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Hello everybody and welcome to another great episode of my EdTech Life.
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Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful day and wherever it is that you're joining us from around the world, we thank you for all of your support.
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We appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows.
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Thank you so much for sharing our content and again I want to give a big shout out to our three sponsors that make these shows possible.
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Thank you so much to Book Creator, eduaid and Yellowdig.
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We appreciate you believing in our mission to bring amazing conversations into our education space so that way we all continue to grow and learn together.
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And I am really excited because we have a fantastic show.
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We have Nick Coniglio who's joining us, along with Marnie Stockman, and I am excited about today's show because today's show is going to be something that I was just talking to our amazing guests earlier that I was like this is something that I know I'm going to take a lot from, and that entrepreneurial spirit in me, too, is definitely going to take a lot from.
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So I would love to welcome to the show Marnie and Nick.
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Marnie, how are you doing this evening?
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I'm good Thanks for having us and I'm excited that my friends at EduAid sponsor the show.
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That's excellent.
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Yes, nick, how about yourself?
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I am almost perfect, almost perfect.
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I'm doing great, yes, excellent, and I do want to give a big shout out to Scott, who connected us.
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So big shout out to my brother, scott.
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Thank you so much for making this connection.
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But let's go ahead and dive in, because there's definitely a lot that I want you to share and amplify and talk about your amazing book.
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So we'll start off with a little bit of an introduction and context.
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So we'll start off with Nick.
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So, nick, can you give us a little brief introduction and what your context is within the education?
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author space, absolutely Well, I'm guessing, a little bit outside the spectrum of your typical guest, but I started my career as a computer programmer, of all things, and from there I quickly found myself working for companies where I was employee number single digit and that happened to me four times where we you know as as employer number two, six, ten, what have you?
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The company grew, scaled, had tremendous growth and I found myself in leadership really for the last 25 or 30 years.
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The third company that I happened to join was a company called Performance Matters, which today is folded into the PowerSchool umbrella, and I was big.
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I was the driving force in engineering and customer support around an assessment platform and analytics platform geared towards K-12 schools.
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And that is where I ran into your other guest, marnie Stockman, and that's where our paths crossed.
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So that's where I'm at.
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I'm the author, co-author, of two books.
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Excellent and thank you so much.
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Nick and Marnie, how about yourself?
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Give us a little brief introduction, and I know one thing that I love is that we do have that connection as far as being former math teachers, so that's something that's great.
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But, marnie, tell us a little bit more about yourself.
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Yes.
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So I started out as a high school math teacher, was assistant principal, was the district assessment coordinator, so all things data and I was working in a school system inside the assessment platform when the company hired me school system inside the assessment platform.
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When the company hired me and much to Nick's dismay, he got on a support call and saw my face on there and said, oh, we hired her, but he's gotten over that.
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So we worked in the same ed tech company.
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I ran customer success while he ran support, and we quickly found that we had the same core values in really wanting to help students and help our customers, which were school districts.
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So in all of the acquisitions we found that we were getting a little culture clash with how we wanted to run things, and so he said we should go start a business of our own.
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So we did.
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We jumped outside of education for a few years, went and started an IT company and sold that so that we could jump back in and build something in the ed tech world.
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So we wrote Lead it Like Lasso and we wrote now the Business of you and, as you know, a little sneak peek into what we're building next.
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So that's how we got here.
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Excellent.
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Well, that is great, and what a way to connect.
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That is amazing and I love it, and so I know that this conversation is definitely going to be just wonderful and very full, or full of a lot of energy, for sure.
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But let's talk about your book.
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Like you said, the Business of you and this is such a very unique title and really it's just the book introduces the idea of running your life as a business.
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So can you explain a little bit about what that means and why we should think of ourselves as the CEO of our own life?
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So I want to start off with Marnie first.
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Yeah.
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So you know a lot of people on the Internet will say that you should be the CEO of you, right, you should be the boss of yourself.
