How to Stop Self-Sabotaging and Take Your Big Swing

0:00Being scared does not mean you are disqualified. Everyone is scared and people who go for the big swings are the ones who are scared and do it anyway. And more importantly, never be the one to disqualify yourself. Our guest today is Patti Azzarello. At 33, she was the youngest general manager in HP's history. By 35, she was running a billion-dollar business. And at just 38 years old, she became a Silicon Valley CEO. And she built every bit of it while feeling like she didn't belong in the room. I believe that one of the most effective teaching tools we have to learn things is failure. Patty didn't just survive the cutthroat world of corporate politics.

0:45She mastered it. But that's not even her real superpower. Her real superpower is that she did all of it. The boardrooms, the power play, the high stakes execution without losing her integrity, her sanity or her humanity. If you're being so serious all the time, you're not giving anybody a human being that they can connect to. You're just like being a business robot. Patty has been in the trenches. She's run the room that everyone's afraid to run. And today, she is going to show you how to conquer the chaos, scale your impact, and rise, even when it feels like everything is working against you.

1:22When you get embarrassed, you don't die. It's just, you get embarrassed. It feels awful. Like, it feels absolutely awful. It makes you feel small. It makes you feel weird. It makes you feel insecure, but it doesn't kill you. And that was another one of those lessons which allowed me to take more big swings later in my career. This one is for anyone who has ever talked themselves out of doing something big and is looking for the courage they need to take their big swing. And if you love the stories from this episode, you will love her book. It's called Why Is She Still Here? Check out the link in the description.

1:58Let's jump into it. This episode is brought to you by Granola and Quint. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai slash kwami. That's granola.ai slash kwami to get your time back. Three months free at granola.ai slash kwami. Find your next fall favorites at Quintz. Download the Quintz app for app-exclusive offers or go to quintz.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let him know it was me. That's the best way to support the show.

2:38Playing it safe is easy. Playing it safe is comfortable. But here's the problem. Playing it safe and playing by rules that were never meant for you will never take you to the next level. If you've got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park, the only thing holding you back is whether you're brave enough to take a big swing. I'm Kwame Christian, and this is Big Swings Only. Every week, we're telling you the stories of people who fought their fear, chased the life they actually wanted, and became who they had to become to get it. This show is built for people who are meant for more, because if you really want to get to the next level, you've got to do something big.

3:14So the question isn't whether or not you've got what it takes. The question is whether or not you're going to swing. You were built for more, and this show was built for you. Subscribe now.

3:30Just a little bit of context. I entered the workforce in the tech industry as a young woman, and nobody really expected or wanted me to be there. It was very, very male-dominated. There were lots of low expectations to overcome. And I just pushed my way forward from situation to situation. And I ultimately grew my career into being a general manager. I was the youngest general manager at Hewlett Packard and a female. So I was thinking, I'm doing great. I'm on this journey, I'm, you know, look at me go. I'm a general manager at 33. And I always had aspirations for bigger things. And a job came up.

4:26And this job was a bigger general manager job to run a billion dollar software business within HP. If it was, if this business was on its own outside of HP, it would have been the 14th largest software company in the world at the time. And I was 35. And I thought, wow, like, that's the that's where I'm headed. Like, that's the job where I want to be someday. And I had this sort of someday, I'm not ready for this. I'm too young. I don't have enough experience, but someday that's, that's who I want to be. And so, um, I describe this as like, I almost didn't show up for the biggest breakthrough of my career because I had disqualified myself.

5:19And so what happened were I had mentors that just descended on me and they're like, Patty, what are you doing? Why is your name not on this list? And I was like, who, me? Like, little old me? I'm not ready for this. And they're like, Patty, you have to get your name on this list. And then they showed me the list of other people that were applying for this job. They were all men. And most of them didn't have any general management experience. And I thought, damn, like, if they're not too embarrassed to go for this job, I shouldn't be either. And so I put my name on the list. And then of course I was terrified.

6:00Like this was, this was, this was a scary thing to, to go try. Um, so I got into the interview and this was a business to run. Um, it was a saw, it was a network management business and I would be, I would be running this business. and I got into the interview and the hiring manager said, looking at my resume, he's like, but Patty, you don't have any network management experience. What are you doing here? And at that moment, I had a choice to make. Like I could get all weird and defensive. I could try and convince them that I had network management experience that I didn't have. But I decided to just lean in and and tell the truth and this is this is one of the themes throughout my life which is when I'm super uncomfortable about something if I just tell the truth of the matter and talk about the reality of the situation I find a path through these awkward moments so I paused for a minute and I leaned forward and I said to him, you have 3000 network management experts in this business.

7:17You don't need another one. What you need is me and you need me because this network management business is losing money in a growing market. That's really bad. And it's doing that because you have the wrong management team, you have the wrong organizational structure, and you don't have a clear strategy. You're going in so many different directions. You have internal competition within the business. Those are the things that I do. You need somebody to sort those things out. And that's what I do. And that's why you need me. And so the interview ended. And then literally, as I walked out, the words I had in my head were, man, that was a big swing.

8:07and I went and hid in the ladies room I just I was so like overcome by what did I just do that I just needed a moment and I sat in the ladies room for probably half an hour just like panicked over what I had just done and um I got the job and one of the one of the things I want to shout from the rooftop to anyone who will listen is being scared does not mean you are disqualified. Everyone is scared. And people who go for the big swings are the ones who are scared and do it anyway. And more importantly, never be the one to disqualify yourself. Only let other people disqualify you. Give it a try.

