0:02

Welcome to Good Intentions, the podcast where we explore the world around us, find meaning and intention in what we do.

0:09

I'm Kelly Harvard and I'm on a mission to spread positive stories that will inspire you to live a more meaningful and connected life.

0:18

Ann Hyatt is a bestselling author, executive consultant, speaker and investor.

0:23

She's a Silicon Valley veteran who reported directly to CEOs including Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Eric Schmidt from Google, and Yahoos Marisa Mayer.

0:31

She consults as CEOs and their leadership teams across the globe on C-Suite optimization and has published articles and publications such as the Harvard Business Review, fast Company, New York Times, the Financial Times, and Forbes, quite a list.

0:44

She's in Dubai at the Emirates Literature festivals talk about her book, book Bet on Yourself.

0:49

Incredibly. She's taken the leadership principles that guide the work of celebrity CEOs and explains how to use them to take a bet on yourself and use them as stepping stones towards a dream career.

0:58

Anne is so warm and she was full of so much amazing advice.

1:01

I loved what she had to say about making sure your job gives as much to you as you do to it.

1:05

And also her take on the tech bro culture and how to navigate an often patriarchal business system.

1:10

And of course I had to ask her what it was really like to work for Jeff Bezos in such a once in a lifetime role.

1:15

Whether you're just starting on the career ladder, feeling stuck in your current job, or want to be finally recognized for promotion or a leadership role.

1:21

This episode will help you identify how to create something extraordinary from ordinary opportunities that even when your options appear limited, you can take charge of your career and build a future that exceeds your wildest expectations.

1:32

Please enjoy our conversation. Thank you so much, Anne for joining me today on The Good Intentions podcast.

1:37

Delighted to speak to you.

1:38

Thanks for having me. I look forward to our conversation.

1:41

Yeah,

1:41

Me too, me too. And um, you're actually gonna be in Dubai in, in a matter of weeks at the Emirates Literature Festival.

1:47

So I'm really keen could you start by telling us a bit more about the book that's brought you here and, and why you wrote it and what we're gonna hear about when you come?

1:53

Oh, thanks. Yeah. I very much look forward to being back in Dubai.

1:56

I really, really enjoy being there. So I will be presenting my book, which is titled Bet On Yourself.

2:02

I published it just over a year ago with Harper Collins.

2:05

It's my first book ever. So I learned a lot of things in the writing of my first book and it's really aimed at the ambitious individual.

2:12

I use my individual career as a little bit of a, a pathway and a guide, largely because I think there's nothing overly exceptional about my journey, although I in my career have worked with some of the most powerful and influential business leaders of our generation, if not beyond that, I started my work just out of undergrad working for, directly for Jeff Bezos in the early two thousands.

2:33

Then, um, got recruited into Google and worked for the CEO O of Google for over a decade.

2:37

And now I do consulting with CEOs all over the world.

2:40

But the reason why I wanted to use my career as a case study is to really show how I've adapted all the best practices of these super performers into my life in a way that I feel is accessible to anyone, anyone of ambition who wants to create something of themselves.

2:53

Whether you are just finishing your studies and entering the workforce for the very first time and as often happens your first job in no way resembles your dream job.

3:01

So you might wanna know, how do I get recognized as a leader, create opportunities for myself, or maybe you are a mid-career and really wanting to get that big promotion for the first time being seen as a leader, leading a team or a project or getting that big client account.

3:14

How do you really build up that business acumen and um, get noticed and get promoted.

3:18

And then the third category is for my entrepreneurs who are maybe working on a side hustle who maybe have converted it to their full-time hustle during the pandemic and giving you some of the best practice I've seen from making your wildest dreams come true.

3:30

So the book follows my career from the be dawn of the internet and the very beginning of all these companies that are now everyday practices and and infiltrated into our lives.

3:39

And I, I share kind of a lot of the lessons learned, meaning a lot of failures.

3:44

And I share this kind of as a playbook to help other people avoid the mistakes that I've made and ideally have a playbook for success that works regardless of what your dreams might be, your current level of seniority or what your risk tolerances are of the industry or the part of the globe you find yourself in.

4:01

I really have this, um, list of best practices I think really can be applicable to anyone.

4:06

Gosh, sounds fantastic. I've already told my team we're coming to see you and I'm getting everybody the book and we're all gonna use it as then as our roadmap.

4:12

It sounds fantastic. I can't wait to see you

4:14

Speak, can't wait to meet you all. That will be fun

4:17

<laugh>. You say you've been to Dubai before so you know what to buy in the UAE is like right?

4:20

We're super ambitious, driven like everybody chooses to be here.

4:24

So there's this great energy where people just wanna hoover up knowledge and wisdom and sort of always trying to sort of self-improve, which I think makes it this super magical place to be and sometimes a bit tiring.

4:34

I will not lie to you<laugh>, but equally, um, equally it's just got this like kind of energy that's palpable, which I think if that's what you want from life, it's a fantastic place to be.

4:42

So I think the buyers just your message and your book is just gonna speak so well.

4:46

Ah, thank you

4:46

To the city and to the nation and the people here as well.

4:49

So it'll be fantastic. And just coming on, you touched on this about, you know, your dream Jo, your first job might not be your dream job and indeed maybe your second or third job might not be your dream job<laugh>.

4:57

And you, um, you had this great quote which I loved, but you, you said, you know, my work philosophy has always been that my job should give as much to me as I give to it, which I thought was a fantastic, obviously it should be the ideal, right?

5:08

We should all be getting something from our jobs, but I think sometimes we lose sight of that a bit.

5:11

I think it's always like, well we've got to do and what we've got to give.

5:13

So cuz for whatever reason some people's jobs just won't do that for them, right?

5:17

So is there a way of, I mean, do we either have to sort of make peace with the job that we've got or should we always be striving to get something from our work?

5:25

Like is it either or or what should we be doing?

5:27

Yeah, I hope it's not either or. I completely acknowledge it's a privileged place to be where you feel like your life passions and missions are all being fulfilled by your work life.

5:36

Like that's often not the case. But in looking back in my career, even my earliest jobs taught me something really vital that opened up opportunities for me I wouldn't have had otherwise.

5:46

For example, my very first job ever at 16 years old, I was working at a startup as a general office manager.

5:53

It was a company of five people started by two brothers who had just, just graduated from Harvard Business School.

5:58

And I had no idea that that was preparing me for my future in working in early tech.

6:05

That was not plans AB or c<laugh> on my, on my radar at 16 years old.

6:10

I did not anticipate this career in tech that I've had.

