Episode 13: Liz Tran
Finding Your Inner Genius with Liz Tran and Aisha Dozie
Episode 13: Show Notes
Welcome to this very special edition of The Paint and Pipette Podcast, as we bring you a live coaching session hosted by the remarkable Liz Tran! Liz is a former venture capitalist and team-builder turned spiritual guru and startup coach. Her newest book, The Karma of Success: Spiritual Strategies to Free Your Inner Genius, is all about how to connect with your innate intuition. In this episode, you’ll find out how Liz coped with changing the entire concept of her book just six weeks before it was published, the magic of the three S’s, and everything we can learn from Einstein’s process of generating new ideas. Then, we introduce the subject of Liz’s coaching session, Aisha Dozie, the Founder and CEO of Bossy Cosmetics, a beauty brand geared toward igniting confidence in ambitious working women through high-quality, beautifully packaged, cruelty-free cosmetics and topical content. Liz begins the session by asking Aisha a series of rapid-fire questions that help us understand Aisha’s professional background, what motivates her day-to-day, the differences between zones of genius and zones of excellence, and what Aisha can do to amplify her zone of genius on a daily basis. We end with a discussion about when you should and shouldn’t outsource your zone of excellence and why leaps of faith are all about being comfortable with discomfort. Tune in for all this and more!
Key Points From This Episode:
• Liz’s account of changing her book’s entire concept just six weeks before publication.
• Her experience of writing about deeply personal matters with vulnerability and transparency.
• How to assess if you’re connected to your intuition: do you trust yourself?
• The three S’s of spaciousness: silence, solitude, and stillness.
• What we can learn from the way Einstein brought subconscious ideas to fruition.
• Introducing the Founder and CEO of Bossy Cosmetics, Aisha Dozie.
• Now for something different: Liz displays her craft in a live coaching session with Aisha!
• A series of quick-fire questions to establish Aisha’s base.
• Aisha’s professional background and what motivates her in her line of work.
• How her role and the relationship with her clients have changed since she started Bossy.
• The way she spends her time in any given work week.
• Finding Aisha’s inner genius (and differentiating between zones of genius and excellence.)
• How she can restructure her days to make more room for her zone of genius.
• Liz’s intended outcomes for the specific tactics she used in her questions to Aisha.
• When excellence is and isn’t outsourceable.
• Leaps of faith and being comfortable with discomfort.
Quotes:
“That’s what the book is about: the fact that every person has an inner genius. That inner genius is the voice that gives you great ideas, that gives you pieces of information that you don't quite know how you know, but you turned out to be right later on. It's your intuition.” — Liz Tran [0:02:48]
“My role as a coach is to enable [clients] and help them reach their inner genius. I'm not there to be the person with all the wisdom; they have it within themselves.” — Liz Tran [0:04:41]
“The work here is knowing that that [intuitive] voice is real, it's right, and you can apply it to a whole set of other decisions that we normally think are purely reserved for the data-driven business world.” — Liz Tran [0:07:13]
“I've always been passionate – [about focusing] on women; ambitious women, igniting confidence in women, thinking about confidence hacks, and supporting women in our own professional and personal journeys up the career ladder.” — @TheAishetu [0:19:34]
“I want to serve millions of women, but let's focus on one. What's keeping her up at night? How is she thinking about success? How is she thinking about her career and how does a lipstick really enhance that for her? That's the balance I'm constantly trying to manage being a CEO.” — @TheAishetu [0:24:48]
“I don't have any meetings on Fridays. That's my thing. It's my blank day. I say it's my day to think, but it's also my day to enhance creativity.” — @TheAishetu [0:26:45]
“You can end up growing a business in the wrong direction if you are not staying close to what your customers want.” — @TheAishetu [0:29:12]
“Don't let that feeling of discomfort scare you. It’s actually a good sign that you are growing.” — Liz Tran [0:56:50]
Longer Quotes
“Courage is leaping in spite of fear. I often have fear, but I really trust my intuition. I trust that deeper faith within me, then I go. I know that sometimes I will fly, and sometimes I'll fall. The goal is that when you fall, you get up, you learn, and hopefully, the fall isn't nasty, but you brush yourself off and keep going.” — @TheAishetu [0:45:25]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Aishetu Fatima Dozie on LinkedIn
Aishetu Fatima Dozie on Instagram
EPISODE 13 [TRANSCRIPT]
[0:00:02] AD: I think it was really just engaging with people. I think one of the things that I learned from being at the d.school was just talking to people, talking to your customer, talking to the user, really having this empathetic viewpoint of what this person's opinion is about the world, what their experiences are, what their problems are, what their joys are. I think for me, that was a very exciting process to just really speak to as many ambitious women as possible. Also, women who didn't identify as being ambitious, why they didn't speak to women who were in the arena, or women who had come off the arena. Just really understanding, what was the thing behind confidence and how was cosmetics able to play a part?
[0:00:47] JU: You're listening to Paint & Pipette. I'm your host, Jeremy Utley. I teach innovation and entrepreneurship at Stanford University. Thanks for joining me to explore the art and science of bringing new ideas to life. Let's dive in.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:09] JU: All right, folks. Welcome to another episode of the Paint & Pipette Podcast. I am delighted to get to be with you all this morning and to get to showcase the brilliant and unique work of Liz Tran. Liz has just published last week a book called The Karma of Success, which I've dog-eared and taken lots of notes in. We're excited to do something a little bit different today, aren't we, Liz?
[0:01:33] LT: We are very excited about this.
[0:01:35] JU: Yeah, it's going to be a really fun conversation. Thank you for being game to do something different. For those of you who don't know, Liz is a startup coach, a former venture capitalist and a team builder turned spiritual guru and startup coach, who thought she was going to write a book about the intersection between entrepreneurship and spirituality. Then true to your own inner genius, you decided to pivot. What was it like to pivot when you had so little time left to actually get your book to publication?
[0:02:07] LT: Yeah. I had six weeks left. For the people out there who know, you get a year to write a book. I had spent most of that year diligently writing, making time in my calendar every single day, but it just wasn't working. It felt like I would sit down at the computer every day, and it was literally like driving a car with a parking brake on. You're pressing the gas, but you're not moving at all. It was a tough realization.
What I realized was that I was building on completely the wrong foundation. If you're trying to build a house on a crooked foundation, then it's not really going to make any progress. It essentially was a trust in myself. That is what the book is about, is about the fact that every person has an inner genius. That inner genius is that voice that gives you those great ideas, that gives you those pieces of information that you don't quite know how you know, but you turned up to be right later on. It's your intuition. You can call it gut instinct, intuition, inner genius, whatever it is. I thought, “You know what? I need to write the book about this, because it is so clearly what has helped me and my clients throughout their careers.”
