38. Life Lessons

Brandon 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the operations room a podcast for CEOs. I am Brandon Mensa and joined by my lovely co host Bethany errors, how're things going, Bethany?

Bethany 0:17

going fine, I think to do I had a really bad night's sleep for no reason. So a couple of years ago, I was complaining about not being able to sleep and a friend told me about like the A to Z that you go through in your head, you choose a topic, and then go through things that start with that. So last night, my topic was birds. I have a bird phobia. I'm absolutely petrified of them. So I have no idea why probably just to make my life particularly difficult. Like,

Brandon 0:47

I know what I'll do,

Bethany 0:48

I'll choose birds is my A to Zed.

Brandon 0:50

So this is like, a much more complex version of counting sheep is what you're telling me? Yeah,

Bethany 0:55

but it mostly works. Except for the days when I get to x, y, z. And I'm wide awake still. And there's just nothing more depressing. Not only are there not a lot of birds, I can think of that start with X, Y and Z. But also you're like, okay, that hasn't worked. So let's try a new topic. So I did that throughout the night. It didn't work very well. So that I had these like light dreams of trying to come up with letters or birds that start with letters and like a lot of stress and anxiety related to it.

Brandon 1:25

e was, whose album dropped in: 2003

Bethany 2:20

That was her name of her album. Wow, it

Brandon 2:22

sounds like a: 1980

Bethany 2:43

So I'm just going to start with the first one, which is, know where you want to go. And be really clear on that. But don't be so rigidly holding on to it, that you miss the opportunities in front of you. And so for me, I have known since I'm guessing eight or nine, the woman in Wall Street just captivated me. And I was like, I want to be her. I want to be in the grey suit and the heels. I think she had an MBA, but like a joint something at Harvard Business School. She was super smart, she knew everything. I want to be that woman when I grow up. And so that sustained me for a very long time. And I came from New Mexico, where there are no corporates, nobody does that kind of work. The movie is what motivated me to be this thing. And I had no idea how to get to be that thing. But all through uni. And when I was looking for my first jobs, business, whatever business was, was what I wanted, and where I wanted to be. How I got there was totally organic and random. Taking jobs that sounded cool, looking at different opportunities, following where my energy was cultivating networks, friends, introducing me to things. I ended up broadly where I wanted to be, I don't have an MBA, I don't work in finance. I don't wear grey suits and heels. But I did end up the only woman in the room most often with power and influence, which was actually kind of like the core of my desire. So how

Brandon 4:31

do you think this lesson parlays itself to businesses more broadly, because immediately when you say these things, it kind of just refreshes or reminds me of what we do and companies these days, which is the founder sets the vision for the company, how we get to that vision can take all sorts of permutations and flavours over time. You know, with OKR teams, we set KPIs and targets that we want to get to. And the problem is given to the cross functional team to try to figure it out. So it seems like this broad idea of lessons learned around this Set your vision set your North Star, how you get there, the trials and tribulations and experiments along the pathway. But this applies to almost everything that you do in life and doing business.

Bethany 5:09

Yeah, even how many times do you write a budget at the start of the year or your five year plan and have a great intense and how that actually is going to unfold? You know, even as you're writing it, it's not going to unfold the way you're planning. It's just the best guess for that moment.

Brandon 5:24

I was in my last year of business school, and I was in the internship programme and the internship programme is absolutely critical that phase to really get into the working world with some actual experience behind your belt. I did the first semester of the internship programme, I applied for 10 roles in marketing roles, got 10 interviews and did not get an actual job. So it was quite painful at the time, and rolled into the second semester of the internship programme. And the way that the programme worked was that if you were in back to back consecutive semesters where you didn't actually get a job, they punted you from the programme. So it's a bit of like a Darwinian approach, at least it was at the time. So there was a lot of pressure I put on myself to land that first role. I went through the entire semester, again, interviews didn't land anything. And the last role that was posted for that semester was a selling exhibition booth space for a conference trade show. So really a straight up outbound cold calling, SDR role. I mean, didn't call it str. Roles back in the day. I don't even know what they call it. To be honest. I think it was called a marketing specialist.

Bethany 6:28

Yeah, tele marketing was a thing, remember? Yeah, yeah, telemarketing.

Brandon 6:32

I think at that point, being: 2122

Bethany 7:59

Because there's a long queue of people who wanted to sell exhibition space by so Exactly.