8:58See what feedback you get. Maybe you win, maybe you lose, but you always learn something. And it's just such a shame to disqualify yourself. And as I said, I almost didn't show up for that because I had disqualified myself. And what a shame that would have been. Two things are coming to mind, Patty. First thing, you were born for that job. Second thing, you were born for this podcast. This is so great. It really exemplifies everything that we're trying to share with this. And one of the most powerful elements of the story is that, again, from the outside looking in, you have had and continue to have such a remarkable career, not just with the things that you've actually done with your own hands as a leader in incredibly competitive business environments, but then afterwards as a thought leader helping so many people.

9:55But it's so important for people to hear that you have done so many of these things while scared. And like you said, so many people disqualify themselves because they see that fear as a sign that they should not be doing what they're doing. But one of my mindsets is follow the fear. The fear has actually been a very interesting bellwether, so to speak, for me when it comes to whether or not I'm moving in the right direction. And let's talk about that because I don't want it to just seem like, okay, you were scared and you did it anyway. I want to dig deeply into your psyche here and understand how you're able to do these things and take big swings, even though you're feeling that fear in the moment.

10:41can I can I tell you a bit of a my my story my background because it's very pertinent to why I seem to be able to do scary things so I grew up in a really small town in New Jersey kind of a farm adjacent town that was so small and so boring like nothing nothing ever happened there and i i had no role models um i i just like the fact that i navigated from that to silicon valley ceo is just a wildly unlikely path um and i can talk more about how how that came to be. But with regard to doing things scared, I was this super ambitious, eager beaver, little, little girl that couldn't wait to go to school.

11:40And when I started kindergarten at age four, I could not have been more enthusiastic or had a bigger open heart to just be learning.

11:48Patty Azzarello: Finally, after my long four year life, I get to go to school. I can't, I can't wait, right? um the only flaw in this uh in this plan was that i had a bully that started from the very beginning and it was this little very impressive clever pixie of a machiavelli mean girl who started a bullying campaign against me that lasted for seven years and her her thing was she was the popular girl and her thing was if you want to be in the in the in crowd you have to hate patty and so you know i would go to school every day and i'm still getting a little bit emotional talking about it and people would act would just say to me patty i hate you like every day people would say that and i'd like approach a group and they'd be like ew go away you're gross you can't be with us.

12:52You're disgusting. Don't you know that everybody hates you? And I'm like, you know, I actually didn't know that everybody hates me. So I had, so I have, my mom was like, so extraordinary because I would come home from school every day and I'd cuddle up with my mom and she'd rub my back and we would have deep, long conversations about what makes people mean. and what she taught me was that it's never about you it's always about them you have to believe that in your heart in your bones patty it's not about you bullies are hurting on the inside and they need to make you hurt worse than they do that's what a that's what a bully is and she gave me so much support.

13:48Like, I don't know if for a lot of people, home is not the safe place, right? For me, the world was the scary place and home was the safe place. And what that allowed me to do, and at a very early age, like, you know, the bullying, I was probably six or seven when I made like a life decision that said, you know what? School's going to be frigging miserable for me, but I'm going to be an excellent student. And that's going to be my, my kind of offensive play, not those words at that time in my life, but that's going to be how I survive the bullying because she can't take that away from me. So I am going to be such an excellent student that that's, you know, that's where I'll get my love.

14:39I'll get my love from the teachers because I wasn't getting it from anybody else. And one of the themes in my book, and I promise I'm getting around to answer your question about doing hard things. One of the characters in my book is who I call Little Patty. And Little Patty is still with me. Little Patty had things more right than wrong. And when I think about what she had to go through, she was very brave. She went to school every day, even though it was awful and scary. And so when I'm faced with a scary thing as an adult, I think back to that and I think, well, she did it and she was just little.

15:31You're an adult with lots of resources and, you know, experiences. If she could go back into that environment, you can do the scary thing and you need to honor her by doing the scary thing. Wow. Thank you for sharing that story. That was a super long story. I hope that was. It was better than I ever could have expected. This is so good. So I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing that. And what's interesting is that so many high achievers run away from the old version of themselves. They try to bury it and say, you know what, I'm not going to be that person anymore. And they kind of live their life with this shame and a sensitivity that they never expose and they live in constant fear of that vulnerability being exposed.

16:23but you have incorporated that into yourself well there's a there's another little angle please tell me this comes in the form of a story patty

16:37um the world the world hurts everybody right there's something as a child that somebody something takes away our innocence and it hurts us and then as adults as you said we don't want that hurt little person in our lives we distance ourself we throw that little person under the bus and say you're holding me back i have to be this new fresh person fresh version of myself without all that baggage but the way i look at it is think about who you were the day before the world hurt you right and when i think of little patty boarding that kindergarten school bus for the first time she was awesome she was powerful she was full of enthusiasm she was full of heart she was brave like she just she that's i believe that if you can remember who you were the day before the world hurt you that that is the best version of you and as you were talking about Michelangelo, that's what we're trying to reveal is before that hurt happened.

17:52You're so right. And when you think about little Patty, because she's still here and that we all have our small versions of ourselves, whether we want to admit it or not. If you were to walk her through your life, what do you think she would say? How would she feel about what it is that you were able to accomplish yeah you know um so she wanted she wanted a few things and this is this is this is in the book and i'm just delighted to to share these things um she wanted to live in a less boring place she wanted the world to be beautiful there was there was i describe my world is small and brown we we didn't we had like brown toads we didn't have green bullfrogs we we had little brown birds like we didn't we had little brown fish in the lake we didn't have anything exotic or colorful or interesting patty wanted to live in a big exotic world little patty wanted to live in a big exotic world and um you know little patty it's amazing her heart never really closed.