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So you hear that, and what a lot of folks, especially kids, high schoolers, college age students.
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What they're thinking is great, I'm the boss, right, and they're picturing the boss as someone who has everybody else doing other things for them.
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What they don't realize is when we're talking about the party of one, the business of you, you are in charge of your marketing, you are in charge of your selling, you are your head of your HR, you're the head of your finance, and so you are then a part of, you're in charge of all of that, and if you don't take charge of it, somebody else will.
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Right If you don't put your, if you're not charge of all of that, and if you don't take charge of it, somebody else will.
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Right, if you don't put your weight, if you're not paying attention to how you're telling your story, it's getting told without you.
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My gosh, you are so true on that.
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And, like you said right now, what I liked is that if you're not taking care of it, somebody else will.
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And oftentimes, you know, sometimes that can be the case without us really realizing how much control we let go in many times in certain roles.
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Nick, how about yourself?
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Tell us a little bit about what your view is of this, living your own life as you, being your CEO of you.
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Yeah, I mean I think Marty nailed a lot of it.
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I did want to add that I think these days business can be seen as a four-letter word.
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It's cruel, it's cutthroat, but, like Marnie said, I think when people think about it, every successful person we have ever met, whether they admit it or not, they're running themselves like a business.
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They're setting the vision and the strategy.
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They're running themselves like a business, you know.
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They're setting the vision and the strategy.
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They're building skills and acquiring skills constantly.
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They're telling stories so people are engaged, and those all fit into.
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You know, whether it's the office of the CEO or the marketing department or learning development, they all fit into a department that is aligned to a business.
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And I would be remiss if I didn't add you know, a big part of our target audience that we're going after are students and we have found with many of the students that we have mentored and spoken to that they're entering this world, whether it's straight out of high school or right out of college, with not a lot of knowledge about business departments, structures, organizational charts, and we kind of had a little bit of a goal to introduce them to that so they were comfortable understanding.
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Okay, this is what a marketing department is responsible for.
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This is what research and development, or learning and development, or finance.
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So we do cover that in the book, but we also really apply what those departments mean in a personal journey or in your personal leadership experience.
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So we're excited to knock off a lot of birds with that one, where we feel like we've gotten a lot of good in terms of, hey, not only did I learn how to improve and set a path for myself, but I learned a little bit about what people might be talking about when I'm on these interviews that I've never heard before.
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Yeah, and I think that is such an important skill.
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As you know, for myself, my experience coming in into the world of business I had no idea, and that's because I went to school for marketing and so on.
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But once I got into the real world and into that field, I was like wow, these are some of the things that no one ever shared with me, because it was really just the theory.
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You know the books, you're going through those studies, but when you're in an office and you're working and you've got bosses, you've got metrics that you have to meet your KPIs, you've got all this other stuff, it's like wow, like what's wait?
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Wait a minute, what's going on here?
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Like I know the definition of that, but I didn't know the way that this really worked and this is the way that this works, and so on.
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And then now in my current role, with organizational charts and coming in from the classroom into our service center as the coordinator for digital learning, I'm like oh my gosh, like I had no idea how many people there were in the background doing all of these things from finance.
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You know, of course, you've got the superintendent side, you've got the curriculum side, you've got the special education side, and I mean that org chart is extensive and I think that what you hit on right there is something that is very important, that I know that of course, the finance, the math and all of that is very helpful.
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But I think navigating that space and, like you mentioned, having just a little bit of that knowledge of what it means in an interview when they're talking about, you know, a KPI or performance indicator and things of that sort, that can definitely help you know an interviewee go a long way.
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But now I want to talk about Sydney here, and we'll start off with you, nick.
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Now Sydney, her character.
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How did you come up with the idea, how did both you and Marlee come up with that idea of coming up with this character, sydney, to make her very relatable to not only myself but, I think, to many?
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As you know, she kind of felt very stuck and very unsure about next steps.
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So were the, was Sidney kind of an amalgamation of you know people that you knew through your own experiences as well?