I wrote to my editor and I said, “Might need a little bit more time.” She said, “Sure.” She really trusted me. I followed it. Felt like, the flow state came in. I wrote this book in six weeks. I turned it on its deadline. When I sent it to my editor, she said, “This is one of the best manuscripts I've ever read from a first-time author.”
[0:03:38] JU: Which is a testament to the whole proposition, right? Actually, trusting your inner genius. In just a second, we're actually going to bring a startup founder and CEO here to do a live coaching session, because we thought it'd be fun to actually peek behind the curtain of your coaching practice and see what that's like. Before we dive into that, as I was reading the book, I just – to me, one, I really appreciated how deeply personal it was. I mean, you were really vulnerable. What was it like writing about your own personal experiences with such transparency and candor?
[0:04:13] LT: It was really important to me, because I love reading business and self-help books. The one thing I haven't liked about them is that it feels so much like the author is like, “I'm the expert. Listen to me. This is what I do. I'm the person that you need to follow.” I really don't believe that that's true. I'm a human person and I feel the same way as a coach, even though I’m coaching CEOs and founders of some of the fastest-growing tech companies, I don't believe that I know better than they do.
I think my role as a coach is to enable them and help them reach their inner genius. I'm not there to be the person with all the wisdom. They have it within themselves. So much of the theme of the book is to be a coach for everyone who's reading the book. In that way, I want to say, I'm a person. I don't know necessarily better than you, but I've done this a few times and hopefully, what I offer here is of service and supportive to you.
[0:05:09] JU: Yeah. No, it’s beautiful. I found myself really touched by some of the poignant stories, I mean, about your upbringing and certainly, your experiences in India and in your early career. For me, I found myself, there's a question you asked at one point. You said, “How connected are you to your intuition right now?” That’s a question that you ask in the book. I found myself wondering, how does someone even know that? That question as I interacted with it, my first thought was, well, I don't even know how to answer the question. Being connected to your own intuition and inner geniuses is so critical. How does one even begin to assess where they are in that? Is the fact that it's a difficult question to answer and answer in and of itself? Or could you be connected to your own intuition and not even aware of it? How do you begin to process that question?
[0:05:58] LT: Yeah. I think another way of phrasing it is, do you trust yourself? Do you trust yourself in the absence of data, or in the abundance of data? If you hear a lot of people telling you a certain thing, can you still listen to that voice even when it's going against the grain? Then vice versa, when there's not a clear black-and-white answer for what you're trying to solve, do you still trust yourself that there's this deeper knowing that you can rely on?
I think that a great exercise is to go back in time and think about all the big decisions you've made in life. Maybe it's a move to a city, taking a job, deciding to start a company, choosing to marry your partner, whatever it is. Think of those big, foundational pivots and consider whether or not you listen to your intuition over what other people said, external sources of information. Then you start to get an answer, right? Because I think most of us actually have an instinct, where you start dating someone, you're like, “I just knew right away that I was going to marry them,” right? Or you meet someone, you're like, “I knew I was going to be able to work really well with this person.”
I think a lot of times, we don't count that as intuition, right? Or we say, “Oh. Well, I only relied on it, because there was no data to rely on.” But it still counts. It's still really important. The work here is knowing that that voice is real, and it's right, and that you can apply it to a whole set of other decisions that we normally think are purely reserved for the data-driven business world.
[0:07:25] JU: Yeah. One thing that strikes me even as I interact with that for myself, I find, one thing I heard you say is take stock of your past and see and connect with the times where you have been connected to your intuition and your inner genius. Yet, I'm going to put a question out there, make a statement that's really a question. You can also become disconnected from your intuition, right? I would assume. There's a path towards connection and probably a path towards disconnection. What I fear, even as I interact with the prompt myself is that there was a period of time where I maybe was connected with that inner genius. Then, I've become disconnected. Are there ways to assess what my present condition is, irrespective of no matter how connected I might have been in the past, how do I assess it now?
[0:08:13] LT: Yeah. You know what? It varies day to day. You could have one day where you feel really connected to your intuition. Maybe you're on a hike, right? Or you have time to yourself. Then another day, where literally your to-do list is the thing that's dominating your psyche and you don't have time to even hear that voice. What it's really about is spaciousness. I call it the three S's, silence, solitude, and stillness.
I think that's a really good indicator. How much of that do you have in your life? Do you have even five to 15 minutes through the day, where your phone isn't beeping at you? No one's demanding your attention, where you just have downtime. Because those are the slippers of space, where the intuition sneaks in and says, “Hey, I have a message to give you.” Because I feel disconnected from my intuition all the time, especially when I'm back to back to back to back. Then as soon as I'm able to say, “You know what? I'm just going to take a shower and not listen to a podcast.” Then you just say, okay, whatever message, or whatever magic, whatever thought wants to come in, let it come in. Sometimes it's honestly nothing.
It is a skill like any other. It's a muscle. The more we practice it, the more loud that voice is going to be. What I'll say is that it's all something that happens for us naturally. It's not even like you have to try, or sit down and be like, “Intuition, give it to me.” It's just about carving out five minutes. Literally just five minutes.
[0:09:39] JU: I love the three S's. I love your story. To me, I thought a great diagnostic was a story told about a co-worker, who always responds to email within three minutes. That to me is a great litmus test of, wow, there's clearly the three S's don't have priority. If responsiveness is always paramount, chances are, you're lacking in stillness. I thought there might be some interesting ways to assess yourself in terms of behavior. Are you super responsive? Perhaps you neglect stillness, for example.
[0:10:07] LT: Yeah. I think a good barometer is are you spending as much time in the internal as the external? That's a hard one, right? Because most of the world is wired to be external. It's like, meetings, emails, all that stuff. I think we look at “downtime” as doing nothing. People are like, “Well, I'm not doing anything. I'm not being productive.” The reframe that I want to make in this book is that those moments of spaciousness are even more productive, than being busy, busy. I love a story in the book about Einstein and how, when he has –
[0:10:40] JU: I was going to ask you about this. It’s great. Go there. Please, by all means.
[0:10:44] LT: Whenever he had the hardest problem to solve, he would go and take a nap. It wasn't like, he was sitting with his colleagues, or in the lab trying to figure it out. He would go sit in a rocking chair. He would let himself fall asleep and he would hold these two metal balls in his hands. Right when he was starting to fall asleep and the balls would fall on the ground, wake him up, and he would have whatever idea it was, because it had been lingering in his subconscious. Coming out right at that intersection of sleep and wake. Then he would wake up and he would have the idea. He would also do this through long walks. He loved walking. He loved playing musical instruments. He found that his ideas came out through that way.
