Maggie Chan Jones, Founder of Tenshey | Decoding Sponsorship, The Strategy to Accelerate Careers

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network the HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like the martyck podcast hosted by Benjamin Shapiro each week the martyck podcast tells stories of world class marketers who use technology to create lasting success with their business and their careers if you like any of these topics you're gonna like the martyck podcast is changing advertising how to set up a CRM so you actually use it private equities take on digital transformation by big social is focused on newsletters if these are topics that resonate with you go check out the martyck podcast wherever you get your podcasts or you can also go listen at HubSpot.com slash podcast network my guest today is Maggie Chan Jones Maggie is a season C suite executive specialized in marketing business transformation and technology she's also an entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Tenshi a tech enabled startup with a mission to advance gender diversity and leadership development through executive coaching Tenshi focuses on executive coaching that helps women advance the leadership roles in the boardroom prior to becoming an entrepreneur she was the first woman to become the global chief marketing officer of SAP responsible for leading SAP's advertising and brand experience sponsorships digital marketing strategic events customer audience journey and field and partner marketing functions across all markets during her tenure at SAP Maggie led the transformation of the SAP brand to becoming the world's 21st most valuable brand delivering double digit growth in marketing contribution to business and advanced people skills development to compete in the digital economy she was also an executive sponsor for diversity and inclusion in the CEO board area and part of the SAP innovation roundtable outside of SAP she's also been a board director at a vast and a member of the board of directors at open systems plus a ton of other incredible experience both at a century link which used to be level three communications as well as seven years at Microsoft. So what do we speak about so we spoke about discovering your career north star and creating a career roadmap to reach your goals we spoke about taking calculated risks recruiting a support system and cultivating your personal brand we spoke about engaging tools to define your goals and to put you in control of your own career using the power of sponsorship unlock career opportunities aligning your objectives with your chain of commands business goals to deliver deliver organizational successes and then of course paying forward by using sponsorship to advance talent and to strengthen your company's leadership succession this is an incredible episode a ton of great business advice career advice for women looking to advance but also just incredible career advice for anybody looking to advance so let's jump right into it without further ado this is Maggie Chan Jones founder and CEO of Tenshi So I was born and raised in Hong Kong and I came to the US when I was 14 years old and I decided to leave my family and the world that I knew and hop on the plane by myself to come to New York and live with my dad and his side of the family and and with really the purpose of that was to pursue a higher education because for me I knew that when I was in Hong Kong at that time there were only three universities locally and I wasn't smart enough like book smart enough to get into one of those so my mom had always instilled in me that education is very important for you know for the future so that's what I decided to do. So you jumped on you jumped on a plane here and walk me through so your your father was already in North America but still you were just uprooting your life at this point and what was the plan once you got to North America did you have a university set up or was it just I'm going to figure it out I'm going to live with family I'm going to go jump into some job and support myself until I can you know get acceptance to university. Yeah I lived with my dad and his side of the family for three years when I was going to high school in flushing New York so imagine someone whose English is the second language and going to public school in the New York system. I mean that was pretty pretty nerve-wracking I would say and after after high school after three years I went to Binghamton University for my undergrad and I study business business management. And from there I actually went to the west coast because I really wanted to stay closer to my mom's side of the family and my Anne and her family at that time went to Vancouver BC so I thought Seattle was the place to go because I could be within a few hours of car ride to visit them and that's how I started my journey in tech. I you know when I got to Seattle I didn't really I didn't have a job and I was you know I graduated with a marketing degree really wanted to get into marketing but at that time it was you know early 1997. There wasn't a lot of marketing jobs out there for college grads and the tech industry wasn't really booming as it is right now. So I applied to all sorts of jobs like management training you know any type of entry-level jobs and back in the days it was still very much you know you snail mail your resumes and hoping for the best. And I probably apply for over a hundred jobs and finally I was able to get a job as a junior buyer at a small tech company in rep in Washington called ADIC and back in the days day focus on manufacturing backup tapes. I mean they focus on manufacturing backup library so back in the days there was no cloud storage it was you know you put in the tape into a library and that's how you do enterprise backup. And I was really lucky that you know my first hiring manager Peter Hughes at that time was