On the fourteenth installment of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, talks about how therapy has made her a better entrepreneur, a better professional, a better friend, and better to herself. Having a relationship with yourself is crucial to your growth and development, and it will allow you to build self-awareness as you are constantly improving and working towards achieving your goals. Let's normalize the conversation of going to therapy!Learn more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBStop by LateshaByrd.com!Check out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBVisit our website!TRANSCRIPTLatesha: What's up, everyone? Welcome to The Link Up with Latesha on Living Corporate. This podcast is for young professionals that need some real advice, tips, and resources to navigate corporate America and dominate their career. If you're looking to upgrade your brand, get the knowledge you need to level up professionally for your future, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Latesha Byrd. So let's get into today's episode. I'm so excited to just share this very important topic with you all today. I am going to be talking about how therapy has made me a better entrepreneur, a better professional, a better friend, and better to myself honestly. [laughs] So, you know, as working professionals or entrepreneurs that are highly driven and ambitious, we have a hard time with giving ourselves grace. I hope that you can relate to this, [laughs] because our mental health is so, so crucial to success. Having a relationship with yourself is crucial to your growth and to your development, and it will allow you to build self-awareness as you are constantly improving and working towards achieving your goals. So what I'm gonna be sharing with you all is my journey with therapy, why I started going to therapy, how I started going, and how it has essentially changed my life. If you follow me on Twitter, I am always talking about therapy. I love going to therapy. It's not easy, now. [laughs] It's not easy. It's not, like--I don't know if I would categorize or label my therapy sessions as fun, but I enjoy going because it stretches me and makes me uncomfortable and makes me call out the biases and the lies [laughs] that I'm telling myself. So I'll start with why I started going to therapy. Actually, let me just--before I talk about why I started going to therapy, I want to just share that, you know, PTSD is real from working as the only person of color, or one of the few, in a predominantly white workplace. I've talked to women particularly--and there's some men as well--you know, black women that have been discriminated against, that are treated unfairly, that are blamed for things that they have--that they've never even touched before. I've heard of women being, you know, let go for things that their co-workers maybe just got a little slap on the wrist for, you know? I have heard stories of us feeling uncomfortable walking into work or feeling like if we share a little bit of ourselves, they will take that and use that against us. I've heard all of your stories, and I've--it really, really hurts, and it angers me to hear the experiences of the trauma, you know, that we have to deal with in the workplace, and I do think that is why going to therapy is extremely important. Know one that you are not alone. You are not alone in this, and it's important to have someone that you can talk to about it. Now, my personal reasons for going to therapy--I'm not going to get into too much detail as to why I started going, but it was really for me based on some deeply rooted issues within my family that I had been experiencing and the trauma that I went through as a child, as a young adult, in college and even, you know, post-graduation from college, and hell, I'm still dealing with some [BLEEP]. [laughs] But we cannot, you know, choose our family, but I also kind of grew up thinking "Okay, well, your family is your family. You have to respect them. You gotta just deal with them, even if it's your parent, because that's how it's supposed to be. You gotta respect 'em." You know? And so I just thought, like, I had to deal with a lot of BS because they, you know, were my family members. So that's why I started going to therapy, just to kind of figure out, you know, how I can relieve some of the stress and the heartbreak that I have experienced. I have a--just to share a little personal anecdote, I have a very distant relationship with my mother because of a marriage that she's--a very toxic marriage that she's been in for about 10 years. So I very--I rarely see her. Actually, I haven't seen her in years. Honestly, I don't talk to her. I want to be in her life, but I have been shunned. And I grew up in a single-parent household. She raised me. So that has been so hard for me to just get--to get through, you know? I love her, and I will be there whenever she needs me, but I've realized in conversations with friends that they said, "Yo, like, your situation, that's not normal, and that's not okay, and we need you to really get some help." There is a stigma in the black community that if you are, you know, going to therapy you're quote-unquote "crazy," right? Or that means that something is wrong with you, but it is so important for us to--and I'll be honest, I thought that. I mean, it was literally ingrained in me, and so I was conditioned to think that if you go to therapy, "What? What's wrong with you?" You know? [laughs] But I've been going now for--let's see, starting in May, so about six months, and it has literally changed my life. So without further ado, let me just tell you all what I have learned from therapy. It has--one, I've learned that I need to give myself more grace, giving myself grace, and also working on self-compassion. My first therapy session I was super nervous. I didn't know what to expect. I was like, "Okay, what if she doesn't like me? What if I don't like her? What if I--" Like, I just had no clue what to expect. [laughs] So, you know, I kind of went in there and she said, you know, "What made you come to therapy?" And I'm like, "Wait, what? I don't--I don't know. I'm here." And she's like, "Okay. Well, just tell me about yourself." So that's kind of how we started. The first thing--the advice that I would give about going to therapy is you definitely will have to be vulnerable and transparent if you want to get the most out of it. Vulnerability is something that I also struggle with as someone that is a leader. Naturally I have a lot of people that look up to me, and my clients and friends, and so showing weakness, showing that you don't have it all together, ooh, you can't do that, right? I have learned though, from watching Renee Brown--I probably have talked about her a lot on previous episodes, but I've learned a lot from her about vulnerability. So check out her TED Talk. She also has a Netflix special, and she talks about, you know, that--she talks about how vulnerability is bravery. So I am learning to be vulnerable, but anyways, in that first session, the main thing that came out was self-compassion and having a relationship with yourself. And I did not have a relationship with myself. Like, I did not. I was kind of going through the day-to-day, going through the motions, you know? Going to my office and talking to clients and working, coming home and working more, and not really checking in with myself to actually ask myself, "Hey, are you happy? How are you feeling?" You know, "How is your energy?" Right? And so that was the first thing I learned was one, I had to give myself self-compassion and know that, one, I'm not going to be perfect. [laughs] The people around me are not going to be perfect, and see, because I did not practice self-compassion, I also wasn't compassionate with others. With my team, you know? With friends. I didn't give other folks grace because I did not lend that to myself. So I've had to learn how to be kinder with the words that I'm speaking to myself and also make sure that I'm constantly checking in to see how I'm feeling, and if I need--maybe I'm working too hard or going too hard and I need to take a break, you know, or maybe I'm having, you know, some negative thoughts. That means that I need to take a step back and say, "Okay, why am I feeling this way?" So it's been really interesting, you know? I love learning more about myself. I feel like I am coming into myself, and I think that becoming is better than being, and I learned the difference between being and the difference between becoming. I journal all of the time now. That took me some time to actually get used to. I mean, I've journaled before in the past. Like, in the morning--I have a stoic journal that was gifted to me by a friend where we have guided journal questions or prompts, but I have now transitioned more into self-reflection, journaling my emotions throughout the day, journaling how I feel about my relationship with myself and then with others. So I've learned to give myself self-compassion. That has, you know, allowed me to be more compassionate with others. That's allowed me to be more empathetic. The way that this has helped me to change my life and business, or business specifically, is because I would go into therapy sessions, and the first thing I would say--when she'd ask me how things were going I would say, "Oh, man. You know, entrepreneurship is so hard." [laughs] Which it is. Like, real talk. Everybody knows it's hard. But I was like, "Man, business, running a business is just hard," and she looked at me and she said, "You understand that this is your business, right?" Like, it's your business. This is what you wanted. This is what you signed up for. You are in control here, so I'm going to need for you why or what's making it so hard and go ahead and start working on making some changes. And she asked me why it was so hard, and I was telling her about the workload, and, you know, she told me how she ended up, you know, just kind of downsizing, and she thought that she wanted to grow a very large company and realized that that's not what she wanted. And it made me take a step back because I was working--I mean, there's 24 hours in the day and your girl was working about 17 hours, sleeping and getting up and working again, going to the office, going to meetings, speaking, you know? I also teach at a university. And, I mean, I would--I was driving myself crazy, and I was unhappy. I was so unhappy. My team was stressed out. And I ended up changing my whole business model, because I realized that I did not want a company where I had to work myself to death and my team had to as well. So the shift that I made, I'll tell you about that. Originally, you know, when I started my company, if you listened to the episode a couple weeks ago, I talk about how I started my company, where it was mostly doing resume writing, and now it's shifted into career coaching. So I've pretty much changed the business model. 75% of my business, approximately 75%, is solely 1-on-1 career coaching and business coaching. Prior to that--and I made the shift a few months ago. Prior to that, you know, it was focused on resume makeovers, LinkedIn makeovers, interview coaching, and we had about 30 to 40 clients--whoo, just the thought of that gives me--[laughs] just the thought of that just kind of gave me a real quick headache. 30 to 40 clients a month. I was keeping my prices somewhat low so they could be competitive in the market, and that's fine if that's how you want your business model to operate. Lower price point means more clients, right? Well, I don't want to say that that's exactly what it equates to, but that was my thought process. And so we were working with about 30 to 40 clients, you know, probably about 15 to 18 simultaneously, and it was hard. Like, it was very hard. I was stressed out. My team was stressed out. It was hard to keep up with everyone. And then I had to take a step back and ask myself, "Is this truly what I want?" "Is this really what I want?" And sometimes you do have to do that, you know? Check in with yourself regularly. And I realized that it wasn't, and so because of that I shifted my business model to career coaching. I had a launch strategy. I built a brand new website. I did that on my own, which I am so proud of, on Squarespace. Check it out - LateshaByrd.com. I'll probably link it in the show notes as well. And so--now don't--I know there's a lot of listeners out there in the tech industry, so if y'all have some tips on my site let me know, okay? I am not [laughs] a coder, but I worked very hard on it. So anyways, I shifted my business model. I had a launch strategy, and I ended up getting 15 coaching clients to start coaching with me from October to December. Most of them paid me upfront for the three months, but I had my revenue goals, and I said, "If I can charge this amount, if I can hit this number of coaching clients, I'm good," and that's what I did. Everything has been so wonderful. I do have a three-month coaching program, so now I will have recurring coaching clients every quarter. So I'll have new coaching clients starting in January. So going from January to March, the next group going from April to June, and starting again in July and then October. I love that because I didn't have that level of organization and efficiency in my business the way that I have now where before I would just enroll coaching clients whenever they wanted to start, and so now everyone is on the same schedule, they're going through the same type of information, and so it has been wonderful. I have gotten so much of my time back, and I also realized that if I am preaching to other people about just living the lifestyle that you deserve but I'm over here stressed out, you know, I'm kind of being a hypocrite, right? And so I had to take a tough look at myself, and I fundamentally decided this was the best thing for me to do. I have gotten so much time back, and because my business is now at this level of, you know, organization, I am able to focus on other areas of my life. So now I'm focused on my physical health, going to the gym and eating healthy. Still working on that. [laughs] And, you know, I think I said my budget, so I'm just trying to work on my finances as well, but because now I have this one area of my life in order, it has allowed me to focus on other areas. Hopefully for those business owners out there that are listening to this, if you don't go to therapy, I highly recommend it. Let's normalize the conversation of going to therapy. Let's talk about what we learned. You know, let's just all focus on mental health, you know? We get a lot of negative content kind of fed to us on a daily basis, and there's a lot of the--you know, we all kind of compare ourselves to each other on social media, things of that nature, but get your mental health in order please, because that is going to hold you back from really just being your fullest and truest and happiest and your best self. Other things that I learned outside of self-compassion - giving myself grace, you know? Asking myself the tough questions and checking in with myself, and making changes was, again, just taking that ownership, you know? Taking that ownership and understanding that I cannot change other people. I can only set boundaries. So I'm working on setting boundaries. Communicating my needs and my expectations in all of my relationships. You can't control what someone else does. You can tell them how you want to be treated, and if they act accordingly or not, then you will know what it is that you need to do. So that is my spiel. If you have any questions about therapy, let me know. You know, this is a very important just time in our lives as we're growing in our careers to make sure that we do have a relationship with self. If you don't have a relationship with yourself, then let's start there, because that's gonna be, you know, the #1 factor to building, as I mentioned earlier, that self-awareness. You have to know who you are, what you need to work on, and who you want to be so that you can know what changes need to be met and so that you can also know where you want to go professionally. All right, guys. I hope this was helpful. I look forward to hearing your feedback and your comments about this. Again, therapy has changed my life. It has made me a better entrepreneur, has made me a better friend, and I'm so incredibly grateful to be on this journey, and I'm really excited to share this with you all. So talk to you all next week.

On the thirteenth entry of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, speaks about effective career planning - working on your career versus in your career. With 2020 right around the corner, this is a great opportunity for all of us to make some fundamental shifts that we have been maybe kind of putting off in our careers or in our businesses. Hear the five questions Latesha suggests asking yourself that are key to unleashing your career potential next year!Learn more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBCheck out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBVisit our website!TRANSCRIPTLatesha: What's up, everyone? Welcome to The Link Up with Latesha on Living Corporate. This podcast is for young professionals that need some real advice, tips, and resources to navigate corporate America and dominate their career. If you're looking to upgrade your brand, get the knowledge you need to level up professionally for your future, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Latesha Byrd. So let's get into today's episode. Today on The Link Up with Latesha we are talking about effective career planning - working on your career versus in your career. Now, if I have any entrepreneurs listening, I'm sure you all are very familiar with the term of working in your business versus working on your business and how many entrepreneurs get caught up working in their business--meaning just handling the day-to-day tasks of actually running the business versus actually working on the business, which is centered around, you know, strategizing, planning, really thinking about the future of the company, thinking about scaling strategies and et cetera. However, this is a really important topic for entrepreneurs, but what about working professionals? This is why I wanted to talk about this. I've never heard someone use it in the terms of working in your career versus working on your career, but it's super, super similar, and I've realized through my coaching, as a career [and life?] coach, [that] most of us--I don't want to say most and make that assumption or generalization, but many of us don't really work on our careers, we work in our careers. That being said, we typically just go through the day-to-day of getting the work done, you know? Getting the work done, doing our jobs, going home, right, and then when it actually comes time for evaluations, promotions, talking about, you know, longevity with the company or upward mobility with that company, we could be a little confused or maybe a little bit unclear as to what our future with our company or even in our careers and what that looks like. Now, this can be dangerous, and I think that there should be a balance of 1. having a plan in place, but 2. also being flexible, you know, and knowing that, hey, your desires, your dreams, your goals, those may change over time. So there is a fine line of okay, having a plan, you know, having that being structured, but also having some willingness to change if needed. So how do you actually effectively plan your career, A.K.A. how do you actually effectively work on your career versus working in your career? So I think it's important to 1. just kind of differentiate the two. Working in your career is, you know, essentially going to work each day and doing your day-to-day tasks, completing projects, working with clients, responding to emails, putting together deliverables, you know, implementing processes. Examples of working on your career is again around that career management, career planning. Setting goals, long-term goals. Understanding what it actually takes to be successful in your role. Understanding what it actually takes to get to that next level that you would ultimately like to go in, and that's different than sending out some emails or working on a deliverable. It takes a different--it takes a different mind muscle, if I can say that, meaning you're really gonna have to think strategically about your career from a long-term standpoint than "Okay, what do I have to get done today? What do I need to get done by the end of the week?" So I hope that makes sense, and I wanted to 1. just talk about how do you actually begin to work on your career. You don't want to, you know, work work work every day, and months down the road you look up--or years down the road, to be honest, and look back and say, "First of all, why am I still at the same point?" [laughs] "Why am I still at the same salary 5 years later? Why have I not been promoted? Why are there others that have came in after me at lower levels that are now at higher levels?" Right? That's because you have not taken the time to work on your business. So how do you do that? I want to make sure that you feel that you have complete ownership over your career, that you are in control, and that it's not up to these employers or these companies to tell you what, when, how, where to move. This should all be within your control, and you should be able to understand, like I said earlier, what it takes to get to that level that you want to get to, what do you need to do, but actually what does that level look like. So that takes me to the first thing: I want you to ask yourself, "Where do I see my career in 5 years?" So we are embarking on a new year very, very soon, 2020, which is a new decade. I am super excited about this new decade and this transition in life and age and time in the world. I'm super excited about it. This is a great opportunity for all of us to make some fundamental shifts that we have been maybe kind of putting off in our careers or in our businesses. So thinking about where do you see your career in 5 years, in 2025. What do you see for yourself, for your professional self? Do you see yourself in a leadership role? Do you see yourself traveling the world? You know, do you see yourself leading global teams? Do you see yourself retiring? [laughs] Do you see yourself retiring? Launching that business? Maybe taking that side hustle to a full-time hustle. Hopefully if you are an entrepreneur you listened to my last episode on how I actually took my side hustle to full-time. So then thinking about where you see yourself in your career in 5 years is important, okay? And then hey, maybe 2 years. So 2025, 2022. What about 2021 or by this time next year? So by November of 2020, where do you see yourself in your career? I am going to loop you all in on a secret--it's not really a secret. It's moreso of a method [laughs] that I follow with my clients. So, you know, my objective as a career coach is to help my clients get three things, which I call the three Cs. #1 is clarity, getting clarity on what you actually want for your career, what you want out of your life, how you actually show up, meaning, well, how you want to show up professionally. When you are operating at your best, truest, highest self professionally, getting clarity on what that actually looks like. And then also, once you get that clarity, getting clarity on what it actually takes to get there. So working through that strategy plan, you know? Really putting some goals down and knowing that "Okay, I gotta do Step 1 here first, then Step 2, then Step 3." So having a strategy, having a plan that actually makes sense and is not overwhelming so that you can start to move forward. That's the first C, clarity. So clarity on what it is that you want, and then I would say the other part of this clarity is clarity on what companies are looking for, employers are looking for, based on where you want to go, so that you know what you actually need to do within yourself to actually make that transition happen to land your dream job. So that's for clarity. The second C is confidence. So building up confidence in your skills and your experiences and understanding how what you have previously done and what you currently do is aligned with where you actually want to go and fully believing in that and owning that, because if you are not confident in yourself--I probably say this every single episode, [laughs] but if you're not confident in yourself, these employers are not going to be confident in you. These recruiters are not going to be confident in you. Your team--if you are a leader, your team won't be confident in you. So, you know, #1 clarity, #2 confidence, and then #3 is control. You guys know I love to talk about having that control, feeling empowered, having ownership over your career and really feeling like you have a good pulse on where you're going and what it takes to get there. So those are the three Cs. But in my coaching program--I'm going to break down five key steps that I follow or walk my clients through. So the first thing I already mentioned. Where do you want to be? So thinking about where you see your career in 5 years, in 2 years, even a year from now, okay? And then #2 is where are you right now? And really coming to grips with where you are. If you aren't where you want to be that's okay, but you really have to take a step back and say, "Okay, where am I in my career? Am I in a company that I see myself growing with?" Or "Am I in a toxic work environment and have I just been putting up with BS just because of this paycheck?" You know, you really have to come to reality with that understanding of where you are now. Based on where you are now, what do you need to get to where you want to be? What are those resources that you need? For example, are there certain certifications that you need? Are there certain skills that you need to develop? What about your social capital, you know? Who's in your network? Who do you need to know? This is important to think through in and out of the workplace. In your current company, if you see yourself moving up there, staying there for, you know, the long haul, you need mentors and you really need sponsors. I will be talking about mentors versus sponsors in a future episode, and I was just reading an article last night that was talking about how black women are mentored--we got mentors, but we are not getting sponsored. So, you know, we are not getting promoted to these leadership levels that we should be. However, we are coming in knocking it out the park. Killing it. Most educated, you know? But we aren't getting to those levels of leadership that our white male counterparts are because we are not being sponsored. So more to come on that, but it is important to think about who do you need in your network. You need sponsors. What about outside of your company? You need to know people in your industry outside of work. That's important, because you want to make sure 1. you are staying ahead of the curve in terms of skills that are needed to be innovative in your industry, and you also want to make sure that you are staying competitive. So, you know, again, #1 - where do you want to be? #2 - where are you now? #3 - what do you need to get there? What resources do you need to tap into? Who is in your network that maybe you have not reached out to in a long time, or who is that person you have been stalking on LinkedIn or stalking on social media because they're doing something that you know you want to do or you want to be in that place. Why haven't you reached out to them? Social media makes it super easy to build relationships with folks. It's so important to be super intentional about 1. how you are establishing yourself and your brand online, but how you're going about developing relationships. I have gotten so many clients through Twitter. Follow me at Latesha_Byrd. I tweet a lot of career advice. I've gotten so many clients through Twitter. I've gotten friends through Twitter and even LinkedIn. Instagram not so much for me. Instagram, you know, people I follow I've known since college or, you know, maybe over, you know, the years being involved here in the Charlotte community as an entrepreneur, but a majority of my clients come from Twitter and they come from LinkedIn. That's where I ultimately spend most of my time in the online world. But saying all that to say think about who do you need in your network. We can't do anything without people, and I'm realizing that relationships probably are the most undervalued thing [laughs] when it comes to effective career planning and management. Okay, so what do you need to get there, all right? What are the roadblocks? This is #4. What are the roadblocks that are keeping you from getting there? What I mean by that is--let's say you have a manager that is an ineffective leader. They don't know you. They don't care about you. [laughs] Y'all don't have a good relationship, but your manager is a decision-maker in getting you that promotion. That is a roadblock. Or maybe you know you want to get this certification, you've been planning on taking it, but it's the money thing. Like, you just don't want to dish out, you know, that 1,500, that 2,000, 5,000. Some certification are very, very expensive. Maybe it's money that you need to get certifications or certain classes that you want to take, you know? Conferences that you want to attend. Or maybe it's mental. Maybe it's the mindset. You know, what is holding you back? What are those roadblocks, mental, financial, you know, emotional, spiritual? What are those roadblocks that are keeping you from getting there? If you can identify those roadblocks, then you can start to think through "Hm, what do I need to do to overcome these roadblocks? What do I need to do to knock down these roadblocks?" If your manager--going back to this example--if your manager is not an effective leader, but you know that your manager is a decision-maker, you know what? You may have to really work on establishing a better relationship, and you may have to do some intense managing-up. Maybe there's other folks within the organization that you need to start establishing relationships with. You need sponsors. Maybe you should identify who could be some potential sponsors in your organization that you could start to build those relationships with. Going back to the example of money, maybe it's money, okay? Like, you might have to start saving up. [laughs] Putting away, you know, 100 bucks a week. That might be, you know--for, you know, ladies, maybe we don't--I don't even want to say this 'cause it hurts my heart, but, like, maybe we don't, you know, get our nails done for just a little bit of time. [laughs] When I first quit my full-time job to focus on full-time entrepreneurship I stopped getting my nails done. But, you know, think about where can you cut from a financial standpoint if it is that money that you need. Start saving. Thinking about where you can cut. Maybe you don't go shopping. I love me some Nordstrom, and I really try to stay out of Target 'cause Target is really on the up-and-up with the quality of their clothes and just the prints and just how it--I just love Target. [laughs] You know, I know we see this posts online where it says you go into Target and you come out with a whole cart full. Like, that is so me, so I try to stay out of Target. Maybe, you know, try staying out of Target. That might be the answer to this. [laughs] But seriously, think about what resources do you need to tap into that can help you with overcoming those roadblocks. Get a career coach. I mean, hey, I'm a career coach if you don't know any. [laughs] But seriously, get a career coach. The two most important investments I have made in my career was getting a career coach and then getting a therapist. Actually, getting a therapist was the best decision I've made in my entire life. [laughs] But, you know, start thinking about what do you need to invest in to help you. So I'm gonna run through this 5-step process again, or 5 questions. Like I mentioned, this is a process that I follow or take my clients through. #1 - where do you want to be? Where do you see your career in 5 years, in 2 years, next year? #2 - where are you right now? And being very honest and real with yourself. #3 - what do you need to get to where you want to be? So if you think about a diagram--if you're a visual learner maybe you can draw this out somehow, you know? #4 - what are the roadblocks that is keeping you from getting what you need to get there? And #5 - how do you overcome these roadblocks? One more time. #1 - where do you want to be? #2 - where are you now? #3 - what do you need to get there? #4 - what are the roadblocks that's keeping you from getting there? And #5 - how do you overcome these roadblocks? Last thing I will say here is to set some goals, all right? Start setting them for 2020. I'm not saying that you need to set some goals for, like, Monday of next week, but, you know, take some time this week, over the next couple of weeks, maybe in the morning when you first wake up and you're refreshed, [and] just kind of journal. I'm a huge, huge fan of journaling. I take my journal with me everywhere, and I will legit be, like, in the middle of, you know, reviewing a client's LinkedIn and "Let me pull out my journal real quick," 'cause I have a lot of thoughts and things running in my mind, so I'll just pull it out and whip it out any time, but [laughs] journaling is big for me. It helps me to just kind of get my thoughts all out and do a brain dump so I can kind of try to organize what I'm thinking. But, you know, start thinking about how you want to show up in the world professionally in 2020. Visualize and mentally place yourself into the position of success that you want to be in. In order to do that, you have to know what success looks like to you. It may not be a title. That's perfectly okay. Maybe you don't want to be in this high, visible, you know, leadership role where you're managing large teams, and you may have to come to terms or come to grips with that. I know at one point for me as an entrepreneur, I thought I wanted to, you know, scale my business by having multiple locations and having a team of 50 people and different career coaches and different resume writers, and I realized that that was not how I wanted to define success for me and that wasn't the only way that I could define success for me as an entrepreneur. So I'm scaling my business in other ways - by creating digital products, by building an online brand. The goal is, in 2020, to have a full-fledged online career shop with courses and e-books and guides that will help you navigate your career. And I'm okay with not having a team of 50 people, but you have to think about what success looks like for you, and it's okay to redefine success as needed. Maybe it's not a certain, you know, salary amount. You know, maybe it's the feeling of being able to empower your patients, if you're in healthcare, you know, or being able to empower your clients. Maybe it's just that feeling of knowing that you made a difference in the world. I know that sounds a little cheesy, but seriously, you know? Money is not everything, and so you just want to make sure that you know what success looks like for you. And also - for you, okay? Not what your mom, what your parents, you know, what society is telling you in order to be successful. And when I think about success too, I equate that to happiness and being emotionally stable and happy. Seriously. So I hope that this was helpful. Again, in 2020, we are working on our careers, not just working in our careers. So let's get it, and I will talk to you all soon. Peace.

On the thirty-seventh installment of Tristan's Tips, our special guest Tristan Layfield talks about networking in a way that most of us don’t consider or sometimes downright avoid - reaching out to old high school, college, and work friends that we've lost touch with. Tristan shares how they can open up whole worlds we didn't even know existed and more.Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn, IG, FB, and Twitter!Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTTristan: What’s going on, y'all? It's Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting, and I've teamed up with Living Corporate to bring you all a weekly career tip. This week, let’s talk about networking, but in a way that most of us don’t consider or sometimes downright avoid.Often times when we hear the word “networking” it brings up images of rooms filled with people that we don’t know and the anxiety of having to participate in small talk for the next two hours. But what if I told you there another way to connect with people that is not only a bit easier for most, but research shows tends to be more beneficial?Many of us overlook the value in reaching out to old high school, college, and work friends that we’ve lost touch with. These connections are known as dormant connections. But the research shows that reaching out these people can open up a whole new world of resources. Just think about it, these people aren’t running the same circles as you which means that they more than likely have access to information and resources that you and your current circle aren’t privy to! They've been meeting different people and learning different things in the last few years, so they can open up whole worlds you didn't know existed.Also, you typically already have had a relationship with these people so it tends to be easier to reach out to reconnect. Just don’t dive into asking for favors right away, take some time to research what they’ve been up to, try to find a way to be of service to them, and simply ask for insight. You’ll be amazed at what they may come back with!This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @layfieldresume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn!

