You are techY podcast

Ellen (00:01):

You are listening to the You are techY podcast, episode number twenty-six

Intro (00:11):

Welcome to the You are techY podcast where it’s all about growing in your techy-ness so you can find the tech job of your dreams and now your host technology learning coach, Ellen Twomey.

Ellen (00:21):

This podcast is sponsored by our all new course, What Tech job is Right For Me? Visit us at youaretechy.com/start to check out our new course and find what tech job is right for you!

Ellen (00:21):

Kristin Zhivago has seen tech from all angles. From Silicon Valley in the late 1970s and early 80s to providing revenue coaching for fortune 500 companies, like IBM, Johnson and Johnson, to start ups and everyone in between. Seeing the potential in the digital space, Kristin has made digital marketing and technology her career. she nows serves as the president of Zhivago Partners, a full service digital marketing agency, focused on helping organizations achieve their revenue goals. there is so much to explore in Kristian 40 plus years in tech. I think its best if I let her tell you about her adventures.

Kristin (01:33):

Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Ellen (01:36):

All right, let’s start off. Tell us about your career journey, how you started out, and then how you ended up to where you are now. Maybe the abridged version. I know you got a lot in that thing.

Kristin (01:47):

Yeah, it’s pretty easy actually. Okay. So I started out, uh, in tech, I’d had a few other jobs before this, but when I was 17, I started out as a machine shop tool, sales person for Pratt and Whitney distributor. And he basically said, Oh, you’re going to make thousands of dollars and here’s the catalog. Go sell. Yeah. And that was back in the day of miniskirts and stuff. And the pivotal moment for me, the moment that I actually decided to devote my life to selling end and a tech, I was, I went into this one machine shop and the whole place shut down because nobody ever came in a miniskirt to a machine shop.

Kristin (02:28):

All the guys came out. And, um, this, the, the leader of the, of the pack, so to speak, was this old fogy kind of curmudgeon, um, guy. And he was very pleasant and he said, well, honey, um, you know, why are you here today? And I told them, I’m here to sell you the machine shop tools from Pratt and Whitney. And he said, okay, tell me how. Mmm your drill bit is better than the one I’m using now. And of course I didn’t know, I didn’t get any training. I was just given a catalog and more my miniskirt and that was supposed to be enough so I couldn’t tell him. And he said, uh, okay, so you really shouldn’t be selling anything you don’t understand. It was a very embarrassing moment for a senior in high school. You know, I was. So, I mean, I went out with my tail between my legs and I swore, I remember standing in that parking lot.

Kristin (03:20):

And so my 51 Chevy and thinking that’s it. I’m going to learn everything I can about technology and selling. And I’ve been doing it ever since that guy changed my life. Wow. That is a fantastic story about turning a failure into learning, which of course it was so much more important than the failure. It’s all, yeah. So, um, I worked in a bunch of jobs. I worked for tech companies cause I was in Silicon Valley. Uh, and then my husband and I started a, um, high-tech ad agency. We did ads and PR back in the day and it was just pre-internet and, um, we were very successful. Um, we brought in as much revenue as companies that had eight to 10 people and it was just the two of us. And that was partly because my husband was so good at systems. He used to run a factory.

Kristin (04:11):

Um, and so I, I really became a systems and pro, um, Mmm, uh, you know, process convert in that period, uh, and used to be able to play millions of dollars worth of advertising in 20 minutes kind of thing. It was just amazing. And it was really a spreadsheet kind of system before there were even spreadsheets. So we did that for 12 years. And then the Mac came out and I looked at my husband and said, you know what? They’re all going to go in house and I’m not going to be one of those agencies faking for crumbs at the table. I’m going to shut down the agency. I told him to retire. This is 91 and he was 52 and then I went and started to try to help people market in house. And for three years I didn’t know what I was supposed to do every day I got up every day I worked, but it was not like I knew what to do.

Kristin (05:02):

I was trying to find my way. And I finally figured out, I started calling myself a revenue coach because I knew that CEOs didn’t care about sales and marketing. They cared about revenue. And so I had this wonderful elevator pitch. I could be standing at Comdex, you know, back in the day when we all went to Las Vegas and there were 200,000 people there looking at the new stuff. And I’d been in an elevator with a CEO and he’d say, well, what do you do? And I say, well, I’m a revenue coach. And his eyebrows would go up and he’d be like, what the hell is a revenue coach? And I say, well, I help CEOs and entrepreneurs make more money by understanding what their customers want to buy from them and how they want to buy. And so I ended up doing that. I did marketing and sales turnarounds.