He also slept for 10 hours a night. I think all of us have been programmed to think that the busy we are, the more successful we will be when really, it's the opposite. The more we can tune in and create the space, the ideas just flow. No pun about the title of your book.
[0:11:40] JU: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It brings us full circle. Everybody knows I'm a sucker for a good Einstein anecdote. I definitely key it into that page of the book, and I actually hadn't heard that story. That's really cool. I think to me, part of it comes down to permission. As I was intersecting with the three S's in my own life, it really came down to, do I give myself permission to have space? How do I judge effectiveness? Because I find, there's this tyranny of efficiency that dominates our working world. When you realize that what is efficient isn't actually what's effective, then you can start to make that change.
I think stories like Einstein's and many others. I mean, there's a whole chapter in our book dedicated to these unconventional tactics, because to me, if you become aware, wow, really smart and successful people work differently. Part of, to me, at least what's built the case to give myself, forget anybody else, to give myself permission to work differently.
[0:12:38] LT: Yeah. I think experiment for yourself and see, this is something that my clients really push back on is when I try to give them more spaciousness, especially if they're early-stage founders and they feel like they need to be doing everything for product market fit. I say, just try it. Just try experimenting with it and just notice whether or not your effectiveness is better when you have less “productivity.”
Something in that I suggest that you do is don't even think about it as, “Am I being productive or not?” It's tracking where your energy is. We all can say, Jeremy, what's your energy right now on a scale from one to 10? What do you think it is?
[0:13:16] JU: I'm an eight.
[0:13:17] LT: You're an eight. You're doing pretty well, right? I'm probably a seven and a half right now. I'm doing pretty well, a little tired from the book launch, but doing great. It fluctuates all throughout the day. Just checking and saying, where am I? You start to notice which parts in your calendar drop you down to a two or three, which meetings really drain you, which ones elevate you. Then you start to play around with trying to set up your schedule and your calendar, so that you can be at a 10 all the time. Sometimes that means taking an hour for breakfast, so you start your day at a 10, or taking an hour in the afternoon so you can go exercise.
I even look at things as granular as that with my clients where I might say, okay, you've been working out in the morning, but think of exercise for you as an energy booster. Maybe you want to move it into the afternoon after you've had that weekly recurring team meeting that you know is horrible and you hate.
[0:14:07] JU: There's a great doctor that I work with at Stanford named Anja Nabergoj, who has written a guest blog post on my blog, but she calls it hacking your chronotype. Recognizing that everybody has a different chronotype. You can actually hijack it, or hack it to amplify your own individualized. You talk about being one in 13 quadrillion. I'm going to get the number wrong. I like the idea of chronotype as well. One thing I want to dive into, because we have a special guest waiting in the wings, you mentioned hypothetically, one thing I'll mention to clients, I think one thing that's really special about your book and your practice is it's informed by lots of these clients interactions.
As you and I were talking about, what are ways we could honor the karma of success and actually showcase some of your work? We thought, wouldn't it be cool if we had a startup founder, like the ones you're describing actually come into a live session? I'm thrilled to get to welcome to the stage, Aisha Dozie, who is the CEO and Founder of Bossy Cosmetics, who is it four of Oprah's favorite products, Aisha?
[0:15:06] AD: Yes.
[0:15:07] JU: You’re one of her favorites.
[0:15:08] AD: That is correct. Hi, Jeremy. Hi, Liz.
[0:15:12] JU: It's awesome to have you with us, Aisha. Thank you for being game to do this. Folks who are joining us today, what we're going to do is something a little bit different, where we're actually going to have Liz showcase her craft by doing a live coaching session with Aisha. We've asked Aisha to be as open and comfortable as she's willing to be, not saying anything that she's not willing to say, of course. But what we want to do is actually watch what does a client engagement look like as Liz seeks to cultivate and help Aisha connect with her inner genius.
What we're going to do now is I'm actually going to leave the stage. I'm going to let Liz lead the conversation. Then I might pop in a couple of times for meta commentary and ask follow-up questions, not so much about the contents of the conversation. That's really Aisha's content and her property, but rather, about Liz's craft and how she's approaching the conversation the way she is. That hopefully, everybody can get some practice with what does it look like? Put yourself in Aisha's position here. What does it look to begin to identify and cultivate and nurture your inner genius? With that, Liz, I'm going to hand the floor over to you. Then if I pop back, hopefully, you guys will welcome an interruption.
[0:16:17] LT: Sounds good. Hi, Aisha.
[0:16:20] AD: Hi, Liz. How are you?
[0:16:21] LT: I'm great. I want to start off and say that I know you've worked with coaches before, but this might feel a little different, because it won't feel like the flow of a normal conversation. I'm going to ask you lots of questions in the beginning. That's how I work as a coach is I like to make sure that I'm never assuming anything about your perspective, your viewpoint, your situation. I guess, we'll first just start and check in and I just want to see how you're doing energetically on a scale from one to 10. What would you give yourself? Ten being best, one being worst.
[0:16:55] AD: I think I'm kind of nine and a half.
[0:16:58] LT: Excellent. I love to hear it. That's good.
[0:17:01] AD: Yeah. I'm good to go. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm like, “All right. How's this going to go?”
[0:17:07] LT: Perfect. Okay. The way we start is you tell me something that is taking up the most space in your mind right now. It doesn't necessarily have to be a problem, or question, but just something that you've been thinking about a lot and it feels like is weighing on you.
[0:17:23] AD: Wow. Where to start? Obviously, this is professionally. I think my brand, Bossy Cosmetics is a little over four-years-old. We started as a digitally made-up brand, literally sitting down in front of a computer on my phone, selling products on Instagram. In four and a half years, we have gone from being predominantly D2C to now selling in over 600 stores around the country.
As Jeremy said before, really being blessed to be one of Oprah's favorite things and a lot of others, awards. It's just been on my mind this year how to transition from being a D2C company sitting in my home with my Instagram account to really building out this wholesale, retail-driven platform that still keeps that almost one-on-one personality and the essence of who I am and why I started the brand, with this much bigger footprint and platform and doing it effectively. I think about that a lot.
[0:18:23] LT: Yeah. Okay. That's super helpful. Then, so four and a half years ago is actually not a super long time ago. Congratulations. I mean, that's a lot to do to be in 600 retail stores and have the presence that you do. Let's go back in time to four and a half years ago. Tell me about the moment, or the unraveling where you're like, “Okay, I want to start this brand. This is my vision for it. This is my goal.”
