EP 201: How Culture Quietly Shapes Every Career Decision

What if the way people think about jobs, risk, and “security” has less to do with personality and more to do with the country that raised them? In this episode, Alison Eastaway, VP of People and Culture at Push Security, connects how Australia, France, and the US shape the way people make career moves, weigh startup risk, and decide whether to say yes to an offer. It’s part global perspective, part recruiting masterclass, with a memorable detour through a Paris wine shop that reveals something deeper about burnout, community, and choosing the right problems.

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Allison

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We're uh joined by Allison Eastaway. Allison is uh currently the VP of people and culture for push security. So, Allison, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yeah, thanks for being here. Really do appreciate it. So, what was it like growing up in Australia?

Australia Versus US Daily Reality

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. I think Australia, um, particularly, you know, I was born in the 80s, grew, spent most of my childhood through the 90s, which is pre-internet, right? Or at least pre-internet at home, you know, that came in when I was in high school. Australia is pretty isolated from the world. So a lot of my childhood was, you know, not to over-idealize, uh, you know, uh hindsight's always 2020 on that, but a lot of outside time, uh, a lot of time with my head in a book, um, traveling, you know, as best I I kind of could, because I always sort of had this sense that there was a bigger world out there or things were happening in places that weren't Australia, you know, whether it was the movies you watched on TV or the TV shows where everything was happening in America, it was snowy at Christmas, and you know, whereas for us it was 40 degrees Celsius and you know, on a beach at Christmas. Um, so I think it was always this kind of disconnect around, you know, the pop culture and the things we're getting are from a place, you know, even American high schools or the movies, um, a place that wasn't sort of our reality. And so I think I always had this curiosity around, you know, what's happening out there in the rest of the world. Um, and then the internet obviously broke that wide open. You know, I had to dial up internet at home, I guess, when when I would have been 15. So the last couple of years of high school and you know, really the Wild West of the early MySpace days and ICQ and things like that. And I so, you know, I think there's a bunch of things about me that are really inherently Australian that I don't think I realized until I left Australia first for France and then later for the United States. Um, I think at the time I just felt like we were probably quite far from a lot of things that were mentioned in books or on TV shows.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

What do you think are some of the biggest differences between Australian culture and US culture? I know US culture is kind of a loaded, I mean, because there's so many different I feel like cultures within the United States, which is one of the things that I think makes this country really cool. But um yeah, what would you say are like some of the biggest differences?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, it's so interesting, and you're right. It's it's I I certainly wouldn't dare to try and summarize US culture. I've been in the US full-time for a year and a half, but have been working with French American companies for you know the last decade and and traveling a lot to San Francisco and New York and you know, even comparing New York culture to San Francisco culture, you know, or the Midwest or anywhere else would be or Miami.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Have you been to Miami? Yeah, it's like a different country, like totally different. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Exactly. So, you know, I think there's kind of no one size fits all. And I also think I did most of my culture shop from Australia to France. Um, and so then the move um from Paris to New York, it felt much more like a homecoming. Um, and and I think that obviously comes down to you know the same default language and things like that. Um, you know, there's a lot of different cultural things. You want it and what as it comes down to sort of your work-life balance or even you know the way benefits are done, Australia, and you kind of can't overstate this, Australia and France have uh universal healthcare. I have never, you know, you grow up as a kid. Um, in Australia, your biggest concern about healthcare is that something happens to you in a remote place and it takes a while for an ambulance or a helicopter to get to you, right? And we're talking about pretty dangerous, you know, animals and snakes and spiders and things like that. So in Australia, you grow up being very educated about what to do if something happens and you can't get an ambulance there quick enough, right? So, like we all go through this kind of basic survival training of snake bites or spider bites and things like that. They just see when, you know, all of us know how to swim and how to, in theory, dive in and rescue a friend and do CPR before you graduate, the equivalent of middle school. So that's just a real reflection of kind of that climate. Moving to the US, obviously, one of the starkest things is understanding that most people in New York City would take an Uber to the hospital non-ambulance. And that's just really reflective of, I guess, the system and the things you take for granted. Um, you know, I obviously moved to the city recently. I asked a friend, I said, Who's your primary care physician? They've been here a decade, they don't have one. Why? Oh, I try to avoid going to the doctor unless it's a real emergency. Okay, interesting. Um, you know, those are obviously top of mind because when you think about sort of then flow-on decisions, the US obviously has relatively low protections for employees. France has some of the highest in the world. Um, so I think some of those things then in in France, if you leave a job, you have a three-month notice period for sort of white-collar work. If you think in the US, at will employment in most states, the way people think about their careers and their lives and what security means and therefore where they're willing to make a change or prioritizing stability, it just looks totally different depending where you're at. Um Yeah, so I think it's been it's been a bunch of those things. And then you see the flow on with entrepreneurship and how that then leads to people take taking more or less risk in their life based off um you know some of the social systems that back it up.

French American Startup Culture Clashes

SPEAKER_02 5:47

So you said you worked for a few uh like French American What so what's it like? And I we've worked, uh I have a lot of experience working with international companies, but I think you know, from your perspective, uh did you see like differences? Okay, if you you had your office in Paris and you have the office in New York or San Francisco. How do you think those like how did those cultures work together? Did you see it was like did you see massive disconnects or uh I mean, what was it or not? I mean, maybe you didn't, right? Because like the culture of the company was like of like-minded people. So I'm curious what that was like.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. I think a lot of the uh you know ideas about what the French are like in a work environment are a lot of them are true. A lot of them don't translate into the tech startup industry. So the number one thing people know about France is that people get a lot of holidays and don't work long hours. Um, that's what people tend to think of in France. Now, again, back to social systems, they have huge um uh income and employment protection and great healthcare and things like that. So it's almost a security of the system that allows people to prioritize life over work. But what it creates is a small group of people who are ambitious and hungry for more and something else, which usually leads most of them into the tech industry because that's where there is opportunities for outsize effort to equal outsize results. Um, and you know, for French companies or French startups or European startups in general looking to take things next level after seed or maybe series A stage, they end up in the US because that's where the investment is and the talent and the growth. Um, the European ecosystem is incredible. I you know spent 12 years helping develop it. Um I'm very bullish on companies being born out of Europe. Push security was born in the UK and South Africa. And I think great things can be started elsewhere. I think the acceleration is still in the US. Um what we've what we found between France and the and California was the time difference is painful, but happily French people will work late and Californians will work early, and then the opposite isn't true. So thank God it's in that direction.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Uh yeah, I mean, I think like so many of us in tech, it's like the you know, you you do have to be on, like you have to be available to some extent working in multiple time zones. It's interesting. A lot of French companies, I do see them in SF, and it's like kind of interesting, they don't just pick New York.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Um it's such an interesting question. You know, it's what are you optimizing for? Where are your customers? Who are you selling to? Um, I think if if a decent part of your customers are in the financial services or banking space, East Coast makes total sense. Um, I think if the majority of your customers are tech companies, which was a lot of the earlier stage companies, if you think through like the Y Combinator program, things like that, or selling to other high-growth tech startups, for sure it's the West Coast. Um and then obviously everything in between if you're selling to industry and things like that. I also think the talent density in in New York, uh, of my 10 closest friends, two of them work in tech. Um, so and in San Francisco of, you know, all everyone, I can't think of an exception of people I'm friendly with in SF who don't work in tech. So I think there's also that. Um, pros and cons, diverse and look quite um probably controversially. In San Francisco, there's uh you can understand how a lot of startups get born, there's not that much to do on a weeknight in San Francisco in New York City. You know, the world's your oyster 24 hours a day. So I I can kind of see arguments, you know, uh half a dozen one way and six the other. So yeah.

