20Sales: How to Scale a Career While Scaling a Family, Strategies and Specific Tools To Help Maintain Work-Life Balance, What Companies Can Do To Empower Parents To Be Their Best Selves & How to Prevent Parental Leave Being an Inhibitor To Your Career

25:43I want to touch on some inspirational stories, some anecdotes. Let's bring this to life. Stevie, there's no one better than an amazing story. I loved our episode so much. I wanted to move to you. When we think about inspiring stories or parsley experiences of like overcoming challenges related to balancing my little new career. What's one or two that come to mind feet? Yeah, it's so interesting because Jess really touched on this idea of that feeling of being fake at times and having to put on a mask. I really deeply struggled with that for years when my daughter was younger. I started this sales career and I already felt so completely out of my element.

26:22I had this weird gaming background I honed in all this backstory that I was trying to push as far away as possible. And then not only was I a mom, I was a single mom, and I just was honestly doing everything in my power to hide it. And I would do anything at work. I set no boundaries. If there was like a trip or an opportunity or something coming up, my answer was always yes. I never even hinted that I might have an obligation that could get in the way, because I was so scared of the idea that I had a commitment at home and I was working with all men and I was like it felt so unfamiliar and even though some of them were parents, I just felt like a total outsider, but I doubled down on that myself by pretending it wasn't there.

27:08So if I had to go on a trip and I was single -bomb, I would fly people in from all over the country to watch my daughter.

27:18At one Stay with her and I would never mention these things to the people I worked with. It was so hard and so isolating and so painful to do that. That continued for a long time and I went to Twilio where I was before Vanta and Twilio I started as an enterprise AE and I started on my same thing. I'm going to pretend. But I had this incredible sales leader shout out Alice and Welch who is also now a CRO over at Neo4j. Alice was amazing and she really championed my career there. and the first time she promoted me at Twilio, I had been crushing it as an AE, and she wrote this incredible note. She said, I want to tell more of your story, like about who you are, and she wanted to include in there that I'm a mom, and she just gave me permission.

28:04And from that point forward, everything felt different because I felt seen as a full human. Like Jess said, I embraced it, and I ran with it, and I felt empowered in a very different way. From that point forward, I have never stopped doing that because it actually brings me back to the very beginning of my sales career I had this amazing mentor Matt Golden. He was so hard on me and he taught me so many lessons and the most valuable one was that When you're selling to people you're selling to humans and if you are vulnerable and you show your weaknesses and you show All aspects of your humanity.

28:41You actually give the other person permission to also not be perfect That has stuck with me 20 years on and I think it's what people who aren't parents can do for parents the workplace is be real Just be human and everybody's got commitments be real about what your commitments are be real about not feeling great and in doing that You will give permission to everybody around you to also be real one question Do you think vulnerability is a luxury of being successful? Are you a rock star, CRO, you're a leader of your profession? Is it a luxury of being successful that we can be and it's seen as a strength almost?

29:16Yes, it's a luxury and it's a privilege and I think there are a couple of things I would call out and there one is you never really feel like you've made it. I think you can always look at other people and see oh they've made it more than I've made it or I haven't really made it, I'm still climbing. Part of that is the perception you have of your own success, you can give yourself permission to be more real earlier rather than holding the bar for some like ridiculous accomplishment that you have to achieve before you're able to be real. And I think it's incumbent on those folks who have reached that point in their career and have the luxury and privilege to give everybody around them that permission.

29:55Because you can actually open it up for other people, you can open up an environment where people are allowed to be human to make mistakes and be real. I think that's what leadership really looks like in the workplace now. Like that is the bar for being a great leader. It's not just leading your team to victory. It's doing that and respecting the humanity of the team you've built and allowing them to be real and human. We all have those things. I told my story at Vanity Fair this year. I had a lot of those things and we're not alone and the more you say it, you give other people permission. So that's where I try to focus now is just creating a safe space around me for people to be human.