Kristin (05:44):

It was a lot of my business where I go into marketing department, sales department and turn it around. Um, and I worked for CEO’s and I loved it. I really did. It was a lot of fun. But towards, around 2014, 2017, somewhere, well, 2014, I start, I started, uh, um, digital marketing company with a partner and then I left that and went on to, um, start Chicago partners in 2017. The reason that I did that is because I saw a lot of companies struggling with digital marketing, especially companies that were established already and they just didn’t know what to do. They were like deer in the headlights and all of this, this digital marketing stuff was taking off and they were becoming less and less relevant and they just didn’t know what to do. So I wanted to fix that. So I started this agency.

Kristin (06:38):

Uh, I have an amazing team, a lot of work at home moms, fantastic people, wonderful rapport. And of course we have this no jerks policy that, um, yeah, yeah, no, Derek’s allowed, I been have a jerk test, which I don’t reveal in public, um, for obvious reasons, but um, I can spot a jerk in the first interview with antenna [inaudible] Oh, we keep our workspace jerk free. I think that is so important, so important. So many people think that that’s just what they have to put up with. You know, that that’s just part of it. Yeah. We just had, we’re starting to feature some of our team members in my, normally my blog on Jovanka partners and one of them just wrote about how everybody told he’s told her to just suck it up. That you always had. There were always, he was so surprised to find out that that was our, our philosophy that we won’t let them in.

Ellen (07:39):

I can’t tell you. I don’t really like to, I try to save my gushing for the intro and get it out there, but I can’t tell you what an important message this is coming from you. Someone who’s seen it all from a machine shop to digital marketing and everywhere in between for across decades. You know there is no you, you’ve been around and if you are the person who is saying we don’t need to accept jerks, then I just think that’s so powerful because I can’t tell you how many women I talk to, especially like our stable moms who are returning to the workforce. Like that’s one of the things they’re bracing themselves for. Okay, well like how can I, sometimes it’s like how can I appear to bring something of value so that you know, a jerk, you know, finds, finds my work valuable.

Ellen (08:30):

And really it’s like how do we, and I always tell them, no apologies, don’t apologize. Communicate your value. Great add skills. Add value, communicate that value. And if people don’t like it, that’s not who you want to work for. You know? And I think that it’s just really an important message that you’re sharing. Your quotion is nowhere near what people put up. There’s entrepreneurs are usually people who want to solve a problem, right? And they go into business to solve that problem and they take good care of their employees and so on. So don’t think that business is going to be all about jerks if you’re with a jerk, get out.

Ellen (09:07):

Great advice. Great, great advice. So you’ve talked a little bit about your background. Can you dive into like what, what was Silicon Valley like? Can you paint a picture? What was it like at that time? Like in the late seventies and early eighties

Kristin (09:19):

It was the wild West, I mean, there were a million people running around thinking up new things. And of course my husband and I once made a list of all the technologies that we helped introduce to the market. And I’d never even thought about it that way. But voicemail, email, spreadsheets, we were in on the ground floor on spreadsheets, believe it or not, you know, word processing programs. And when the net came along in 1994, I was writing a newsletter called marketing technology, which people paid like 300 bucks a year to get back in the day. Um, and I spent like four months just doing nothing but figuring out the internet and they came back with a bunch of issues that talked about it. Um, and I got at that time, trivago.com immediately because, you know, I could see where this was going. So I just, to me, the tech industry is so fascinating because there’s always something changing.

Kristin (10:13):

You have to learn. Um, I’ve written 60 page guides on the telephone network and um, you know, the internet and how it’s constructed and the behavioral design of integrated circuits and stuff. So I learned a lot and the first four years of my career in Silicon Valley, I was a head Hunter that was technical recruiter. I recruited engineers and I visited every company that I placed them in. So I saw how things were made and then I interviewed in tears all day, you know, and they were very happy to talk on and on and on to somebody who was, you know, not bad looking back then and was very interested. So it was a wonderful way to get an education. It was great.

Ellen (10:58):

That’s, that’s fascinating. There’s so much, there’s so much to dive into there, but I’d like to know, so you talked a little bit about kind of this revenue coach idea. Can you, can you talk a little bit more about, I mean, you talked a little bit about the transition, but what type of work are you doing when you’re doing, you know, when you were doing revenue coaching what about that did you find particularly rewarding?