Zach has the pleasure of speaking with Glenn Newman, VMware's Global Diversity & Inclusion Program Manager, in this episode focused around all things D&I. Glenn is a professional with over seven years of diversity and inclusion, campus recruitment, and talent management experience. In his current role at VMware, Glenn is working to take VMware's Power of Difference communities (PODs) to the next level by helping them achieve business and D&I program objectives. He shares with us what he's most excited about when it comes to his role and VMware in 2020 and so much more. Check out Ijeoma Oluo's book, So You Want to Talk About Race, on Amazon!Connect with Glenn on LinkedIn!Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and you know what we do. I say a little thing, I go on with a joke, and then I say something about how we amplify the voices of black and brown people at work. Shout-out to all of our listeners, our first and last time listeners, you know what I'm saying? The millennials, the Gen X'ers. The--what's after the Gen X'ers? The Baby Boomers, and then also some of y'all Gen Y--them Gen Z's, rather. Excuse me. Gen Y is another word for millennials. You know what I'm talking about. If you're new here, you know what we do. We do this through--we amplify voices through authentic, accessible discussions with black and brown leaders. Today is no different as we have Glenn Newman with VMware. Hold up, now. Glenn Newman with VMware? I gotta go ahead and give just one quick air horn for that. [air horn sfx] Yes. We out here. We out here. We out here. Glenn is a D&I and talent professional with over seven years of diversity and inclusion, campus recruitment, and talent management experience. In his current role at VMware, Glenn is working to make VMware's power of difference communities - they call those pods, y'all - to take them to the next level by helping them achieve business and D&I program objectives. He is also focused on building inclusive manager and leadership capabilities as the company works to increase representation of underrepresented minorities and women by fostering a more inclusive culture, okay, where employees feel like they belong and they can bring their authentic selves to work every day. Okay, now listen, y'all, that was a whole bunch of, like, corporate talk to say Glenn is out here trying to make it better for black and brown folks at VMware to do what they do, okay? That's all that that was saying. But, you know, they gotta--in this D&I space, we have to kind of pretty things up with these, like, really flowery and colorful languages, but that's what he's doing, okay? Now, look, previously Glenn managed the overall recruitment of associates and consultants for BCG--okay, what's up, BCG? Hold up. ["ow" sfx] But this ain't a BCG podcast. I'm just saying. He also had a talent in D&I roles at Travelport, Accenture, Visa, Google--as a contractor--see, I like... you know what? Glenn is an honest dude, man. So he sent me over this copy, right, and on the copy it says "contract" in parentheses. Glenn, you ain't gotta be that honest.Glenn: [inaudible, both laugh]Zach: And he began his career as a communication and change management analyst at Towers Watson. Man. With all of that being said, Glenn, man, welcome to the show. How are you doing? [kids cheering sfx]Glenn: Thank you, thank you. I'm good, I'm good. How about yourself? Zach: Man, I'm doing really well. I'm excited to have you here. You know, we had to take some time, you know, but you back in town and we're having a conversation. I'm excited about it. So let's--you know, we did a little brief intro about you where I kind of gave, you know, your LinkedIn picture, but what else would you like to tell us about yourself?Glenn: I mean, I guess honestly you captured most of it in terms of, like, the bio and kind of what I'm working on at VMware. I mean, outside of that I'm an Ares, so I'm a hothead.Zach: I got you, I got you.Glenn: I like to ask the difficult questions, and I feel like anybody who has worked with me before would definitely tell you that I have a tendency to ask difficult questions, but also ask the questions that other people feel like they probably shouldn't ask or they don't want to ask, and I feel like I help keep people accountable, you know? So I think it's important to be that voice and to have that voice and to push the envelope a little bit. So hopefully I can disrupt for the betterment of others.Zach: Come on, now. Disrupt? I love that, man. So you said you're an Ares. So I'm a Virgo. Actually, you know, Beyonce and I have the same birthday. Glenn: I did not know that. I did know she was a Virgo though.Zach: I'm saying. So, you know, I'm out here as well. I'm trying to disrupt things as well. So okay, okay, okay, so you're a global diversity and inclusion program manager. What does that mean practically, and what prompted you to take this role at VMware?Glenn: Yeah. So I mean, quite frankly, I was looking for a role where I could have an impact, and I really--so a lot of my career has been in campus recruiting and diversity campus recruiting, right, and I really wanted to pivot from more of the acquisition side and the talent attraction into the, you know, development, the retention, promotion, engagement, et cetera, right, of underrepresented groups, and so I was looking for opportunities, and I was interviewing for a few, but quite frankly I wanted to stay in Atlanta, and the good thing about--one of the good things about the VMware role is it allowed me to stay in Atlanta, and I'm thankful for that. I'm always grateful, because I get to work in tech, I get to work at a pretty large, pretty well-known tech company, but I get to do it in Atlanta, and I don't think a lot of people can say that same thing. I think the other part of it is I was really looking to have a seat at the table, and I can honestly say that, you know, my manager who's a director and [my?] VP. Like, they want to know what I think, I mean, but they want to know what everybody else on the--what everybody on the team thinks, and so, like, that's important to me because I've been in places before where my voice didn't matter or it was overshadowed by people who were more senior or people in the business. I mean, you know, you've worked in personal services, so you definitely probably know what that's like. [Well?,] you've worked in personal services, so you know what that's like. And so I think, you know, just throughout my interview process it felt like the right fit for me for a number of reasons. And so yeah, that's what prompted me to join, and I think, you know, since joining, I feel like, you konw, my expectations have been managed well, but I think I have been set up for success and I'm actually doing the work that we talked about doing in the interview, which is good.Zach: That is good, man, 'cause, you know, sometimes it's like you get a job and you think--especially in these D&I roles, right? And I've had these conversations, like, with other folks on the podcast, right? We've talked to Jennifer Brown and we've talked to Amy Waninger. We've talked to other people, right? We've talked to even DeRay Mckesson, and we talk about how, like, these D&I spaces are--they're slowly becoming decolonized, but, like, there's still a lot of, like, work to do to, like, really get stronger representation in these spaces, right? And you end up thinking--you know, you're over here like, "Oh, snap, I got this job, and they're about to, you know, really put me at the seat of the table and give me a voice," and you turn around and you're talking about ["haha" sfx] Like, not. Joke's on you, you know what I'm saying? You don't even have no seat.Glenn: It's so [?] though, and I think, like, just given my personality, and--I mean, I attribute this to professional serv--like, I grew up in professional services, right? Like, from Towers Watson, from working at Accenture for over two years, from the BCG. I mean, those organizations move quickly, right, and they're all about, like, high-caliber work, high-quality work, quick turnarounds, and so I think coming to VMware and industry in general--industry is a bit slower, right? And so I think I have to manage my expectations around what I can get done, what we can done, what the business is ready for, and so I think I'm definitely learning those lessons, you know? And I'm still working to manage my own expectations. [laughs]Zach: That's real. No, no, no. That's real, and it's crazy--it's crazy, man, 'cause sometimes, like I said, it just takes time. I think there's a lot of--and I've had this conversation multiple times too, like, I think it's easy if you don't have, like, black and brown people, like, in these roles, like, it's easy to forget, like, the emotional labor that it takes to do this type of work, right? Like, it's not just like--Glenn: [?]Zach: Right? It's human. Like, you're dealing with human beings, and you're dealing with human beings that look like you, have similar stories to you, that you're really trying to impact, so I definitely get that, and managing expectations is always important. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. You know, D&I continues to be, like, an area where organizations are focused on, especially in tech, so what do you believe, right, has been the motivation for VMware to continue to expand their D&I office? Because, like, I feel as if--I don't know. Like, you know, we've had some research--we have whitepapers, you know, on our website, like--oh, by the way. Hey, y'all. Check us out, y'all. We got whitepapers. Like, don't play with us. [straight up sfx] Okay? We got whitepapers. [both laugh] And in our research, everybody knows that a common statistic is that $8 billion a year is being spent, and I would argue wasted, in D&I today and that we're not really seeing tangible results. And especially as you think about, like the economy as it stands today. Like, why do you think, in this point in time, VMware is still expanding this space?Glenn: Well, I feel like a lot of the times we hear about, like, "It's the right thing to do" and "We're doing it for the business," right? So I hear that a lot, and not--and not specifically at VMware, but just in general, and I say that to say I think those are the reasons we're doing it, right? Like, we're doing it because we genuinely believe, right, across the company, especially from a leadership perspective, that it's important and that specifically, like, we call our pods that I mentioned earlier, the power of difference communities--like, we believe the power of human difference allows us to be better, to develop better products, to build better products, to better serve customers, to be better partners, right? And then to innovate. So I think there's definitely a business reason behind it, but then I also genuinely feel like there are leaders who think it's the right thing to do. And I think it's interesting because--you know, like, there's the winning the hearts and minds of change, right? So I think you have to [hit?] people with the pathos for the people who, you know, they relate to that, but then you have to have, you know, the practicality in the business perspective for others as well. [?] The data had showed that people--like, once they connect emotionally to diversity and inclusion, they're better able to kind of buy into it as opposed to just connecting to the business. So I think we definitely we have some more of that, work to do, to continue to pull at people's heartstrings, but then also make it real for them so that they genuinely buy in ,and not just because it's the right thing to do from a business perspective but it's the right thing to do from a human perspective.Zach: That's a really good point, and I do think it's both and, right? I think organizations often fail when they try to do one or the other, because, like, the reality is some folks are just not gonna care, right? But then you got other folks who are like, "Okay, I'ma care as much as it benefits my bottom line, so if you can point to me, like, how this can benefit my bottom line, then I'm all for it," right? I think the challenge--the challenge that I think, something that has yet to be quantified, is, like, the amount of time organizations waste in, like, really calculating turnover. So, like, we know the turnover data is bad, like, in tech. But, like, those numbers have yet to really be fully published. Like, I don't think any one organization has really, like, really, really gone into, like, the comparative analytics on their turnover data, but, like, I think if really one was to look at those numbers alone, they'd be like, "Ayo, we gotta do a better job, 'cause, like, this is crazy." I mean, it's just over here like [chaching sfx] But, like, opposite. Like, in reverse, you know what I'm saying? Like, it would be like that sound, but, you know. [both laugh]Glenn: Like a whomp-whomp-whomp. [both laugh]Zach: Right? You know what I mean. And then over time, you know, organizations are so, like, monolithic. They're so white. They're so straight. They're so male. You know, I'm looking on my job board--I'm looking at the job board, I might see a job--let's just say, like, I'm a person of color, I'm on the job board--because I know that this place isn't inclusive--I'm looking at that job like ["i don't know who this man is" Keke sfx]. [Glenn laughs] You know, sorry to this man. I don't even recognize--man, listen, Glenn, I've been so excited to use this soundboard, man. I've got some new [?]--Glenn: I love that. Oh, my gosh. If you knew how many times I say that, like, in a week. "I'm sorry. I don't want to sound foolish."Zach: "I don't want to sound ridiculous. I do not know who this is." And so let me pivot, right? So you talked about the power of difference and these communities. I really want to--now, look, I'm not trying to have you spill any secret sauce out, you know what I'm saying, but I want to learn more about the strategy of these power of difference [communities] and really--frankly, I want to talk more about this offline too. Like, what's the strategy with these pods? Like, what are y'all trying to achieve? What is this looking like? Like, how did this come about, and what--practically speaking, like, how does it fit into y'all's D&I strategy?Glenn: Yeah. I mean, like, honestly [in our?] D&I strategy overall there are three kind of key pieces. There's the representation piece, where we talk a lot about increasing representation and focusing specifically on underrepresented minorities and women, and what I often tell people is just because we're--just because we're saying we're focusing on does not mean--it doesn't mean that we aren't also working to increase representation of other underrepresented groups, and I say that because I really think it's important for people to know that we're doing both. So it's a yes and, and again, these things are not mutually exclusive. The other part of it is building a culture of inclusion, right? So focusing on culture and what that really means, and then the third piece is thought leadership. So how are we tapping into podcasts like this to let people know that "Okay, VMware is an inclusive place to work," and we're working to make it an even more inclusive place to work, right? And then how are we sharing what we're doing and the impact of the diversity and the inclusion that is having on the business? So I say all of that to say our pods, the power of difference communities, are really our ERGs, right? So employee resource groups or business resource groups, and I think we are at a place where we are really trying to take those ERGs, known as pods, to be more BRGs, right? So how are they [?] business? Meaning how are the programs and the initiatives and the sponsorships and things like that contributing to the business? Whether that be in terms of professional development, of underrepresented groups, so that they develop and have talent moves and move into different roles and are contributing more to the business, whether that means we are attending various recruiting conferences and thinking about building pipelines in STEM and in tech of underrepresented groups, whether that be, you know, high school, college, what have you, you know, experienced professionals, or is that we're partnering with other non-profits in the space to, like, you know, talk about what we're doing and help other companies and partner with other companies? And then--or, you know, like, a lot of companies, especially companies who are B to C, right? So we think about, like, big consumer goods or just any product that sells products directly to consumers, they think a lot about and have a lot of conversations about "How do our products reflect our consumers?" Right? So if you think about some of the large consumer goods or CPGs or those companies, they're really thinking about those things, and so I think for us it's "How are we making sure that we're getting the opinions of our employees who are underrepresented or in underrepresented groups, and how are we leveraging that thought leadership, that knowledge, that know-how, to further develop relationships with our customers to build better products to innovate, right? And so I think ideally we want to get our pods to a place where we're doing more of those things.Zach: That's a really exciting vision, right? Like, so you're thinking--so basically these pods, I mean, they're almost like little--I mean, they're genuinely--if effectively strategized around and activated effectively--are real difference makers, and you have them basically stratified across the business. That's pretty exciting, man.Glenn: Right, right, right. Yeah, and I think--you know, I think it's easier for people in general to make that connection when you're walking into, like, a grocery store and you're picking up a product on a shelf and thinking, "How are people who look like me or are like me thinking about buying this product or consuming this product?" And so for us it's different because, again, we're B to B, and we have to think about it differently. So I do think it's--I do think it's ambitious, but I think it can be done, especially when you think about relationships and building relationships and, then again, innovating.Zach: 100%. Okay, so what are you most excited about when it comes to your role and VMware in 2020?Glenn: That's a good question. I think what I'm really most interested in is--so quite frankly we have--and this is public knowledge--so we have closed the acquisition of Carbon Black, and we are working to close the acquisition of Pivotal, so as a result of that our diversity and inclusion team is gonna be growing, and so I think what I'm--what I'm looking forward to is the growth of our team, which means 1. we can do more, and I think also I'm looking forward to the opportunity to partner more with the business and be more of a diversity business partner. So a lot of tech companies have started developing or creating these diversity business partner roles that sit in the business and/or [audio cut] plans that they then work with the business to execute those plans, right? So I think you can think about it from, like--there's a D&I engagement piece, which is around the pods, and then there's, like, the education piece around unconscious bias and how we--how are we educating our managers, our leaders, our employees, around inclusion and topics like privilege and microaggressions and things like that, right? And then there's sitting in the business and working with business leaders and managers to develop plans to actually move the needle, right, in a different way than on the--you know, the education and the engagement, that side. So I think that's what I'm looking for, to have an opportunity to really partner more closely with the business in 2020 as a result of our team growing.Zach: My goodness gracious. I gotta give you a Flex bomb for all that though. That sounds incredible. [Flex bomb sfx] That sounds awesome, yeah. So I was trying to play the "what it do, baby" before, but it was just too loud, so I'm gonna go ahead and do it right now based off of the fact that what you just said is incredible. [Kawhi "what it do baby" sfx] And shout-out to your acquisition as well. [both laugh]Glenn: Right.Zach: Okay, okay, okay. So, you know, you're talking about what you've been doing at VMware, you're talking about some of the strategic visioning around the pods. Again, it does sound really ambitious, but, like, I don't think--when I say ambitious... sometimes people say ambitious and they're really just hating, right? It's kind of like, "It sounds a bit ambitious, don't you think?" [both laugh] But I mean it's ambitious like, "Wow, this is very positive." Like, this is incredible, and I'm really excited for what y'all are trying to drive. This is my question though. What advice would you have for organizations really at the beginning of their D&I journeys, right? Like, maybe they don't even have ERGs or BRGs. And then what have been the lessons learned for you? That's kind of, like, the B part to that question.Glenn: Yeah. So I think, like, advice, I think for companies who are just starting, I don't know, I think it's like--I don't know. I always go back to, like, the change management, right, part of it, right? So, like, thinking about how are you really pulling in leaders, how are you having it--how are you having your efforts so that they are leader-led, right, and it really sits in the business and leaders are held accountable for. So I think that accountability is super important. And not just leaders, right? So it's like--if VPs and above are the only people who are held accountable, then what happens to other people who are directors, [?], et cetera, who lead teams and [audio cut] they're not held accountable? So I think accountability is big, and I think for companies who are just starting out in general, like, just starting out the company by having an inclusive culture and kind of ingraining that into people and educating people from the time that they join the company, but even before they join the company, like, through the onboarding and through the talent acquisition piece, right? So I think that's the advice I would have, and then really just kind of walk the talk, right? Because I'm one of those people--I really, really value honesty, and I think I'm really good at sensing BS, right? A lot of us are, and I think we know [someone, audio cut] is being honest with us and when they're just kind of, like, giving us the "Well, this is what we're working on," and it's like, "Mm, that's not really what you're working on. Just be honest with me," right? If you have room to grow, say, you know, "These are the two things we're doing. However, we need to be doing these five, and we're working on it," right? Like, I'd rather somebody tell me that than to say, "Oh, well, we have these amazing initiatives," and it's like "Mm, do you really have those initiatives or are you just talking about it and is it just lip service?" So that's my advice. And I think--in terms of, like, lessons learned for me personally, we talk a lot about, like, people of color and underrepresented minorities and black and brown people, right, in corporate America, but, like, I'm not--yes, I'm a black man at VMware, but I'm not just a black man. Like, I'm a gay black man at VMware who is a part of a global team that is not just thinking about bringing in and developing and retaining and promoting more black and brown people, but we're thinking about underrepresented groups more broadly and thinking about making VMware a place where everyone can come and thrive and, I like to say, be safe, seen and connected, or feel safe, seen and connected, right? So I say that to say that a lot of the things that I've learned personally [audio cuts]--I advocate for people who don't look like me or who don't--or who I don't identify with from a, you know, race, ethnic background or other parts of my identity, right? And it's just really interesting because I think by being vulnerable and by being empathetic, I am really able to do that. But it's just interesting how, you know, I can be on a call with people who have a completely different identity than me, but I'm advocating for them. And so I'll give you a real example. A lot of people don't know about the model minority myth, right? So I've read this book by Ijeoma Olu called "So You Want to Talk About Race." I love the book. It's amazing. I would completely, like, totally recommend it. And she has a chapter where she talks about the [model minority myth,] and I think it's important because a lot of people--what the model minority myth is, and, you know, I'm not, like, speaking verbatim here, but it's really around the fact that people think about those who are Asian-American or Asian as the model minority, and they have all of these stereotypes about Asians to include--like, they're super smart. They're really--like, you know, they want to be in, like, STEM. They're really good at math. Like, those kinds of things. A lot of people might think they have a lot of money, but that's not the case. Like, when you look at the data, especially of some Asian-American or Asian cultures, that's just not the case. Like, the degrees or the degree attainment from some of the Asian cultures, those numbers are significantly less than Hispanic/Latinx or African-American and black cultures and black identities, right? So I think that's one of those things, by me just kind of educating myself, reading that book, and then I was on a call, and I literally had to stop someone and say, "Well, you know, actually, the model minority, this is what it is, this is why it exists, and this is why we need an Asian at VMware's power of difference community." It's important because there are also people in this community who aren't rich, who aren't, you know, science, math, STEM, et cetera, majors, and who didn't come from a home where both of their parents were doctors, lawyers, you know, computer scientists, et cetera, and that's what a lot of [audio cuts]--for me and having the opportunity to really advocate for people who aren't like me.Zach: Man, I love that, and you're 100% right. So I'm just gonna start at the top of what you said. So you were talking about the fact that you're not just one thing, right, like, you're not just one identity, and I think a lot of times, like, we really do fail to be, like, intersectional in our D&I work, and, I mean, we just had Lionel Lee, who is a diversity leader over at the Zillow Group, and we were talking about the fact that, like, when you look at a lot of work today in these D&I spaces, they're mostly, like, focused on gender. So, like, even the fact that, like, we're talking about race and gender to me is a win, because a lot of times we'll say things like--we'll kind of dismiss race and then say things like "diversity of thought" or just other--like, just generalized things, but I think you're absolutely right, especially when it comes to the LGBTQ space, because--Glenn: Exactly.Zach: This is what I've learned. So I'm a cishet black dude, right? And as I've been having conversations--and this was, like, earlier, like, last season. We were talking to Janet Pope, who is the diversity and inclusion leader over at Capgemini, and we were talking about how, like, it's important to make sure that you're being intersectional with the LGBTQ spaces, because if you're not, those spaces can end up being, like, largely white, and, like, you end up missing out on a lot of different black and brown experiences within that space.Glenn: You're so right. I mean, like, think about--again, like, going back to a gay black man who works in tech, like, there's not a lot of us, right? Especially when you think about the LGBTQ community in general. So I was at the Pride parade in Atlanta for the first time, and, I mean, it was just interesting for me to, like, think about being the only in a place where there are a lot of people like me, right? So whether there were LGBTQ or allies or what have you, I was still the only black man there, right? Like, and so--and when I say there, I mean specifically with the company who came out to the parade. Like, I'm sure there are others there. There may or may not be, so I don't want to falsely assume, but it was just interesting again, like, looking around and being like, "Okay, Glenn, you're still the only in this group of people who are like you because of intersectionality," right? And I think lately there has been a lot of conversation around intersectionality in terms of, you know, you looking at women of color, specifically black women, and looking at Asian women, for example, and then also again, from an LGBTQ perspective, there has been a ton of conversation lately around the importance of intersectionality, and I was telling the team--because last week, like, one of the reasons we had to postpone this was because I was at Out and Equal, which is an LGBTQ workplace summit. It's, like, a huge--it was amazing. I loved it, and I think there was this undercurrent of people getting on stage and really being advocates and allies and talking about how trans women of color are being murdered and no one is doing anything about it. I don't think enough people are having those conversations. So it will be interesting to see the shift in how people are having more conversations, but then also taking action over the next few years.Zach: Man, this has just been a super dope conversation, man. I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to join us. Before we let you go, any shout-outs? Parting words?Glenn: [laughs] Shout-outs and parting words? Hm. I don't know. Like, honestly, in all seriousness, I would encourage people to read that book - "So You Want To Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo. Like, I think everybody should read it, no matter how you identify, because, like, again, going back to, like, a lesson learned, like, I literally--I mean, of course I knew I had privilege. Like, I'm able-bodied. I'm educated. I went to a really good school. Like, I've had the opportunity to go to really great schools, you know, even in middle and high school, and so I reached out to one of my friends and I was like, "Girl, we got privilege," and, you know, we were having a conversation about it, right? So, like, even though you might be an underrepresented minority or a member of an underrepresented group, I think just realizing those things and being self-aware are helpful. So I would encourage people to read that book and just start to have conversations with people who are not like you to increase your understanding.Zach: Y'all... my goodness, y'all. I just--you know what, man? I gotta--let me see here. Let's see here. What are we gonna do, man? We gotta--I just gotta give a [raucous applause sfx] I gotta thank you, man. I just gotta let you know, bro, 'cause I'ma tell you the truth, man. Sometimes, you know, I have some of these conversations with some of these D&I leaders, and they--you know, they really--and not on Living Corporate though. I make moves, so I talk to people, right? Let me tell you, they'll be talking to me, and in the back of my mind I'm over here like [fraud sfx, Glenn laughs]--it's a fraud. Glenn: Yeah.Zach: But I appreciate you being authentic [and] taking the time to, like, really share a bit, right? Not just about VMware, but about yourself. So yeah, man, so blessings to you, and that does it for us, y'all, on Living Corporate, you know? You know what we do, man. We post this stuff, like, three times a week. We've got these regular interviews, then we've got Tristan's Tips, and then we've got The Link Up with Latesha, all really to amplify black and brown voices at work. Make sure you check us out on Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, on Instagram @LivingCorporate, and then, you know, just Google us, you know what I'm saying? We out here, right? Like, we--you know, Glenn, like, we're really making moves, man. We got livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org, livingcorporate.net, you know? Livingcorporate... what else? We've got pretty much all of the livingcorporates except livingcorporate.com. Now, livingcorporate.com is owned by, like, Australia, right? So I don't know. I don't know what's going on with that one, but we also have living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com. So just check us out. We out here. Let's see here. What else? Housekeeping, housekeeping. Shout-out to Ellen, who was on mute this entire time, but Ellen was here to make sure that I didn't get Glenn or VMware sued, so shout-out to you, Ellen, and yeah. This has been Zach. You've been listening to Glenn Newman, mover, shaker, D&I leader at VMware. 'Til next time, y'all. Peace.

