SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, I'm Jamie Lee. I'm an executive coach for smart women who don't like office politics. And I help them get promoted, get better paid without throwing anyone under the butt. How? By blending proven communication strategies with brain-shifting neuroscience techniques. In this podcast, we explore the stories and strategies of Gutsy women and allies who've braved speaking up and navigated their careers forward. We're here to de-risk the conversations that feel the most daunting. Advocating for yourself and your growth. Let's dive in. Welcome to Risky Conversations. And why? Because everything worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation. And I'm really delighted to have today's guest, Purnima. Purnima, how do I pronounce your last name without mangling it? That's okay. It's uh Vijay Schenker. Vijay Schenker. Okay. I met Purnima more than a dozen years ago at a women's conference. It was called the Bullish Conference. And the bullish business still exists, bullish.com. It's a really, really fun business now that sells really funny, ironic, sarcastic feminist goods online. But back in the day, bullish conference was where all of the aggressive feminists that makes it sound like we were militant. We were not militant. We were just, we were just, you know, not afraid to hide our ambition and and have really open and honest conversations about how to activate our career, how to grow in our career, how to negotiate. And you led a great workshop on technology, on how you could be technically astute in your career, did you not? Am I misremembering this?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

You know, you're probably remembering better than I am. I don't even remember what I taught. Oh, that's probably accurate.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

And I just remember you were very a passionate, engaged speaker. I gave a workshop on how to negotiate, you know, your salary, your promotion. And I remember sitting in your workshop. Wow, like she's passionate. And so you're the founder of FEMGenier. Correct. And the FEM is there on purpose, I'd imagine.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

It's there on purpose. And my hope is it will continue to be there. I even got some feedback recently at a conference that people were saying, yeah, keep it. There's no need to rebrand or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Tell us about FEMGeneer. What is it? And what are you what have you set out to do with Femgeneer?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Sure. Femgener started as a blog back in 2007 when I was the founding engineer of Mint.com. And at the time, I really just wanted an outlet to write. I have always loved writing and kind of sharing my work with other folks. So I started writing about engineering, entrepreneurship, the startup I was working at. And that was about it until around 2013, when I decided that I was going to focus on growing it from a blog into a business. And in that, let's call it Femgener 1.0 version, the goal was to build it into an education company to help technical professionals level up in their careers. And I was doing it through content, courses, and coaching. And honestly, in Femgener 2.0, which I'm now doing, not a lot has changed. The focus, though, is a little bit more around communication, because I see that as a gap in the market. You know, there's a lot of people out there who are teaching product development, AI skills, etc. Not to say that maybe I won't do that in the future, but where I see a true gap is around communication, whether it's one-on-one in a group setting or beyond that, if you want to take the stage or do presentations.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

So, you know, I I've sent people your way because you specialize in working with technical professionals and you help them communicate even better. Right. And I I'm also curious, you're a founding engineer at Mint.com, and what I know is that you also worked at Apple.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yes, that was my most recent position. I resigned from Apple in April of this year.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