Kristin (11:26):

Well, it’s kind of interesting because, uh, the turnaround work was probably the most rewarding, which is why I love managing. I really love making a safe place for nice people to work. Um, so when I first went into, uh, a company and I was tasked with turning the company around, the first thing I would do is before I even started, Mmm. I would interview their customers because that’s where the truth was. I, that from the other research that I had done, I knew that the company view of the customer was very different than what the customer really thought for sure. So I interviewed them and then I presented that to management and said, because of this, this is how we’re going to change the marketing and what we’re going to do. And then I viewed all the people who worked for me and I asked them two questions, what about your work satisfies you the most and what about your work frustrates you the most?

Kristin (12:18):

And they were sort of like deer in the headlights because nobody had ever asked them that before, you know, so they were like, wow, maybe she’s going to be okay. So, um, I would then try to rejigger all the jobs in the department so that the people who liked doing this kind of work were doing that kind of work all day. And then the other stuff got put upstairs. People who like to deal with numbers and stats and things like that. And there’s other people who want to be talking to people all day, you know, that kind of thing. And so I tried to make it so their whole day was spent as much as possible on the stuff they love to do. And same for the other people. You know, everybody got their space. And then the other thing I would do is fire the worst person as quickly as I could.

Kristin (13:02):

And what that did, my husband was responsible for that fire early and often he said, yeah. And it was because the good people are really dragged down by the one lazy, dishonest, you know, BS guy who’s, or gal, whatever, who’s just making life miserable for everyone else. So it’s almost like you find the jerk and you get rid of them. So it was very satisfying. It honestly took longer than I thought. It’s sometimes took me eight months to get to the point where we could hire a full time person in that spot. And it was tough work. I mean there was a time when I was working for Dow Jones where they were in New Jersey and I was in California and I commuted every week. Oh my gosh. That was hard. That’s a heck of a commute. Yeah, we did a lot of thinking on those planes. But back then they didn’t have internet on the plane. So you actually got worked out.

Ellen (13:55):

I love it. I love it. So you’ve been a manager, um, you’ve hired a lot of people.

Kristin (14:03):

Mm.

Ellen (14:03):

Can you share with us, we like to call these secret weapon questions because so many of my listeners are preparing for Mmm. Either at their first job in tech or leveling up. There’s a lot of interview preparation and there are, there’s always anxiety around like what question am I going to get asked? And I think just having some really marinade on and think about is helpful in that preparation process. Do you have to, you’ll share with us.

Kristin (14:29):

Yeah, but I’m coming at it from a different perspective. If I come at it from the perspective you just mentioned, I think my answer would be a little different. There are questions we ask like what’s your favorite movie? What satisfies you the most in your work? What’s frustrated you the most? Things like that. Um, and I can get down to, uh, the essence of a person pretty quickly by the answers. Like if they say what frustrated them the most was all about frustration with other people, not letting them do their job and it was all about the other person, then I know they’ve got a problem with blame and not taking responsibility and things like that. Um, the favorite movie thing kind of tells me where they’re coming from. And if they love horror movies, I typically don’t hire them.

Ellen (15:18):

Okay. I’ve got good shot. I can’t stand horror movies.

Kristin (15:21):

It’s just like, it’s not resolution. It’s not happy. It’s terrible stuff. Um, but going back to your question about, uh, preparing for interviews, the thing that needs to happen before you go on an interview is you really have to research the company and the people behind it and do your homework. I mean, go into their LinkedIn, look at all the people that work for the company, what they do, especially the CEO and the VP level people. Um, go to their site and try to figure everything out about their mission in life and why they did what they did. And sometimes you don’t find it as you should because everybody really should be talking about that. Um, but do everything you can and then think to yourself, you know, who are their customers and how could I in my job, help them do a better job of helping their customers regardless of the position that you’re in.

Kristin (16:16):

Doesn’t matter. So, and then when you’re talking, cause a lot of times people in an interview will be too, um, tied into like, what’s in it for me? And that really turns off an employer because you’re being hired to do a job and they want to know that you’re going to be part of the group, that you’re going to care about the things that they care about and that you’re going to work really hard on it, that it matters to you. Um, and the other thing is just be honest, just relax and be yourself because that’s what you’re gonna do. Yeah. Every day. And you know, putting on a big show for somebody who’s going to be disappointing for somebody down the line. You or them or both. Right. Honesty is really one of the outside of love. Honesty is one of the most important powers in the universe. And honestly, I think that real business is all about love. It’s about taking care of people, doing your job, being responsible, and honestly being a mom in a true sense, the kind of mother that they don’t even talk about anymore. But I mean they’re, they’re hardly out there anymore. You don’t see them. But I know a lot of mothers that are really good mothers and they take full responsibility for their part and that’s what the world needs. That’s what business is all about, is taking care of people.