On the twelfth installment of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, throws out some tips, tricks, and strategies for making your side hustle your full-time hustle. She also talks a bit about some of the tools and programs she utilizes that help maximize her efficiency at work.Check out the book Latesha mentioned, The E-Myth Revisited, on Amazon!Below is a list of programs and services that Latesha herself uses to run her business:Scheduling: CalendlyCRM: DubsadoTask Management: TrelloClient Storage: G SuiteMarketing: Canva, CreativeMarketAccounting: PayPal, Bench AccountingFind out more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBCheck out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBVisit our website!TRANSCRIPTLatesha: Today we are talking about making your side hustle your full-time hustle. I know so many entrepreneurs who are hustling on the side and working a full-time job but their goal is to be their own boss. Now, there are some that like doing both the side hustle and the full-time hustle, and to be honest that's what I thought I was going to do. It didn't happen like that. A part of me being able to take my side hustle and make it a full-time hustle was a lot of crying [laughs] and praying and strategizing and believing. I would say that believing, for me, was the hardest thing, and then once I actually really started to believe in myself, in my business and what I was doing, and I was starting to operate at a higher level, that really changed the mold for me. So I thought this would be a cool topic to talk about. A lot of my coaching clients actually have side businesses or are looking to transition from a side hustle to a full-time hustle. I also coach entrepreneurs, and so, you know, I know that I speak mostly on career development and I'm big on career empowerment, career ownership, but I love talking about entrepreneurship, and I thought "Why not start to talk a little bit about business, building a business?" I know some of you all are listening to this podcast where, yes, you are working a corporate job, but you also have your business on the side. I've been there, and I know how that felt, and I just thought I would come on here and share with you all my story of how I was able to turn my side hustle into a full-time hustle, and then just kind of throw out some tips and tricks and strategies that you can start to implement if you do have that side hustle and your goal is to turn it into a full-time hustle. So just to tell you all a little bit about my story - I honestly started my business as a hobby as a career coach. It was something that I was passionate about doing, and the reason or how it came about was that when I was in college I had five internships. I grew up in a single-parent household, so we didn't have a lot of money, so I came to college with a goal in mind that I was going to work my butt off and I was going to take advantage of every single opportunity because I didn't really feel that I had that safety net. There was--for me at least there was no going back home, and so I got really involved on campus [and] had a lot of internships. I went straight into grad school and had a job offer waiting for me post-grad school, so, you know, from I guess the outside looking in, a lot of folks kind of looked at me and said, "Okay, this chick kind of knows what she's doing. She has this internship. She has a job offer, school, everything." Then I would start to get questions. [laughs] Once people kind of caught on to just what I had started to--the brand, I guess... I didn't even know I was building a brand, but the brand that I was building, the reputation I was building for myself, and people started coming to me for career advice. They started coming to me for assistance with getting into graduate school, with help with getting a job, so I started looking at resumes, giving advice, and I realized that this was something that I could monetize, and I said, "All right, the next person to ask me for help, boom, charging them." [laughs] So that's how my business started. It started as a hobby, a passion. I realized I could monetize it, and so I did. Now I've learned so much along the way in terms of getting the skills and the trainings and the experience, the lessons, and just expanding my own skill set or diversifying my own skill set to be able to run a business. You know, those were thing that I of course had to be extremely intentional about as I was building my business. If I could recommend one book to anyone that is really thinking about entrepreneurship and taking that thing all the way, The E-Myth Revisited. For me, it was such a game-changing read, such a game-changing book, because it talks about how a lot of us may start businesses based on a hobby, based on a passion, based on just doing something, and we realize "Oh, this is something that I could monetize," but you don't really learn the fundamentals of actually growing a business, of running a business, and so that book really breaks it down on how to actually do that, how to scale your business, how to really run your business as the CEO that you are. Now, I mean, there are many people as well that don't just start businesses based off of a passion or a hobby. You know, some folks are extremely intentional about solving a business need or solving a business problem, but The E-Myth, such a really great read, you know? We don't learn a lot about entrepreneurship, really nothing at all about entrepreneurship in college, so it is important to think about all of the different skills that are needed to run a business. So kind of going back to, you know, my story, that's how I started my business. Over the last 4.5 years, we've worked with close to 900 professionals in a variety of industries. Business has grown from just a team of one, me, [laughs] to a team of five. Everyone on my team are resume writers, career coaches. I have an assistant. I have someone that helps with business development as well, and, you know, I have so many clients that I've coached over--not just domestically, but also overseas, in Paris, in France--or Paris, France, [laughs] and in Ghana, in Canada, and all over, you know, the U.S. And so in terms of my revenue goals, you know, I have been able to--huge accomplishment on my end, but to exceed six figures last month and, you know, still the goal for my business--I'm being extremely transparent at this moment--the goal for my business is to hit 150K. You know, could I do more? Yeah, but I think that's pretty good, you know? Fourth, fifth year, you know, getting into it. My goal next year is to focus on profit and then cutting as many expenses as possible. Anyways, going back to the first thing that I really had to adjust as I was really thinking about taking this thing all the way in terms of my business. First thing was mindset. It was--you have to think about it in terms of "Is this something I really want to commit to? Am I ready to be fully committed to doing this?" You have to be sure. You know, this really isn't a trial-and-error thing, meaning going from just side hustle to full time is--you know, you want to be pretty sure about it if you are anything like me. Now, I've had friends that have just taken the leap. They've taken the jump. [laughs] But I was really strategic, and I had a plan in place. I am a planner. I've always liked to kind of be in control of my future and, you know, I don't like surprises. [laughs] So I had a plan in place. For me, I knew this was something I had to be fully committed to, and understand that, you know, going from--I think the biggest change for me going from a side hustler to a full-time hustler is that, you know, your lifestyle fundamentally changes. Everything about your lifestyle changes. When you are in charge of yourself, you are in charge of your schedule. You have to decide when you work, where you work, who you want to work with and who you meet with. There's also a lot of decision fatigue that goes into entrepreneurship, so that's something to think about. It takes a lot of energy to run a business, not just from, you know--let's say you are someone that is in, you know, marketing, right? You know, you are developing marketing materials. You may be even doing marketing strategy or SEO strategy for a company, you know? They are likely--maybe you're doing it in-house for a company, or maybe you are working with a company that serves different clients. You know, either way, the company has those processes, systems, tools in place for you to get the work done, or even if you are, you know, managing communication with different teams and groups and clients, you know, these things are being managed by your company. When you are out on your own, there is no middleman, you know? You have to think through those processes and getting all of that in order in terms of dealing with clients, you know? Dealing with, you know, your team. And as an entrepreneur, you're not just doing that work anymore that you were doing with said company. I mean, you are doing--you are the operations person. You are HR. [laughs] You are legal. You are finance. You are customer service, you know? You are the communications person. I mean, of course you will most definitely want to for sure get a lawyer or an attorney, and also make sure you get an accountant, for sure, but there are times where you will need to--you have to know all of the things that are going on with your business until you get to a point where you are starting to hire talent to take on some of that work for you. So what I'm saying there is it takes a lot of energy, maybe a different level of energy, a different level of discipline and motivation, and also self-accountability that goes into entrepreneurship. Now, when you get to a point where you have decided--maybe you started your business on the side [and] you're getting it to a place where you have steady income coming in and you're really thinking about leaving your current workplace. One thing that I want, you know, you all to think about if this is you is what more can you milk from your current job? [laughs] What I mean by that is what are those relationships that you need to nurture, clients maybe you need to make sure you are connecting with again? What are those skills that you want to develop? What about the networking? Who's in your network, or who can you get closer to in your network based on where you are or the access that you have? Just what are those different opportunities? What more do you need from your job? I really was--so when I left corporate, I was actually in a recruiting role, and I managed recruiting for five offices for a public accounting firm up and down the East Coast, and I absolutely loved that job. I thought recruiting was a wonderful field to be in. It was fast-paced. There was a lot of travel, which I loved. I was able to work with a lot of young professionals and give career advice, and I really learned how--how 1. a company actually hires and develops and recruits and trains talent. I had a say so in it, and I was able to help drive strategy in terms of not only how they got talent but how the organization was able to get diverse talent. So I loved that job because I was able to add a lot of value and be a thought leader there, but I was also thinking about "What do I need to get out of my company? What do I need to get out of this job that will make me a better entrepreneur?" You know, more of an expert for my clients? And so I started, you know, asking to attend more conferences, one for networking, but also to develop more skills just in terms of the different sessions that were being offered at the conferences I was going to. Like, one conference I went to in Chicago was a women's conference, and there was a session on public speaking, which was great, because I wanted to do more public speaking. My goal was to become--to brand myself as a speaker. And with that being said, another opportunity for me was to do as many speaking engagements as possible. And so, you know, before I left, whenever a team member needed a speaker for a recruiting event, I always raised my hand to go. So I was able to go to different universities and, you know, do speaking engagements on, you know, any type of career development topic that they wanted the firm to offer, but I also kind of used that under my speaking toolkit and said "Hey, I was in front of this audience," right? And I was kind of building up my speaking brand as much as I could. So that's something to think about. What more can you milk from your current job or just from your current situation? And then I have three things to think about in terms of getting very serious about being more efficient in your business. I'll go ahead and name those three. The three areas are time management, fiscal management, and process management. So starting with time management. You will want to determine how much time you want to spend working in your business versus working in your day job, so keep in mind that you have family responsibilities, and just think about the way your schedule is now, whether it's family obligations, you know, work obligations, volunteer obligations, you really have to get tight with your schedule and know how much time you want to be working in your business, working your day job, and also working on your business, 'cause working in your business and on your business is different. So then in terms of--another piece under time management would be service, products, and offerings. How much time is it taking you to actually do or to put out the offer or to provide that service, you know, that you are monetizing your business off of? You know, for example, you know, thinking about building a course. I did a salary negotiation course last month on--well, I already said it - salary negotiation. But even though that webinar itself was only two hours long--it was about an hour and 45 minutes--whoo, y'all, when I tell you - there's so many steps that go into actually building out a course, and that I learned. So not only did I have to, you know, create the course, I had to create the outline, you know, figure out what the goals were. What did I want? And thinking about what I wanted my audience to walk away with. With all of that being said, you know, building out the outline, thinking about--doing the research, you know? Making sure I'm pulling in industry and relevant data to back my support, to back my findings, you know? Putting it into a PowerPoint or--I didn't use PowerPoint, I used Canva, but--putting it into a presentation template, putting together a workbook. You know, you have the copy that has to go out, and you have to send that out to your audience. So there's so many different steps, and sometimes we don't take into account every single step and, you know, every single moment we're spending to get these things done. So time management. Next is fiscal management, and this is the process that I kind of--that I do actually walk my coaching clients through for those that are looking to launch businesses or thinking about--or looking to scale their business. So fiscal management is the second one. You have to have revenue goals. You have to have revenue goals for your business. It's so key, especially if you're thinking about taking it from a side hustle to a full-time hustle. You know, that's nothing to play with. You want to make sure that you are continuing to bring in money and revenue for your business, so it is important to set some revenue goals, okay? And don't sell yourself short, you know? Also take into account the lifestyle that you want, that you are living, and, you know, one thing that I did is I actually wrote out a budget. I really thought about--or not thought about, but I outlined, you know, my expenses, how much money I am spending on bills, but not only fixed expenses but also variable expenses - food, shopping, entertainment, nails, hair. You know, as a woman, those things matter. We want to look cute. We can't be, you know, taking a discount on [laughs] on that, and so I've really had to think through "How much money do I need to be bringing in each month to keep the lifestyle that I want to live?" I was fully prepared to, you know, be okay with living less, you know, or spending less if I had to--maybe not getting my nails done for a bit, which I actually did stop doing for quite some time. But, you know, other things like that. You may have to make sacrifices, but either way you have to know those numbers. Know how much does it cost for you to live the lifestyle that will make you happy. Happiness is important. And then based on that, you will need to have revenue goals so you can bring in enough to support your lifestyle, right? Especially if you have, you know, a family and children, you will need more money than someone that is single. So you have your revenue goals. You will want to also break those down by services or the products that you are offering, so if your revenue goal is $10,000 and you have something that is--a product that is, you know, $100, you need to make sure that quantity that you're selling is 100, you know? So it's important to think about your revenue goals, break it down by service or products that you are offering, you know? Or maybe you have a multitude of different service offerings or different products, but break your revenue goals by each thing that you are offering. How many customers do you need to be bringing in for that said service or product? That way you also know how you need to be spending your effort in terms of marketing, where you should be marketing or who you should be marketing to. So the first was time management, second was fiscal management, and the third brings us to process management. You have to have systems and tools in order to scale your business. So I know I've mentioned that a couple of times, scaling your business, scaling your business, and some may say, "Well, what does that mean?" So scaling your business--I'm just going to read a definition that I found online, but it means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your company. It means having the ability to grow without being hampered. It requires planning, some funding, and the right system, staff, processes, technology, and partners. When companies scale, they add revenue at a faster rate than they take on new costs. A company that is scaling may gain 50,000 in new revenue, from which they spent only 5,000 on marketing automation tools, versus hiring someone and paying them a $50,000 salary to actually come in and do the work. So it basically means making sure you are operating at your most efficient capacity and capabilities. Scaling is something that is extremely important, especially if you are a company of one, you know? And maybe you don't have a large team in place. So it's important to think through how can you scale or grow your business, because if you are a company of one, you can't do it all. You may need to automate, put those systems in place and tools in place so that way you can get your time back and be able to spend it a little bit more efficiently. So anyways, when it comes to process management, you have to have systems and tools in order from start to finish. I recommend my clients actually write out the steps, write out the steps of an initial contact. So when a client is initially interested in working with you and they want to work with you, where do they go? What do they fill out? What do they complete? How do they get in touch with you? And having a process from the initial contact all the way to, you know, closing the deal or making that sale, providing the service, and then, you know, if there's any follow-up or things of that nature that need to happen post-providing that service, you want to make sure that you have all of those steps in order and think about what are the things that you may be doing over and over and over again that are a little bit recurring that maybe you can--that's something you can automate? What are some canned emails that you are--what are those emails that you are sending over and over again to your clients? So creating some canned emails. I think about, you know, the processes and how can I be more efficient in my business all of the time, and with process management, or for the systems I used, I have a task management tool I use called Trello. It's great. It helps me and my team really stay organized. Sometimes we work with up to 15 clients for, you know, the resume work that we do, and then from, you know, my agency, but then for the one-on-one coaching that I do where I take on about 15 clients, no more than 15 clients at a time, I have to stay organized with that. So Trello [for] task management. I use Dubsado for my CRM. Love, love, love my CRM. And then Google Drive. I am in Gmail. You know, [laughs] Google anything. Google Forms. I--listen... Google. Hey, Google, [laughs] put me on the team. But no, seriously, I use Google for everything. Those are the main systems that I use. The last thing I will say is that once you do make the leap, don't jump right into it. Take a break if you can. You know, take some time off from being in that corporate setting so you can just sit back and--I don't want to say sit back and relax, but just so you can take a breather, you know? We have the rest of our lives to work. You may feel like you want to jump right into it, but you definitely will want to take a break just to kind of get your mind in order and get it clear so that you can be more creative. The last thing that I'll say is make sure you also set some goals. 30-day, 60-day, 90-day goals at the minimum for your business. Be very intentional with that. How many? How much money do you want to work? Of course those revenue goals. How many clients do you want to bring in? Who do you want to--you know, where do you want to spend your money? You know, just being intentional about that and setting some goals. So I hope this was helpful. Like I said, this was all about just entrepreneurship, pursuing your full-time hustle or making your side hustle your full-time hustle. Hopefully you found this helpful. If you want to be your own boss, let me know. If you have questions about entrepreneurship, let me know. I'm happy to really just start exploring more and talking more about entrepreneurship as well as we continue to talk about career development. So that is all I have today for you all on The Link Up with Latesha. You can find me on social media, @Latesha_Byrd, and I will talk to you guys next time. Bye.  

On the thirty-sixth entry of Tristan's Tips, our special guest Tristan Layfield covers three common mistakes you might be making that could be holding up your job search. Many of us apply to dozens upon dozens of jobs only to find ourselves still without an offer - be sure to adapt these points of advice into your job search strategy to help improve your chances!Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn, IG, FB, and Twitter!Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTTristan: What is going on, y'all? It's Tristan Layfield of Layfield Resume Consulting, and I've teamed up with Living Corporate to bring you all a weekly career tip. This week we’re going to discuss a few things that might be holding up your job search.Have you ever been or are you currently feeling stuck in your job search? Many of us apply to dozens upon dozens of jobs only to find ourselves still without an offer. Well there are 3 common mistakes that you might be making that could be the reason why you employers aren’t calling.The first thing is that you’re not clear on what you want. With the name of the game being tailoring, you have to be pretty clear on what you’re looking for. You can’t just take the same resume you’ve been adding to since college and send it to hundreds of jobs. That type of resume spamming very rarely ends in landing a role. On the flip side, if you narrow down what type of job you want, you can tailor your resume, brand yourself on LinkedIn, and ensure you’re communicating exactly what you’re seeking while networking.The next thing is that you’re applying to jobs you don’t want. Believe me I get it. Sometimes the job search is so rough and you just need a win so you start applying to jobs you don’t want to do. Odd are, if you know that, eventually the hiring manager will too. The last thing is that you aren’t being proactive. You’ve probably heard that the best time to find a job is when you don’t need one. While it’s cliché, it’s also quite true. Making connections and finding the right opportunity is easier when you don’t absolutely need it. You’re free to take your time to build relationships and vet out opportunities rather than making blind requests and taking positions that aren’t in alignment with what you want to do.A job search without a strategy is like throwing a dart with your eyes closed, sometimes you might get a bullseye but most of the time you’re just hoping for one. If you want to land a great role, you have you’re going to have put some action behind that hope.This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @layfieldresume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn!

Zach has the pleasure of chatting with Brittani Hunter, founder and CEO of The Mogul Millennial, and they discuss how to go about effectively using your voice at work. They also talk about The Mogul Millennial platform in general, what she's looking forward to in the future, and what initially led her to its creation. Connect with Brittani on Twitter and Instagram!Check out The Mogul Millennial website and follow them on Twitter and Instagram!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and again, look, y'all know what we do. We have incredible guests all of the time. Now, this guest is pretty interesting, because, you know, as I've been--as we. Shout-out to Ade, shout-out to Sheneisha, shout-out to Tiffany, shout-out to Tara, shout-out to Taylor, shout-out to Tristan, you know what I'm saying? These are all sounding like random names, but these are all people that actually I work with on Living Corporate. Shout-out to Amy, okay? I see you. We have all--as we continue to really build out Living Corporate, folks, there's one name that continues to come up. Like, "Have you talked to this person? Have you talked to this person? Have you talked to this person?" And I'm like, "Yes, I have. Yes, we've made a connection. Yes, we still need to interview. Yes, but I do know who that is," and it is this individual, and this person is a LinkedIn Top Voice. They're an entrepreneur. They're a writer. They're an educator. They're a public speaker. They're a mover. They're a shaker, you know what I'm saying? They're a snatcher of edges, you know what I'm saying? They out here is my point, and this person is Brittani Hunter. Brittani, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Brittani: I'm doing really good. Thanks for having me.Zach: No, no, no. Thank you for actually being on the show. In fact, let me go ahead and just--just a very modest, you know what I'm saying, cheer, just to welcome you, you know what I'm saying? [cheers sfx] Nothing too crazy. Just something to kind of get us started. For those of us who don't know you--I know I kind of gave a little bit, but would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?Brittani: Yeah. So like you mentioned earlier, I'm an entrepreneur and also a LinkedIn Top Voice. I am also a proud HBCU grad, so if you went to PVAMU, shout-out to you. I am based here in Texas, Dallas to be exact, and I've been in the entrepreneur space for about 3.5 years, but full-time since January of this year. So January of 2019.Zach: Okay, now, wait, you're not gonna shout-out your HBCU?Brittani: I did. You didn't hear me? Prairie View A&M University. So PVAMU. ["ow" sfx]Brittani: [laughs] Yeah. It's the best HBCU in my opinion, so yeah, shout-out to you if you are a PV grad as well. Zach: Shout-out to the HBCUs. It's so funny, 'cause, you know, no one ever goes, "Shout-out to the PWIs!" But, you know, it's cool. Shout-out to education, and definitely shout-out to HBCUs. My dad went to Jackson State, and my mom [was Miss?] Tougaloo back in the day, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I came from good stock is what I'm trying to say. [jokingly] You're not the only person out here flexing in your complexion, that's all. Okay, so look, today we're talking about using your voice effectively. You talked about being a LinkedIn Top Voice. First of all, what does it mean to be a LinkedIn Top Voice?Brittani: So every year, LinkedIn, they'll select people that currently use the LinkedIn platform--hence the name LinkedIn Top Voice--and what it is is people that they recognize that are making an impact through the platform, and so an impact on the platform through their content. So yeah, to become a LinkedIn Top Voice essentially means that you're recognized as someone who has influence and a heavy impact on the users, on the thousands and millions of users that are on LinkedIn.Zach: Let's talk about you being selected. Like, what did that process look like?Brittani: It was actually a surprise. So I was literally at my old 9-to-5, um, not doing work, checking my personal email on my phone, and I saw that I had an email from one of the editors. And so LinkedIn has several editors that specifically focus on different subjects, and so the editor reached out and was pretty much saying that they love all of my content, that they, you know, on the back end they've been seeing how much engagement and all the high impressions that my content has been getting, whether that was my blog content--'cause, you know, LinkedIn has the publishing platform that you can publish blogs on. So whether it was that or just my normal, you know, short-form or long-form posts, and they were wanting to see if I was interested in being a part of their LinkedIn Top Voice selection. And so it was pretty much--that was really it. They required for me to write a post, so once they released the list of all of the LinkedIn Top Voices in the different categories--and by the way, I was selected in the category for Management and Culture. So yeah, once they released the article with everybody that was selected, they also released a series of articles from each LinkedIn Top Voice that was selected.Zach: That's really, really cool. You know, what's really interesting about what you shared is that, you know, you said you weren't even expecting it. You were just doing what you were doing, and then it just happened, right?Brittani: Yeah. A lot of people think that there is, like, some type of formal application or if you, like, reach out to someone that works at LinkedIn that you can get it, but it doesn't work like that. If you just keep doing what you're doing and just be focused on--and you're just, like, focused on actually putting out great content, then you'll be noticed, and if you're lucky they'll select you as a Top Voice.Zach: You know what? I just--I just think it's really incredible, and like I said from the top, everybody that I talk to, as I've been talking about Living Corporate, they're like, "You know, you really need to talk to--have you talked to anybody from The Mogul Millennial?" And I'm like... but it's just been, like, an ongoing conversation, and, you know, since then, and really frankly to this day, I'm just really excited that we were able to make this connection, you know what I mean? [to this day sfx]Brittani: Yeah. [laughs] I love the soundbites. I love it, I love it. Zach: No, I appreciate. So look, on your platform you share real talk, right? So the latest piece that I personally read was about black leadership at Fortune 500 companies being at its lowest, yet black celebrity partnerships are booming--and it's so interesting because, at the time of this recording, of this podcast, you know, Jay-Z just announced that partnership that he has with the NFL for the social justice movement thing. Anyway, in it you assert that while exploring the direct and subtle implications of that fact, right? So basically you go into it, right? A lot of your pieces do this, where you have, like, this fairly, like, strong initial statement, and then you really go into the nuances and the implications of whatever you stated, right? As black creatives who are focused on content centered around business, I think there's a line we have to decide when we're going to, like, not cross, right? Like, and show how honest or raw that we're being. What has that journey looked like for you specifically and how you've balanced, like, discomforting truths with managing a brand that extends far beyond your family and close friends?Brittani: Yeah. So I think, for me, what I just try to, like, you know, work at towards every day is just, like, living my truth. When you're not living your truth, you know, you're the one that's mostly impacted, and so whether that was--you know, whether that's me right now as an entrepreneur or me back when I was working the traditional 9-to-5 in the workplace, I'm not going to downplay, you know, what I think or try to sugarcoat, like, my thoughts and my feelings because of someone else, and so I think it's important that when we speak on our truths it also empowers other people to do the same. So specifically through Mogul Millennial, I like to have those types of conversations and so that way, you know, the issue at hand isn't ignored or it's not--you know, it's not watered down.Zach: And so how do you feel like that philosophy could be applied to, like, black and brown professionals in their day-to-day jobs and how they use their voice?Brittani: I think, you know--it's funny. So it makes me think about--like, a really quick story. When I was working at one of my last 9-to-5s, it was a predominantly white workplace, and one of my coworkers who was black, she would just, like, literally turn her personality all the way off, even from, like, the foods that she ate.Zach: Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. [record scratch sfx] What you mean the food that she ate?Brittani: Yeah! So she wouldn't eat things like chicken in the office or really be, like, really careful on the types of fruit that she would eat.Zach: The types of--oh, so she wouldn't eat, like, a banana is what you're trying to say?Brittani: That, watermelon. You know, like, the traditional, like, things--[haha sfx, both laugh] Yeah, like, you think about, like, black people, and it was weird. So we would have, like, potlucks at work, and if people brought chicken she would say that she was allergic to chicken, but she loved chicken.Zach: She would say that she was allergic to chicken?Brittani: Yeah. It was like, "Girl, why are you doing this? Just be yourself and people will like you for it," you know?Zach: Can we have, like, a real conversation about this though? Okay, so I was talking to my--my wife and I were talking about this. We talk about this often, and Dave Chappelle did a whole stand-up skit about it, but you know how, like, just racist--anti-black racism is so lazy. So it's like, you really think that chicken and watermelon are, like, exclusive to black people? Do you know delicious watermelon is? Do you know how delicious chicken--like, do you know how many cultures enjoy chicken? We all love chicken. Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. So she would not eat watermelon. She would not eat bananas. Bananas are--you know, they're a lot of sugar, so if you're watching your weight and you're trying to, you know, kind of cut down on your calories, I can understand--Brittani: Yeah, the carbs and everything. Yeah, I get it, but, you know, from that to, you know, purposely not listening to music that she wanted to in her own personal office.Zach: She had a personal office?Brittani: Yeah. It was just crazy. Like, do what you want to do. Like, be yourself. And so she would say all of the time, like, "Well, Brittani, you're gonna listen to this type of music in the office?" Yes. This is my office. You know, I've earned my role. I'm just as qualified as the next person, and I'm not gonna feel uncomfortable at work and not do things that are true to myself, but the person next to me is, just because we're two different skin colors, come from two different backgrounds, and, you know, upbringings. You know, it doesn't mean that they can do something that I can't. And so one of the things that I learned is that, you know, when you're true to yourself, people, they like the real you. They want to know the real you. You don't have to whiten it to be accepted. So yeah, I highly encourage people in the workplace to not, like, you know, whiten or change who they are just to quote-unquote "fit in," because, you know, people can recognize bull**** and they know that it's not the real you anyway.Zach: That's right. Now, look, this is a clean podcast, but, you know, I respect you, you know what I'm saying?Brittani: Oh, I'm sorry.Zach: No, no, that's okay, but when you said it I was like--[Metal Gear Solid surprised sfx]--you know what I'm saying? Like, "Okay, wait." But no, no, you're absolutely right, people can recognize it, and you just want to be yourself, you know? It's interesting. We had a conversation on Season 1. It was, like, our first episode, with Fenorris Pearson, who was--he was, like, an executive with Motorola and Dell, and he talked about the fact that he went on this plane ride, right, with, like, this very senior white executive, and he said, "Look, we can tell when y'all are putting on airs, and, like, it's fake." Like, "We hate that. It's annoying. We can see right through it. It's awkward. It's clearly not authentic," right? Now, I don't want to shame anybody, because we've been classically--we've been conditioned to put on coverings and participate in respectability politics as a means of survival, so I'm not shaming anybody for doing those things, but at the same time--not but, and we also live in a time when, look, you have a voice. Use it and be yourself, right? Like, if you want to listen to Rick Ross, you know what I'm saying, do that. You want to smoke a Black and Mild on your smoke break? Go ahead and do that. Like, nobody's gonna stop you. Like, it's okay. It's all right. Maybe not a Black and Mild. [both laugh] I'm trying to think of the last time I've seen somebody smoke a Black and Mild, like, in a work setting.Brittani: Oh, God. I don't think I've ever seen that. That's funny.Zach: Like a 'rillo. That'd be like, "Ooh, what's going on?" [both laugh] No, no, no, but anyway, let's talk a little bit about Mogul Millennial, right? You've talked about the fact it's been going on for three years. What have you been most proud of so far, and what are you looking forward to most in the next, like, six to twelve months?Brittani: You know, when I think about, like, everything that I've experienced in these three years, the thing that I am mostly proud of was getting out of my [?] and realizing that I literally cannot do everything. At my last job, I was--I've always been in management roles, so I'm used to being, like, head over something, you know?Zach: Hold on a second. So wait, wait, wait. You said you've always been in management roles?Brittani: Yeah.["ow" sfx]Zach: Okay, I got you. Keep going. Brittani: [laughs] Yeah, so when I started, you know, The Mogul Millennial, it was, you know, just, like, a side project in the beginning since I couldn't dedicate all of my time and resources to it, but yeah, once I decided that I was gonna go full-time with it, I knew that, "Okay, well, Brittani, you can't, like, grow this company. You can't, like, really be as profitable as you want to be, and you're doing everything." So you're doing all of the social media. You're writing all of the blog posts. You're the one trying to pitch yourself and your company to different brands and partners, so you can't do it all, or you can but it's not gonna be really worth anything, or it won't be as good as it could be and as impactful as it could be. And so I really didn't want to at the beginning, I decided to put out a post asking for help, and once I did that, like, our traction increased. I felt like the content got better because we just had, you know, more diverse opinions and thoughts from--like, black millennials literally all over the world were contributing, and so I think that's what I've been most proud of, you know, recognizing that I don't know everything, and that's fine, 'cause now I have people that help me out day-to-day that are so much more better at certain things and more knowledgeable on certain topics, and I've learned a lot as well from those people.[straight up sfx]Zach: No, I feel you. Like, it's tough when, you know, you're at a point, you're grinding, and you feel like you're doing everything, right, like, to the point you're just at your wit's end. You're looking at 'em like ["what more do you want from me?" sfx] You know? It's just like, "I can't." Like, "I have to reach out." That's really important. So, you know, you not only used your voice to create your platform, but you used your voice to extend and expand your platform, 'cause you had to actually use your voice to ask for help.Brittani: Mm-hmm, absolutely. So right now--it was crazy, 'cause when I put out the first post--so since I'm... I have the highest, like, influence on LinkedIn, so, you know, I went to what I know I'm good in. So I put a post on LinkedIn, and literally within the first, like, two weeks, we had over 150 people who were like, "I want to write!" And it was so overwhelming. So between--and remember, I was still working at my 9-to-5. So in-between meetings, like, literally as I was going to, like, meetings, either, like on-site at my job or off-site, or during my lunch break, anything--on the way to the restroom, I was having interviews with these people. 'Cause some people, you know, I had to--I wanted to be accommodating as well, 'cause I wanted to help, and so yeah, it's been good. It's been really good.Zach: So what does it look like, right, to continue and build out this platform, and--actually, let me take a step back. What did it look like when you actually left your full-time job? Like, what did that conversation look like?Brittani: So I had actually planned to leave and was really strategic. So I--I think you and I had talked before and I mentioned that I lived in Houston for a short period of time.Zach: For a little bit of time, yeah.Brittani: Yeah. So originally I'm from Dallas, and I went to school at PV, which is by Houston. Went to PV, came back to Dallas, and was working at a university that's, like, north of Dallas in a small--well, not small... well, yeah, small, but it's [?]. So I was working there at UT Dallas and I remember being approached by my boss's boss--well, no, my boss's boss's boss. So, like, three people above me, to work at the property at the University of Houston, and I denied them, like, three or four times, because the pay wasn't right and I was like, "No, you're not gonna pay me [?]," and I have to move and uproot my life, and so eventually we negotiated back and forth. I got the rate that I wanted plus more, and we--and so yeah, I specifically took that role because I knew that I wanted to quit within a year so that way I could work on Mogul Millennial full-time, 'cause we were doing really well with the site, and so--so yeah, I literally only took the promotion--well, it was like a lateral promotion, so it was the same role but different duties. Zach: But you had got that [cha-ching sfx].Brittani: Exactly, exactly. Making extra money, so I took it knowing that, "Okay, well, I can save money even faster and, you know, quit and be way more financially comfortable."Zach: I got you. So you were, like, kind of scheming on the low, but, like, you know, for yourself though.Brittani: Yeah. I mean, they do it all of the time with us, with [?]. So I had no regrets, no shame. [laughs]Zach: Oh, no, no. Hey, I'm not shaming you, I'm just chuckling 'cause, you know, you negotiated that deal and you're in the background, you know, you're shaking his hand and you're talking about ["hehehe" sfx, both laugh]Brittani: Yep. So no, like, I literally stayed, like, long enough as well. So the year was special because, you know, within a year you can really do--if you're dedicated and persistent you can do some really good damage--well, not damage, but some good improvement. Zach: No, you said what you said. It's okay. [both laugh]Brittani: And then also with the relocation fee, you know, that's why it's important that you read everything. I read in the contract for the relocation [?] I was given that you need to stay for a year. So yeah, I left within a year, and then--so it really just looked like, you know, within that time period for me working at the other location in Houston, was to just save and grow my team, and then also focus on, like, upcoming products and plan out different projects that we're gonna actually be releasing this year, so I'm really excited about that, but it was a lot of hard work. So at my last company I was literally working, like, sometimes, like, 60, 70 hours a week, 'cause I worked in a very busy industry, but at the same time, you know, having a team was really helpful, and then I just worked crazy hours on the weekends, on my lunch breaks, before work, things like that.Zach: That's a blessing. It's a blessing to find folks who are, you know, engaged and willing to support, right? You know, I think we probably need to have you back just around, like, the principles of building a team and getting started, because I think a lot of times, and I'll say this for podcasting, podcasting is notorious for people, like, starting off really big with a splash and then being done after, like, 2.5 months, because the load of, like, getting content, researching, producing, it can get, like, tiring over time, so, like, a lot of podcasts don't even last a year, you know what I'm saying? Let alone--Brittani: It's a full-time job.Zach: It's a full-time job, and so, you know, it's tough. So that's incredible. I'm so excited. I'm so thankful that you've been able to be on this, on our platform. Now, look, again, Brittani, you're the first LinkedIn Top Voice that we've had on Living Corporate. How does that make you feel?Brittani: You know what? It makes me feel good, but it won't be the last. I believe in you guys.Zach: Ow! Had to do my own Cardi B "ow," goodness gracious. Thank you so much, I appreciate that. And, you know, I've gotta give you a Flex bomb just because you've been dropping casual just--[Flex bomb sfx] It's just ridiculous. Like, it's just incredible, but, like, I'm just so thankful that you're able to be here. Before we let you go, any parting words or shout-outs?Brittani: Yeah. So of course shout-out to my team. My editorial assistant, Alex, she came up with the name Mogul Mob and I love it, so shout-out--Zach: Oh, The Mogul Mob? Yeah, Mogul Mob be up in that WordPress putting content together like [Cardi B "bratbratbratbrat" sfx] You know what I'm saying? We out here.Brittani: [laughs] Yeah, so shout-out to them. They are all amazing, even--like, in their own individual lives they do so many great things, from being startup entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers, et cetera. Corporate bosses. They are just amazing. But the only other thing that I want to also shout-out or mention is that we gonna be launching our own online course platform through Mogul Millennial. It's called Mogul Genius, so look out for that. It will be released to a private group of people in October, but after that we'll be releasing it to the general public, so yeah.Zach: Look at you. Come on, now. Well, first of all, again, you know what, just shout-out to y'all. I've gotta go ahead and drop these air horns right here--[air horns sfx]--for The Mogul Millennial and, you know what, for Brittani Hunter. Thank you so much for being on our show. Y'all, that does it for us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure you check us out on Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, on Instagram @LivingCorporate, and on our website at living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com. Now, look, if you have any questions or any shout-outs you'd like to place on the show, you can contact us through the website or you can email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com, or you can just DM us 'cause the DMs are wide open. Now, look, you can check us out online if you just Google Living Corporate. We're at all of the domains. Brittani, do you know we have every single Living Corporate variation besides Living Corporate dot com?Brittani: That's a smart way to go. A lot of people don't do that. I'm so glad that you do so somebody [can't?] steal it.Zach: Thank you. So we've got livingcorporate.net, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org, but we don't have livingcorporate.com because Australia has livingcorporate.com. They've got, like, some apartment renting company out there.Brittani: Oh, my God.Zach: I'm saying, right? Now, look, one day though the brand is gonna be brolic enough we're gonna go and we're gonna get that domain. I just don't know when that's gonna be, but it's gonna happen. I'm speaking it.Brittani: They'll [?] forget to pay their renewal.Zach: They'll mess up. Yeah, real talk. Playas mess up, and they'll mess up too. [both laugh] You know what I'm saying? We've talked about Australia a little bit. I'm really trying to be careful 'cause I don't want to create no international beef, but I very much so do want the domain, so I'm trying to figure out, like, what the best strategy is. Maybe you and I could have a conversation offline about that.Brittani: Yeah, yeah. I could tell you a story about that. Zach: [laughs] All right, y'all. Well, look, this has been Zach Nunn, and you've been listening to Brittani Hunter, CEO and founder of The Mogul Millennial. Until next time. Peace.