Brandon 8:03

listen to Gangster's paradise: 1995

Bethany 9:37

And the thing is, is like the more you do uncomfortable things, the more you realise you can handle uncomfortable things. And sometimes like when a kid stubbed their toe or whatever. You need to go, Yes, it hurts but not feed it. And then as an adult, you also need to do that. So it's like, you have a choice when you're going to Get on that call have loads and loads and loads of anti speaking to yourself and all the reasons why it's going to be horrible and everything that's going to go wrong and really stoke the fear, or not going to do that. You're going to pick up the phone, see what happens. And just brace yourself. And I think learning that skill is critical. And then to bring that round to the radical candour of one, brave enough to have uncomfortable conversations, you also understand that you're going to survive it and the other person is going to survive it.

Brandon: 10:33

All right, lesson number two, Bethany hit us.

Bethany: 10:37

So my second lesson, don't try and be somebody else. Figure out what you're good at, which is going back to like, where's your energy come from, and be the best at that thing. I spent so much of my early career and early life, looking at other people and thinking, I need to be like them. What's wrong with me that I'm not friendlier, I'm not faster, don't have as many friends. So I would spend my time trying to make myself more like somebody I wanted to be like, which was not me. And that just was like lost opportunity, instead of spending time becoming the best version of me and honing the skills that I cared about and the things that I was good at. And I think also something that I definitely did, and I suspect loads of people do is if it comes easily to me, I don't value it. I'm like, Oh, well, that's really easy. So that can't be valuable. And it took me a really long time to notice that the things that I'm good at, other people aren't. And so therefore, I should focus on this. Rather than like, Oh, that's really easy, whatever, that doesn't matter. What I need to do is become an excellent party host, which I will never ever be. I

Brandon: 12:07

think oftentimes, especially for introverts, I tend to look to extroverts as being the better people. Yeah, that makes like they have better skills, they have more charisma, people like them, they can talk and really articulate ways. And I always used to compare myself negatively versus these individuals. That would downplay what Brandon's good at. And think as I've gotten older, I think the recognition of what I actually am good at what value I bring to these organisations and being able to really take that and make it quite a powerful asset to help manage businesses and to coach others. I'm really much, much better at these days. And I think that comparison piece, I don't do any more. But what I do do is I do look at some of the behaviours and ways of working of some of these individuals, or at least I did historically, and try to pick up bits and pieces that I could integrate back into my toolkit in ways that enhance Brandon that came from Brandon's perspective, as opposed to trying to mimic somebody else's?

Bethany: 12:58

Did you actually take the ways that they were working or ideas that it stimulated?

Brandon: 13:08

If I'm being honest, I think it was a bit of a mix of both, there was both an inspiration piece of I think back to one of my previous managers who had huge charisma, he inspired me to be more kind of like a diffusive in my praise of individuals using really strong wording around it. So there was a bit of like inspiration, but also slight ways of working style that I picked up not mimicking, per se, as it was like, I would think to myself, yeah, this this verbiage that he uses, there's a wonderful element to it. And I wanted to use some of that, from a branding point of view. Because I

Bethany: 13:45

think I probably take ideas from others or ways of thinking that I haven't thought of before. If somebody wakes up at five o'clock every morning because they're insane, and they need to do like their 400 things before the children wake up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that. Seven Habits of Successful people. I'm like, No, not for me. But the idea of prioritising and valuing time to work on myself is something that I can then take in and absorb into my life in a way that works for me. Okay, Brandon's your number two, perfect. So

