Aug. 17, 2024
Navigating Tech Careers & Fostering Diversity: Insights from Futurist Sudha Jamthe
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Ever wondered what it takes to navigate a career in the fast-evolving tech industry? Join us on Unlimited Seating as we sit down with Sudha Jamthe, a renowned Technology Futurist, Business School of AI which is her personal platform, author of 7 books, educator, and independent researcher with 25+ years of entrepreneurial and operational experience in the technology industry. Sudha builds online learning communities at Weeklywed and IoTWomen and Global South in AI at the NeurIPS conference.
Her aspiration is a limitless world where AI can work ethically for all of us. In her spare time, Sudha enjoys chasing self-driving cars and hugging robots.
Get ready to be inspired by her journey of embracing new technologies and her unwavering commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in tech.
In this episode, Sudha reveals how her initial curiosity about the Internet of Things blossomed into a multifaceted career that includes teaching at Stanford and writing influential books. Learn about her unique approach to using community feedback to shape her professional growth and gain a deeper understanding of how real-world applications and industry challenges have fueled her passion for autonomous vehicles, data analytics, and Generative AI. Sudha’s story serves as a testament to the power of continuous learning and the importance of leveraging constructive feedback for personal development.
But Sudha's journey doesn't stop at technology. During our conversation, Sudha shared her candid experiences about career transitions, salary negotiations, and the challenges faced by women re-entering the workforce. From launching a startup during the dot-com boom to consulting for PayPal, Sudha shares valuable lessons on resilience and adaptability. Discover her efforts to empower women in tech through initiatives like IoT Women, and understand the critical need for advocating professional value and self-worth. This episode is a treasure trove of inspiration and practical advice for anyone passionate about technology and diversity.
Sudha can be reached at sudhajamthe.com
#powerwomen #womeninleadership #womenempoweringwomen #diversity #diversityandinclusion #equalopportunities #leadership #leadershiplessons #career #opportunity #leader #globalleader #interview
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WEBVTT
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Hi and thank you for giving your time to Unlimited Seating.
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I'm your host, Sunila Samuel.
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Every episode, we bring to you a role model who shares her journey in an easy-flowing, candid conversation.
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We talk about early childhood influences, career choices and how they've navigated through biases and life in general to get to where they are at today.
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Through these conversations, Unlimited Seating aims to inspire, educate and build a community that promotes and celebrates inclusion and diversity in a world where female leaders are still an exception and not the norm.
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Hey, and not the norm.
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Hey.
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Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unlimited Seating.
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It's been a while, but I'm so happy to be back and with my first guest, Sudha Jamte.
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Let me tell you a bit about Sudha.
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Sudha Jamte is a technology futurist, author of seven books, an educator, an independent researcher with 25 plus years of entrepreneurial and operational experience in the technology industry.
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She builds online learning communities at WeeklyWeb and IoT Women and Global South in AI at New IPS Conference.
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Her aspiration is a limitless world where AI can work ethically for all of us.
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In her spare time, Sudha enjoys chasing self-driving cars and hugging robots.
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She can be reached at sudhajamtecom.
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Sudha, thank you so much for making the time to be here with us at Unlimited Seating today.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm so excited to have this conversation.
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Likewise and I'm going to jump right into it because I just love your profile first, can you share a little bit, get us started, about what you do, why you do it, what motivates you.
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It's a very different profile from many of my other guests at Unlimited Seating.
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That's true, and anybody who sees my profile would say I do many things, which is kind of my method to the madness.
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I'm a technology futurist, I'm based out of Silicon Valley and I've had five or seven different careers in my life, I would say, and the bulk of my career has been in technology industry.
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I started from being a software engineer and then I wanted to do a startup, so I eventually ended up doing a startup.
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That's the entrepreneurial part in my resume.
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That you see.
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But I love learning constantly.
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What I do is, having worked for a couple of decades in the technology industry, built out organizations from scratch for innovation, for social, for mobile new technologies, I realize I like new technologies.
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I get very excited.
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That's why I chase the robots and self-driving cars.
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But my operational experience has taught me that there are some technologies that are here to stay and many of them come and go in waves, and so I hold myself accountable to see when I get excited about a technology, what are the business drivers, what are the market drivers, what is the technology really doing, and then use my experience to figure out my own thought around it.
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And I write, I talk, I teach and women tend to be limiting themselves unless they know 100% of something, and so I like to make sure that you know there are more women brought in to learn the latest new technology.
