Ashley Bryant-Baker- Structured and Quick feedback loops are critical to staying on vision

Hello and welcome to Wiley on Business a podcast where we explore how individuals and companies make dramatic breakthroughs and transform their businesses from a job to an enterprise with real value by enabling others to realize their full potential by being crystal clear on the vision of the business. My name is Jake Wiley and over my nearly two decades of business experience and client service owning a business as well as being a CFO, I've had the opportunity to see the difference between slugging it out to stay above water and exponential growth. On this podcast, I interview amazing leaders who have figured it out and get their perspectives on how they do it. Share it with you. This week's guest is Ashley Brian Baker. Ashley is the Director of Digital and analytics at fresh eyes digital, a data scientist, speaker, entrepreneur and stem advocate. Before fresh eyes, she ran her own consulting firm, b&b data solutions, where she helped brands build and leverage data solutions. She has worked in analytics for over a decade, using data to drive business decisions and built a company that focuses on the human side of data and analytics. She has become a sought after speaker on the topics of gender bias and AI, dynamic customer segmentation using AI and diversity in the workplace. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for joining us, you've got a really interesting background. And I'm kind of excited to share this with the listener group. Because once you tell us a little bit about what you do, what you're doing, and what's important to you right now.

Sure. So thank you for having me, I'm really excited to be on Podcast. I am the director of data and analytics at fresh eyes digital. And we are a consulting firm that works with nonprofits, basically, to make their fundraising as well as their businesses a lot more polled. And just supplement the work that they're doing. The work that I do is primarily steeped in the data as well as predictive analytics. And it's something that is, I would say, a little bit scary for nonprofits is to go into predictive analytics and really using data in that way. But I think it's really important to move teams forward, and really be able to supplement the work that they're doing the really great work that they're doing in the world to be able to make societies and and situations better in their communities. In addition, through the work that I do with fresh eyes, I'm doing a lot of work with STEM education, and just making sure that there's equitable access to stem across all kinds of different things. Things like broadband access in rural areas, things like education and inner cities, just making sure that everybody has access to this new world of the internet, and all these new possibilities that really are being able to drive society forward. But some people are still being left behind. So it's really important to me that we make that equitable and inclusive for all groups.

And that's, that's really cool. And I guess, thinking about your, you know, the discussion about the predictive predictive analytics for the nonprofit groups, I'm kind of used to, you know, somebody just calls me, he's like, Hey, you know, you were a member of our group, or you're part of our organization, you know, this is our annual drive, and like, we're gonna, can you donate some money? That's kind of what I think of like, how that works. But I guess what are you doing? Because I think this is so fascinating. Can you kind of explain like how you would use predictive analytics to make that process better? Is that totally unrelated?

No, it's it's definitely part of it. I think that there's like two prongs to it. So the first part is that part that you're talking about when somebody calls you and says, Hey, do you want to donate to the thing, um, the thing that I'm doing there, the work that I'm doing there is really about making sure that we're meeting you at a time and place that works for you. And when it's top of mind. So how can we predict when are you going to be thinking about this organization? When is this organization or the work that this organization is doing? Going to be top of mind? And when will you be most likely to give? And that kind of work is really interesting because it gets into really what drives people? What are people's motivations, then the other half of the work, the other prong that I'm doing is around measuring how they are able the work that these nonprofits are doing, measuring how it's able to change the communities that they're working in. So a lot of the measurement that nonprofits too, is based in surveys. It's based in asking people questions about what they're doing, or how the organization has changed the work like their lives and that interaction is not as granular. And it's also not as accurate as what a lot of nonprofits would like, especially when you're going out for things like grants. And when you're trying to remind your constituents like this is the work that we're doing. And this is why we're important to the communities. And so the other piece of that is being able to ground their measurement into something that's a lot more tangible, a lot more real. And that's really being able to say, these are the changes that we can see. Based on measurable results, whether that's, you know, average income for particular region, whether that's visitors or money that has been given by policymakers to a specific region, where they're trying to do climate change, analysis, that kind of thing, just being able to understand that from a really deeply rooted in data and analysis place rather than surveys or just, you know, eyeballing it trying to look and understand. Oh, these are the changes we've made.