Ellen (17:32):

Yeah. That’s fantastic. I you didn’t use this word and probably because it’s overused, but when you were talking about being honest, I thought of the word authentic. Like I think one of the things that I’ve learned as I, I recently had a birthday, it was 29 again, but uh, as I, I feel like I have a greater appreciation for, there’s only so much energy and effort you can put into things. Why waste it on being fake. If you’re just you and you can find a good fit for being you, then you don’t have to put all that effort into being somebody different, you know? And if you bring that to the interview, what you’ll find, I know when I like when I actually was 29, I don’t go into an interview. I really just wanted to like say whatever I had to say to get the job. I mean if I’m being honest, that’s what I did and I was really good at interviewing, but I was never looking for like, am I actually gonna want to do this job long term? Am I being me and finding a good fit that never entered my mind. It was just like, how do I impress them to get the offer? Like it just, and I think that I didn’t appreciate that authentic. Like if I was just myself, I would find a better fit for, for them and for me and put all my effort into doing a good job instead of being who I thought they wanted me to be.

Kristin (18:59):

Okay. So this is a very interesting segue here because you know I’ve, I’ve worked with so many CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs, people own companies.

Kristin (19:10):

When you’re in a position of leadership, you are usually surrounded by people who want to please you. They, they want to impress you. They, they want to make you feel good about them. And so they’ll kind of say anything. Okay. And CEOs don’t like that because that means they’re going to be blindsided later on by some truth where somebody, some brave soul finally took them aside and said, you know what? This is really screwed. Nobody’s doing anything about it. I mean, David Packard, I think the guy from behind you and Packard or HP went into retirement in Silicon Valley. It was basically done. And then some assembler somewhere sent him a personal email and said, you know what? This is what’s happening right now. And he just came back in the company and turned it around because of that one person. So CEO’s appreciate more than the good ones, not the jerks remember, but the good ones want the truth. Um, and uh, they’ll, they’ll be appreciative and they’ll want you to move up because they need people like that in management to help them do the right thing. So it’s a really big deal, to be honest. I mean, I, I really stopped, um, being anxious about what people thought of me somewhere in my fifties and I haven’t looked back. It’s been a wonderful way to live really. That’s fantastic. I love that. Okay. Um,

Ellen (20:48):

I wanted to circle back on one of these comments that you were talking about, about being a mother in the workplace. And I would just like your perspective on what do you feel, what role do you feel motherhood plays in the career decisions for many women in the workplace? Like what role do you think, what role do you think it plays and what role do you think it should play?

Kristin (21:08):

Well, I mean obviously you don’t go in and say, I want to be a mother of your administrative system. You know, you don’t, you know, bring that up because the world is just not resonating right now with that, which is too bad. But it is. Um, I honestly think motherhood is the most important job in the world. I really do. I think the world needs more motherhood and more. And what is a mother? A mother is someone who is looking out for your best interest, who is not, Mmm. Trying to used you for her own narcissistic, whatever, which you see a lot in show business and you see a lot anyway because we’re living in this, you know, I mean, the abbreviation for social media is so me and that’s kind of, it’s like everything’s about me. Um, and kids get left out when that happens.

Kristin (22:00):

I mean, the mother has this amazing job which is to, to be there for the child and be interested in the child and you know, be present, really be present with the child, the child, like their best interests at heart and you still give them their freedom. Um, and really taking responsibility. I mean, once you have a child, you really are taking responsibility for another human being in a way that, that nothing can match, which is why it’s so tiring because you’re taking full responsibility for that other human being and they’re running around putting their hands on hot burners and you know, eating things they shouldn’t eat and stuff. Um, and then you have to give them their freedom and let them go as they grow up and start learning their own lessons. And that’s really hard because you have been responsible for their safety.