And maybe only as much as you'd like to, would you like to share what that experience was like, you know, working at Mint.com, working at Apple and resigning. Like, I mean, you you you came back to Feng Jennier to your own thing, and I'm curious what made you do that.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yes. So honestly, I resigned both from Mint and from Apple. So I feel like I'm already operating from a place of strength, but also a risk, like we're talking about here. I was really grateful for my experience at Mint. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I think, to be at a ground floor startup. You know, I came up with the name, I worked with the founder very, very early on, back when it was just two, three of us building the prototype and getting out there. And then to take that from an initial prototype to then launching and scaling it to serving millions was very insightful. You know, seeing the whole picture. And at a time where, you know, this was 2006 to 2009, 2010, there weren't a lot of tools. So we had to do a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves. There was not just a vibe coding thing that we could say build an app, like we had to do that work. And then we also had to do the heavy lifting when it came to marketing, when it came to product sales, et cetera. And that gave me a wonderful bird's eye view of how a product is not only put out into the market as a prototype, but then how do you go from that prototype to making it into something a consumer wants, almost to the point where people were up in arms when they shut down a couple of years ago. Uh, you know, they sunset the product. So I think it was lovely to see a beloved product be in the market for over a decade and to be part of that experience. It's it's almost like having a baby, not quite the same. I think having a baby is more enriching, but it was just a wonderful experience. And I left at a time where I felt like my role was complete. I had kind of gotten what I wanted, and I wanted to then step into the shoes of being a founder. I had a decent exit that gave me the privilege of doing that. And from 2010 to about 2013, I focused on building my next startup, which didn't go so great. And I'm gonna talk about that when we get to the question around a risky conversation. But then around 2013, like I said before, that's when I decided to do Bem Junior 1.0. And then in 2019, a year after the birth of my first child, I felt very overwhelmed. I, you know, was a solo founder. I had a small team in place, but I just felt like all the sales and everything was kind of on me. I also knew that I wanted to have more than one child. So I was having a really hard time kind of imagining what my next steps were going to be for the business and for myself personally. So when the opportunity to work at Apple came up, and this was a company that I had grown up with, like literally grown up with, I just was like, I want to do this, I want to join, I want to see how honestly the sausage is made. And I got the chance to do that between 2019 and, like I said, April of this year. I worked across three lines of business, going from watch to Macs, the new Mac mini that people love. I worked on that. And then iPhone was the last product line I worked on. So iPhone 17 is one that I kind of have a little fingerprint on. And I about a year ago was thinking about what I wanted to do next, not because I, you know, felt like Apple was in a great place. I felt like I had gotten to a point where I had learned a lot. I had worked on hardware products as a software person. And truthfully, I had also leveled up in my communication skills. But there were a couple of things that were truly missing for me. My role was very, very product-centric, and I wanted to do more coaching. I wanted to also have the freedom to build my own products. And honestly, I wanted to do what I love doing, which is writing and speaking. And sometimes that can be hard to do from a schedule perspective or from kind of an approval in a large company perspective. So I decided that striking out on my own was the next thing for me. And quite frankly, I had always kind of known this going into Apple, even. I was like, I'm here, I don't know how long, whether it's three years, five years, 10 years. I kind of knew that the next thing for me was getting back to my business, whether it was femjineer or something else. And it just so happened to be that I thought, okay, I think this is a good time. Because what I was seeing in the market with the adoption of AI was kind of neglecting the human touch and what that means. And I had done a lot of that work at Fem Juneer. So I thought this is a good opportunity to kind of dust off some of the products that I had initially put in place and showcase them. I think that's what people truly need in this next era. Um, and that's why I decided to leave and I spent about a year putting that plan in place. Got it. It was a planned exit for you.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yes. Yeah. So I am curious, what was the one of the riskiest conversations you've had and why was it worth it? I'd imagine you have had many, plenty of risky conversations. And if one comes to mind for now, I'd love to hear about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