Degrees Versus Early Work Experience

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Yeah, I hear you. Um well that's that's really cool. And it's so you you mentioned like the the mindset is different around work in a few different ways uh in Australia, and and I think you had mentioned that it's a little different in terms of how uh people think about uh like bachelor's degrees versus like work experience. And I how does that trend like so? What are the differences between how people think about in Australia and in the United States? And I know it's probably evolved over the last you know several years too, but I mean what what are the differences there?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Yeah, absolutely. And look, my experiences you're rapidly out probably getting out of date uh the more I you know, the more distance between my uh university uh aged years and and now. But Australia, uh if you take the three countries where I've spent most of my life and career, Australia, France, and the United States. The United States obviously has the most expensive um higher education program, very common for individuals to take on significant student loan debt uh to fund the most basic of um uh of degrees, uh the most affordable of a degree of degrees. France, it's almost entirely free. So in France, everybody, you know, more or less without exception gets a five-year master's degree because it is largely free. And it is also because everyone has one, that is the well-trod path. And to not have it is really to sort of set yourselves up, at least that's how they see it for failure. Australia hits something of a middle ground. Australians are incredibly pragmatic. Australians tend to have jobs, you know, it used to be 14 and nine months, and then when I was turning 14, they uh switch that back to 14. You could start working from, and that was very happy for me. So I went and got a job, you know, sort of the day after my 14th birthday. A lot of Americans also work throughout high school and have summer jobs or are working on the weekends or after school. France, that doesn't happen. Um, people, you know, there are some exceptions, but generally speaking, French people will be 25 years old, have a master's degree, and have never had to, you know, show up for a shift on time. And it does create really interesting dynamics through the workforce, with sort of like for like you might think, okay, people are of a similar generation have probably seen similar, you know, things or have similar basics sort of under their belt. And a, you know, a 25-year-old from Australia, myself at the time, you know, would have had 11 years work experience versus zero for a French person.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

That can be really worthwhile to think about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah. So it's uh, and you know, a lot of those skills are transferable from, you know, my first job was as a shop assistant in a bakery. Um, and uh, whilst that doesn't look like it has a ton to do with a job in tech, there's a bunch of sort of baseline skills that are definitely transferable. And I think I think that's what's interesting as well. Um, but yeah, different kind of mentalities around whether a degree is the only way um to access a profession, whether work experience can stand in or replace uh or some combination of the above.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

I think I think people who are successful in tech know how to translate experience in other industries into successful. Like that adaptability part of it's like learning from whatever industry you started out in, or whatever job or right.

Risk Failure And The American Dream

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah, I I usually say I've talked my way into every job I've ever had. Um and uh, you know, it's largely a question, and I feel like this is a fairly Australian mindset. Again, it always comes back to like labor laws and the setup in the country. In Australia, it's relatively easy to let go of somebody. Um, we have decent safety nets on things, so it's not, you know, quite the at-will um one day to a next uh sort of set up in the US, but it's relatively easy to stop working with someone. So my pitch would always be what have you got to lose? We try, give it a try for a week. If at the end of the week you're not happy, like we part ways as friends. And that's largely the mindset I've taken into any job I've ever had. If it's not super obvious to say, hey, look, what's the worst that could happen here? Um, and and you know, front load that risk. And that's inherently not a French mindset. It's closer to an American mindset, um, sort of depending um, you know, your mileage may vary, but uh a little more, let's give it a let's give it a go. Let's have that appetite for risk, let's try. And failure, I think, is um, you know, much more palatable in the US uh than it is in France, for example.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Really? Can you explain on that a little bit more? So what do you mean like they're like this? Is it from like a you just mean a risk perspective, they're worried about failing, or is it is it like a social aspect of the perception of failure? Like what what is that?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'd say, you know, my experiences, particularly in New York and San Francisco, which might skew a little bit the opinions, but that um, you know, people are excited if you try something and not necessarily gonna sit around and say, oh, you know, didn't you have a business? Whatever happened to that business? Oh God, were you terri terrible at it? Is that why it shut down? You know, um, people are much more likely to socially, to your point, minimize the failure and just be like, yeah, well, good on you for at least trying. You know, a lot of people will go their whole lives without even thinking. So I think there's more, you know, it's a little bit the American dream. It's a little bit the, you know, you can, I guess the version today is if you've got a laptop and Wi-Fi, you can probably, you know, build the future. And I think that idea about it's better to have tried than to sort of die wondering. And that is very inherently not European as a mindset. And so there's a lot of stuff to overcome, I think, for people going into tech and startups in Europe that just isn't, you know, as present in the US or or in Australia.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

I think it's actually thought about that a lot. And I wonder it's like why like American culture, even like within the diversity of cultures within America, that's sort of like a common theme uh across like a lot of folks. And I personally I think it has something to do that like America is a country of immigrants, like inherently they're risk takers. Like everybody here left and moved to a new continent, right? It's like all within the last, you know, either at max few hundred years, but a lot of which a lot sooner. So it's like everybody here has that side to them to some extent, you know, and I think that's like why we have such a like there's this level of um like risk taking that is like deep within our culture and can be like when you look at all of the different kind of like subcultures within the United States, it's like a very common theme that you'll find. It's like people willing to take risks for a better life, take a shot.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Um and I think spotting, spotting the opportunity, um, you know, the work ethic of putting in saying, yeah, this is probably not gonna be easy day one or year one, but you know, there seems to be something here, or let's go for it. Worst case, what we'll have you know, another door that's opened on that side. And yeah, and that mindset, um, obviously, you know, can do a bunch of things can influence it. And family obviously being probably the number one factor there around you know, what you were exposed to, what was okay, what was rewarded, what were the stories that people told that I think you know is is huge. And I think definitely why the US is still viewed as the key, you know, area for uh opportunity, expansion, acceleration, career growth, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Yeah, I mean just the general market, right? Like there's of all of our international customers, doesn't matter if they're like somewhere within Europe um or Israel or India or wherever, right? I mean, it's success is typically defined of like we need to go like conquer essentially the US market. That's where we really need to be to make it big.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

