Maya Grossman Mixed.mp3

Maya Grossman: [00:00:00] And you don't need to be a marketer to become great at telling stories, because the basis is very, very simple. It's never about you and it's always about them.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:00:40] What's up, everybody? Welcome to the artists of Data Science podcast, the only self development podcast for Data scientists. You're going to learn from and be inspired by the people, ideas and conversations that'll encourage creativity and innovation in yourself so that you can do the same for others. I also host open office hours. You can register to attend by going to bitterly dot com forward, slash a d. S o h. I look forward to seeing you all there. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a five star review.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:01:35] Our guest today is a marketing executive, blogger, speaker, podcasters and career coach as a marketing consultant. She's worked with all sorts of companies, from small startups to Fortune 500 companies, helping them build high performance marketing teams. She's worked for companies like Microsoft and Google, racking up multiple promotions and raises and strategically leveling up from an individual contributor all the way up to the vice president level. She's blended her experience climbing the corporate ladder, motivational leadership style, authentic voice and love for helping others into a book designed to give you the tools you need to succeed.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:02:18] Please help me in welcoming our guest today, author of Invaluable: Master The Ten Skills You Need to Skyrocket Your Career, which I'm sure will be a future New York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling book, Maya Grossman.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:02:34] Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to come on to the show today. I really appreciate you being here.

Maya Grossman: [00:02:40] Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:02:44] Maya talk to us a little bit about where you grew up and what was it like there?

Maya Grossman: [00:02:49] I actually grew up in Israel, born and raised. And I had a very, I would say standard childhood kind of. I had both parents with me, went to school, came back home, did my homework. I was a complete nerd. I grew up to believe that education is probably the most important tool you can have in your tool kit. So my focus was on being a great student, to be honest.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:03:15] And so in high school, you're a great student. What did you think the future would look like for you?

Maya Grossman: [00:03:21] I'm not sure I knew what it would look like. I just remember during that time, in my mind, I imagined myself being a lawyer. I watched way too much TV and I wanted to be the person to say, objection, your honor, just like you see on TV. It seemed so exciting that this is how I imagined my future.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:03:42] Is it way different now from what you imagined it would be?

Maya Grossman: [00:03:46] Yeah, I think if you look at my career and everything I did to date, it has nothing to do with being a lawyer or TV for that matter. I kind of followed my passion and it took me a while to find it. I spent the first seven years of my career as a travel agent, which wasn't a bad job. I work for a great company. I was moving up the ladder, but I wasn't excited and passionate every single day. And then when I did my bachelors, I actually fell in love with marketing and decided this is what I want to do for the rest of my career and try to find ways to actually get into that profession and build a career in marketing.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:04:29] So what would you say you love most about marketing? What makes that such an interesting career and interesting field for you?

Maya Grossman: [00:04:37] I think initially a lot of what I learned about marketing had to do with strategy, and it had to do with communications and really understanding people and how they think. And that's what really got me excited. I'm not as excited about algorithms and tricking people, but I really love the storytelling aspect of it and how it can actually change people's perspective.

Maya Grossman: [00:05:03] But doing it in a very kind of kind and authentic way,

Harpreet Sahota: [00:05:07] I absolutely love that I've been really digging into marketing recently just to understand the field. And obviously with the podcast, marketing is kind of a aspect of it. It's I've been digging into a lot of work by Seth Godin, and I think its, This is Marketing and there's another one that's funny is called All Marketers are Liars.

Maya Grossman: [00:05:25] Oh, yeah, that's a great book.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:05:27] Both of them amazing books and what I read recently was actually by Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller. I'm not sure if you've heard of that one either, but it's such a fascinating, interesting field.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:05:36] So talk to us about how your experience coming out of high school, going to college, climbing up the corporate ladder and being so high up the corporate ladder. At what point where you're like, oh, I've got to make a book about this. I can teach people like, how did all this experience culminate in a book?

Maya Grossman: [00:05:52] Yeah, I definitely think it's something that I wanted to do for a while. So I had a task. Every year I create my list of goals for the year and I had to write a book on it for years, but I had no idea what I wanted to write the book about. But now when I look back on my career, I've been a mentor and a coach for fifteen years. Every job that I had, even if I wasn't a manager, I was helping others, just giving advice and kind of sharing what I was doing. And I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. It made me really happy to see other people kind of optimize their work and maximize their potential. And I think it was about. A year ago, I was doing some consulting for Google, and at the time three different people came up to me and asked me the same questions and I was giving them the exact same answers about their career and what they should do. And it hit me that this is what I'm going to write about. This is how I am going to make a bigger impact on people's lives. I'm just going to take all that advice and put it into a book.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:06:58] What was the process like for you writing the book? Like, how did you kind of structure your book? You've got 10, 10 skills that you needed to skyrocket your career. Like how did you settle on the number 10 and how do you kind of organize them and have that all kind of unfold?

Maya Grossman: [00:07:13] So I started I think I had like twenty three different skills. Basically, I sat down and I wrote everything I thought helped me achieve the success that I've achieved in my career. And slowly I tried to kind of group the different skills until I ended up with probably like 15. And from there I just try to focus on the skills I thought were the most valuable and the most relevant and the ones that will actually drive you forward and the ones that didn't have a lot of information about them. And I structure them in a way that is kind of compounded so that every skill that you learn is going to make the next skill easier. And the last two skills in the book, How to create your career roadmap and a Plan and how to track your success. That's how you're going to keep yourself motivated and you're going to continue working on your career. These are the tools, the practical tools that are going to keep you going.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:08:13] So I'd love to get into the book. I think there's so much wonderful content and there's so much wonderful material that I know the audience is going to love to hear about.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:08:21] So first question here is what is invaluable all about? What does that mean?

Maya Grossman: [00:08:28] Yeah, so it's kind of funny how I fell into that word invaluable a couple of years back. I was sitting with my manager at the time and they already knew I was going to move to a different role. And I asked them if you had to describe me, what would you tell a hiring manager? Because I wanted them to give me a good reference. And my manager looked at me and he said one word. He said exceptional. And that word stuck in my head. And when I started writing the book, the original name was exceptional. But somehow it wasn't enough. When I told people exceptional, it didn't resonate with them. And every time I tried to explain what the book is about, I said, Oh, you're going to be an invaluable employee. And so I kept using that word. I said, OK, so the name has to be invaluable. And I think it really represents an employee that constantly delivers value, someone who stands out not just from the norm, but he goes above and beyond, even like the highest performers, someone who is able to think about the bigger picture and not just their own job description, someone who is willing to solve problems and one who initiates someone who's accountable. So not just someone who would get the job done, but someone who knows how to get the right things done. And when you put all of that together, I think you get to a point where you become so valuable to a company that they want to help you advance. They want to make sure that you're happy and they want to make sure that you stay with them. And that makes you invaluable.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:10:08] So who's this book for, like in your mind that you're writing this book for somebody? Who is that person that you're writing this book for?