So I was telling you, my second startup did not do very well. And the reason it didn't do very well is after we launched our second product, we got into some hot water. There was a situation. So we were building a next day payment service, and we had money launderers come in and we were able to shut it down really quickly. But it ended up costing us in terms of having to give back that money. And it also put us in a precarious place with raising capital. At that point, I had raised about a half million dollars from angel investors. So it was a kind of a mystery service engineer. Was this for F. This is for Busy B. Sorry, this is for Busy B, my second. Okay, yeah. Yes. So Busy B was a uh CRM solution that I had built for small businesses, specifically fitness businesses. And I had built one product, the CRM solution, that helps people check folks in as they are going to these kind of membership businesses. And then we were building a second product to help them with their payments. And it was when that second product launched that we were all excited, seeing a lot of growth, but it was artificial. And I then had to come clean with my investors and my team around this is what's happened. You know, we have gotten ourselves into the situation and I can't make payroll. I also need to pay back this money and I'm gonna figure out how to do that. But I don't see, again, a clear path. So I think we need to shut down. So we ended up shutting down the second product. We let the first product live on for a while, but I had to shut down the second product. I'd come clean with everyone. And at the time I was like it was around my 30th birthday. Um, and it was a heavy moment. I hadn't envisioned that that was what was going to happen. And I felt like we had put a lot of safeguards in place and had done our research, but there was, for lack of a better kind of term, like we had we'd almost built up so much uh uh like marketing and it told a bunch of people about this that we kind of opened the front door and let folks in. But a couple of things happened from that. One, you know, it showed that I can be brave and I can speak to people. Uh, one of my investors was like, Yeah, you're in a tough spot, but I admire you for telling us this and coming clean. So I was like, oh, okay, thank you. And my initial team at BusyB are still folks that I am dear friends with and go to when I meet a sounding board or, you know, even as I've been starting this next version of Femtenier, they have been got helping me. So I think it was really important to have that integrity and to just kind of say what was gonna happen and to not sugarcoat it.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Can I just say thank you for sharing that? Because how many times do I coach women who feel they've been blamed, thrown under the bus by people who refuse to take accountability? Like it's every week, and every week we're like, okay, how do we pick up the pieces and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again? And the answer always comes down to we need more people who are willing to take accountability. And what I'm hearing from that conversation was that you were willing to take accountability when it was not your fault. I mean, like it wasn't your intention to fraud people, it was not your intention to, you know, let in people who are gonna launder money. Yes, you had the responsibility, but you didn't bring that that bad intention into this, into this situation, but you were willing to be like, I'm still responsible for it. I'm gonna do the right thing. And I just have to say, I it must have been so hard, but again, doing the right thing is not always easy. And that's what you shared with us. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. So you're welcome. Thank you. Yeah. And I hear that it's also informing and helping Fem Junior 2.0. So tell me more about that. You know, you coach people on how to communicate better. And you coach technical professionals specifically. And why do technical pro professionals, or why do any professional need help about promoting themselves when it comes to communicating their strengths, their you know, capabilities? Why, why do so many people need that sort of coaching help?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