30:35I view it as supporting the economy. My therapist has unwavering demands on his time. I'm really a net additive to GDP. Maggie, I want to move to you on an inspirational story. What's the first that comes to mind? Yeah, first off, Stevie, thank you for always just being so real. There's like fewer people I know that are just more real and out there than Stevie. And I believe as others and really anyone, we have a duty for those out there to set this kind of standard and set the stage of how we want to show up. And we're going to be setting this mirror and those who potentially look up to us or all of us are leading orgs are going to mirror what it is that we're putting out there and we're going to show that it is okay to act and behave and share these stories.

31:16So thank you Stevie for always being so open and honest. Yeah, working parents are just some of the toughest that are out there. And I think it's really important for me to never hide that I'm a parent. So obviously I realize it's coming from a place of privilege, but for my teens, I want them to know that I am a working parent. I am a working mother when I am pregnant that I'm not having the best days and sometimes I just need to cancel that meeting or go off camera and actually speaking of being pregnant, one of the biggest things that happened in my career was actually when I was eight and a half months pregnant.

31:45There was a role that opened up at Slack for an enterprise leader and at that point in time I was a senior manager of Midmarket and there was this new role to help lead enterprise for our West Coast team. And I thought there's absolutely no way I should put my hand up for this role because I'm literally eight and a half months pregnant. I can't hide this or whatsoever that I'm about to give birth. And who's going to want someone who's going to get the role and then go out on leave for the next five months? And I actually had two male allies, our VP of sales as well as our head of enterprise encouraged me to go for the role.

32:18In addition to many others within the company, but that was something they really stood out is that they told me the company is invested in this person in a long term. This isn't something that we're just thinking about short term, three months, five months. It's really important that we get the right leader in place. You should absolutely go for the role. So I decided to put my hand up for it. I went for it. Again, literally interviewed eight and a half months pregnant. I stood in the entire interview. I was so uncomfortable, but I felt like I had to stand and be there. And I really celebrated that I had been pregnant while also leading very successful teams in the past.

32:50and why I was the right person for this. I ultimately ended up getting the job and I can very confidently say my career would not be where it is today if I hadn't gone for this job and if I hadn't gotten that job and I was so close to just not going for it because I was in my own head. And so that's really my story there and some encouragement for anyone who's listening is to don't be afraid to go for something. Don't feel that like sense of shame or sense of guilt or sense of not being good enough because you are a working parent or a working mother or pregnant or planning a family that you should just really just go for it and see what happens.

33:24Maggie, I love that story in terms of just going for it and I didn't actually know that but also eight and a half months pregnant going for a role. You go, that's fucking awesome. But you wanted to ask that because you mentioned that the time off afterwards, I think I'll see your opinions and particularly the Swedes in terms of parental leave. How do we think about parental leave specifically? How have you navigated this because it is a challenging topic also knowing that you're inevitably behind you to, I feel bad saying it, but like your career being on pause, whatever analysis does progress.

33:52So career pause, I think sadly can be a very real thing. You essentially step out of the business for four to six months and the business is still moving forward without you. And that's why I actually think, and this is a bit counter -intuitive, but it's so important for companies to have equitable parental leave for both parents for the birthing parent and the non -birthing parent. So it shouldn't just be the female that is getting the bulk of the print to leave. And you know, typically the male or the other partner, it really needs to be both need to have pretty darn near equitable leave. Because if you don't do that, it actually puts women at a disadvantage, both financially, as well as in their career, if they're taking far longer than their non -birthday encounter parts.

34:33And this is going to happen multiple times if they have multiple kids. So in my case, I've now gone out and leave twice in the last few years. And then When speaking on the home front, studies show that with a non -birth and parent or a partner's increased involvement in baby care, it can mitigate maternal postpartum depression. And actually, one in seven women get postpartum depression, which is something that is not talked about enough publicly and enough out there. It can be really hard to come back to work and to focus on your career if you're also battling postpartum depression at the same time.