[0:18:46] AD: It's really funny we're having this conversation, because four and a half years ago takes me back to Jeremy, actually. I was a student in one of Jeremy's classes, yeah, at Stanford. I think it was this class called Transformative Design. I had spent the entire year at Stanford taking a lot of classes in the d.school, but really trying to think about deconstructing who I am and what I believe my purpose is in this planet. Prior to being a student at Stanford, I'd worked for over 20 years as an investment banker. Spectacularly burned out from that career and came to Stanford to really just reassess like, where did I think my skills were best focused on?
Part of what I realized from that transformative design process is really me getting back to what I believe is the intersection of my purpose and my passion. I've always been passionate as a working woman to really want to focus on women, ambitious women, igniting confidence in women, thinking about confidence hacks, and really just supporting women in our own professional and personal journeys up the career ladder. Then my passion was always as you can see from my office color, I love cosmetics, I love accessories, and I really wanted to take money out of the picture. I say, money out of the picture, because not because I'm independently wealthy, but because I'd made a lot of choices in my prior career focused entirely on money.
That part of my reinvention of self was really focusing on the intersection of purpose and passion and believing that money will follow. That's how I came to the idea from this transformative design class of thinking about myself deeply and what I thought that I could bring to this world that was so unique, that was such a unique point of view, but also, was something that people needed. That's how Bossy Cosmetics was born.
[0:20:35] LT: Okay, great. I'm going to play that back for you and tell me if it's right and then also, edit it and add on. Four and a half years ago, you knew that you had a great career in investment banking for 20 years, but that there was something deeper and more meaningful for you. That involves empowering women and helping them get confidence. Then also, you combine that with your love of accessories, being bold.
It's like this personality characteristic of being unafraid to take on the world that you wanted to express and help women express through the products that you're creating for them. Does that sound right?
[0:21:11] AD: Absolutely. That is absolutely spot on.
[0:21:14] LT: Okay. Great. Anything else that you want to add about even just that time period that feels important to you?
[0:21:20] AD: I think it was really just engaging with people. I think one of the things that I learned from being at the d.school was just talking to people, talking to your customer, talking to the user, really having this empathetic viewpoint of what this person's opinion is about the world, what their experiences are, what their problems are, what their joys are. I think for me, that was a very exciting process to just really speak to as many ambitious women as possible. Also, women who didn't identify as being ambitious, why they didn't speak to women who were in the arena, or women who had come off the arena. Just really understanding, what was the thing behind confidence and how was cosmetics able to play a part, or had it traditionally played a part and where I saw white space?
That's how I basically decided to start this company is that women thought a lot about ambition and confidence, but they didn't – they used their beauty products and their beauty regimen to get their confidence levels up. But no beauty company was actually helping them to do that. I wanted to be at that middle part and really turbocharge it.
[0:22:24] LT: Yeah. You know what's interesting is that I feel like, before Bossy, I mean, every other cosmetics company, it's almost the opposite where they prey on women's insecurities to be like, “You need this thing.” I really love this messaging of like, you were amazing. Let's enhance this, or express your natural, innate confidence through this product, because it feels really, really different. One is very abundant and the other one is very scarcity-minded of like, if you don't buy this thing, then you're not enough.
[0:22:54] AD: Absolutely. Everything, even on our packaging, it says, may this lipstick serve as war paint to help you surpass your goals and more. We're not saying, may this look to cover your face, so that you can be beautiful for a meeting. It's put on that war paint, but you've got what it takes to succeed, believe in yourself. This is just enhancing. That's everything that we wanted to be. Everything about our products, we write on the packaging, “You're awesome, you're beautiful, you're amazing, you're driven.” All of these affirmations, because we know that these are things that are really important to women. But beauty companies are only thinking about completely unrealistic aesthetic. We wanted to be part of something completely different. That's how this company began.
[0:23:35] LT: I'm also hearing you say that a lot of this for you, you're attributing this and thanking the people that you were talking to. You designed this product for real women who you had conversations with. Tell me about over the past four and a half years, how the trajectory of those conversations has changed. Also, in relation to how your role has changed, what were you doing in the beginning, and then what does your role look like now?
[0:23:59] AD: I mean, in the beginning, I was speaking to every single customer, right? I mean, I was speaking to customers, I was speaking to women on the street. I was emailing, I was doing Facebook surveys. I was very, very, very intricately involved in everything that the brand did. I think over time, when you asked me, when we first started this conversation, what keeps me up at night, so to speak, is the fact that I can no longer speak to every single customer. I can no longer be as tactical as I was in the beginning. How are you making sure that you're having really representative conversations and that you're not also getting very mired in now, I have to think about operations, management, supply chain, the very exciting things as you scale a business, that I want to make sure that I don't lose that initial magic of that individual woman.
I mean, I want to serve millions of women, but let's focus on one. What's keeping her up at night? How is she thinking about success? How is she thinking about her career and how does a lipstick really enhance that for her? That's the balance that I'm constantly trying to manage being the CEO, the chief visionary officer, chief strategy officer, chief everything officer to the nuts and bolts of making sure the magic in the brand is never lost.
[0:25:17] LT: Perfect.
[MESSAGE]
[0:25:21] JU: How many ideas have you tested today? How about your team or organization? Idea flow is a set of tools that help you test more ideas faster. I've worked with both high growth startups and global organizations and success comes when you test more ideas faster. Want to learn how better idea flow can help your organization? Check out my website, jeremyutley.design, or reach out to me at jutley@jeremyutley.design. I'd love to talk with you.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:25:54] LT: Just to even get into a double-click on that a little bit more, if your week is like a pie chart, can you give me the slices and the percentage roughly of where you're spending your time? Obviously, it doesn't have to be exact, but just a rough estimate.
[0:26:10] AD: Okay. Even answering now, I'm like, not enough time by talking to customers. That's for sure. As soon as you asked it, I was like, “Oh, I see where this is going.” I would say, I spend 50% on operations. Definitely. I would say, I spend another 30% on calls. Just calls, calls, calls, calls, calls that have everything to do with the brand, but not the operations themselves. Then the rest of the 20% is split between me giving myself some spare time to think. I don't have any meetings on Fridays. That's my thing. It's my blank day. I say it's my data thing, but it's also my day to enhance creativity.
I have a board on my wall right now that has lots of stuff from newspapers, from magazines. I do a lot of reading, lots of podcasts. It's my time to get still and create space, so that I can be creative for the next period. I would say, the rest of the 20% is in that space.