You know, I think some of it is actually structural and systemic. So, you know, when we when we go to college, when we go to grad school or or wherever, and then we join a company, a lot of our work is geared towards a product or a service. And everything we do is in service to that, right? So it's like I'm building this thing, I am putting it out there, and I need to focus my energy around building the best product or service. And then it's oh, did you do a good job? Well, then you get a performance review saying, yes, great. You know, and so you're always kind of aligning the work that you do with how good the product or service is. That ness, but unfortunately, what happens is a product or service, like I just shared with you, can live or die even if you do a good job, right? So you can build an amazing, and I and I I wouldn't say like maybe Busy B was amazing, even take Mint, for example. Amazing product, people loved it, it still got shut down, right? So there are these things that happen, and then it calls into question oh, well, maybe I'm not that great because my product didn't live on, or I did something that led to this failure. And so people like kind of one question their self-worth and their contributions based on the success of a product or service, when you can, like you just said, only do the best that you can do and hope that there's a positive outcome. The second is nowhere along this whole journey are we ever taught like you need to take stock of your skills and your accomplishments and just speak to them as if those are what's important, right? Nobody tells you this. There's like a couple moments where it comes up, again, the performance review or something like that. But once again, it's back to that product or service. So people kind of naturally feel challenged and they're like, Well, who am I? They they get into an identity crisis, but then they also kind of feel self-promotional because folks who genuinely want to do these kind of careers, you know, whether it's software engineering, hardware engineering, or like you said, any sort of skilled professional trade, they are crafters and they really care about the craft and they reflect again on the product based on that craft, but they don't take the time to think, how does this craft fill me up? Or how have I improved my craft over time? And it gets complicated when they hit a kind of transition period, a layoff, or maybe they're not getting the raise or the promotion. And then somebody says, Well, I don't know what you did. And you're like, But I I built this thing, I I put it out there, I was part of a team, or I was really instrumental. I'm like, Yeah, but like that was three other or five other people. Like, what makes you so unique? And that's when you start to question yourself, you're like, You're right. I how am I unique? Like everybody else is writing code, everybody else is delivering amazing products. And so then people kind of feel backed up into a corner. And instead of kind of taking that time to be like, no, maybe I did make a contribution, maybe I did have something unique, they kind of question that. So this is where it becomes a slippery slope, and it can lead to so many kind of bigger issues around mental health, which I won't get into here. But what my focus is to keep people kind of at that transition point where they're like, well, I did all this work maybe for half a decade, a decade, or two decades, like a lot of senior folks are in now, and say, you do have expertise. Whether you believe it or not, it's in there. Like you've been on this earth for some period of time. You've done something. The fact that you're sitting in front of me, like, yes, if you're my three-year-old, I would be like, good job. You brush your teeth, you clothed yourself, you know, but you're older, so I might give you something else. Like, you know, good job showing up hosting this podcast. Like, I would, I would kind of calibrate the feedback based on what you've done. But people aren't getting that daily. They're not getting that feedback. It's just kind of assumed now in our culture, like this is what you do if you're an adult. And so they're like, yeah, I don't, I don't know what my unique expertise is. And then if they don't have unique expertise, it's like, well, I don't have anything to say then, because I'm not unique. I'm just some like regular person, and everybody is like me. All right. So that creates another concern. And that's where you start to see people who don't speak up in meetings, who maybe stop contributing. Some folks get over that and they're like, if you're like me, you're like, well, I can do better. I'm gonna go somewhere else, or I think I have something to share that is unique, but that is such a small segment of the population. And when people kind of go through the exercise of just thinking about, you know, something as simple as I call it the inventory method, take stock of what you've done for the last three to 12 months, and you will notice things come out, right? You solved a problem. Or even if the problem didn't get solved, you figured something out along the way, you had some aha moment, you maybe championed a process that took a quarter to put out there, right? So that is valuable whether people recognize it or not. And you have to stop looking for that recognition and you have to just start putting it out there and saying, I did this, or if it's a group effort, we all did this and this was my contribution. But that is very, very important because if you stop, then you start to feel like again, you lose yourself. And it doesn't have to necessarily be an entire link to an identity, but it is still important for you to have that positive accountability. Like, uh, I did do something, I do have some expertise, and then notice some patterns.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Thank you for that. And so, speaking of contributions, you mentioned vibe coding early. I my life partner is a technical professional and he's in love with vibe coding. He cannot stop. Just between me, you, and everyone else who listens to the podcast, I I kind of feel like