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Tell me a little bit about Sidney.
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Yeah, I think you nailed it.
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I think Sidney and we will be clear, she is a fictional character, but she the character herself, she represents real experiences both Marty and I have seen just countless times.
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I think we really intended to build her as kind of this composite characters.
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The readers can see themselves in her struggles.
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You know unsure of her direction.
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You know learning.
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You know as you her direction.
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You know learning, you know as you read the book.
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She's learning constantly, learning how to ask better questions and gradually finding, I guess, that clarity and you know the whole notion.
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We talk about the importance of storytelling and we really wanted this to be a story so people remember it.
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People remember stories so much, so much more than than lectures.
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And Sydney, I think, became the bridge between you know our ideas and, hopefully, the lived experiences of readers.
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That's the goal, at least.
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Love it, Marnie.
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How about yourself?
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Tell me a little bit about Sydney.
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Is there a little of you in Sydney character Maybe?
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What little bits of you are there, you know, kind of built in into Sydney?
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So I think the bits of me at this point are the other side of Sydney, the one talking to Sydney, because we have mentored so many folks at our own kitchen, my own kitchen table, or, you know, over Zoom or in a classroom that I talk to a lot of students who have done all the right things, they've taken the right courses, they've gotten good grades, They've joined clubs, they've done all the things.
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They've sent out hundreds of applications but they weren't getting the job, they weren't standing out, and I've had a lot of the conversations with the Sidneys of the world of, okay, well, let's talk about you and what you like and who you are.
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So that was the perspective that I felt like I brought to it, because it's a different world now than when I was applying for my first job in the 1900s.
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So that's how.
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That's how we come to the table.
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I birthed a couple Sidneys.
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I think what Marnie also should say, and I don't know why she's not saying it.
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One of those people was was my son, connor, who at the time was maybe 19 or 20 years old, who had that GPA of you know.
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He was 4'3 in high school, he was 3'8 at the University of Georgia, he had a job in the career center, he was in a business fraternity, he was doing all the right things, but you know what?
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He was struggling to get an internship and stand out in the crowd.
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And you know, if you ask Marty and I, although we spoke to dozens and dozens and literally hundreds and Marty, through education, thousands of people, it's that one story that probably, you know, along with her children, you know, probably really was the tipping point for us to actually write this book and have Sydney become the character that she actually is.
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You know.
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Something that's very unique about this book, I think, personally, is just the way that you are using Sydney to you know we're going through this journey, but you're learning along the way and it's not just a book of like.
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Here are 10 chapters, just follow this and you're just, I guess, just talking to the person.
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But now it's that storytelling aspect and this is something that I absolutely love in education, that I always did in the classrooms and even now.
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It may not be maybe a glamorous job to many, but doing the district assessments, I mean just still being able to tell a story through that data when I have to present it to me, is something that's very important because I want to make sure that we capture everything.
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So I think that this is something very rather unique.
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That, as opposed to having a lot of the books that I have here where somebody's just telling me what to do chapter one, chapter two, follow this and so on but just to be able to relate and you're following this character and as the plot continues to move forward, it's like, oh, I went through that, or I've gone through that, or wait a minute, wait that might come up, and if that comes up now, I've got that little knowledge nugget that I can carry around with me and sprinkle it onto what I'm already doing great and just to continue to move forward and grow, and I think that's something that is wonderful that I love about this.
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Now let's start off with you, marnie.
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I want to kind of change a little bit here some of the themes and lessons that I kind of picked up on, and one of my main things that I love is just personal branding in the book and the importance of personal branding.
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So talk to us about you know some advice about personal branding that you share here through Sydney's story.
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That would be very useful not only to our youth but even us as adults in the education space.
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How important is personal branding to?
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us.
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So it's interesting because you just talked about how you appreciate that this is a story and branding really more likely to be remembered than just facts 22 times.
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So when you're thinking about your own branding, you're looking at what everything that's out in front of you is telling about your story.