Kristin (22:54):

So it’s just, it’s super important job and I think it applies, you know, it, it comes down to taking care of your customers and not worrying about yourself, but really trying to help them get what they need any way you can. So it might even not be what you thought you were supposed to do if you own a business or something and suddenly clients are standing over there saying, well that was really nice and thanks a lot, but I really want this. Right. And one of my rules in businesses, somebody standing at the door with money in their hand, you don’t shut the door in their face. You let them in, you know, Oh that’s sounds very interesting. We’ll figure out how to do that. And then you do it. Right.

Ellen (23:35):

Yeah. I love that. I love that. And as a UX designer, that was my, you know, kind of my first lens was help moms understand that even though, even though as as the company you are techie offers multiple different pathways. Being a UX designer myself, I thought that was the greatest first pathway to say, no, here’s how technology literally uses empathy. This skill that as a mother you practice every day, you have to be able to do this and you already have practice in it. It, it, it’s, it’s applies directly and yeah, we need to learn some tools, we need to learn some systems and Mmm, you need to create some assets to get to skill up to that, but you already have this foundation that you don’t even understand. And the other beautiful thing about that is at my sort of my career as a developer, I have lots of developer friends and everyone I would talk to, developers appreciate the UX designers so much because they wish they could spend time with the customer.

Ellen (24:35):

But it is challenging to write code like it is. I always call it like your mental, your cognitive load is just completely taken up. So to have this kind of dichotomy of like, here’s the customer, how are we serving them? Here’s the customer. How are we serving them? I think it’s a beautiful dance that it’s not executed perfectly in most places, but even the attempt I think is really just a great way to, um, it’s a great interplay of saying these, these parental skills that we learn and how it applies in the workforce. I totally agree with you and developers are in introverts who really don’t want to talk to much of anybody, you know, they do their best work by themselves. So, um, bringing that to the table is absolutely essential. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s really interesting work. I love, I love what you said about parenting too.

Ellen (25:22):

I think it’s, it’s this challenge that have always, um, looking at how we can adapt and change it. I know as my children, my oldest will be 13 this year and really looking at how Mmm. You know, when they were babies I was for sure. Like even though my husband was very hands on, I was the expert. I really, I’ve been around babies my whole life. I knew babies, but I’m, I struggle to like take a step back and let things chaos happen. And I’ve really been able to work, like it’s been this realization to me that I can learn a lot from him, that with his ability to do that and allowing them to fail, which, which has always been something I’ve tried to do. But it’s hard for me. I’ll just be honest. Like it’s hard for me, let them fail, but I know that that’s the best experience. So I think, yeah, it’s interesting to me to see how different phases of parenting it can be, um, informed by the other two. It’s not really one versus another, you know? I agree. Totally agree. All right, so now you’ve got this, you know, Chicago partners, you’ve got, you’ve seen all these changes, uh, you’re running your organization. Um, I know everyone says every day is different, but like tell me what one day would be like you in your current role. Tell me some of the things you do.

Kristin (26:45):

I have two. What kinds of days? The quiet days and they don’t happen during the week. Those are weekend days where I write, um, I write a couple of blogs. I have been addition to the one at Trivago partners. I also want a right one called Christians wisdom. Um, Kristen’s was in.com and that’s kind of a labor of love for me, just trying to help people in business and starting out and entrepreneurs, all the people that I don’t really service, but I know a lot that can help them. Um, I have an article in there about, you know, how to communicate effectively and not talk like a Valley girl, but because, uh, male, uh, adults cannot hear anything you’re saying if you’re talking that way, they just shut it off. So just succeeding as a female in the marketplace and also just as a human being in the marketplace and how to get along with people and, and what makes you successful.

Kristin (27:42):

I’m trying to get people’s shortcuts to success, you know, taking all that experience that I have and saying, okay, here’s, here’s the real deal. Here’s where this all filters out and that’s what you need to worry about. Um, so there’s that quiet writing time. I do a lot of accounting during the weekend too, but it’s just that quiet time not being interrupted, being able to focus on something for two or three hours and get it done. And then during the week, um, you know, I’m on Slack 24, seven pretty much, except when I’m asleep and, uh, we just communicate on Slack. We run the whole company on Slack. Um, the clients are on it, we’re on it. Okay. Things get done through Slack and all day long. I’m, I’m either having meetings with clients or workers or, um, our team members or, um, answering questions, making decisions, you know, showing people and trying to help people when I make a decision, um, there’s always a reason for it.