On the eleventh entry of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, talks about how to take mental health days at work, what that actually means and looks like, and the benefits of doing so. According to a 2018 Glassdoor study, the average American only takes about 54% of their available time off in the previous 12 months - don't hesitate to take yours!You can read Latesha's interview on Forge!Find out more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBCheck out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBVisit our website!TRANSCRIPTLatesha: What's up, everyone? Welcome to The Link Up with Latesha on Living Corporate. This podcast is for young professionals that need some real advice, tips, and resources to navigate corporate America and dominate their career. If you're looking to upgrade your brand, get the knowledge you need to level up professionally for your future, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Latesha Byrd. How are y'all doing today? I hope that you have had a wonderful week. It is pretty cold here in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I am. It seems that we went straight from summer to winter. So--[laughs]--no cutesy letter jackets, no. You know, we're straight winter coat, peacoat with the scarf and gloves mode, so hope you all--if you love the cold, love the winter, good for you, but I am definitely missing the heat. Anyways, today we are talking about something that is extremely, extremely important, and this is on thinking about our mental health at work and doing what is best for us to make sure that we are really, you know, taking control of our mental health and making that a priority. I was recently asked to be interviewed for Forge. If you are unfamiliar with Forge, it is a personal development publication by Medium. It's pretty cool. Check it out. Forge. And the topic was how to ask for a mental health day. You know, we just celebrated or recognized Mental Health Awareness Day, and so I thought it would be a great idea to just share of the tips and go into a little further detail about, you know, the conversation that we had and some of the things that were actually discussed. And I think that now in 2019, you know, we are understanding, or more so normalizing, you know, the conversation around mental health, you know? It has been a stigma in the black community that if you are going to therapy or if you are depressed or if you are dealing with mental health issues, then, you know, something is wrong with you, right? But, you know, I just started going to therapy this year. It has completely, completely changed my life. I have learned to really build a relationship with myself, and it's allowed me to be a better coach, a better businesswoman, a better friend, a better mentor, a better boss and leader and all of the above. So mental health is something I'm really passionate about, especially as we think about how our mental health affects how we actually show up in the workplace. So I wanted to share just some stats with you all, talk about how to actually take mental health days, what that actually looks like--like, what that actually means and the benefits of it. So I was reading an article on CNBC, and it said that among Americans that are currently employed, 13% say they plan to take a quarter of their vacation days or fewer this year - according to a poll of nearly 2,600 U.S. adults conducted by Bankrate, which also finds that 4% of Americans aren't planning to take any vacation at all, even though their employers offer it. Another stat that was shared from Glassdoor in 2018 was that the average American only took about 54% of their available time off in the previous 12 months. I want you all to take your PTO. Please. You don't have to go on a vacation to take time off. This is where these mental health days can come in. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health. When you think about your mental health, there's a few things that go into that: anxiety, right? That is something that I have had to really try to overcome, especially as an entrepreneur. Stress. That leads to burnout, you know? And it's not just about at work, you know? Dealing with this at work. You know, especially for women, we are the caretakers. We are taking care of everybody, our kids, our parents. Who's taking care of us? It's funny, I was actually scrolling on Instagram this morning, and I saw a really, really interesting quote, and it said, "We expect women to work like they don't have children and raise children as if they don't work." So women, you know, I know we are Superwoman. We play Superwoman really, really well, but we have to take those days off for our mental health. Now, in terms of thinking about your mental health, you know, it's important to understand where the burnout, where the stress--where it's coming from and what may be depleting your energy. For me, I've really started to focus on managing my energy versus managing my time. So I know when I'm best during the day and when I'm not, and I will structure my work around those times where I have the most energy, or the least energy. So if it's something that is requiring a lot of creativity, some innovation, a lot of critical thinking, I will do--I will work on those things when my energy is at the top top top, and I'll save some of those lower-level thinking activities [like], you know, doing administrative work, for when I have, you know, lower energy. It's also important to know what work you're doing maybe that's causing some of the stress. How can you prioritize your work, you know? Is it certain people you're working around? That can be contributing as well to depleting your energy. It's important to understand, you know, the sources and where that is actually coming from. I am not, you know, a mental health professional, so it is important to--you know, I always recommend, again, therapy. Talk to a therapist, you know? Talk to a professional that can help you get, you know, the resources that you need to figure out where it's coming from and how to overcome it or, you know, just how to, you know, live more energetically, especially, you know, as we're thinking about the workplace. So, you know, coming back to the topic of taking a mental health day. I just want to make this clear. Your company is not obligated to know that you are taking a mental health day. To be honest, I don't really think it's any of their business. Now, if you have a very close relationship with, you know, your boss or your manager, and they're extremely supportive, and everyone talks about mental health and they really, really value mental health, yeah, maybe then it's worth a conversation, but you don't need to feel obligated. You can just say that you need to take a day off. If you are in a workplace where, whenever you take a day off, you know, they go, "Well, why do you need to take a day off? What are you doing?" Like, what? Mm-mm. I'm not here, so why are you asking? [laughs] So understand that taking a day off, you're not obligated to tell them, you know? That is up to your discretion, but I will say is that you need to take time off to recoup. Understand the PTO policy for your company. You know, as I shared those stats, a lot of us don't take time off. We also don't take--we don't max out on our time off. Now, if your company has a "use it or lose it" policy I'm gonna need you to use it, [laughs] but it is important to know "If I don't use all of my PTO by this day, will I run out of PTO?" Or I guess not run out, but will it not roll over to the next year? Some companies will let you roll over your PTO to maybe the next fiscal year if you don't use it. Sometimes that amount is capped as well. So definitely understand that, and then just start (booking?) time off regularly. I think something that holds us back from taking time off is that we feel like we have to go on a vacation. Like, we only take time off if we are going out of town, if we're going somewhere, and then we say, "Well, I don't want to spend money," you know? Taking time off could just be sitting at the crib--[laughs]--sitting at the crib not doing anything. Sometimes, you--like, vacations are great, right, but man, y'all know that time when you... sometimes you need a vacation from the vacation, you know what I'm saying? So sometimes vacations are great--well, not sometimes. Vacations are great, you know? It's great to get away, to get out of where you currently are and try something new, new experiences, you know, immerse yourself into a new culture, but I'm telling you, that transition period from coming back from vacation to getting back into the workplace can be a little bit challenging. But all I'm saying is it is good to just take time off and really not do anything. Just schedule days where you just stay at home or where you just don't do much of anything at all. You know, I recommend to set some restrictions for yourself. When you decide to take a day off--no vacation, maybe you're staying at home, but you're taking that mental health day. Don't set up any meetings, don't set up any calls--unless it's, you know, maybe with an old friend or with a family member that you just love and you want to catch up with. Maybe a little grocery shopping here and there if you must, but relax and rest as much as possible. Catch up on your shows. Listen to music. Read a book. Go to a museum. Go to a park. Walk around a park. If you live near a lake go to a lake, or, you know, maybe you could just lay up on the couch and watch your favorite movie with a bottle of red wine. Just do something that doesn't require a lot of energy. Taking that time away will allow your brain to also recoup. You'll see that once you take time off you will come back to work even more productive, you know? Maybe your creativity, your innovative ways of thinking have been a little bit stifled. This is where that taking the time off and not doing anything and giving your brain will help you to come back even stronger. Now, this tip is super important, and that is setting boundaries. Set boundaries with your coworkers. When you are off, they should not be calling you, okay? They should not be texting you. It's important when you're taking time off to just make sure that your work is handled beforehand, having--if you must, you know, have conversations with those that can maybe pick up work for you or just let everyone know--not everyone, but let the right people know where you are with your work, what needs to be done, who needs to contact who, who you're waiting to hear back from, et cetera. You know, it's important to be a little bit more proactive, 'cause you don't want to come back from your day off and then, you know, everything's on fire. So you can be as proactive as possible, that way you can also make sure that things are taken care of while you're gone so you won't have to deal with calls and emails and texts--and if I were you, I would not even respond to them anyways. [laughs] A little bit harder for me since, you know, I run my company and my team needs me all of the time, but I do tell them when I go out of town or if I'm taking a day off like, "Hey, I am off work. If it is not an emergency--if anything is not on fire, please don't call me. Put it in an email. I will get back to you when I can, but other than that..." And they have been great with respecting those boundaries, but you will need to set some boundaries, you know, not only with your coworkers, but also with yourself, you know? So don't do too much where you're exerting a lot of physical energy either. Really, just relax. We're in this society where we feel like we need to be productive all of the time, right, and our productivity and what we achieve is tied to how we identify success, but understand that taking that time off for you will allow you to come back even better. So I hope that this helped. If you want to check out the piece by Forge on Medium, you can find it on my social media - @Latesha_Byrd. So that's all I have for you all, so have a great, great week, and I will talk to you later. Bye!

On the thirty-fifth installment of Tristan's Tips, our special guest Tristan Layfield adds to some of the previous tips he's given us on cover letters by discussing three tips to help tailor and strengthen your cover letter. Unlike resumes, cover letters provide an area to get a little bit more creative, so use that to your advantage to make a lasting impression!Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn, IG, FB, and Twitter!Check out our website by clicking here: Living CorporateTRANSCRIPTTristan: What is going on, y'all? It's Tristan Layfield of Layfield Resume Consulting, and I've teamed up with Living Corporate to bring you all a weekly career tip. This week we’re going to add to some of the previous tips I’ve given you on cover letters by discussing 3 tips to tailor and strengthen your cover letter.Similar to your resume your cover letter should be tailored for each position you’re submitting it to. Since I know most people hate writing cover letters, that’s easier said than done. So I wanted to provide a couple of tips to make tailoring and strengthening your cover letter a little easier.First, use portions of the job description. If you want to get a job, you have to be able to talk to the talk. Take the time to identify and incorporate keywords and phrases from the job description to you ensure you’re speaking their language. Often times you can pick up on which points relate to your experience just by reading the job description.Next, try to tie in the company’s mission or core values. Doing this shows that you’ve done your homework. That you’ve researched and you understand WHY you want to want for this company or organization. It also displays how your skills and experience fit into the larger context of the organization and by proxy how YOU fit into the company or organization.Lastly, try to tell a story. The path you took to gain the relevant skills for this role is unique which is a selling point for you. Use your highlights and accomplishment to build a compelling narrative showcasing how your interest in the role or company came about. Just be careful not to go too farin-depth.Unlike resumes, cover letters provide an area to get a little bit more creative so use that to your advantage to make a lasting impression.This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, twitter, and facebook at @layfieldresume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn!