6:12

But I learned a lot of things there about, you know, even though every day was not glamorous, I was answering the phones and making photocopies and doing the material sourcing, like literally making sure there were staples in the stapler, like that kind of thing.

6:23

That's not something that gets you excited about, you know, waking up every morning and doing that.

6:28

But I think the reason why, one I really thrived in that job and two it prepared me for something future was I made some major mistakes cuz it was my first job ever and I really failed at some projects in spectacularly.

6:39

Those early failures helped me see how even seemingly insignificant projects that had been given could often be the most important thing that was happening in the company that day.

6:48

So I think it's about lifting our view from the task to the purpose.

6:52

And so one of these early failures was I was making photocopies of sales marketing packets cuz again this is a startup, it's five people, the brothers have invested their time and talents and money into this.

7:02

And so I was just making photocopies and the copier wasn't performing well, it was like slightly blurry and there was those lines, you know, when you're at the end of the toner and it just did not look professional.

7:12

And luckily the c e o kind of quality checked it before I popped them in the mail and he was like, you have to do this again.

7:17

And I felt devastated cause I'd wasted all this time and resources, you know, the paper and everything because I wasn't thinking about what is the purpose of this packet, why am I making all these copies and assembling these packets?

7:27

Which in it of itself was not very fun. But that was the opportunity for the company to hit their target audience and create a connection with them.

7:33

And when I realized that one, I was horrified that I'd done such a horrible job.

7:38

But two, it helped me see even in the seemingly mundane tasks there is a larger purpose.

7:43

And that really taught me to ask that question early, especially when I didn't fully understand.

7:48

For example, our receptionist is often the first person that someone engages with at the company.

7:53

It sets the tone idea of the culture, the way we get things done here.

7:56

It gives you a good sense of their, of their vibe and their purpose.

7:59

So in those seemingly simple tasks can be layers and layers of meaning.

8:05

So when I created this personal mantra that I wanted my job to give as much to me as I gave to it, which has always been a decidedly high bar that was really about what can I learn from this?

8:14

How can I lift my sights? How can I, you know, instead of just thinking about as photocopying, I'm one of five, I'm 20% of that five person startup.

8:22

What can I learn? What can I absorb? Uh, what can I contribute to this that's beyond just the confines of my job description.

8:27

And that moment really kind of set the stage for some<laugh> crazy adventures that followed in my career.

8:34

I'm sure. And I love what you're saying about purpose, I think it's really important.

8:37

I try with my team, we often talk about purpose cuz you know, on the surface where, you know, our work in pr we're usually trying to get people to buy things<laugh>, right?

8:43

Or have experiences or spend, you know, part with their money for a reason, whether it's to have an experience by a product.

8:48

So we're constantly trying to think, okay, like how are we aligning ourselves to people's individual purposes?

8:54

And also like the purpose of the uae, right? So if you've got a client that's doing a huge opening, they're investing in something, well it goes beyond just the fact they're opening a new store or a mall or whatever.

9:02

It's about actually, you know, economic drivers like providing jobs, giving back to the community.

9:06

So I think the more you can do that, I think that you're absolutely right.

9:09

Of course people respond to it more if there's something bigger than you.

9:12

Yeah,

9:13

Well said.

9:14

But I do think, and I love this quote from you as well, you said if you had to choose a single indicator of long-term high impact success, it would be this be driven by purpose again, fantastic.

9:22

But how do we kind of align our own personal desires and sense of purpose with those of work?

9:26

Because sometimes they can conflict, it might not be exactly, you know, sort of the end of your rainbow.

9:31

So how can you make it work for you?

9:33

That's such an important question and one that I did not ask myself early enough in my career.

9:37

We learned a lot of these things the hard way. But one thing that I really try and emphasize in the book in particular is exactly at the heart of the question you're asking here, which is it can seem like it's, it's only available to the privileged, the privileged few who are working these big glamorous companies or have the big titles to be able to think about purpose and passion and mission alignment.

9:58

But I, I am a big believer that that can be available to anyone regardless of what you're doing.

10:02

I have this quote in the book by Martin Luther King Jr.

10:05

Where he talks about the street sweeper.

10:08

And even if your task is to just clean the streets of your city block, be the very best street sweeper that you can think about the families who walk on that street, think about the accessibility you're creating.

10:18

Think about if we lift our sights from, again, mundane tasks to something with meaning and purpose and really is connected with what drives you of making your community safe and more accessible and beautiful and attractive that removes sort of these, i I guess mental barriers where we hold ourselves back from thinking that I can be proud of what I do or what I contribute.

10:36

Yes, I, I've worked for the biggest celebrity CEOs there are in the world.

10:41

Their work contributions are not that much different, but the differentiator between them and us normal people is that they are constantly focused on that larger purpose.

10:49

They're constantly focused on, what am I contributing here?

10:53

They really believe in the Silicon Valley cliche of we are aligned here, we show up every day so that we can make the world a better place.

10:59

And when you just frame your tasks within that light, I think a lot of opportunity for acceleration, for additional impact shows itself.

11:08

But that really only becomes available when you start looking at your role that way.

11:12

My sister's 23 years old, she's just starting her career, she's finishing a master's and a lot of the work she does right now, you know, is not something she feels like she's gonna post on Instagram.

11:20

But, uh, while I was home at Christmas talking to her about, you know, these early career opportunities she's having, I helped her see that this access, just being in a room with this person, an executive that she really, really admired and observing the way that she ran a meeting is really elevating and incredible.

11:35

Or if you're just in the room where something's happening for the first time where someone has an expertise you don't have or a leadership style you've never been exposed to, that's an elevating effect and that's outside of your individual contribution.

11:46

So it's really about seeking out those environments and those people and thinking about how your individual tasks connect to a larger hole.

11:52

Yeah,

11:52

That's so interesting, isn't it? I, I mean I still remember, you know, when I was 21 in a fresh PR grad, like some of the directors that I interacted with, some of my CEOs, like they said things that have stayed with me throughout my career and then, you know, you're getting old when you repeat them to like your own team, right?

12:06

<laugh>. So I'm like, God, and any opportunity to sort of, and even now, you know, I've got some amazing clients, amazing colleagues.

12:12

Like I often think, gosh, you know, I'm in this room with like these really smart people and I'm gonna take something that they've said or something that they've made me think about.

12:19

And constantly trying to kind of see where you can learn and what you can take from other people, not in a kind of, you know, one way only and hopefully you can contribute something at some point, although it's not necessarily the purpose of every call or every meeting.

12:30

But yeah, I think that's really interesting. Ties really nicely back into purpose.