Brandon: 14:19

over the course of a seven year duration, I went from being a product specialist to a VP of product in a company. And I went through all the levels associated to those promotions. And at that point in time, I had a insatiable appetite to do two things. One was to become a domain expert, which in this case is mobile phones and what the product was, I understand it backwards and forwards what the customers were looking for. I was probably at some point the most vers person in the company around what the customer needs were, and the market dynamics at our marketplace. I knew exactly what was going on and what the players were doing and then functionally, it was the same thing, which is how do I be a phenomenal product person? This is back In the 2000s, through books, mentors programmes, whatever I could lay my hands on, in terms of cutting edge product principles and being a craftsperson, when it came to product, again, insatiable appetite to get from that junior level to much more senior level as fast as I possibly could, by pulling together the functional piece and the domain expertise part of it. And I remember going into Seattle, Washington to meet with Microsoft. And in that meeting, we had probably 2530 product people, researchers, designers, and so on half of which were native Chinese speakers in this case, and I was coming in to talk about Chinese text input for mobile phones. And I was so knowledgeable about the product and the Chinese language properties as it related to mobile phones and input methods. They were looking at me as the actual expert about how that actually works. And I think it was just a really good demonstration at that point in my life around this idea that I was a domain expert, people were looking to me for answers, and I was delivering those answers back to folks. And I think the lesson here is, focus on the job that you have this idea of side hustles, and other things that are distracting or thinking about the next job, forget that focus on the job, be a practitioner, be a craftsperson, understand your domain, build that within you. And when opportunities arise, which they will unveil themselves, because you're a good practitioner, when those opportunities arise, you will be perfectly placed to take advantage of those opportunities when they happen. So my recommendation to young people is, do that focus on the job that you have become good at what you do, and opportunities will come from that, that you can take advantage of to move yourself on at that point. And the last little bit of this is, if you do that, there will always be a job out there for you. So even if your company takes it, being a practitioner, it's not gonna be that challenging for you to find the next role. Because you've built that skill set, you have people around you that know that you're good that you can bank on to help you to refer you into other opportunities. And that's the place to be.

Bethany: 17:08

So it's interesting that you really specifically went for being a domain expert, or some sort of expert. And this maybe goes back to be who you are, and not somebody else. So I always wanted to be a domain expert, because for all the reasons that you just said, but I get bored really easily. And there was no way I could do seven years of what you did. And so I beat myself up for so long about not being a domain expert, and what am I who am I, I'm not a marketing person, I'm not a sales person. There's nowhere to put me. So like when I first started, new voice media, and I was whatever crazy title that I hated, because it was like, Director of Product marketing, sales operations and strategy or something like, you know, like just everything, which today would be Chief of Staff. I was so uncomfortable in that position, because everybody else had a box to fit in. And they were great at their job. And they knew about marketing, and they knew about sales. And I was just like, who am I, I can't get a job, I can't market myself. I am this glue between everything. And therefore I'm massively unimportant. And I can be replaced by all of these functional people. And then I did five years of therapy. That's what one does. And it was brought, I don't know, maybe two, three years into therapy, and I was just there and I was like, I am considerably younger than every other person in the management team. I'm the only woman I'm the only foreigner I don't belong. And a lot of like, woe is me victimhood of like this untenable situation. And my therapist because she was a good therapist, and not just stay, and how does that make you feel a therapist, or look at your strengths, you know, all of their jobs, you're super valuable because you plug all the gaps of things that they don't know how to do. You're not in the room, because you know how to golf, you're not in the room, because you're going to strip clubs, you're not in the room, because you're a lot of fun to be around. You're in the room, despite those things and look at the value that you're providing. And over time I've realised that like I guess I do have a specialisation but my specialisation is not obvious. It's definitely not like being in the room as the person who knows mobile phone Chinese code more than anybody else. I guess for me, it goes back to my original line of like, realise what you're good at, embrace it, and go for that. And for you, Brandon, that's becoming a subject matter expert. For me. That's learning loads of stuff about everything because I get bored But then when you know loads of stuff about everything, it becomes valuable as well. Yeah,

Brandon: 20:04

actually, you bring up a good point here, which is your centre of gravity in your superpower a little bit. And believing in that, and packaging that as like the real value add, knowing that and being able to add that value to companies, we all have our thing. And I guess just know that thing is, and being able to triple down on that. Which

Bethany: 20:23

brings me to, if you want something, work hard at it, which I think encapsulates part of what you're talking about. And so again, another contradiction, don't work all of the hours and burn yourself out all the time. Because then people will look at you and just think, either You're irreplaceable, and you can't be promoted, or to you don't understand what matters, and you're not on top of shit. And so why in the world, would you get another job because you're just like spinning your wheels wildly. What you need to do is work hard at the things that matter when they matter. So peaks and troughs. But don't be afraid of putting in those long hours when it matters. Okay,

Brandon: 21:11

lesson number three from my side. So at this point in my career, I had built up massive ego, I would say, and hubris around brand and being fantastic.

Bethany: 21:23

Without five years of therapy well done.