Maya Grossman: [00:10:16] Yeah, I think initially I thought, you know, if you're early in your career, if maybe you're just graduating and you're doing your first internship, your first job, you're really clueless when it comes to what actually happens in the day to day because you might have learned a lot about a vocation. You may have some expertize, but what happens when your boss yells at you or you miss the deadline or you need to get some stakeholders to actually support you because you need a budget to do something? And I think a lot of those situations is where young professionals get stuck.

Maya Grossman: [00:10:52] And I wanted to give them and guide something that they can go to and solve all of these problems before they even occur. And I think also anyone who is really ambitious and really wants to make the most out of their career, whatever success means to them, success does not look the same to all of us. But if you have a goal, there's no way you're going to achieve it. If you don't have a plan and this book is going to teach you how to achieve your career goals.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:11:21] Is it ever too late for anyone to become invaluable? Let's say you've been in the same job 15 years in the mid thirties, late thirties, kind of feeling jaded. And, you know, you want something more. Is it ever too late to become invaluable?

Maya Grossman: [00:11:37] I don't think so. Invaluable is all about mindset. It's all about developing soft skills and it's someone that anyone can do at any time. The only thing is you actually need to want it and you need to do the work to get to the results. You can't just read the book, maybe talk about it like a mantra, but not do anything. If you don't take action, you're not going to see results. But I had people read this book who are in their late thirties and forties and they said, you know what? It just motivated me to try even harder to do something different. It gave me the direction that I need to be even better than what I am right now. So I don't think it's ever too late.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:12:21] And what I like about these 10 skills is that they're kind of agnostic to whatever industry one person is going to be in. Right. Kind of like, quote unquote, soft skills. Right.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:12:33] So what is the deal with soft skills and why are they so important?

Maya Grossman: [00:12:37] It's funny, we've had research for more than one hundred years that shows us that career success is best predicted by soft skills. Seventy five percent of your success can be predicted by our soft skills and only twenty five percent by your hard skills or your profession. And even though we know this, there's so little information about how to actually acquire soft skills. You go to school, you go to college, you learn about a profession, but no one really talks to you about mindset. No one really guides you on how to build a career roadmap and how to actually get what you want. And I think when I started with this idea of the book, I tried to look back and figure out why I was successful. And initially I thought, well, I'm a great marketer. And the answer is, yeah, I'm pretty good at what I do. But that's not the reason because I was invaluable before I got into marketing. Even those seven years of the travel agency, I was doing things differently. I took initiative and I moved within that company. I moved up faster than anyone else and I was so junior when I joined. It was funny. So I really do think that soft skills is what makes a difference, because at the end of the day, everything is bigger, audible, and as long as you believe that you can grow and change, you can achieve anything that you want. As long as it doesn't defy the laws of physics, you can pretty much achieve anything. I think most people just don't know that they have it in them. And soft skills, those beliefs about yourself, those habits that you generate, that is what makes the difference.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:14:17] I absolutely agree with you. You have to keep your mind open to the possibility that great things can be achieved. You can be an average person of average intelligence, but you can do some amazing things because a lot of amazing things have been done by just regular average people. Right. And once you kind of set your mind down to the possibility that you can achieve anything great, like there's no way it's going to happen.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:14:38] One of these concepts you talked about fairly early on in your book, which I think you kind of touched on a little bit here, but it was that owners mindset and how success really has nothing to do with the seniority or job title, but it's all about how you think. So what is this mindset and why is it that these people can do things that people without that mindset can do?

Maya Grossman: [00:15:03] An Owner's Mindset is the first skill that I talk about and the reason why it's the first, because it's the basis for everything.

Maya Grossman: [00:15:11] And I think it's also a skill that a lot of people struggle to identify with because it requires you to put in a lot of effort and energy now for results that you will only see further down the line. And people like immediate gratification. But having that mindset and what it means to have an owner's mindset is not that you need to work 24/7. It actually means that you need to look at the bigger picture. You need to think like an owner, which means you want to make sure that you get the most out of everything that you do and you spend the least. You want to create the most revenue. You want to make sure that your customers are happy. You want problems to be solved. You want everyone to work well. You want everyone to give one hundred percent to the company. And I think a lot of the times, especially when you're early in your career, you're very much focused on your role and what you do. And you don't really look around. You just see what's happening. And if you don't do that, you miss out a lot of opportunities to actually grow, learn and probably even move up within the company. And anyone who is open to those possibilities, anyone who is understand maybe you're a small cog in a big machine, but you're also part of a machine. I think when you realize that it kind of creates a shift in your. Thinking and when you can see the thirty thousand foot view and the day to day, you have amazing insight. And this is why people with an owner's mindset can do so much more than people who are just stuck and doing their day to day.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:16:49] What can we do to start kind of cultivating that owners mindset? Do we need to reach out to people that are higher up and kind of talk to them about getting the big picture? Do we need to we just go straight up to the CEO and just ask him with? The big picture is like, how do we start cultivating this owner's mindset?

Maya Grossman: [00:17:05] I think the first step will always be to really understand the company you work for. So I'm not just talking about going to the website and reading what it says, but really understanding how the business work. What is your product? What are you selling to? What does your business model look like? How long is the sales cycle? Just really understanding how all the different pieces work together and you can do that. But like you mentioned, maybe reaching out to people are a little bit more senior. If you work for a small company and you can actually reach out to the CEO, why not? I mean, at the end of the day, the CEO is the person with the vision and who's better suited to actually get you excited about what the company is doing and help you understand how your role actually fits into everything. And this is really how you understand the bigger picture. And you can also do it independently. I mean, you can go and listen to earnings calls. If you work for a public company, you can read all kinds of internal documents just to have a better understanding. And you can just reach out to other team members. I mean, go to the product team, talk to them about the product, go to the sales team and ask to see the sales pitch and what it looks like. It will just give you an abundance of information and that will actually allow you to have that bigger picture of you. So I would say knowing the company, that's probably the first step. The second step would be to really adopt this way of thinking where you're trying to do more with less. And this is something I sell mostly in corporate America, where you have big budgets.