It's interesting, but yeah, US culture is interesting too. It's like they're almost like we do to some extent romanticize like the idea of like individualism or entrepreneurship and ambition. Um, I think you know, at times a little bit too much. But I mean there's benefits and drawbacks, right? Like I think it's interesting. I mean, I think starting business, business startups ideas are wonderful, but it's certainly not the only path to success. And uh I was actually just doing career day for uh my girlfriend Sonny's in fifth grade, and we talked about entrepreneurship, and we were talking about values and virtues and what it means to be a good person, and then we got into like, look, you know, ambition actually is not a virtue, it's not something that makes us that there are good people who are ambitious, right? But usually entrepreneurs are very ambitious people. But you don't have to be. Entrepreneurship isn't isn't for everyone. In fact, you there's other ways to be ambitious. You can be ambitious in how you show up for your family, right? How you take care of yourself. You know, do we don't you have to have such a limited scope in how we think of the definition of ambition? Um but it's just interesting, it's it is interesting cultural, it's like kind of really cool and exciting from a tech perspective, but it's also interesting, like you know, it's it's there's a lot of different ways to make an impact. Yeah, a lot of different ways to live life, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah, and I think like you know, you have ambition, but there's also like the concept of excellence. Um, and I think you can be really excellent at you know any number of things, whether it's the way you, you know, do your home cooking, you might be like, okay, I want to make the best version of like this day. And I think the reason I think through excellence is that I do think that then translates out if you're you're sort of shooting for excellence in one area of your life. It does, you know, it does become a bit of a habit. Um, and I think like the kind of building blocks for that, or even what I would refer to as like taste or standards for yourself and things like that do tend to translate. And then ambition can just be around. I tend to think of ambition as um, you know, this timeline that someone else laid out on paper. Is there a way of compressing it? Could we get there faster? Could we dream bigger? What would that look like? Um, right, which I think is definitely a product of, you know, a decade and a bit and startups and things like that, where you see, you know, tiny startups, you know, less than 100 people challenging massive incumbents who've been around for 20 years. And it does sort of put you into this um is everything figure outable? What is a hard limit that I can't push through? And I do think it does expand the way you then sort of think through what's a hard and fast rule or what can be influenced. And I think that's where sometimes the ambition part can come in, where something might sound super ambitious. You know, I packed up, I left home at sort of 18 and you know, a minute and you know, moved completely to a different country where incidentally I didn't speak the language and hadn't actually really thought about that until I landed and went, oh right. Might have been useful to think, but you know, I guess I'm here now and I need to communicate, so we're gonna work it out together on that. Um, that wasn't a particularly that didn't feel like a big deal for me because the trade-off was uh, you know, getting to be a part of this big world that I'd heard about rather that, you know, the the bigger risk for me was staying in Cherry Brook, a tiny suburb of you know Sydney's northwest where I grew up. That was the bigger risk, was the the kind of truck I felt like you know, I would like atrophy and I would nothing interesting would ever happen to me. So I do think there's kind of like no one size fits all for what risk actually looks like, and sometimes it doesn't look like you know the big bold movie.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Like risk, risk is also uh you know there's a correlation between risk and your values and what you associate, like you know, pain versus success, or I mean, like, yeah, it's like when you look at I mean, I actually like kind of very similar, um very similar experiences grew up halfway across the world from where you did, but in terms of like my values and how I thought about risk were very similar. It was, you know, my my biggest fear was like regret of not going for it, of not being an entrepreneur, um of looking back and and wishing I had done more because I felt so passionately about it. Um it's a similar story. Like I I quit, you know, I had worked really, really hard for a job in the States. Um I didn't I didn't have a college degree, and um I was able to get hired by a publicly traded company that required college degrees, and they ended up making an exception for me. Um but it was very, very hard, and for a long time they said they wouldn't do it. Um But uh they did. I I ended up getting an interview with the the president of the company. Turns out he was the only other person there without a degree. Uh so you know, uh go figure. But so he ended up like you know, letting giving me a shot. But then it's like at 23, it's like I quit my job and moved to a new country, didn't speak the language. Uh it's I I kind of did that path too, but it was always looking through the lens of like I I feared the long-term consequences of not trying to live my life to the fullest versus the short-term consequences of being uncomfortable.

unknown 21:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

If that makes sense. I was willing to be uncomfortable because the pain of the long term was greater than the pain of the short term. I feel like, and that's I feel like such an important concept for people to think about when it comes to accomplishing anything you want. Like most things that are fulfilling or a lot of the things that we need to do to better ourselves can be uncomfortable in the short to midterm. So it's like we have to kind of flip that on its head and say, okay, like make the pain of not doing something in the long term greater. It's like, you know, like it's it's anything, it's like eating eating healthy, right? Like people don't want to do it because in the short term, it's like, I don't want to do it, but long term, it's like if you can make the pain of being unhealthy in the long term greater than the short term of not making an adjustment now with like working on whatever else, like that's how you end up being successful. Um, anyways, yeah, you just the way you were saying it just made me kind of think about this because I've thought about it, and I think it really is a definition of like so something that is shared amongst successful people is they're able to make the the pain of something long term and push it to the present and feel it in the present, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yeah, I think like yeah, it's a it's an interesting concept. I think, I think um, so I taught um uh English uh as a foreign language to uh both initially it was my first job in France, um uh to French people looking to speak English, you know, and you know, Fortune 500 company CEOs and things like that. Um Ministers in the French government, but I also also taught nurses in recent arrivals to Australia, Korean and Japanese nurses as well, English. And it's really interesting when you start teaching some of the tenses, what you ask to explain it, you sort of say, you know, oh, it'll be 6 p.m. by the time he gets here. That's a very complex structure to teach as a second language because you're projecting forward to the future and then looking backwards. And it's kind of the parallel that I have. Whenever I'm sort of thinking about, you know, path A or path B, it's like, okay, well, what if I could project forward to the, you know, best possible outcome of, you know, path A or best possible outcome of part B and then work backwards? How would I feel about it now? You know, projecting to that future point. I think it's kind of that. It's like, how do you then assess, you know, best case scenario, best case scenario, all things being equal to the other.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

That's a really good example. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Yeah, it's a good like mental exercise. Um, but and and then I think there's also the idea of agency. Yes, I'm definitely an ambitious person, like I'm much more comfortable with that term now, but I would have always said I'm like very like action-oriented, high agency. And if anything is quite is physically within my power to shift and do and change, I'm going to do the thing rather than wait. Um, and I think often some of those bigger moves are like, well, I could not change my diet and see how things pan out, or I could just like make this small tweak and you're like, oh, well, I did a thing rather than waited and didn't do a thing. So that's always appealed to me. It's like having the uh, you know, it's probably just a control issue that you know probably certainly has downsides, but at the very least, has led to some, you know, very good career things along the way.

