58.605
[SPEAKER_00]: I just made as many channels as I could to talk to people when I traveled.

28:58.665 --> 29:02.728
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have lunch meetings in breakfast meetings with groups of people in here from them directly.

29:03.328 --> 29:15.157
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was so empowering to me because it took away so much of what fueled the imposter syndrome, which was, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.

29:15.958 --> 29:32.363
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, the more I talk to the people and the trenches, the ones out with the customers, people in the customer service department, people building the products, I knew what my job was and I just want a lot of grace and patience from them as I got on my feet in that big role.

29:32.483 --> 29:41.105
[SPEAKER_00]: It bought me enough time for me to figure out what it is I'm doing here as the leader because I was just really respectful of people and they felt like they were

29:47.233 --> 29:52.942
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you're making me feel good, because whenever I join into an organization, I do that same habit.

29:52.962 --> 30:01.154
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I basically do an audit, I speak to everyone, but I've never gone to the scope of like working with 3,000 people, it feels so, it feels so...

30:02.295 --> 30:30.863
[SPEAKER_01]: When you think of big corporate right, it's like this big box, there's almost like a loss of humanity when you go to big corporate that's perceived and it's almost because it's like the sheer number of people means like we I think we're best to manage like 150 relationship if you're talking about like tribe sizes and stuff and when you start thinking about thousands, it's just we're empathetically incapable of containing all that and so the systems you've shared to be able to have the open office hours, et cetera, that at least keeps the channels open to be able to manage that but God it's just like

30:31.423 --> 30:32.544
[SPEAKER_01]: such a different beast.

30:32.944 --> 30:47.852
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be curious to know from, you know, running as a manager within the hundreds of people versus, you know, with a thousands of people, what were some of the main activities you had to find yourself doing in that role that might have been surprising or just radically different from working with your few hundred.

30:48.585 --> 31:09.411
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so before I answer that I just want to quickly circle back to this to this idea of power and some of the other the other themes we talked about because I think when a lot of people get into a role that big they are overwhelmed they do have imposter syndrome and there's a power that I felt like I was supposed to have like I'm

31:10.530 --> 31:14.091
[SPEAKER_00]: This organization, the budgets were massive.

31:14.172 --> 31:17.073
[SPEAKER_00]: The revenue was massive, like everything was so big.

31:17.173 --> 31:19.934
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, am I supposed to feel powerful?

31:19.974 --> 31:22.555
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't feel powerful.

31:23.495 --> 31:34.260
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I realized is a lot of leaders that get dropped into those big roles, they take on the power of the role as their own personal power.

31:37.134 --> 31:38.415
[SPEAKER_00]: And I never did that.

31:38.635 --> 31:46.140
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what I felt was not personal power as much as personal crushing responsibility to make sure I took care of 3,000 people.

31:46.180 --> 31:49.303
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took care of these big budgets and big revenue streams.

31:49.743 --> 32:00.550
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's where you get to, this kind of leader that we see so often and why are people like that is it's a lot of stress to have that much power

32:01.491 --> 32:03.713
[SPEAKER_00]: organizational power under your control.

32:03.913 --> 32:05.033
[SPEAKER_00]: And so people take it on.

32:05.074 --> 32:08.136
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, well, I'm the powerful leader of this organization.

32:08.216 --> 32:09.817
[SPEAKER_00]: So people need to do what I say.

32:10.137 --> 32:16.922
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the things that I avoided entirely, which gets to your next question about like, what do you do?

32:17.722 --> 32:19.864
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your job when you get to that level?

32:20.944 --> 32:33.828
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the very interesting things that I do in my coaching of business leaders is I talk about how there's a values shift at each level and which is the thing that a lot of people miss.

32:34.509 --> 32:37.970
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you're an individual contributor you are valued for your expertise.

32:38.710 --> 32:43.337
[SPEAKER_00]: your speed, your technical proficiency, the quality, you do your work, the problems you can solve.

32:43.878 --> 32:47.343
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what your value would for, and you start to value yourself for that.

32:47.824 --> 32:52.991
[SPEAKER_00]: When you get to be a first-level manager, your value is about delivering projects.

32:53.612 --> 32:57.557
[SPEAKER_00]: and helping your team be brilliant and be technically excellent.

32:57.997 --> 33:13.154
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first value breakdown is when you get put up a level and you should be managing projects and programs and budgets and communications and you still want to jump down and be the smartest one in the room and be the expert and you end up competing with your team.

33:13.915 --> 33:32.201
[SPEAKER_00]: when you step up another level and you're managing managers, then that becomes much more about clarifying strategy and organization-wide communications and connecting your organization with other organizations and looking for opportunities to build bigger things that are broader than just your organization.