Kristin (28:43):

There’s some general principles, like if the client’s standing store with money don’t turn them away kind of thing. Or, um, okay, we just screwed up. What do we do? We’re honest. We immediately go to the client. We immediately fess up to it. We don’t feel terrible. We just, we know we did the best thing. I have this thing that came from my husband actually. It’s, uh, find it, face it, fix it every single day, all day long. We find a problem, we fix it, we face it. That’s the next step. And then we fix it. And I have a little side thing to that, which is, um, if everything else fails, if you try to fix it and fix it and fix it, it doesn’t work then f it.

Kristin (29:25):

I don’t say that word. I think it’s a rude word, but you know, I mean at some point you have to say, okay, that’s just not going to work. I’m going to, um, we’re going to do something. Plan B. Yeah. But at all times you’re completely up upfront with the customer, the client tell him what’s going on or your boss or whoever it is. Like we go back to that whole honesty thing and people know, people make mistakes, they make mistakes. We all make mistakes every day. I wrote an article about how to live a stress free life recently and it was just skipped the stress. Just go right to the, you know, okay, this happened. Find it, face it, fix it. Okay, next. You know, if you get stuck in the stress you’re, you’re stopping yourself from fixing the problem, you’re wallowing in the, in the disaster part of it or the sad part of it.

Kristin (30:12):

I just skip all that. I don’t have any stress all day long, you know, just helping everybody, helping the clients. I’m, I’m a great believer in servant leadership. You know, where my job is to help everybody the opposite of a jerk and make it easier for everyone to do their work. And so I’m a hundred percent available, a hundred percent positive. Um, I praise in public and criticize in private. Mmm. You know, there’s some basic management, um, tenants, whatever you want to call them, that are just absolutes in my life. And so that’s what I do all day. I solve problems and I try to help clients make more money by understanding what their customers want to buy and how they want to buy it. And we’re, like you said, we’re just using all the tools available to us and that changes every day. There’s always a new tool out there that we can use where absolutely cloud driven business, you know, we’re, the first person I hired was an app whisperer slash infrastructure person. I work at home mom. Um, and she was fantastic at helping us get set up with systems and apps. And, uh, so there’s a lot of that too. You have to be smart about your apps these days.

Ellen (31:26):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Let things get to us. We can, we can or we can just choose to face it like you’re saying and accept it and then move forward. And I love it. I think that’s wonderful. Well, so just a couple more questions here. Um, and we’ve covered a lot of digital marketing, so maybe what we could focus on is like how technical is digital marketing? From your perspective…

Kristin (31:52):

Oh, it’s bad. It’s really bad. Um, you know, and, and again, I’ve been in tech for so long, uh, that it doesn’t surprise me that you really have to do your homework. And what does it tricks about technology is you don’t say, Oh yeah, Oh yeah, I get it. When you don’t really get it. If you can’t explain it back to somebody then you haven’t gotten it yet. So I wanted the lessons I learned being a recruiter of, you know, engineers for five years is I was unafraid to ask questions because I had to understand it in order to play. I’m in the right job and they were happy to explain it to me. So I learned all this stuff about tech by these guys who were doing it and I learned the value of being and saying, wait, wait, wait, stop.

Kristin (32:40):

Say that. What’s that acronym again? Instead of looking it up on Google while they’re talking and then you don’t hear the rest of what they’re saying. Don’t be afraid to be stupid about stuff every, nobody knows everything. Nobody even Google doesn’t know everything. A lot of stuff you can’t find on Google, so just be open and not judge yourself for not knowing. And then you keep learning and it does help to take classes or get some basic, there’s some wonderful stuff on video these days. You know, you can spend 10 minutes and understand something more thoroughly than you ever could back in the day when I was learning this all stuff without you too. Mmm. So I think the, the main thing you have to realize is you’re only as good as your apps. So you really have to find good apps. And good thing about that is you can go to cafeteria or G two crowd or one of those sites now and, and see reviews from real people.

Kristin (33:36):

Yeah. And it’s just like any other review. Some of them will say, Oh, I hated this because of that. And you’ll say to yourself, well, we don’t really care about that. So that’s okay. And see a lot of demos. Go through, look at the screens, you know, show it to other people, understand it. So there’s apps, there’s the underlying how things work stuff, which actually doesn’t hurt for you to understand it. Don’t be afraid, afraid to try to understand it, not about what you quote unquote no, it’s what you actually understand and what you could turn around and teach to someone else. Hmm. Mmm. And you also don’t think that you’re not techie. One of the things I hate is when a woman says to somebody, well I’m not very technical. Well I’m sorry, but in this day and age, everybody who is working needs to be technical. Okay. You just have to understand it, have to learn it. It’s a constant process. It never stops.