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So we mentioned at the beginning, you are your own chief marketing officer and if you don't put the right story out there, that story will be somewhere else right?
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So whatever you have on social media is telling a part of the story, but that's not all of the story.
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One of the things we talk about is in your HR department.
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One of the pieces that's most important to set up and establish your branding is to really understand who you are, and what we find is that students really lack confidence in understanding themselves and that is what's holding them back from being able to tell their story.
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They don't understand truly what their values are in a way that they can express that.
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They don't know their strengths and their weaknesses, etc.
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And all of those things turn into your story that make all of your lived experiences make sense.
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So that's part of what we talk about in the book is helping figure out who you are and how you're putting that out there.
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Nick, what am I missing with the branding piece?
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Or did I catch most of what you were thinking I was going to say on that?
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I could not have answered that any better, and I would never answer better than Marnie about personal branding, because that is truly a superpower of hers, not only with her own personal branding, but helping others establish their own personal brand as well establish their own personal brand as well.
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I think I want to highlight something that is here in the book, if you don't mind me sharing, but I know here.
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It says here your personal brand is the story you tell the world about who you are and what you offer, and if you don't craft that story intentionally, people will assume one for you, and I just kind of want to dig in a little bit deeper on that, Nick, on your side, just to add a little bit more.
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I mean, how has this that I read from the book?
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Is there something that you can remember from your 30 years experience in ed tech and working, you know, with companies?
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How important has this been?
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Or maybe an experience that you've had with personal branding and making sure that you control what the narrative is?
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I'll talk about myself, my personal story first, and I will say that you know I mentioned at the outset that I was a programmer and I met all the stereotypes of the programmer, meaning that I sat in a closet, I drank Coca-Cola, as I was very introverted, I did not like to talk to people, but I was really good functionally at what I did and I ended up getting promoted, you know, a number of times when I was, when I was very, very young in my career and I didn't have any notion about a personal brand at all None, and I didn't want to because I didn't like, I wasn't comfortable talking to people and, at the end of the day, what?
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what that really came across to most people that I was working with that ended up working under me in the leadership position was that I was more cocky, I was not a team player, right, I was very quiet, but that didn't mean necessarily that I wasn't a team player or that I was cocky.
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And it took a while for me to realize.
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And that was like a spiral All of a sudden started, you know, getting out of control where you know I was.
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I felt like I need to know all the answers, and I, of course, didn't nobody knows all those answers, right but it just kept on feeding off of each other and it wasn't until I really started getting comfortable on who I was, which is the fact that I'm somebody who listens a lot and it takes me a while to process things and and respond, because I want to do so in a very thoughtful way and I felt like I had to put the time in to demonstrate that, and that's ultimately what I did, and eventually, over time, I believe that became my brand.
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That was who I was.
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I was a cautious conversationalist, but people began to know that I was thinking, because I would ask a ton of questions and I would listen to them.
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I was present with them.
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So that's not the story Marnie wanted me to tell, but that is my personal story and I think, no matter what you're doing, we find it so much with young people these days.
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Even the things that you don't do are a story about you, or the things that you don't intend to put out there to create your brand.
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We see it all the time with social media.
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That is telling a story, whether you like it or not.
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You may think you're just having fun posting a picture out at the bar or doing something that you shouldn't be doing, but it's a story and you're building a brand, and I think that's really important for all the young people out there.
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Remember, Excellent, yeah, and those are all valid points and that is great.
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But I love what you share too, because it's a nice segue into the next question.
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But it's because I find that I'm you are very relatable in the sense that I am in a very similar train of thought.
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Like I'm an I'm I think I just over process, but I just love to process and it takes me a while.
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Just I just love to take it all in, be with my thoughts, and then be able to make sure that I give an answer that fits, you know, whatever the situation may be.
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But at the same time I do like to ask a lot of questions.