12:34

Thank you. I mean, you've mentioned Jeff Grs a couple of times.

12:36

I have to ask you, I mean it sounded like absolutely incredible working with him.

12:41

I you organized this, these sessions where he went off and read books for a week, a bit like Bill Gates's reading week, right?

12:46

He locks himself away going back with notepads full of ideas.

12:48

I mean, what was it like working with someone whose mind works like that?

12:51

He was such an a titan now of sort of modern business.

12:55

Yeah, obviously it's life changing. To work with someone who's so larger than life whose mind works completely differently than most people I've been exposed to.

13:04

It was a great privilege to sit literally in the dust physically closest to him and the entire company for three years.

13:09

And especially this stage of the company growth that it was.

13:12

And I started with him in 2002.

13:14

Amazon was not yet profitable. We were making like crazy big bets every single day.

13:19

I learned to embrace failure rather than be intimidated by it.

13:23

I mean the environment I was in radically changed who I am as a person and how I uh, approached the world.

13:28

And that is probably the greatest gift the universe has given me because I had the longer story of how I ended up with this being my first job after undergrad.

13:35

But that's a sliding door moment in my life for sure.

13:37

I mean, to sum up Jeff Bezos in one word is really difficult cuz he is multifaceted.

13:42

But, uh, my favorite word for him is relentless.

13:45

And not just in the dogged tireless which he is, but really in the pursuit of the exceptional, which I find so intoxicating now and was not how my mind worked naturally.

13:56

I'm, I'm naturally fairly timid. I love rules, I love things that fit neatly into columns.

14:00

And if you wanna do something exceptional and if you, especially if you wanna contribute something that the world has never had before, you really have to think differently.

14:08

So his relentless pursuit of the exceptional really was probably the greatest gift that my career has given me.

14:13

I've, I've learned through osmosis how to start to think like that.

14:16

And yes, you're right, I, I did organize his thinking retreats that he did quarterly and I see Amazon now launching things that were literally born in those notebooks, you know, nearly 20 years ago.

14:26

Oh wow. Yeah. That's how far in the future he's contributing and thinking even now his protege, you know, Andy Jassy, who was his, literally his title at the time back in 2002, was the Shadow Andy being the Shadow I, I saw him being trained in thinking like Jeff Banks asking the questions he would be asking if he were in the room and really being app apprenticed into the leader that he now is as Jeff's successor as c e O of Amazon.

14:49

It's a really incredible for me to reflect on now.

14:52

And yeah, like you, I still quote Jeff on a daily basis because what he said really rings true.

14:58

And I do wanna add in asterisks that I hope none of my comments sound like hero worship because I know their strengths as well as their weaknesses and none of the people that I've worked for then are now are perfect in any way.

15:08

But there has been a lot of valuable gold to glean from the executives that I've been able to work

15:14

For. Oh, Sharon, I'm sure that's a huge understatement.

15:16

I'm mean incredible. Like you said, people are human and they're nuanced, right?

15:18

And nothing is quite black or white and no one is good or bad.

15:21

So I think yeah, you can take what you can from each individual.

15:24

And I have to ask you, I mean there's quite a lot being talked about sort of of late, I'm a fantastic book recently, which the titles are just escaped from me, which is really helpful.

15:31

But it was all about this sort of this toxic sort of tech bro culture in Silicon Valley.

15:35

And I mean, I think you were one of the first women to sort of be in that culture.

15:38

I mean, how did you navigate that? I mean, and from that, do you have any advice for people, especially obviously women working in, whether it's a male dominated industry or even just in this sort of patriarchal society that we live in?

15:48

I mean it doesn't, PR is not male dominated, but you know, we can still face these challenges as well.

15:52

Yeah, I have been very lucky that the people I've worked for have been just the gold standard of leadership and vision and making sure that everyone who works for them constantly rises to their level of best contribution.

16:07

I personally have not experienced the bro culture of Silicon Valley, although I have seen it<laugh>.

16:12

I know very well that that is the truth. It is out there.

16:15

I'm not sure what book you were thinking of, but perhaps it was super pumped, which is about Uber.

16:19

It's an excellent book.

16:20

Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember the name. Is it, oh, I haven't read that. Amazing.

16:23

Actually I'm gonna write

16:23

That down. It's so good. Super pumped is about the early years of Uber and it's a really interesting examination of, I know a lot of the ways that they made their major success were through Simi kind of questionable tactics.

16:34

And so the book examines could Uber have existed without these, what then later became these very toxic policies?

16:40

So I, I'm fascinated by that, by the duality of these worlds that exist within Silicon Valley.

16:44

But I, I've been privileged that I could choose the leaders that I wanted to work for.

16:48

Not in the beginning, but I've been very lucky to work with people that I wildly respect.

16:52

In fact, that's the bar that I use now when I'm choosing even my, my c e O clients.

16:57

I think the biggest differentiator in my career and something is applicable to anyone is really I, I look for three things.

17:02

The first is the leader that I work for. You know, even in your first jobs, maybe your direct line manager is not worthy of like the label of like the absolute gold standard of what you wanna be in the future.

17:11

But whether or not that person's worthy of it, each person probably has something to teach us.

17:15

And if your line manager isn't the type of leader you want to become, seeking that out in your organization, if it's not available in your organization, maybe in your community, your volunteering or thanks to the internet, we can now cyber stock the people that we do admire and learn so much from their talks, their social media, the things they're sharing.

17:31

So I've always tried to really seek it out, although I've been very privileged to work for some of the, I think the greatest leaders out there.

17:37

So yeah, I think it's really, really important to be choosy in that way.

17:41

But like I said, I know it feels like a privileged position, but I think there's more we can do to seek it out than we think.

17:46

So that's one thing that I look for in the careers first is, is this team, this organization full of leaders that I wanna become like the second way of up-leveling regardless of your seniority or your exact job title.

17:56

The second thing I always look for is what is the reputation or the expertise I'm gonna build in this role?

18:01

Like what do I want this to give to me in return?

18:04

Going back to our earlier part of our conversation, like what are the learnings, the expertise, the re the reputation I'm building?

18:09

Maybe the Rolodex that this role might open up for me.

18:12

I think if we are really purposeful in what we wanna get in return, it is there.

18:16

But<laugh>, you know, even though I've worked for some of the greatest leaders in the world, not a single one of them, not one of my CEOs has come to me and said, you know, Anne, I was thinking about your talents and uh, ways that we might, you know, better utilize them.

18:26

Like that's never happened. That's my job.

18:29

So my job is to think about that. What do I wanna learn?

18:32

What's available to me in my, in my current opportunities where I am right now?