19:04She just, she was so hopeful. She wanted, she tried so hard to make connections with people and she just wanted them to like her back. And what I'd love to show her is, is the big world I've discovered. Can you imagine taking little Patty to Italy, choking on all the beauty? Like I get to do that. Like that is so incredible. And, you know, I've had this big career and I have this lovely big life and I have this amazing network of friends and people in my life that is the best part of my life. And that makes little Patty very happy. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And because, Patty, this makes me think back to what you said, where you said, think to who you were before the world hurt you.

19:54And so many folks are living a life where maybe even from the outside looking in, there are significant accomplishments, but the person actually living those accomplishments feels very inauthentic. And what's interesting is that as we progress through life, part of us is going to be constructed with intentionality. Part of us is going to be discovered by serendipity. and it's often hard for us to figure out who we really are and what we really want because the voices around us can be very, very loud. And I love this idea of going back to who you were before the world hurt you. And I'm wondering if there were any times in your career where you felt like you lost that sense of self, where you didn't have that same degree of clarity.

20:46Patty Azzarello: Does that resonate? The first thing that I ever got from Quince was this pair of really nice formal pants, but they were stretchy and made for travel. So for me as a lawyer and businessman, as I travel and I do these keynotes all over the world, it's really nice to be able to know that I could wear something that looks good in the airport, that's comfortable on the airplane, and I could wear comfortably if I have to roll into a meeting or an event right after getting off the plane. and it was only$60. And that's what turned me into a repeat customer. Because Quince focuses on wardrobe staples that are made with premium materials.

21:22So for example, 100 % Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and as it's gotten colder, I've been leaning on their down jackets and wool outerwear too. They're solid, warm layers that don't feel like they're cutting corners just because the price is lower. And that's really the whole model. Because everything at Quince runs about 50 to 80 % less than similar brands simply because they cut out the middlemen and work directly with ethical factories. But the thing is, it's not only clothing either. They carry that same quality into bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture, all designed with the same care.

21:56I use Quince and so should you. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let him know it was me. That's the best way to support the show. Have you ever walked out of a meeting feeling really good about it? And then 10 minutes later, someone's messaging you saying something like, wait, what did we actually decide in that meeting? That gap between what happened and what anyone remembers is exactly what Granola AI closes.

22:32Honestly, the first time I looked back at my notes afterwards, I didn't expect them to be that clean. It was more organized than anything I'd ever written myself, and I hadn't done any extra work to get there. Granola AI is an AI-powered notepad built for how people actually meet. You take the same rough notes that you always would, and in the background, Granola AI is quietly transcribing the conversation. As soon as the meeting wraps, it turns all of that into clear, structured notes automatically. And it also runs through your device's audio, so there's no bots joining your call and nothing extra to configure.

23:04It just fits nicely into the tools you already use. You can stay focused on the conversation and still walk away knowing exactly what decided and who's doing what next. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai.com. That's granola.ai.com to get your time back. Three months free at granola.ai.com. You know, not really. Because I, you know, I was told in my in my one of my very early interviews in my early 20s for a tech job, the guy sitting across the desk from me said, who are your enemies? And I'm like, what?

23:52I'm like, I'm 22. Am I supposed to have enemies? Right. But I was asked this question for years. Like this was a standard interview question for years. And I finally came to realize that this had everything to do with the male version of power, which was for me to win, you have to lose. And not only do you have to lose, I need to see it. Like, I need to feel you losing in order for me to feel like I've won. And, you know, they were telling me you're too nice. Corporations are aggressive, competitive, nasty places. You need to be like that, too, if you want to succeed here. And I just I thought about that.

24:34And I thought, I can't even try that on. Like, if I wanted to follow that advice, I just didn't have any of those moves. Like, I just couldn't even try that on. And more importantly, I thought back to little Patty and it's like to have survived all of that bullying only to become a bully myself later on would have been horrible. Like it just would have been horrible. So I made a very strategic choice to just never be a bully. And I built my leadership approach around humanity and respecting people and building teams by lifting others up and getting everybody working in their strengths and striving and respecting them.

25:17And my businesses all ran really well. And I'm a big believer in that. So I don't feel like I lost that. the part of little Patty that I did lose is she was desperate to be an artist. And my mom, who was wonderful, but who was also very, very practical, like from birth would say, you're going to grow up, you're going to go to college, you're going to get a good education, you're going to support yourself. Never expect a man to support you. That's your job. You're going to support yourself. And so when I got to college, registered as a fine arts major, I heard my mom's voice in my head and I thought and I literally I scribbled out fine arts and I penciled in electronic engineering and I went and stood on the electronic engineering line and that is what launched my career so so little patty's like for decades has been like when are we gonna get back to being an artist that's the part I threw under the bus and I'm happy to say I'm getting back into that now and I'm, and I'm lucky.

26:26Well, that was going to be my next question. If you were going to, to get back into art, but I guess I'll ask my second question, which was so hypothetically, if you had to bully somebody, who would you bully? I'm just kidding. I'm joking. I'm joking.

26:46But I want to, I want to revisit a word that has come up quite frequently and it's the word heart. And when I hear somebody use a specific term in multiple ways, it tells me that the term has deep resonance, but also the resonance that it has for you is probably different than it has for me, you know? So what does that word mean to you and why is it so near and dear to your heart? yeah um you know that's an interesting question um i think you know there there's there's the idea of living with like a full whole heart and that is that is so important to me because otherwise you're not you're just living a constrained life and i think that is that is so painful.