35:04So if you're now able, if this, if your company is able to increase the leave for the other parent, it's going to be associated to greater relationships stability. And this is actually largely because when partners take leave, it's going to signal a greater investment in family life. So it's going to reduce the burden on mothers. It's going to strengthen the parental relationships. It's really less about dividing those household tasks and it's more about providing emotional support and being present during those early months. I think all of us on the call can attest those early months of a baby's life are some of the hardest most hiring most challenging You're trying to heal from a major life event your body is just completely Organized itself some of us have had major huge abdominal surgeries to get these kids out And it's really important for that other Partner to be present during those earlier months and then that's actually in turn gonna help the birthing parent or the birthing mother get back into the swing of things with their career because they've now had this support over the last few months.

36:03Whereas there's so many companies out there that think about this in kind of the old traditional way I was actually just speaking to an investor at different from recently where they told me that in their firm the male gets two weeks, whereas the female gets a ton of time but that's actually not setting that female up for success to have a very good entry into the first few months of their child's life. I just have to ask these questions, should we force them men to have the same time off? Like, you could put it in place, but like, respectfully have probably want to give out to work as soon as possible.

36:34Should we force it? Because it is important for so many different reasons. I believe so, but I think that also comes to making sure that men are also paid, that you're getting part of the problem with America is there's no set parental leave policy. We actually have one of the worst policies in the entire world. the most countries out there have far better leave policies than we do because we have pretty much zero guaranteed time And so by doing that in addition to potentially forcing or requiring for the partner Strongly strongly encouraging the partner to take the time off But it's also making sure that they're not going to be missing out on compensation when they are on that time And sadly a lot of policies are out there is like a job will be guaranteed But you won't be getting the full pay for it So we also need to make sure there's the other policies that are out there to help support the non -birth and parent to go on Lauren, I'm intrigued.

37:19How did you think about this kind of potential career pause and not aspect of parental leave? Yeah, I think it's critical what Maggie just said at the end there, the non -briving parent and the bricking parent, right? We want to expand the scope of policy design to any type of family unit that's bringing a child into the world. I didn't think of it about as putting my career on haze. Really, what I thought was how do I continue the momentum while I'm out? So for me, it was critical to invite Well, it's on a team to step up for a opportunity for them to step up, but leaders in place who can keep the momentum going and really that requires setting clear expectations for what will be accomplished before you get back.

37:57So that's a lot of work. And now I don't want to make light of it because you really have to take responsibility to make sure while leaders on leave helping a team be successful and what are the expectations and what I have a accountability are you going to put in place because the business continues whether you're there or not. So it's your choice. whether you want to put a blue current in place to ensure team has a need while you're investing your energy into keeping a tiny human life. Because is it tough to be fully out? And what I mean by that is it's so easy to just pop on Slack or pop on email just quickly.

38:30It was just half an hour a day, but then you're getting in your about and it's tough for your team then and is that rider is that wrong? How do you think about that? Like fully in, fully out, checking in, not checking in. What's the right answer there? For me, I really tried to honor the fact that it was a once in a lifetime or multiple times ending on your family structure, but to experience that time with my newborn and really just expand the scope of what life means. And every time I thought about it without level of gravity, it was really easy for me to say this luck and wait, or empower someone else on the team to make a decision.

39:05Ideally, what I've done is create a team that can fashion and ramb since. Yes, of course, always come to an occasion. We'll reach out sometimes. And that's really hard to create that boundary. But for me, it was setting up times where I was like, OK, I'm going to devote this hour to thinking about what's going on in the business. And then after that, I'm going to sign off. No guilt. I signed myself a schedule. I'm following the schedule. And I'm going to refocus on this again. I'm really magical once in a lifetime. Exhausting experience. You clearly never saw cheaper by the dozen. but I'm sure that I managed to get in a plug for Slack, that a Maggie you should be so proud of me.

39:42I mentioned Maggie, the America's worst parental leave policy. Sometimes I think funny things, and then realize I probably shouldn't say them. But tell me, how can you advocate for parental leave if the existing policy isn't up to Paulate? What can we actually do to change things? Yeah, absolutely. Great question. I think about it in a kind of four -step structure framework. So first, I'll start off with the number one thing that's important to do is to educate your company. And I've found that oftentimes policies just haven't been formed. They're outdated. They haven't been reviewed in years.