Zach welcomes Cognizant's Maureen Greene James to the show, and she shares what she thinks are the biggest frustrations in the diversity and inclusion space today. In addition to speaking about her unique role as an inclusion leader who's jointly focused on leadership development, she also offers up three points of advice for executives looking to create an inclusive workforce.Connect with Maureen on LinkedIn and Twitter, and check out Cognizant's website, Twitter, and Instagram!Check out our website by clicking here: Living CorporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, you know what we do, right? I come on here, I say, "What's up, y'all?" And I say it in this smooth way, right? And then I say we're a platform that amplifies the voices of black and brown people at work, but just for those of you who don't know, we are a platform that amplifies the voices of black and brown people at work. Now, if you're new to the space you may say, "Well, how do you actually do that?" Let me tell you how we do that. We do that by having pointed, accessible, and real, authentic interviews with black and brown executives, leaders, movers and shakers, influencers, public servants, educators, activists, creatives, artists, you know what I'm saying? With everybody. And we also interview non-black and brown folks too, for those who are fragile and feel not involved. We got y'all too. You're welcome as long as you are an advocate for black and brown people. And so, look, we do this, and today is no different. We actually have a great guest like we do every episode, but I'm saying this episode really for real. 'Cause sometimes I have a guest and y'all send me messages like, "Okay," but no, but really, this time a super, super dope guest. Our guest is Maureen Greene James. What's up? Sound Man, give me some air horns right here. [air horns sfx] Okay, thank you. Now, look, Maureen, she is an HR professional whose background, experiences and expertise include HR leadership, talent development, diversity & inclusion, employee engagement, communications AND change management. Maureen serves by bringing expertise and experiences in HR leadership, diversity & inclusion, talent and leadership development, employee engagement and change management to Cognizant, serving as the leader--y'all, check it out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. The leader of Diversity & Leadership Development for North America. So all of the states, right? Including the little states on the side. For those of y'all who weren't too good at geography, Alaska and Hawaii. Those spots too, right? She is in charge of all of that, right? Now, to further enhance Cognizant’s commitment to diversity, she plays a key role in the company’s efforts around executive talent & leadership development while staying focused on building a diverse, high performing pipeline of strong women leaders. Maureen has been recognized for her professional accomplishments in Black Enterprise magazine--come on, Black Enterprise--and in 2014 received the “Most Powerful and Influential Woman Award” by the National Diversity Council. I mean, come on. I mean, what can we really say here? I gotta drop at least one Flex bomb. [Flex bomb sfx] Maureen, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Maureen: I am great, Zachary. How are you?Zach: I am really, really well. So, you know, a little bit of behind-the-scenes tea, I'm really glad we're able to sit down. We've been so busy.Maureen: We have. There's been a lot of stuff going on. I've been doing some travel for work. But, you know, it's all good. I'm staying busy, staying focused on all things inclusion and diversity within my organization, as well as, you know, within other organizations that I have the opportunity to be in front of and share my knowledge and expertise [with].Zach: Okay. Well, hold on. So you say you've been traveling, you know, and again, you said your organization as well as, you know, other organizations, so... ["ow" sfx] You know, can you talk a little bit about some of the other organizations that you've been able to share your knowledge and expertise with?Maureen: Sure. So I often have the opportunity to really utilize my platform and my voice to speak with other organizations at conferences and inclusion summits. I've had the opportunity to be in front of MetLife as an organization just to talk about diversity and inclusion. I actually hosted a panel around inclusion not too long ago. I also had the opportunity to work with PwC, which is an organization that obviously I'm familiar with because that's where I was for the past I would say about 11.5 years. So I do spend a lot of time really focusing on diversity and inclusion, obviously within Cognizant, but also making sure that I am sharing the knowledge and expertise as well as learning from other organizations too around what we're doing, what we're all doing in this space to really build an inclusive work environment.Zach: Well, I mean, I just think it's incredible, and that's why we're so excited to have you on the show today. So, you know, I gave a bit of an introduction and we talked about--and just now you talked about some of the speaking you've been doing. I talked about your professional background. But for those of us who don't know you, is there anything else you think you'd like to share about yourself?Maureen: Yeah. So for anyone that doesn't know me, [know] that I'm a really passionate--I don't like to say HR leader, even though that's probably what it says in my bio, but I'm a people leader, you know? Like, I like to get in touch with the people. I like to know what's going on with the people within an organization and what makes them tick, what makes them get engaged with the organization that they work for, and what allows them to feel like they are working within an organization that has a very strong culture of belonging? So those are the things that are, you know, really important to me and the things that I'm passionate about professionally. I recently had the opportunity to speak at an inclusion summit for an organization called ATG - Advanced Technology Group - and, you know, one of the questions that they asked me was around, you know, "So what are the things that people don't know about you?" And I said, "Well, you know, there's some things you don't know about me. I like to kayak. I like to read. I like to learn. I like to hang with my family." And of course my favorite thing in the world is I like to spend time on the beach. But I try to mix all of that, the business and the pleasure together, so taht I have what I like to call work-life--like, some kind of work-life equality. Not necessarily balance, because there's no such thing as work-life balance.Zach: Listen. Now, we could have a whole 'nother podcast about that. I sometimes--[both laugh]--'cause it's not true, right? I think--ugh, anyway... no, no, I'm gonna go ahead and say it! [both laugh] So I sometimes talk about, like, work-life blend, right? And I've even had, like--this was back when I was, like, 23, 23 or 24. I wrote an article on LinkedIn about--I said work-life balance is a myth, 'cause it is, right? Like, we live in a capitalistic society, and the rate of pay has not gone up with the rate of work. So whether you want to accept it or not, right, like, you are--people are now working more than they ever have before and not getting paid commensurate with just the hours. Not even talking about, like, the thought leadership or the quality, just the hours of work that you put in. People at large are not getting paid for/in direct with that, right? So this idea of work-life balance, like, I know the workforce of the future is this whole new topic around, like, just how people are gonna be working differently, because this cannot continue at the rate that it is, and so this whole idea of work-life balance, like you said, I just--I don't think it's real either. So that's awesome though.Maureen: It doesn't exist. Yeah, doesn't exist.Zach: It doesn't exist. And, you know, people will call you pessimistic or whatever, but it's not. It's like, it doesn't--that's not necessarily good or bad, it's just like--but you want to be honest, that way you can actually start creating some boundaries and kind of, like, just start determining what your atmosphere is gonna be. Maureen: Exactly.Zach: Yes, ma'am. So look, let's just get into it, okay? Now, with Trump as president, I'd say we have a stronger focus on diversity and inclusion than ever before, but I'd argue that we've seen a sort of colonization of space where discussions around race are dismissed as elementary, right? Like, gender is amplified and diversity of thought is a north star. So what, if anything, do you think can be done to include more black and brown folks, particularly black and brown women, in these spaces?Maureen: Yeah. So that's a great question, Zachary, and one of the things I see is that when we're talking about diversity and inclusion, we have to really be thinking more broadly around "What does the diversity lens look like?" Right? So there was a point in time when the diversity lens looked like it was all about race and ethnicity, right? And so now women are a bigger and much larger part of the conversation, as it should be, but then there's also the opportunity for us to really be thinking more broadly around, like you say, black and brown folks and black and brown women. So we know that at leadership levels within organizations we don't see enough of us, but there are some things I think that can be done to ensure that we really have a bigger seat at that table. For example, I'd love to see black and brown women really put themselves in positions to be front and center, to be leaders, and that sometimes means for us stepping a little bit out of our comfort zone, right, and putting ourselves in places and in opportunities and on projects where we may not necessarily have every single requirement that let's say is in the quote-unquote job description, but we have a good percentage of it, and so then why wouldn't we go for it? And that's typically something that women on a whole don't necessarily do. And so just think about it from a black and brown perspective. We do it even less because we feel like we shouldn't be doing that, we shouldn't put ourselves front and center for some of those things. So I think that we need to make sure that we're putting ourselves front and center. I also think that we need to be seeking out mentors and sponsors, and the reason I mention both is because there's a difference, right? So a mentor is somebody who's going--you're going to go to for advice and counsel on your career and is it going the right direction and that kind of thing, and people need that. Everybody needs that, especially if you're an emerging manager within an organization, but then if you're at a higher--a little bit of a higher level but not necessarily at that C-Suite level, then you need a sponsor. You need somebody who is going to talk about you when you leave the room in a really good way. You know, not dishing all your business, but talk about you in a really good way to say, "I know that Maureen can do this because I have seen her do XYZ. I know that she can win that client over because she has the skills to do this based on the work that she's done with a similar client, and I have been privy to that." So you really need to have that sponsor who's going to pound the table for you and say, "Hey, this is the woman that you need front and center." So I don't want to spend a ton of time on it, I mean, 'cause I could go on for days, but those are some of the things that I think are really critical for black and brown women to focus on. Zach: So let's do this then, right? And it's interesting 'cause I was just--you know, you see a lot of these thinkpieces out lately, but I was just actually listening in on Dr. Janice, right, and she was talking about how leaning in doesn't always work, right, because, like, what do you do--so, like, we just had you, Maureen Greene James, inclusion and diversity extraordinaire, leader of people, speaker, snatcher of edges, you know what I'm saying? You out here. You just gave us great wisdom and insight on what should happen and what we should do, but what happens when--first of all, how do we do that? How do we have those conversations and put ourselves out there? And then what advice then would you give to the people who are in power, right, which is basically white men and women, on how they can be effective sponsors. Like, how does that happen?Maureen: That's a really good question. So advice I would give to people who are looking for sponsors, what I would say is that you look for someone who doesn't even remotely look like you or sound like you, walk or talk like you, and that's a hard thing to say, right? That's a hard thing for somebody to get their mind wrapped around. So I'll give you a quick story. So when I was working for PwC, there was a point in time where I was looking for someone to really--I wasn't looking for a mentor. I was truly looking for a sponsor, right? Somebody that I knew was going to give it to me straight, that was gonna tell me "Yeah, Maureen, you're not doing a really good job at this," or "Yeah, you're doing great at this, and here's what else you can do to improve in that particular area." And I was also looking for somebody to talk about me behind closed doors when I wasn't in the room. And so I really decided to put myself completely outside of my comfort zone, and I went and had a conversation with somebody who I previously did not necessarily get along with, and I had the conversation for two reasons: one, I wanted to understand what it was about this individual that, for whatever reason, we just rubbed edges. So I needed to understand that just for my own personal understanding, and two, I wanted to understand it from the standpoint of saying, "Okay, so now that I have an understanding of what that is, is this the person that could really be my sponsor?" And so I invited him out to lunch, and we had a great conversation. We talked about that one moment where we bumped heads. It was a few years before, but he remembered it very well and I definitely did not forget it, and at the end of that conversation I simply said to him, "Here's what I'm looking for, and I would like you to be this person to help move me along in my career, to be that person who is going to step in and really be that person pounding the table for me," and he was completely taken aback and surprised but elated at the same time that I asked. And when I tell you, Zachary, that he was probably one of the best individuals that I have had work with me in my career. He was straightforward with me when he needed to be, and he was at the table, you know, singing my praises one, but two really talking about what it was that I could do, how I deliver, how he's seen me deliver. So I really think it's important that we step outside of our comfort zones and we don't look for people who look like us or think like us or who have worked in the same organizations or even in the same industry and sector. This person didn't work in HR. Did work for the company, but didn't work in HR, didn't have an HR understanding, didn't necessarily want it, and that's why they were so critical, because they can give you a different perspective, something that you don't yourself necessarily see because you're in that space all of the time. So that's one of the things I would definitely say is critical. Step outside your comfort zone and look for somebody different.Zach: I love that. And so then on the other side, right, so when you put yourself out there, what advice would you give to your non-melanated, right, counterparts, on how they can make themselves available to be sponsors?Maureen: [laughs] I love "non-melanated." [both laugh] Zach: You like that, huh?Maureen: I love that. I love that. So one of the things I would say is--so I'm going to, you know, really try and step into their shoes for a second, even though that's not necessarily an easy thing to do. I would say it's very difficult for them to feel as though they can put themselves out there. And so the one piece of advice I would give them is just get to know someone. At the end of the day, Zachary, we're all human beings, you know what I'm saying? I mean, we do a lot of stuff alike, okay? We're really not that different, and I really think it's important that we are encouraging our non-melanated counterparts to feel like they can have a conversation with us, but to make them feel like that we have to treat them the way we want to be treated. So in other words, we can't necessarily roll up on them with any kind of, you know, negative thinking around how we think they're going to treat us or how we think they're going to approach us. Just have a conversation with them like you would anybody else. And honestly, you'd be surprised at how open and willing they are to really working with you, but sometimes they feel like they need to be given permission to know you. And I want to go back to something that you said earlier with Trump as president. I think that has created a lot of friction in terms of the way that people just approach each other on a daily basis, right? You know, non-melanated people may think that they can't approach black and brown people, right, or that they shouldn't, but before Trump did we really think that? Did we really have that going on, or were we comfortable just kind of saying, you know, "What's up? Can we talk?" Zach: I wasn't, but, you know, I do believe that it's definitely been more heightened now, right? Like, I think it all depends, right, on your background, right, on your story, kind of where you came from. I know just based on--so my family, coming from the South and, like, horrific experiences that they had, you know, they've really been comfortable, like, in certain situations, and in experiences I've had as well and just in my life. Not even just singing my parents' song. There's always been a bit of hesitation. I definitely believe though--to your point I believe is that it's definitely been--like, it's way more pointed now than it's been in a while, yeah.Maureen: Yeah, which is very unfortunate, because I think people--you know, most people are inherently good and really want to help and want to engage, you know, but I think that, you know, they don't necessarily feel like they can or they should, and so they don't, and so it's almost like they want permission from us. And I think we, black and brown people, need to give a little permission. And it's hard. In this day and time, that's a really hard thing to do. Zach: It is, right? 'Cause, like, there's so much emotional labor, and I think--I know that you know this, but I think it's a huge blind spot, and I think it actually goes into our next question, which is around, like, D&I programs and organizations when they think about diversity and inclusion. I don't think that organizations are effectively factoring in, like, just the emotional labor that goes into being other in majority-white spaces, nor do I think that people really understand--so, like, just black tax, right? Like, we're recording this on the day of Amber Guyger's sentencing, right? And, like, black and brown folks who have been looking at the trials, specifically black people, looking at the trial and, like, seeing this person who was convicted of murder, so... so okay, she did murder this person. [She was] crying, like, crying fake tears--crying what many people felt were fake tears, and, like, that could be triggering to a lot of different folks, the body cam footage being released and, like--so, like, just dealing with all of that and the PTSD-like symptoms that just seeing black death or constant coversage of black death causes. Like, those people still have to go to work, right? Those people still have to interact with people who may shrug their shoulders at that stuff. So I just think, like--to your point about it being hard, I think that it's really easy to undermine or dismiss--I don't think that you can overstate how hard it is to make yourself available. I'm not saying that you shouldn't or that you can't, but I'm just saying, like, I wish that--for me, right, so I know I'm interviewing you, but this is me just talking to you as someone who is in a position, right, as an executive, I wish that organizations would be more thoughtful to that, right? And I think there's just so much work to do. I'm curious to know though what you believe organizations could still be--are still missing when they talk about diversity and inclusion and you have these conversations on the big stages and also in the smaller rooms. Like, what are some themes that you're seeing around organizations and kind of what they still could be developing when it comes to their programming?Maureen: Yeah. So that's a great question. I think some organizations are doing a fairly good job, and then there's some organizations that are, you know--they're trying to get there. They're doing--I'll say they're doing the best they can, right? So one of the things I think is very commendable and courageous is having those bold and courageous conversations, right? I think that that is something that is innovative, it's fresh. It invites everyone to the table to have the deep discussion. At times, they can get really real and dig deeper than anyone wants to go, and they can create emotions out of people that no one expected, but that's necessary to have an understanding of what everyone on all sides of the coin across the entire spectrum of diversity is thinking and feeling. I think where organizations fail--so organizations that do that, I think they're doing great, but I think where those same organizations fail is that after they do that work, what happens next? So what are you supposed to do with those conversations? What are the expectations for the people that are sitting in as a part of those conversations? "Okay, great. We got it." "Okay, I understand how you feel," because this woman was just, you know, convicted of murder. She's gotten 10 years. And yeah, I understand that, but what am I supposed to do with this? There needs to be an afterwards. There needs to be an understanding of "Okay, so here's the way I feel, but here's the reason why I feel this way." And then there should be opportunities for people to bring that into the thinking around how we work, how we hire people in organizations, right? So are we thinking about talent of all colors, or are we thinking about talent of just one color? So in other words, you have to take the conversation from just, you know, engaging people and saying, "Yeah, here's what we did. We brought everybody together. We had a really good conversation, and now the organization is better for it." The organization is okay, but it's not better for it unless the people--unless everybody in that conversation walks away with, "Okay, what can we do next?" And that's the thing I think is missing.Zach: No, I agree with that, right? And I think--so when you talk about D&I programming as a whole, like, it's just not restorative. It's not restorative, and it's also not policy-driven. It's not data-driven, and it's not results-oriented by means of policies being updated. So, like, all of the things you just said--so okay, we had the conversation. Cool. "This is how we feel." Okay. "Now this is what we're gonna do about it, and this is how we, as an organization, are gonna change, and this is what accountability is gonna look like, in light of the conversation and the insights that we gathered." Like, that then makes the emotional labor worth something, but, like, if you're putting in emotional labor and not getting anything in return, like, not only is that, like, exhausting on the inset, but then it's defeating on the outset, right? So that's huge, and again, it really leads us into the next question. Okay, so you're the first--so we've interviewed some folks, right? I'm not a name-dropper. You can go on Living Corporate's podcast--ow--y'all check it out. Y'all can see the people that we've talked to. And we've talked to folks who have been in, like, these global or national positions around inclusion and diversity, but I think that you're the first person we've spoken too who is, like, in their title integrating inclusion with leadership. And so can we talk about--yeah, so that's pretty cool, and I believe that's, like, the next--I really believe that's the next level or the next phase when you talk about kind of reclaiming D&I. I do see, like, more black women and black and brown people being in these positions of inclusion and diversity much more than I have in the past, I don't know, seven or eight years, right? I've seen an uptick. So when I was talking about, like, kind of decolonizing D&I and [I] talked about, like, reclaiming the space, that's part of what I mean. So can we talk a little bit about how you've led the strategy for Cognizant to drive the intersection of those two spaces, and then also what you're continuing to do?Maureen: Sure. So at Cognizant I've had the opportunity to, as you've mentioned, be on both sides, right? So diversity and inclusion as well as leadership development. So within Cognizant, the global leadership development team is really focused on growing leaders at the director and above level, and within doing that it's also focused on making sure that our people at those levels are very diverse across the board. What I would say, Zachary, is that we have a long way to go, right? I don't think we're different from many other organizations out there. We do have a very long way to go in terms of "How do we continue to build this inclusive strategy specifically for our directors and above?" And so while I am focused on everybody across the organization regardless of level, obviously, my leadership development role is only focused on our directors and above, but I make sure to keep a diversity and inclusion lens on that population of people because when individuals see diversity at the higher levels of the organization, it attracts more people, it allows us to retain more diverse people, because now they're able to see levels and opportunities and projects and roles that they can aspire to, and it helps us to grow and develop that population. So it helps to grow the diversity that we do have at the manager and below level into those leadership levels. So it's--we like to say it's a cyclical win-win, right? The attract, retain, and develop pillars, but what I will say to you is that our focus, primarily for the past year and a half or since I've been there, has been around gender diversity. And so I bring a different lens to it, because I'm not thinking about just, you know, "Let's just bring any women in." I'm thinking about "What do the women look like? Where do they come from? Where have they been? What industries? What sectors?" All of those things, but I'm really also making sure that we're building into this diverse lens. So we have some black and brown people, you know, at the higher levels, so we make sure that we're incorporating individuals with disabilities at those levels, right? All of those things. So we're incorporating our LGBTQ+ community. We need to be able to have people at those levels who are going to be th epeople that other individuals in the organization aspire to or other individuals outside of the organization see and now say to themselves "Well, if So-and-so can be a leader in this organization, there's an opportunity for me here. There's an opportunity for me to start somewhere." So that's what the strategy has really been built around, you know? Making sure that 1. we're focused on gender diversity, but we're looking at it across a lens of all of the components of inclusion.Zach: You're bringing intersectionality to the table.Maureen: Absolutely. All day every day. All day every day.Zach: And I think, Maureen, like, for me--everything you said, of course, 100% spot on - I think what organizations don't realize is, for me anyways, right--when I come into organizations, and I've been in a few different places, so I've seen a lot. Like, I've seen a variety of cultures, but I always--when I come in--I consider myself about, like, an A- employee, okay? I feel like I'm great. I'm not, like, the best, but I'm very, very, very good. 'Cause I have other things going on. I've got Living Corporate. I ain't got time... like, I got other stuff, but with all that being said--[both laugh]Maureen: I hear you.Zach: You know what I'm saying. You know, I'ma keep that extra plus for me, but my point is I'm a very strong employee, so when I come into organizations, you know, I have aspirations, I have goals. I typically, without even, like, actively trying to do it, I just end up kind of zooming in on, like, the senior-most black people, and I look and see how they're treated, and I use that as a gauge to feel like "Okay, let me just think. Okay, so this person has a doctorate and an MBA, international experience, interned with the UN, can speak three languages, two more than me, and they're still being treated like this." So what does that then mean for my prospects as someone who's looking to build a five, six, seven-year roadmap here, right? So 100% right in that the treatment--how you treat... I mean, people see those things, right? So let's pause for a second though, 'cause I want to go back to something you said. You talked about the director level, director and up. Have you noticed a pattern of black and brown folks kind of, like, climbing a ladder and getting to the director level or, like, senior manager level even, and just kind of stalling out?Maureen: Yes.Zach: What's the reason behind that?Maureen: Yeah, I wouldn't say--and that's an every organization thing. It's definitely not, you know, a Cognizant thing or--Zach: Exclusive, yeah.Maureen: Yeah, yeah. No, definitely not. What I would say the issue behind that is that people in those roles tend to stall out because the higher you go within the organization, a lot of times you don't see people who look like you, so the people who have the power--Zach: And social capital.Maureen: Yes, to make the decisions to therefore promote a black or brown person into those high level roles aren't necessarily there, so they're looking through one lens, and their lens is typically people they know, people they've worked on projects with before, people they went to school with, people that they're in the same social circles with, those kinds of things, and black and brown people aren't necessarily always in those places. And so I think that that is part of the problem. I think the other problem is we, as black and brown people, sometimes tend to hurt ourselves because we don't necessarily put ourselves in those positions. I can speak from experience. I did it to myself and, you know, almost derailed my career years ago when I decided I didn't want to attend an event that I was invited too. But I responded and said I would, and then at the last minute [I] said, "You know what? No one is going to notice if I don't show up," and so I declined it at the last minute, and sure enough next day I walk into the office and the person who invited me says, "Maureen, we missed you last night." Now, this was not someone who looked me. It was somebody who I thought really wasn't even paying attention to me, but obviously he was, and I made the really poor executive decision to not go because, and you heard me say it, I thought I was not going to be missed. "No one is going to notice if I'm not there." And this man--I don't even know if he even remembers this story, and I always say one of these days I need to remind him, but this individual, when he invited me, he invited me for a reason. So that's why I say we can derail ourselves. You know, if you get an invitation like that--and this was a senior leader--take advantage of that, you know? Absolutely. Don't ever think--and that's the other thing. Don't ever think that people aren't paying attention to you. They are. They are, especially if you are doing great work. Like you said about yourself, you're an A- employee, which I'm sure you're an A++. Even if you remotely think you're an A- player, somebody is paying attention to you, you know? So I think we need to do a better job of putting ourselves in places where we can be seen, but that all goes back to the point of being on those high-visibiliity projects and how do we get there. There has to be somebody at the top that's pounding the table for us to get there. So it's kind of cyclical. It's kind of like you're almost, like, stuck in a...Zach: A loop.Maureen: Yes. Yeah. It's a challenge.Zach: No, it is. It is. Now, you know, we've talked a little bit about programming. We kind of had a meta discussion about D&I, but then, like, I'm curious, right, from a leadership perspective, if you were to give, like, five key traits of inclusive leaders, like, five key behaviors, like, what would they be?Maureen: That's a good question. I would say definitely someone who--an inclusive leader is someone who's a good listener, and I don't mean someone who's just gonna kind of listen and say, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, next," but someone who's really going to listen to what you have to say, someone who's able to replay that back to you, right? Recap that and say, "Okay, I understand. So tell me, what would you like me to do next? How would you like me to proceed?" So not just listen, but then understand. Get to understand what needs to happen next. Second thing is be a great giver of feedback. It's really, really important to give feedback, because feedback really, truly is a gift, but it's also important to get feedback. So I always encourage leaders that I work with not to feel like they're--because they're in a quote-unquote "leadership role" that they're just supposed to be the people that give feedback. No, it has to be reciprocal, and they have to not only ask for feedback, but then they have to ask follow-up questions so that they can understand what is it that they're doing well or not doing so well so that they themselves can change and evolve their own behaviors. The third thing I would say is an inclusive leader should be somebody who's able to pay it forward. So be able to reach back, reach to the sides, reach wherever and pull somebody along, take somebody along for the journey that they're on, because it helps that individual learn and grow in their own respect, and, you know, I always tell leaders, "You didn't get here by yourself." Let's just be real about some things. You took the same journey that now this individual behind you is also trying to take. So do the right thing, and if you've got somebody that you know wants to move in the same career path or maybe they want to do something different but could use your guidance and expertise, pull them along with you. The fourth thing I would say is an inclusive leader should be somebody who is able to truly bring a team together, and, you know, bring them together--I'm not saying bring them together for lunch. I'm talking about bring them together so that they have a good understanding of who they are as a team, what are the team goals, what are they striving for, and most importantly, as a team, understand what each of them individually are able to contribute and bring to the table, because it is the individual nuances that we all bring to an organization or a team that helps us to be a successful team. That's how we create inclusive products, inclusive services for our clients, is by bringing those innovative and inclusive voices to the table. So an inclusive leader should definitely be somebody who is able to bring a team together. And then the last thing I would say is that an inclusive leader needs to be very mindful of the fact that they are the ones who have the ear of the C-Suite, and so they need to be individuals who can listen and hear what's going on on the ground--so across their teams and other teams--and be able to articulate that and bubble that up to the top so that any issues or concerns that may be rising are things that they're able to squash before it becomes a bigger issue. They've got to listen in on what's happening at the ground level and be able to help manage, to help do some kind of change management or navigate the conversation so that it doesn't become a bigger issue. But if it's getting there, they should be the ones who are able to bubble it up to the top and then say, "Okay, so what can we do to mitigate this?" I think that's really it. Zach: Wow. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you so much. You know, you're just dropping bombs, dropping coins, as it were. Maureen: [laughs] Coins, yep. Mm-hmm.Zach: It's really helpful. I was trying not to cut you off 'cause I had, like, a couple of these... [Mario coin sfx] But I was like, "Let me just let her finish." [both laugh]Maureen: I'm sorry, I'm just going on forever.Zach: No, no, no. It's great. No, it's absolutely great. This has been a wonderful conversation, and thank you so much for hanging out with us. I know we went a little bit long. Before we let you go, any parting words, shout-outs?Maureen: Parting words and shout-outs? Parting words are, you know, just be the best human being that you can truly be, you know? Never take for granted where you are, because again, you didn't get here on your own. Really, really important to reach back and help others. And then any shout-outs I would give are simply to all of the people who are in the position, as you are, Zachary, to help get these kinds of messages out. Kudos to you, because this is not easy, you know? Doing what you do is not easy. Having these kinds of deep and courageous conversations isn't easy, so kudos to you, and then shout-outs to all of the people who are driving diversity and inclusion within their organizations, because, you know, we've got some work to do. People love to say to me, you know, "Well, you know, in your role, you're gonna have a job forever. It's job security." Here's the thing - I'm not sure I want to live in a world where the need to have a diversity and inclusion leader is job security, because that means that we are--that means two things. One, the world's continuing to evolve and, you know, the components of diversity continue to change. That's good. But two, it means that we're not doing everything that we could and should be doing to make this a more inclusive and global environment, and so I don't know if I want that job security. I want it to be where it's just very organic, you know? That we're not thinking about, "Well, you know, how do we hire black and brown people? Where do we go to get them?" No! It shouldn't be that way, and I know I've probably gone on way too long, but shout-outs to you, shout-outs to my peeps who are doing this day in and day out and are leading the charge right along with me, so.Zach: Come on, now. Let me get these air horns right here for that. [air horns sfx, both laugh]Maureen: Love that. Love it.Zach: Man, this has just been great, Maureen. Thank you so much. And listen, y'all, that does it for us on the Living Corporate podcast. You make sure you check us out on Twitter at @LivingCorp_Pod, Instagram at @LivingCorporate, and then, you know, you've got our website living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com. We also have livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.org, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.net. Maureen, we have all of the Living Corporates except livingcorporate.com. We have all of 'em, you know? You know, it's market dissemination. We're really out here. We're trying to make sure we get them SEO clicks.Maureen: Do your thing.Zach: Come on, now. We're trying to. Now, listen, y'all, y'all hear these conversations that we have. If y'all ever have questions y'all want to send in and, like, have us, us being the hosts or our guests, answer them, just send 'em on in. YOu know, DM us, email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com, you know, and we can just get it poppin' like that. Now, look, if you can't remember all of the different places I just said or where we are and where we're at and what we're doing, just Google Living Corporate. We out here like that. It's been, like, 130 something odd episodes, so we're now at the point where if you just Google Living Corporate, we'll pop up, okay? So you check us out, and until next time, this has been Zach, and you've been listening to Maureen Greene James, D&I leader for North America at Cognizant. Until next time, y'all. Peace.

On the tenth installment of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, helps us effectively approach getting back into the job search game by sharing five tips that help manage the process a little better. On average, it takes five months to land a position. Don't give up, and keep pushing through the uncertainty!Find out more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBCheck out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBTRANSCRIPTLatesha: What's up, everyone? Welcome to The Link Up with Latesha on Living Corporate. This podcast is for young professionals that need some real deal advice, tips, and resources to navigate corporate America and dominate their career. If you're looking to upgrade your brand, get the knowledge you need to level up professionally for your future, you are in the right place. I'm your host Latesha Byrd, so let's get into today's episode. So today we are talking about getting back in the game. For those that are searching for their next opportunity, I know just how hard and challenging it can be to push through the uncertainty. I often times relate job searching to the dating world. Like, for instance, let's say you go on a first date, you really hit it off, but he or she has not called you back. So you are sitting there wondering, "What the heck happened?" You know, "We had a good conversation. We have a lot of commonalities." You know, "We just really hit it off. Good vibes, good connections, all of that," but you are still uncertain about whether you should hit that person up or do you wait? You know, do you text first? You don't want to seem too interested, but maybe they're waiting for you, right? And so--[laughs]--dating is a whole game in itself, but the job search process is so similar to it, and so I know from experience--and also as a career coach and a former recruiter--just how hard it can be to really get back into the game and to get focused and to, you know, push through the unknown, you know? When it comes to searching for a job, you are having to just constantly put yourself out there and talk to different companies and, you know, some of them you may hear back from, some of them you may not, or you may, you know, interview, and you get really great feedback, and then it's crickets, right? But for some of those that maybe haven't applied or interviewed or had to search for anything, you know, in a really long time, the question is where do you start and how do you start? What do you need to start? You know, there are so many questions and things that go into it. So I'm here to tell you to, you know, don't give up. Don't give up. Keep pushing. Keep working through the uncertainty. Push through it anyways. On average, it takes five months to land a position. I've done a lot of research on this, on Forbes and CNN Money and all of those sites. The average amount of time that I'm seeing that it takes to land positions is five months. Now, some of my clients are able to land jobs pretty quickly, you know? In a month or two months, but for some, you know, it takes a little bit longer. And it's challenging because waiting to hear back from someone who literally has your future in their hands can be so painful, no matter how well you did in that interview, no matter how bomb your resume is, no matter how bomb your career coach is or even how great your network is. When it comes to landing a position with the company, that is something that you simply won't be able to control. And it likely will take a lot longer than you think to find something, and I'm not saying jumping at the first job offer that you get, but actually finding something worth value, something that is aligned with where you want to be professionally or grow professionally. So I have just a few tips that I wanted to share to help you manage this process a little bit better and to fully get back in the game. #1 - have you tapped into all of your resources? Have you tapped into all of your resources? Take an inventory. Take an inventory of your resources. Often times, we don't tap into people that we already know, such as family, our friends, college classmates or college professors. What about those professional associations or those organizations that you volunteer with in the community? Your peoples at church. [laughs] Your neighbors. The list goes on here, but sometimes we don't think about who we already know, 'cause you never know who knows someone else. So let's say I want to find a job as a management consultant, okay? So my neighbor may not be a management consultant or work for a management consulting firm, but what if his wife's cousin's--I don't know, I'm just--you know, y'all know how that whole wife's cousin's baby momma's hair dresser thing goes, right? [laughs] You just never know who knows someone. And this is a little bit unrelated to the job search, but in terms of a situation that happened to me recently, I was actually tapped for a speaking engagement with a TV or media news company in Virginia, and that connection came from my--this is gonna sound a little tricky, y'all [laughs]--but this came from my father's ex-wife's brother's ex-wife. Right? I didn't even know that she was watching, you know, what I was doing in my business. We had been connected on social media for, you know, a few years now, and it was one of those things where I said, "Man, you never know--" First of all who's watching you, and then number two you never know who knows who or who that person is that could be, you know, get you the key to the gate. So think about who you already know, and you've gotta tell people. Like, you have to tell people that you are actually seeking employment. Let the pride fall where it may, right? This is about utilizing your social capitol. You're not using people. You're not using your friends. You're not using, you know, those folks in your network, because this means that if--if they're able to help you land a job, you could probably help them in some way down the line in the future. So let the pride go and use your connections and ask for help. Ask your connections, as well, to match you with other connections. This is specifically related to LinkedIn. If you all have used the LinkedIn job board for your job search--which I highly, highly recommend, and this is why--because LinkedIn is gonna give you a lot more intel than literally any other job search platform out there. So for instance, if I'm looking--and I'm based in Charlotte, y'all. So, you know, big banking center here. So let's see you're looking at jobs at Wells Fargo and you find a position at Wells Fargo on LinkedIn. LinkedIn will show you who you are connected with that works at Wells Fargo, or it will show you who you're connected with that's connected with someone that works at Wells Fargo. That's why I freaking love the LinkedIn job board, for those connections solely. I had a client actually a couple weeks ago ask me to connect her with a talent acquisition manager at Credit Karma, which is also here in Charlotte. And she just reached out and said, "Hey, I see you're connected with..." She named the gentleman's name and said, you know, "Would you mind facilitating a connection?" And I was like, "What, girl? Heck yes." I have no problem with doing that. I didn't even know him. Now we are acquainted. We just happened to be connected on LinkedIn, but what she did is she was looking at particular companies she wanted to target, and I'm believing she looked for folks in talent acquisition or recruiting and was looking for mutual connections and saw that we were connected. So I was able to facilitate that connection. I reached out to him. I said, "Hey, I have a client who is an accounting operations finance executive. She is wanting to get connected for potential opportunities. Do you mind if I connect her to you?" And he responded immediately, like, "Yes, no problem at all." It is that simple. So #2 - don't be afraid to make new friends or make new connections. This is normal on LinkedIn. This is what LinkedIn is for. Again, LinkedIn is a social networking platform, so you should be socially networking. Look up recruiters. Look up talent acquisition managers. Look up people that are in positions you would ultimately like and just reach out to 'em. You may or may not hear back. It will, you know, take a lot of courage to reach out to them, you know? To say, "Hey, I'm actually interested in working for your organization," and, you know, what have you, because that shows a sign of vulnerability, right? When you have to ask someone for help. That's showing a sign of vulnerability, because that's a quote-unquote weakness, when you need help. I love, love, love Renee Brown. I love her books. I love her TED talk. I love her Netflix special. I just love everything about her. And she talks about vulnerability, and this is something that I talk to my coaching clients about all of the time. You know, vulnerability is--and the way Renee Brown says it, it's like getting in front of a crowd with no clothes on. [laughs] Getting in front of a crowd completely naked, and you are not sure how they are going to respond, but in that vulnerability there is a lot of courage, you know? There is a lot of bravery, because you're pushing through the fear, and you're doing what it takes anyways without even knowing what type of response it is you're gonna get back. So you gotta be brave here. #3 - be specific in what you're looking for. Don't keep it super broad when you're searching for opportunities. Like, for instance, if you are looking at marketing positions, get clear on what type of marketing positions, because there's a whole lot of marketing jobs out there. For example, is it public relations? Is it communications? Is it integrated marketing? Digital media? Et cetera. Quality over quantity is key. If you keep your job search broad or if you are looking for a broad range of roles, because you're not being specific in the key words you're utilizing, whoo--you're gonna be looking at thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs, and that can get really challenging. Well, not challenging, but overwhelming. So be as specific as possible. #4 is get deeper in your craft. Take time to develop more skills. Think about online courses. I love Lynda on LinkedIn. You know, there's Coursera. There's Udemy. There are so many, you know, ways that we can continue to get deeper in our craft and expand our knowledge, you know? I am a--I have a Ph.D from YouTube University, [laughs] so I am always, always, always looking up how to do things or how to develop certain skills on YouTube. It takes some time to get deeper in your craft while you are searching. #5 - brand yourself online. You know, as you are networking socially on this social networking site called LinkedIn, you've got to make sure you're branding yourself. That's gonna bring more attention back to your page. You know, my recommendation is to post three times a week. One of my clients, she is in HR, and she has been posting pretty regularly on LinkedIn, and her tweets--not tweets. Wow, I'm thinking about Twitter. [laughs] I love Twitter, y'all. Follow me. @Latesha_Byrd. But LinkedIn, she posts about three times a week, and some of her LinkedIn posts have gone viral, and through that--through the virality, she gets a lot of attention from recruiters reaching out to her, which is exactly what she wanted. So brand yourself online. You don't have to post, like, you know, all of these long, thoughtful, deep messages, you know? Just start posting articles related to what's going on in your industry, posting questions to kind of get folks thinking. You know, post a quote. You know, again, just post regularly. Start to brand yourself online. Set some boundaries with yourself. I promise you you don't have to spend two hours every single day looking at job boards. Those jobs are not going to grow legs and run away. So if you take a day off from searching for jobs, it is going to be okay. So set some boundaries with yourself. Maybe you only search for jobs three days a week - Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Maybe you do 30 minutes in the morning, you do 30 minutes at night. So, you know, don't go too hard, right? Because that job search fatigue is real and we've talked about that before. Get an accountability partner as well, someone that can hold you accountable, to make sure that you are applying to jobs, that you are networking, that you are posting online. Be very specific in the goals that you share with them, and you need someone that is actually really going to hold you accountable and that's going to encourage you and build you up. The last thing that I want to say here is be patient. Be patient with yourself. I am actually in the process of searching for a home. I'm looking to buy fairly soon, and if you have ever bought a home before, you know just how hard that process could be. And I had a friend that told me, "Delayed is not denied," you know? So again, just be patient with yourself. Finding your next best thing, it really will take some time, and I want you all to make sure that you are giving yourself some grace in this process and not taking every "no" you get or, you know, the silence, don't let that get to you and don't take it personal. You know, sometimes these jobs are filled internally. Another thing is that sometimes jobs are posted as a formality in the process, even though they already know who they are going to hire. They may have to just interview some folks, you know, to show that there was no bias, right? And so just know you never know. You really never know what's going on on the other side. So give yourself some grace. Be patient with yourself. Know that your job is out there. You have to--you have to--believe. So I hope that these tips helped you all today. Remember to push through the uncertainty. Just get out there. And I am always rooting for your success. I hope that you are able to land your dream job soon. And that is all I have. So I wish you all the best of luck as you are applying. If you enjoyed this topic, if you have any questions at all, if there's anything you actually want to hear on this podcast, then hit me up. I'm really easy to find - @Latesha_Byrd. L-A-T-E-S-H-A underscore B-Y-R-D. You can find me on Twitter. You can find me on Instagram. LinkedIn, Facebook, all of the things. So thank you guys so much, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.