18:35

And then being bold enough to ask for it, which for me is the hardest part is just being brave to set these, say the goals out loud, tell my managers and the people in decision-making authority where I wanna go and allowing them to open some doors for me has, has really given me a lot of benefits and it's been a big differentiator also.

18:52

Yeah, I was just talking about this actually with a colleague this morning and I think this is quite a gender thing, right?

18:56

It's as women, you don't push yourself forward for numerous, numerous, numerous reasons.

19:00

You know, women get seen as pushy, you know, ambition is confused with the other things.

19:04

I mean Sheryl Sandberg talked about it a a lot in her book, lean In when that came out, got a lot of air time I think, yeah, as women, no one is waiting for you to shine and to give you an opportunity, right?

19:12

Well just in general. But men are much better I think, at pushing themselves forward and you know, asking.

19:17

And I think as women we need to get stronger at that and it's something I've had to work on.

19:22

I'm not naturally predisposed to be like that despite the fact I work in PR on cell phones on a daily basis when it comes to selling myself.

19:27

It's just got that sort of cringe factor, right?

19:29

It does have a cringe factor. I think we are taught that from an early age, of course that women's roles is much, we're much better accepted and encouraged and praised when we're doing something that serves the whole rather than us as an individual.

19:43

That's just true globally. But once we're aware of that, I think there's some ways that we can use that to our advantage.

19:50

In fact, just yesterday I was reading this amazing Harvard Business re review article about this.

19:54

It wasn't about women specifically, but it was about kind of these helper roles, especially those of us type A personalities like my, like myself, I love a to-do list.

20:02

I love to check, check, check things down. Gosh,<laugh>, there's nothing more satisfying to me than having a, you know, a long to-do list checked off at the end of the day.

20:10

But that for people like me, that actually can inhibit me because I love to be useful.

20:15

I love to be that single source of all truth on a team.

20:18

I love being the go-to person. It, it's really fulfilling to me to be that resource to a lot of people.

20:24

But this article really highlighted the downside of that, which is one we can get sucked into tasks that aren't propelling us forward.

20:31

They can propel the team but it's actually the lower quality work that often goes to women, like the women office work of like, oh, can you coordinate this?

20:38

Can you do the follow-ups? Can you take the notes? Can you log the action items?

20:41

That often goes to women. And so it's important for us to be able to push back and say like, oh it'd be a great, I did that last, last week.

20:47

It would be a great opportunity for Jeremy now to take that this time.

20:49

I think this would be a great learning opportunity for him as well.

20:51

So sharing that around, but making sure we're not self-limiting ourselves.

20:55

So first being aware of what am I volunteering for?

20:57

Am I constantly up-leveling my contributions or is this kind of lower level tasks and and I need to give that to someone who would experience that as a great learning opportunity and then free myself up for higher impact.

21:08

Things that actually lead to promotion, lead to that next bonus or you know, really being seen as a leader.

21:13

I think just giving ourselves permission to seek that out and not get stuck in those roles that, gosh, it's very tempting.

21:19

I love to be helpful but oh

21:22

Goodness, I have, I have a to-do list. It's actually called like to-do lists.

21:25

Like it's a to-do list. <laugh>, I bought a special goat padd, like I love a to-do list boot off and I write it the night before.

21:30

I write it on a Sunday night for the week and then I cut.

21:33

Oh love it. I mean I color code it. Same. Love it.

21:35

But you're absolutely right. The limitations of that are something that perhaps like when you're in, when you're in the trenches of getting the work done, you don't think about how it's limiting.

21:43

You write cause you're just trying to get it done. Especially your fast-paced industry where there's a lot to be done and you know, you don't, you're kind of drinking from a fire hydrant of Red Bull all the time in what I do.

21:52

So it's kinda like when do you get that chance to kind of lift up and be okay, how is this aligning to my personal goals?

21:58

Am I, am I moving forward as a person in the right way as I'm doing all this?

22:03

Yeah, and I think, so an important element to that is also a documented fact that women don't receive actionable feedback as consistently as men do.

22:11

We get generalized feedback of how we're being perceived rather than the actual core competencies.

22:16

So that's an additional burden. But once we're aware of it, women can self-advocate for that.

22:20

For example, you know, we're just finished a a year, we're starting a new year, everyone's got some new goals and growth targets and KPIs or whatever goal system your organization uses.

22:28

Really ask yourself unpack it of like, are we working from the same scorecard here?

22:32

Do I understand exactly the top three to five things?

22:35

Cuz often it's only three or five things that your contributions as an individual contributor then relieve the burden of the person you report to that then fulfill the needs of the organization.

22:45

I call that a win-win win. Once you can see how your individual tasks, like how I sit in this chair today serves my manager and serves the organization as a whole, you can then ask for some crazy stuff,<laugh>, you can, this is when your job gets really fun.

22:58

Cuz once you understand the win-win win of how my job serves, the role of my leader, who then serves the organizational need, you can get a yes to some seemingly crazy stuff that's not in your job description.

23:08

This is often how I worked on cross-functional projects or I got promoted for the first time, or I learned how to people manage or project manage was just by volunteering for stuff that was not originally in my job description, but I thought would give me the exposure, the expertise, the skills, new relationships, expand my Rolodex, et cetera.

23:24

And you get a yes every time, but you really have to understand that flow and that doesn't come proactively.

23:29

Most managers a have never received training in how to give actionable feedback.

23:33

Two, they're overburdened, they've got so much on their mind, they're not thinking about you until they get this reminder to do a quarterly evaluation about you.

23:40

And so if you can proactively come to them and say, Hey, I've been thinking about how my role could really relieve this, what if you delegate that to me?

23:46

I learn and you're freed up to do this bigger thing. You're gonna get a yes and you're really gonna accelerate your career in ways that otherwise might've seemed inaccessible.

23:54

Yeah, you have to drive it, don't you? It's so interesting and make a, make an effort to do that, especially as a woman.

23:59

So your career, I mean the sorts of places that you've worked, they don't sound like super laid back and uh, easy.

24:04

They sound like you needed to be pretty tough, right? And pretty resilient.

24:07

Like have you got any tips? Like what have you learned about being resilient and kind of putting yourself into those very high pressure environments and kind of surviving at the end of it and, and hopefully thriving as well, but you know, kind of emerging alive, but also emerging as a better person, a better leader, or getting more towards your goals.

24:21

This is like nature versus nurture.

24:23

For me, my nature is wildly timid.

24:26

I'd like to do everything perfectly. I like to get a 10 out of 10.