[0:27:09] LT: I love that. I love that you do that already. On those Fridays, what has worked well for you? Then also, have there been anything that's been standing in your way of the Fridays being fantastic?
[0:27:21] AD: The one thing that stands in the way is if I have somebody I really need to speak to that can only speak on a Friday. That really annoys me, but hey, you got to do it. I go for walks around my neighborhood. I listen to podcasts. I spend a lot of time on the internet just figuring out what are some really good articles out there. I use that time to send out emails to customers. One of the things that I do, I do once a month, I write 200 personalized cards to customers who have placed orders from us. I just randomly have the system bring out 200 and I write letters. A lot of times, people respond. People will write in the back and reach out. I'll respond to those. That's really it. It's a time for me to think. I call it my thinking day.
[0:28:05] LT: Great. Well, one, I think that will be really inspirational for people listening to this, because it sounds actually incredibly productive. The second thing is in that pie chart, what percentage amount would you give to interacting with customers and having one-on-one conversations?
[0:28:22] AD: That's in the 20%. I would say, maybe a third of that. 6% of my week. Oh, God, this is getting more embarrassing.
[0:28:34] LT: I think what I’m hearing you say is that in the beginning of Bossy, you're spending almost 100% of your time talking to customers. Then over the years, because it has turned into a really vibrant business, now that's reduced to closer to 6% of your time.
[0:28:48] AD: That is correct. Yes.
[0:28:50] LT: Then what comes up for you when we quantify it like that?
[0:28:54] AD: Well, I mean, not good. I know this and every week, I'm like, “Okay, this week, I'm going to give that entire Friday to talking to customers,” right? That number is going to go to 20%. Of course, it never happens. Yeah, what comes to mind is I've got to prioritize this. It's really important, because you can end up growing a business in the wrong direction if you are not staying close to what your customers want. I recognize it as critically important. I just haven't figured out how to find the time to make it very systematic as I do with all of my work meetings, or my operations management.
[0:29:30] LT: Yeah, definitely. Okay, let's talk about the two other buckets first before we return back to that, which was operations and then meetings. Tell me a little bit more about those two buckets. You're 50% with operations. Now you're 30% with meetings. Tell me what you do day-to-day. Then also in a dream world, is that the amount of time you want to be giving to your pie chart, or do you want to change it?
[0:29:53] AD: Well, in a dream world, operations would drop from 50% to 10%. That would be that I would hire somebody who focused on operations. I mean, we're a pretty small company, and so we don't have a chief operations officer, or anybody like that. In a perfect world, that would be a better use of my time. I think, when I say operations, it's supply chain. It's making sure goods are moving to the right distribution center. Talking to our Amazon logistics team. Talking to the JCPenney distribution centers. It's a lot of stuff. My supply chain starts in China. It moves to Italy. From Italy it comes to the US. It's managing all of those things.
Somebody else who's really talented could do that. I don't think you need the CEO to be managing that level of operations. That also includes if there's a customer service issue, I mean, I do have someone who focuses on customer service, but there's some things that I like to get involved in, again, to keep that personalized touch. I think the other 30% meetings, I mean, for now, I see that as just my job.
I have a weekly team meeting, a weekly design and art direction meeting, weekly social media. We have parts of the business that are just people are managing them every week. We come together and make sure that all the pieces of the business are moving together in a very cohesive manner. I don't want to give that up any time soon. I think that 30% is where it needs to be. I've become really religious this year on if it can be communicated in an email, or in Slack, we're not talking about it in a meeting. I'm pretty responsive on Slack. I just don't want to spend my time in a meeting talking about anything, can be communicated very quickly in writing.
[0:31:37] LT: Great. Okay, let's pause here because Jeremy jumped in.
[0:31:42] JU: Just from a meta, again, processing level, not to dive into the details, the conversation itself. Liz, one thing I'm noticing is you're beginning to have Aisha describe reality. It seems like there's a level setting of what is the basis of today and calendar, things like that. You use this phrase, I wrote down, in a dream world and then you're having her compare the current state of affairs to a dream world. My question for you is, is the dream world in your mind, in your practice a representation of the inner genius? Is someone's dream world, is that actually their inner genius speaking to them when you ask them when to compare where they are with where they hope to be, that the gap represents the potential space for the inner genius to emerge? How do you think about that?
[0:32:35] LT: Yeah. One thing I was trying to identify with Aisha is that that we were just going to talk about, which I think we can just bring up now, which is helpful, is that the area – her zone of genius is clearly around her interactions with customers and being able to hear what women are saying, and then create products that don't exist for them, right? No one has done that before her.
But, and she's also really clearly very competent at operations, because she's describing everything that she does and the fact that she can do that in 50% of her time is actually pretty extraordinary, and I'm thinking about her in her former life as an investment banker and imagining her being really good at that. But I would actually probably put that work in her zone of excellence, which is that she's really, really good at it. People really want her to do it. She's probably gotten paid really well for that type of work in the past, but it does not light her up.
You can hear the difference when she was talking about, even just I really pay attention to voice. When she was talking about having these conversations with the customers, she was so lit up and when she was talking about her vision for the brand. I was like, “I want to go work for Bossy.” She was just lighting up the whole room. Then she was describing operations –
[0:33:42] JU: Sign us up, Aisha. Sign us up.
[0:33:43] LT: - and she was very much like, it was much more – she was very on it and very good at explaining it. That same level of joy wasn't in her voice. I don't know. Did you hear that as well, both of you?
[0:33:55] JU: Yeah. Oh, a 100%. Aisha, before you answer, hang on, because I'm going to get off stage here. But one question just to drill down, Liz, you made a distinction between zone of genius and zone of excellence. Can you tell us about the difference there and what do those represent?
[0:34:11] LT: Yeah, 100%. The similarity is that it's stuff the person is really good at and is recognized externally for being really good at those things. The difference is the zone of genius gives energy to the person and the zone of excellence detracts energy from the person. It's actually impossible to be in flow state in zone of excellence. You can be in your flow state in zone of genius, with those activities. The problem is that we get really pigeonholed into a lot of zone of excellence activities, because maybe we're the best person at them, right? Then we get stuck in the cycle where those things aren't giving us life. Also, those tasks are not being done by someone who, for whom those are their zone of excellence.
Ideally, a company – what I always say is like, your trash is someone else's joy for managers. It's like, you may hate doing this, but there is someone out there who is going to thrive doing that. With the inner genius, that exists in the zone of genius. I really was looking for Aisha's zone of genius and what her inner genius says, but it's actually pretty clear and pretty evident, because it's usually attached to what the differentiating factor of this company is. This company has not made a huge splash, because the operations are tight. That's just a – it's like a status quo thing to hit. This company has made a splash, because of Aisha's ability to create products for people that did not previously exist before.
