You are techY podcast

[00:00:00] Ellen Twomey: You are listening to the You Are TechY Podcast, episode number 176.

[00:00:06] Narrator: Welcome to the You Are TechY podcast, where it’s all about growing in your tech so you can find the tech job of your dreams. And now your host technology learning coach Ellen Twomeyi.

[00:00:23] Ellen Twomey: So what I wanna talk to you about today is from Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead, there are a couple of concepts, but the theme is, courage is contagious.

and so what Brene says is courage is contagious to scale daring leadership and build courageous teams and organizations. We have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations and whole hearts are the expectation and armor is not necessary or rewarded. So if you have never been, exposed to Brene’s work, she talks a lot about armor and, it’s fantastic the way that she does this because many of us were raised with this concept of like, professionalism. that was the way I, it was taught to me you may have had something, similar but a different word and the concept of armor and professional, well, you should be professional.

Right? That’s good. Unless it extends to this point where, you have armor and you can’t be your true self at work. Now this is where it gets tricky, because, so one of my children, I won’t say who has a coach and. What I’m about to share with you might sound awful and terrible and like the worst thing ever.

Actually there have been two coaches this year, but they use this, be authentic in the wrong way. It’s just how I feel. So some of the comments are, you guys are no good at shooting the terrible shooters, so that would obviously be basketball. And then, another one is like, you guys are just wimpy.

You, you have no heart. So, I’m just telling it like it’s that those, that’s the language. Now you might say, oh my gosh, those coaches are horrible. And actually they’re not actually, they’ve done a lot of great things and many people say, unhelpful things and if you grow up in sports, so I think this is gonna be next on my list, but Louis House wrote a book called of masculinity.

Um, and I need to read that. And I know you might be thinking, wow, mom of five, why do you need to read masculinity? But in sports, what they do is they teach you to put on this armor, just be tougher. You could just cut through it. And so I, I was incorrectly taught. A lot of like push through the pain techniques as opposed to let’s check in, let’s see what’s actually true and let’s move forward.

And so what Brene is describing here is how you can be authentic and you can be your true self. And you don’t have to be a jerk. like, there’s never a good reason to say to children, you are terrible at shooting. First of all. that would be the coach’s job to improve their shooting, and that would be the coach’s job to, encourage them on how to shoot well.

And we’re also talking about inexperienced people. so you are not a good shooter. It’s a definitive statement about who they are when they haven’t even been given the opportunity. To grow. and change. And so when we say you are this, and this is why Iresist so much at the word smart.

So people will say like, oh, your kids are smart and I hate that you, I think, why would you hate that? Because. And this is wheremy little, my 10 year old is just such a genius I think children are brilliant. I think not just mine, all of them, they say things that we don’t understand and he said, smart is not something you are, it’s something you become.

So when I was like trying to explain this concept with Carol Dweck, and I haven’t learned that yet. Smart. Is that something you are, it’s something you become. So you can be smart today, but if you stop educating yourself and you stop growing, then you probably won’t be smart tomorrow. It’s not. It’s something that can change and grow.

And a lot of times we look at like, what am I a good student? Even if we’re like in our forties or fifties or whatever and we look, oh, but I, they, I wasn’t doing good school. Well, there’s so many reasons for that and I, I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about this because. Science was never really my favorite subject.

But then when I had a good teacher, I happened to like anatomy and physiology and later I loved physics. And so was it more about the subject or was it more about the teacher? And, you know, we get these things in our head, like We think we are a certain way, but it’s not really true.

so it, it requires courage to step into something new, to become something different than we are today. And we talk a lot about, um, getting hired in tech as a goal, but really even just learning a tech skill. being someone who’s confident in speaking tech or being, seen as someone who’s techy.

And I can tell you from experience that I have, and I’ve talked about this a little bit like. When I associate myself as tech, many times people will say things to me and assume that I understand because that’s their interpretation and you know, sometimes I correct them. Sometimes I don’t. But I have very, I have had insecurities in the past when I didn’t know every single thing in fact.

But I don’t have those anymore. I don’t know why. Probably mindset work, but I don’t care if somebody tells me something about tech and I don’t know. I just tell me more, actually, that’s not how I experience it. I would love to hear more about that. But I, but I want you talk about, courage as contagious in terms of you and your work efforts.