Yeah, that's, yeah, I would imagine that the second prong of that is, is a lot of data aggregation, right. But the first prong almost seems a little scary, you know, it's like, how do you know when to contact me? And I think that's probably a conversation for another day, but you probably take a whole hour trying to figure that out, and then realizing like, Oh, my gosh, that's why they called me, you know, right after I was on the website. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess we'll dive into to kind of the questions I wanted to ask you. But yeah, there's a little bit of preamble, we've talked about this before, you know, you think about where you've come from and where you are in your career. And, you know, it is not, it hasn't just been Ashley, doing this all by herself all along the way. It's really been a lot of teamwork and building people up and helping them support you. So you can get to where you want to be. But I guess how much how much of your success would you attribute to to other people kind of like helping you get there?

Honestly, I would attribute all of my success to working with other people. Like, I think that one of the really important things to know, just as a person, but especially as you become a leader in your company, or whatever work you're trying to do is, you can only be as good as the team that you are supporting, like, your team really does make a difference, like my family is huge in helping me with all kinds of things from just like life questions. adulting, if you will, I have a great mentor group that I'm able to rely on for understanding like, What steps do I need to take with my career or my business and just understanding that road? I would say just in every area of life, I've had to work with and rely on other people that saying it takes a village to raise a child, I think, really, it should be extended to say, it takes a village to do anything of consequences world so

and I think, yeah, to your point, like, that's consistent with everybody, I've talked to you, by the way. And you know, I think that, especially with what you do, you've got to be really good at what you do. Right? You've got to understand that. And as you continue to grow your career, like there's a lot of times, it's easier just to say like, I'll just do it, right? Because I already know how to do this, as opposed to like delegating it down or pushing it down or, or encouraging other people to learn and understand. I guess for you, when did you realize that you needed to kind of delegate and push down and grow other people as opposed to just doing yourself?

Yeah. So my career has been primarily in small business startups, startups that are funded by venture capital. So we have always been in the situation where it's very scrappy, and very, like you have to use limited resources to be able to make a big impact. And that's the same in the nonprofit world as well. It's all about limited resources to make a big impact. And so I think the first time that I was brought into an organization at in a management position. It wasn't just about wearing multiple hats as it had been through my whole career up until that point, again, working at startups and smaller companies, but it became really about not only are you wearing multiple hat in getting getting the test done. You're also wearing multiple hats in that you have to think about the big picture and a strategy, you have to think about how are these actions really going to drive the business? And what does this look like, in a year, three years, five years. And when you are both tasked with doing the work, and with strategizing on the work, because of the fact that you are a start up, and you do have to be scrappy, it becomes really important to be able to rely on your team and to be able to empower them to do what they need to do so that the entire organization is lifted. So it's been really just, unfortunately, it was a throw me into the fire, and eventually I'll learn situation, and unfortunately, it wasn't like somebody sat me down and told me Well, this is how life is. Um, yeah, it's definitely been a learning process.

But was it I guess it was a struggle? Or did you have like an aha moment where you're like, if this, if we're going to be successful, we've got to kind of like, I've got to shift my mind, right, like, I can either work 80 hours a week, and then like, all we'll ever accomplish is x. Or I can figure out a way to say like, what resources do I have? And, you know, let's empower them. And let's, let's figure out how to do that. And like, Did it take a while for that to sink in? And we're or did you kind of come to that naturally, pretty quickly.

Um, I would say, probably took a while for it to sink in. For me. I'm the oldest in my family as far as kids. And I think that having that control was really hard for me feel like so really being able to say like, I can't, I cannot control everything, but instead, I need to rely on these people. I mean, I was the hiring manager also. So I really, I haven't hand picked these people myself. And if I couldn't rely on them to do the work, it was like, Why? Why did I go through the effort of making sure that I was hiring a team that both I thought could support the work, but also that I thought could work together and, and improve upon each other as well. So I think it's important, especially when you're in a situation that's scrappy, when you are limited on resources. And, and also, when you're trying to make a big impact with those limited resources, it's really important just to be able to rely on that group, not only to do the tasks, but also just to to feed and kind of build on each other. You don't want people to feel like they're siloed. And they're trying to, you know, carry the burden on their own. And that includes yourself as a leader, you can't carry the burden on your own, he'll get nowhere, because you're relying on ours. And you really want to be able to make that exponential.