On the thirty-fourth entry of Tristan's Tips, our special guest Tristan Layfield shares a few ways to effectively advocate for yourself professionally throughout your career. Remember, closed mouths don’t get fed in this day and age. If we don’t advocate for ourselves in the workplace, who will?Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn, IG, FB, and Twitter!TRANSCRIPTTristan: What is going on, y'all? It's Tristan Layfield of Layfield Resume Consulting, and I've teamed up with Living Corporate to bring you all a weekly career tip. This week we’re going to talk about a few areas where it’s essential for you to advocate for yourself throughout your career.In my coaching program, I talk to many clients who are unhappy with their careers but after asking a few questions I realize they aren’t taking ownership of their careers. Often, we get into roles and think that all of our work is going to speak for itself. Unfortunately, that’s a pretty big mistake. Managers are not only responsible for you but they’re also responsible for all of your colleagues and their own careers. So a big factor in the trajectory of your career is taking ownership so you can show why you deserve that raise, promotion, or new role.One of the things you can do to start advocating for yourself is to sell yourself on your resume. Employers look to your previous employment experience to determine what their return on invest in you is going to be. But if you can’t convey your value, how can you expect anyone else to understand what you’re bringing to the table? In order to do this, you have to start keeping track of your career highlights and accomplishments so you can translate the value of those in your resume.Another area where you can advocate for yourself is by asking for what you’re worth and believing it. Whether you’re negotiating your starting salary or requesting a raise, you have to BELIEVE you are worth that amount. Do your research and factor in your experience so you can have your own back. But also, once you get the job make sure to keep track of the work you’ve done so you can leverage it during your annual review which impacts your raise!The last area I’m going to highlight when it comes to self-advocacy is asking directly for what you want or need. When it comes to business, I find that directness is kindness. So if you’ve started a job and you’re still confused on certain processes, ask for more training. If you’re assigned a project but you’re unclear on what you’re responsible for, ask targeted questions about expectations and timelines. If there’s a position open that you want, ask for it or what you can do to land it.Remember, closed mouths don’t get fed in this day and age. If we don’t advocate for ourselves in the workplace, who will?This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, twitter, and facebook at @layfieldresume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn!

Zach speaks with Lionel Lee, Zillow Group's Head of Diversity Engagement, and they discuss his unique personal career journey up to this point. Lionel details what influence and coalition-building look like in his position, and he also shares some of the things that he's been able to do at Zillow that he believes have helped to improve the sense of belonging and inclusiveness for black and brown folks in the workplace.Connect with Lionel on LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPTSheneisha: Hey, y'all. Sheneisha here with Living Corporate. As you know, we're about having real talk in a corporate world. With that in mind, before we get into this amazing discussion with Lionel Lee, we want to let you know this content makes mention of violence, which may be upsetting, so if you're listening with some little ones, discretion is advised. Zach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with the Living Corporate podcast, and of course you know what we do. We have interviews, conversations, right, that serve to amplify the voices of black and brown folks at work. And what do I mean by that? I mean we typically have black and brown folks, leaders, executives, creatives, entrepreneurs, you name it, on the show, having real conversations about real topics, and today is no different. We actually have with us today a very special guest. I'm very excited to speak with this person. I've been in contact with him for a little while, and I'm excited just to, like, get him on the show, 'cause, like, we've been texting, and then we talk on LinkedIn, and then, you know, we've been trying to coordinate. Even today we were coordinating back and forth. Lionel Lee. Lionel Lee is the head of diversity engagement at Zillow Group. He provides career development support to underrepresented employees and works with executives to develop equity and belonging policies to improve employee experiences. He also serves as a connecter between employees and community organizations. Prior to joining Zillow Group, he worked in talent acquisition, sourcing candidates across technology and banking industries. Okay, so really quick y'all, all of that to say he's by the people, for the people, you see what I'm saying? Okay. Helping communities has always been a constant throughout his life. Lionel has created and developed community groups that promote health and wellness. He's worked with HIV/AIDS education groups, substance abuse/addiction organizations, as well as health groups for youth. Lionel immigrated to the United States from Korea at age 5. His experiences growing up in south-central Los Angeles and later in the projects of Honolulu, Hawaii--I'm gonna ask a question about that in a little bit--helped nurture his passion for community building. With all that being said, Lionel, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Lionel: I'm doing well, man. Thank you. Appreciate it.Zach: Now, look, you know, of course I've got all of these questions for you and everything, but the first thing I gotta ask - you talked about the projects of Honolulu. Hawaii has projects?Lionel: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Honolulu has projects, and growing up there in the '70s and partial '80s, yeah, it was kind of rough, 'cause most people don't know about that, 'cause what they see about Honolulu and hear about Honolulu is it's just a paradise, but it's not really a paradise for all. You know, the level of poverty there, still to this day, is [amazing?], but back then it was like--where I grew up, in Kalihi--Kalihi is a town right outside of Waikiki, and it's--the projects are called Kuhio Park Terrace. We call it KPT, or Killer Park Terrace. Kill People Today. That's what it was, and I lived on the 16th floor, and I had to actually walk up the stairs to get to my apartment because there was a young lady that got her head cut off in the elevator, so the parents and kids, you know, catch the elevator. And then, you know, you have the same stuff that you have in a lot of different projects. You know, you have a lot of drug abuse, and, you know, you have people defecating in the stairwells. So that was the smell you walked into every single day. The crazy thing is that the dude that cut off the woman's head lived two doors down from me. And he kept it. Kept the head. Zach: What?!?!!!!!!????????????Lionel: He kept the head. But, um...Zach: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm sorry. Wait, wait, wait. You said he kept the head?Lionel: He kept the head. He was--he was a Cambodian dude, and he was just mentally disturbed, you know? He just had some serious stuff going on, and he kept the head, and we found out, like, you know, two weeks after it had happened, you know? That was--it was a very different kind of place. Very violent. You can still look up--actually, you can go on YouTube and look up videos from Kuhio Park Terrace, and they'll show you videos of what it's like at KPT to this day.Zach: To this day. That is--that is--wow, that is shocking. I'ma tell you, you know, Lionel, in your short 3 minutes of being on the Living Corporate podcast, you have given us the most gangsta introduction we've ever had. And I'm not making light of anything. I'm just taken--I'm very taken aback by this. Wow.Lionel: Yeah, I don't have the typical--you know, I don't have the pedigree of someone that's in my position, definitely. I'm not--you know, I just wasn't raised like that. I wasn't--you know, I didn't think I was gonna go to college. I didn't go to college. I didn't get a degree. You know, I had to work and do all of that kind of stuff. It's just I was given certain opportunities and took advantage of every single one, you know? Made the very best that I could, and I've always had a tremendous work ethic, you know? Just, you know, been out of my house since I was 17 years old. I've lived in my car for, like, three days, just so I can be out here, you know, just doing my thing. You know, just doing my thing and just trying to keep it moving.Zach: Wow. Well, kind of to start there, let's talk a little bit about that. So you've started on that path, but kind of talk to us about your journey from Hawaii to the head of diversity and engagement at Zillow. What did that look like?Lionel: I was a gogo dancer at one time. That was pretty weird. I've done everything, man. Like, I can do stuff around my house--like, right now I'm remodeling my house, and my kids will be like, "Where'd you learn how to do that?" And I'm like, "Man, it wasn't nothing about learning. I just had to survive." Zach: Wait, wait, wait. So let's take a step back. You said you were--you were a what dancer?Lionel: I was a gogo dancer for a little bit. [Zach laughs] Yeah, when I was, like, young, you know, and that kind of stuff. So I was raised extremely religious. My grandfather is a Baptist minister, and I was raised in the church, so we didn't go out and do that kind of stuff a lot, you know? And I went to, like, school dances every once in a while, and I always liked to dance, so as soon as I got out of my house and, you know, I didn't have nobody telling me what I could and could not do, you know, I got caught up in the dance club scene for a while, and I was going there a lot, and the dude that owned the club, you know, he asked me one day if, you know, I'd want to just come in and, you know, get paid for it, right? But it was like--I don't know if you remember. I don't know how old you are, but--Zach: 29.Lionel: There was this one dance that I was really good at. It was The Prep. I don't know if you remember what The Prep is.Zach: Nah, what's The Prep?Lionel: It's just a dance that, you know, like, a lot of black folks did, you know, back then. You know, I'd have to show it to you in order for you to know what it was, but people around my age group, they know what that dance is, and I was really good at it. You can be extremely creative with it, you know? So the dude just kind of, you know--and I didn't paid, like, a lot. It was--like, that was my part-time gig. My full-time gig was, you know, managing the Church's Fried Chicken, which was down the street from the club, right? So after work at Church's Fried Chicken I would shoot over there, and back then they would throw some, you know, neon sweater or some shit on me, and then I'd get on there and, you know, do my thing. [both laugh] So yeah, that's a snippet of my background, but the way that I got into where I'm at now is--the funny thing is I met a dude on a basketball court, right, like, when I was in my late twenties, and it was one of those stereotypical things, you know? I got into a fight with this dude on the basketball court, you know? Like, you know, you get into a fight on the basketball court, they find out you can fight, and then all of a sudden everybody wants to be your friend, right? So dude wanted to be my friend. He was a white dude, and I had never had too much interaction with white people honestly, and definitely not on a personal, you know, like, friendship level. That just wasn't the way I was raised. So I was kind of cautious, and at that time I worked for an organization called Street Outreach Services, and it was an HIV/AIDS prevention organization. It was led by this amazing sister from Brooklyn. Her name was Amani Wood. She recently passed, like, a couple years ago, and I consider her one of the strongest individuals I've ever met and was lucky enough to have her as a mentor for a very large portion of my life. But anyway, she and I were working together, and then I came up with this crazy idea that what we should be doing is we should be documenting, you know, crack addicts and crack dealers under the age of 18, 'cause that's a group that we were not capturing. So the city of Seattle liked the idea. My organization liked the idea. So I ended up doing that for about 2.5 years. So I was going into crack houses and stuff, like, you know, at 3:00 a.m., you know, 4:00 a.m., and dealing with a whole bunch of kids, and I dealt with the kids--I mean, I had one sister, her name was Beautiful, literally, and she was 13 years old, you know? She was 13 years old with a baby and she was a crack addict, and she was a crack dealer. So, you know, I had to deal with that, and that kind of stuff is emotionally extremely taxing, and the--I just couldn't do it as--I couldn't put as much of myself into it as I was, so I was starting to get burnt out, and dude--you know, he was a recruiter, this white dude that I had met, right? He was like, "Hey, you ever thought about, like, recruiting?" And I was like, "I don't even know what that is, man." And he brought me up to his office to show me what he did, and, like, a lot of young black men and young black women and kids that come from, you know, lesser economic areas, you know, when I saw a computer I thought, "Nah, I can't do that," you know? 'Cause, you know, "Computers are magic, right?" They're not meant for me. They're meant for, like, geniuses, right? You know, "Black kids can't do math." You know, "Black kids can't do this kind of stuff," and I bought into a lot of that. I bought into a lot of that kind of stuff. But I had a two-year-old child, so I had to do something, you know? 'Cause I wasn't making enough money, and I wanted him to have a better lifestyle than I did growing up. So I took him up on it, and, you know, I shot across the bridge over into Bellevue from Seattle, and then--I don't know if you know Seattle, but in Seattle you have east side and west side, and when you go across that bridge, man, it's completely different. Extremely affluent. Very, very white. You know, as a brother back in the, you know, '90s, you couldn't be on that side if you weren't an athlete, right, or somebody else, you know, that they recognized, because if you were a black person that they didn't recognize, the cops would give you a hard time. Like, literally. They would follow you around and stuff, right? But I went over there and I interviewed, and I interviewed with, like, nine blonde-haired, blue-eyed women, man, sitting around the table. I was like, "Man, I don't know if I want to do this," and they offered me the job, you know? And I was like, "Whoa, what do I do now?" And at that same time I was actually interviewing with the fire department, and walking out of that office--I drove, like, this beat up 1984 Volvo, you know? And when I say it was beat up, I mean it was *beat up*. There was 100 and something thousand miles on it. The paint was peeling, you know? That kind of stuff, you know? I put on the best clothes that I had at that time.Zach: That was a bucket.Lionel: It was a bucket. Man, it was a buck-et. And I'm walking out, and every car in the parking lot was like Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, you know, that kind of stuff, and I was like, "I don't know, maybe I can do this." And so I accepted and started there, and struggled, man--I struggled a lot. I mean, I struggled so bad the first three months. There's a very large organization. It's called EDP Contract Services. Now I think they're called TAC Worldwide, and it's one of the largest recruiting organizations in the world. At that time, I forget exactly how many people they had, but I know that at one time I was ranked, like, something like 2000th or something out of the company of recruiters, and by the time--I had to make a decision at one point because--you know, because I was basically told that I could be pretty successful in this if I got the street out of my voice, right? So I started [?]--you know, I went home and was, like, frustrated over it, you know? And my girl at that time, she was pretty hood too, so she was like, "[BLEEP] them. You know, we can sue them. Blah, blah, blah, blah," you know? But I went to bed with my two-year-old son, you know, and I was like, "Man, I've got to do something." So I made up my mind. You know, I made up my mind that okay, well, this is what I'm gonna do, and I walked into the office the next day--I got there at 6:00 in the morning. Nobody was there. And I didn't leave until, like, 8:00 at night, and then I did that for, like, a whole year, and I became #2 in the company, and my income went up something like 300% in a year. Zach: Goodness gracious.Lionel: Mm-hmm. And so I figured out that yeah, I can do this. And then I went to--excuse me, sorry. I went to San Francisco right after that. I got recruited by a staffing firm there. I didn't like them too much, so I started my own staffing firm. We did $2.5 million in our second year of business, and that was just, like, you know, three of us, right? And then we added some people on and that kind of stuff. Then I came back to Seattle and, again, you know, got recruited by another company and became the manager for recruiting for a startup during the dot-com era. I was killing it there, then the dot-com bubble burst, and then I went to Washington Mutual as their diverse executive recruiter, and that was probably one of the worst work experiences I've ever had, 'cause what happened--what happened was they wanted this person, but one of the head people in this department didn't want this person. They didn't feel the need for a diversity executive recruiter. So they waited for her to go on maternity leave and then, behind her back, hired me, right? So my first day of work I'm walking down the hall and this woman walks up to me and she goes, "Who are you?" And I said, "Oh, I'm Lionel Lee." And she goes, "Well, what do you do?" And I said, "Well, you know, I run diversity executive recruitment here," and she just looked at me, and I got this, like--it was chilling. Like, this look was crazy, and then the next thing I know, man, like, seven months later or eight months later, you know, maybe close to a year later, you know, the whole group was disbanded and we all had to leave and, you know, go do our own thing. And it was kind of crazy too. The way that they told you was, you know, they asked you to come in for an early morning meeting. I went in for an early morning meeting and they had HR there, and they said it's disbanded.Zach: So where does Zillow come into play?Lionel: 2007 hit, man. 2007, 2008, 2009, you know, and I went through all of my money, and I had to get back to work, you know? So I joined a really small recruiting firm that was, you know, bullshit. They didn't know what they were doing. [both laugh] But then there was this other recruiting firm that I really wanted and I went and joined them, and they were amazing, and--that's one of the crazy things too, the dude that hired me--he's, like, this really young--comparatively. I think he's, like, you know, close to 40 now--Republican white dude, right? And he hired me on to the company, and I go in there and I'm on the phone the first day, and he said "Hey, Lionel, can I [?] you for a second?" And I was like, "Yeah, what's up?" And he goes, "Man, who the hell is that on the phone?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Do you know you sound white?" And I was like, "What?" He goes, "Yeah. When you talk to me normally, you know, we're fine, but whenever you get on the phone you sound white," and it's because of what I learned in the earlier part of my career.Zach: Code switching, man. Yeah.Lionel: I was code switching. And I told him, "Well, you know, that's how--" And he goes, "Nah, man. I don't think that's why you're successful. I would really love to see you be you. I got enough white dudes in my office. That's why I hired you." [Zach laughs] And I was like, "Oh, okay," and then I started really, like, trying to understand what just happened, and the reason I ended up here at Zillow Group--I stayed there for, like, five years, six years, right? And I ended up killing it there. I was always either #1 or #2. And the reason I ended up here is that the person who had hired me on at Washington Mutual, she became the vice president of talent acquisition here at Zillow, and she--I started my own company after a while, again, right, and she was one of my clients, and she asked me to come in, and she said, "Lionel," you know--this was, like, 2016. "Lionel, we're really trying to do this diversity thing, man, but we don't know what we're doing." You know, "Would you want to help us?" And I said, "Well, I can put something together." You know, I talked about it with them a little bit. They wanted me to do it. I couldn't dedicate time to it 'cause I had my own staffing firm at that time and my staffing firm was doing extremely well, but what happened was that it kind of grabbed a part of me that I didn't know really existed. My experience in tech as a black man was horrible. I mean, it was horrible, so I decided that, you know, by doing this I would be given an opportunity to better the experiences of other people that are underrepresented in the tech space, right? 'Cause when I was starting out, you know, there was no other. You know, there was me. There was me, and I was probably the only one that I knew with the exception of, like, one or two that worked in other agencies. But it was me, right? And it was horrible. I hated it. I mean, I couldn't--there was no way that I could tell somebody that "Yeah, this is a good day." I woke up every single day begrudging going to work, and eventually I was able to push down to the point where I didn't realize that, you know, there was a part of me that was always anxious, right? And that's when I got a chance to change, you know, within this organization, and then what I'm hoping for is that this organization will be--you know, will be, like, a beacon for others to take a look at, right? Like, "What did they do to make a difference?" Right? 'Cause we did. We changed how we are as a company. We've changed the way that we're perceived. You know, people want to come to work here, you know? That kind of thing, and, you know, the brown and black folks here are much happier now than they were. We know that because I'm very data-driven, and we took some surveys and things like that that let us know that the things we're doing are working. But that's how I ended up in this position. And I was a consultant at first, and they--you know, we talked about 20 hours a week. 20 became 40. It became 60. It became an obsession, you know? Because I--you know, I was like, "Ooh, I get a chance to--"Zach: Really move the needle in some way, yeah.Lionel: Yeah. Not just move the needle, but, you know, just--you know, we talk a lot in those kind of terms, right? Like, "move the needle," you know, that kind of stuff, and the way that I looked at it was never really like that, you know? The way that I was looking at it was, you know, "Improve the day-to-day experience of the underrepresented worker going into the tech space." That was my--that's my driver, right? The way that I describe what I do is that my job is to make sure that everybody that comes to work is happy and feels like they belong. That's my job. That is my job, and I--I don't like to say I love my job, because I don't think in that way, but I'm extremely proud of what we've done here at Zillow Group. I'm extremely proud, and I'm hoping to continue on this path and, you know, continue to make us an employer of choice.Zach: [applause sfx] I mean, what can I say? I mean, I hear you. This is incredible. Look, I have another question, but I want to get into this really quick though. You talked about some of the things that y'all are doing here and, like, they've been serving well. What are some of those things that you've been able to do at Zillow that you believe have helped to improve the sense of belonging and inclusiveness for black and brown folks? Lionel: Well, that was the thing, right? 'Cause one of the things that they had asked me to do was go out and find best practices, and the crazy thing is that there were no best practices 'cause nobody was really killing it. Nobody's numbers said that they were killing it, right? So I had to come up with my own stuff, but what that gave me was green fields. So I could do a couple things. So one of the first things that I did is I was walking through the office one day--and we had this wall of speakers, right? And the speakers--I looked at that wall, and it's a pretty big wall of all of these, you know, headshots of all of these speakers that we've had come into the office, and I was like, "Damn, every single person on there is white." Like, literally. Like, every single person on there is white except for one brother that we had, and of course he was a football player, right?Zach: Of course. Of course.Lionel: Right? And I was like, "Come on, man." You know? So I changed that immediately. That was one of my goals, to change that, and I did that. You know, we brought in people like Van Jones. We brought in people that were from the Islamic community. We brought in people from the Latinx community. Totally changed that whole landscape, right? And then we started talking about, like, just simple things like events, you know? Because that's one of the things that tech companies are known for, right? We have these crazy-ass parties where everybody has a good time, but not everybody gets down like that, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't grow up that way, you know? I don't go out and--you know, I'm not one of those people that like to [imbibe?] in that way and that's how I party. That's not how I do. I like the music. I like to dance. I like that kind of stuff, you know? And I'm not saying that we're all the same, but there are certain foundational pieces that make us a little bit the same. [?], right? And so we started throwing, like, parties, but I would tell the dudes that came in--I started going out and creating relationships with external organizations that were representative of underrepresented groups within our company. So we had professional organizations that I went and made agreements with, and then they would come in and they would throw the parties. And they asked me, they said, "Well, how black do you want this to be?" [both laugh] And I was like, "I want it to be as black as you want to make it."Zach: Right. It needs to be black black, with a Q.Lionel: It needs to be, 'cause you have people here from, you know, predominantly black areas, right? You've got a kid that grew up in a predominantly black area. He goes to an HBCU, you know, does really well there, and then all of a sudden he's thrown into this, right, where he's one of--I think we're at, like, 9% or something like that, right? We're still improving in that area, right? And then he's just got to, like, hang out and do what these guys do? You know, why don't we give him some of what he had back home? You know, why don't we create a sense of community for him, you know what I mean? And we did that, and then we started taking a look at some of the things--and it's all from my own experience, right? One of the things that really bothered me is, like, when all of the brothers was getting shot, you know, I felt completely alone in the office, and I had nobody to talk to about it, right? And what we did is we started--we created a forum here where people can--when things like that happen, for example when the El Paso shooting happened recently, you know, we had a forum here inside the office where people from the Latinx community could get together, along with people that were not from that community but allies that were in positions of power and strength here at the company, we all got together and we had a conversation, and we, you know, basically video-taped everybody in from all the other offices, and we had this, you know, straight up conversation about what this feels like, and that made a difference in people's experience, right? And then we talked about "How do we do our recruiting?" We started taking a look at--I started taking a look at how we do the recruiting in the first place, right? Many of our people that come on board come on from internships, so how do we effect that? Well, we start creating more relationships with organizations that are representative of us. So we started a relationship with NSBE, the National Society of Black Engineers. We started a relationship with SHPE, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, right? And then we put into practice talking to the CTO, the chief technology officer, who is just--you know, he's cool, he's just really cool, and I gave him an a-ha moment when I took him to AfroTech, like, two years ago.Zach: Oh, yeah. Shout-out AfroTech. Shout-out Blavity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Lionel: Yeah, by Blavity, right? And I took him--he was one of the only white dudes there, and I was like, "Look, you know, I'm gonna introduce you to some people. You're gonna have some good conversations, and then we're gonna talk about it afterwards," and he was like, "Cool," but he walks in and there's THOUSANDS of black people, man. Where people were telling him, "Oh," we can't be found, which is bullshit. Zach: It is, man. No, it is. It is so annoying, Lionel. Well, it's annoying and it's insulting and it's racist, right? So you said, "Well, we can't find this talent"--like, we're all over, and, like, look, AfroTech is an obvious one, but man, there are also, like, a lot of, like, local, like, groups, right? Like, there's all--if you go to any major city, there's some grassroots coding group that is black and brown, right? And honestly, even if you just take the time and look in the PWIs that you're recruiting, if you just look one more time, they're there too. Like, we're here. Lionel: Right, right. So what we did--he saw that, and we came back and he was like, "What do we do?" And I said, "Well, let's figure out some strategies," and what we started doing is we started making--'cause Boeing has doing been this forever, but Boeing's been going to NSBE and making offers on the spot, right? And so it was like, "Okay, well, let's do that," and we started doing that, and we started increasing our numbers because of that, right? And then those kids that were coming in as interns, we started converting them to full-time, and then on top of it their experience as workers here is real cool because, like, I'll walk by, you know, and I'll talk to 'em and be like, "Hey, what's happening, brother?" You know? "How you doing?" And they'll look at me like--Zach: Even that alone, which is small, right? It's huge to them.Lionel: It's small. It's really, really small, but it's so important, right? People gotta feel like they feel belong. People gotta feel like they're appreciated, right? That's what has to happen, and that's what we started doing. That's one of the things. I could go on and on, man. We've done--when I say I'm proud of the work that we've done here, I'm extremely proud of the work that we've done here.Zach: Rightfully so.Lionel: Yeah. The executives have been fully on board. You know, we also do this other thing where we understand the C-level, the C-Suite, has to be on board. So we do a thing called the MB Learning Series, which is twice a month. You know, we get together, myself, the senior VP of community and culture, and some other key individuals that are well-versed in this space. We'll get together with a bunch of people from the C-Suite, and we'll sit down and we'll talk for about an hour, an hour and a half, about whatever it is, right? It could be a current event that has impacted an underrepresented group, or it could be about something that they've encountered themselves, right, that they want to know more about, right? So we work with them, and they get to learn, they get to learn what's happening, and it changes their perspective and it changes the way that they go out and approach things and make decisions, right? We have our CEO--our CEO is, like, one of the only CEOs where, you know, in his signature file, you know, he has his pronouns, right? Because that's important, you know, to understand that not everybody identifies in that way. Understanding that people identify differently is extremely important, 'cause it puts you in a different place in your learning, in your journey, and that's how we got here. I mean, there's--you know, I could go on and on, but that would take up your whole segment.Zach: No, no, no. This is great, and look, Lionel, we'll just have you back. It's not a problem, man. We'll just have you--[both laugh] You'll just come on back. But it's interesting, really quickly, about the pronoun point, right? So, you know, some research that Living Corporate has been doing, you know what I'm saying, on our whitepaper--if you check us out on the website, you know, you'll see us on there, and we talk about the fact that, you know, 14% of millennials identify as trans or non-binary, right? So it's a real statistic.Lionel: Oh, it's a real statistic. It's real. And, you know, there's so many different groups of other people that do not feel like they belong. You know, they just--you know, especially with the current climate in our country today. That kind of stuff, the divisiveness of our country today, and, you know, we just--we want to make sure, in our company--and we've been voted, like, one of the best places to work forever, right? ["ow" sfx] Forever. But what was not being considered was that not everybody felt that way. It was not the best place to work for everyone. We found that out through our data, you know? We pulled some data that showed us that. So our goal is to make this the best place to work for everyone, and we don't--I mean, we look at everyone and make sure that they're taken care of. And we started our ERGs here two years ago. We dedicated a lot of resources to it. It has its own program manager that manages everything. That's his full-time gig. That's what he does to make sure that, you know, they're good. You know, we have all of the infrastructure in place for that. They're fully capitalized. Yeah. We do--you know, we do a lot of stuff here that a lot of companies don't do, and I think a lot of it just has to do with the fact that we've been following best practices. 'Cause, like I said, we didn't find any, so we had to create our own.Zach: No, that's incredible, and you're absolutely--this is the thing. It's so interesting because as commercialized and, I'm gonna say it, colonized as diversity and inclusion has become, right, like, as a space, when it comes to actually delivering and doing the work, we're still very much so in our infancy, right? Like, there's not a blueprint for anything.Lionel: No. No, there isn't, and that's--yeah, I would agree with you that there is a lot of stuff in our space that, you know, I kind of, like, look at three or four times too, you know? Like, "Really? That's what we're gonna do now?" [Zach laughs] But that's the thing, you know? Let's be creative, you know? Let's figure it out, and for me it was very personal, you know? That's why, you know, a lot of the stuff that we did here was me imagining me, you know, sitting there at work. You know, what would I want? You know, when I first started in this stuff, what would I want? I'd want to be able to come into work and feel like I can be the best me possible, right? But I don't have to, like, play by nobody else's rules about how I talk, how I walk, and all of those kinds of things. I don't believe that people should or can bring their whole selves to work. I don't believe in that. I think that, you know, there's some shit you need to leave at home, right? [both laugh] I don't believe--you know, like, my grandmother used to tell me, you know, "Tell some. Keep a lot." You know what I mean? You don't need people knowing everything, right?Zach: Yeah, keep going.Lionel: You should be able to be comfortable when you go to work. You shouldn't have to code switch as much. You shouldn't, you know, have to wonder about your place there as much, you know what I mean?Zach: I do. You're 100% right, yeah. Lionel: Yeah, that's what we did. Zach: You said, "Share a little bit. Keep a lot." But you're right though, and some of that, Lionel, is cultural, right? So, like, I would say black and brown folks--and I'll just speak for my experience. Like, I was raised, you know, you keep your business to yourself, right? Like, there's certain things, where as then, you know, there's stereotypes that white folks love to just tell everything they got going on. They'll talk about the medication they're taking, if they're depressed, you know? They'll share everything. But you're right, like, I'm not tripping on--I don't necessarily--my quote-unquote "whole self," like, I don't have to do that, but I should feel comfortable--right, I should not feel uncomfortable and dread going to work or feel like, man, just so otherized to the point where I can't even function.Lionel: Exactly, and being othered is real, and it's difficult for people to see that, you know? Like, "Oh, we're paying you," you know? "I don't know why you don't feel appreciated," you know? It's that kind of stuff, and it's like, "Man." You know, if I'm coming into work and I can't wait to get home--not because, you know, I just don't want to be at work for whatever reason, but just because I don't feel comfortable and when I get home is when I feel comfortable? Or I'm dreading going to a company event because I don't feel comfortable? You know, that's a problem. That's a problem. That's why there's more brothers and sisters that are consultants than full-time employees in the tech space.Zach: Man... listen. Oh, my goodness. So look, Lionel, you gonna have to come back, because I've got, like, four more topics we can talk about, [laughs] but you're 100% right, right? Like, you think about, like, it's these temporary, transient roles, right, that give you space, but then also, like--they give you space to kind of move around and not get too uncomfortable in these environments. Man, not to mention the pattern where I'm seeing a lot of black and brown folks are in these, like, non-client-facing positions. Like, they'll typically in, like, the security tech roles, but let me not even--let me not step on too many toes today. Let's keep going though. I want to respect your time. Let's get into how you and I connected. So of course, you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm active active on there, but I seen you on there, and you sent me a link about a project you're working on, which really got my attention, and I'd love to--I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that as well as--and just kind of your passion and interest as to why you're doing the work that you're doing on it.Lionel: Yeah. I think you're referring to the microaggressions survey that we sent out.Zach: That's right. Lionel: So Rebekah Bastian is the VP of Community and Culture here. She's my boss, right? I have a direct line to her and then a [?] line to the chief people officer. She and I sit right next to each other. It's an open kind of space. And she's a contributing writer for Forbes. So she was writing this thing on microaggressions, and I was like, "Let me read that," and I read it, and it talked about microaggressions towards women, right, and more microaggressions towards women, and I was like, "Man, that's crazy," you know? Because we suffer from microaggressions. And she was like, "You do, I know that." And I was like, "Yeah, I know you know that, but, you know, there's no data around it. Why don't we do our own survey?" You know, 'cause we couldn't find no data, right? We did the research and whatever, and she was like, "Yeah, I would love to write something on that, but, you know, I can't find any data," and I said, "Well, let's create our own data, you know?" So she put a survey together, and I sent it out to my network, which is pretty broad, and then many of my--that's one thing I want to thank everybody for, including yourself, you know? Many of them sent them out to their networks too. Like, "Hey, you know, this is happening. Let's talk about this." Right? And yeah, I came back and--I think we're gonna try and do this, like, yearly, and try to go even deeper, 'cause I think that it was a great introduction, but I think that we could have covered a couple areas that, you know, people really don't want to cover. But it's important, right? 'Cause I know that I suffer for them still today on a daily basis. I have to check somebody in a meeting or, you know, I also have to be mindful about certain things, right, you know, that they don't have to, you know? When I say them, I mean, like, white folks that are in my same position or at the same level that I'm at, right? And yeah, we still go through it, and it's difficult. You know, it's difficult, and we had to put that information together ourselves 'cause we couldn't find any.Zach: Well, to that point though, why do you think that I&D programs--so I have a bevy of my own theories, right, but why do you think, when we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we don't zoom in on black male or brown male experiences specifically?Lionel: I don't think people really want that wake-up call yet, you know what I mean? I think that people want to imagine that "Hey," you know, they got to this particular spot in their career, you know, they're making this particular amount of money, you know, they should be happy, right? But they don't know that for a lot of us--I mean a lot of us, man, a lot of us--you know, we have to deal with [BLEEP] on a daily basis that they never have to deal with, they never have to deal with. But nobody really wants to put light on that, you know? 'Cause then that would mean that we have to do some more work, and I think people don't want to do that, you know? I think that, you know, people try and find the easiest and fastest way to get to a certain point, right? But when we're talking about something that's this complicated and this nuanced, it's gonna take some work. It's gonna take some serious work, and--what is it--the implicit bias trainings and all of those kinds of things, you know, that's, like, the tip of the iceberg. Nobody wants to.Zach: No, they don't. And it's aggravating too, because even--so I've talked to--so in my current job, and then at previous jobs too, but, like, I have mentors here, and I've [?]--you know, what I find frustrating about us always running into implicit bias is that it makes the presumption that all bias is accidental or unconscious, right? And it's like, "No." Some of y'all actively don't want black and brown people here. Like, come on. It is 20--it is the age of our Beyonce, 2019. We know the deal. [both laugh] We know where people align politically. Like, more than ever we have direct insight into political idealogies, beliefs, and points of view on race, gender, sex, religion, sexuality. Like, we know all these things, so, like, let's not act like everything is "Oh, I stumbled across this racist thing." Like, come on. That's not the reality. So let me ask you this as we kind of wrap up. What are some of the challenges that you've come across as a black executive leader within an I&D space? 'Cause you're the second person. You're only the second person in one of these positions that I've met that is a black man. So you're in this position, right? Typically I see folks in this position are white women and maybe even white women who identiy as LGBTQ, right? As a black man, what does influence and coalition-building look like in your position?Lionel: Influence and coalition-building in my position? Well, one is--you know, one, you've got to have allies. I don't believe that we're in a position right now, that we have the power right now, to be able to make the change that we need to make without powerful allies, right? But at the same time, those powerful allies are working with biases themselves, so you need to make sure that you're training them up, mentoring up with them, to make sure that when they are supporting you that they're supporting you effectively and they know where it's coming from. I agree with you in many ways that, yeah, I don't necessarily think--well, let me change that. I don't believe that bias is a strong enough word for one thing. Two, I don't believe that it is all implicit. I do think that some people are just that way, and they just believe, you know, all of the propaganda and rhetoric that has been going on in the United States forever about us, right? And coalition-building really means getting rid of some of that, you know? Doing the, you know, behavioral change and thought change is important, you know? That kind of thing has to happen before people can really try to support you, because they have to understand that they are being affected, and their actions are being affected, by things that they've been taught for most of their lives in the United States, you know? The United States, man, we're--this is a country built on racism. This is a country that's, you know, built on the backs of us, you know? Whether you're Asian, Latino, Native-American, you know, that's what this country is built on. [to this day sfx]Zach: Straight up.Lionel: To this day.Zach: To this day!Lionel: To this day, right? To this day, and we have to get to a place where we recognize that. We have to get to a place where we're not okay with it. It is something that we're ashamed of, but it's something that we're gonna admit, right? That this is what's going on with us, and we need to move forward from here. That's coalition-building, you know? Getting people to really understand the mistakes that were made. Fess up to them. Own up to them. Make some changes, right? [?]Zach: [Flex bomb sfx] Man, I love it. And, you know, this is the thing--you're the first person who I've had a conversation with who talks about the fact that coalition-building is not only bringing things in but also pushing things away, right? It's both. I love that. I love that. Well, look, let's do this. If you had three points of advice for any leader seeking to specifically recruit and engage black men, what would they be?Lionel: Make sure that what you want to invite them to is welcoming of black men. Do that, right? I mean, don't ask me to come to your house if your house is falling apart. Don't do that. Like, make sure your outline's right first, right? Make sure that you work with recruiting to help them to understand that, yes, they are out there, you're just gonna have to work a little bit harder. Make sure that you work with your executive staff to make sure that they're on board with whatever programs that you put in place so that you can make sure that you keep people once they get there. Zach: I love it. Just like that. And listen, y'all, you heard Lionel's advice, so we looking at you now. So you're gonna come around trying to invite black and brown men to your organizations, and we're looking back at you like [haha sfx]. Look, don't play yourself. Pay attention. This has been great, Lionel. Before we get out of here, any parting words or shout-outs?Lionel: No, man. Thank you for having me. You know, we've got a lot of work to do. You know, we're nowhere near where we could be, and a lot of this is about the economic divide, the wealth gap, and it's just gonna get wider and wider and wider. We've got to get on, you know, our bikes, man. We've got to get to work, you know, 'cause--we've got to get to work. We've got to get to work.Zach: Well, they're projecting that the median wealth of black families from a household perspective will be zero dollars, like, by 2050 or so, so you're absolutely right. We gotta--man, Lionel, this has been--like, no shade to everybody else, y'all, this has been top two dopest conversations we've had on Living Corporate. Thank you so much for being a guest. We very much so want to have you back. We'll talk about that offline. Until next time, y'all, this has been Zach. You've been listening to Lionel Lee at the Zillow Group. Make sure you check out all of his information. Links in the show notes. Catch y'all next time. Peace.