Efforts, right? So you guys all give great effort, but what I wanna share with you, over the years I have had many students who have talked to me about how they want this ideal manager and this ideal team, and they’re gonna help them and walk them through and really help them to build their UX skills and.

What’s challenging for me as your coach is that I want you to create an ideal dream job. I want you to focus on what exactly your dream job is gonna be and how, how everything is gonna be amazing. But I think that it is wrong. I think that it is inaccurate to think that you can go to a place of work, and everything that you need to support your learning is encapsulated in there.

And the reason that you think that you even choose to think that thought is because. You’re doing so many other things that are overwhelming that are like that end of the rainbow needs to feel really perfect. But I can tell you that when you get there, even though your dream job is amazing,

I still strongly recommend a beautiful, brilliant. Network. A beautiful, brilliant community of mentors and peers and mentees who are helping you to grow and stretch you that are outside of your organization. I still recommend that you go to meetups and learn even more as you cross that getting hired threshold.

And so of you are nervous when you enter the workforce that a UX team isn’t welcoming you, and the way that this usually works is there are two options. One, there’s a big company and they have an open spot, and they have someone ready to train you and they’ll call you in, and some of you’re going, I love it.

It’s perfect. But I can also tell you that companies like Cisco and Microsoft and fortune 100, fortune 500 companies, they have the pleasure of getting someone who is. Experienced and so many of you, while you may end up at one of those companies, you need to do a stint somewhere else. And that could be freelance, a nonprofit, you may need to do something from an organization that has a greater need than, a Fortune 100.

You may not have the support that you need in the organization. They’re hoping that you can solve their challenge, their development challenge, their UX challenge. And you might be thinking, but I don’t have all the answers.

And so I can confidently tell you that when you get into the workforce, one of the things you might have to do is say, I don’t know this.

I can try to figure it out. I think it’s gonna take me a while, but maybe a better solution is to bring someone in who can solve this for us immediately, and that is the job, especially as a developer, that’s gonna be a piece of it. Like that. If they, if you’re with a nonprofit or you’re with a growing startup, or you’re with some, someone who doesn’t have the budget for all the components of a, if they make any comment to you about budgetary restrictions and technology, then you have to understand that you.

You may have to hire a contractor or a firm, an agency they call it. You may have to bring in an agency just to fill in that gap. And while an agency can be like fugitive as an agency, it can be pricier than a person. It’s for a short amount of time. And so that’s why people do that. And so keep in mind.

That if you are going into your work and you’re thinking, I need to know everything, then that is going to be a very challenging place for you to come from. That comes from your work, okay? Also, courage is contagious. So what we’re really asking you to do is to step into this role and then what? No, nothing be not unprepared, wrong.

Wrong. That’s why I designed the program the way that I did. You do two projects, so you’ve faced some of these hills, you’ve faced some of these battles. It’s been painful. It’s hurt you, it’s hard, and you go through it. That is courage. Okay. What is another quick story? one of the voices I’m listening to and mentors that I’ve had and friend really, that I’ve had for quite a long time, happens to be an amazing entrepreneur in the triangle where Riley dri, if you know North Carolina, he was a early sponsor of podcast cause he’s just an amazing guy.

So Spiffy is his company. I love Spiffy. I’m a customer. I love them. This is gonna sound like an infomercial, not so spiffy is. On demand car care. So they’ll come to your house and do oil changes. What,

He just raised Wait for it. 30 million. Okay. 30 million. It’s hard to really think anything other than That’s an amazing amount of money, right?

But I wanna share with you something that Scott, his name is Scott, um, shared with me in a coffee shop a long time ago.

as I was building u techie, which in reality, like if you look at it, you know, he’s building a 30 million business. U techie is nowhere near this. it’s very small compared. but I, I went out to coffee with him, like, was I allowed to do that? Was I, why would he share that with me?

Why would he help me? Just think of that Mismatch. but I had the courage to go, okay, that’s great. Have the courage to go. You can talk to whoever you want. So, The reason I share that with you is actually not my courage.

It’s, it’s Scott’s courage. So in that meeting, he’s like, I’ve already built 10 million business, and if these numbers are sounding crazy to you, they used to sound crazy to me too. But now that I’m around vental times, they just sound normal. A 10 million business is like a good size business. it’s like a nice small business.