the head of purchasing department saw something in me that he thought hey she could be a junior buyer and that's how I stepped into tech. And so nowadays I always you know when I share the story with people and when I see college grads saying that Maggie I really want to be a CMO one day or really good one to go into marketing but I can't find a job in marketing I'm like no sweat I didn't start over marketing. Yeah no that's very good and that's but but that's something that a lot of people have even like imposter syndrome when they're jumping into roles right out of college right that's not an easy thing so there you you have a personality that is okay taking some risk and I think that's something that we have to like unlock in some people and I want to understand that as well how do we get that mindset mindset right. But let's still let's go let's keep going down the path because your career is incredible so that was your first tech job so how did you progress into and I'm assuming I'm going to make an assumption here you you still wanted to after this junior buyer position obviously you still wanted to move towards marketing correct that was absolutely absolutely. So from the junior buyer job I was you know I mean I was so grateful at that time to have a job because I had to pay friends I have to pay for all the expenses so so I really work really really hard in that job I you know I didn't mind working on weekends I was really I was really excited to learn new things so so actually within within two and a half years I grew from a junior buyer to a buyer to a senior buyer at that time and because at that time back in late seven back in late 1990s I mean the tech industry was starting to really boom so we had a possession open in marketing at a DIC so I jumped on that opportunity and apply. The good news at that time was that the hiring manager was actually asking me to apply for the job so as a 20 some year old I thought well if the hiring manager asked me to apply for the job that means this must be my job to lose and little did I know that was not the case that would that just meant that yes you're one of the many people that you know that was invited to to interview for the job and I didn't get the job. I was devastated and talking about I know we can spend more time on talking about sponsorship my boss at the time Peter actually went to the CEO of the company so the great thing about a DIC was that it was a smaller company it was about you know a hundred people when I first joined so it was really a very close business and everyone called you out of team member and so I got a chance to talk to the CEO Peter Van Oppen at that time and I told him I was very disappointed that I didn't get a job because I was so excited to get into marketing and I think it was because of my passion and my work ethics and also my credibility in the company already Peter was like you know what Maggie we want you to continue to grow and the next marketing job that opens is yours. And sure enough within a few months I got a marketing job within the company and that's how I started in marketing and I started out as a project and I started out as a product manager and looking at you know looking at pricing strategy looking at product positioning and then eventually I decided that Seattle wasn't quite. Seattle wasn't really the place that I wanted to stay as a 20 some year old where you know I wanted to do a lot of things outdoor but the weather was kind of great for the Connecticut part of the year so I moved down to the Silicon Valley that was during the Internet boom and worked for Sun Microsystems and I spent five years as Sun and that was my first my first job in a really big company. And if I remember correctly at that time back in 2000 I mean Sun was known as the dot in the dot com and you know any type of Internet companies or tech companies would be using they they would have used Sun systems Sun servers and storage systems and so I mean it was such a great training ground for me trying to navigate in a big company. So going from a company with a few hundred employees then all of a sudden I was working in a company with about 30,000 employees. So that's where I really learned from you know going into product management going into product marketing channel marketing and and this is also the time Scott that I feel like wow you know the more you get into the marketing areas I realized that there's so many different functions within within the marketing function. And I learned a lot along the way and back in 2005 and I moved quite a few times as well so I went from Seattle to to the Bay Area and then and then because of my husband we moved to Colorado and and it was around 2005 we decided that it was best for us to move back to Seattle which is where my husband was born and raised to be closer to families. So that's when I get into Microsoft. So I was at Microsoft you know started now started out as a senior marketing manager you know looking after the worldwide small and medium business marketing side of the house and I really in in my time at Microsoft I really learned a lot about leadership and personally I grew as a leader as well. And about a couple of years in that's when we started to really hone in on cloud computing back in the days at Microsoft you were in all the major miles like as a dot com cloud computing you were you were there at the right companies that's incredible that would have been a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun and you learn a lot along the way as well I mean being a son at the height of the company to going through the you know dot com bust and that part you know what's not fun because you know you see a lot of companies we're not doing well or actually had to close doors and you know and laying off people at the same time it you know those they were a lot of lessons to be learned. And then going into Microsoft