The Wine Shop Detour After Burnout

SPEAKER_02 24:24

I love it. Hey, so when was like I, you know, I I don't know the right way or when to segue into this, but I'm curious. I'm just gonna do it now. Um, can you tell us about you did this like uh W S E T like testing, like wine uh education? Like when did you do that? And can you tell us more about that? I just find that like super interesting. I'm just curious to hear what that was about.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've had a bunch of different jobs um and probably have one of the jumpiest sort of CVs in the game, if that's what we're looking at. Thankfully, haven't used my CV to get a job in you know, probably the better part of a decade. Um, and hopefully, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

There's a lesson there. There's a lesson there for everybody tuning in.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

100%. Um, but I think uh I think everybody in tech or startups uh who's been doing this for a little while occasionally steps back from the computer, the zoom call, the you know, whatever sort of virtual tool and world and AI that we live in and goes, oh, what would be the after plan? Imagine that this thing we're building makes it really big and money is no longer the main object that you're thinking through and you know you're you're all your needs are met for, you know, whether it's six months or or you know or or longer on that. What then would I do? Um and it's a useful thought experiment. A lot of people in tech end up landing on some version of the cozy cafe somewhere in the woods, uh kind of uh, you know, sort of fantasy life, which is you know entirely offline and you know, simpler things. And, you know, most of us, uh myself included, probably, you know, the reality won't ever match up to the fantasy. But, you know, I worked for um sort of three tech startups in rapid succession, the third of which happened to be, you know, a really great success. And we sold in a strategic acquisition to a much bigger tech company um right sort of after the second wave of the pandemic. So in sort of 2021, after sort of a crazy um, it's time to sell for sure. It in cybersecurity it certainly was, and had, you know, I'd like to say we timed it, but no, it was just a you know great inflation of things. Yeah. So came out of a very intense virtual and incredibly stressful for HR and talent professionals. Um, we largely were carrying entire companies and industries, sort of anxiety and trying to also function and and navigate a genuinely never before seen situations. So came out of that with a little bit of time, a little bit of money, and you know, certainly a touch of burnout, and said, What would I do now? Um said to myself, take six months off. I think I took two. Um, and then I find, you know, tech people, particularly operators, we can be incredibly, it's almost tunnel vision. That's what it's required to get everything done. It's like focus, you hear people say lock-in, things like that. The second you sort of step back, whether it's a longer break or things, you kind of, it's your periphery that opens up. Um and I think for me, the things I started to notice, I was like, okay, well, you know, what am I really good at? What are my core skills? Um, and what do I absolutely not want to do for a little bit? I didn't want to be on a video call. You know, I think at the time I said I'll never take another video call again, you know, hyperbole. Um I didn't want to, you know, I previously traveled a lot. I said I kind of want to be in one fixed location. Um, and I don't particularly want to solve, we just come out of solving these problems nobody had ever solved before. Um, that now sound really run of the mill, but at the time, you know, uh we were deciding, you know, whether government fell short. We were deciding, do you reopen offices and put people's lives at risk? Or is are you being, you know, excessively cautious? Are you being dramatic? Is this actually, you know, you're often the one person who decided things that could have very far-reaching consequences. So I didn't really want to make consequential decisions. I wanted to solve easy problems. And all of that kind of came together where I went, oh, you know, what I'm talking about is brick and mortar retail. I want to be in a fixed place. I don't want to be on a video call. You know, I want to solve a problem that's more or less intellectually easy to understand, which is what should we drink tonight? Um and so I you know opened, and also with my startup brain, there was a natural.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

I just love how you explain that.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

It really was the process, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Um and solve an easy problem. I want to solve something that's what changed.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

I didn't want anyone coming to me with anything other than I'm making, you know, a spaghetti vongoe tonight, what goes with it? Great. You know, I've got this person I'm trying to impress. What bottle can I take? You know, I've got 10 euros, what can I get? Kind of thing. That was the level of where I needed to exist. Um, and there was a gap in the market, which is that women buy the majority of wine, like any household good. Um, you know, there's a lot of English-speaking uh immigrants and expats um in Paris. And most of the wine stores I would go to as a customer would either speak down to me because I was female or a foreigner, um, or try and upsell me on an excessively expensive bottle because they would inaccurately read my accent as American and think that I was a tourist. And so I saw that there was actually a niche uh opportunity uh to focus on female producers and therefore a kind of female-friendly wine environment in English and also French. Um, and to do wine education that wasn't alienating for people, that was just let me give you some descriptive words so that you know how to get the best bang for your buck when you're at a restaurant or in another wine store. And also the unintended but kind of upside was some in real life community, which everyone was kind of craving in the kind of spring of 2021.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Yeah, for sure. That's that's awesome. And so how how long uh but that was just something you were working on for a couple months, and then you got pulled back into tech.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

It sounds like um so I ran the store for a couple of years actually. Uh yeah, we were yeah, lucky enough to have Cavewoman for for a couple of years. Um ultimately um I was working on some tech projects in parallel, uh, because it turns out solving um not particularly intellectually hard problems uh meant that I got a little bit bored, um, not of the project, but just uh you know uh something to occupy the brain. Um but uh yeah, ran it for a couple of years in Paris um before we ultimately shut down.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