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But in this world where a lot of people are just sometimes looking for answers, you know we forget that asking the right questions would be something that's very critical, and I know that this is something also that you do talk about in the book the Business of you, which we will make sure we link in the show notes, but talking about Sydney, that she learns to ask the right questions and that that is more important than having all of the answers.
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So, marnie, tell me a little bit about that, and why is this skill so critical and how can it help our young adults, you know, maybe even high school students coming out and even just us as adults, you know?
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Tell me a little bit more about that.
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Well.
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So one of the things we talk about is the need to have a group of advisors, right, your personal board of advisors, and Nick is one of mine, and I need to find people that are not like me, and so he has taught me the power of listening and asking better questions.
00:23:40.961 --> 00:23:42.798
It is truly a superpower.
00:23:42.798 --> 00:23:44.557
It is truly Nick's superpower.
00:23:44.557 --> 00:23:51.097
So, in the world of asking questions, I think people need to reflect.
00:23:51.097 --> 00:24:02.382
It's very easy today to Google fact answers as opposed to, you know, asking questions about who you are, about what value you bring to a company.
00:24:02.382 --> 00:24:04.873
That's the type of story that people want to hear.
00:24:04.873 --> 00:24:14.089
So, when it comes to asking questions, it's very powerful in understanding who you are, but also how you can connect with others.
00:24:14.089 --> 00:24:18.826
One of the things Sydney has asked is what value she brings.
00:24:19.228 --> 00:24:30.789
If you're looking at how you're going to apply for a college or a company, if you're thinking of a college essay, for example, you want to think about what you bring to the party and what would the college want to know.
00:24:30.789 --> 00:24:32.201
Right, you need to ask yourself.
00:24:32.201 --> 00:24:34.423
Put yourself in the other person's shoes.
00:24:34.423 --> 00:24:40.554
As a teacher, I'm confident you thought what do the students really want?
00:24:40.554 --> 00:24:51.721
If you're just thinking, I need to communicate this information.
00:24:51.721 --> 00:25:03.574
That can make math a boring situation, but the great math teachers figure out how to figure out what the students really want, right, what's in it for them, and when they think about asking that question, then suddenly you can turn it around to make the class much more entertaining.
00:25:03.574 --> 00:25:10.594
So Nick is really the master question asker, but I have learned quite a bit from partnering with him.
00:25:11.881 --> 00:25:12.281
Excellent.
00:25:12.321 --> 00:25:14.890
Nick, tell me a little bit more about that experience.
00:25:14.890 --> 00:25:16.804
You know, just asking the right questions.
00:25:16.804 --> 00:25:21.462
How has that been something that has helped you personally grow?
00:25:21.462 --> 00:25:27.020
You know, not only within your space and your realm of work, but just even just personally?
00:25:27.761 --> 00:25:38.056
You know, I think the simplest way to put it is that answers end conversations, but questions really open them up.
00:25:38.056 --> 00:25:45.413
And you know, for somebody who's, again, rather introverted, you know, what am I always scared of?
00:25:45.413 --> 00:26:17.381
And that very annoying pause and silence that scares me to death, right, and what I found out by practicing that right as a way to network and engage with peers and people I look up to, is that that one skill of asking questions and being curious about things always moved me forward.
00:26:17.381 --> 00:26:25.622
Right, it always opened up additional, uh, opportunities for me, whether I was looking for them or I.
00:26:25.622 --> 00:26:35.500
I wasn't, and I, you know, and it makes sense when you think about it, right, because you're you're wanting to understand somebody else's perspective.
00:26:35.500 --> 00:26:43.669
You're wanting to understand things that you currently don't know how they operate, and that only helps you grow.
00:26:43.669 --> 00:26:51.653
So the whole notion of curiosity in driving anybody forward, we strongly believe in.
00:26:51.653 --> 00:26:52.984
We've seen it work.
00:26:52.984 --> 00:26:53.855
I've seen it work personally.
00:26:53.855 --> 00:26:54.339
Marnie short sells herself, but she's a.