40:11It wasn't actually a bunch of folks up at the top being like, let's make really bad policies. It was just something that maybe was never worked on or maybe was really never thought through. So it took great time to really come together and all walking through the steps, but to really educate those at the top who are the key decision makers on why it matters to go change these policies. So the first thing that you should really think about doing is pull together data and research of comparable companies and comparable companies within your industries. If we are web flow, who are the maybe top -defect friend company that we need to compare ourselves to, is we think about top -town, and then really go and look at what are their policies, how are they treating this?

40:52Is there anything that we can learn from them? The second thing that's really important to do is to meet with leaders and peers from the company. Ideally, parents or people who want to be parents or people who are really like allies to families. So really get together a group form a group of people to advocate for change in parental leave policy together and work on gathering that data across your network. The third thing then to do and we actually a group of us right here on this call, we did this at Slack where we found an ally and a sponsor who was willing to champion this discussion at the executive level.

41:26So really you've got this whole group of people who some are more junior in their career, some are more senior, but it's really important to have this executive that's gonna be the sponsor for this. So work with them and take these findings to the executive team and have a productive conversation. That's actually one of the most key things here is don't go in combative, don't go in blaming, don't go in telling them what they need to do, but be very clear in your asks and your education of what a good parental leave policy should look like. And then finally, be a bit selfish and advocate for yourself and don't be ashamed and don't feel any guilt.

42:02Sales in particular has a ton of nuances on parental leave, I think probably more so than any other role that's out there because you're thinking about things like your quota, your book of business, who's going to cover your accounts when you're out? What happens if an opportunity closes when you're out that you've been working on for years or what happens if an opportunity starts in one of your accounts? And now all of a sudden you've come back, do you take it? Does the former rep take it? So there's a lot of nuances within sales that are really important to think through with your leader and with the sales leadership team.

42:33So make those asks, make the asks for things like a ramped quota when you're coming back into work, make the asks for protection over your accounts or deals that might close when you're out. And all honestly one of the most important things that you can do is ensure that you have an adequate lead coverage plan. Very similar to what Lauren was saying, when I went out on my last leave, I put together this behemoth of a coverage plan. and I made it very clear of here's when I want to be contacted and here's when I don't want to be contacted. Key hyarings, final round interviews, firings, terminations, I made it like very black and white of here's what my needs are and here's when I expect to still be brought in and then even different cycles.

43:11First month, I don't want to be talked to at all, months two and three totally okay to reach out to me. So I would also say for I see's for sales reps for really anyone, be very clear with what your asks are and what your needs are for when you go at them. You mentioned this like got your elements there and those intricacies Lauren I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Yeah I'll just share my story I was pregnant when I started it by tram and I'd done the high level due diligence of confirming that there wasn't fat differential leave plan at all at this tech startup that seemed like a market of proofread length of time and that was frankly about as much as I was willing to ask about as a candidate as gentle as subjects to brief and out yet employed.

43:50And when I arrived, it actually turned out that you can only qualify for parental leave if you had been an employee for nine months, which was physically impossible for me given I was to you seven months into the new gig and actually California doesn't guarantee job perfection to you've been in see for 12 months, although that tenure Flippes seemed outrageous to me. It was actually a step up from what's been provided to us that a government. So there are a few other gothies in there that just needed to be revisited. So I followed a lot of the stuff that Maggie do not land to rewrite the policy.

44:21In particular, what I think was most effective in my approach was that we focused on their DEI implications of the policy. So if you're as a business committed to recruiting diverse top talent, you have to be able to hire that talent regardless of where they are in their family planning journey itself. It makes the decision for the business more about online and with our values as a company and less about the tiki taku start date qualification minutia. And Maggie also mentioned on the sales side that it's pretty unique another thing to look out for in front of leaf policies is whether they pay you commission while you're out.