When you get used to like a live like living at a certain pace, it's or when you when your brain is used to being challenged, it can be really challenging to to slow down and not be able to solve problems. Like I just think back to like just different parts of my adult life where work felt like okay, things are on track, we have momentum, and then it's like okay, I that's where I notice like okay, I'm I'm reading more now, like I'm I'm studying more philosophy. I'm like, there's ways, okay. If I'm doing this and I feel like doing this after work, like I'm not stretching, so it's like okay, well, what else can I be doing at work to stretch and to make us better and to solve more problem you know what I mean? Like it's just an interesting I've just noticed that about myself. It's um I never really slow down on problem solving, I just end up like allocating that energy wherever I can. But it's I don't I don't know if you've it sounds like you sort of experienced that too. It's like it's hard to slow down.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, it's one of those things where I kind of say like creativity or or this energy and thing is a little bit kind of like a Labrador puppy, like either you're all gonna give it something to do or it's gonna find something else to do. Um, and you might not like the outcome. So it does it finds an outlet for sure. That's that's I also don't mean to imply I learned everything there was to learn about wine and got bored, but what I did realize is what your average can even your expert consumer needs is this much info. Yeah. And once you get into the next phase, you become, in my opinion, kind of insufferable where you're you're telling people like details that nobody asks for and it's very alienating.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Yeah, so hey, that's like the whole concept behind this podcast. Like we don't want to be like overly tactically dense where people are just like, God, we don't need to know like every nuanced tactical insight on how to implement ATS. Like we can figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Yeah, absolutely.

Talent Acquisition Mindset Shift

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Okay, so speaking of talent acquisition, let's get into it. Um so I I would just love to talk to you about like top lessons, and and I know you're in a people role and it's a little bit more all-encompassing. However, you know, we we have a lot of there's people leaders, but there's a lot of talent acquisition leaders tuning in too, and mostly startup growth stage and even enterprise tech industry. So people you know similar to us, right? TA leaders. Um at this point in your career, I'm curious to get your uh thoughts on like kind of your top uh takeaways for talent acquisition. What would you say is like the top lessons learned at this point in your career?

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Yeah, I think uh you know what's so interesting about talent acquisition um is that it really is kind of just about understanding the way people think. And the reason I say that is ideally, if you're at a stage in your career where you've been able to choose the company you work for as opposed to, you know, take the job you could get and things like that, if you are in a talent acquisition role in a company that you believe in for yourself, because that's why you've taken the job, um, you know, the insight then is to say, why would you know we're going after the best talent, right? Every if if you're a talent acquisition professional and you don't believe that the company you're at can allow itself to go after the best talent and you're given industry or geography, like there's probably a question there. Um, but that should be our positioning, right? Uh you know, again, 10,000 caveats. But if we think that we really are the best company and that's where you are spending your career, we should be able to go and get the best candidates. So therefore, the framing of it is not why would somebody join us, but why would the best person, let's say let's take push security, why would the best security researcher in the entire world not want to work for us? And that's what I kind that's kind of my mental model because I do think it really shifts things from oh my God, how am I going to source candidates to really kind of centering, okay, before we get into the nitty-gritty of you know, finding, assessing, and then, you know, hiring people, uh, what actually is it we do? Why is that compelling and exciting? Um, therefore, where are the best people in the industry? And can we work backwards from that? And that is very different to, oh, we just need to hire an account executive who can sell cybersecurity and is based somewhere in Chicago. Because then you kind of start at the end of the game and you go into your LinkedIn or whatever recruiter, which we all do, which is fine, and type your keywords or your AI search and and look for people, and then you kind of run down the list and whatever whatever order LinkedIn's given them to you. Maybe they're open to work and you're like, okay, great, let's see if I can get this person to interview, meet them. Are they good enough? Let's go. Um, and that's fine because we're usually understaffed, we're almost always understaffed. We're not rewarded necessarily for you know finding the needle in the haystack, we're rewarded for closing the role. But I think at if at least the mindset is if I'm if I back myself and I'm in this role, why uh wouldn't other great people join us? It kind of just flips a little bit the order of operations in in how you hire.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Yeah. It's being proactive in determining like, okay, what potential blockers are we going to run into? Yeah. Um, but yeah, I don't know if if Yeah, that's that is a really solid way to approach it. Hey, in startup and growth stage environments, like with successful startups growth stage, what do you think the biggest blockers are? I mean, does anything stand out of like what companies typically get wrong there? Yeah, I think there's all sorts of stuff. I know that's like a big question, right?

Why Startup Candidates Say Yes

SPEAKER_00 35:30

But I think where so you know, caveat, the market right now, early 2026 and late 2025, is insane. I've never seen a market like this, and I've been doing this for a while. And what I mean by that is, you know, last week we lost a candidate uh who had signed with us, resigned from their old job, and then their former job counted with a hundred and uh a hundred thousand US dollar um uh retention bonus, no strings attached. You know, I've never before seen that in my career. Um, and uh the more I told that story, the more friends in the industry were like, oh, well, actually in my company this or actually over here this. And and and so there is just a lot of um things that previously weren't even, you know, we we would previous wisdom would say, you know, uh, as a talent acquisition professional, you ask up front in, you know, uh first screening call, um, you know, why are you open to a change? Imagine you're uh imagine we go through this process, you're our candidate, we make you an offer in line with your expectations and your uh boss counters. What are you gonna do? You know, we get people to front load that decision. That goes out the window. 100K uh to say anybody, you know, you'd be insane, you know, not to kind of thing. So I think there are no hard and fast rules, but I think a lot of the reasons, you know, I think the reasons why people join an early stage startup are a little bit misunderstood in the broader, if you haven't done it before, it was a little bit misunderstood in the broader community. Usually people say, okay, you're joining early, you're gonna take a below market salary, and your equity will be game-changing one day. And that's kind of maybe what people think of. Um maybe, maybe not, right? Imagine if you're a sort of sales hire and number fifty, you know, maybe your employee number 50 in a kind of you know, uh mid-level sales role, is actually in an equity attribution model. Is actually that equity gonna be game changed? Maybe if you end up you know with one of the biggest IPOs, but it might also just be one part of your package, and it might be the fact that actually you're the first person and the only person on the East Coast. And so the entire East Coast for revenue is for you, and so you're a W2 if we're in the US, W2, you might be able to make 4X your OTE a couple of years. That's probably gonna outweigh the equity payout, you know, over four years and and and on that model. So I think there's like a bunch of nuance around the specific role, why you join, even the what you get to work on. Um I think we're no longer in the model of the larger the company, the bigger your team and department, therefore the more you know, prestige or money or advancement. Um, and often, particularly for talent acquisition, you know, for people in our roles, you're doing a lot more with less. Um you're often doing the people scope as well as talent acquisition, as well as being the person, you know, if there's a labor issue that goes on, as well as half the time running payroll. Um so I think it's about really understanding what is the day-to-day like. And if we never get that liquidity event or that equity, why still is this a really good way to, you know, spend a couple of years of your career? And I think articulating that stops people from overly focusing on equity, which is never guaranteed, always back of the envelope figures because we don't we can't predict the future. And I think that helps us weed out in both directions people who will actually thrive and succeed an early stage and people who would be a much better hire in a year. And that's a great, let's stay in touch and you know, stay where you're at and let's chat later on. So I think it's around that. It's around not drinking so much of your own Kool-Aid that you think everybody should get in at this stage, might not be actually the right fit. They might be your best, you know, third person to hire when you've divided the East Coast territory into you know, mid-Atlantic and New York City area and things like that.