24:29

I am that a plus student. You know, I'm a front row, multiple highlighters kind of a person,<laugh>.

24:34

But thankfully joining the tech world, especially the time that I did when nothing had ever been done before, I saw modeled from every single person in the company, whether it was Jeff Bezos, you know, founder, c e o himself, down to me, who was like the junior most person at the whole company.

24:48

I saw every person just learning as fast as they could.

24:52

And so I had learned to equate failure with learnings because it was celebrated in that environment.

24:57

So I was nurtured out of my nature<laugh>.

24:59

And I'm very, very grateful for that because I think working at Amazon in the early two thousands, like was, you know, a full career in and of itself of learning.

25:07

So when I saw it modeled for me, I was in environments where that was rewarded.

25:10

Then later, not every company embraces failure or struggle or not every manager is really great in encouraging you through those times of failure.

25:18

So you do have to have this well within you. I, I read a book like Carol dw, she's, um, a professor at Stanford.

25:24

It's called Mindset. That book not to overstate things literally changed my life and definitely my career because in that book, professor Dweck talks about two mindset.

25:34

One is the fixed mindset and the other is the growth mindset.

25:36

My nature is a fixed mindset. I have x number of talents I was born with, I'm gonna do this, and outside of the parameters of these talents, I will be a failure.

25:43

Obviously, that's not how I thought about it, but that's an oversimplification.

25:46

Now, if you get into a growth mindset, which is what technology is surrounded by, that's the environment I was cultivated in.

25:52

That is the belief that I can take the talents I have today and through iter iteration, through learning, experimentation, failure and trying again, I can expand the areas of my talent.

26:01

I can be more tomorrow than I was today by pushing those boundaries.

26:06

So when you're at the boundary, instead of feeling like, oh, this is proof that I'm a failure, this is proof, this is gonna expose me as an imposter and everyone's gonna realize I don't know what I'm doing, which was true always in my career, but it should be.

26:17

If you're really pushing yourself into growth path, a learning mindset person thinks, this is the evidence I need that I am growing.

26:23

The fact that I couldn't do this perfectly today shows that tomorrow I'll get, maybe today I was a six out of 10 and tomorrow I might be a seven, but through progression and iteration and trial and error, I'm gonna get better and I'm gonna expand my growth set.

26:35

That mental shift changed everything for me.

26:39

One I thought modeled around me. Two, I read her book. That was this moment of click of like, that's what I've been seeing.

26:44

And uh, three, I proved it to myself by doing some scary stuff, failing in front of people whose opinions really, really matter to me and surviving.

26:51

And you start to really be able to trust yourself.

26:54

In fact, that's, um, I just trained for my fifth half marathon.

26:57

I'm a horrible runner by the way. Like this is, I'm not

27:01

<laugh> on the slowest runner.

27:03

I'm barely, barely moving above a walk. Like when, when my Nike app registers it, I'm like, I think, I think there's like old people laughing me and like, yeah, I think, I think it's actually a walking pace.

27:12

But anyway,

27:12

Same, same. So you and me both.

27:15

So I was training for this half marathon and it was my first, since the pandemic had been like, I don't know, four or five years since my last one.

27:20

And I'm much older than I used to be. Anyway, so I was listening to this trainer as I was doing my workouts, getting ready and um, she said something that literally made me stop in my tracks on my run.

27:29

She said, you can't push yourself until you trust yourself.

27:32

And I was just like, yes.

27:34

That is everything that my career has taught me.

27:37

If you don't push yourself, if you're not doing something today that you have no idea how to do perfectly, you're never gonna trust yourself enough to set these bigger goals and to accomplish what actually is purpose aligned, passion aligned, mission aligned for you.

27:50

And, um, anyway, I just think that's so great. I'm, I'm also a huge fan of Atomic Habits by James.

27:55

Clear? Yes. Ugh.

27:57

Yep,

27:57

Yep. That is what that book is about. It's about teaching yourself that you can trust yourself to do really hard things through small incremental goals.

28:03

And I think that's what any success that I can identify in my career really came from that through being willing to experiment, try again and fail in front of people who I really care about.

28:14

Yeah, atomic Habits comes up quite a lot actually when I have conversations with people also.

28:18

Um, have you heard of a book called Grit?

28:19

Yes. Huge fan.

28:21

Yeah, so I, I recently finished that and you know, like you said, stopping yourself in your track.

28:25

So there's one line, the essence of grit, right, is finish what you start.

28:29

So like this, it's this focus thing and there's so many times my team must think I'm nuts.

28:33

I'll be literally dancing from like my keyboard to my teams to my screen to when, and I'll just say, Kelly and is what you start and just like get this focus back.

28:41

And like it's funny when you find something that really resonates with you, it becomes your, your mantra, right?

28:45

Like you have many of these. So yeah, I think it's fantastic when you can find something that really speaks to you like that.

28:50

I find it super interesting and, and something great to on

28:53

To Olive Angela Duckworth's work around grit and I just, I'm a super fan.

28:58

Yeah, she's amazing. She's amazing. I love her too.

29:00

I'm assuming, you know, you are obviously a very accomplished, productive person.

29:05

Do you have any sort of specific morning routine that you kind of can tell us about or you know, are you quite laid back in that department, you know, and do you have bad days?

29:13

Like how do you handle these like on a day when perhaps you just can't really face doing, you know, whatever task you've got that day or day or a big project, how do you kind of plan for that and, and make that happen regardless of how you feel?

29:23

I think my answer's gonna surprise you.

29:26

We'll see, um,<laugh>, so I read all the time and my husband now shows it to me because it drives me nuts all the time.

29:32

There's all these people talking about these, these are the habits of the billionaires, okay?

29:36

I've had the privilege of working for many of them.

29:39

I know many of the billionaires that are cited and, and all these, like they get up at 4:00 AM and they do this and there's like lies, lies.

29:46

That's total lies. They don't get up at 4:00 AM there are those who do, like I worked for Marissa Meyer my first three years at Google.

29:52

The woman only needs four hours of sleep to highly, highly function.

29:55

I'm not that kind of person. That's okay.

29:58

So I think you can throw all of that out the window.

30:00

If you're a natural night owl like me, that is not gonna hold you back.

30:04

You'll be just fine. I worked for many night owl CEOs, so I don't think, I really don't believe in this like formula for success.

30:11

I, I like to see the relief on your face for that<laugh>.

30:14

It's just lies. So the reason I say it's lies is because every person has a different rhythm.

30:19

And so really, I'm sorry it's a harder answer.

30:22

Rather than me giving you the like top three or top five like productivity tips of billionaire CEOs.