[0:35:34] JU: Thank you. That's a great distinction. Okay, I'm dropping off the stage. Please, continue. Thank you.
[0:35:40] AD: I'm writing notes over here, Liz. The zone of genius.
[0:35:45] LT: What do you think about that? I mean, when I said my assessment is that Bossy has done so well and grown so quickly, because the differentiating factor is the products themselves, which arrive because of your conversations with customers. Does that feel accurate to you, or is there more, or something else there?
[0:36:02] AD: It's a 100% accurate. I'll take it a slight step further in that I see myself – my zone of genius, if I'm using your language, is my ability to tell a story. I think that is what is – it's almost founder market fit. Let's leave product market fit out of it, right? When I tell the story of how this brand was born, even my own background of being first generation American, born to a single mom, being raised in the projects and my own journey, everything about that authentic story is real. I show up and I get to do what I love. I mean, there are parts of it, which you are correct, are my zone of excellence. I will execute brilliantly on operations. I don't let the ball drop on things that need to happen. That's been my story.
Where I light up is where I start thinking about, okay, how do we make a lipstick that does this and how's it going to be different and what's a key ingredient and what's the packaging going to look like? If I show you our products, you might just see a beautiful rose gold bottle. What my team and I did in Northern Paris to smelt that plastic, to get that specific color, you can't begin to imagine. There is so much that we pour into the names, the descriptions. The story of this brand is what makes this brand different. We infuse that in the colors, in the branding guide, all that stuff.
I mean, I can't sit to a customer and have this long journey, discussion to sell them a lipstick. What happens is if your story is constantly being told, it's infused in everything you do, customers will begin to tell you your story. That's been one of the most amazing joys for me when I read reviews on our products, or what people say, they're telling me what I was telling them.
[0:37:59] LT: Yes.
[0:38:00] AD: Wait a second. you're preaching to the choir over here. No, you are right. It's a red lipstick. I'm wearing a shiny gold lip gloss, okay. Is it going to change the world? No. But everything about this lip gloss, the packaging, the name is called outspoken. There's a reason that it's old and it's shimmery. There's a reason why we think that women should be outspoken. When we talk about women having voice in the world and using your voice, there's an entire story behind this gold lipstick, right? Everything about the brand is that storytelling. It's what I do so naturally, because I'm not having to be somebody that I'm not. I'm being my most authentic self.
I think that is my zone of genius. But then the product needs to make it from point A to point B. I need to talk to my suppliers. I need to deal with regulatory issues. All of those things don't excite me, but they are very important building blocks to be able to sell someone a lip gloss, or a lipstick.
[0:38:58] LT: Perfect. I love hearing how clear you are on your zone of genius. It is indisputable that you know what it is. So, let's actually go with that. Let us re-imagine this pie chart of your life. Then my constraining function is maybe you don't need to hire some from operations. Maybe you do. I don't know. I think you know your business best. All I'm asking is that how can you be in your zone of genius 60% of the time? Because right now it sounds like, you get that 20% of your day that you're doing it, you get maybe some of those external conversations. Forget the previous buckets that we set, because you want to be at least 60%, because you want the energizing activities to eclipse the energy draining activities, so every day with a net positive. Because if you're even at 40% zone of genius, 60% zone of excellence, you're going to feel an everyday like, doing a little bit of a disservice to your company, because it's lacking the magic. The magic is so, so important and the magic is quantifiable. The prompt is, how would you restructure your role to ensure that you are at least 60% in your zone of genius on a day-to-day basis?
[0:40:06] AD: Wow. Okay, that sounds like heaven. I just don't see it being in heaven, but let's dream.
[0:40:14] LT: Yeah, let's dream.
[0:40:15] AD: Operations would just completely tank to maybe 10% of my day, if anything. That 10% would be me managing someone who that is their zone of genius, right? I literally would be like, how are we on supply chain? How are we on more materials? How are we on regs? I would just check, check, check, check, check, and then I don't have to think about it. That would be the first thing, 10% to get operations down.
I think, team, I would actually increase the time I spend with my team, because I think that I'm so focused on getting through, okay, how are we doing on this product? How are we doing on social media? How are we doing? That I don't spend enough time with them, ideating and dreaming and saying, “Hey, the other day I saw this. Why don't we come up with a campaign that does that?” Because I've such limited time with them now. I'm really just like, okay, let's do boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo and let's go. I would almost take 10% for operations management. I might even take spending time with my different teams to 50%.
[0:41:18] LT: Yeah, that sounds great.
[0:41:20] AD: Yeah, right. Then, so that's 60% right. Remember, of that 50%, a lot of that, in fact, all of that is my zone of genius. That goes from just process to guys, let's dream. How do we focus on our social media strategy? Then the balance 40%, I would spend on my thinking. That thinking would be visiting more stores, talking to customers at the stores, visiting the beauty associates, asking them what they're seeing in the marketplace, going to beauty conferences. Just basically being out, out, out, out, out, out and communicating with people. That would be the balance of my time.
[0:42:00] LT: I don't know if this feels right for you, but tell me if it feels right or not. I also see you being more visible and giving a lot more talks and being at those conferences, because I feel inspired just listening to you and that message, I think, should be out more in the world. What do you think?
[0:42:16] AD: Absolutely. It's so interesting. I feel like, you're in my head, Liz, and this is worrying. A couple of things you said, I'm like, “Wait. Did she – I mean, okay.” Over the last couple of years, I've been asked a number of times to speak. I think the first couple of years of the brand, I only wanted to speak about what the brand was actually doing, because I wanted to focus on the brand. Then I also felt like, look, let's get some success under our belt. I don't want to be one of these people who's just talking, but doesn't have anything to show for it.
This year, actually, in the next couple of months left of this year, I have a bunch of speaking engagements that I've been invited to, to talk about the Bossy journey, talk about my own journey and talk about how we've gotten to $9,000 in sales to a couple million. Yeah, I definitely do believe, as I said earlier, I believe my main responsibility of this company is chief storyteller and officer. I'm leaning in a lot more to speaking on podcasts and live audiences. I have very limited time to do all of that. If I could get to my dream allocation of time, I'll make more time to do that.
[0:43:21] LT: Perfect. Then what are the obstacles standing in the way of getting to this dream allocation of time?