00:26:54.339 --> 00:26:54.574
We've seen it work.
00:26:54.574 --> 00:26:54.953
I've seen it work personally.
00:26:54.953 --> 00:26:58.845
Marnie short sells herself, but she's a great question asker as well.
00:27:00.167 --> 00:27:13.504
And the key to remember, though, is, when you're asking questions, that you really need to be present and listen to what the person you're communicating with is saying.
00:27:13.504 --> 00:27:17.333
And again, that I think is a struggle for a lot of people.
00:27:17.333 --> 00:27:21.350
I know you know I pride myself in asking questions.
00:27:21.350 --> 00:27:23.848
Sometimes you're like, okay, well, what's the next question I'm going to ask?
00:27:23.848 --> 00:27:29.512
No, stay present, listen to them, understand, just be genuinely curious.
00:27:29.512 --> 00:27:39.055
And I promise you that's one of the things we try to present with Sidney through the story and give kind of concrete example what that means.
00:27:39.055 --> 00:27:50.095
But it's a really underrated skill that I think a lot of people, especially younger people and I was still this one don't really think about doing.
00:27:51.300 --> 00:27:51.661
Excellent.
00:27:51.661 --> 00:27:52.942
Oh man, that is such a great answer.
00:27:52.942 --> 00:28:00.800
Like right now, just listening to both of you speak and going back and forth and answering these questions is I am just amazed and I'm like thinking.
00:28:00.800 --> 00:28:04.612
I was like, yes, like Sydney, yes, I can think of, like that's always.
00:28:04.612 --> 00:28:07.105
Sydney is just like just amazing.
00:28:07.487 --> 00:28:12.508
You know, and everything that I'm learning you know now I get to speak to the authors that helped form Sydney.
00:28:12.587 --> 00:28:36.260
But I mean, I think, just with your experience that you've had and the way that I listen to y'all and you like just are very compliment each other very well as far as you know the content that we're speaking of, and I was like, well, it's no wonder that this book is just great and it's something that's very useful and would be just a wonderful addition to any anybody's tool belt to be able to have it and read, because this is great.
00:28:36.883 --> 00:28:48.740
But going back to this, nick, this is kind of a nice progression also and this is great that it's working out this way, that talking about being present and asking all the right questions too.
00:28:48.740 --> 00:29:04.751
So, marnie, let's talk about the next aspect, I mean for me, for myself also, seeing as being in there and being present is something that is also a time investment, and I know that that is something that is one of our most valuable resources.
00:29:04.751 --> 00:29:19.032
As a matter of fact, here within the book, it says it's not just money that's one of the most valuable resources, but it's that time and energy so how are we using our time is something that is very detrimental to as well.
00:29:19.032 --> 00:29:20.948
So let's talk a little bit about that.
00:29:20.948 --> 00:29:29.625
How might we take some steps to audit our time and to making sure that we're spending it on what truly matters?
00:29:30.067 --> 00:29:30.368
Yeah.
00:29:30.368 --> 00:29:43.869
So I gave a graduation address to a local high school this spring and I went through a few of the departments and I said if you're the chief financial officer, would you invest in you?
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Would you invest in your habits and your work ethic?
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And when you think about that, think about where you are putting your time.
00:29:53.136 --> 00:29:58.787
And it was interesting because you know I talked to five departments.
00:29:58.807 --> 00:30:03.379
But when I said that line, I definitely got you got a reaction from the students.
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They were like, oh all right, she's going to hit it hard.
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We're not just going to get jokes out on the stage today.
00:30:10.711 --> 00:30:18.164
And so really to encourage folks to say every single thing you're doing is investing in yourself.
00:30:18.164 --> 00:30:22.194
So are those 10 hours of doom scrolling?
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Is that a good investment in what you're preparing yourself for?
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Right, is what you're doing, working to help you accomplish your goals?
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So when students start thinking about that, a lot of folks in the business world or even in education will say, oh, I'm busy but not productive.