Offers Negotiation And Radical Transparency

SPEAKER_02 39:13

That's really good insight. Like one way to just simplify and take out like part of it too is um you know, like listening to the market and where it is. Like you can't just like you talk about how the market's different than how you've ever seen it. I feel like I've been saying that for the last like five years. And it's just like what is normal? Like what, yeah, what's going on, right? So it's like constantly shifting, and so it's like listening to the market and where it's at, not just resting on what you learned like two years ago or five years ago or ten years ago, but staying really close. Um you gotta constantly be evaluating uh data and feedback from candidates and like staying really close to what's happening out like what you were saying, that you were talking with your friends and like hearing what they were saying about like what they're seeing on the market with candidates and whatnot. I feel like now more than ever, like you just gotta be on it, right? You gotta be really plugged into what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Yeah, and I think also like ask the question. I I see I see sometimes people earlier in their careers with recruiters and things like that, where they go, Oh, you know, I I don't think the candidate will accept if this. And I'm like, oh, let's just ask. Like, let's just say, hey, go for it. Here's where we're at, and here's the math we're running. Is this a deal breaker or not? Like, let's not sit with these, oh, I don't think, or the that, like, particularly in early stage, you can really get away with just being like, hey, we've not done this before. Are you open to this?

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Uh yeah, I do that, I do that a lot. Like, I I frankly, I have a lot of like conversation with like for my embedded recruiting RPO firm, it's a lot of abroad scale-ups, and just kind of teaching the side, like just talk to the candidate about like even before making the offer, like, hey, we're thinking about making an offer here. Like, what do you think? Is this something you would accept? Right? Yeah, okay. No, so like, well, let's talk about that. If so, if you wouldn't accept them, why? And so, what would it take to get you to accept before we go to the work putting together all that? Like, let's just talk about it and figure it out. Okay, so you're saying XYZ, if we got to this place and you had these things, would you accept that point? Yeah, okay, great. Let's let's see if we can make that happen now, right? I mean, it's like just like I I I always see it, and and I talk to candidates about this too, like even with folks that are joining my companies. It's like, you know, hey, the offer process, this is the first, this is the first project we're working on together. This is an opportunity to see how we work together as partners in the business. It's so that we're going to work. We are working together already, and and this is a process to see if we're gonna continue to. It's so it's it's like thinking about it from that mindset of like like I I actually use it as like part of an honestly, even part of an evaluation process. Like, hey, what do you want? Like, let's see if there's alignment. Well, you know, in having like more of an offer conversation versus like evaluation than hey, we're just gonna present something. It's like, no, let's let's talk, let's have a conversation about it. Um I found that to be like really, really helpful and make me make also it it also kind of you can get a sense for people's business and strategic acumen and for their comfort level of like having executive level conversations and like you know, just these types I think it's really helpful to get a sense for how people think too.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Yeah, absolutely. And and and you always have to extrapolate signals from the hiring process in any case, you know. Yeah, there's like old adages that a sales candidate who doesn't negotiate their offer isn't a good sale. And it's like, well, you know, sure, if you've never present, you know, if if your uh company strategy is to go low so that they negotiate high, sure, I would expect that. But if you've been transparent through the process, here's what our account executives make in this region, here's where the OTE would be, here's the benefits, here's the equity, and it's based on a mathematical model. Um, here, you know, how does that align from sort of conversation one and throughout the process checking in? Do you have other offers that you're comparing us against? Okay, great, we wouldn't be able to get to the OTE where we would have wiggle room, might be on, you know, the ramp, or it might be on, you know, a recoverable signing bonus, or it might be here. I think like people can accept a lot of things if you're transparent. The worst thing you could do would be to say this is best and final, and then they get in and they see that they're a person across the state in a neighboring territory, you know, they talk and they find out, well, actually they managed to push the OT up. I think it's, you know, people will remember kind of the meta conversation, which is were they transparent, were they helpful? Was everybody kind of on the same side of this? Or were there some cheap tactics to save 10 grand here or there? And in which case, you know, I think that's where you then end up with more of that individualism than you're looking for.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

So yeah, I think as as transparent as possible, which is you know, sometimes transparency is also being like buttoned up, like everything you were just saying, it's like there's a lot that goes into it, and you know, knowing and having a strong enough alignment with the leadership team internally to be able to present like with that level of granularity in terms of like, okay, we can't budge here, but we can do this. And there's you know, just different parameters that we can work within, and we'll work with you, but let's get ahead of this just so you know and setting those expectations. Like reality is like not a lot of teams do operate that in the scale-up space. It's like they're just not, and it's sometimes to I don't want to say no fault to their own, but I mean they're just like they're still growing, like they're still figuring stuff out, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:03

Um, so you do it's never gonna be perfect because like you you also have to play to your advantage, and your advantage of being smaller and more agile is that you can sometimes go outside a band or you can sometimes do a thing. One of the things I think is still true is that you know, if all of a sudden somebody had access to everyone's comp data, can you at least explain the decisions and are you comfortable with it? And even if people aren't happy with it, if you if you're comfortable as the CEO or as the you know VP of people or as the VP of finance or or whatever that looks like, if you're comfortable with that, then fine, you're you're running things correctly. And I I always have that back of mind. I always sort of say, look, let's assume that these two people speak to each other. Can I justify that gap? If I'm comfortable, let's go. Um, rather than Keep everything equal, you know, if because performance in startups isn't equal. That's the whole point. You know, outsize performance, outsize rewards.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

Yeah, well, it's performance. Like I I do the parallel to like professional sports teams all the time. Like not everybody's paid the same. Like how valuable of a player are you? Like straight up. I mean, there is that, but of course, there are salary bands across like position. I'm not I do advocate for those as well. Um, but I think it's like, well, then it's like, okay, if there's discrepancies, you have salary bands for the same position, but you see different levels of talent based on whatever. It's like, okay, well, then maybe you need tiers for a certain role so that you can equitably say, okay, there's a reason why they're at a higher tier. But then again, you don't necessarily see that level of sophistication at at a little more mature than yeah.