being on the ground for the cloud computing the area of the cloud computing just starting really trying to figure it out you know the different ways that companies that partner with Microsoft can you know can make money from the cloud computing perspective how do you go from. You know selling big enterprise contracts with on premises software going into the cloud SaaS based subscription model I mean the whole transformation not only within Microsoft but also for the industry was very fascinating and to be having the front row seat. For that journey was really amazing so I was I was at Microsoft for seven and a half years and you know I did roles in the global organizations I've done roles in the US market specifically in my last few years at Microsoft my role was really about launching and building the cloud computing business which you know back in the days from the version one which was called business productivity online suite is a mouthful. And you know going into launching the second version which was you know office 365 to now becoming Microsoft 365 I mean seeing that product journey and seeing the transformation not only from the business model perspective. But how do we change the way we do marketing how do we change the way we compensate you know our sellers and and the partners and and how do you see different organizations in how they evolve their own internal transformation from a technology perspective which leads to the whole digital transformation that it happening today especially with the pandemic that is happening in the last one and half years right so from you know from Microsoft I actually a funny story was I really enjoyed being at the company I felt like I got a lot of development I learned a lot from a leadership perspective and obviously as a big organization there were a lot of room to grab. But during my time at Microsoft I also you know earlier in the earlier years at Microsoft I remember you know back in the days I was still thinking okay everyone in the half to two years I need to go look for a new role within the company so that I could continue to grow and you know learning skillset. So I was you know two years into the company I was looking for a new role within the company and my my approach was very shotgun I was like okay while these jobs are kind of at the same level that I'm looking at these are new skillset so I'm going to apply. And one day my VP you know I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot HubSpot is the leading business CRM now creating a legacy business start with investing in sustainable scalable tools. HubSpot is the number one CRM for starting growing and scaling businesses with the HubSpot CRM you have a purpose-built solution that's tailored to your business and your business alone now I've used HubSpot for many years now but just this year the releasing some new features these are some of the ones that I'm definitely most excited about. 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Go right now TrueBill.com slash success story that's TrueBill.com slash SUCCESSTORY it could save you thousands a year that's TrueBill.com slash success story take control of your subscription. Just stop me in the hallway and he was like Maggie like I'm seeing you interviewing for different jobs but where do you want to go where do you want to take your career and that kind of that kind of made me pause because I was like well I had not thought about that. I just thought you know I'm going from one level to another and I'm looking to continue to grow my skillset continue to climb the corporate ladder but I never thought about way that I you know where we set destination that I want to be. So he was like you know being a great leader that he was and he was like you know what why don't you go home think about it and then come back and we will have a career development conversation. I'm like okay great so then next day I came back to the office and I said you know Mike I'm ready let's talk about it and of course as a Microsoft I pull up my PowerPoint slide and my PowerPoint slide was a was basically it looked like a product roadmap like any technology companies would have is like okay you are here and you want to go here and here and eventually. You know from you know just like a product roadmap you started out with some features eventually you're going to get to feature complete right. So I said you know eventually where I want to go and where I'm at is I want to lead a marketing organization one day. You know at that time there wasn't you know there wasn't the chief marketing officer title I just knew that you know I wanted to be the leader of a company for marketing that's what I wanted to do. So he was like okay great so you know knowing that that's what you want to do ask your career north star so now you need to start building out what are the competencies that you're going to need what are the skillset that you already have so that now you have a roadmap on how do you get there and I would say you know from that point forward all the roles that I have taken was very intentional on how do I continue to build up. How do I continue to build my skillset and my competencies to become a CMO one day. Very smart very smart now I do want to I want to there's there's I guess a couple more major points in your career that I think are very interesting but when was the point in your career that you understood because these are all great career lessons but when was the point that you understood that sponsorship or that mentorship was what basically pointed out. Basically pointed you in the right direction and this is something that you were so passionate about in terms of career velocity and progression that this is what you double down on and you eventually not knowing yet at Microsoft you eventually made a career about what was was this the point was it Mike this VP or was it earlier on you had