Brandon: 21:26

It's almost the reverse isn't like I'm the master of the universe. So I was classically put into a role at that point that I was not qualified for, nor I was good at, which was the managing director, partner of the CEO, I was put into board meetings to that point. And I was terrible. I didn't know how to build relationships with these people. I was nervous going into those sessions. I just didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. And I was asking terrible questions and answering weight in ways that were probably not useful to the board either. At some point, the CEO sat me down and said exactly that, which is Brandon, You're terrible. This, here's the reason why, and you no longer in the board meetings. And from a performance standpoint, in the mid roll, you're also not satisfying that. Here's the reason why. And I remember at that point in my life based on this ego part that was coming into play my reaction to his feedback in my head and tell him this, obviously, it was just like, go fuck yourself, you're wrong. Here's a bunch of rationalisations that I'm gonna propose to myself as to why I'm right in this case. And it took me, I don't know, three months, four months of just reconciling the fact that he was right, I was wrong. And there was a tonne of stuff for me to learn much more on the ways of working communication, behavioural side of things, technically, I was strong domain, the functional stuff that I spoke about before, but I was just terrible at being an actual leader communicator. And during that same time period, I'd taken on an external coach to help rebuild Brandon. And to help me focus on what I needed to do next. And it helped, it worked. And I think the lesson here is, accept critical feedback for what it is and take it seriously. Don't shy away from it. And you know, it doesn't matter if you agree with it or not, you need to try to look at it objectively, in terms of, is there some essence of truth here that I need to think about consider and to action? Or not, potentially, but I think just going through that process is incredibly important. At that point, it was all about me, being a leader, right? I'm a leader, I'm the smart guy. And the other revelation that came slightly later was that leadership is not about you, it's about serving others and really allowing others to flourish and to develop and to perform and to be truly foster that within the people that you manage. And I think that's the other critical lesson I learned.

Bethany: 23:45

Yeah, it's a really hard lesson that, that it's all about the people, like you can say, it's all about people. I know. Yeah. Okay. It's all about people. But what that actually means on a day to day basis is strange. As a leader, I think, particularly if you have free like read and having domain expertise, so you're like, well, but I know what I'm talking about. And also like being more of a doer, and in the work and the more senior you become, the more removed you are from doing. And the more time is spent on the people stuff. And yet the people stuff that somehow doesn't count, and is not as easily measurable. And so then it's hard to figure out what your value is, like, it's really easy to know your value. When you're producing an amazing board pack. And you're analysing the shit out of stuff. It's much harder to explain your value. When you're like leading a meeting, the weekly meeting and because not tangible, and you're not producing something. It's hard to understand, but you can really see when it's not there. One of the clearest examples of this for me of The power of leadership was actually my kids old primary school, had a really strong head, and then a series of misfires and then they had a head, who was horrible. Everything about this person was awful. She couldn't remember the kids names, she spoke down to the parents, she was apparently horrific to the teachers. If she was doing an assembly, the kids were like, inwardly grown, she had no love anywhere, the morale of the staff plummeted, you had lots of staff turnover, go to parent teacher conferences, and we're just like, nobody was engaged. She finally left much too late. New head came in, same background shows up. And it's just a good leader. I don't know what made this person a good leader. They just are. And the kids are engaged, the staff is engaged, everybody's happy. The entire aura of the school is transformed with one person. And it's not like, oh, they did a new newsletter, or they did this or they didn't? Who knows? That's the power of leadership.

Brandon: 26:17

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I always think about it as an intangible. And to your point of it. I don't know what it is that you're right. There's like hard outcomes of like the board deck deliverable. But you know, being able to lead people enable people, coach people, mentor, people create a field or a cultural field within a group, to put them in the best possible position to succeed, how you quantify that, you can't and that's why is kind of an intangible, but when you see it, you know, it's, and you can feel it. And you

Bethany: 26:46

can also see when you don't have it, I think bad leadership is easier to see than good leadership.

Brandon: 26:51

When something is terrible, you can see the symptoms everywhere. When something's phenomenal, you just kind of take it for granted that it's great. And

Bethany: 26:58

then that actually pulls me back to the, to the original point of like, know what your strengths are, and be who you are. And so understand what kind of leader you are or if you're not a leader, and it's okay, like I feel like our culture idolises leaders and idolises strategists. It's like, somehow they're the elite of the elite. And not everybody is going to be a strategist and not everybody is going to be a leader. And that's also okay. Because if we were all leaders, nothing would happen.

Brandon: 27:31

Well, actually, it's funny that you say this, because there's such a growing movement now towards career progression frameworks, not just having the classic, you know, becoming a manager track. But for the individual contributor, having an ongoing, individual contributor track that never ends, and recognising and understanding what you just said, which is, people can and should be able to progress down an icy track, get paid more money, and have a phenomenal career doing that. And not everybody has to become a manager. And to your point, not everyone's good at being a manager, but they can be just unbelievable icees delivering just phenomenal work. And they should get paid for that and have a career that makes tremendous sense.