Maya Grossman: [00:18:45] And the immediate response from everyone is just let's spend money. If we can pour money on the problem, we're going to fix it. And the thing is, money doesn't always fix the problems. And when you create that habit of asking yourself, how can I do more with less? And for me, I just pretend I don't have a budget like I have a zero budget and I still have the same goals. How am I going to make that happen within the tools that I have right now? And just changing that perspective, I think very often gets you to think more creatively and allows you to not go to the simple answer of let's spend money on the problem. And I think last but not least, you need to stop thinking within your job description. You need to understand that no matter how small your role is, you are part of a bigger machine, you're part of the company, and your job is to make that company successful however you can. And the minute you realize that you're going to start seeing opportunities to do more and to help more and in most cases, that's going to give you more experience. You can experiment and see what you like, what you don't like. And it's also a great way to set yourself up for a promotion or for your next role.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:20:03] What can we do for working at just like a huge, massively large company and we're just a small, small cog in a much larger machine? What can we do to help develop a sense of purpose for ourselves and our work?

Maya Grossman: [00:20:18] Well, if you work for a company the size of Google, obviously you can understand how every part of the machine works, but you can focus on your own business unit or your own team because that's going to allow you to have the bigger picture but at a smaller scale. And I think hopefully if you chose that job, you have some passion for what they do.

Maya Grossman: [00:20:43] But if you don't, you can actually cultivate that. You can actually convince yourself to fall in love with the company you work for. And here's why. Because we spend so much time at work. Might as well enjoy the time you have there. And it's not always easy to just get up and walk out. Sometimes you literally just need a job to pay the rent. So it's important that you find ways to make that passion work for you. So a few things you can do if you will learn about the company, if you understand how it works, if you understand the product and potentially the market that it's in, that might be exciting for you. Maybe you don't have the best team in the world. Maybe your day to day is not brilliant. But if you really believe in the future of the product you're working on, on the market, you can really get excited by that. You can do a lot of. Research and you can become an expert in that field and maybe use that time with the company to even build your own reputation. I always advise people to speak to people a little bit higher up at the same business unit to see what they care about, what gets them excited.

Maya Grossman: [00:21:53] A lot of the time, if you work for a small startup and you talk to the CEO, they are the people who are going to get you inspired. If you work for a business unit, just go to the person at the top and see why they care about what they're doing. And I think a lot of the time, just hearing someone else explain it from their perspective can really help you understand. There's really a lot of potential here. I didn't consider it. Last but not least, if none of that works for you, you don't like the industry or you're not enjoying working on that product, then ask yourself, how is this job going to set me up for my next role? What can I do now that I want to see on my resume? Five months from now, that's going to get me the job of my dream and just double down and focus on doing that work to the best of your ability so that you can have that on your resume and it will help you get to the next level so you can start cultivating that passion by actually taking a look back.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:22:56] Ok, so you've been in this role for some number of years. You've probably gotten pretty good at this particular role. And it might not be like an inborn passion, like maybe your passion about being a painter, but you can still fall in love with the job of realizing that you've gotten good at something and just really take a craftsman kind of mentality towards what you're doing.

Maya Grossman: [00:23:14] Yeah, I think that's definitely one way. And just seeing the potential, let's say you're in health care and you're not crazy about health care, but you can find one thing if your company is now doing breakthrough research on the topic that is really interesting to you and you can be proud of that. You really feel good about what they're doing. I think that could go a long way in cultivating that passion.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:23:39] So you talk about one of the most important skills that we can develop is learning. So why is that one of the most important skills that we could develop a while?

Maya Grossman: [00:23:47] Because if you don't learn and you don't grow, you're basically moving forward. And it's kind of weird. Most people don't read a book after they graduate from college. As we grow up, we were being taught that you need to learn. So you go to school if you're like you go to college. But the minute that ends, there's no motivation to continue learning. You pretty much think you're done. But if you look at the job market right now, and especially if you look at tech, there's no way you can stand still and still be successful. Things change every single day. To be honest. By the time you graduate, half of the things you learn are not going to be relevant for your job. So if you don't cultivate that passion for learning or you don't have a system that allows you to continue learning, you're going to stay behind. And it's just a competitive advantage. The more you can learn, the more you put in, the more you're able to actually put out the talk about systems.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:24:48] What can we do? How can we turn learning into a habit?

Maya Grossman: [00:24:51] Yeah, so I found it's very challenging to kind of convince yourself to spend time learning unless you have something that constantly just you and tells you. You need to learn. You need to learn. So this is what I try to build for myself and this is what I talk about in the book. You can automate the process of learning. And what it means is you're going to figure out how to get all of the information you need coming to you automatically instead of you having to go out every week, month, whatever, and start researching and trying to find the content that you need.

Maya Grossman: [00:25:29] And it's actually pretty simple. There are five different steps you can take, but overall, it's just a way for you to get information right into your inbox. Whether it's through newsletters, you can have different notifications coming to you. You can set your social feeds in a way that is going to make it easier to learn. So, for example, if you like me, I wanted to focus on product marketing. I found different influencers in the product marketing world. I found different companies who were sharing interesting content, and I followed all of them on the same platform. And for me that was LinkedIn. So every time I open my LinkedIn feed, I PhD at least three or four posts or articles that has to do with product marketing. So without even wanting to learn or thinking about learning, it hits me every single time and it's something that anyone can do.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:26:24] So it's just kind of cultivating environment for yourself to make it easy to actually learn so you could turn your news feed into just the news you care about.

Maya Grossman: [00:26:33] Exactly, and in the same way I mentioned marketing, but I also, Carol, about a personal development, so I signed up for a few newsletters who constantly come into my inbox and I don't know about you, but for me, if I have an email in my inbox, it will get my attention no matter what, because it just bugs me that it's there. So I have time on my calendar every weekend to look at all of these newsletters and read whatever makes sense for me to read. And I explain in the book there's a process where you don't get stuck with hundreds of different newsletters coming to your inbox. You just pretty much settle for, let's say, between five and 10 that are actually useful to you and you'll get rid of everything else. And it just creates this process where every single week, sometimes every single day, you will learn something new. And it's incredibly easy because you don't actually have to work hard to make it happen.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:27:32] What are some newsletters that you are currently subscribed to?