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So I like to demystify the latest.
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So my latest book is on Gen AI.
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I like to demystify it, I like to have opinion pieces on what's happening.
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I teach this in multiple different universities.
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I teach at Stanford Continuing Studies, I teach at Barcelona Technology School, I teach at El Salvador School of Design, I teach product managers, business managers, lawyers, designers, linguists, so that I want to bring a variety of different roles to build AI in a very equitable, inclusive way.
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So, in short, I'm a technology futurist.
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I'm always looking at new technology, but I teach, I write, I talk, but it's all towards the same topic.
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Wow, I love I talk, but it's all towards the same topic.
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Wow, I love it.
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I just love the goals that you have, and it all stems from your love for learning, love for technology, and you're kind of sharing that with everybody and bringing more people in into your space.
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So we're probably going to go back then to the start of your career, just trying to understand, growing up probably, who were your role models and how did that lead into your career choices so I come from india and when I wanted to do computer science it is just it was a very nascent new field and my physics teacher said that this is going to grow and you're good at physics and I think you should do this and I got in and I got very excited about computers and my entire family there were no engineers and they were all accountants or CPA and they were like this is this new field, why do you want to do this?
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And I was kind of the first person in my family to kind of go do that and that helped me shape my own career, shape my identity, and so once I landed in a job and then my career took off, I deliberately shaped my career to where I want to go.
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I've changed my career multiple times From being an engineer I got excited about the web and I wanted to go be an entrepreneur.
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And there were several people who are entrepreneurs who were my role models, mentors and advisors and they were all people who had achieved.
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So one of the things I like to do is I can never give back to the same people because they were millionaires, billionaires or, at least from my perspective, their way about me at that point.
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So I feel like I need to give back, like it's like paying forward, right, that's what I'm doing in what I'm doing.
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And then around eight years back, I left my corporate job and decided to go off and write a book and started with one book and then it became like seven books and I spoke to several people and in that there are two role models.
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One is Brian Solis writes brilliantly and I wanted to, you know, have like a platform like him.
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And the other person is Marsha Collier is a millionaire who's written 30 plus books and she's a professional writer as an author, published author and so I asked advice from my publisher, my friends who had published, and Marsha Collier's advice stuck with me.
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She said if you have something to tell the world that you think it'll help somebody, go write.
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Don't write it for money.
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And just because you think you're helping somebody, don't put it out for free, because if you put it out for free, people will not respect your time or your advice, and so it was kind of a very grounded advice.
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So I look up to Marsha on the author side of things.
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So like that I've been.
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You know Susanna Raj, who's an AI ethicist.
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I work with her and we found a nonprofit called Global South in AI, which is one of my recent projects, and she inspired me about being an AI researcher and to educate and bring more people into AI research from global South countries.
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So I've had various different role models.
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And then, as I'm teaching adults, professional adults my students really are my role models.
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My students are innovators and they love latest new technologies, and so I'm not just teaching them, I'm inspiring them to innovate, to bring their experience from what I'm teaching them.
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So there's I have a list of students who are my role models in various different aspects of what I do that's really um interesting so that because, like you said you, you evolved and done a lot of different things from you know.
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You started out as a software engineer.
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You said you're an extrovert as um as well, so it looks like you do go seek people who can provide that guidance a bit of, but also that inspiration right and, as you've done, these different pivots, maybe can you give a bit of advice on how did you go about so you go from software engineering, transition over to the web and at some point you then transition into ai, which is in the space that you are really big time into right now.
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When you get into a new space, give us some tips on how do you go about connecting with the, with people okay.
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So the the first thing is I get very excited.
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I'm very driven by passion and so first, when I wanted to write a book, when I was still in my corporate job, I was heading mobile analytics at ebay.
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It was a big org.
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I was responsible for $24 billion, a lot of responsibility, and you think, like your world is your company right?
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And then I wanted to get out and go do this.
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So I started talking to people to just understand what this book writing looks like.
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What should I write?
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Should it be an ebook?
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And one of the advice I got was just write a lot, read a lot, so that you become a good writer and write various topics and see what.
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At that point, since I was heading mobile, this internet of things, or how everything is connected to the internet, was fascinating as one of the things that eBay was looking at and was coming under my org.
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So I got very fascinated and I was thinking there are people like me who have been very busy with corporate jobs who don't know this IoT or Internet of Things.