30:27

It's really about finding your individual rhythm. So my rhythm now, because I have a lot more flexibility and freedom than I did when I was working 18 hour days at Amazon and Google.

30:36

The way I tructure my time now is I protect my mornings wildly unstructured.

30:41

So my mornings have as some non-negotiables.

30:44

One is I need to be able to move my body for an hour a day, depends on the day what that means.

30:48

It might be an hour walk with my dog. This morning I did a spin workout in my guest room, you know, with my pandemic spin bike that I got.

30:54

You know, each day is different, but I really need to, I have found that I need to get myself out of my head and into my body for at least an hour a day.

31:01

Two, I need sunshine in the morning and three is unstructured time for learning and development.

31:06

Minimum an hour. I find I get so much more back from it if it's more than an hour.

31:10

So ideally it's two. So that's three hours of my morning that I leave just open.

31:14

I'm listening to a podcast, I'm reading like that Harvard Business Review article I mentioned earlier.

31:19

Whatever it is that fuels me because in my work now in advising some of the most ambitious CEOs in the world and give, give, giving all day.

31:26

And so my non-negotiables are about how am I going to fill myself up?

31:31

This is what I've learned. The hard way is absolutely necessary for me not to burn out.

31:35

I need to take care of myself physically. I need to be filling my mind and, and learning, you know, a big part of my job is having a finger on the pulses of what's happening in tech globally.

31:43

So I do a lot of just listening to podcasts and reading and researching and things.

31:48

And if I start my day that way, I usually am successful.

31:52

Now, you did ask about my failures constantly.

31:55

If I wasn't constantly failing, that would mean I'm staying very much in my comfort zone and I'm staying in the lane that I know how to do perfectly.

32:00

So I'm okay with that, that I haven't delivered as long as my failures never come in the category of, I didn't show up as my best self today because I wasn't prepared because I was disorganized, because I misunderstood the actual needs of a client or something.

32:15

That's not okay with me that, that those are the kind of mistakes that haunt me and sit with me for like years.

32:20

But if I'm making mistake because I'd never done that before, I'm pushing the confines of my expertise or my experience, that's okay.

32:27

But that's usually iterative. So even if I've made a mistake, I learn really fast and do it better immediately.

32:32

But I think those are the boundaries with which I, I kind of look at that like productivity and how I'm judging my progress and my accomplishments for, for the day

32:39

Is so refreshing. I find this kind of like toxic productivity and I'm sorry to say it, but it's so often like the, the sort of people, the entrepreneurs I follow and the people that I'm interested in this space, often they're men and often, you know, they might be married, they might not have kids, so they've kind of, their wife who's obviously they holding onto all the emotional baggage and then all that emotional stuff.

32:59

So I'm, I'm kind of like I'm done. I saw a mean recently about someone saying I'm kind of done taking advice from like 20 year olds guys because I mean, come on.

33:07

You know, come back to me. I wanna hear from like a woman who's like, you know, juggling a house and a career and a dog and a baby and then whatever they might be juggling because like this is more really, you know, my husband God bless him, gets up at 4 45 every morning.

33:17

Ew, mine too. Why do they do that?

33:19

Why Anne? Why do they do it? But to be fair to him, he could read a book by NA Seal, um, it's this Jocko Wilin character.

33:25

Yes. Refer to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To be fair, it's actually a really good book because he raved about it so much afterwards.

33:30

I then read it and I had to grudgingly admit that it's a really good book.

33:33

It's called Extreme Ownership and it's all about, oh whatever level you are, whatever job you do, whatever role you're doing.

33:38

Like if you take extreme ownership of something and obviously he references the Marines all the time or Navy, Navy Seals, sorry, that's probably, he hate that anyway,<laugh>.

33:46

But yeah, it's all about taking ownership of things and that comes all the way down from that and he gets up super early and he, all his exercises done by, you know, 6:00 AM so you can read, that's great.

33:55

Seriously good for him. I mean, I'm joking, super impressed and gets up come hell or high water.

34:00

He is up at 4 45 and he's at his desk, you know, by eight o'clock and everything is done and he runs his business and he's, you know, very good at it.

34:07

But yeah, for me, I mean I'm up at six, I cannot get up on it any early than that.

34:11

I just can't, it just doesn't work. But I struggle to sleep as it is, which I'm working on, you know, getting up any, any than six and I've gotta do the school run and then I've gotta get to the, I mean I'm at my desk at seven 30 is I can't get there any earlier.

34:21

I can't do anymore.

34:23

Allow me to relieve you of the burden of believing the lies that the most productive people and successful people in the world do that.

34:29

No, same, my husband's also self described like president of the 5:00 AM club, but he's a natural, like good for him, good for do you, do you, it's very annoying cuz he's not that quiet in the morning.

34:39

He thinks he is a ninja but he's not. But anyway, good for them.

34:42

There's no right or wrong. Like I felt so much of my life feeling guilty about being a night owl.

34:46

I do my best thought work at night. I get all my ideas.

34:49

I wrote all my best college essays for that, that I, I just have to be okay with that.

34:53

I learned that really hard when I was writing my book Bet on Yourself.

34:56

It took me forever to figure out my rhythm for creativity cuz I'm used to project.

35:00

I believe in time blocking my calendar's, got all the tasks I need to do today.

35:04

I'm, I'm pretty good at estimating, okay, this client briefing will take me about an hour and I want 30 minutes of unstructured time to research this.

35:10

That works really well for me. But creativity, you can't just say, okay brain, within 15 minutes you're gonna figure out this.

35:16

It doesn't work like that. Play

35:17

A difference,

35:18

Right? Giving yourself that grace of being like here's what works for me and for each individual that's very different.

35:23

And we could talk for a while about what I figured out was finally my natural writing rhythm.

35:26

But um, again, it has to be highly personal and that we can't judge ourselves what works works.

35:31

And it may or may not work for someone else.

35:33

What a relief. Yeah, I did read the 5:00 AM club.

35:35

I actually got about just over halfway through the 5:00 AM club and then I said it's just not for me.

35:39

I popped it back in a little free library outside my house and said someone else can pick that

35:42

Up. That's great, good for them.

35:43

But then many people swear by it. So like you say, whatever works for you.

35:46

No hard for you<laugh>. So I mean you are, at the moment you are counseling like some of the world's, you know, like you say most ambitious, amazing CEOs, people that are changing the world.

35:54

Is there anyone that you'd sort of like to work with that you haven't or you know that would be like an ideal client of

35:59

Yours? Ooh, that's a really fun question.