27:44So I think I equate heart with a sense of self and authenticity and a sense of finding your, you know, finding your ground and your identity in the world is really all about your heart and, and, and making sure you, you keep your heart well cared for by having the right people in your life and avoiding the wrong people in your life and choosing work that feeds you something that gives you energy and just honoring your own humanity and the humanity of others. I think those are all heart things that I mean when I use the word heart. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I and I think there are a lot of elements that we can either recognize are important to us or also just had an awakening saying that is important to us to me but I'm not living it and what's interesting is that it can be hard to follow your heart when it comes to the things that you're trying to accomplish especially within the corporate world because there are in many cases very regimented pathways to very concrete forms of success so for instance there are specific positions, their specific methods of growth, those types of things.

29:04And also the corporate world will try to shape you in a way that might be more beneficial for the corporate world. And a lot of times, maybe even well-meaning people might suggest that you do things that they did in order to be successful, and they assume that's what's required to be successful. So just like that kind gentleman suggested that you might want to have an enemy or two, and you said maybe not. You know, so how did you have the the resilience, the strength to still stay authentic to yourself while achieving at a high level when it seemed like there were forces trying to push you in another direction?

29:44Yeah. And this this was not, you know, when I started out, I was not quite as as grounded as I am now. It took me a long time to really land that plane because I was nervous all the time. So I am a like I am a I am an introvert and I have a lot of social anxiety. People are surprised to hear that because I'm very expressive and I like speak for a living. But but in terms of who I really am, I'm I'm like, you know, my identity is is is awkward, nervous introvert, socially awkward, nervous introvert. so i get as a young woman into the male-dominated workforce and i don't know who i'm supposed to be because i just you know they don't really i don't fit right nobody looks like me nobody really wants me there there's a lot of unwelcoming behavior so it was this constant constant making you know assessing the situation and trying to make micro adjustments to just prove my my existence prove my worth prove my value without getting some little thing wrong that was going to cause them to bounce me out of the room and so the the it wasn't quite inauthentic it just wasn't this wholehearted way to be yeah as many young women do i was not being taken seriously you get treated like a little girl and to combat that i just became very serious i just became all business.

31:23Patty Azzarello: Serious, serious, serious. I would start every conversation with, here are my five points, three ideas, and two questions, and just get right to business. And I found that that felt safe for me. It felt like they couldn't possibly not take me seriously when I'm being so serious. And when I'm being so serious, I'm less likely to get hit on, which is another gauntlet of I had to avoid as I was as I was coming up in my career. And, you know, for a while it worked like it got me through those first gates. It got me through those first hurdles. But as I advanced and I became an executive, I remember I came home from a business trip that was like particularly annoying and I was I was tired.

32:12And the next day at work, it was five o 'clock and I was with my boss and I was so ready to go home. And he said to me, you know, Patty, I just can't relate to you the way I relate to your peers, all men. And he said, you're too serious. And I'm just like, oh man, like, what, what do I got to do to get a win here? And, And, you know, it took me a really long time to to sort that out. And I was very lucky and grateful to have a mentor who he didn't start as my mentor. He started as this big, scary, really high level executive, multiple levels above me that I managed to to secure a meeting with.

33:02and I was really nervous when I walked in and I was expecting him to be all buttoned up and be a big serious executive and he was like he was wearing a short sleeve dress shirt with no tie very like unfancy and he was sitting back in his chair and I came in and he's going so how are you doing and I'm like I'm I'm doing okay how are you and he's like man it's tough out there and he's like I don't know what to do the competition is killing me I think sometimes they're going to take my pants what are you seeing and i was like what like what is happening here it just it it it blew my mind that this very big executive was being so informal number one and number two he was talking to me like a human number three he was showing vulnerability to me he was asking my opinion he was talking to me like a peer like all of these things were happening in this moment and like all of my internal circuitry was just like, like short circuiting at this point, because I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it.

34:07And I left that meeting and, and it was such a good meeting. I actually secured him as a mentor. Like I, I, we had a great meeting and I said, would you mind if I called you again sometime? And I just parlayed that into, into a mentoring relationship and he taught me that you could be at a big impressive level and still just act like a human being and he was not being serious or formal at all and i thought okay this is important but i don't know what to do with this like how how do i apply this insight to me and i thought I know who knows the answer mom mom knows the answer and I told her this story and she said Patty if you're being so serious all the time you're not giving anybody a human being that they can connect to you're just like being a business robot and at this level I can I can see how that could maybe be holding you back or damaging your career.

35:20Patty Azzarello: But I'm like, but what should I do? What should I talk about? And she's like, talk about, you know, talk about your cycling, talk about your scuba diving. She just gave me like all these things. I'm like, really? Like, I can do that? And she's going, Patty, men, you know, they just they talk about all this stuff all the time. They go out for drinks and play golf and they call that working. They have human relationships with each other. If you want to keep, you know, if you want to stay in this circle in advance you're going to you're going to have to give more of your humanity into these conversations and then it finally occurred to me that yeah they have to want me in the room like my achievements have gotten me to a certain level but they didn't really want me in the room because it wasn't pleasant or fun to relate to me and it just it dawned on me that nobody wants to have a drink with five ideas, two points, and three questions.

36:16This is so good. Because here's what I'm hearing. A couple of things. First, I love the fact that you're giving us permission to be ourselves, which sounds like a weird thing. But we often just get this idea of what an avatar of a, quote, successful person should be. And then we say, I'm going to become this bland, successful person. It's for anybody who is immature like me. It reminds me of this episode of SpongeBob where he decided to be normal. Hilarious. Patty, I'll send it to you offline if you want to just, you know, waste time. But it is delightful. It's exactly what we're talking about here.