Maya Grossman: [00:27:36] Oh, well, I got a few. Well, I'm part of the product marketing alliance, so everything that they send out, I definitely have. I like the content that you are creating, especially around marketing. And I have a very interesting newsletter from Nat Ellison, and it's actually almost random, but this is a really smart dude and he has a very interesting perspective on the world. So this is kind of my crazy. Let's see what's happening in the news that I haven't heard about newsletter. And I try to check it out every other week or so.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:28:10] Definitely going to have to add that one to my list. Thank you. So you talk about this concept of this character of the fixer. Talk to us about what that means, what it mean to be a fixer, and what does it mean to be a fixer in a junior role versus a senior role?

Maya Grossman: [00:28:27] A fixer. And I have a picture in my head of Olivia Pope from Scandal, but we're talking white hat. I think a fixer is someone who doesn't only fix problems. It's not just someone who gets things done. It's someone who has the ability to identify a problem. They care enough to ask questions, to dig around, to actually take action when they come across something that doesn't work. You know how maybe you work for a company and you're stuck doing invoicing, using it in an Excel spreadsheet and it's driving you crazy. Someone who is a fixer will go and do the research to find out what kind of software they can actually use to be more efficient. They will figure out what's best for them and the company and will go back and convince management whoever needs to pay for it, that it's a better way to get the job done instead of just doing what they're expected, using what they were giving and being fine with it. And it's also someone who will notice that there are too many dishes in the sink in the kitchen and will get everyone to pitch in and buy a dishwasher, which is a completely different example. But it's just someone who understands that as a whole, the company works better when everyone works better and they just want to fix problems. There's actually a really interesting story. I heard it in a different podcast. A new employee came to a company and her desk was very close to a staircase. And every couple of minutes someone would walk up that staircase and it would make a terrible noise. And this would last for the whole day. And it's been going on for weeks. And she got so upset that she got a forty and just went to the staircase and used it and the noise was gone. Now, people sat there for months, if not for years, and did absolutely nothing. And that person just had enough. And after a week, she fixed the problem. And this is the kind of mindset we're talking about.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:30:47] What's up, artists? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email to the artists of Data Science, Gmail dot com. Let me know what you love about the show. Let me know what you don't love about this show and let me know what you would like to see in the future. I absolutely would love to hear from you. I've also got open office hours that I will be hosting and you can register like going to bitly.com/adsoh. I look forward to hearing from you all and look forward to seeing you in the office hours. Let's get back to the episode.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:31:33] So let's say we're on the management end of things. We see a budding fixer on our team. What can we do to help enable them to help empower them so that they can hopefully spread that mindset to other people on their team?

Maya Grossman: [00:31:47] Yeah, that's actually a really great question. For me, it's always been about empowerment. So if that employee would come to me for advice, I would encourage them to do whatever it is that they were trying to fix. And I will try to make sure that they have all the resources they need. If they were successful, I will definitely give them a compliment, potentially do it in front of the team to make sure that they understand this type of behavior is something that the company really appreciates. And I think I don't know if anyone is going like everyone will eventually adopt this mindset. You definitely need to be a specific type of person, but anyone can. It's just a matter of deciding that this is what you want to do.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:32:34] So talk to us about this this idea of being a lateral thinker. But what what does that mean to think laterally? And how can we leverage that type of thinking to move up in our career?

Maya Grossman: [00:32:48] So if you're a fixer at the end of the day, you'll have to fix problems and you won't necessarily know how to fix them. Maybe it's something you've never done before. Maybe you see that there's an error on your website, but you're not a developer and you have absolutely no idea how to fix it. Sometimes you need to come up with very creative ideas and lateral thinking is one way to come up with these really interesting ideas. Basically what it means if you're a lateral thinker, you're able to take information from different areas, different disciplines, different things you've done in your life, and apply them to come up with a very creative idea. And there are different ways to actually cultivate that ability to think laterally. The first one is actually, I think I mentioned before, you need to put in more information into your system, which means just enriching yourself with knowledge. And it doesn't have to be specific to your career or your discipline. Just in general. The more information you put into your brain, which is our operating system, the more output you're going to get when you kind of type in a query into your head, like, how can I figure this out? So I think that's the first step that you can take.

Maya Grossman: [00:34:03] You can also try and come up with alternatives so your brain will automatically go to best practices or anything. That's very common and that's great. You could write that down. But your next step will be to find at least five alternatives, different ways to get the job done. And if that doesn't work and you kind of need to get your creative juices going, there's an exercise that I talk about and it's called Find the Worst Possible Solution.

Maya Grossman: [00:34:30] And we're talking crazy bad. I think I mentioned it in the book when I worked for a creative agency. We had to come up with a campaign to promote a new movie. I think it was a superhero movie. And our bad idea was let's have a competition where people jump off a building and if you survived the fall, you won. So this is a bad idea. But when you let yourself go there, when you kind of let go biases in anything that's stopping you, your brain starts coming up with really creative ideas. And sometimes the difference between terrible and great is really simple. It's just a small change. So the more you kind of practice coming up with this terrible idea, the more you're going to get closer to finding a really good one.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:35:18] So some people might be scared to put ideas out there like they don't want to come off as looking, oh my God, I might say something in some decent thing. I'm done for saying that. What can we do to kind of get over that fear?

Maya Grossman: [00:35:29] I think there's a lot that you can do, but it also depends on the people around you. I think it starts with building relationships and having that trust between team members or between you and your manager. And it doesn't usually happen overnight. I think a great way to turn your quest to turn statements or thoughts into something that's a little less intimidating is positioning them as questions. So instead of saying, hey, maybe we should change our strategy, you can say, hey, have you ever considered trying A, B, C? I think it just comes off a little less condescending, especially if you're new to a company and it shows that you are very curious and you don't have to stand up and say, oh, no, no, no, we tried it, it didn't work. Then you didn't really lose anything, but you at least tried.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:36:29] So it can have to just open yourself up and just let those ideas come out. But Make sure that when you're bringing the ideas up, prefacing it with you, have we thought about this or what about if we do it this way? Not not really. Just kind of proclaiming that is the best way, I guess.

Maya Grossman: [00:36:44] Yeah. I mean, at some point I think you should be able to stand behind your ideas and own them. But I think if you're early in your career or you just started with a new company, it's a lot easier to build your reputation if you take a step back and position it more as questions and suggestions. And when you have that trust, when you know your team knows that you're good at what you do, I think that's when you should have more confidence speaking up and actually standing behind your ideas.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:37:19] What are some things that we could do to start building trust with our teammates? Let's say that we happen to be in an environment where maybe that level of trust, the level of comfort wasn't there. But now we really want to try to make that happen.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:37:33] We want to start building those bonds because we want to start becoming invaluable. And I might be wrong here, but can you become invaluable by yourself? It needs help, you might need some assistance from your team to become an invaluable might be wrong in making that statement.