Abundance Mindset And Hiring Standards

SPEAKER_00 45:31

I think it's I think you can operate with principles before you have to kind of hard code it into models. Um, and that can be things like as long as there's something that makes them exceptional, we can go up, you know, plus 10% without it needing to be, you know, like a three tier approval, you know, and and then once every six months, do we run it, run our eyes over it, and go, yeah, actually we need to fix that or not. You know, it might just be that level of it. I think as long as there's like principles, and that can be as simple as, you know, I mean, everyone runs it differently. Our offer approval process is a call it on Slack.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

Yeah, what to avoid is like they just negotiated better. Like there needs to be value like behind it. Otherwise, like you gotta hold firm to I mean, you know, because that's just sort of like that's just gonna break trust. Like again, as you said, like people cannot like decisions, but you know, if somebody brings a specific type of experience or skill set or expertise to the table, or you know, from a performance standpoint, like whatever. I mean, you can be a little like you could use it's one base more situational, uh you can be a little more situational, I think, but right, there should be some kind of like the the just the logic of they just they pushed back, and so we had to do, I mean, you know, that's not how business should be run at any level.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Yeah, no, and I think like also it probably is indicative that we weren't doing our job. Um, if we didn't get until like the 11th hour, the pushback, like why we pre-qualified, we pre-closed, why is this coming up? And sometimes the answer is, hey, I got this other offer, and you go, okay, great, like you told me your decision criteria were these things, you told us that we stacked up better versus them. I'm gonna leave it with you. This is the offer, you know, think it think it over, but come back to us. And if not, we're gonna move forward. You know, and I think having, I think it comes down to, and this is really tricky in high-growth startups where you're understaffed, you don't often have, you know, even if you have the agency or external budget, you don't always have the partners that you would choose for yourself. And yeah, you know, there's a bunch of forces at play there. Um, you have to have an abundance mindset around talent because, and that's kind of where what I was driving at around why wouldn't the best people in the world join us rather than, oh my God, if we lose to this person, we don't have backup candidates. And it's like, well, hold on. Have we exhausted the entire talent market in that geography? Like, are we in a position where truly we believe it's scarce, or truly we believe that we're gonna keep losing out at offer because of XYZ? Like, let's let's run the experiment of, hey, are we missing something? Has the market shifted since we last hired here and actually we are undercutting everyone? And therefore, you know, we do need to level up the budgets. Great, we can very easily figure that out. Or is it more, you know, pushing back against that eternal thing? It's better to have a role sitting open than to have the wrong person in it for three, four months um while you figure it out. And that is very easy to save it, very difficult to get, you know, whether it's your CRO or you know, another leader, like really bought into that when they're just seeing, you know, uh yield spreadsheets or things that need to be filled. So, but I do still think largely an abundance mindset. Um, if it's not this person, we'll get someone better and that's fine. Um, obviously backed up by some hustle to say now we're gonna go run and fill, refill pipeline on that. But I think if you have a scarcity mindset on talent, you're setting yourself up for a bit of a world of pain, which is because we're an early startup, because of XYZ, uh, we can only aim for this kind of level of talent.

Startup Brain In Real Life

SPEAKER_02 48:48

It's a terrible way to goal set. Okay, I mean that's just like one of my kind of pet peeves. I mean, I always set incredibly ambitious goals, and I I've always looked at it from the perspective of like, okay, this is the goal, it's not changing. What might change is the approach to get there. So, like, my job, I see everything as like an equation, right? Like, there's a formula to get to where we want to be. So, like, let's set the outcome we need to achieve, and let's work backward to figure out what the formula is. Yeah, we're just gonna continue to iterate and change until we get there. I think it's like the same thing we're holding, it's like like maintaining high standards and you know, being incredibly persistent when it comes to achieving our goals, but flexible in how we get there. It's a really important, just like general principle in life. Like just for everything. Like, you know what I mean? It's like funny as like we're talking about like earlier, just talking about before we recorded about how you kind of operate and it startup sort of like bleeds over into other areas of your life. And you're you're talking about like some of those uh different things. I forget exactly what you were saying, but you were like you're talking about how like your career definitely has influenced different ways how you operate uh just in your life. Can you remind me like what were what were some of those top ways that present?

SPEAKER_00 49:55

Yeah, yeah, I think it's like around like efficiency or the fact that hard things are figure outable. Um, you know, I moved to the US a year and a half ago, uh uh obviously uh not an expert in US taxes or what I need to do. Um, I know that you can't really do them yourself, um, and that that's a kind of flaw in the US system, but at the very least, trying to sort of figure out hey, have I done all the right paperwork? What are the dates? What are the things? Like uh when am I likely to do? Am I likely to have to pay? Are they gonna refund me? What are the implications? You know, I have, you know, tax residency uh, you know, uh in in various places. That can be incredibly overwhelming. Um, but if I frame it as, if I frame it as a personal problem, I'm like, oh my God, that's exhausting and something I have to do after work. And if I just apply my startup brain and I'm like, imagine it was an employee who's just moved to the US and like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm like, what would I actually do? What would be the checklist? And it's so much easier than to just kind of frame it. So I think yeah, I think it's just like the ability to break down something where, yeah, you know, if somebody said to me, um, hey, we've got an employee labor law case in, you know, uh let's say what's the country I've never operated in Romania. Um, and uh, sorry, you weren't here when we hired the person and the contract somewhere, and anyway, uh, we're probably gonna get sued. Can you figure it out? Um do I have any specific expertise for that? Absolutely not. Um, leave me until the end of business and I'll at least know the edges of the problem. Um and then I think what that then can sort of look like um, you know, good and bad in in your sort of personal life and thing is just like an extreme efficiency. Like my the amount of things I can get done on a Saturday just because of kind of like the way my weekdays are scheduled and half hour increments and context switching is, you know, I have a logical path for if I've got to run these four errands and then see this friend and then do this. Here's the order of events, and here's what I'm gonna, you know, do in parallel and things like that to my own detriment. Like I have to then, you know, maybe put a three-hour block on a Sunday morning in my calendar to say, do not book, you know, actively relax, read book in bed or something. You know, so it really does have a downside, I think, if you're used to, you know, this like high velocity operating. But I think on the upside, I've moved countries twice, you know, relatively complex visas, you know, back to the earlier point for the United States, Australians at least currently can get uh work visas if you have a job offer, a bachelor's degree, um, and uh a wage above the prevailing minimums. Um, I don't have a bachelor's degree. Um, I'm still here on that visa uh because there are ways to figure it out, um, which is, you know, I now have an honorary bachelor's degree of 12 years of professional experience equivalency through, you know, that's not the default path, but there's almost always another path if you want to figure it out. So yeah, I think there's a everything solvable kind of approach. Um, but yeah, a lot of downsides. You know, much like all those memes around uh they can be a little bit gendered, but sometimes it's like, oh, when I'm talking to my boyfriend and I don't want a solution, I just want, you know, empathy. Startup people can be like that. We're like solutions first. I'm like, oh wait, here I can solve that with a checklist, and sometimes a checklist.