[0:43:28] AD: A number of things. I would say, the biggest is capital. I've been very, very efficient with capital. I don't want to go out and raise a boatload of money. Whether I could or not is one conversation, but I just don't want that. I think I really want this to be as much a bootstrapped company as it can be. I want it to be funded by its customers, which means that you can hire less really expensive people. I'm trying one way of hiring people who are not as experienced and trying to coach them and teach them, and all that is done is just sucked me away from my dream state of spending more time to customers.
I think the biggest obstacle is figuring out what's the most efficient way to getting to my dream state? Maybe that means that I do need to think about raising some money, specifically as our focus going into the next few months is to expand our retail capabilities. We want to go from 600 doors to 1,500 doors. From zero doors to 600 doors is a completely different business model. From 600 doors to 1,500 doors, we begin to have to level up the infrastructure. I'm in those conversations with myself right now. It’s, “Aisha, this is a beautiful company that you're building, but you can't continue to build it by carrying it pretty much on your own.”
[0:44:46] LT: Yes, exactly. To me, it feels like, this is a really pivotal turning point where you almost have to leap a little bit. Does that seem right to you?
[0:44:56] AD: Absolutely. I am a leaper. I am a leaper. I've always been. I always tell people, I never hesitate to invest in myself. Maybe that is the investing of intuition. I believe in my gut. I strongly consider myself a faith-driven entrepreneur. My spirituality is number one in my life. When I feel a very strong calling to do something, I leap. That doesn't mean that I'm not afraid, though, because a lot of times I get called fearless and I say, “No, no, no.” Courage is leaping in spite of fear. I often do have fear, but I really do trust my intuition. I trust that deeper faith within me. Then I go. I know that sometimes I will fly, and sometimes I'll fall. The goal is that when you fall, you get up, you learn and hopefully, the fall isn't nasty, but you brush yourself off and keep going.
[0:45:47] LT: Yeah. I agree. I think that that is the most courageous thing is leaping when you are afraid, because that's true bravery. Also, you strike me as someone who takes a leap, but you're going to make sure that your parachute is packed appropriately, that you have everything that you need. You're going to test it all out. With that metaphor, let's talk about an operations person. What are some of the ways that you could help prepare to get to a state where you could make this leap and make this higher? Also, do you know what you want?
[0:46:15] AD: My lead designer of my business is just an amazing woman. Her name is Stephanie. She's been working with me for almost the beginning of when we started, a little over four years. I use Stephanie as my example of I want a Stephanie for that. I want a Stephanie for that. Why do I say that? Maybe she'll listen to this podcast, but I love her dearly. She's deeply vested in the business, but she's also deeply talented. Her zone of genius is areas where I can dream, but I can't quite execute. Stephanie has a very unique ability to take my dreams and execute them into visuals. I'm an incredibly visual person, but I don't know how to go from that. Ooh, to that. Stephanie can listen to me. I need a dream and then she creates this beautiful design and I'm like, “Oh, my goodness. How did you do that?”
She's got 15 years of experience working for global beauty brands. She's on Givenchy, Lacômbe. When I say I'm looking for a Stephanie of X or Y, it's someone who's got the background, who's got the passion, who really believes in ethos of the brand. Stephanie is such a believer and will push back. She and I oftentimes when I'm like, “No, let's do this,” she will come to me with a very strong opinion on something when she has a strong opinion and I always respect it. I'm looking for someone like that, someone who believes in the brand, believes in the journey, believes that there is a voice and a place for this specific brand and just is in their zone of genius in whatever area they're supposed to do for this brand and they run with it.
[0:47:55] LT: Yeah. I'm hearing you say that what's great about Stephanie is that you guys are really in sync and aligned in terms of vision. She really understands you, what you're saying, but she's also really great at doing all the nuts and bolts of executing to get it done. I wonder if with this operations person, the prompt for them as you're interviewing and meeting people is to even utilize them as your right hand and say, “Hey, listen. Think about how as a homework assignment in the interview, how you can create some cash flow in this business to pay your salary,” right?
[0:48:29] AD: Oh, I love that.
[0:48:31] LT: Because it's interesting. It's like, okay, help me create a plan where I can hire you. How many doors do I – What's the threshold of how many doors I need to get to, or how to increase D to C if we want to do that? Tell me what your dream amount is for salary and then show me in the business how your work supports you in getting there, and then I will back you up.
[0:48:49] AD: Oh, my God. Liz. I love this. I'm writing notes. Oh, my goodness.
[0:48:55] LT: Because then, that person is truly –
[0:48:56] AD: Never even thought about that.
[0:48:57] LT: - your partner in the way that your designer is, right? Solving problems where you don't have to actually have it all on you, because their zone of genius will be in figuring out those backend economics.
[0:49:07] AD: Yeah, I love it.
[0:49:08] JU: That felt like such a magical place to interject. I also wrote that down, Aisha. That's brilliant. If I may, just again, once more, can I zoom out at a meta level? I think we should probably wrap the coaching session just in the interest of time. I have a feeling it may be to be continued, by the way.
[0:49:24] AD: Has to be.
[0:49:25] JU: I wanted to ask you, Liz, a phrase that I've heard you say a few times is I'm hearing you say … Also, you said things like, does that sound right to you? I'd love to hear why is it that you're repeating back what you're hearing? What are you doing when you use that tactic?
[0:49:44] LT: Yeah. I am active listening. I'm really, really trying to understand Aisha in a very deep way. I'm double-checking my assumptions, that I'm not hearing something and then turning it around in my mind to make it something else. Also, I'm giving her the space and opportunity to further expound on whatever she's talking about, so I can get more information about that. My whole MO this entire coaching session is to be listening so carefully to every word, to really understand what drives her and what she wants, so that we're solving the right problem together. That solution at the end of finding someone who can maybe even solve this problem for her, she came up with it, because she was telling me about this designer that she already has.
I'm honestly just replaying. She gave me the idea to say that. That's how all my coaching sessions work is like, I'm looking for this person to tell me at the actual breakthrough idea, but I just have to listen really, really closely and replay it. Does that make sense?
[0:50:46] JU: What I'm hearing you say, to use your tactic, is you're waiting for the person to tell you the solution to their problem.
[0:50:54] LT: Yes. She had just told me, because she was explaining this. She already knew what she wanted. She wanted someone who was going to be extremely proactive and she didn't have to worry about them. I was like, great. Okay, this is how she finds the person to hire. All my clients always do this. They have the answers. Because if Aisha and I had jumped into this conversation and she had just given me the background and be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.” I would have been like, “Oh, maybe you should do X, Y and Z.”