44:52So in sales, we're in someone of a unique position because so much of our income is variable, but it's totally reasonable to advocate that just like any other role, a salesperson should be paid hour on harder earrings, which includes variable while we're on lead. It's the only way to prevent penalizing burping parents or taking leaves that they visit them require. Is that internal politics around the commissions? As you said, if it starts when you're away and you close it or you start it and then it closes when you're away, is that politics? I haven't actually ever thought about the kind of internal politics and dynamics between bluntly the cash cycle and who gets it.

45:27Absolutely. And there are nuances to it. Every deal is structured a little differently and also depends on the company. When I was at Google, there was a double -con policy. So everyone wins and everyone's incentivized around the same thing. When you're at a startup test looking for profitable growth, that's not always an option. So you start to get creative, developing splits and creating the most equitable opportunity that ultimately keeps the customer at the forefront of the experience so that we're all making our problem their problem. He mentioned some tough elements there and they're actually finding the community of people we can talk to.

46:02Rainier, I'd love to speak to you about this, which is like, how can we think about speaking up effectively and getting help? Versus bluntly, sitting with all of the stress and struggles on our own, how do we do that effectively? Yeah, absolutely. I know Julian Lorne and the team covered this earlier as well. So my oldest is nine, who's born in 2014. His name is Roman, and nine years ago, as you can imagine, and being in office was the trend. And when you leave the floor of the office, you're sitting in. Everyone can see you. It's very visible. And from the last nine years, I've been the parent.

46:32You got to pick up their child at least 50 % of the time. And so this meant I would take my laptop in my bag and leave the sales floor by sometimes as early as four, even for 30, depending on where he was and daycare or preschool or with our nanny. But honestly, I'd never felt guilty. And trust me, leaving the sales floor at 4 4 30 is there's this is when some of the folks that don't have kids there there's really good energy there's deals being closed and of quarter you can imagine what's like at this time and I sat right next to our VP of sales at Slack for three years and he would see me that today's I was in charge picking up my kids he would see me get up at 4 4 30 always with have a good day Ray knew awesome day today or whatever it was and that helped me not feel guilty that gave me the permission because he knew my family was a non -negotiable.

47:21I wanted to be there for pickup, I wanted to be there for the optical activities, I wanted to be there for the 9 a .m. first swim lessons that Roman had in a pool that was across the city and my team, people that I poured into, the people that I poured into me, always knew that this was something that was very important to me. How can you speak out? As a leader, know what your teams non -negotiables are. Ask them. DeCurious, Jess said, give them the permission they need to go to their kids first swim lessons or their spring musical that's always like at 1 p .m. where the parent to your coffees are always at 10 a .m.

47:54right? Make sure that you as a leader know what's important to your team and support them. And if you're not a leader, let your leader know what your boundaries are, what your priorities are, what your non -negotiables are, and don't be afraid to tell them that you want to be at your child's swim lesson or at pick up every day. And love that in terms of sitting nice to VP of cells and him encouraging you and being supportive in that way. That's awesome to hear. It's lovely to have that support. And when I think about that, I think about kind of mentorship. And Lauren, if anything, about how mentorship or support from others is really impacted.

48:23Well, journey is a working mother. There are some points which really essential for you. Yeah, I think it's critical to get creative and building your personal board of directors. I'm part of an incredible women's circle made up above their alumni from Stanford business bold that span from their ferdens to their 70s. And so there's something really magical about sharing the ups and downs that you're carrying with the multi -generational sport group. And anyone can build a board like this. In fact, you're looking at another one. This is my go -to group of sail leaders. Whenever I'm facing a challenge at work or thinking about a career transition or want to celebrate something, we do this daily and it's really important.

49:00but you have to take responsibility for designing that personal water dressers. It's not something that's going to be handed to you. So that spanned outside of your how many outside of your industry and other cases. And for me, when I started at my current company, I mentioned I was pregnant and my boss, Cory Boss, and the bad of higher beaches, but yeah, was really inclusive. And a lot of people think that this type of membership would traditionally come from women, but I just want to call out meant to be in credible allies and advocates. When Jim gave me my verbal offer, I said, what's a need to think critically about hiring me for a BPSA school during a season of my life, in which I'm working on growing a family.