Maya Grossman: [00:37:47] Well, it's definitely a combination. There are a lot of things that you need to do yourself. You need to change your mindset. You need to be very proactive. But when you work for a company, there's no way around. If you need to work with people, whether it's your managers, your teammates and even other colleagues in different departments, at the end of the day, you need to work together. And to do that, you really need to build relationships. And it doesn't mean you need to become best friends with everyone. But what you want to do is make sure that you at least have a level of understanding of who people are and what they care about, especially the people who are closest to you. If you understand what your manager is optimizing for, if you understand which each one of your team members is trying to achieve, then you can become kind of a force for empowerment.

Maya Grossman: [00:38:42] You can make sure that your work reflects well on them, that whatever you do actually influences them. And then when you do ask for help, they're going to be much more inclined to help you. But it does go beyond just building a relationship. I think there's also, you know, a good way to ask for help that will get people to help you almost every single time. And this is what I call in the book The Influence Formula. And it's basically a way to use storytelling at work. And you don't need to be a marketer to become great at telling stories because the basis is very, very simple. It's never about you and it's always about them what is in it for them. So no matter what you do, let's say I need to get a budget from a stakeholder because I need to do something as a marketer. I don't go to them and say, hey, I need a budget to do something. As a marketer, I will try and find an angle that shows how they are going to profit. In a way, I enjoy working with me, how it's going to reflect on them and their goals, and I'm going to make it worth their while. And just to give you a little example, I worked when I worked with the team at Google, I was a consultant, so I didn't actually manage any of the team members, so I couldn't exactly tell them what to do. And I really wanted to see the strategy I outlined being executed.

Maya Grossman: [00:40:13] So I took one of the team members to lunch and I kind of dug around. I wanted to know why there were kind of hesitant to follow through on what I suggested. And what I learned is that they had a dream, they really wanted to become a creative director. And the work that we are doing right now, they thought this is what's going to position them as a great art director, so anything that is going to be different than that is going to take away from their ability to get their dream career. But the thing was, what I was asking them to do is not step away from creating videos and anything they considered to be part of their portfolio. I asked them to learn how to promote those artifacts. And when I explained it that way, when I told them, imagine how impressive your portfolio would be when you don't only show all the wonderful movies you've created, but you can also show that they reached a million people, not just five. How amazing will that be? Wouldn't that set you apart from anyone else? And that small switch is all it took to get that person committed to actually working on promotion and not just creation of art. And this is what I talk about with the influence formula. It's not about lying. It's not about backstabbing. It's not about making up anything. It's looking at every situation and thinking, how can this situation be great for them and what can I do to make their lives better?

Harpreet Sahota: [00:41:48] So you get into formulas. I think you're speaking the language of my audience, Data scientists. We love formulae. We love algorithms. What is the influence formula?

Maya Grossman: [00:41:58] So it's pretty simple. You start by identifying your goal. What are you trying to do? For me, I wanted to get this person to work on promotion. Step number two is trying to understand what is in it for them. If they actually follow through and help you, what are they going to get from it? And you need to find an interesting angle and you can do that if you don't know them at all. This is where the building a relationship part comes in. The next step is to try and understand what might be an obstacle in the way. Why wouldn't they want to work with you? What you may be a challenge. So you're prepared for it. And then you take all this information and you try to put together a story just like I did. And the story was, I can see how doing what I'm asking you to do is actually going to help you get the career of your dreams. And there may be four or five different stories. I actually recommend. When you get started with this, you actually collect the data, you write down a few options, and then you just choose one and kind of go with it. I know how to do it on the fly these days, but it took a lot of practice to get there. And the last step is really understanding what you're asking for. So you create your story. But at the end of it, there needs to be an ask. You still need to get them to do something and you need to make sure it's very specific. You don't want to leave any room for error. You want to make sure they understand what they need to do to make you happy, but also to get whatever it is you showed them you're going to give them.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:43:36] So speaking of stories, you once stopped a plane from taking off. Do you mind talking to us about that story.

Maya Grossman: [00:43:45] Yeah, spoiler alert, by the way, if you haven't read the book. But as I said, I worked for a travel agency. And the first year I spent working for the twenty four seven support desk, which meant I got phone calls from people who were stuck in different places in the world because they missed their flight. And I had to help them figure out how to get back home. And one of these times I got a call from a couple that was I think they were stuck in Rome. They just got the news that someone in their family passed away and they had to get on the next flight home. And they were running all through the airport and they knew they only had a couple of minutes to make it to the gate. And I had to stop. I literally had to stop the airplane from taking off if I wanted them to make it. So I didn't actually stand on the tarmac and stop the plane with my hands. But I was able to use the influence formula to convince the people at the gate to actually wait for these passengers. And you know what? Maybe it wasn't even as convincing. Maybe just spending five minutes with them on the phone, keeping them busy. Maybe that was the answer. But I definitely know that the intent was there when the conversation was done. The person at the gate told me, OK, we're going to give them five more minutes, but they'd better be here. And they made it. They got on that plane and they made it home in time.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:45:08] I love it. It's a good story. So when it comes to storytelling in terms of let's say we're presenting Data, we're presenting findings to stakeholders that are not as technical, does the influence formula change or does that influence formula still apply in those situations?

Maya Grossman: [00:45:27] I think it's actually an amazing tool in situations like these. I kind of had to do it the other way around, but just to give you an example, I had to share marketing information with an entire company, including our development team. And they don't really know anything about marketing. They don't really care about marketing. They thought it was just fluff that we spend a lot of money on. But I had to get them excited and I wanted to convey a point during my presentation. So I actually use Data to show marketing information in a way that will actually resonate with them. And I also talked about the end results. So I was in the situation where the entire company thought our target audience was one type of customer. And when I started looking into the Data, when I started interviewing customers, it seemed like we were actually talking to the wrong audience. And I had to convince an entire company that we need to make a switch. So I took that information, put it together, and I turn it into this big reveal. And I showed them if we were to go with the customer description we have right now, this is what marketing would look like. But, hey, we actually got the Data. Here's the Data. And based on this data, we're going to have to shift to a completely new marketing plan. Here's the new marketing plan. And those plans were so different that I think you could hear from the audience like an of, oh, my God, we almost made a huge mistake. And I didn't tell anyone that they were wrong. And I didn't say we almost made a huge mistake. I stuck to the positive aspect of it. And instead of saying, hey, I'm a great marketer, I solve the problem, I said, I hope this is going to make your job easier, because now you know exactly who we're talking to and we actually have proof that this is the right type of customer. So I really think it's all about the attitude and really understanding your audience.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:47:37] Thanks for sharing that. I know the audience that's listening is really going to appreciate that story. I'm wondering what your take is on talent stacking, skill stacking, diverse set of skills. You mentioned that you working with the development team and they thought marketing was fluff. They didn't get it. They really care about it. They thought it was something that people spend money on. But what is your take on people learning these kind of opposite skills for their career advancement? Does that kind of make sense?