She's probably already thought about all those things, and it wouldn't be useful. You know when you're talking to a friend and you're like, “What do I do?” They're like, “Oh, just do this.” You're like, “I already thought about that. I'm not going to do that.” She has so much more context than I do about her business and about what she needs, and so, I'm just trying to play that back and we're just trying to get to the solution together.
[0:51:37] JU: Aisha, do you have any reflections before we graciously allow you to bow out of the conversation when we wrap up, do you have any reflections that you'd like to share, or how is that for you? What are you thinking about as you head out of this conversation?
[0:51:51] AD: Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Liz. As I said before, I was a little nervous. I'm like, “Oh, my God. A coaching session being recorded.” But this just felt really relaxed and natural. My mind is blown by that last moment. What I should do to think about bringing somebody in for ops and making them create their role is like, ta-da. Yeah. I mean, this is great.
We can go on and on. Liz, I'm definitely going to get your book and I'm definitely going to contact you, because I'd love to continue this conversation. My favorite part, lots of parts have been favorite, but the three S's for me are really great, because I have always believed in that silence, solitude, and stillness. Sometimes I guilt myself into feeling like, “You should be using this time better, Aisha. You should not be doing this.” Now I almost feel like, I have permission like, “Oh, my God. No. Liz says I should do this and it helps me be better.” Thank you so much. This was awesome. I really enjoyed it.
[0:52:51] LT: Thank you, Aisha. I love talking to inspiring, energetic entrepreneurs and you just totally lit me up. My energy level is now at a nine, because you just feeling how much founder product market fit you have is insane. You are 100% building the right business and I just love it. I love seeing that. Thank you for doing this with me.
[0:53:14] JU: Thank you, Aisha, for joining us. We'll see you backstage in a little bit. Liz, as we wrap up, I want to come back to this concept. I mean, there's so many things we could cover. The concept of zone of genius, versus zone of excellence, I think, is a really interesting distinction, because as you were saying, so many of us end up playing to our zone of excellence.
If folks who are listening to this either live, or recorded later, if they're trying to distinguish between the two, are there ways that you would recommend someone making that? I mean, on the one hand, you could say it would be very much on brand. Just trust your gut. But how do you begin to think about some of the, what you call excellence that is probably outsourceable? What do you say? “No, this is insourceable. I need to keep doing this because this is my unique contribution I can make to the world”?
[0:54:08] LT: Yeah, 100%. I always think it's worth doing the zone of excellence stuff for some period of time, so that you really understand what is needed and maybe you're even building the initial process. Once you feel like you could document that work, hand it off to someone else, who's going to take it and turn it into something even better, because it's their zone of genius. I don't say like, throw out your zone of excellence stuff completely. I think it's actually good to know, especially if you're a founder, so that you can give it to someone else. You can hire the right person. My sense is distinguishing between the two.
People always know. I do this exercise with a lot of people and they have to fill out a little chart and people really quickly are able to identify what's what. The zone of excellence stuff is the stuff that you look forward to doing, and/or when you're doing it, time flies. You have a great time. You want to talk to people about it. That's a big thing. Do you get excited to tell your friends and your family and your partner about it? Our zone of excellence stuff, we don't want to talk about it, unless we're complaining about it. That's an indicator. We're never like, “Let me tell you this amazing thing I'm working on.” It's a little bit more like, “Oh, man. I got this issue. It's hard.”
I think, just even paying attention. The way that I was listening to the – I was so tuning into Aisha's tone of voice and her energy. It was even, my head mentally just tracking as her energy went up and down. That's actually how I distinguished her zone of excellence from her zone of genius, too, is I noticed when she got a little more serious, she was talking, that's her zone of excellence. When she was lively, yeah, that was her zone of genius. Just listen to the way that you even speak to other people about the work that you do, I think is a really big indicator.
[0:55:50] JU: The last thing that I've got to ask is Aisha's comment about capital made me think of this, and you mentioned, you got to take a leap. I would imagine, I mean, based on the hundreds, if not thousands of entrepreneurs that I've worked with over the years, that the biggest reason they haven't outsourced their zone of excellence is capital. It's like, they're doing the zone of excellence stuff because they have to. If they could afford to not do it, they probably wouldn't. I do think there is a little bit of a chicken and an egg thing that you illuminated, I think, with your advice very wisely. Does it always require a leap of faith, so to speak?
[0:56:25] LT: I think that it may not be a leap of faith, but it always feels uncomfortable. Whenever a person is evolving and elevating to the next level, it feels a little hard. It feels tough. It's always going to feel that way. It's the same thing as like, when you're gaining more strength, when you're working out, it's going to feel a little painful for the first few days that you're getting that new muscle mass. I would say like, don't let that feeling of discomfort scare you. It's actually a good sign that you are growing. I think the advice here is don't leap without being fully prepared, right?
As I said to Aisha, jump off that cliff, but double check your parachute a million times, test it out, and then also know the exact zone that you're leaping into, which is why with that suggestion of hiring this person, I was like, leap, but actually, have this person create a plan. Know exactly how many doors you need additionally in order for them to pay back their salary, right? Know how much efficiency they need to get from the D2C play in order to actually pay back their salary. I'm all about leaping, but I'm always about like, have a business plan for it, know all your risks and then write down everything that needs to happen.
[0:57:35] JU: Yeah, that's great. Karma of Success out last week. Liz Tran, we're so delighted to have showcased some of your brilliance, some of your inner genius and you manifesting it outwardly. Thank you for joining us today. Aisha, thank you very much for joining us and to all of you who tuned in today, we appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you in two weeks when we get host Ed Catmull, the Founder and former president of Pixar and Disney Innovation Studios.
[0:58:00] LT: Whoa. That's a good one.
[0:58:02] JU: Until then, that's going to be awesome. Yeah, join in. If you got questions, drop them in LinkedIn and I'll be sure to add them to the list. With that, we wish everybody a wonderful day. Thanks so much.
[0:58:13] LT: Thanks Jeremy.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:58:15] JU: By day, I'm a professor, but I absolutely love moonlighting as a front-row student next to you during these interviews. One of my favorite things is taking the gems from these episodes and turning them into practical tips and lessons for you and your team. If you want to share the lessons you picked up from this episode with your organization, feel free to reach out. I'd be thrilled to do a keynote on the secrets that I've gleaned from creative masters, or put together a hands-on workshop to supercharge your next off-site adventure. Hit me up at jutley@jeremyutley.design for more information.
[END]
The first question an innovator must answer is not “can I make it?” but rather, “should I?” This has become something of a mantra among CEOs I work with, as a needful protection against the gravitational pull of the organizational bureaucracy.