your first boss who also helped you out. What was that switch that went on like I have to say Scott that the piece about sponsorship was something that I learned much later in my career is more like when I was an executive and that was still not very like not super clear in my mind of course I know sponsorship can help but at the same time I thought everyone was doing that I thought of course you want to align your work. You want to align your goals with your business goals with your manager and your managers manager you know your chain of command but what was not clear to me was that not everyone was doing it and I would say it wasn't until I became it wasn't until I became the chief marketing officer at SAP and I realized that wow you know sponsorship has helped me so much in my career. We used that to help others in you know earlier in the career to help them to grow into into an executive level and and of course now as you know as the CEO and founder of my company Tenshi that's what I think about day in and day out how do we enable more women ethnic minority leaders and other minority leaders to really using sponsorship as a way. To grow their career. And is that so that's obviously been something that's that's helped you now why do you think that's not why do you think that sponsorship is not more prevalent in people's lives and people's careers. Yeah I think sponsorship is something that you see happen all the time right you know you see it let's describe let's define. Let's describe sponsorship first so to describe sponsorship I think about it as you know you have seen it in movies where you know a wise you know older. You know expert who you know who want to pass on their craft and to a younger protégé that's what you see a lot in movies and and one of the things that is very interesting is that the sponsors themselves would actually you know open new opportunities for the protégé as well. So how do we bring that into the corporate or you know in the workplace setting right so the way I think about it is we talk a lot about mentorship and a lot of organizations have mentoring program which are fantastic. I personally benefited in mentorship programs in my past as well. At the same time the way I look at mentors are are that they are the people who have been there and done that they have blaze the trail and they have expertise that they can share with you and give you advice as you you know as you grow. They don't necessarily would be in the position to have the political capital to open new doors for you for new opportunities that's where a sponsor come in a sponsor is someone who is more senior than you are and they have the political capital within the organization to help open doors for you. And I've heard someone actually said that mentors are someone who shine a light at the door whereas a sponsor is the person who kicked the door open for you. So that is the main difference and I think especially attention now when I look at a lot of you know women as examples that we work with many of them thought well if I work hard I do my job. Then that's it right someone would tap me on the shoulder and or you know new opportunities would open up that may be true for some people and that may be true to a certain extent but at some point in your career you may find yourself wait you know that trajectory is not the same anymore how do I really help continue you know how do I help myself to continue to grow. And that's where sponsorship can really open new doors for you. Okay so now we figured out what sponsorship is and at a high level it sounds incredible like yes everybody everybody want it like and we'll speak about women and progressing into leadership roles and actually I want to also I want to go down the sponsorship route but I also want to understand what was your experience as being a really incredible women tech leader as you rose through the ranks. Have you noticed anything because I'm sure that of course over the years it's gotten a little bit better compared to when you first started during the calm and whatnot as you wrote to the ranks talk to me about your experience being a woman leader in tech. Well so I personally feel really fortunate that I you know what let me take a step back so if you look at the broader industry as an example you know McKinsey and Lynn and every year they do a study on women in the workplace and over the last five years when you look at the percentage of women in the sea sweet and the percentage of women of color in the sea sweet. They don't really change that much and you know right now is roughly only about 21% of the sea sweet of women and only 4% are women of color so you know when you look at the workforce starting out at 50 50. Well how do we get from 50 50 to 20% or to 4% so knowing that and also being in tech I remember in my early days in tech most of the time I would be in a meeting and I was the only woman in the room or definitely the only woman of the color in the room. Nowadays that still happened and it doesn't you know I mean we did the thing that I like and and I love seeing the progress is I definitely a lot more meetings now when I go into that I see you know like I definitely see more diversity but it is still a minority is not an equal playing feel yet. So that is why I personally believe that when you think about sponsorship and when organizations thinking from a diversity equity and inclusion perspective. You have to be very intentional looking at your work for seeing where you have gaps where you have you know opportunity to improve and focus on development area that can help you to really create an inclusive environment and my you know my view is that until you have representation. You're not going to have inclusion and until that happened then that's where people everyone can feel like they belong. And what do you think what do you think was the opportunity as well as obviously