Maya Grossman: [00:48:05] Yeah, I guess in a way, it's it's a question of whether you want to be a specialist or a generalist. And I'm very much biased because although I spent most of my career in marketing, within marketing, I'm kind of a generalist because I did everything from PR to dimension product marketing. And I actually think that is what a lot of what allowed me to move up the ladder faster. I think it really helps with seeing the bigger picture. I think it really helps with lateral thinking. And I do think if you have the opportunity and you have the passion, like don't force yourself, I wouldn't go and learn accounting because I just don't enjoy it. But if you have some passion, I think especially in this day and age, it's going to be super valuable. Just to give you an example, I mean, product marketers don't have to be technical, but I think product marketers who come with a technical background has the ability to do more and to do different things that potentially can make them very successful. So I would definitely say if you can kind of cross pollinate, do that. But do bear in mind that one moving from one discipline to another is not easy because you don't have the same level of expertize. And two, not every role will actually benefit from those additional learnings. And sometimes it's OK, just do it for the fun of it so that you understand. I spent the last year or so learning a lot about the human brain. It has nothing to do with my job, but it just intrigued me. I wanted to know how everything works and it just got me more excited to learn about psychology, to learn about why people do what they do. I don't know.

Maya Grossman: [00:49:51] It's just interesting. 

Harpreet Sahota: [00:49:52] For those who can't see this, I started smiling, nodding my head vigorously, very aggressively, because that's been a fascination of mine recently as the human brain. So just understanding how the brain works and all those different functions like, you know, we've got two minds and its role in decision making and its role in pretty much every aspect of life is super fascinating. Not related to brain science that are you familiar with Naval Ravikant or Scott Adams by any chance?

Maya Grossman: [00:50:20] I heard about it a little bit and I started reading one of his books. But I will admit I got a little frustrated. I think I need to start with something a little bit simpler.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:50:31] Yeah, well, the. He hasn't written a book, so it might be a different.

Maya Grossman: [00:50:34] Oh, I'm yeah.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:50:36] Yeah. So Scott Adams wrote How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big. And it is in his book, he has this idea of skill stacking and stacking diverse skill sets that seem unrelated, but they make you especially unique. And it's like you don't even have to be in the top one percent of the top 10 percent in any of these skills. You just have to be good enough at them. And it's interesting how it can help build your career capital. Like, for example, as a data scientist, to me, like math and statistics is my thing. But here I've got this diverse skill set of communication and graphic design for the podcast and stuff, and there's just being able to have a little bit of knowledge and a bunch of different things that make you unique. So essentially Naval Ravikant calls it specific knowledge. So in an age where anybody can go to school to learn how to do something, why not become something that nobody can go to school to become, which is just a unique you, right?

Maya Grossman: [00:51:41] Yeah, I love that. And I think there was a lot of talk about the ten thousand hour rule. How do you become an expert? And I think a lot of the pushback was, yeah, you may become an expert, but one hundred other people can potentially do the same thing, maybe not to your level. And like you mentioned, education is democratized right now. I mean, you can pretty much learn everything you want on YouTube, but the combination of different skills, that's going to be very hard to actually mimic. And it's funny because you can see it even within the same discipline. So I'm a marketer, but when someone talks to me, I position myself with a specific type of marketer based on what's unique about me and how I'm a storyteller. I spoke to someone in H.R. yesterday and she said, well, yes, I'm in H.R., but my background is actually in Data science. So I'm a very unique type of person. I look at the numbers and I bring that into my work. So I think it definitely has the potential to set you apart. I do think it's important, though, to find those combinations that actually complement one another.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:52:50] Yeah, definitely. And for data scientists out there to get that communication skills and presentation skills, that will really make you invaluable. So thanks so much for talking about your book. I'm going to leave the rest as a mystery for people to go and pick up and read on their own, because it is a phenomenal book. I absolutely enjoyed it. Congratulations on gettin' it out there. I absolutely love it. I want to dig in now to some of your LinkedIn posts that a lot of great content that you;re sharing on LinkedIn. 

Harpreet Sahota: [00:53:20] A lot of great wisdom and advice. And I really, really appreciate it, starting with the five pieces of career advice that you wish somebody would have given you in your twenties. What are those five pieces?

Maya Grossman: [00:53:33] Oh, well, there are probably a lot more now. The more I write career advice, the more I realize, hey, I did not know that 20 years ago. I think first and foremost and this was the biggest one for me, understanding that my job is not who I am.

Maya Grossman: [00:53:49] And for a really long time I defined my value by my job. So if for some reason something went wrong, I screwed up or whatever, I felt terrible. I felt like I was No one. And I think it kind of surfaced back again. Now, with covid-19 and people unfortunately losing their job, they also lost their self-esteem and their value. And that's just not the case. You are so much more than your work. Your work is what you do. It can be a big part of who you are. It can be your passion, but it's not what defines you and how great you are. The only thing that actually defines you is your values and what you believe in. And the more you tie yourself value to things that are antifraud, fragile so they don't change, the stronger that you're going to become from a self-esteem perspective. And I didn't know that. I really had absolutely no idea. I didn't know that networking was important. I spent the first probably, I don't know, five to seven years of my career heads down doing the work. I thought talking to people was a waste of time, not not in a bad way. Like I liked people. If I had a break, I would talk to people. But if I was supposed to work, I wouldn't spend that time socializing. And I realized when especially when I worked for big corporations, you can get anything done without those relationships. And the more I progressed in my career, the more I relied on my network to get the next job and the next job. Most of my career, I was referred to jobs I didn't even apply online. So I. Understanding that you need to build that network early on is something that I wish someone told me at that time.

Harpreet Sahota: [00:55:41] Can you share some tips on networking for our audience? Maybe in two contexts. There's networking when you're already hired inside a company and there's networking and you're kind of like at a networking event. Are there different skill sets you need to network in those two scenarios, or is it the same skills? Can you share some tips?