Yeah, no, I think that that's exactly right. So was there. Was there a turning point for you, when you, you know, kind of just clicked in your mind of like, as I'm building teams, and I'm building like my career that like, I've got to focus on this? Or is it just kind of this gradual process that you just that you evolved into?

Um, I think it was a great, I think it was probably a gradual process. I think that it got to the point where I was just working constantly, where my team felt like they were spinning their wheels. And I think that's another piece of it was that I don't mind working myself to the bone, but working other people to the bone, I didn't want them to feel like that was what it was going to be to work at that organization or to work at that startup. Like, it wasn't something or I should rephrase, there was a point in time where I felt like I was drained and are said, Okay, that's fine, I can be drained. But when I get to my team, and I look at them, and I see that they their morale is low, and that they feel drained and that they don't feel like they're being able to give as much as they want to be able to give to the work. That's I think, probably when I started to see like, hey, I need to be much more resourceful about how I'm using my team's time about how I'm using my own time. Um, and also just communicating that like, and having that communication line between both me and my team, to feel that they feel comfortable saying, Hey, I'm worn out. Right? I can't work 70 hours a week anymore. We've been doing this for three weeks, this isn't gonna work for me. So I think it's just you have to you have to understand that protecting your team's morale is also part of your job as a leader and I think that as you rely on your team more and give them more autonomy, then they will do the work in a way that doesn't require 70 hour weeks or, or just kind of that rundown feeling.

Yeah, I think, you know, to your point there, did you lose people along the way? Or were you able to catch it? You know, you're like, a god, like my team's running out of the morale is low, they're running out of steam. I got to change things now. Or did you, you have to really learn the hard lessons if you know people just left?

Well, thankfully, I caught it early. Which I mean, I attribute that so having a really good relationship with my team, they, more or less always felt pretty open. And talking to me about things like that. And so as soon as I started seeing it, and as soon as the first person said something to me, which I always want people to feel comfortable saying things to me. I was just like, well, then we have to change something, because especially in my field, where you're hiring engineers, data engineers, software, engineers, data scientists, the cost of hiring those people the cost of losing those people, it's really just so much burden on an organization, especially in the startup stage, and especially in the nonprofit world, it's so much burden on the organization to lose somebody like that, that it, you know, you just never want to do that. Not to mention that you've already created relationships with these people that they understand the business, and that's really important to me, on my engineering teams is to know that they understand the business as well as the technical side. It's just it's not worth losing someone.

Yeah, absolutely. That's like, the hardest lesson you can learn is the turnover cost. And what it does to the rest of the team is is generally very brutal. That So okay, so you made a change, right? In your, your, the way you approach things, and I guess you had a vision, and you needed to make sure the team was in line with your vision, but like what barriers came up along the way, right, as you kind of made that pivot to saying, Okay, we've got to, we got to use our resources, more appropriately, in better. But like, here's our angle, and this is where we're trying to go. And this is kind of like the barrier burden that I was carrying alone a minute ago. And now I'm sharing it with you guys. But like, what were the barriers that you had that point when you kind of made that transition?