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Let me demystify that.
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So it was a very simple goal and so the way I ended up, I took a sabbatical of a couple months and I said I'll write this book and go back.
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And I started to go learn what is this IoT, went and attended meetups, tried to go back to my engineering roots to build IoT and then, as I interacted with more people, I realized this is much bigger than my view in Silicon Valley.
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So I started a YouTube channel where I started interviewing people on IoT.
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So as part of the interviewing process, I had to prepare for it.
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So eventually, what happened was I had enough content.
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I said you know what I know to do is.
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I know to put things out on the web and get feedback.
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So I'm going to put a Kindle book, which is like an introductory book, and I went to LinkedIn and said this is what the chapters of this book, this is the rest I'm planning.
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Tell me if this is useful for you.
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People came to me and said how about this?
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How about that?
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Why don't you talk about this?
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Why don't you talk about how this can actually be applied in industry?
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Who's doing it?
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And that helped me to kind of guide my iot channel on youtube and I ended up building case studies.
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When I had enough case studies, I said that's the book I'm going to build, going to publish.
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So my printed book became one about real applications in industry, real challenges and where to innovate.
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And then stanford called me and said we don't have a book on a topic on this.
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Can you come teach this at continuing studies?
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And I went and did that and then, as I was continuing with, I moved to autonomous vehicle, because that's a connected device.
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A car is a connected device.
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So that fascinated me.
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So that became my next topic, next book, next course and kind of my next journey.
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And then, since I had worked with analytics and data, I realized everything is about data, the real value is from data.
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So I kind of meandered towards that and that led me to AI.
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And then that led me to Gen AI.
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So that's where I am.
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So and today I'm known, as you know, one of the top industry experts on Gen AI because I've written a book on that at the Stanford course on that, and I have opinions and publish things.
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And do you know, guide people to carry people to Gen AI and publish things.
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And do you know, guide people to carry out people to GNI.
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So I'm learning, teaching, learning and and getting feedback.
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Yeah, yeah, this is stemming from your interest and passion and you're trying to first learn for yourself and then you're finding the means to do it and that's kind of putting you.
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You're.
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You're kind of building out your network as well, yeah.
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But I also put things out like when I write a piece, I write an opinion.
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As adults, how we learn any new topic is we already have experience from whatever we've learned, whatever our vocation, right from our life experience.
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Then, when something new is told to us, we try to make sense of it relative to what we already know when we make that connection.
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So.
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So what I do is when I'm learning something, I would say, ah, this looks like what happened with the web, or this looks like what happened with mobile, or can this be applied in e-commerce?
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And I would have an opinion about it.
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So when I looked at IoT and Alexa had just launched and I said, oh, if I was a product manager of Alexa, how would I build it?
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Why did they build it this way?
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And then I started writing about it and I post I used to do only on LinkedIn and I now write guest posts everywhere and then I would say this is what I'm thinking.
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Are you working in this field?
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Do you agree?
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And I want people to disagree with me.
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I want people to come and tell me stuff that they're doing and I'm so grateful for my community right To come and talk to me and say no, this is not what we do in this industry, then I would engage in a conversation on that.
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Or I would go back to the drawing board and say this is my understanding from e-commerce and this seems different.
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Or this is my understanding from this geography and they're doing it differently.
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What is different?
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And I try to understand.
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And then I would come back.
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So I feel like I'm accountable to people, especially my community on linkedin right.
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I'm accountable to them to be authentic, to come back and close the loop, and that's a continued conversation we are having forever.
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I I would say that brings me to a very important topic.
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So you did say that you know you take inputs from people and you use that to improve and continually better what you're working on.
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I want to take you to a topic of feedback.
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Right, we all give feedback, we all get feedback, but the way everyone responds to feedback it's very personal and it's very different, especially as somebody who's working in a very entrepreneurial fashion, right?
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How do you go about getting that feedback?
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What does it mean to you and how, then, do you use it to?
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Because it's not a typical corporate setting, right, where we have a feedback process and a loop, and I'll come back next year and somebody will tell me oh, you've taken the feedback.
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So what does feedback mean for you and how have you incorporated that in your very different way of working?
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So I think feedback is a gift If somebody cares enough to tell you good or bad things right and give you feedback.
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It One is, as I just mentioned, when I post things on LinkedIn, I write things and people come back and give me feedback.
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I say, oh, that's a gift.