SPEAKER_00 22:00

bit of an addiction but but it is i've done it too yeah aside from that let's talk about you know how this is impacting technical professionals engineers uh software engineers uh developers some people have gotten laid off because of ai and some people are being of are afraid of being laid off like i i personally have coached professionals who work in the tech field they either resign themselves or they got laid off and and that's because ai is doing so much of what people used to do as you alluded to earlier and so how does communication come into play with all of that happening what do you want to offer to people who have experienced the the AI impact on the technical field yeah yeah and and the AI story is still very early you know there there there are some casualties at the moment it's still unclear whether it is a tool that we will use for the long haul I think it's it's definitely improved productivity in a in a number of areas I think it also is getting some blame around resourcing because a lot of companies now are seeing the maybe productivity improvements but they're also seeing the cost associated with it you know whether it's token use or having to buy machines for agentic coding etc or even like if you're a a company that needs to build out data servers and things like that because you are the one kind of building out the AI infrastructure right so there's there's a lot going on.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Can I ask and do you notice it's also those companies that are laying people off those very scalers you know so I want to hear your thoughts about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Oh sure I I I don't want to veer too far but I think it's a it is a leadership issue. So there does and the reason I what I want to say is layoffs are not new. I have been a casualty of layoffs for a very long time you know as young as eight years old when my dad came home the summer of third grade and announced that he was being laid off from a hardware company. So in our family a layoff is like catching a cold. It's like oh you got a layoff okay cool no it's not something that we attempt to like let you know give me my severance or whatever. It's not something we are prideful about also but it's like you know what it just happened and there's only so much that we can control when those things happen. But you know pretty much 75 80% of the people in my immediate family are in technology. So this is something that we have gotten a sense of over the last 30 plus years. And you can kind of point to a new scapegoat every year. This year it's AI next year who knows what else it's gonna be and the reframe is yes this is going to happen. How are you going to be the agent of your own kind of career right? And that's kind of where I'm leading people now is it might be inevitable. You might go to a big company like you said hyperscalers you might also go to a small company and get laid off it's it's hard to say like I know people who have gotten laid off from startups as well because like in my situation the company went under so how can you kind of control that and part of controlling it is knowing your value and being able to speak to your value in terms of what you just did at that company, like how you helped them and you know if they went under, they went under there was only so much you can do. So getting really keen about what your value add is and translating that back to your expertise. That's kind of the focus around communication. And then how can you do that again one-on-one with your manager, your boss, your teammates, a company overall and then outside an industry that those are kind of the areas that I coach people on but it's giving people that agency back and knowing this is just going to happen. We're gonna try to shield ourselves or even if it does happen, we're gonna bounce back because it's about recovery, right? Even we see this in sports like you're gonna get injured. What's your plan B? Is it you didn't have too much of an injury injury so you can rest for three to six months or even just a week and then you're gonna come back or are you going to pivot and do something else in your career but you still want to stay in the industry.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

You just reminded me early in my career I worked at a tech startup that was founded by a former friend. And I think like two months into the job I'm like oh she's gonna fire me. She's so unhappy with my work I'm gonna get fired. And so I quit and I remember as I was leaving I sort of had this idea that I would work for myself and I would work to support individuals as an individual I remember having that specific thought because I'm like yeah I'm gonna get fired. Not I mean it's different from a layoff but it was a company I'm like this I'm not gonna survive what do I really want and so you know that's what that's the memory you just triggered. Can I ask a challenging question about this?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Okay the skill in order for technical professionals to you know the skills that they can speak to the skills that will help them articulate their strengths and their values right what if what if just hypothetical situation what if their skill and their values were doing the kind of work that AI is replacing now and that might be the case yeah you know I think it's it's hard to say it's it might be the case however we see a lot of parallels it's um it's kind of like robots doing surgery a lot of times they still do like minor stuff they might not do major stuff right so this is again this is like we don't know when it's gonna happen we don't know when the tipping point is it's going to happen and again it's like okay do we believe can I still can what what do you mean by tipping point tipping point what kind of tipping point so right now there's probably a lot of folks still writing code you know there's probably a lot of human beings out there who are writing code yes AI is also writing code it's not like it's not you know 5050 at this point because a lot of it depends on company adoption and also some legacy systems. There's still a lot of friction around just general AI adoption. So I think it's it's not yet a like game over you know AI is the one only writing code. There are still folks who are writing code and then there are also folks who are debugging code there are folks having to rewrite code that AI wrote there are folks who are having to scale systems that AI wrote. So there is still a lot going on the challenge is you know one do you what kind of path are you seeing and where do you want to be in that trajectory? Do you want to keep writing code and then figuring out how you can do this it's kind of like you know I love baking. I'm gonna keep making sourdough for my family I'm not gonna become a baker because I don't want to but if I want to become a baker I need to figure out how I'm going to do this knowing that there's our factories who are making bread every day like thousands, hundreds of thousands, right? So it kind of comes down to the individual figuring out where they want to participate in this kind of spectrum knowing that there's going to be some evolution of their career. I think that's kind of the first and that's the place that you start when you think about regaining your agency.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Well you know when you put it that way there are people who learn to bake every day even though there are lots of factories baking bread because the the bread you bake at home or for yourself is just so different from what you get at the factory. But but having said that would you still like I have a friend who's mid-career is just like maybe I should learn how to code go for it.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Is it worth it? It's not worth it the the thing is so I I say a couple of things. The first is you know learn a skill because you want to learn the skill not because you think it's going to look good on your resume. Because if you are mid-career again there's probably a bunch of expertise that you can leverage and that's I think a piece that people forget it's like I actually did a lot of stuff it's applicable in this new job. It's figuring out which of it is relevant and which of it applies going forward. But I think people kind of get into the shiny object syndrome of like I have to learn all these new skills and they just get this like dopamine high of like yeah I'm learning all this new stuff whether or not they want to have the career. And we saw I saw a lot of that with folks who went to boot camp because they were thinking well I just need to make more money. This is the way to make more money and then some of them did decide they genuinely liked it. And some folks decided oh maybe I just build an app and become a founder. Another group thought you know what this was great. I'm glad I have the terminology and the practice now I'm gonna go and maybe coach other people or I'm gonna be a manager or something else that's relevant. Or like that was great. I'm never doing that again. So you figure out do you want the skill? It's kind of like learning a language you know I learned Spanish in high school I practiced it for a little bit do I use it every day I live in California so I maybe like once a week if once a month speak it but very rarely but it's still valuable for me to learn and I've kind of reprogrammed my brain doing and all that good stuff. Maybe I'll revisit it as my kids get older. So it's a valuable skill it's a life skill you figure out same thing with coding do you think it's valuable but think on think about acquiring a skill in terms of is it going to be enriching is there kind of an ROI that you're seeking or do you feel like you know what I'm just gonna go do something else. I'm gonna get a different skill so I think that's how you kind of want to think about it. I still do see value in this long term because there are going to be things that AI gets wrong. There is going to be investigation that needs to be done and this is where expertise is important like when people know how languages work or know how systems are built and so much of what I'm seeing even at places you know like my former employer that's kind of where the careers are moving. That's kind of how my role changed from being a software senior software engineer to being a senior engineering program manager where I had to have more of a high level view because a lot of the coding was either being outsourced to contractors overseas AI was one piece. You know they had a lot of different ways of doing it so senior folks weren't always the ones who were writing code maybe it was less of a percentage in their overall week.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