On the ninth entry of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, talks to us about five things she thinks we should consider when pursuing our dream job or just that next best move we can make. You're bringing a lot of things to the plate - your experience, your expertise, your skills - so it's important to make sure that these companies are really delivering that value right back to you!Find out more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBCheck out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBTRANSCRIPTLatesha: What's up, everyone? Welcome to The Link Up with Latesha. I am your host Latesha Byrd, and this podcast is for young professionals that need some real deal advice, tips, and resources to navigate corporate America and dominate their career. If you're looking to upgrade your brand, get the knowledge you need to level up professionally for your future, you are in the right place. I am here with Living Corporate, and today we are talking about five things to consider as you are pursuing your dream job. That's right, talking about pursuing your dream job or your ideal job or the next best move that you can possibly make or--for any type of job opportunity or career path that you are considering, here are five key tips. And this is extremely important because I realized that so many of us really go about this job search process all wrong. For instance, we get our degree--I'll just choose marketing as an example. We'll get our marketing degree, then we just are looking for marketing jobs without thinking about "Is this something that I will actually enjoy? Will it fulfill me? Will I love it?" We're just out here applying to the jobs that we think we can get an interview for, things that, you know, we meet the qualification for, but do these careers actually qualify us, or should we be qualifying them? When you are thinking about the job search process and as it relates to landing an opportunity, it is a transactional relationship. With that being said, you are being paid for your experience, your expertise, your skills. If you have listened to this podcast, you know I've preached on this all of the time, but you're bringing a lot of things to the plate, so it's important to make sure that these companies are really delivering that value right back to you. So as you are thinking about what your next job will look like, I have five tips for you, and the first one is - will this company allow you to live the lifestyle that you ultimately want to live? With that being said, do you want to be able to work flexible hours? I'm a very independent person, just thinking about my personal work style. If you give me something, you give me a task, I'll take it, I'll run with it. Now, you have some others that, like, really emphasize collaboration every step of the way. Not saying that I'm not collaborative. [laughs] I just kind of like doing my own thing, and I'll explain that a little bit later. So just thinking about the type of lifestyle that you want. Do you want to work flexible work hours? I actually don't even really buy into this "work from home" thing anymore. I like the "work from anywhere" model, you know? So let's say I'm traveling [and] I want to go--me and my friend, we actually went to Chicago for a week in August, and, you know, she was--she wanted to go out of town for a week. Her job was flexible and allowed her to do that. So, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. I typically can kind of go and choose to work where and how I please, and so I said, "Hey, girl. I'm coming on this trip with you to Chicago," and we just went to Chicago for a week and, you know, got an Airbnb and just worked, just for a change of scenery. Will your job allow you to kind of live that lifestyle if you do like to be on the go-go-go. With that being said, if you do like to travel, get a job that will give you those travel opportunities, you know? When I worked in recruiting--and that was what I did prior to becoming a full-time entrepreneur. As I was growing my coaching practice I was a recruiter for an accounting firm, managing recruiting for about five offices up and down the East Coast, and through that job I was able to travel up and down the coast, from D.C., Virginia, Atlanta--I went out to Vegas for a few conferences. So a very, very cool experience, and I love to be able to travel. So think about the lifestyle that you want. Will that company, will that job, allow you to do that? We all know that there are certain positions that are a little bit more--that are travel-based, you know? Maybe you have clients all over the states or you have clients internationally that will you require you to have some face time with your clients. So, you know, if you like to travel, that might be a type of job that you would want to consider. You know, consulting, there's so much travel involved in that, and a lot of other types of, you know, opportunities out here that will allow you to do that type of trouble. The second is D&I, or I'll say DE&I. Or is it DEI? [laughs] Diversity, equity, and inclusion. We hear this talk about company culture, right? Making sure that, you know, "You need to be with a company that has a great culture and everyone likes each other." I really think it boils down to "Does this company have innovative DEI initiatives, practices? Are they not just talking the talk, but are they walking the walk?" If a company is really focused on that, their culture is going to be reminiscent of or reflective of, you know, the effort that they actually put behind it, and that's extremely important to me. You know, thinking about--I am a black woman. I want to see black women in leadership roles. It would be great to see them in roles that I aspire to. And, you know, not just black women, but I want to work in teams where I get to work with folks of all different ethnicities and genders and sexual orientations and, you know, all of the things that make us different, because I've realized that as I start to learn from other people from different backgrounds, it actually makes me a more well-rounded individual. And, you know, from a diversity perspective, companies do perform better if their teams are diverse. And I don't want to just emphasize on that diversity piece, but the culture has to be inclusive, and that's a lot more than doing an unconscious bias training once a year. Number three is the team. When you're interviewing with these companies, make sure that you are meeting people that you would like to--that you would be working with. Maybe if you don't have the opportunity to connect with someone who works on that team while you are interviewing, see if you can at least have a conversation with them throughout that process, even if it's over the phone or for something casual. Let's say you interview, you get the offer, and you still don't know who you're working with. Ask them if you can actually speak with those individuals before you make your ultimate decision. You know, it is so important--[laughs]--it is so important to actually like the people that you work with. Do you like them? Do you vibe with them? Is the energy good? You know, these are things to pay attention to as you meet them. What is their working style, you know? Do you have a team that likes to meet every other day to talk about what they're working on? Or if you're like me, where you're a fairly independent worker, hey, maybe "I have my work here, you have your work there. We come together when we have the ultimate team or a larger-scale project that we're working on," but for the most part I'm good, you know? That was one thing that I really enjoyed about being in recruiting, I had my own territory that I managed. The other recruiters on my team, they had their territories that they managed, and we would come together to plan, you know, company-wide recruiting events, initiatives, things of that nature, and I really enjoyed the independency piece of it, but also the opportunities to collaborate as needed. Number four - the work itself. [laughs] Will you actually enjoy the work that you're doing? You know, before I was in recruiting--now y'all are gonna be like, "How many jobs did this girl have?" I had three, okay? I went from accounting to recruiting, and now I am a career coach. [laughs] So I started my career with KPMG in Audit. It was a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful company. I had several internships with them, but as I--and I guess I didn't really think through if I would actually like it until I started working post-graduate school and said, "Wait, is this what I--wait, this is what I signed up for?" You know? As an intern, I was just happy to be collecting a check and to be working with a large organization that had such a great brand recognition. So I realized that I did not enjoy being an auditor, you know? I kind of felt like, man, my clients didn't love seeing me. I wanted to feel like I'm actually making a difference or I'm making an impact where I'm helping, and, you know, folks when they see me, they'd be like, "Ugh, what do you want today?" [laughs] They were actually great. They were fine, but it was sometimes a little harder as an auditor to get what we needed. You just had to kind of, you know, win your client over a little bit, and then it was good, but I ultimately realized that not only that, I just did not enjoy the work, and that become something that was, you know, pretty important, but it's not all about me. I meet a lot of women every day that don't love the work that they do and they are scared to, you know, pursue something else because of the pay, because, you know, maybe this job that they're at right now is giving them some flexibility, or maybe they're just scared, you know? Maybe it's just fear, but if you don't enjoy the work, I promise you there is a job out there where you can enjoy it and you can get all of the other things that you want and more. Number five is growth and training opportunities. Are you interested in growing with the company? Now, success--we should always be reevaluating what success looks like for us from a professional landscape, but, you know, when it comes to growing, do you want to actually grow into a leadership role, a management role? You know, if not, then that's cool too, but depending on how you want your future to look, you need to make sure that the organization is willing and able and has the capacity and is fully vested in your growth and they are going to provide you with training opportunities and development opportunities that will allow you to grow into that professional being that you ultimately want to be. So I hope that these five key things help. Make a list. You know, make a list of all of these things and get as specific as possible. I have all of my coaching clients create a list of at least 30 things that they are looking for in their next role. These are some things to consider. Now, I didn't cover every single thing that's out there, but to me those are the five key things. You have to think about what's most important to you. So that's all I have today. Just to run through those tips again or those keys. Remember, it was five key things to remember as you are considering your next position. One is lifestyle. Two is culture or DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Number three is the team. Do you actually like them? Do you vibe with them? Number four is the work itself. Will you actually enjoy what you are doing? And the last is growth and training opportunities. So that's all I have today. Thank you all so much for listening to The Link Up with Latesha on Living Corporate. If you have any questions or comments or, you know, you have some thoughts, please reach out to me. You can find me on social media, on Instagram and Twitter, at Latesha--that is L-A-T-E-S-H-A underscore Byrd, B-Y-R-D. I'll catch y'all next week. Peace.

On the thirty-third installment of Tristan's Tips, our special guest Tristan Layfield talks to us about the three things he believes all professionals should be scheduling regularly. The best time to find a job is when you're not looking for one, so be sure to implement these strategies to set yourself up for when you do need that new job! Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn, IG, FB, and Twitter!TRANSCRIPTTristan: What is going on, y' all? It's Tristan Layfield of Layfield Resume Consulting, and I've teamed up with Living Corporate to bring you all a weekly career tip. This week let’s talk about 3 things I think ALL professionals need to schedule regularly.Do you know when the best time to find a job is? …. Well let me help you out, the answer is when you’re not looking for one. Searching for a job can be stressful. Think about it. Trying to not only remember what you did the last 4 years of your career but also having to write it down in a compelling way. Attending a ton of events in a short amount of time to try to make new connections in hopes that the uncomfortable first interaction leads to a career. Connecting with people on the internet thinking that maybe, just maybe someone will reach out with an opportunity.All of that induces a ton of anxiety and honestly doesn’t position you for success in your job search. That’s why I think there are 3 things that ALL professionals, no matter if they love or hate their job, should schedule on their calendars to help them in landing their next role:The first thing is time to update your resume - As I said earlier, trying to update your resume after 4 years of not touching it is the worst. Especially if you find that application that’s due tomorrow or someone says, “Hey, shoot your resume over to me now and I’ll see what I can do.” If you put 30 mins on your calendar every month to update your resume while everything is pretty fresh in your brain, you’ll keep yourself out of those binds because your resume will ALWAYS be ready.The second thing that should be on your calendar is time for LinkedIn - Being active on LinkedIn can build up your network which, in turn, can help you in your job search. But being proactive about this allows you build genuine, authentic connections that makes those people more likely to help you in whatever way they can. There are a few things I suggest you get on your calendar when it comes to LinkedIn First, I suggest scheduling time to update your profile monthly around the same time you update your resume. Second, make some time to create posts and engage with other people a couple of times a week, at least.The third thing is time to network - since most jobs are filled through referrals, this is key. The best time to build and warm up your network is when you don’t need them. But remember, networking doesn’t always mean going to events, it also means warming up connections you haven’t talked to in a while. Since old connections run in different circles they tend to provide different information than what you or your inner circle have access to AND you two already have previously established rapport so they are more likely to help you. Oh, and yeah you should go to events too and be sure to always follow up! Having these three things on your calendar at regular intervals will help you remain accountable and also set you up for when you really need that new job!This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, twitter, and facebook at @layfieldresume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn!