36:02

<laugh>. Um, I don't know about a name of an actual human might come to me as I describe it, but my avatar in general, the people that I really, really thrive in partnering with are crazy dreamers.

36:15

Like I am not a crazy dreamer. I love to be around people who are unhinged from the co current confines of what is possible.

36:22

I find that wildly exciting and I think that describes every CEO I've worked with.

36:26

They just think and approach the world differently.

36:29

They have this different understanding of what is possible.

36:32

And then my job is to then take these moonshot dreams of theirs and break it down to a hundred manageable steps of where do we start today, how do we make progress?

36:41

What are our roadway indicators that we're on the right path because there's so much trial and error and failure involved.

36:47

I really love that. And so my ideal next person to work with would be like whoever's the next Richard Branson.

36:52

Like I love that kind of crazy, I love that like approaching not only your work but life with just this zeal and passion and love for just wanting to have wild experiences and meet interesting people, do cool things and leave a mark on the world that will outlast your lifespan.

37:06

That really excites me. So anyone in that box,<laugh>, which is a unique box I guess,

37:11

But very unique. But like yeah, I, and I love what you say there.

37:14

Cause I think that's what we can't all be Richard Branson.

37:16

We can't all be Oprah, we can't all be Beyonce, but we can take like that way of that the attitude, right?

37:21

And that mindset of I'm gonna try, I'm gonna, I wanna do different things.

37:24

I wanna learn, I'm not the finished article, I'm curious, I'm interested and yeah, I'm gonna change the world.

37:28

I'm not gonna find a cure of cancer, but I'm gonna change the world of the people around me and the lives of people around me.

37:33

And we can all do that. You don't need to be Oprah to do that.

37:35

I really strongly believe

37:36

That Oprah, Beyonce, if you're listening yes, you would be in that group.

37:40

Yeah,<laugh>, Michelle Obama.

37:42

Oh, I mean come on. I got her new book for Christmas.

37:45

That's

37:45

So good. I haven't read it yet. Have you got the new

37:47

One? Yeah, I just picked it up in the airport on my flight home.

37:49

Oh I'm darn good.

37:51

Yeah. To be honest, if she rewrite the phone directory I'd I'd read it.

37:53

Me too.

37:54

She's done the audible version. I believe she's actually done the

37:56

Recorded it herself book.

37:58

Yeah, I've had a little sample of it on my audible the other day.

38:00

I was like, maybe I'm gonna get the audible as well. Cause then I've got Michelle talking to me like in the car.

38:05

Yes please. She's my best friend. Because

38:06

Yes, I'd like to imagine that situation

38:08

<laugh>.

38:09

So I'm, I'm curious, when you're giving these leaders advice and you're saying they've got these crazy ideas, I mean, do you ever, I mean I'm sure they fail often, so any of these ideas that you think are really bad?

38:18

I mean is it your job to

38:19

Come? Oh yeah,

38:19

Give them that feedback. How does that land?

38:21

How do you give feedback to somebody? It's a really bad idea, but you want to obviously motivate them and keep that positive energy as well and keep them optimistic.

38:29

Or do they not care? Do they appreciate being told a straight answer and straight

38:32

Advice? Yes. And so that is my job description.

38:35

That is what I've done for the past 15 years is my job is to tell the truth to the most powerful people in the room.

38:42

So there's something in TE technology we call the hippo effect.

38:45

HIPPO stands for the highest individually paid person's opinion.

38:48

Once the highest individually paid person's opinion has been expressed.

38:51

Creativity and innovation stop. My job is to make sure that moment never happens.

38:55

There's no HIPAA effect moments in our conversations, especially at that level.

39:00

Once you become like, look, I've worked for these CEOs before they were their current celebrity CEO set.

39:05

They were not yet literally the richest people in the entire world.

39:08

They were known, they were respected, but they were not<laugh>.

39:11

This legend status that they are now.

39:14

My entire job description, if I had to summarize it in a sentence, it was to speak truth to power.

39:18

That is why I was in the room. That was what I was hired to do.

39:21

Because it's really, really dangerous, especially as you're becoming wildly successful and having this astronomical growth and impact that they were having is that suddenly all your ideas are good and all your jokes are funny and people aren't telling you the truth and they're really intimidated by you.

39:32

And my job was to make sure that never happened.

39:35

One, to exemplify the type of behavior we wanted to see with senior executives, which is asking the hard questions, playing devil's advocate, poking holes in all their favorite ideas, helping them see around blank corners.

39:45

And I am the junior most person in the room always like I was surrounded by people with PhDs and things I'd never heard of until they sat down in that room.

39:53

Like I am always the least expert in that.

39:56

And I had to realize that in the long run, that was my greatest advantage.

39:59

To help these experts who have spent their entire careers nicheing down their knowledge into one tiny little aspect.

40:04

And I had to be the zoom out. I was the like 10,000 foot view where I had to be like, unpack that for me.

40:10

What did that term mean actually? Ooh, is this relevant for what we heard last week?

40:13

And really connecting these connectable dots was my purpose in the room.

40:17

So one, I had to be brave enough to do that. Was I able doing that on day one?

40:21

Definitely not like<laugh>, it was incremental growth.

40:24

So when I started with Jeff Bezos, I was the junior most member of his team.

40:29

I was trained by John Connors, who was still to this day, 19 years later, his chief of staff.

40:33

He taught me everything I know. And um, in those early days with Jeff, I was terrified.

40:38

I had no idea what they were talking about. Technology is its own language and to give myself some grace, like back then nobody knew all these words let alone me.

40:46

So I would just, the way I started is I would then go to my manager, John, after the meetings and say, okay, I didn't understand X, Y and Z.

40:54

I've researched it as much as I can on my own.

40:56

Is this the correct like learnings or takeaways from that?

40:58

And as soon as I felt like my own, I called it my homework, self-imposed homework was accurate and I was learning what I needed to glean from these meetings.

41:05

Then I started asking John after the meetings, okay, but my question is this, what if this being true?

41:10

Can we take it there? And once John was like, yeah, that's actually a really good question, we should definitely bring that up.

41:14

I would start doing it live. I would start doing it live in the meeting because I trusted my barometer that I wasn't wasting these.

41:20

You hit the conscience then. Yeah, exactly. I wasn't making fool of myself or wasting their valuable time.

41:25

Then once I was at Google, then I could hit the ground running, ask some smart questions, and then eventually fast forward my job was anticipating every problem, knowing every question they were gonna ask, doing all the research in advance and really being able to have that strategy mind of not only what does my team need from me today, but what are we gonna need tomorrow, even 10 years from now, be able to anticipate.

41:45

That's the core part of my job now, but it's baby steps.