I see great so communication still matters and also skills including coding skills still matter for the right reasons. What am I seeking? What is the ROI? And is it really aligned with what I want from myself ultimately and you were talking about you know there's four different types of people and I think I was the last type were like yeah I took one HTML class one CSS class. I'm like okay that's not for me let me get back to my you know words and coaching people on their mindset and their uh communication skills so let's talk about communication one more time you're a public speaker you said you you you left Apple because you wanted to be able to write and speak yeah and do you also coach people on public speaking coach like technical professionals and yeah that's what you do?

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yes yeah yes so you know I had a very insightful performance review last year when my manager asked me like oh how do you like you know speaking to senior leadership and kind of the communication style because they had a very specific way of communicating at Apple and I in that moment I realized like yeah it's it's great but I like doing the more inspiring communication I like doing more of the coaching I like instead of being out in the community rather than just giving exec updates or kind of drilling down into debug and triage sessions I can do those things but I want to do something else. And I also enjoy doing something else. So for me that is the kind of communication that I like to do. And the other piece of it like you said is coaching folks. So folks who are technical unless they went out of their way to look for a public speaking or maybe they were like a debate nerd like I was in high school or something like that, naturally don't do a lot of public speaking and they need a way to translate their expertise because the truth is there's a lot of mixed audiences that people come across especially as we're seeing kind of organizations contracting and people are expected to do more cross-functional work. So the challenge for technical folks is I can't just speak in technical jargon like I used to with my teammates. Now I have to translate that to my boss who may or may not have written code for the last year or more and then potentially an exec or leadership and customers. And I have to be able to change what I say the message is still the same. You know, maybe something's broken a fix is on the way etc but I have to be able to change that message organically based on the audience how do I do that without feeling overwhelmed and it's landing and that's a lot of what I do uh when it comes to public speaking is helping them connect those dots so that they see this is honestly just like writing code and kind of figuring out systems. It's now geared more towards humans. So there's emotions on the line and we have to be mindful of that. But that's how I help folks kind of get over it. And you know I love the aha moments when people have gone through one of my courses and they're like oh it was within me I can do this. It's not so hard right because it's just again it's a system you figure it out and you practice and then you get over some of your nerves they never go away but you get over it and you also get that feedback loop. You can watch your recordings you can see how you did over time and you're like okay I can now do this. This is now something that's valuable a valuable skill for me.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