It’s not a big business. He’s like, I’ve done 10, he’s done more. He’s like, I’m not that interested. I wanna grow a billion dollar business, a $1 billion business. And I remember I was like, okay, how are you gonna do that? He’s like, well, I don’t know, but I’m, that’s what I wanna do.

And then he kinda walked me through some of his logic. But the point is that that stuck with me, and I remember that. And today when there it was announced that he raised 30 million, I was like, oh. He’s really doing it because 30 million to a billion is not really now, now it’s starting to sound pretty close.

I mean, there’s a gap there, but he’s already got from zero to 30 million. Ok. Why? Why wouldn’t I think that he could get to the billion and in and in the business, you don’t have to get to that size. You can, it’s like a, some multiple, they multiply your business. Um, and that’s the value of your business because there’s growth potential, right?

So businesses have growth. Potential lending means. So the reason that I share all this with you is like, I feel inspired by Scott’s story. I feel inspired by him saying 1 billion, like all he did was say it, think about it. All he did is say it, but then he showed up and and now he’s, and he’s doing it. And I think that’s really what we’re afraid of is like, we’re afraid that if we say I’m gonna get a job and I’m gonna be amazing, and then we’re not.

That’s it. Let me tell you what, if you get hired, you get hired in tech, or you start your tech company or you, learn something and you put it down there and then you fail. You get up, you dust yourself off, and then you try again, and you just keep trying. Even if you get a job and then you get fired, even if you get a job and you hate it.

You just keep going. And so part of what’s happening is that when you, so this like kind of take this back to this, I want a manager and this amazing team and this keep in mind that you are the solution to someone else’s problem. you bring the value that they are going to need to help support them.

How can you help them? And then in your language, in your speech, in your living outta this goal, you are showing up with courage and that courage is contagious. And so you don’t have to build a billion dollar company, but you can say, I’m getting hired in tech. And then you start doing it, and then you get knocked down, and then we pick you up, and then you do it again.

And then it’s never a straight line. And then someone’s gonna tell you, you can’t do it. you’re gonna feel embarrassed. Or Brene would say, shamed. You’re gonna feel shame along the way, like you’re a fraud or you’re an imposter. And you just say, oh, okay. I don’t know that. Let me go learn that.

Let me go spend my time. In that space, learning that skill that makes me feel like I don’t know it very well. I’ll give you a great example of this and then I’ll wrap it up. So the great example is UI. And we just had a new student say this. We have other students, it’s like they go through the UX process and they understand that they don’t quite feel like they have their UI skills.

And I’ll tell you that that is very normal and very natural, and until you spend. Detailed amount of time on that thing, that ui, unless you’ve been an interior designer, a graphic designer, or like you’ve developed marketing assets, unless you’ve been in that space of ui, you probably just haven’t had enough time on the ui

and so, That can feel like it doesn’t quite look right. You look at your designs, you’re like, Ugh, it doesn’t quite look right. Unless I use a template and then I, if I wanna change it, I don’t quite get it in that ui. what you wanna look at is, okay, this is a skill I need to learn. Okay? how can I best load it?

Well, I can tell you right now, it’s gonna be not from starting a new project, from going back to your old projects and going into those more, because starting new means you gotta add all these things. Don’t add anything new. Now, you might need another course.

You can buy a book, You can just spend time in reading blogs on the internet. But the point is that you’re spending time on this one skill.

And what you’re gonna learn is, oh, people aren’t born with UI skills. They develop them from spending time and space in that area. And so when I say courage is contagious and you feel like you aren’t gonna live up to it or you’re an imposter, really what’s happening is your brain is like, we actually need more time on this thing.

And that’s okay. That’s okay. That we need more time on this one space. So my friends be courageous. that courage that you have to say, I’m gonna get hired in tech. Even if it’s just at a bank, right? I actually love FinTech. I love finance and, the technology around finance, I think it’s important.

I think it matters, and that doesn’t mean that a nonprofit isn’t important, but it also doesn’t mean that I’m not doing good in the world because I’m working in finance. You can do good in the world in that space. Just you being in technology is an inspiration to other people and is doing good in our world because you are creating a voice for the people who currently do not have a voice.

And you are one of those people. And then when you meet people on the street and they say, oh, what are you doing? And you say, I’m UXs right now. I’m a developer. Oh, I’m not techy. Well then you send ’em to the podcast. So my point is that you inspiration. By living your life courageously because courage is contagious.

Thank you, my friends. 

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