brought incredible skill to the table but what allowed you to get that CMO position at SAP how can we unpack that strategy that allowed you to not I guess not strategy but of course the mix of your career skills plus the fact that perhaps you had sponsorship plus you had a company that wanted to bring in just the best talent and that's what they were looking for and they brought you in. So I'm trying to figure out how do we get more you know Maggie's you know CMO SAP how do we get more of those and what was the path to get there yes I first and foremost is really understanding or knowing where you want to go and having that clarity having that clarity for your career North Star right not everyone want to be a CMO so you have to at least you know first point is is that where you want to go. And then the second piece is how do you take intentional steps to get there because you know you may say you know for example I may be mentoring and executive and you know and and one of the things that I always say to people I mentor especially when they are thinking about their career journey is where do you want to go where do you want to take your career. Which was the exact same question that I got back in the days at Microsoft and so understanding where you want to go is important and then the steps that you take has to be very intentional and more so when I talk with executive women right they may be at you know one or two level be you know they may be at one or two level below the C suite. Those steps become very critical because that would determine which path you are going to take and will help you to get those type of roles so going. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode Shopify now don't you love that sound that is a sound of a sale being made that's a sound of the all in one e-commerce platform allowing you to start scale and grow your business. 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So you can try it yourself see how effective it is terms and conditions apply go to LinkedIn dot com slash success story right now check it out for yourself back to you know my own journey. I was having a lot of fun at Microsoft I you know my career was going well and that was back in 2012 and cloud was taking off so that was great at the same time I also knew that you know there were so many layers between where I was and where to keep marketing officer role it was so I'm like okay you know when I was looking at opportunities I actually was offer a role. To go to China to you know to do a business unit lead for the marketing side and and then another opportunity came across was to be a senior vice president of marketing at level three and level three at that time was a fortune 500 company so between the two roles even though both were really amazing and you know honestly if I could clone myself I would do both. But you know knowing that my longer term goal was to become a CMO one day then you know taking the role taking a bigger risk to leave the company I was comfortable with and and going to level three at that time was was very intentional. And then yeah go ahead Scott no no I was going to say so so what I also want to understand though so that makes sense to me so being intentional about where you move your career but the reason why what I'm trying to unpack is why is there that 4% that 4% of underserved groups marginalized groups and women see sweet leaders I'm sure a lot of women I'm sure there's a lot of women that for I'm sure a lot of everyone that doesn't have that clear direction but I think a lot of them probably do. So it's about having that clear direction as to where you want to take your career but then after that yeah how do you how do you move the needle on that how do you bring a lot of women that do have that very purposeful driven like you know laser vision on what I need to do next this this and that to get to the C suite. That is exactly right Scott like you have your ambition you know what you need to do from building your own competencies then it's really about sponsorship it's really about getting the right sponsors and who can advocate for you who can give you visibility and open doors to new opportunities. So in the case of my own journey getting to become the CMO of SAP at that time was you know an executive recruiting firm reach out to me about this opportunity and you know that took a while at the beginning but once I spoke with the chief the chief HR officer at that time step on trees and we really connect and he was like you know you need to speak with our CEO Bill McDermott and and after speaking with Bill that that's when things became clear Bill was a sponsor of mine and you know I went through the rest of the interview process knowing that I have his support and you know getting to that was very critical and you know and on the other side. Someone like Bill and Stefan really understanding that they need to make big bets on talent is is also very critical because without that like I wouldn't I wouldn't have got to where I got to. And how would you how would you suggest because this is what I also want to pack unpack unpack as well because some of these going to listen to this and they're going to say well of course if she has the CEO and the chief HR officer then that's a shoe in but the trick is to know how to get into the room with these people the right people and have conversations. So what would be the strategy for somebody who does want to have those conversations so that they can find the right sponsor how do you find how do you find the sponsor how do you find the VP or the CXO or the CEO that can help you get to where you want to be and how do you even make them care about you so that they want to do this. So there are two side there are two part answers to that one is when you're within your company continue to grow within your company. It's really understanding how do you align your