Bethany: 28:09

So neither of our lessons learned, but just an observation that I think we completely agree. And then the other part that stimulate an idea for me was, your lesson learned was to take feedback, take it on the chin, actually listen and do something about it. And that's a very good lesson. For me, the extension to that, or my experience was because I'm super good at feedback, you know, probably too good and that I just beat myself up all the time. But finding people who stretch you, I've had two people in my career, who have told me, I could do more. And I was shocked both times because, you know, it might surprise you to learn but I was always like the a student and did everything really well and was afraid to make any mistakes. So I wasn't used to being told that there was more in the tank than I was giving, and that I wasn't thinking critically, and I wasn't thinking enough. And one of the times it was an amazing experience with a mentor. It was a former boss, who was former BCG and we were working on a project together and she's just like, No, this is the way you build slides. This is the way you think this is how you form an argument. This is the level of quality that we're looking at. And so through working with her, I basically got the BCG analyst training, but live with something and I just loved it. And then the second one, I have shared publicly loads of times it was our very scary, very 1980s sales leader, French board chair who just tore me to shreds in the board meeting which I cracked something in me that meant I had to cry for like four or five days. But I came out of that so much more resilient. But again, giving very specific tactical ways that I could improve, which he provided to which he provided. So he wasn't just like your shit, he was like, it was one of the lessons is, we're not paying you to provide us with data we're paying you to think for us. And I have given that advice to other people many times. And then the other one was actually not in the board meeting where my psyche was cracked in half, or my soul was cracked and a half, it was a subsequent one where we were preparing for our quarterly company updates, and he was there for some reason. And I was presenting and he just likes like, nope, nope, start with the punch line. I was like, oh, but he's like, start with the punch line. Okay. And so I've always done that as well of like how to get tighter and your public speaking. And it was very valuable, even if it wasn't comfortable at the time. And actually, as we're speaking now, I'm thinking I don't have in my life right now, a mentor who will push me further and get more out of me than I think I can do. So to do list, need to go find somebody who will kick my ass for a bit. So that's like a bonus one finds somebody or multiple people who will tell you you're not good enough, but in really specific ways that help you get to be better.

Brandon: 31:37

So next lesson from my side, post my time as managing director of this company, I did a bit of a reset afterwards, I took a step down a bit of a lateral move, and became a market analyst for IDC. And the IDC job was fantastic. I loved it, it was all around being a thought leader, making presentations, you know, thought leader documents that people would buy for 10, grand, doing keynote speeches, conferences, and so on. And a couple months into that job, we got a call from the CBC, which is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, similar to the BBC, and they wanted me to come in to talk about Blackberry. And I remember when my boss had came to me asking me to go to the studio, which was just gonna be in two hours, you know, this broadcast works when they didn't need an analyst, they need them immediately. So the first thought that occurred to me was, Who am I to be an expert on TV, number one. Number two, this is not just TV, but live TV, if I screw up, there is no going back from this stuff. It's gonna be a disaster. And we just have this huge crisis moment of doubt. And my next thought was getting back to the previous lessons, there is an opportunity being served to me right now. And I've got all the skills and capabilities to do this. And I need to do this. And getting back to my motivation at the time, which was all about ambition. The answer was yes, I will do this and roll the dice. So I did. And at that point, did the interview went off. Well, all the broadcaster's watch each other in terms of who the analysts are. So at that point, because I've done a credible job, I started getting calls from all the other broadcasters to come in to do the TV commentary in terms of BlackBerry specifically in terms of what was happening at that point, and ended up having a number of engagements on the the TV side of things, which was great and kind of took me to the next level in terms of my ability to be a communicator, I guess, the lesson learned here is that when opportunities avail themselves, because you're good, because you're talented, you need to take them, step into them, and make them happen for yourself. And the other bit of this is, don't wait for organisations to help you figure this stuff out. Which is, if you need to be a better version of yourself, take the time and effort to figure out what does that need to look like for you take the steps to make it happen, whether that happens in the organisation, because they're actually helping you or not, whenever you need to be proactive to craft your pathway, because the fact of the matter is, I would not have been able to pull off those TV gigs by myself. If I had not figured out that I needed to be a better communicator. And we'd I've referenced this previously. But I took four years of acting, I did three years of improv. And I was at that point where I was confident enough to pull off the TV gigs. That was Brandon by himself, figuring out the pathway and then making it happen in this case. So I think there's a bit of this self reliance scenario, that all of us need to recognise, which is companies come and go. They may help they may not, you know, hopefully they do. But the fact of the matter is you need to pick up your bootstraps and figure it out for yourself. Sometimes. I