Ellen (34:32):

Can I use that for an advertisement? Absolutely. Go ahead and say that. Well, this brings us to our final question. You’ve given amazing wisdom and advice throughout this interview, but do you have any advice specifically that you’d give to a woman who is considering tech as a field, a new career choice? What would you say to her?

Kristin (34:57):

Fear. Not.

Ellen (34:57):

I love it.

Kristin (35:01):

Well, I mean honestly that’s it. You know, uh, there are people in texts, the males specifically. Okay. Cause there’s mostly males in tech. Mmm. Who sort of Lord over you and it’s all about what they know and all that stuff. I just press pass it. I don’t, I don’t, and you know these days too, cause I have a young sounding voice. So when I’m interviewing an engineer or something on the phone, they’re like trying to be really careful about their language because they don’t know what I know what I don’t know. And so I just tell them, Oh by the way, I have a 40 year background plus your background in tech. So don’t be afraid to say something and then they just run off at the mouth because now they know that they can speak freely and, and I also stop them if they say something that I don’t understand.

Kristin (35:46):

So right away they know that I’ve understood all the other stuff. Right. This is about, this is a conversation between human beings. One person knows something, another person wants to learn it. And if all your defenses are down and you’re just there to improve yourself and get better and work hard, ask, learn, that’s it. That’s it. The only glass ceilings I’ve had, I’m going to be pilloried for this are the ones that women have put made themselves and then put over their heads. I mean, I was in high tech, I was wearing a suit. It was a skirt and everything, but I wore a suit and a tie when I went to work when I was 28 years old and started my agency because I had to communicate that I was there for business and they accepted it. They knew it, they knew I wasn’t uptight or you know, it’s about males and females and all that stuff.

Kristin (36:39):

I, and also I have to say that I haven’t seen any good manager, not a jerk. Forget the jerks we’re not talking about them, but the good solid manager who likes people and takes care of his people. I have never then stopped by that kind of person when it came to respecting or promoting or, I mean, I’ve had CEOs, a CEO of one company we were, I worked for in Massachusetts and I was like a troubleshooter for the company. They, they farmed out people all over the world to do technical jobs. And um, I was working for his son and his son was very threatened by me. He didn’t want me around. And so he found an excuse to fire me. And when he did that, he had sweat. Yeah. All down the side of his shirt. I was embarrassed for him. It was terrible. So he fired me. So I went to his dad and said, well, um, you know, your son just fired me. He said, okay, that’s too bad. I have an office in Cambridge that I want you to open up.

Kristin (37:40):

And so the next week I came in to pick up my paycheck and the son saw me and said, what the hell is she doing here? And it’s like, well, your dad hired me to do this. Okay. Yeah. Just ignore the jerks, find nice people to work for and learn and learn and learn and learn. Be a good mother. Uh, you know, take care of everybody and you’ll be fine. That’s great advice. Now just to go over, I know you’ve mentioned it, but where can people find you if they want to hear from you or reach out to you? Okay, so zhivagopartners.com. It’s my last name, partners.com. Um, there’s a lot of stuff there including my blog. Um, Kristinswisdom.com is where I, right. Those helpful articles. I have a book, I have two books out, but the first one was like a dress rehearsal for the second book.

Kristin (38:28):

So I only sell the second book. It’s roadmap to revenue, how to sell the way your customers want to buy. And I only sell it on Amazon. Um, is a Kindle, uh, audience audible book and a regular hard cover. Um, that’s pretty much it. I’m on LinkedIn, you know, Twitter, you know, all around you have to be these days.

Ellen (38:47):

All the socials. Yeah.

Kristin (38:48):

Yeah.

Ellen (38:49):

Kristin it was a true pleasure to have you and to hear all your wisdom. I will refer to this interview frequently. I know and probably grab some snippets for some great technical advice and um, promotion of the concept that we all need to be techie in today’s workforce. So thank you so much for being here.

Kristin (39:14):

I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.

Ellen (39:23):

Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to sign up for the You are techY email list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies, training and never ending support to get hired. Sign up at youaretechy.com that’s Y-O-U-A-R-E-T-E-C-H-Y dot com. I’ll see you next time.