Maya Grossman: [00:56:00] Yeah, I think the skills would be similar, but the way you apply them may be a little bit different. When you're already part of a company, you have the added bonus of not really needing to kind of ask for an introduction. You probably can just send an email to someone, or if you sit in the same office, you can walk up to them and have a conversation and you probably have more access to who they are, what they do. And I think one of the best things you can do, especially if you just got into a new company, is then your first 30 days getting to know everyone around you, like seriously having a lunch date or in a virtual coffee with one person every single day. And you want to have that conversation without any business agenda. So I don't need them to talk about your work just to get to know them. And you don't need more than 15 minutes. You don't need to make it like an hour. And the reason is, first, you want people to know who you are and you want them to know your name. So when you come to them in six months and you need help with a project, they at least know who you are.

Maya Grossman: [00:57:10] And it's also kind of ammunition for the for the moment you want to create an influence formula. You want to know who they are and what they care about and what they work on. I remember when I started working for Microsoft, one of my colleagues told me that I have to start doing this and it just seems so weird to me at the time. But I said, OK, I'll try. And I went to the company's org chart because I didn't know anyone I knew like five people at Microsoft at the time. But I looked at the org chart and I try to find people who either had similar roles to mine or they worked in interesting departments. Anyone who seemed like we may have an opportunity to collaborate. And I just send them a cold email saying, hey, I'm new to the company. I would love to know more about what you're doing. I think we may have potential to collaborate. Would you mind grabbing a coffee with me? And I think eight out of 10 people said, yeah, of course. And we had really nice conversations. I didn't have to say a lot because when you tell people you want to care about them, they talk about themselves.

Maya Grossman: [00:58:14] So you don't really have to do too much. You want to take some notes, you want to send them a follow up after that. Just so again, they remember who you are. And you have context because I don't know about you, but if I don't write something down, I will never, ever remember it. So I would just send a thank you note. And then six months later, when someone in the PR department had a vacancy, they reached out to me and said, Oh, do you want your team to have this spot? And I really needed it. And we only had one coffee. I didn't have to build an entire relationship, but they at least knew who I was. So if you're if you want to build a network internally, this is what I would try and do. And don't just do this once. Do it every single week if you can and expand your network. If you want to do this externally, it's a little bit different because then you usually don't really have any connection to someone, especially if you're looking at influencers or people you think are maybe above your level in the organization and you really want to be that person that they actually get back to.

Maya Grossman: [00:59:25] And I think what a lot of people get wrong is that it requires time and effort. You don't just send a message.

Maya Grossman: [00:59:35] You need to start by doing research. You need to really go deep and understand who this person is. If they're already online, go like their posts. Go leave a comment. But a thoughtful comment, not just, oh, that's great. Actually spend time listening to them, reading what they write and engage with them. So when you do send out that request, they've already seen your name a couple of times. They already know who you are.

Maya Grossman: [01:00:01] And when you reach out to them, if possible, find a way to add value at that point already. So a trick that I use and I tell people to do if that person has a website or if this person works for a specific company, go to their website, go through every single page, click on every single thing, you are very likely to find something that doesn't work. And if you find a broken link or a typo or anything.

Maya Grossman: [01:00:32] Reach out to them and just offer to help say, hey, I was browsing through your website because I'm really interested in what you do and I know this is not right. I thought you may want to know and fix it. I have done this dozens of times, and every single time I hear back, people say thank you. And that's the beginning of a conversation.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:00:55] Thank you very much for sharing that. So you also talk about another LinkedIn post, the five skills that we need to succeed in the next decade. What are those five skills?

Maya Grossman: [01:01:09] Well, technically, you need 10, which is why you have ten in my book. But I wanted to make it a little bit shorter for people. So I would say having the owner's mindset, being the lifelong learner, learning how to be accountable, learning how to tell stories. And this is where the influence formula and last but not least, being a fixer, I think when you combine all of these together, it doesn't matter what your profession is. If you do all of that and you're able to change your mindset, you're going to drive value and you're going to become invaluable.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:01:47] Absolutely love it. So before we can become invaluable at the organization, we actually got to get hired there in order to get hired there. We got to go through an interview process. What are five things that we could do to just ace an interview?

Maya Grossman: [01:02:03] Well, I don't know if I have five, but let's see what I would normally do. I think it starts by understanding - at least this is my philosophy. I don't believe in spraying and praying. I don't think you should just randomly send your resume everywhere. I think you need to really understand where you want to go next. And if you read the book, there's a whole chapter about how to understand what the next step in your career should look like. And if you have a vision, if you have a goal, the job search is actually going to be easier because you're going to know which companies are right for you, which companies are not. I say focus on one or two roles. I see people who send out resumes for marketing roles, sales role, business development roles, product roles. There's absolutely no way you're going to be amazing doing all of these. If you want to maximize your potential, you have to focus on one or two things that you're really good at and go with that. Then you need to actually work on your LinkedIn profile and your resume. And once again, this is the biggest mistake that people make. They try to have everything on their resume. Now, I have 15 years of experience and my resume is not two pages long. So if you're early in your career, you do not need twenty thousand bullet points.

Maya Grossman: [01:03:18] Less is actually more. And the more specific you can be. So if you're applying for a marketing role, if I'm the hiring manager, I want to see your title, say, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing. Now, you don't always have that, especially if you're early on. You try it a few different internships. You did a few different things, then find a way to highlight how those actually contribute to marketing. But make sure that your resume is super focused for that specific role. You need all of that, because if you do get that interview, you want to know that you are aligned with the job description. So you want to study that job description. You want to actually take it out. Right. Bullet points and understand what the company cares about. Because here's the thing. Product marketing roles are going to be very different from company to company. There's no one size fits all. You want to know what this company cares about the most. So make sure you identify that. And then you need to do research. You need to go very, very, very deep into that company. I'm not talking of five minute Google search. I'm talking about putting in 10 to 15 hours of research. Like I said before, listen to earnings calls, go through their website. If you can use their product, go use the product so you know exactly what it looks like.

Maya Grossman: [01:04:37] Go to review websites. You want to see what other people say about this company in their product. If you can find articles online, do that. If you can research the people who are going to interview you, you want to know who they are, what they care about, maybe listen to an interview or podcast, Data. You need to be an expert on that company and then you need to connect the dots. You need to understand what they care about from the job description. And you need to take all the information you've gained about where they are right now and what is the challenge they're trying to solve. And when you put that together, you need to be the answer. So every time someone asks you a question, you answer in a way that shows how you're going to fit the job description, that shows how you're going to solve their problems. And you can do that now because you have the information. So you don't need to give General and. You don't necessarily need to speak about your history, which is great. Sometimes we use history to showcase what we were able to do. But if you can talk about the future and already show people that you put some thought into what they need in order to give them a few ideas or solutions, that's going to set you apart from anyone else.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:05:51] And let's say we get the job, we're finally made an offer. Should we just take the offer at face value and not negotiate?