goals your business goals with your you know your quote unquote sponsors right and the way I look at you know within an internal organization this sponsor should be your manager your manager's manager. And also any business executives that you work closely with so you know by aligning those goals then you also earning their trust as well and by doing so you will be able to also start having career development conversations with them. And you know get their advice and also get their help tell them where you want to go and you know I mean majority of the time if not all of the time they would be very willing to help you because what you have done and the values that you have to the organization. So that's part one indicate of how you know my interview process with you know with Bill and Stefan at SAP at that time I didn't know them I met them through the interview process so so my guidance in this case is really to your homework to understand where you know based on what you're interviewing for. Where does the company want to go how are you going to contribute to the company and and therefore you know why are you uniquely position to be in this role and that's how you know when you can make that connection with the hiring manager with you know with all the influencers within that hiring you know within the hiring decision it's going to help you to you know set you apart from others. Very smart very smart so it is you you at this point are over preparing aligning your own personal objectives with company objectives and that's how you're either getting into these conversations with sponsors within the own within your own environment or. If you are going into a net new environment that's how you're eliciting that net positive response because you've you've basically align these objectives so that you are absolutely standing out from everyone else who's just going in thinking that this is just a job or hasn't done their research or whatnot and you feel like. At one point Scott is when when I was interviewing for an executive position or even now when I look at board positions I don't necessarily focus to why I shouldn't say that. When I look at those type of positions I would look at it not so much you know using the job description as the N all be all but looking at okay if I were to be in this company and in this particular role how do I add value so I always always look at the annual report. I always listen to the quarterly earnings you know webcast because those are the ways that you can really understand from the CEO's perspective you know how do they communicate with the investors and you know and also what is the future of the company look like. When you're interviewing for an executive job you have to know all those and and be able to say knowing where you want to go and knowing the challenges and opportunities ahead this is how I can add value. Very smart very very smart and do you think that there is something trying to think about how best to say because I don't want to make an assumption but in your work do you find that not enough women and or marginalized groups even make the first ask is that something that you find or is that something that is not an issue. Is it more just when they're trying to and I'm not talking about like for example sorry I don't mean to flip flop back and forth not when I just I'm very curious about this topic as to how do we how do we solve for this I'm just trying to figure out what the what the major problem is for the person who's listening to this is it just making that first ask is getting into the mindset of this is okay to go search for it within their own organizations I think that's an easy next set that's a low hanging fruit versus of course. What you just mentioned you know listening to the to the shareholder you know quarterlies and looking at those report that's also a great step that I mean for somebody who's perhaps not as advanced in their career. What's what's the biggest inhibitor that you see. The biggest inhibitor is that they don't try. So that still is an issue. Yep so I would say you know I like the key thing is yes you may get a lot of nose but you only need one to say yes so when I you know I talk to a lot of people who are in the middle of you know interviewing for jobs and sometimes they get discouraged because they felt like you know I'm applying for a lot of jobs I am interviewing but. You know somehow I'm not getting the offer and I always say that you know you're right maybe this path is harder for you at the same time you know if you keep trying and also learning as in you know learning as part of that process as well if you're getting a lot of nose starting to think about okay why is that happening you know. You know you may never really know for sure but if there are things that you can adjust whether it is your value proposition or you know the way you show up in terms of you know confidence and those are the things that you can work on so I would say keep trying until you get to where you want to get to. Amazing okay now I want to the sort of the I'm happy how this unfolded because we sort of went through your career we unpack lessons like as your career progress now the last thing that I wanted to dive into. You have a couple more minutes is just you're at the height of your career you know CMO SAP you're also an advisor at a vast and I think you've held a couple other board and or advisors. Board of directors okay at a vast so obviously a pity me like you've you've made it right that's where most people would want to end up now you end up pivoting and you start your own thing so walk me through that process because that is also very interesting to people who are later on in their career and what was your mind like what was what were you thinking when you're like I want to uproot all of this and I want to start my own company. Yeah I think something that has always been