49:38And he leaned right in not only underscoring the company's whole person values, but also when it was time for me to go out on leave, he spoke publicly about his senior revenue leader going on for him to leave and set the tone not only is a tolerable, but it's celebrated. Jones of Us 1, which is, I said to someone the other day and the team, I have no idea what it's like being a parent, but I just want you to know that you can tell me whatever you need, you can come to me with anything, and it's okay. We'll figure it out together. Is that lazy of me because I didn't take the time to really speak to lots of parents and figure out what it is?

50:10Or is that actually okay of me because I was giving them the room and the space to be what they needed to be? I think so on earlier on the call said this well, which is be curious. Just the open minded of people's different experience, whether they have responsibility that side of work I'd include parenting or include caring for an elder in their lives or what have you. So I think it's a great approach to be open -minded and create a space for people to be as D said vulnerable and sauce. Yeah, I was worried. Mario, Raina and Judy, you have the mentor commonality of Kevin Egan, who I actually spoke to for this wonderful man Made a great chat, but I'd love to hear how was that impactful in terms of how you think about really your journey as a working mother?

50:51I'm happy to start. I still work for Kevin. I think it's just having a great mentor empowers you to be who you are. It opens the door for you to to work freely, live freely. And what Raino said, like, we have to demystify that being flexible and being successful are not mutually exclusive. They can happen at the same time. And at the end of the day, your work will speak for itself. And that's how Kevin was. Like, it didn't matter how you get the work done, but it's that, do the work. And I find that when we give people the avenues to get their work done and work in the way that best suits them, but we see people at their best.

51:36And I think Kevin was a great leader and is a great leader in showing that way. The worst thing is when you have to go through your day and your career feeling guilt and having things sit on top of you when you are trying to do your job. I think having a mentor that recognizes that early on is critical and recognizes that we need people to show up as their best selves. So if it means altering how we lead or our expectations or time commitments, then at the end of the day, we all want to be successful. So the sooner we can get to that mindset, the more successful and happy you will be and your teams will be.

52:15Jess, who's been really impactful for you and your career and enabling that feeling from you? Before we went out, I'll leave the first time. We had a plot of this big reorg and I was reporting intramly to our global VP of Revenue, the Thomas Hansen. And I didn't really know him that well. But I always think about this Maya Angel, who quote, which is, people won't remember what you said or what you did, but they'll always remember how you make them feel. I was a random afternoon. I was walking down the hall and he stopped me and he was so excited for me. And he was just like, I, we're gonna go out and leave.

52:50He encouraged me to take the entire time. It was like this is the most, one of the most important times in your life and I just want you to be able to spend that time with your family. You now have to stop and tell me that. He made me feel so confident in being able to do what I needed to do for my family and for me and I'll never forget that feeling. And maybe for him, he doesn't even necessarily remember it. Although I work with him now in amplitude and I, we, I'm measuring it over this story. I just think work now, especially after COVID, It's blended with life and so it's not yes, we're all sales leaders so the number matters But it's also about making people feel the way you make them feel and if you're not doing that then I don't think you're doing the right thing So funny I said that my angelu quote to one of our interns here with me in my fund and I tried to pass it off as my own quotes And then they told me that they were an English student and that it was my or angelus and I told them that's venture capital We packaged other people's knowledge in Sada Lazarus And so that's less than one neck didn't go down so well.

53:48Anyway, Stevie, who is your shining rice in terms of this mental? I have been so lucky on this front. Magaldin was the first I would have never been in sales without his willingness to take me on and teach me how to sell. But really the transformative moment for me was at Twilio. And Alice and Welch was a big part of that. But it was also that I had an entire reporting chain that included all parents. So Allison reported to the CRO Mark Borodetski. He had kids. He talked about the very openly. George who or COO had kids Jeff lost in the CEO would talk about his kids. So there was this real commitment to talking about family and that just became part of the practice.