41:48

You, you don't start day one being able to do that no matter who you are or what PhD you have.

41:52

So it's all about that incremental growth of expanding your knowledge.

41:55

Yeah, so interesting. I always felt much better.

41:57

I once met, um, some people that worked at Apple at an event and I said, you know, how do you cope with all this like tech and strategy?

42:03

And one of them said to me, Kelly, I Google stuff all the time.

42:05

I didn't an answer to. I was like, what?

42:08

And they're like, no, no, I just, I'm not sure I Google it and then I'll ask someone else.

42:11

I was like, okay, I feel I've been given like an open chance here to kind of do the same and to ask the stupid questions, not necessarily on upon to everybody, but do the research and find out the answers and then yeah, yeah,

42:21

Yeah. If I've learned anything from working for these wildly powerful people, I mean I was had the privilege of working with, you know, heads of stage or celebrities or that if there's any common denominator, it's that nobody has any idea what they're doing.

42:34

And that is of great comfort to me instead of terror, they're just smart enough to figure it out to cu to trust themselves, to figure it out and do their best and learn really fast.

42:42

I heard this comedian once say that it's a really coming age moment when you realize that your high school's running the country, you know, all these people who like<laugh>, you know, are so dumb and so normal and so just non exceptional are now like, yeah, world leaders are running organizations.

42:57

To me that's a very liberating thought because we're all just figuring it out the best we can.

43:01

And that is not a reason to not put your hand up and say, me too.

43:06

I wanna sit in that seat. I wanna have that responsibility.

43:08

I wanna learn that thing. Because a lot of these people, in fact I was one of my favorite things Michelle Obama ever said, she did an interview with Oprah when they just days after they left the White House and Oprah said, what was it like sitting at a table with the most powerful people in the, in the world every single day?

43:21

Then Michelle, without missing a beat, said, you realize is pretty fast.

43:24

They're not that smart. And that wasn't meant as an insult to anyone.

43:26

It was meant like we're all just figuring it out the best we can.

43:29

They're not smarter or better than me and my question is as valid as anyone else's.

43:32

And I think once we have that moment of click, it can be very liberating.

43:36

Absolutely. All hail Michelle.

43:38

That's yeah,<laugh>, that's my mantra in life.

43:40

I, yeah. Fantastic.

43:41

That's the title of this episode. All Hail

43:44

Michelle<laugh><laugh>. Great idea, right?

43:46

Yeah,<laugh>. So this podcast, it's called Good Intentions and it's all about sort of how we connect and ground ourselves.

43:51

And you mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of what I do is I give, give, give.

43:55

So how do you kind of stay grounded and connected to what's important to you and to what your purpose is in life and what you are trying to sort of achieve?

44:02

I've learned from the people I've worked for that it's really important to be a lifelong learner.

44:07

So I try and remain insatiably curious about things.

44:11

The people I've worked for ask like 100 more questions than a normal person would like.

44:16

To the point that it gets weird and people are looking at me like, where is this going?

44:20

They just love getting into details.

44:22

So that's part of my practice. I just follow rabbit holes.

44:25

If I listen to a podcast and there's a term I haven't heard of or you know, a book, I've never, I follow it through, I like to to chase those rabbit holes.

44:32

So that's part of my protected time every morning for continued learning and education.

44:36

I think something really special happens when you no longer stay fixated in your area of expertise.

44:41

At the moment I'm obsessed with the Huberman LAD podcast, the Stanford, yes,

44:46

Yes, yes.

44:47

Oh my gosh, right? He's so good.

44:50

And it's like all this stuff about neurology that has nothing seemingly nothing to do with my day-to-day life.

44:55

You would not believe how often I'm clueing this stuff about how the mind works, how we motivate ourselves.

45:00

So anyway, I think that for me, being an insatiably curious person and a lifelong learner is what fills me back up and prevents my burnout.

45:08

Even though my job is very demanding and, and at the end of the day my cup is empty every single day.

45:14

So it's my responsibility to fill it back up and get ready for the next.

45:16

And thankfully I think that's really fun.

45:18

Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I'm glad to hear it.

45:20

And I mean, we talked a lot about purpose, you know, purpose in our jobs, purpose in our life.

45:24

And what do you think our purpose is sort of here on earth?

45:27

Like why we're here?

45:28

<laugh> philosophers have been debating that question from the beginning of time.

45:32

I know, I know, but I think just my initial reaction, my gut reaction is three things.

45:37

The first is to learn, as I just mentioned.

45:39

I think constantly pushing ourselves and just being better tomorrow than I was today is my barometer.

45:45

So I think it's to learn, I think it's to lift.

45:47

I really want to be here to use that learning, not just for my own, but to use my tide to raise all ships.

45:53

And that's something I'm trying to be really purposeful about right now.

45:56

I feel this great privilege of having been app apprenticed by some of the most impactful people in the world.

46:01

And my mission now is to democratize success.

46:04

I wanna get everything I've learned out of my head into as many minds as possible, especially underrepresented entrepreneurs.

46:10

We need more people participating in designing the future of this world that we're all gonna share.

46:15

So I wanna learn as much as possible and I wanna lift as many people as possible.

46:19

And the third is really to love. I just got home from visiting my family in Seattle.

46:23

I live on the other side of the world from them. And I was really struck by how core this value is in my family and exhibited by both my parents.

46:31

They just love so deeply, even strangers.

46:33

And um, that's a goal of mine to become even more like them and to really find opportunities to truly make the world a better place no matter how seemingly small, insignificant, but look for those opportunities every day.

46:44

So learn, lift, and love.

46:47

[inaudible] Gosh, powerful. Such powerful, gorgeous sentiment to end on.

46:50

I absolutely love that and thank you so much and, and thank you so much for our conversation.

46:54

I can't wait to see you at a lip best. I've already got my session, your session in the diary and like I said, I'm gonna bring my team, oh and probably like stand in the queue and Sam girl you'll get you to sign the book.

47:02

So apologies in advance for that part, but um, I can't wait.

47:05

I'm very excited.

47:06

<laugh>. Well I've really enjoyed this conversation so hopefully we're just getting started.

47:09

I look forward to more. I'll see you

47:11

Soon. Yeah. Safe travel. Thanks so much for listening to the Good Intentions podcast.

47:16

You can find links to issues and to books that we discussed in the show notes.

47:20

And you can look for the podcast on Instagram.

47:22

It's Good Intentions uae.

47:24

Please do make sure you subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoy this conversation, I'd so appreciate a review on whatever platform you're using.

47:31

It helps more people find out about the podcast.