36:59And the other thing that I think is interesting is I'm seeing. Tell me if I'm reading too deeply into this. I'm seeing a thread though, because when it came to your ability to, your willingness to take the big swing at age 35 for this massive role, you self-selected out. You said maybe later, but your mentors told you that you should do it. And then this gentleman became a mentor, but also throughout your life, you truly do value the relationship that you have with your mother and the advice that she gives. So can you talk a little bit about the community, the tribe that you have around you and you've cultivated over time and the effect that's had on your life trajectory?

37:44yeah for sure so i i won the lottery with my family i just i can't believe it and and mom was the one who enabled me to go after a career like not all little girls in the 70s got that right it was it was quite the opposite and just another quick story um about the moment where where this happened like a very transformative moment for me we're talking we're talking about but Italy again, right? The Italian side of my family had these epic family picnics sometimes on the weekends. And I was the youngest person in my family by a mile. My sister's five years older than me and everybody else was older than her.

38:29So I was the only kid. Like I was the only little kid at these picnics. And I would sit in the grass and I'd usually be doing my homework at the family picnic because that's what I that's what I do um and I just I remember one one day watching all the adults all the cars arrived and they're unloading cooler after cooler after cooler after cooler of food a grill and a stove so they could cook pasta at the picnic right so these Italians they know they know how to eat um but anyway I remember after everything was unloaded the women all gathered and started emptying the coolers and doing the prep and the cook and the serving and all of that and the men all went off and started playing ball and all day same thing the women cook clean serve on repeat and the men are playing ball and they're like laying in the sun drinking and happy as can be and i just remember like i'm looking at the women and the men and the women like back and forth all day and i just landed on the men and thought that's the one that I want.

39:35And in that moment, that didn't seem strange to me because for two reasons. One, I thought I'm a person. Like the women are people, the men are people, I'm a person. There's no reason for me not to choose the men as my role models because they're a person. So that's the one that I want. I want to do all the interesting things in the world that the men are doing. And that wasn't as weird as it sounded because my mom was the one who encouraged me, you can be anything you want. Go to college, get a good education, support yourself. If my mom was saying, be pretty so you can attract a rich man and your only job is to be pretty.

40:19And that, you know, that's a very different message. And a lot of girls at that time were We're still getting we're still getting that message. And and it was interesting because mom didn't. She wasn't like you were not allowed to be pretty. But any time you paid any attention to that, she would be like, yeah, that's fine. But that's not what's important. What's important is that you're smart. She just over and over again. What's important is that you're smart. And so that was just such a boost, like compared to so many young girls that were not getting that from their families. That was just a giant, a giant head start.

40:57When I, you know, school, I had one friend, Wendy. She, she was impervious to my bullies program. And so I had one good friend that stuck with me. We're still good friends today. It's, it's a beautiful thing in my life. um when i got to college i had i got to electronic engineering school i went from being this super student to oh my god i'm gonna fail and lose my scholarship it was so much harder and so much bigger than anything i ever imagined and i was so like panicked and desperate not to lose my scholarship that i had to ask for help i asked for help all the time from other students from teachers, anybody that could help me, I asked for help.

41:44And so I developed, that just became my nature. And I know so many people at any age that would rather have needles stuck in their eyeballs than admit that they don't know something and need to ask for help because it, they, people think it's going to make them seem weak or not credible. But for me, it was quite the opposite, right? You ask a smart person for help, they tell you the answer, you go do the thing that you didn't know how to do before. And then their response is like, wow, look at her go. Like it's just, it is so the opposite of losing credibility by asking for help. So that just became my way of navigating the world.

42:26And an interesting thing, I think I've never put these two thoughts together the way I'm about to put them together right now is if you combine the idea of it became my nature to ask for help with the idea of being an awkward introvert that's how I met people right because I've found that when you ask people for help their reaction is like oh she thinks I'm smart I like her because she thinks I'm smart because she's asking me for help and then they give me the help. We have a really interesting conversation about whatever that's about. And I've formed so many relationships and this support team because I was willing to ask for help.

43:13And that's how it all started, where if I was just trying to like socialize to meet good people, I would have been hopeless. So that's an interesting thing I just figured out while we were talking. What I love about this story is the authentic form of connection. We connect with people over different things. And it's when you find that thing, just keep on doing it over and over again. There's a really interesting phenomenon. I don't know if you've seen this in other folks too, where they feel like they need to overcomplicate success. I think it all goes back to that insecurity that we all have and we're trying to deal with.

43:56I have another story I can share. So I was visiting a customer and I was talking to the director, the technical director, and his boss, the vice president was in the room and his boss was a bully, like of the worst kind. And he was telling me how, you know, our whole problem here is, is, is I call him Seth in the book. Seth doesn't know how to do his job. He's an idiot. Like everything is screwed up. He doesn't like it was so bad. I was just like feeling so crushed for this poor man with this bully of a boss. and then later later that same day the vice president walked me out to the lobby and we met his boss and this bully turned into a cowering suck-up with his boss totally different person and i was just so appalled and i thought in that moment you know if i still have you know little Patty's insecurities and fears of scary things.