Bethany: 34:44

have a very similar one which is be responsible. It's that being responsible for your life and being proactive, not taking a victim mentality, but then also being responsible to the team To the company to other people. And this takes me into what's expected at different levels of seniority and the level of responsibility, which again, I don't think everybody always thinks about. And if you want to be promoted, not only should you in effect be doing and demonstrating, like the skills of the next level, you should also be demonstrating the responsibility expected of the next level. So, when somebody comes in first job, the goal is to go from being directed by your manager to being self directed, then the next step would managers or being able to direct others, it's not just being able to see what's needed for you. But make sure that you understand what's needed for your team, your direct team, then the next level up is when you're running a function. I saw this quite often where people get very good at directing others within their function, but then have a bit of a victim mentality around the annoying sales team are the annoying marketing team or product won't do this. Like as soon as you just hear well, product won't do our product says blah, or sales has given us this or marketing's leads are bad. Your job leading a function is to start to solve those problems up and downstream. Your job isn't just to complain bitterly about other organisations and

Brandon: 36:35

other functions. This is a common problem. I

Bethany: 36:38

think it's super common. And I think it's just because it's not explained that what your job is it because everybody thinks, Okay, well, my job is I'm really good at sales, and I can get my team to deliver a number and therefore that's the end of my job. But know, if you actually want to move from being a sales director to VP sales, or CRO, you need to start solving the upstream downstream issues, and that's talking to your peers. And that's changing things within other parts of the organisation. So that your function works well. And again, that's taking responsibility, you're actually still just taking responsibility for your function, but you're not being a victim about it, you're solving problems that need to be solved that are outside of your swim lane.

Brandon: 37:16

I think that is a tremendous piece of advice. And then that's

Bethany: 37:20

the piece that a CEO should have is how do you motivate everybody which comes to a completely amorphous, it's not being really good at sales or really good at delivering product, or even solving how sales and product work together? It's how do you keep everybody excited about achieving the vision that you've laid out? That's the the pinnacle of leadership, isn't it? And that's all based on responsibility. You know, there's

Brandon: 37:49

a real reality to this that a lot of folks don't do, which is just take responsibility for the world in which they live, which to your point is not just literally what they do, but what surrounds them in this case, and you're always surrounded by other people, other teams, other priorities, and how you work with those folks to pull things together to move the ball forward is the definition of success and also the definition of what responsibility looks like. The next story on the docket is I went back into the settle after the last IBC analyst role, which is to be the VP of product and was six months into that VP of Product role. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Luxor hotel. And I was in the room by myself. And I was really, really, really unhappy. And I didn't want to leave the room that day I just on the tradeshow floor, I was like, I don't want to be here anymore. I'm done. I want to leave this company. I felt like I was being undermined. I felt like there was competing, conflicting priorities. I felt like I wasn't working well. With the leadership team. I felt like there was all sorts of things that we needed to do building the product team itself, the researchers, designers, product manager side of things, we had customers interact with tourists to be done. There's all sorts of pressure to make things happen. And I gone back to Calgary, Canada, a few weeks after that, for a job opportunity that was presented to me. And I had a decision to make at that point, which is, do I bail on this job that I just got hired for where there's a tremendous opportunity here six months in and go to the back to Canada and take on this role? Or do I stick it out and see if I could turn things around for myself. And it was an agonising decision at the time. And when I reflect back on it, I made exactly the right choice, which is I pulled my shit together. And I think it was all about me in this case, I needed to pull myself together, I needed to rethink how I was approaching the role itself. And I needed to figure things out. And I did and on the flip side of that had a tremendous run at the company. The company was enormously successful. And when I look back on that time, if I had not made that choice, I would be in a very different position right now for sure. Without a shadow of a doubt, there's so many different ways I can even it's one of those like sliding door moments where I don't know where I would have ended up to be honest. But back in the backwaters of Canada, I was working for some shitty telco company or something I don't quite know. But in any event, I think the lesson learned here really is one around resilience, which is throwing in the bag is not always the right choice. For me, what I understood quite readily was that this company had a tremendous product had a tremendous opportunity ahead of it. And it was my job as the leader of the business to figure out how to lead properly and to make it happen. So