Zach speaks with Kori Hale, CEO of CultureBanx, about CultureBanx itself and her personal career journey. They also discuss the concept of producing content, particularly while other, and Kori offers some great advice for professionals who are afraid to make a jump or do something new in their career.Connect with CultureBanx through their website, Instagram, and Twitter - and check out their content on Spotify!Connect with Kori on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and we are here again. More fire for your head top, more content, more real discussions with black and brown people or people that affirm the identities and experiences of black and brown people to center--that's right--black and brown people. And today is no different, 'cause, you know, we're coming to y'all with really good conversations, often times with a special guest, and we have such a guest today - Kori Hale. Kori, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Kori: Hi, Zach. I'm great. How are you?Zach: I'm doing really, really well. I appreciate the fact that you were able to take the time to be on the show. For those of us who don't know you, could you talk a little bit about yourself?Kori: Yes, I can, but before I do, I noticed in the opening you said this show is also for people who affirm the identities of black and brown people, and I was wondering if that included Rachel Dolezal. [laughs]Zach: Oh, goodness. You know what? If Rachel wants to--here's the thing about Rachel. I--it's so confusing, 'cause she could have done so much more as an actual white woman and, you know, given and used her privilege as--you know, and given it away. Instead she chose to, I don't know, handicap herself, but then also take a bunch of, like, praise? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. What do you think? You tell me.Kori: Yeah, I don't know. It is a tough one. However, homegirl can definitely braid some hair based on that Netflix documentary that I saw, 'cause I'm like, "Yo." I mean, normally white people just have less-textured hair, so it's much harder to actually, you know, braid in extensions, and I ain't ever even seen anyone iron some hair like that before. [both laugh] She was teaching me some stuff! So I was like, "Oh, girl, I didn't even know you could do all that."Zach: That's so funny. But you know what? I think this is a really good segue into what you do and your platform, but I'd love to hear more about your journey and kind of--so let's just get it out there. You're the CEO and founder of CultureBanx, which is a media platform for black folks, for black and brown--I'm gonna say black folks, and I'll let you kind of get into it, but let's talk a little bit about your journey and kind of how you got there and then really more about what CultureBanx is.Kori: Yes. So my journey is--well, as I like to say, the path that we're all on in life is not easy, nor is it paved in gold, and that's a lot like my story. I started out as an investment banker, first internationally at a Swiss bank in London, and then I moved back to the States and I was with Goldman Sachs for several years and just really realized, right, that there wasn't anyone that looked like me delivering high-level business financial news in a way that really would resonate with my community, with my core values, and so I was like, you know, "If I can't figure this out, let me maybe try and go work at some of the big networks," specifically business news networks, right, and figure out how can I maybe inject some diversity, because I think that a lot of us, when you work in corporate America, the main thing that you want to do is feel like--and I really actually hate when people use the word "safe places" or "safe space." Like, there's no safe space when you get up and you go to work for somebody else every day, right? Because it's their company. So, like, that doesn't exist, even if they want to create some employee resource group or whatever. Like, the head of the employee resource group still reports to somebody that doesn't look like them, [?] like, up to the CEO of the company. And so I thought I was gonna be able to inject diversity at networks like Bloomberg and CNBC, and even when I was a news anchor down on the floor of the Stock Exchange and actually didn't even know until I was down there that I was the first African-American woman to ever anchor a daily news show from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in its 200+-year history, and I thought, "Well, that's odd." Like, "What's going on here? Why has that never been a thing until I worked at this media startup?" But through that transition of investment banking to then getting into media, what I really realized was that there was no outlet, broadcast, print, or digital, that was gonna deliver the type of content that I was looking for. So if a former investment banker journalist can't create this sort of company for communities that need it the most, then no one else is gonna go out there and do it, and that really brings us more to the present day and CultureBanx, the media company, and what we do is create business news for hip hop culture, and essentially all of our articles have music attached to it that then spins out into different curated Spotify playlists. So it's pretty dope if I do say so myself, because I--Zach: Aye. [laughs]Kori: I mean, it is. I look at music as that sort of underlying theme throughout all communities. It's an easy way to engage, an easy way to see a reflection of yourself, and what if we took that same approach to information and content and not keep pushing just entertainment and sports and celebrity and that sort of stuff to minority communities? Because we think--and by we, the people that are actually even pushing the content towards these communities aren't even from those communities, but they're trying to say, "Oh, this is what they want. This is the only thing they care about," but that's not true. It's just that you're putting it in a, as I like to say, razzle-dazzle sort of way. If you did the same thing but you talked about stocks and mergers and acquisitions, what a difference you might see in those communities.Zach: No, you're absolutely. And I mean, I think the other piece is, like, also acknowledging the work that those communities are already doing, right? So there's more and more black tech spaces that are coming up organically, right? Like, you think about--there's multiple of these types of pods, like, within the coastal cities, the DMV, LA, Oakland, Houston, the Midwest and Chicago. Like, there's all types of just organic things happening. Healthy living co-ops. There's all types of activities that are happening in these--again, like, in these black and brown communities, but there are larger, I think, like--I don't know, just larger narratives and systems in place that minimize those stories. And also there's a lack of funding, right, and marketing awareness for those organizations that are already in place. What I think I hear you talking about is really exciting because you're pushing more content, and then I also believe CultureBanx provides opportunities, or at least opens up a lens to what is actually happening today in those spaces, right?Kori: Yes. We definitely provide people with what we call the culturally-attuned perspective in those spaces. I mean, it's easy to see a headline--to your point--about minority maybe co-working spaces or different companies or organizations, institutions, that are focusing in the STEM fields as it relates to minorities. What we really try to push over at CultureBanx are the everyday stories though. So not just [whatever?] falls in the minority bucket 'cause it mentioned something about the Latinx or Asian or black community, but this story is the headline on all of these platforms, and this is information you need to know, but they're not gonna tell you exactly why it's relevant to your community, why you should personally care about something like that. And Zach, can I go ahead and give your listeners a quick example here?Zach: Come on.Kori: So last year, Michael Kors--the company, the retail brand--bought Versace, a very famous Italian luxury retail brand, for $3 billion. You would think on the surface, "Okay, well, that's interesting I guess, if you're into fashion," or even if you're not into fashion, but no one is telling you why that deal is really a play on urban culture. And the reason that Michael Kors really wants a bigger stake in Versace is because of Versace's long-standing love affair with hip-hop, hip-hop and the community, and hip-hop of course being the #1 genre of music for the past decade.Zach: In the world.Kori: Right. Hip-hop leads these trends, and the majority of hip-hop artists are African-American. We've seen a huge rise, right, with Latinx performers in the hip-hop community as well, but still all in that, you know, minority category, and just that spending power alone of African-Americans is currently at $1.3 trillion, making the spending power of this community larger than the economy of Mexico.Zach: Come on, now. [Flex bomb sfx]Kori: Y'all gotta feel me when I say we have more spending power than the entire country of Mexico just as an African-American community, a subset of the bigger U.S. population, but it's more powerful than entire countries. And so to get in front of that audience, right, is something that most brands want, and no one is gonna talk about that the way we're gonna tell you "This is why this is important," right? This market move by Michael Kors to acquire Versace is much bigger than them trying to perhaps get into more of the luxury business and much bigger than Versace trying to figure out how it can get into more stores. It's like, "Hey, we know their main audience, the people that are spending money." I mean, think of all of the free advertisement that Versace gets in hip hop songs?Zach: Oh, no, 100%. 'Cause part of me--I was talking to my wife about this. I was like, "Dang, I wonder if any of these rappers--like, do they have deals that they don't talk about?" Right? Like, when Migos made that song "Versace," right, like, did they have some secret deal, like, a marketing agreement, and, like, did Drake get a piece of that? 'Cause, like, it's just wild that--like, we do that though. Like, we'll talk about Polo, Versace, Gucci. Like, we love high-end brands. We talk about Pateks. Like, we talk about--anything that's, like, European and very expensive, like, they end up in rap songs, and I just ask myself--and maybe I'm a little bit more conspiratorial than I should be. I'm always thinking about, like, there's just some grander scheme here--like, I just wonder, like, is there some, like, larger agreement that maybe even some of these record labels have with these European brands to then create this content? 'Cause you're absolutely right. Like, we promote it at crazy levels. Like, I wouldn't have wore Polos when I was in middle school like I did if it wasn't for Kanye, and I wouldn't have wore--like, there's just a bunch of clothes that I just wouldn't have purchased without--like, without rap influence, you know what I mean?Kori: No, I completely understand what you're saying. I think that that's what makes this so fascinating and so interesting, that other businesses, industries, sectors, they really value, right, the trendsetting and the taste-makers that come from minority communities moreso than we will value our own, you know, power, and that's the problem, because sometimes I don't think that we really immensely understand the power that we have. So when things are not going right, let's say on the negative side--racism, sexism, those sort of things--like, how valuable withholding your dollars from certain brands can be to move the needle.Zach: Yes, you're absolutely right. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, these insights that you're having around media production--like, the business insights that you're having and that you're bringing to this space, I mean, I think it comes from your business journey, right? Like, you've had a few different jobs, and you don't really give the impression of someone who's afraid to change. So, like, can we talk a little bit about where you started, and then, you know, what advice you would give to professionals who are wherever they are for whatever reason and they're afraid to make a jump and to do something new? Kori: Yes. I actually really love kind of telling this particular part of my journey, but I'ma take it back a little bit before I actually started working and shout-out my undergrad university, Hampton University, out there in the Hampton Roads area right outside of Virginia Beach. And going to an HBCU is a very great experience, but for me personally, growing up in Houston, Texas, I grew up knowing and being around affluent African-Americans, so that wasn't, like, a stretch for me, to see black people that had real money, not the--you know, the kind of clout money as they say. That wasn't really a stretch for me, but going to Hampton University and really getting a full scope and breadth of black people from across the country, like, that was very eye-opening for me, and what it instilled was really the value of appreciating what we can do as a community and, you know, us being a part of that talented [?] and what that would mean for the future of our community. And after Hampton, when I moved to London and started investment banking at the Swiss bank UBS, I was like, "Huh. Well, this is also odd, because now I'm back in this super minority--" I call it a double-minority status, because I'm not just, like, a black person living abroad--I'm a black person and I'm also an American, so it was just a lot of things to have to work through. But coming back to the States from London and working at Goldman, I kind of got a better sense of the way that corporate America worked, and I wanted--at the time I thought the ultimate goal was to become a partner, right? That's what you kind of train for, that's what you kind of work up--"what you should be," as the company will tell you, should be aspiring towards. [cha-ching sfx] And I'm like, "Okay, so let me sort out this path." And I figured out what that path was about two years after I started at Goldman. I stayed another couple of years, but after those first two years when I figured it out, I also got into the mindset of "Okay, I pretty much know what it's gonna take and how long it's gonna take me to get there." Like, "That can't be the mountaintop," so to speak, because there's got to be more to life than this. And I really just took those next two years where I was at the firm to kind of navigate what I wanted to do. Like, if you would have told me at the time that I started at Goldman that I would one day be running my own media company, like, I would have laughed at you, because I had no aspirations to be in media. I didn't know anything about journalism. Matter of fact, the day I left Goldman Sachs, I did not know one person that worked in media. I'm talking about not even an assistant, even a doorman at a building, security officer at a news room, nothing. Like, I literally knew no one that actually worked in any news corporation, but I felt like God spoke to me when I was at Goldman and said that this is what I should be doing. I just kind of decided to stick with it, and some of the partners that were mentors and sponsors for me, I ran this idea by them, that I, you know, was gonna leave Goldman and go to journalism school and try and become a business news journalist--they were very supportive, and they told me basically, like, you're young--I was around 26 at the time--and if it doesn't work out, you can always come back here. Like, "You can always come back to GS if it doesn't work out," but a lot of them were basically like, "Don't be like us." Like, "Don't buy into," essentially drinking the company corporate Kool-Aid, so to speak, and stay here because you've figured out the path and it seems safe and secure, because you'll always look back and say, "But if I would have given this other thing a shot, even if I failed, at least I would have known I tried." And going back to a respectable organization like GS isn't a terrible fallback plan for anyone. Luckily I haven't had to tap into that fallback plan, but you never know what the future holds. [laughs] So we can always see, but that's kind of how that transition happened.Zach: You know, it's just incredible because--I'll speak for myself, right? Like, you know, I didn't think that I would get here, where I am, in my job, you know? I didn't think that I would be--I didn't think I'd be working here. Like, I remember when I was in high school I said, "I think I want to be a consultant one day," and my high school counselor said, "You're not gonna be a consultant," right? You know? And then after that, before I became a consultant I was trying to pursue a career in HR. I had folks who look like me saying, "You're not gonna be an HR manager," right? So, you know, for me, because of that and not having a lot of people that look like me in these spaces, getting to one of these jobs seemed to be the mountaintop, right? But the reality is that there's more to life than just working for somebody else. And, you know, no shame to anybody who wants--like, who wants to be a career... career person, but there's more than that. You know, how did you navigate some of the--like, the fear and anxiety that came with, like, making that jump? So you came--I'm not gonna get into your pockets, but I would presume, I could be wrong, that perhaps your career at Goldman Sachs gave you a little bit more financial flexibility to, like, make certain moves and take certain risks that other people couldn't take. Is that a wrong assumption, or is that--you know, did any of that come into play in terms of, like--do you feel like, because of your job, you were able to--you had more space to kind of take that leap?Kori: I think my job gave me--and, like, the money I made while I was there, it definitely gave me the flexibility to be able to go to Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communication and figure out, like, "Could I make this journalism career a thing?" I think it definitely gave me that because I had the confidence to know that if, for whatever reason, it didn't work out, I would be able to go back and have, you know, a very good-paying job, but also, like, enough money, for the most part, to help me at least get through, like, the schooling part.Zach: So then--so let's talk a little bit about the concept of producing, right? So you're a content creator. You're a producer. It's a term though that's thrown around quite a bit, right? Especially, like, in today's digital age. What does it really mean in your mind to be a producer in the media space today?Kori: I look at content producers in general as people that are creating new original, authentic shows, articles, media content in general. So not the companies that are aggregators of information. Like, there are a lot of companies out there that are basically just pulling stuff from other people's websites, but they're not actually holistically creating something that was not there before, and that's really a major differentiator in the space, because--to your point about a lot of different, like, black and brown minority-based concepts popping up, you've got to be able to stand out on your own and be creating in a space that no one else is already creating in. I think that we definitely need minority spaces, but we shouldn't divide and conquer, right? We're stronger together. We don't necessarily need 50 different versions of co-working spaces for people of color. I'm not saying that we only need one, but would it make more sense to pool our efforts together in order to create something bigger? Zach: No, you're absolutely right. It's interesting though because it's--like, so kind of going on the co-working space thing and, like, other ideas, one, because, like, our networks--I don't know, our networks are just different, and also, like, because sometimes we come into spaces late, or we--and when I say come into spaces, I mean we don't have the same amount of support to, like, be early adopters in the spaces that we may see our white counterparts do. So, like, we'll come into a space, and we'll come into the space at the same time, and so it looks oversaturated, right? But I actually--like, I don't know. So talk to me more about--so you zoomed in on co-working spaces twice now. Like, talk to me a little bit more about what you're seeing in that space and why--like, what's your point of view on it? 'Cause, like, I think they're really cool. I'm a consultant, so I have a co-working space all of the time because of, like, just the nature of my job. Like, I can just go to any home office, like, through the firm that I work at, but I think that they're a pretty cool idea, and they seem to be used, but, like, I'm not really as plugged in. So, like, I'd be open to you educating me on it.Kori: Yeah. So, I mean, I don't--I have a co-working space as well, but I don't really use it that much, and it's not a co-working space at a place for people of color, but specifically on that front, like, I do know a couple of founders that are trying to launch their own versions of, like, specifically of women of color, others specifically for founders of color in a particular sector, like, that sort of thing. I actually feel like that is a very fragmented marketplace, almost much in the way of The Wing, which is a very popular all-female co-working space that WeWork has actually invested in, and I definitely think there's a space where, you know, women want to be, but one of the main issues with the WeWork is that there are no men allowed, which, if you're a smaller business--which most people that use co-working spaces tend to be--you don't always want to have to go outside of your co-working space for a meeting. And I think that there are other ones that have popped up along the way. Like, there's one for women executives, right, where it's also fragmenting the market, but it's fragmenting the market in a way that makes people feel like they're being part of an elite club, if you know what I mean. Like, "Oh, you have to be at a certain level at whatever your organization is to be invited to be a member here." I think that sort of way of strategically planning out how you roll out different co-working spaces for people of color is a better strategic roadmap to success than just saying, "We're opening up a place for people of color."Zach: What is the--what would you recommend as the approach to, like, unify and desegment that space?Kori: Right. I think the best way to look at it is like, "This is the community that we're trying to get in front of," or that we're trying to help, and really pinpointing "What are the most important things to those people?" And I can actually liken that back to CultureBanx, like, and going into roadmapping out how do you deliver content to this so-called new woke generation in a way that they can actually identify with and see a reflection of themselves and their community with? And when you think of co-working spaces, like, what is it that's most important to the community of potential co-working clients and users that makes the most sense? And back to CultureBanx, for us it was everything that tends to be pushed that does really well in front of minority audiences has something to do around entertainment, music, celebrity. So it's how do we bring that to what we do so that it doesn't seem like it's such a far off leap for people to be interested?Zach: So then what does it look like--you know, let's talk about, like, the professional who--maybe they're not looking to start their own company, they're not looking to--they're just trying to survive at their job, right? Let's talk about, like, the concept of producing and, like, bringing these--and, like, the principles that you're talking about with CultureBanx, and how do you think those principles can be applied to a black and brown professional at work? Because ultimately there seems to be a certain level of purposefulness and intentionality. That's the better word. A certain level of intentionality and strategy that it comes to really producing effectively and really kind of managing brand. Do you think any of that could be effectively leveraged, utilized, for folks in their 9-to-5 jobs? Kori: Yes, but I think it always starts with figuring out--like, knowing your end goal and working backwards. So as I mentioned earlier, when I thought my end goal was to become a partner at Goldman, it was "Okay, well, I want to become a partner. I'm only a senior analyst now." Like, "Let's scale back from partner and work our way backwards and see what it takes to get there," to your point, like, your own self brand management at work every day. And funny enough, this is something that a lot of people don't know about me, I actually left Goldman about two months after I got promoted, which is--but I had already been--but this is when I talk about the planning. I had already been planning, like, my strategic, like, exit. As you all know, I'm sure, that are listening right now, you know, you apply to a school, you have to wait to get in, that sort of thing. You know, take the tests or whatever tests you need to be admitted to these universities. So, like, I had already been strategically planning that, but I had also still been working on that plan of "If I do stay and try to navigate my way to someday becoming partner--" I was still working that plan too and, you know, just came to that crossroads of "Huh, do I--" Even after I got promoted I almost decided that I was gonna stay and not even pursue this whole journalism path. I'm like, "Oh, this happened sooner than expected." So, you know, I was on the high-performing track as they call it at some companies, the fast track to moving up. Like, there was no real reason for me to want to leave other than I felt like my life's purpose and calling was greater than what I was currently doing. And when you are constantly in this strategic mode of planning out "What does it look like in my 9-to-5 every day to be able to push to the next level?" Everything about what you do has to be very heavily managed, as a person of color especially, and I know that in corporate America people try to heavily, like, push this whole concept of mentorship and sponsorship. I will tell you I'm not a huge fan of mentors, and every time I say that people will, like, give me their pushback, which is fine. You're entitled to your own opinion. But especially in corporate America, sponsorship is significantly more powerful than mentors, because mentors, they can also be sponsors, but you know how much more effective it is if you come to somebody with a game plan already and say, "Would you be willing to help me navigate executing this plan or this strategy?" As opposed to going to a mentor and being like, "You know, I'm really trying to figure out what role I want," or "I'm moving to the next department and thinking through--" Like, show up with some skin in the game already. Like, "I've already done X, Y, and Z, and it would be great if you could help facilitate." Now, obviously most people don't want to--I shouldn't say they don't want to. Most people want to feel like they're imparting their wisdom and knowledge on you, but if you're in a position where you can make that person look good by helping them or by them getting you to the next level, that only sets you up for more success.Zach: No, you're absolutely right. I also do think that there's a certain level--I don't know. I'm not trying to, like, pathologize nobody, and I'm not a psychologist, [but] I do believe that there is a meta-narrative of, like, non-minorities paternalistically trying to tell black and brown folks what to do, and they kind of revel in, you know, putting people in their place or just raising them in some way. [laughs] So I 100% agree with you. I think a lot of that stuff is often, like, self-aggrandizing and ego-centric. To your point around--like, I think it's more about the relationships you can build and what value you can directly say that you helped somebody else with to help them be successful. That's the way that I've seen people really climb up, right? It's not necessarily being like, "Oh, this person pulls me aside and gives me things to work on, and that's how I got promoted so fast." That's not really the case, 'cause you and I both have seen folks, you know, in an industry who have no business being in the position that they're in, and yet, you know, they're there, you know?Kori: Yeah. I mean, I think we all see that in this country, starting at the very top at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.Zach: Oh, wait a minute. Hold on now. [and i oop sfx]Kori: Not getting deeply into politics, but just saying, like it or hate it, if you agree with his politics or not--'cause people could say the same thing about 44, President Obama. Like him or hate him, you could argue one way or another and say maybe he didn't deserve--purely based on a resume, not basing on anything else. Purely basing it on so-called skills and qualifications for the role, you could make a case that he wasn't necessarily qualified, and it could be justified. You could make the same case for the current president, that he is not qualified for some of the same on the opposite end of the spectrum. I look at Barack and I say--excuse me, let me put some respect on that man's name. I look at President Obama--Zach: Come on, now.Kori: [laughs] And say that--it would be easier for people to say, you know, he doesn't actually have any business experience. He hasn't been serving in public office for any lengthy amount of time. Like, things that you would call into question for someone who would be taking the office of president. And on the other end of the spectrum you have president Trump, and you can say, "Yeah, he's run some corporations." They, on the outside, seem successful, but as we all know, when you dig in there are lots of question marks and, you know, missing documents, but you would say, "But he's never served in public office. What does he know about actually serving people essentially that aren't, you know, paying customers in that way?" Outside of the taxes that we pay. And you would question whether or not that someone is fit for that position. So yes, to your point, we all find that. "Why is this person in this position?" Well, most of the time it comes down to a likability factor. It doesn't come down to skill sets. And that's really my point, is that it's proven at the highest level. Like, something that my mom would always say to my older brother Kenan and I--primarily it started when we were in college--she would tell us, "You can either network or not work." Like, you going into work every day and doing your job that you're hired for, that's only 50% of your job. The other 50% needs to be you networking with people, because you don't know where your next opportunity is gonna come from, and your next opportunity, the likelihood that it comes from what you're doing sitting at your desk every day is very slim. It mostly comes from that person that you got coffee with once every two or three months.Zach: And I think this is the--so I don't know. I feel like you and I should actually have, like, another conversation. This isn't, like--you know, we don't typically do, like, in-depth conversations about different points of view on, like, whiteness or just, like, privilege, but, like, I'm curious to get your point of view on, like, even that. Like, that right there, the idea that you're building relationships off of the people that you're getting coffee with. Like, there are barriers to making sure that you even get that coffee, you know what I mean? Like, there are certain people that get invited to get coffee and then some people who don't, right? And then there's--and then as you even get to, like, the executive levels, you know, so many sales relationships are built on historical relationship equity that black and brown people just don't have 'cause they haven't been in these spaces. And so, like, I'm curious as to, like, your point of view on what does it look like--when you talk about relationships, when you talk about, like, navigating--and we kind of strayed away from the concept of producing, but I still think we're there. Like, what does it look like to use those tools to then, like, create those connections as much as you can?Kori: Yeah, getting invited to coffee versus, you know, kind of pushing your way in, I think that as a minority myself and other minorities especially working in corporate America need to take that ownership of organizing, of basically being like, "I'm gonna set up this sort of coffee situation." And I can give you all an example of my own personal story. So I worked at a media startup called Cheddar before I launched CultureBanx, and I actually knew the founder of Cheddar for a year or so before he ever even launched that company because he used to be the president of BuzzFeed, and then after that he was the CEO of The Daily Mail, and I knew him because I would book him as a guest to come on this show I used to produce for called Squawk Alley on CNBC. [owww sfx] And I used to just, you know, book him, and you kind of just build relationships, right, from being a producer, with different people, and that is essentially how I got that next role. So it had nothing to do with the fact of what I got up and went into work to do every day. Zach: Right. And again, what I continue to hear is just the willingness to put yourself out there. It's just so interesting, because, like, with non-whiteness I believe comes a certain level of unfamiliarity, right? So, like, you have the--if you don't look like somebody, even if--so let's just say there's two white people, right? They may have completely different backgrounds. Like, they may have completely different religious, socio-economic, even, like, cultural backgrounds, but that, like--the benefit of looking like somebody, there's certain grace that's given and space that's made to, like, more easily build relationships, where as if you're a person of color, like, what I'm hearing a lot--even though you're not saying it explicitly, Kori--is, like, you had to put yourself out there. You had to be enterprising. You had to connect the dots. You had to be much more strategic and intentional with your time and with, like, even how you present yourself and the things that you're doing and what you offer, right? Like, you had to really come--you had to really be thinking of a position of value creation, and that's great for you. Like, you're clearly a beast, right? Like, you've been--you've made moves moves, but what does it look like for--like, teaching that to somebody who isn't wired that way. Right? That could be challenging.Kori: It definitely is, and I am in no way a master of teaching it to other people. I know I have personal friends that say, "Kori, you're really great at public speaking," or "You're really great at going in and selling yourself or whatever it is that you're doing to other people." This is what I will say - it's a learned skill. Like, I didn't come out of the womb, like, doing this. There's definitely certain personality traits that are more akin to being able to just pick up these sort of things and these sort of characteristics, but it's a learned skill day in and day out, and it can start very basic. Going back to the coffee thing. Like, getting comfortable--which I know this is overused--with the uncomfortable, with making yourself uncomfortable. And if you're not the type who's gonna send a random email--which I love when people say to me, "Well, I mean, what am I gonna say?" I'm like--to your point about it kind of being a bit narcissistic with mentorship and that, people do love to talk about themselves. So just put it out there that, "Hey, you know, I'd like to talk to you. I'd like to learn more about what you do." And make it more about them. Normally, like, if you're in a relationship and you break up with somebody, you give them the "It's not you, it's me" speech. In business, give them the "It's not about me, it's all about you" speech. Like, when you send the email, like, "Hey, this whole thing is about you," right, "'cause you're so great, you're so fantastic. I just want to know about what you're doing." As a way to soften the introduction or the awkwardness that you think lies there, because you might not really know someone, even though that's something that you eventually might want to do or an area that you might want to move into. You have to do more, because you didn't go to boarding school with So-and-so, you know what I mean? You probably didn't go to all of the right Ivys, and even black people that have gone to Ivys, like--Zach: Listen, I've heard. Yeah, I've heard the experiences are different.Kori: Yeah. Like, if you didn't grow up in that world, like, you're still not necessarily accepted. So I think it's just you have to put yourself out there because they're not gonna know to contact you. Like, your parents, you know what I'm saying, y'all don't go sell off, you know, Martha's vineyard [?]. You didn't grow up going to summer camp for two months after you left boarding school, so basically you only saw your parents on holidays, and you're not even in college. You're only in the seventh grade. Zach: Right. You didn't go to Vermont to make artisanal pickles, you know what I'm saying?Kori: No, you didn't do any of that. So they already have 10--and that's just, like, at your level. Now you've got to think about how connected these parents are. Like, you're fighting a major uphill battle, and you can't go in every day and say, "I'm heads down. I'm gonna do a great job," which is something that they try to preach to you, right? Like, "Just go in. Work hard. Excel at your role." Like, "That's how you're gonna see opportunities."Zach: That's not true. Like--[laughs]Kori: You know why you're not gonna see any opportunities? Because your head is down at your desk or on the computer screen.Zach: And meanwhile we're upset. We're over here like [what more do you want from me? sfx] You know? It's just like--we're doing everything we can. So I 100% hear you and I agree with you, right? And not that I need to agree with you - this is a space of open ideas, you know? So diversity of thought is not real, but we do appreciate diversity of thought as it pertains or intersects with lived experiences of black and brown folks. So this has been super cool. Look, we've talked about CultureBanx, we've talked around CultureBanx. One thing we haven't done is talk about where people can learn more about CultureBanx, so please drop the info in here. We'll make sure to put it in the podcast notes and everything, but please let us know.Kori: Yes. Check us out at CultureBanx.com. You can find all of the content on our website. Sign up for our newsletter, daily newsletter, bringing you the latest, greatest, most important business news for the culture, as we say, every single day. You can also listen to the CultureBanx daily news briefing on any smart speaker device and also on Spotify. Everything is @CultureBanx on social media. Luckily we got in. There's no other company called CultureBanx, so it's the same--Zach: Aye. People underestimate how powerful that is. If you have the only name and you've got the domains--'cause let me tell you something. I've got--no, keep going. I'm messing your plug up. Keep going.Kori: [laughs] No, you're not, but it is important. Like, everything is literally just @CultureBanx. With an X, people. Don't forget.Zach: Please say the X, you know what I'm saying? Hold on. [Flex bomb sfx, both laugh] Oh, my goodness. Well, look, this has been super dope, and, you know, we just really appreciate you. Before we let you go, any parting words or shout-outs?Kori: Parting words? I think the main parting words I would have is something that we say on our show, which is just keep building for the culture. Zach: Come on, now.Kori: We gotta do it for each other.Zach: [straight up sfx] You're absolutely right. Now, look, this has been a dope conversation. Thank you all for listening to the Living Corporate podcast. Now, look, y'all know--I wasn't trying to mess up Kori's plug, but y'all know we got all the Living Corporates, okay? We got livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.org, livingcorporate.net, livingcorporate.us. We don't have livingcorporate.com. We have living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com, but we don't have livingcorporate.com. Australia has livingcorporate.com. Believe it or not, Kori, Australia, and they're selling corporate stuff. But see, the SEO looking kind of brolic out here, 'cause now when you type in Living Corporate--they used to be at the top. Now they're like, you know, in 8th or 9th. You know what I'm saying? Like, we applying pressure, you feel me? One day the brand will be brolic enough where we're gonna go to Australia and we will politely, respectfully, yank that domain right on back, and we're gonna have all the livingcorporates, and we're gonna just sit on a mountain of domains, you know what I'm saying?Kori: Which is not a bad idea. I'm actually helping out this other startup that's trying to modernize central banks, and the name of the company--which I won't throw out there right now--is so generic, and the person, the founder, has been using, like, different versions of the name of the company to try and set up, you know, different social accounts, and they have--even the website's name is not what she calls the actual name of the company, and I'm like, "This is too confusing. Like, people don't know where to go."Zach: 100%. People be having, like, the dopest ideas and be like, "Oh, we're gonna launch Bread.com." Like, yo, fam, you gotta figure out something else. Like--Kori: Right. You had to launch Bread.com when the internet first started. Like, the late '80s, mid-to-late '80s. Like, that's when you needed to launch that, but at this point no.Zach: Straight up. Man, this is funny. This is, like, the first, like, interrupted outro we've done, but it's really good. I like it, and we might have to start doing this moving forward. All right, y'all. Look, you can check us out. We're everywhere. In fact, just Google Living Corporate at this point. That's right. Stunt. That's right. Lowkey flex, but it's an honest flex. So Google Living Corporate. We out here. If you have questions you want to email us, check us out at LivingCorporatePodcast@gmail.com. Hit us up on the DMs. Twitter is @LivingCorp_Pod, Instagram is @LivingCorporate, and until next time, this has been Zach, and you have been talking to Kori Hale, CEO and founder of CultureBanx. Peace.