consistent in my career is that I want to continue to learn new things and you know and every role that I took had always been about learning new things so after the role as a CMO of SAP I'm like. What new things can I learn if you know if given that I have reached my career north star and in the other thing to was that I really start to think about what kind of things really would make me happy and knowing that I really wanted to focus on something that really speak to me which was around gender diversity. And that was really kind of you know the path that I was thinking I wanted to focus more about helping next generation leaders to grow especially women ethnic minority in other minority leaders but I didn't really know what exactly should I go into until I was speaking at an executive MBA class at Cornell University and someone asked me you know Maggie you have such an amazing career with coaches mentors and sponsors. I was a big part of your growth I said absolutely I said you know I actually really appreciated having work with my coach for you know for like the past eight years since I was a director at Microsoft and that was a like boat moment for me I was like you know what I'm going to start something to help more women and minority leaders to get executive coaches. I think a lot of people early on in their career where they get stuck was not really seeing where they want to go and how do you hold yourself accountable to get there and having a thought partner as a coach was important. And obviously that's how I started Tenshi and as we continue to think about what are some other ways that can help leaders to grow and to accelerate their career trajectory was really about sponsorship which is exactly why I wrote the book decoding sponsorship. And any any lessons that you've learned from starting Tenshi and just jumping into building your own thing coming from some of the largest companies in the world. You mean other than it is really really really hard to start your own company. Yes other than that little little thing. Yeah I you know I think for anyone who want to do something to who want to pivot you have to think about what is you know again what is the angle that you want to achieve. And why you're doing this right for for me it has always been this passion to pay it forward and really unlocking the unlocking to potential of the next generation leaders and those were the things that. When I was in you know in my executive corporate roles that's the thing that really resonated with me the most in terms of giving me the most joy so that was why I decided to do it and even nowadays you know they will be tough days. And I just have to remind myself why I'm doing this is not you know it's not because building a business is fun at least you know to me personally that's not the fun part the fun part was seen to impact that you make and that's the most fun I get. And one last thing that I wanted to just touch on because I know you bring it up and you speak about it in the book is paying it forward so walk me through. The importance of that how to do it properly and and some of the things that I guess really that it's critical like the core founding principle of what you what you've built now it's paying it forward but also how people can do it in at a smaller scale. Yeah I think anyone can really pay it forward whether it is through allyship meaning that you know you could be in a meeting where someone's voice seems marginalized or they didn't really speak up or have the opportunity to speak up help them to create room for them to speak up. That could be a daily thing that you can do or helping the next generation leaders like those who are still in you know in middle school in high school you know we still need more women to get into STEM helping girls to really you know looking into those opportunities those could be ways to pay it forward in a day to day basis. And then more so is you know as you continue to grow your career mentor to next generation leaders and when you are in a position where you have the political capital to you know to help the next generation leaders really be intentional about creating a diverse and inclusive environment that means also having a diverse team as well that's going to be key. Very good amazing okay so I want to I want to I want to pull out some rapid fire from your career that I ask everyone because I have a board meeting at 11 oh my goodness okay so we got to we got to wrap this up we got to wrap this up okay okay um before we kill this and we and we and we end off and where can people go and connect with you and find more of you. So you can find me yep you can find me on LinkedIn on Instagram and Twitter okay perfect all right well thank you thank you very much I was incredible and I don't mean to rush through the end I'll ask quick rapid fire questions sure if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be. I would say don't worry too much everything's going to work out just fine. Perfect if you had to suggest one book or podcast do you have anything to help a mind you'd recommend people go check out. You mean other than the success story. Other than yours other than mine other than mine other than yours. When I first started building Tenshi I love the podcast of how I built this by. Yeah yeah yeah that's a great one as well um if you had to pick one person who you learned a lot from over your career who was it what did they teach you. I think the one person I would say is my mom because she is such a tough lady and you know she she was you know she was a single mom and I really learned a lot about you know hard work and really you know chasing what you dream of. Amazing and then last question what does success mean to you. Success mean to me um success to me is making an impact that impact out of people's life every single day. I love that that's it that was quick okay good very good. you