54:31And here you asked if that question you had asked in opening the door for your team was okay. And the answer is absolutely, but the key is turning it into a practice. And that's what happened with all those leaders for me at Twilio's. It was just part of the daily everything was just like, oh, I'm picking up my kids now. Or I'm taking off next week to go skiing with my daughter or just celebrating life moments. And Erie, you may not realize this, but the way you include your mom in your story, the way you talk about your mom, it actually gives parents more comfort and permission to talk about their kids because it's this little signal.

55:10And we were talking earlier about that luxury or the privilege of being vulnerable. When you're early in career, you're looking for these signals and the people you work with to see is it safe. Can I talk about this? Is it okay? And by talking about your mom, you make it more safe. It doesn't, you don't have to be a parent to create that environment of safety. And that's what those folks did for me at Twilio all the way on down from the CEO. And that's part of what made it feel so safe to be real. At so kind of you, I just hosted my AGM for my LPs and my Fung, then we have the biggest institutions in the world.

55:43My mother organized everything. She was there for everything. CIOs is the biggest endowments in the world. She smauched it. Mind you, tell me, in terms of actually getting granular and improving situations. How can we create a more inclusive and supportive environment for working mothers in sales leadership roles? So I think similar to whatever and said is to normalize having children back in the day It wasn't normal for children to be around to be talked about my mother -in -law was lieutenant governor of Colorado And she went back to work. They know something like two weeks after having both of her sons It just wasn't a normal thing back then and we're so fortunate to be in a day and age now We're it's perfectly acceptable to be a working parent and to be a mother and to have a career So first off, it's to normalize it.

56:29And some really easy ways to do it is bring your kids on calls. If your kids are running around in the background, pop them onto a call and have them say hi. Honestly, everyone's gonna love it. Because it's so fun and it breaks things up. Be honest when your kids are sick or when they have their pre -school or their daycare or their school is closed. Don't try to hide it, say, hey, there might be a visitor. It's gonna jump in to our call or have them over in the background. Your companies and teams again are gonna look up and mirror what you do. And then the other thing you can do is create resources and support and affinity groups.

57:00So something that we had it slack that I then brought over to Webflow and created was a pregnancy support channel. And this is where people who are trying to get pregnant are pregnant. New moms, really anyone who has been on their pregnancy journey and wants to help support can jump in there. And this has always been one of my favorite channels because you can ask any real and raw question and get all the advice in the world pretty much from people who have done it before. Something that we also had at Slack that I absolutely loved is every month, earlier days, we would bring in a leader from whether it's the sales team or across the company or maybe even one of our investors or someone in our network that would come in and talk to us about their career journeys.

57:39And again, inevitably in their kind of career and family life journeys, things like kids and being a parent are going to come up. So really being open to sharing these things. Other things too that I've seen for in -office type cultures, family days at work, bring your kids in, we still have a Halloween party every year. All the families and all the kids would come and it just continues to normalize, oh my CEO has kids, my COO has kids, my Sierra has kids and here's that person's family which just brings it to a different level or if you're a virtual type company and many of us are, I've seen companies do virtual family events really well so like a magician come in and then everyone brings their families around the screen for an hour.

58:16So there's just a lot of things that you can do that don't necessarily cost a lot of money and can be free. All these different affinity groups, advice groups, support groups, journey sharing can really go a long ways to really normalize having a family within a company. I have a magician comes in. I think that's called a head of sales in 2023, Mackie, but it's sure. You just have to ask final one before we do a quick fire on advice. I made it like mandatory that we're all back in office again. I just think we're so much more productive in office. We're all in London anyway, but it's that bad of me.

58:46And his remote just so much better in terms of being the best in this balance. It's going to be different to every single company. I just went from Webflow, which is fully remote. And now to OpenAI, which is more of a hybrid model. So it's going to be every company is going to have its different choices. The one thing I wouldn't say though is still always remembered to be flexible while in office maybe a requirement. Again, doctors, preschool, or different school events, or outing soccer games, parent teacher conferences in a remote world. It is so much easier to just slip off and go do those things in a in office world, it's really hard to do that.