Bethany: 40:35

it's definitely about resilience. But it ties into a lot of the other things we were talking about today as well. So knowing what you're good at, and doing uncomfortable things. And sometimes the uncomfortable is what's required, and taking responsibility for your life. There's so many ups and downs, the number of times I wanted to leave businesses, because of kind of like the things that you're talking about. It's like a relationship, isn't it? Like you have rough patches, but it doesn't feel like you're having rough patches, because it's work and so like, the world is over, as you know it like you know, so the number of drafted resignation letters, the amount of venting. And then you just have to realise, no, it's a rough patch. And actually, there's more work to be done here. Or this is an opportunity that is worth sticking with until you know that it's really not

Brandon: 41:33

exactly, it's sometimes hard to know the difference. This is where outside counsel and coaches or people that can really help you think through challenges like this externally are super helpful just to kind of like a little more objectively look at what's going on and be able to help make the right choice.

Bethany: 41:49

I think there's that and there's also just time, if you've had a really bad meeting or a blow up with somebody, that is not the time to decide to resign, give it a month, give it two months, definitely give it the night, and just see how things change. Because it is ultimately another relationship only it's a really complicated relationship with you and like a lot of different people, plus an organisation. So while we're talking about people, people are really helpful. One because they teach you things and they hold you to account and they make life meaningful. And you'll either hire them, or for me also, more importantly, be hired by them. My best opportunities have always come through my network, rather than through recruiters or applying for jobs. The ones that have made the most impact on my career have come through network, this podcast has come from us knowing each other. And so you should cultivate your network. But that, again, requires being who you are, I'm not cultivating my network so I can get my next. Whatever opportunity. I'm cultivating my network because I genuinely like the people that I meet. And I find people interesting and have cool stories. And I genuinely want to help people. And therefore I have a very big network. And I 100% believe in putting it out there. And being helpful will mean that when I need help, something will arise. And it's tied into that original one of Be true to yourself. And don't cultivate a network because you're supposed to and don't cultivate a network of all of the important people only because they'll just see through it. And people can tell when you're doing it because you genuinely like them versus you're doing it because you have some sort of ulterior motive.

Brandon: 43:51

I have a particular mentor of mine, where he takes this deadly serious and he gets tremendous value from it. And, you know, I remember having dinner with some almost like random people at some point, I can't remember why we're sitting down together. And this individual knew my mentor and I said, Okay, how did you guys get to know each other yatta yatta. And at some point in the conversation, he was like, yeah, he made a referral into some other person for me, and I ended up getting married to that referral. There is kind of odd serendipity that can lead to really interesting outcomes for people in this case, he got married. But I think just that belief in his network has paid them dividends again and again. And you know, the loyalty this individual now has to my mentor because of what he did for him in terms of the introduction to his wife. There's a lot of just goodwill there that you could never get in any other form.

Bethany: 44:44

I read a book called tribal leadership many years ago, in that it talks about triads. If you're not very secure, you quite like to have a hub and spoke set of relationships. So like everybody go As through, you save lots of one on one relationships. And one of the things that can really transform your influence is to start introducing people to each other. And so rather than being like, oh, I need to be in that meeting, or you talk via me to this person, instead, you're like no you to meet. And I have no idea if I was doing it or not doing it before reading the book. But I really liked the idea. And I started to become aware of it. And I spend a tremendous amount of time introducing random people to each other. Because I listen to stories, I hear interesting conversations and thoughts and where people are going in their lives. And then I talked to somebody three months later, and like, oh, Joe would be the perfect person for you to speak with for whatever reason. And I think my brain is probably sometimes a bit too expensive in the connections between people. So my hit rate of success of those introductions is probably like 20 30%, of like, where something actually happens. But you don't know what's gonna happen afterwards, when these people just happen to meet. So maybe this meeting didn't create something amazing, but it's a seed that's planted, these two people now know each other for something that might happen in the future. So related to the network is another people, one, be kind to the people that you interact with. But don't confuse kindness with being liked, or being nice. So by what I mean by kindness is showing respect for people. Sidenote lesson that I've learned is, everybody's interesting. If you just take enough time to listen, that one was a really hard one for me, because I used to be an absolute intellectual snob and pre therapy. I think like that shell that I created to feel good about myself was quite superior about loads of other people. But you know, after my show was cracked, open, and all the tears and all this therapy, I have a lot of space now for everyone, because I'm like, I'm cool, you'll be cool as well. So treating people with respect as humans, is part of being kind, not going out of your way to be mean. Don't be insulting, don't exclude people unnecessarily. If somebody's not in the meeting, don't make it a point of pointing out afterwards that they've been excluded. Because I think exclusion is one of those things that it hits me hard. And I'm assuming, because of our chip brains, it hits all of us hard when we're not part of the group. It just like one of those really primal, gut punches being excluded. So be aware of your actions and your words and how they'll impact others. But conversely, kindness doesn't mean that everybody's going to like you, and be okay with that. And don't hide your light under a bushel because you want to be liked. And also be okay with the fact that you can respect somebody as a fellow human being, but not like them not want to spend time with them. And they don't need to be in your network long term. Let's assume you have somebody that you don't get on with at work, you need to figure out a way of finding a common ground where you can get on, but you might not then cultivate that network with in relationship with them long term. And that's okay. And conversely, there will be people who just don't like you.