So on your website you share that you've spoken at over a hundred companies in addition to coaching other technical professionals communicate with confidence and does anything if at all still make you nervous because I have coached like presentation coaches people with similar to you who coach other people to give talks who also feel nervous when they have to give talks so I just see it as like yeah this is a human thing a lot of people just get the nerves when they have to address an audience and I wonder if that ever happens to you and if it does how do you handle that I think the first piece is making sure that the audience that I am speaking to is like I've calibrated for it.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

So I you know I to this day I always try to hop on a call with an organizer and I'm like tell me about who's gonna be in the audience there's always like an outlier you know someone who's like oh I already know this or this was you know I maybe I didn't like poor Nima's voice something nitpicky. So that that's always going to happen. And I have to again calibrate for the general audience and hope that it lands. So a lot of times the tape recorder the night or two before is like make sure all my tech works make sure that I've kind of customized some of the the talk for the the particular audience I'm in and then be open to like a whopper of a question and then just kind of getting comfortable in the moment. So I coach myself to be as present as possible and manage those nerves. I know they're never going to go away and honestly I kind of like that they're still there because A, I'm human and and B, like I'm excited to be somewhere and share you know what I know with other folks. So I I don't ever want it to like go away because then I'll be like oh well then I've done this too many times and I need to like do something else. But for me like I said you know I we kind of had one talk that we had given at close to a hundred companies but every time there was something refreshing that I we discovered either in doing the talk or from the audience that it was worthwhile. Wow one talk to a hundred companies wow yeah I mean we have other stuff that I've done so it's you know I've I don't know I've probably spoken more than like a thousand times in my entire life like you consider everything I did in high school and all the videos and stuff there's probably like thousands including this one this is you know this is quite kind of yeah so fen junior do you only work with femme people no i've got I've got a fair number of folks who identify as male or you know who are men I think it's again it was a personal brand and I had to come up with a name for NimaVjshanker.com in 2007 seemed like a really long domain um and everybody loves short domains you know mint.com so I was like okay what can how can I have the best of both worlds and that's where it came about and I've just stuck to that moniker.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Okay and where can people go to learn about Femgineer about the coaching and the courses that you provide for technical professionals?

SPEAKER_00 40:49

Yeah the website so femgineer.com is a great place to start and they can take a look there to see if there's anything that will benefit them and then they can reach out to me on X or LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Okay that's F E M is in Mary G-I-N is in Nancy E E R is in Rain okay is there anything else I haven't yet asked that you want to make sure you do share with us before we wrap up I think we've covered a lot of ground. Yeah and again I know we were talking about this just before we started the recording but we met like about 13 years ago and I love that you're still the same person. You you look a lot like the very same person I met 13 years ago at bullish conference and you still have that energy and passion and it's amazing. It's great. It's great yeah well I'm honored to be here yeah well thank you for your time and we'll talk soon great I look forward to it thank you for joining me today on Risky Conversations. Remember everything worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation and when done well your self-advocacy becomes an act of service. If you're ready to de-risk your own career evolution I invite you to book a free hour long consultation at jambecoach.com slash apply J A M I E L E E C O A C H dot com slash apply we'll map out your custom blueprint to confidence and get you on the path to being better paid on your own terms. Let's make your next conversation the one that changes everything. Talk soon