59:21So just continue to normalize that. The expectation is that you are in office when you can be in office, but if you need to miss being in office for some other reason, family event, sick event, whatever it might be, it is totally okay. Alright, we're gonna do a quick fight. So we're gonna do a quick fight on advice, which is like a short snippet of wisdom from each. And I'm gonna direct the conversation here. So what advice would you give to other mothers who are considering a career in sales leadership or other demanding roles. Maggie, let's start with you. What advice? Absolutely. It's believe in yourself.

59:52So have the confidence in the swagger and your ability to have a career and be a great parent and a great partner and a great friend. It's inevitable that you are going to feel guilt. We've talked about guilt a lot throughout this, but it is a very real thing. I felt guilt so many different times. So it's inevitable that you're going to feel it, but you also need to accept this guilt as normal and normalize it and move on. Lauren, what do you think? What's the advice? Yeah, my advice is to earn the right to ask for what you need to be successful. And if that's a more flexible travel schedule or a milk store service by all the road, ask for it and set the bar high for yourself and for your team for what success looks like on your terms because you can't already with the results.

1:00:35But ask for that that you need. Don't kind of do it alone. Jess, what's your advice? She's the right partner. I think being able to have the conversation before family around how you envision your career and where you want to go and what you want to do and what you want to accomplish and making sure that your presence on board and you should be on board with what your partner wants to do and just envisioning life after kids and how you're going to deal with it together. Yeah, sadly, bumble premiums not paying off for me. Julie, your turn. What advice do we have? I was completely distracted. That was great advice.

1:01:05They're by the way, pick your barn. There's absolutely a brilliant beat. There is Warren Buffett's biggest piece of advice to you. Julie, what advice do you have? Yeah, I think it's also pick your company. At the end of the day, you want to be so excited to go to work and so excited to go home. And if you know that you're coming into so time in your life or work where you have to make decisions and make compromises, you wanna make sure you love what you do. And I've been through many careers, made many mistakes. At the end of the day, you're spending so much time with these people. Make sure you love who you work with.

1:01:36Make sure you love the culture. I mean, sure the journey is one that you can embrace. And then the sacrifices or the guilt, it feels a lot more manageable. Stevie, your turn. Hit me with some wisdom. Come on, what advice? Oh my gosh, mine is don't apologize for yourself because you're always gonna have other commitments, things you need to leave for your child is gonna show up on camera during Zoom calls. It's gonna happen. You really do not need to apologize for that. part of normalizing it is just acknowledging it and moving forward without acting like the other person is doing you a favor by accepting it, they're not.

1:02:15It's just normal. So let go with the apologies and just embrace that everyone has commitments and that it's okay. I ran a final one wisdom. What advice do you have? Go for it. I tell my team that's a lot. Put your head down and just do good work. Sales with a numbers dashboard game. Let the numbers speak for themselves and to find your tribe right find your tribe. There's no coincidence that we're all on the same panel together. This is my tribe. This is who I go to for career advice, for mom advice, for life advice. Your tribe is out there. Go find them, go find your community and you'll be surprised about how many people want to support you on your journey.

1:02:50I absolutely love that. This has been so much fun. I feel like I've been ingratiated into this type tribe, which you're probably barely having as not a sail leader, not a parent and as a young single guy, But I'm gonna take that moment anyway, I can't thank you enough for welcoming me into your drive for an hour This has been so much fun and I've actually learned a huge amount bluntly, so I so appreciate it and this has been wonderful What a fantastic and fun show that was to I'm so proud to have done that show to commemorate the amazing mothers all around the world We could not do it without you and we so appreciate you But before we leave you today you might remember in our amazing episode with Maggie hot she mentioned a tool she could not live without called Pocus.

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1:05:43Now we have an amazing episode coming few on Friday with clam at hugging face so stay tuned for a cracker there.