33:32.661 --> 33:34.442
[SPEAKER_00]: And each time you step up a level,

33:35.542 --> 33:40.205
[SPEAKER_00]: not only does the work change, but what you value about your self has to change.

33:40.766 --> 33:46.710
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to value yourself for the leadership skills that are required, not the technical skills that are required.

33:47.411 --> 33:53.015
[SPEAKER_00]: And so many times when I'm coaching executives, I tell them, thank you for God to give yourself the promotion.

33:54.302 --> 34:02.048
[SPEAKER_00]: because they almost feel guilty about acting as a big manager and having the authority to just make a decision, say, no, I've decided, let's go this way.

34:02.068 --> 34:05.350
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, but those people used to work for me, and I don't feel comfortable.

34:05.391 --> 34:06.872
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, that's your job now.

34:06.952 --> 34:13.156
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, your job now is to own decisions and make trade-offs at a much higher level.

34:14.498 --> 34:34.139
[SPEAKER_00]: And you need to give yourself the promotion, you need to give yourself permission to do those things so that you can create clarity in a good working organization structure for the rest of your team and make sure that your team and your organization, your business are on the right track out in the world and you're following the market and the competition and the trends and you're not

34:35.180 --> 34:51.212
[SPEAKER_00]: Jumping back in to work at a level of value you used to be comfortable with because you used to be comfortable right and then you go to this new level of value and you're not good at those things yet You haven't done those things before so you feel like I'm not valuable.

34:51.312 --> 35:02.920
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't you know I'm not I'm not practiced at delivering value at this higher level and that's the real breakthrough that leaders need to make is they get into bigger and bigger advancing levels of leadership

35:04.272 --> 35:05.873
[SPEAKER_01]: I swear, Patty, I'm asking for a friend.

35:05.893 --> 35:09.476
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make sense?

35:10.216 --> 35:14.099
[SPEAKER_01]: A whole lot of sense, and it hits post a home too, and so it's really, really an advice.

35:14.139 --> 35:24.126
[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate everything so far, and I'd be very curious to kind of bring this off to the point that now you've stepped away from corporate, and you've started your own organization.

35:24.606 --> 35:32.732
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be very interested to hear about the, you know, what prompted you to make that shift, and what are some of the biggest things you're able to carry from your experience

35:34.680 --> 35:36.401
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah, it was a couple of things.

35:36.501 --> 35:45.226
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the stories in the book was that like horrible things happened in my company with regard to my viability there.

35:45.246 --> 35:58.633
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a massive management shift take over all of the people that I knew were just gone and I found myself kind of floating with no support at all and it got a little bit, it got a little bit ugly.

35:59.293 --> 36:00.693
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had a choice to make.

36:00.713 --> 36:07.015
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I want to try and fight the windmills here and start over again and build my whole network again?

36:07.515 --> 36:08.735
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do I want to do something else?

36:09.255 --> 36:16.097
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I started working with an executive coach to help me make this decision and help me plot my next steps.

36:16.297 --> 36:19.218
[SPEAKER_00]: And he challenged me to think about starting my own business.

36:19.798 --> 36:24.359
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was like a wild idea that I never in a million years considered.

36:24.399 --> 36:26.100
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good at running large organizations.

36:26.120 --> 36:26.800
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I do.

36:26.840 --> 36:27.660
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I should do.

36:27.700 --> 36:31.201
[SPEAKER_00]: It almost seemed irresponsible not to do that again.

36:31.602 --> 36:33.342
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was quite a big shift.

36:34.082 --> 36:40.084
[SPEAKER_00]: But going back to this idea of working in your strengths, what I did was I made three lists.

36:40.664 --> 36:46.086
[SPEAKER_00]: These lists contained everything that was involved in being a technology business leader.

36:47.178 --> 36:53.624
[SPEAKER_00]: In the first column, I wrote down things that I'm good at and things that I like doing and I have energy for.

36:53.804 --> 36:59.610
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was what we've been talking about, clarifying strategy, being a leader, communicating those kinds of things.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The second column were things that I'm good at, but I don't like doing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I, for example, I'm really good at managing sales performance on a month to month, quarter to quarter basis.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really good at that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I hate it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like more power to you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: If that's what that's what you do.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then there were like a number of other things.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then in the third column, I wrote down things that I just detest.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And part of what I detest is technology.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been a techie.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and I spent a lot of my career thinking somebody's going to fight out that I don't, I don't really like technology.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I looked at that list, and I just dared myself and said, could I create my own business only doing the things in the first column?