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I would take that in perspective and then I would process that and say where are my gaps of knowledge?
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Did I bring this perspective?
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Because I don't have this lived experience of this other person and I kind of adapt my content.
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I could adapt my books, my courses and things like that, so that there it's very straightforward it's a gift when somebody tells me something right and then if they are telling me they love my work or if they tell me that this is not how it is done in my world, I am not affected in a very personal way because it's all learning for me, right.
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And when you are in a corporate job, there is a systematic process, right.
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I've had feedback similarly from my very good sponsors and mentors internally in my job who helped me grow right.
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Again, you can take that as a gift.
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But what you do with it, how much you change your identity or you judge yourself, is left to you and when we get started, we don't know the difference.
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If somebody tells us something that you don't know you're doing it wrong, we assume they are right.
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They know better.
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One of my observation in corporate is women get a lot of feedback.
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Also, women seek a lot of feedback.
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So I've seen many women who would ask for feedback of their bosses and well-meaning bosses would give feedback and they so that they can improve and grow and they will help them grow right.
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So what happens is, especially when women hit the, the ceiling and the, the managers are not able to help them.
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They would say but you know what?
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You are very process oriented, you need to do this.
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You know what.
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You're focused on this.
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You need to.
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You know you're a specialist, you need to be a generalist, and they will move into different roles and they will give them things.
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So it's very important, I would say, to receive the feedback, because they are caring enough to tell you yeah, it's against.
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But then how you process it and you say, okay, they're saying this about me.
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Is this true about me?
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Maybe it is now.
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Do I want to change?
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Yeah, and is it going to help me towards my goal?
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And I think that's how we should process feedback, especially in a corporate setting.
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I think that's very critical, right?
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So yeah, that's that's my.
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That's a really important point to just don't take the feedback just at face value.
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Question it a little bit, right, and I do think that I feel women tend to anyway be tougher with ourselves, right?
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So, yeah, take the feedback and I like what you said.
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Do I need to change?
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And because does this help me with where I'm trying to get to?
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Right, and it's not helping you to where you want to get to, then it's okay.
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Yeah, do your thing you have to set a goal for yourself which is bigger, just your job.
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So if you're going for your job and you're saying I want a promotion and your boss says, okay, you need to do these three things, you have to hold your boss accountable and say if I come and show you that I've got these three, are you going to give me a promotion?
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Yes, now help me figure out how I fill in these gaps.
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What should I do?
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Right, and sometimes people mean well most of the time people mean well and they'll tell you things right, but they might not be able to help you Once you execute on that gap.
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They might not be able to help you to get to that next level, to get to that path in your career.
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So you need to have a goal that's bigger than one job, one role, one place.
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You need to have it for yourself, saying I'm going to be here in five years from now, or two years from now or something like that.
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Right, and I think that's important.
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So you're accountable only to yourself.
00:17:40.752 --> 00:18:04.775
I love that, and I love what you said about you being in the flow and you know what keeps you in the flow, right, like doing a number of different things that, for you meet your are to do with your passion and you're also helping others, right, and that I think that's linked to the feedback piece as well Like, know what keeps you in the flow, and if you're being told something that you think is going to disrupt your flow, then it's probably something you shouldn't pay per se.
00:18:04.775 --> 00:18:05.926
Yeah.
00:18:06.228 --> 00:18:08.925
And I think all of us at some gut level, right when.
00:18:08.925 --> 00:18:11.013
I think Steve Jobs said this.
00:18:11.013 --> 00:18:17.451
So I'm just paraphrasing this Like if you're doing something and you don't feel happy about it, don't feel fulfilled about it.
00:18:17.451 --> 00:18:19.452
If it's one days, two days, it's okay.
00:18:19.452 --> 00:18:26.435
If it goes on for a few days and you feel restless about, you're not happy, then you need to stop and evaluate what am I doing, how am I doing?
00:18:26.435 --> 00:18:34.181
And you're running between multiple things and you're kind of you know, not giving enough attention and you feel like you're not an expert on wherever you want to go.
00:18:34.181 --> 00:18:41.354
You kind of judge yourself in so many ways, right, you do you stop and say, okay, is this job, is this environment not working for me?
00:18:41.354 --> 00:18:44.711
Do I am I not able to give it all I can do?
00:18:44.711 --> 00:18:48.726
I need to do something different, or do I need to do something totally different?
00:18:48.726 --> 00:18:50.430
So I think you have to.