45:09I bet this guy does too. I bet he, you know, I, he is his, he is his little self. And what I'm just seeing is that insecurity. And that's where the bullying is coming from. And once I saw that, I just, I couldn't unsee it. And I just, every time now, when I see a, uh, somebody, an aggressive, an overly aggressive, scary executive that's being bullying in the workplace, I just want to reach over and grab their forearm and say, oh, did somebody steal your ball? Did you cry? Did your dad get mad at you for crying? Like, I just, I cannot unsee it. So if you just kind of go through the world with like everybody's basically a 12-year-old, it really helps sort out some important things.

45:58And I think these layers and levels of complexity and facade and image that people build onto their success is just a more benign version of the same thing. They're protecting that insecure 12 year olds and they need to be impressive. And so they they put all of these these layers on. You're so right. And first of all, to the person who's listening to the podcast, let the record reflect that there is somebody that Patty wants to bully. it's bullies with executive positions. I'm just putting it out there, putting it out there. The second thing is just, it's the classic saying, hurt people, hurt people.

46:41Hurt people. That's right. And that's honestly, not that I take solace in the misery of others, but if somebody is creating a painful situation for other people or for me, and then it makes me want to lash out in a mean kind of way, I say to myself, one thing that helps me to choose peace and compassion and empathy in those moments is just recognizing that I don't need to do damage because I can already see the damage that has been done to them. And I think about times where there might have been times where I put a bad review on a company. That's as bad as it gets for me i don't even play in the comments it's like this company i slightly didn't like their product um whenever i do i'm the same way i can't do it because i know there are people who work really hard it takes a lot for me to get to that point but i do know there in the past where i have gotten to those points i personally wasn't in a good place you know and it was just you know some unfortunate situation that put me to the place where i said you know what i'm leaving a review this time um so yeah i think that's just something that we can keep in mind a lot of times the the people who are who are trying to tear us down it comes from a place again like your mother said it's not about you it's really truly about them about them yeah so that just reminds me of one of my very favorite things ever is it was on a list of vengeful quotes for people who are not very vengeful and it was may all of your chocolate chip cookies turned out to be oatmeal reason

48:24Patty Azzarello: that is the worst we don't like wasting calories patty that's really good that is really good let's talk about some of the big swings that we've taken that might not have worked out because that's always the thing that holds people back the fear of failure. What if it doesn't work out? What if people laugh at me? And for somebody who has accomplished as much as you have, I know there are big swings that have hit and there had to have been some that didn't. So what comes to mind for that? Well, the first one that comes to mind is the most embarrassing moment of my career, which is I was just starting out.

49:06I had been an engineer and I hated being an engineer. And I, through a series of steps in good luck, I discovered the job of being a sales engineer, which was to be a technical person that works in a technical company in the sales cycle. And you answer all the technical questions in the sales cycle. So I had had my first two weeks of training and our company had two different products. Um, one was a, a schematic capture product, which was to draw, you know, schematics. And the other product was a printed circuit board design product, which was a product to actually create the physical printed circuit board.

49:49I was only trained on the first product. All the sales reps knew that. And they were told, do not take Patty into a situation for the second product because she hasn't been trained. so i'm in my first week maybe my second demo of my life and i'm in this room full of men and they're all of engineers they're on their plaid shirts with their pocket protectors and they're just sitting there and the the sales force um introduce the sales guy introduces me and um i i have my you know i'm sitting at the computer and i open up the schematic capture product and the guys say oh we don't need that product we already have a schematic capture product we're only interested in your printed circuit board design product so i i knowingly glanced at the sales rep expecting him to say sorry for the misunderstanding we'll have to reschedule and instead he said patty show them what they want to see

50:50and i'm like uh and i'm like so duty bound that i'm like okay so i i clicked on the printed circuit board product and there we all were staring at a picture of a printed circuit board on the screen that was all i had like literally i had nothing else i had nothing else to say i didn't know I didn't know what to do then the questions started coming and they're asking me how many levels do you support can you do how many vias can you have can you do internal vias how do you handle heat sinks they're throwing all this stuff at me and I'm like I didn't even understand the questions and I'm just writing frantically these questions and I must have said I'm sorry I don't know but I'll get back to you like 30 times I was dying I was so embarrassed I was just mortified.

51:44And, um, and so finally, like the worst moment that I could imagine came where one of the guys in the room just stopped this and said to the sales rep, why did you bring her? She doesn't know anything. And oh my God. So I, I left that day feeling like such a failure um but the reason i share this story is because what happened to me after that was i didn't die right that's i didn't die and the next thing i did was i went and i took my list of 30 questions to the product manager for that product and i asked him please explain what all these questions mean. Please explain why they're important to the customer.

52:37What's the customer trying to accomplish? And please show me how to demo these things in our product. And he did. He spent like three hours with me. And within two weeks, I was like highly sought after as the one to go to, to demo that product. If I hadn't done that, I would have waited a month to go through the corporate training, which I ultimately did, which wasn't nearly as good as what I got from taking this embarrassing situation and taking everything that happened and learning from it. And, and then, you know, it thing, it was just, it was, it was transformative. And I, I recall that situation so many times.

53:22It's like, when you get embarrassed, you don't die. It's just, you get embarrassed. It feels awful. Like it feels absolutely awful. It makes you feel small. It makes you feel weird. It makes you feel insecure, but it doesn't kill you. And that was that was another one of those lessons which allowed me to take more big swings later in my career. Because every, I believe that the one of the, one of the most effective teaching tools we have to learn things is failure. Because there's a lot of motivation to not embarrass yourself again. So you have all this energy to figure it out and make sure that never happens again.