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[SPEAKER_00]: The things that I really enjoy doing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't know.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't like a fierce commitment to leave corporate and start my own business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was an experiment.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I created a business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I started slogging away and inventing it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the first things I did was I developed a executive career management workshop.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I advertised that to the public and it was a hit and then I started getting brought in by corporations to do that and then I started evolving my portfolio of other things I would do with as a relevant group and it just it worked and it was a real delight for me that I spent virtually a hundred percent of my time doing things I didn't hate doing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There were still some admin.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There were still some annoying stuff.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There were still chasing down things that weren't delightful.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But pretty much I was working in my in my gifts and my strengths and it felt really meaningful and I was helping humans.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was helping humans do two things.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was helping them up their game and be better in their roles.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was helping them learn how to survive their corporate careers.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of both of those things.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and every bit of that felt meaningful.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so when you shifted towards running as a business on a versus a corporate leader, where there are places where you realize, oh my god, I have way less tension or stresses that come from this side, but I have these new surprises that came up that I wasn't really expecting, and just to get somebody prepared if they are making the leap.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I mean, the biggest thing is you don't get a paycheck anymore, so what you're in corporate, you could have it off week or enough month and not be at your best and you still get a paycheck and then you make up for it once you get yourself through that cycle.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's, I think, a really, a really big adjustment.

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[SPEAKER_00]: What I ended up doing and I recommend this to people in any size organization.

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[SPEAKER_00]: is what I call draw an ideal blank sheet or a good church.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So we tend to draw arc charts and we put everybody's name in, and it's like, no, that's not your job as a leader.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Draw an arc chart and have all the boxes blank, and then define what the ideal roles are.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And to find what the work that's needed is in all of those roles.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And only then think about your existing team and start mapping people who really fit well into those roles.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And what you end up with is typically some really good fits, and then you have some empty boxes and some extra people.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where leadership is really necessary to decide what you're going to do to form the right organization, to build the team who truly need to move forward.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I did that for my own business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I drew my ideal blank sheet, org chart.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And it had product development and strategy and at marketing, it had sales, it had infrastructure, financial admin, all the things.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I just looked at it and thought, well,

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to do all of these things and then I think a lot of things that New Entrepreneurs do is they focus a lot on their secret sauce and on their building their portfolio and you know building their website and creating their offers and creating their products and you can spend a lot of time on that that's not scary because nobody's told you no yet.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody said I'm not interested yet, right?

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[SPEAKER_00]: So that was the thing I realized is I had all of these

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[SPEAKER_00]: under those columns and under sales.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I had no activities, had nothing on my to-do list, under sales.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's actually what lit a fire under me to develop that career workshop.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I need to find something that is really low hanging fruit that I can sell.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then that'll become a sales, you know, marketing effort in a good sales channel for me and it was the other thing that I think is important when you're starting out as an entrepreneur and I've gotten this advice.

41:54.416 --> 42:08.487
[SPEAKER_00]: I got this advice from the cover of a book that I never read and I've never been able to find the book again, but the cover was enough and it was called multiple streams and on the back cover it said, make sure you're getting income from more than just one thing and I thought, well, that makes sense.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I was writing a blog.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I started selling articles.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what encouraged me to write a book.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That was another revenue stream.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I put one on one coaching on my portfolio, as well as helping organizations with strategy.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then suddenly I had this, I had multiple revenue streams, and I could experiment and see which ones took off.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then all of the webinars in the blog and the book and all of that just didn't turn into,

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[SPEAKER_00]: Not primary revenue streams for me, but those became my marketing channels.

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[SPEAKER_00]: People find me today still because of those things I created a while ago.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's so surprising to me that my first book rise, which came out of my career development workshop.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That book is like 15 years old, and it's still selling at the same rate it was selling 15 years ago.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Close my mind.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Patty, honestly, this has been such a fun conversation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You are a wealth of knowledge for anybody who's on a career path.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Anybody in an executive position or anybody going to a personal, you know, reinvention of self.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And luckily, you've written a book about all these three topics, because these are all the things that you've supported a lot of others with.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and so what I want to do in the show notes for everyone right now the latest book why she's still here if you've enjoyed the stories and you want to see more of how you can actually go up this corporate ladder and perhaps even do a re-invention yourself definitely pick up a copy we're going to put a link in the show notes and move which is more about making decisive

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[SPEAKER_01]: executive decisions as a leader is going to be a powerful book for you and rise for somebody who's going to advance their careers in corporate.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You have anything for everything you're looking for.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to put a link to the show notes so that you can grab a copy of those.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, this has been a fantastic conversation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad we got a chance to connect.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What a journey you've been on and I think it's inspiring.

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[SPEAKER_01]: particularly for young women who might not have seen this as a potential path, you've paved the way for a lot of people to see that this is a possibility.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But putting gender aside, even as a man, I look at your trajectory and I'm admiring it and this is fantastic and you know, I'm even inspired and I've gone a few key ideas that I want to reinforce in my own workplace.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This was such a powerful conversation.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You are welcome.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This was the super fun conversation to me too.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Jason Mark Campbell business podcast and of course keep selling with love.