00:18:50.430 --> 00:18:50.990
You have.
00:18:50.990 --> 00:18:57.990
We know that at the end of the day, when we go to bed, we know if the day was good that's right.
00:18:58.009 --> 00:19:05.550
Yeah, I'll also then take you to the corporate career and then start starting out almost.
00:19:05.550 --> 00:19:07.936
It's almost like like a starting out right On your own.
00:19:07.936 --> 00:19:11.288
There are something that I always learn from my guests.
00:19:11.288 --> 00:19:19.453
A lot is it's great when things are going well, right, when you're in the flow, all good, you can keep going and keep doing better.
00:19:19.453 --> 00:19:25.776
But can you share a time when things were really not going so great for you, right?
00:19:25.776 --> 00:19:30.126
Maybe it was a low point, either corporate wise or you know, as you're figuring out?
00:19:30.126 --> 00:19:32.392
Hey, let me start a new initiative.
00:19:32.392 --> 00:19:34.617
Can you focus, share a low point?
00:19:34.617 --> 00:19:37.190
How did you maybe get yourself out of it?
00:19:38.451 --> 00:19:48.846
okay, I think I I'm sure all of us you know, I've had like 25 plus years career, so I have like many times in my career I'm just trying to think what is relevant for this audience.
00:19:48.846 --> 00:19:58.131
So one thing I would say is I moved from software engineering to the web and then I went and did an MBA because I thought I was so.
00:19:58.131 --> 00:20:03.811
When I tried to move from software engineer to the business side, I got pushback and I did so.
00:20:03.811 --> 00:20:08.396
I thought, okay, I was not a business person, I was not able to communicate and articulate this, and so I need to get an MBA.
00:20:08.396 --> 00:20:10.351
So I went okay, I was not a business person, I was not able to communicate and articulate this, and so I need to get an MBA.
00:20:10.351 --> 00:20:11.609
So I went and did an MBA.
00:20:11.609 --> 00:20:17.433
And then I ended up with the right job and I was growing in my corporate job and I was having fun.
00:20:17.433 --> 00:20:18.830
Things were going fine.
00:20:19.325 --> 00:20:23.108
And then I decided to do a startup and I wanted to do a startup.
00:20:23.108 --> 00:20:33.209
For a while I was itching to do that and so I left everything and went into the startup Again.
00:20:33.209 --> 00:20:33.891
It was a starting point.
00:20:33.891 --> 00:20:34.874
I had to learn and I had my ups and downs.
00:20:34.874 --> 00:20:36.318
I raised my first million in 140 days.
00:20:36.318 --> 00:20:37.040
That's kind of my claim to fame.
00:20:37.061 --> 00:20:37.583
I was in Boston, I was.
00:20:37.583 --> 00:20:37.824
You know.
00:20:37.824 --> 00:20:48.646
This was like mobile middleware play, creating the app store technology so many decades back before iPhone, android and stuff and so I had to wind down everything with the dot-com bust.
00:20:48.646 --> 00:20:51.433
And then I decided that, okay, I'll go back to a job.
00:20:51.433 --> 00:20:59.829
And at that point I moved from Boston to California because bulk of my investors were in California and I saw tech industry was kind of booming there.
00:20:59.829 --> 00:21:09.117
So when I moved here, one of my thought process was I need to decide whether I'm going to go back into a startup mode or whether I'm going to go into corporate, because those are the two things I know.
00:21:09.117 --> 00:21:18.108
So all these years of experience I had and the success I had in corporate, I never thought that would be diluted or questioned when I go back into the job market.
00:21:18.611 --> 00:21:20.395
And then what happened is at the end of my startup.
00:21:20.395 --> 00:21:29.648
I ended up having a baby, so I took a little break and then I came back and I was very deliberate about what I was doing.
00:21:29.648 --> 00:21:30.211
I went hands-on and whatever.
00:21:30.211 --> 00:21:32.398
The latest was web 200 and I kind of studied that and played with things and stuff.
00:21:32.398 --> 00:21:35.410
I was ready, right, and so I was eligible.
00:21:35.410 --> 00:21:40.868
I was ready, up my resume, moved to west coast and then when I applied for a job, the big companies won't call me.
00:21:40.868 --> 00:21:51.366
And then one of the one of my friends eventually said all your resume shows east coast companies and they're not showing west coast companies and they are literally, if you're in google, they're looking for people from yahoo.
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