Brandon: 48:33

It's actually quite interesting, because this was my next lesson learned myself. I was dealing with a type a sales leader. And to your point, personality wise, I did not like him. He was very pushy, and all sorts of ways that I resented I guess. And I remember one meeting in particular, that was almost like an explosion between the two of us. And from that point, I don't think we spoke for probably six months, it was ridiculous. What I recognised much, much later on post, my time working with them was that actually he was very skilled at his craft, he was very good at what he did. He had reasons for what he was wanting to do at the time. And, honestly, I have a deep level of respect for him as an individual and as a professional as well. Do I necessarily like him, per se? No.

Bethany: 49:20

Being kind of out of service,

Brandon: 49:22

I wouldn't go out with him in that sense. from a business point of view or working point of view, I'm sure, come 2024 Right now I work with them seamlessly to enable an organisation to be successful. And I think that's the key bit, which is the respect for the person and maintaining that respect and not doing silly things, which, you know, I lay my own feet, not his. Similarly, I worked with another individual where I had so many preconceptions about this person where they had bought, the company that I worked for, in Calgary, Canada, they enrolled into town laid off the entire company with the exception of three of us I ended up working for that larger corporate company at that point and I remember the first call that we had or the second call, again, this is me with a lack of respect to him. And it was like completely unfair, given the fact that I barely knew him. I just had these preconceived ideas in my head. But he said something in my call. And I said something to the effect of like, Do you have a problem with me, you're in something like that, right? Immensely disrespectful. And I ended up leaving that role at some point, and he disappeared from my life. Then he reappeared in my life, four years later, on a call and became my boss. And at that point, I got to know him. And we developed a wonderful relationship. He invested heavily in me in terms of who I am today, and maybe think about myself and much more expensive ways than I ever thought about myself previously. And going back to this basic idea of respect your colleagues, whether you like them or not, personally, in that sense, there's so much value you can get out of individuals,

Bethany: 50:56

looking at it from a longer term life, or they're no longer your colleagues, or what is what we're doing now, with the podcast. And just life in general, don't be afraid to be disliked. Because it has nothing to do with who you are. As long as you're not an asshole. So like, as long as you're being kind and respectful. If your opinions upset people, so be it. Yeah.

Brandon: 51:20

And you're right. I mean, this is literally part and parcel of leading companies, you can't avoid it.

Bethany: 51:26

I have no control over how other people are going to view me. And I'm also not going to stop being an opinionated woman, which already know is like, a bold statement in this world. And you can take me or leave me, because this is who I am. So that's the lesson for me is you can't control what other people think about you. So as long as you're not an asshole and actively going around destroying people's lives, fuck them. Yeah.

Brandon: 51:53

If you are in a position where the principles by which you act are sound, right, where you are respectful, you're kind you express empathy, vulnerability, candour, psychological safety, whatever all that stuff that you're wedded to which you are. And those principles are, they're the aspects of how you manifest yourself within the business itself. If people are deciding for whatever reason, that they don't like some of those manifestations, as long as you're rooted on what is, you know, in principle, the right thing to do in the business itself to your point, there's nothing that you can do at that point or that stage. If you're a leader in a business, you will have people that will not like you for different reasons that you can control to your point. So I think this is actually a wonderful lesson to finish the podcast on so thank you, Brandon Mensing and Buccaneers operations room.

Bethany: 52:48

It was a pleasure, Brandon. Thanks for having me.

Brandon: 52:51

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