54:05And so that's a big, that's, that's the benefit of taking big swings is you, you grow faster, even when you fail. Mm. Patty, I love this story. I love the story. I don't like that it happened to you, but I'm glad it did because you leveled up. Because think about it. You were thrown under the bus and survived. So we've talked about little Patty. Now we're talking about speed bump Patty cannot be destroyed. And what's really great about this is the guest I had on earlier, Selena, she said we're either winning or we're learning. And then I want to add on to that because it's we can win now or we can win later.

54:48Those truly are the options because it's either you get the you do the pitch, you do what it takes. Hey, I got a success. That's fantastic. or this happens and you think about the the fears that hold so many people back from shooting their taking the big swing in that one story you you lived all of them you know so the version of you that came out the outside of that story could go to the version of you at the beginning of the story and then she says is it as bad as i think it's going to be and you say patty it's worse and And you use that as a tool to level up. Because when you think about it psychologically, we have loss aversion where a loss hurts twice as badly as a win feels good.

55:35And there's an important evolutionary purpose for that because we need to pay attention to those things. Pain is life's greatest teacher. And then you use that as a catalyst for future growth. So, okay, win now or you turn me into a machine. and then I'll win later. And this is such a really powerful story of resilience, but a different take on it because you chose to continue to push forward and use this as a catalyst for success. So there's so much we can take from this. And before we bring Simone in, I have this fear. I don't know. It's probably, it's out there. But as a keynote speaker, one of my biggest fears is getting there and just falling off the stage.

56:26It's never happened to me, though. I don't know why I brought that up. Does that conjure up any thoughts, Patty?

56:38Well, in fact, it does. Yeah, I was on a stage. There were about 2 ,000 people in the audience. and it was a it was a big like ballroom and it was really dark and the stage was like a three-foot platform that and a giant screen behind it and the where my slides were being shown and the and the only light in the room was the giant screen and so I'm about halfway through my presentation and I'm I'm going to emphasize a point and I walk back to point to the slide but I couldn't see because of the way the room was lit there was like a three-foot gap between the stage and the screen and I literally just disappeared like that's what that's what people told me I just I was there and then I was gone and then there was silence and they and there was a people were ready to like get getting out of their chairs to come in and and rescue me and from my perspective i'm like i've just fallen off a stage and it's really dark here and like am i okay can i move like i don't know if like 10 seconds or 10 hours went by before my brain switched back on and then apparently what the audience heard was my lapel mic just like rumble rumble rumble rumble and then this little tiny voice that said i'm on me and then and then i stood up and i'm like waist deep behind the stage and it didn't occur to me to like walk around to the front of the stage and walk up the steps like a normal person so i just like lumbered like rolled myself onto the back of the stage like a seal climbing onto a rock and I got up and I was just covered with dust bunnies I was wearing a black suit I was just covered with dust bunnies and I just stood there for a moment looking at the audience and they're all like well now what's gonna happen and and so I'm brushing off the dust bunnies and I just said you know it's so wonderful that I got to share one of my true career highlights with so many people and then i got i got a laugh um and then i i i went usually i walk around the stage but i had sprained my ankle so i went and i hung on to the podium and i delivered the second half of my talk standing on one foot hanging on to the hanging on to the podium it was uh it was pretty funny Wow.

59:26And you finished it. You finished it. This is great. This is the the the stories of Kobe Bryant shooting the free throw with his Achilles torn and Patrick Mahomes limping his way to a Super Bowl. Got nothing on just Bunny Patty. so so a year later i had to give the same talk to the same conference and they introduced me and everybody laughed and i thought okay well that doesn't feel so great but i was prepared so um i um had i got up on the stage and i said before i get started i'm taking some precautions and i had guys in hard hats come and put up traffic cones and wrap me in safety tape around the edge of the platform and then i got another laugh and that one that's good oh that's great that is great oh my goodness okay now um let us go to our correspondent everybody's favorite canadian simon perez and also please explain to the audience why you weren't in the selena episode and why i keep on hammering this canada thing well i was not in the in selena's episode because

1:00:42Patty Azzarello: I was in my citizenship ceremony. So now I am Venezuelan and Canadian as well. I have two citizenships. That's why. Thank you, Kami, for the opportunity. And now, my question, you know, when I was analyzing your profile, I saw that you have two books at the beginning that is Rise and Move. Those are called Rise and Move. And they're like very straight to the point. Like from the cover, this is what you're going to learn in this book but then for the third one is a very different one it has a different style because it says um why is she still here so who is she where is here so for me it was like there is a transformation between the the first two books and the second book something happened in the middle that i don't know so i just want to invite her to ask her what happened between the first two books and the third one.

1:01:43Patty Azzarello: Is there any change or is it just a marketing decision that you decided to start this book with a question? So my first two books are about, you know, building a successful career, being a strong leader without turning into a miserable jerk. They're about how to use humanity to get your organization moving forward, executing strategy together. And these were things that I figured out. I figured out how to do them. I'm a clear thinker, so I wrote it down. And there's a, these books are just full of, of really good advice, um, in, in those topics. This book is very, very, very different. I was not, I was on purpose, not trying to write another instruction book or directly give advice.

1:02:35I thought it was important to share the real story about what my journey was like as a female and as a human building a big corporate executive career, because it was wacky. And the why is she still here speaks to the male-dominated environment and the low expectations and the fact that every day you are faced with low expectations. When I was in that sales engineer role, for example, very often the sales guy would introduce me as the technical expert and everybody would look right past me and they'd be looking around like, oh, is he in the bathroom? Is he coming later? They just couldn't believe that I could be the technical expert.