Maya Grossman: [01:06:01] Well, I want to say no. Look, if you're happy, if you're really, really happy with the offer, then fine. I mean, I know people say you should always negotiate to kind of share your value. Maybe that's true. I think I negotiated most of my offers, if not all of them, because they didn't always hit the ideal point I wanted them to hit. And the higher up you go, the more senior you are, the more you're actually expected to negotiate. So I think some of the time these companies give you a lower offer because they know they're going to have to negotiate.

Maya Grossman: [01:06:39] So maybe it is to your advantage to have that conversation. But I think what drives this conversation is knowing what you bring to the table, understanding your value and standing behind it, don't negotiate just for the sake of negotiating and have like this random number actually believe in why you're worth it and have that kind of discussion.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:07:04] So we don't need to worry about looking greedy or anything like that. If we do decide to negotiate, it's kind of we shouldn't have any reservations. If the numbers that we're happy with, we can feel comfortable not seeming greedy by negotiating.

Maya Grossman: [01:07:20] Yeah, obviously really depends on how you do it, first and foremost, if you have an imaginary number that has nothing to do with reality, that's a problem. So you definitely want to do your research and make sure that you're within some sort of range that makes sense for that specific role and for that company. And if you do think that you deserve more, then yeah, I say definitely negotiate. But explain why you deserve more. And don't just say because I want it or don't just say because another company is giving them more, but just showcase what you bring to the table and say, yeah, look, I know maybe if another marketer was here, they would be happy with this offer. But I have X amount of years of experience and I actually come with a Data science background, which means I'm going to be able to do X, Y, Z, and I'm going to be able to help you not only achieve your goals, but actually surpass them. And that's why I'm going to be worth the investment. And I think if you're able to do that one confidently, but also you have the experience to back it up. I think that should be a great conversation to have.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:08:33] Thank you very much for sharing that insight. I know the audience is really going to appreciate that. So thank you.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:08:39] I was wondering if you could talk to your experience as a woman climbing up the corporate ladder and if you could share some advice for the women in our audience who are hoping to achieve the same success that you have?

Maya Grossman: [01:08:52] That's a really interesting question. I never - it's kind of funny, but I never thought of myself as a woman in the corporate ladder. I'm just me. I don't necessarily compare myself to my male counterparts. I just compare myself to people around me in the same level and what are my goals and how am I going to achieve them. So I think I think this is actually something that helped me. I never really thought there was a difference. And I guess in a way, it didn't put any glass ceilings or anything like that because I just didn't think it exists.

Maya Grossman: [01:09:30] I completely ignored it. And I know it's not the same for a lot of other women. I know that you can't always get the same compensation that you deserve and sometimes the environment can be hostile. I'm very fortunate that I didn't have to experience it. I would say for anyone who doesn't feel like they're being treated equally, when I do think that you should speak up, if if possible, find one ally, whether it's your manager, a team member, someone who will have your back and see if that can open up a conversation and if you try and try and it just doesn't work. Unfortunately, I think it may be time to look for a different opportunity. And I know it's not the perfect answer. I wish I had a better answer, but it's what I've seen throughout my career.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:10:23] Thank you for sharing that. So Maya, its one hundred years in the future. What is it that you want to be remembered for?

Maya Grossman: [01:10:30] I just want to be the person who impacts other. I want to change other people's lives right now. It's by helping them build a more fulfilling career. But I don't know what the next book will be about. So we'll see. I just want to be the person who changed other people's lives for the better.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:10:49] So we're going to go ahead and jump into the random round. First question here is what was the eleventh skill that you had to leave off of the ten skills that you need?

Maya Grossman: [01:11:01] Oh, my God, I don't remember. I think I had one about needing to be a good team member. And I kind of speak a little bit about that when I talk about managing up and across. But I didn't have a dedicated chapter just for building that relationship.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:11:21] And what are you currently reading?

Maya Grossman: [01:11:25] I told you I'm looking into the brain. I don't remember the name of the book, but I actually recently read Atomic Habits. I've been into career development, but also personal development for years. And I just it's just a great book.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:11:41] I agree, Atomic Habits is absolutely amazing. I tried to get James earlier on the show, but he rejected me sadly at some point, of course. So what song do you have on repeat?

Maya Grossman: [01:11:55] Oh, God, what am I listening to? Sorry, not sorry. Demi Lovato, thanks.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:12:01] So for the next few questions, we're going to jump to a random question generator, some of the. Go ahead, pull this up. I didn't prep for that. Now it's OK. It'll be easy. It's a rubber ducky on the screen. So what issue will you always speak your mind about?

Maya Grossman: [01:12:18] Career development

Harpreet Sahota: [01:12:18] What's the worst movie you have ever seen?

Maya Grossman: [01:12:22] Oh, it was recently that I don't remember the name, it was that bad.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:12:27] What was it about?

Maya Grossman: [01:12:29] It was about it was just so weird. It was all over the place. There were aliens, but not aliens. And there was a murder. It was. Yeah.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:12:37] Sounds crazy. Do you have any nicknames?

Maya Grossman: [01:12:41] Yes, but I'm not going to share that one

Harpreet Sahota: [01:12:45] What's your favorite candy?

Maya Grossman: [01:12:47] Chocolate. Anything with chocolate.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:12:49] What's the best thing you got from one of your parents?

Maya Grossman: [01:12:54] I think I learned about kindness from my mom. She was the nicest person you've ever met.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:13:01] The last one here. What's one place you've traveled to that you never want to go back to?

Maya Grossman: [01:13:07] Oh, I don't think anywhere was that bad.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:13:11] All right. So where can people find your book?

Maya Grossman: [01:13:16] You can go to Maya Grossman dot com to get all the information or just go to Amazon and look for invaluable or my rosemann and I'm always on LinkedIn.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:13:26] And if people want to connect with you, if they want to reach out to you and hear more from you, is LinkedIn the best platform?

Maya Grossman: [01:13:33] Yes, I am focusing on one platform and one platform at all. And one time, like a good marketer, I first want to ace this one and then we'll see. So everything I do is only thing.

Harpreet Sahota: [01:13:45] I thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to come on to the show today. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you.

Maya Grossman: [01:13:53] Thank you for inviting me. I had a blast.