SPEAKER_02 53:04

Oh, that was definitely something I had to learn. Like my any all of my relationships. Um yeah. The other thing that I just I think I just had this realization, and it was because I like I was uh at dinner with a buddy uh who's also like head of TA for incredibly successful scale-up. And we both figured out that we like evaluate everything that we buy in our personal life like way too much. And we were thinking about it, it's like, oh, it's probably because we're in talent acquisition and our job is literally evaluation all freaking day. And it's like this double-edged sword. Like, I can't buy anything without doing like a put on a research, trying to back channel, look at the reviews, okay, with those like marketing-sponsored reviews, like going into like these feature sets, doing an analysis side by side, and it's just like it's like it's like a$30, like I like just buy the damn thing. Like, it doesn't need to be like you know, the best one in the world, right? Like, you don't need the best like wrench or some random crap, you know. It's just like the I definitely do that. I think it does kind of bleed over, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Like, I mean, 100%. And even the you know, understanding other people, you know, you'll you'll note it amongst friends, you know, and kind of say, Oh, actually, like, what do you do for work? And then they'll start with something really vague, and you'll be like, Yeah, no, you can go into details because every other day I've got a brand new job I've never heard of, and you know the questions to ask to be interesting. And yeah, like I do think there's there's a certain automation, even around like how to dive in and figure out what you know makes people tick. And I I do think it generally, you know, not not always true, but it does generally make people also like to be around you and you ask good questions, and you know, people are kind of like, oh geez, you know, yeah, had a great conversation and they asked, and you're just like, Oh, I was just I wasn't even my brain wasn't even particularly on. I was just sort of you know running through the program, but it has been gone, you know.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Yeah, yeah, it's funny. I I well anyways, yeah, I f I actually find that really interesting too. I think for me, interestingly enough, like at the beginning of my career, early 20s, work always made more sense to me than my personal life. I don't know why, but the way my brain was wired is like like work was my comfort zone. But it's interesting, it's like I do think a lot of the communication skills I developed at work, I've been able to figure out how to translate and be like better personally at relationships and communication and being engaging. And like it took me a while, frankly. I I've got I think I've got in there. I don't know. Uh you'll have to ask my friends, but uh you know uh but you know, it's just like one of those things. It's like I guess people kind of take different paths and they have different like comfort zones and different but again, it's like I think it's about taking what we've learned and learning how to apply it.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Becoming A High Influence People Leader

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, I I did want to talk to you about like just like professionally, who do you want to become? Like, where how do you see yourself developing over the next several years? Like, really, what do you want to double down on at this point?

SPEAKER_00 55:55

Yeah, yeah, I think what's interesting is the uh about companies in general, but startups in particular, um, is uh influence. And I don't mean this in a uh you know, iron fist, you know, get to be the decision maker to have the power and things like that. But I think the more you understand, you know, whether you're in you know whether you're a recruiter early career or whether you're sort of spanning a lot of different functions on the people side, I think the more you understand about what matters to a CEO, what matters to investors, what matters to the board, and how they think about things and how they frame problem solutions, spend, budget, things like that, the more indispensable you become in an organization. Um, and the number one thing, you know, quite naturally end up being a kind of source of uh advice for my friends and things for any and all work troubles. Um, you know, people come to me and say, Oh, you know, I you know, I don't get it. My boss did this or asked for this and then change their mind about that. And you know, the number one thing I say is like, step back, like, what do you think they're getting from above? Or do you understand what their boss wants from them? Do you understand what your boss, you know, what is their bonus based on? You know, how do they succeed? How can what you're doing basically map to that? And you know, I'll get it, I'll get some pushback right from from friends outside of tech or a startup so that say, yeah, but like jobs should be like this, and and not, and I don't I kind of say, well, sure, that maybe they should be, but in reality, this is probably what's going on. And if you do this, that's gonna be seen this way, and therefore you'll succeed. And I think a lot of that translation layer from what does a CEO care about? What is he hearing from the investors on board, what is he hearing from customers, um, what uh is the future of our product, what is the future of our market, I think the more you can kind of understand cross-functionally inside and outside of the company, the more you can really influence and have levers and basically draw a much straighter line from the stuff that fills your calendar and your day, a day-to-day, and the actual results of the company financially, which if you are a stock option holder, which you would be if you're in an early stage startup, uh, you have that kind of agency over the results. So I think for me, what what's really interesting is your influence over the outcome and being ever more, I guess, um, embedded in the various parts to understand. Because and then I think if you're if you're doing any kind of talent acquisition, if you start from really deeply understanding the business and what matters, you are then going to be the person who can spot the difference between someone who's gonna fill a role and someone who is going to really be game-changing for the company, right? Um, which, particularly if you're talking about technical roles, you know, I spent a lot of my earlier career hiring engineers and, you know, machine learning and things like that. Well, before that was really sort of you know a more commonly understood thing. Um, I just asked an endless amount of dumb questions of people in my network or people inside the company or you know, to figure out how do I work out what an engineer can influence or not, which I think to this day is the thing that helps me um, you know, sort of spot someone that we should pull out all the stops for or to say, hey, that person over there, did you see what we need to go and get them because XYZ will unlock this and you know that thing we were talking about two months ago, I think we could move it up by a quarter if we get this person, and here's how I think we'll get them because of XYZ trend, right? Um, and I think it's that like that's what's interesting to me, what makes the company succeed. Um, and so I think the actual like format of it, who knows? It might look very different depending on stage, but that understanding how to make a company successful and then being a key driver of it.

SPEAKER_02 59:33

Yeah, it's really well said. I completely agree, and I I that's something I talk about all the time. I don't have anything to add to what you said because you it was well said. I mean, you said it, you I think you you got it all in. So uh, but I I couldn't agree more with you. Uh and I think that's like a big part of what it takes to become a successful executive, to be like top of your field, to truly be excellent. All right, we talked about excellence earlier.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 59:57

Well, hey, Allison, we're running up on time here. I've had a really fun time talking with you today, and uh you packed a lot of really insightful information into this episode that I know our audience is really gonna value. And it's just also been like really fun getting to know you as well. So thanks for coming on today.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

Yeah, same here, James. Thanks so much for having me.