1:03:37So many times I was just, my voice was not included. It wasn't welcome. I tell a lot of stories in this new book about what it took to just exert my existence and my right to be there and then ultimately to get my voice heard. and I was often met with very unwelcoming behaviors. And, you know, there was one role I was in where the behaviors were just blatantly unwelcoming. You don't belong here. You're not technical enough. I don't understand why you got hired. Just like, no facade. It was just, I was just, the low expectations were a lot in that one. and my version of resilience is not something complicated it doesn't require a specific personality or skill set it's just don't get chased away just keep going back just like little patty right go back day after day and so that's what the title of the book is about is it's quite a literal question that i faced throughout my whole career is why is she still here in that particular environment after, you know, nine months, I was still showing up.

1:04:55And I saw people were like, how can she still be here after everything we've put her through? Why is she still here? So it was just such a part of my reality. And I just thought, while all of that advice is great advice, I wanted to share my personal journey and my personal story and help people understand that successful people are still human and insecure on the inside. And we have to figure out how to deal with being scared and how to deal with being unwelcome and how to take those big swings when it's easier not to. Wow. This is so good. So good. Great question, Simone. Great answer, as always, Patty.

1:05:42And I know we've been here for over an hour and my son, I can hear him saying, why is she still here?

1:05:53The answer is because I've got one more question. Okay. So when you think about the exclusivity, we talk so much about inclusivity today, but there was just flagrant exclusion that was occurring. And you had such an incredible amount of resilience to keep on showing up and not just showing up, showing up with ever increasing levels of competence and greatness because everything was utilized as a tool to build you into the person you are today. And now I'm wondering, looking back, when you think about the exclusion that you experience and those difficulties, do you ever wish that you found an environment that was more inclusive where you could be just as successful or maybe even more successful without having to deal with that level of toxicity?

1:06:55You know, not really, for a couple of reasons. One was, I simply wasn't creative enough. This was the path I was on. And I was doing well. And, you know, I love a gold star. So I kept getting more gold stars and higher pay. And, and I, and it's like, well, you're on the track, just keep going and try not to die. That was as creative as I was. I also don't think I believed that other places would be different because the world was the same everywhere. It didn't just happen in the workplace. There's so many stories in the book about dealing with these situation after situation outside of work and and inside of work um there's a really kooky one about my very first job ever um which was at a place an amusement park called action park which was so wild and dangerous they made a movie about it and um and and this was my first i was 13 and this was my first experience at work as a female and getting the the the treatment that you get from men experiencing what that's like as a female and it is just a crazy crazy story but all of my life experiences were telling me this is really hard, but there are benefits and everywhere you're going to face similar things.

1:08:32So might as well stick with it. This is great. And I love that answer too, because you did do that evaluation and recognize this was the best path for you. You know, that's really powerful. And then just a little aside, this is kind of off topic, but it, it really gives you an appreciation of the passage of time and how society can shift too. because as hard as it was for you at that time, and it was obviously legitimately hard. Imagine if you were born 50 or 100 years earlier. I think about that with my career. You know, my tan wouldn't go very far in many workplaces. You know, it's really interesting.

1:09:11And so we have to accept not in the sense of in an apathetic type of way. We have to acknowledge the realities of the situation we find ourselves in. But I find a lot of value in thinking to say, okay, you know what? Today in this era, there are things that we are working through as a society and we might not enjoy them. But man, thank God it's not a hundred years ago. Because that would have had a whole different set of problems too. Yeah. I mean, not even a hundred years. One of the reasons my mom was so focused on the education of me and my sister was that she was dying to go to college. She wanted to be a scientist and she was forbidden.

1:09:50She was a girl. You don't do that. Just one generation. Wow. Wow. That's wild. So in many ways you are the epitome of her highest aspiration for what you could have accomplished. I think that's I might not have said those words myself but that's probably true. Yes. Well, I said it for you, Patty. So it's not egotistical because I said it. Let's say some other nice things. So, Patty, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you joining us. And as we close this out, again, I want you to shout out the book and how people can work with you. But I also want to hear a clear commitment for little Patty on your art journey.

1:10:34I want to hear what you're doing artistically. all right so so first um you can find me online at patty azarello.com on linkedin at patty azarello and i have a sub stack called secret passageways um and i'm at patty azarello.substack.com so i'm pretty easy to find there um you can buy my new book i have it here why is she still here anywhere books are sold so choose your favorite bookseller and as I said when Simone asked the question I'm just really excited about sharing this story because one of the loveliest things is that when people read it they want to tell me their story I love that I love that and if I can give somebody a boost of confidence to pursue their own big swing that's kind of where I'm at in the world right now that's what I want to do is I want to spend my energy just helping other people and lifting people up and helping them see the possibilities that they're disqualifying themselves for so that's why I wrote this book and and why I'm excited about it um so art yes I have um I have started doing a bunch of different things artistically.

1:12:01And I'm really excited about it. I'm taking some online classes in drawing, and I've done some paintings. And I'm just, I'm loving it. And once, right now, I'm kind of in a mode where I'm renovating my place. So it's taking, I could call it being an artist, but I'm acting as the architect and the designer. So it's kind of time consuming. So I haven't fully launched into the art yet but one of the reasons I chose this place is it has a room that is filled with light that will become my studio my workspace and I can I can do writing I can do thinking reading but I can also make a mess and throw paint around and I'm I'm super super excited I love this this is so good and that's that's why I wanted to end on that point too because even though you're taking big swings, doing big things, you still have those passion projects.

1:12:57It's so important. So important. So kudos to you on everything. And then thank you so much for joining us. This has been a masterclass. Well, this has been such a pleasure. You're amazing. So this is great.

1:13:24Thank you.