Right. I think the biggest barrier, and I think anybody who works in a startup will understand this is really, truly understanding what the goal is, and making sure that that's clearly communicated and communicated often. One of the things that I found working at one of the tech startups that I was, I was leading a data science team there is that oftentimes, we were still going towards the same end goal of creating this software solution or business problems. But the focus of that end goal changed and shifted. And we were constantly trying to optimize basically, where we were within the marketplace. Being that we weren't the other, we weren't the only organization who was doing the work that we were doing. And so while I was there, what I thought was really important in getting people aligned was just making sure that they understand, hey, so I know last week, we said, it was really important that we focus on customer complaints and stimming. That, however, we've shifted our focus to this thing over here. And that could have been based on something that we found in the data that was just showing that there was something more pressing or more important, it could have been based on something from the board. Because we were like I said, VC funded at the time. And so it could be based on a bunch of different things. But your team doesn't always get all of that information that's coming from the board, to the CEO or the president to the VP levels to my level. And so I thought it was really important that I'm talking to you, the VP into the president all the time, my desk was actually right next to the President's desk. So I was always turning around and asking him questions. And just making sure that that's communicated down so that they know, you know, is this thing that I'm working on important? Is this something that I should be shifting my focus to, maybe we already have enough resources for that I wanted them to feel like they had ownership over what they were doing. And not just that they were a cog in the wheel. You know? It was really about both getting communication down to them, but also making sure that their communication was going back up because they're actually in the world. They're seeing the software, they're the ones who are looking at the data and understanding the weeds of everything. And my job is really to translate that back into the bigger picture. And how does that? How does that both relate to the bigger picture, but also how does that relate to the work that we need to get done. So it was really important to me that they felt that they had ownership over those pieces. And I think that it also really helped people to get aligned with what we were doing. Luckily, if I've always worked with people who just felt connected to the work in some way, they may not be as passionate about it as I am, or have the same kind of drive. And I think it's important also to understand what it is that's motivating them. Are they just here? Because they want to build cool things, which I've found that that's what a lot of engineers want, they want to build cool things great. Or are they here, because they really want the mission? Are they here because they want to be the CEO of a tech company of their own one day. And understanding that really helps you to understand how to communicate things, and then also make sure that you're getting them on the projects that they can be more passionate about.

Okay, so there's two things you said there that I thought were interesting. And one of them is a I'm speculating a little bit here. But it sounds like you operate kind of like in an agile framework. Is that? Is that a fair statement? Okay. And I guess, have some comments that I've gotten from previous shows is that people don't always understand what that is, would you? Could you explain what agile is? Because I think I think it's fascinating.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, so agile is a project management system, where you are working in sprints. And a sprint is just a short period of time that you have to complete a certain project or piece of a project. And then within that sprint, you are checking in both on a daily basis, and then at the beginning and the end of each sprint. And so it just ensures that you're completing a task over a specific period of time, and that you're in constant communication with the multi very, the varying levels, and the varying departments that are involved in that particular project. So an example might be if you're working on a website, you have your data sciences group, on one end, you have your project, or product group on another end, and you have your web designers on another end, and then your business people. So at the beginning of each sprint, all of a representative from all four groups come together, you talk about what needs to be done, you set up a time period for when that when those tasks need to be done, and then you map out. And then within each sprint or after each sprint, you can have changes to how you want to get to the end of the goal. So if you find out new information at the end of the sprint, then you might revise what sprint two looks like or what sprint three looks like moving forward. So it's really all about being able to work with a MVP very early in the process. And be able to get something up and running without having to wait till a product is completely finished. Especially in the software world. And in the data science world, these are really important if you want to be able to kind of hit the ground running early. As opposed to I know, I've also worked on corporate in the corporate world where you might have a software solution that takes six months to put together and you have to wait that six months before you can use anything in Agile, you can get something up and running in two weeks. But you just have to know that it's not the fully formed product.

Yeah, I love one, that was a great explanation. And two, I love it. You know, you hear about this in the tech space a lot. But in my former life, I was a CFO, and actually ran my my finance function. Using agile methodology. You know, we had all these different projects that we had, slated we had daily work. And you know, basically what we what we agreed upon, you know, at the beginning of the week is like, this is what we're going to accomplish this week. And it's a very crystal clear, like, attainable goal that everybody agrees on. Right. And then we had a daily standup every morning, you know, 15 minutes as a team. And we all talked about it. And we are able to kind of just take little bites out of it in a way that made sense that you know, it's really a typical so I'm only CFO I know that runs the ran his department with an agile kind of framework. But thank you, thank you so much for explaining that because I think he did Much better job than I would have?

Well, I want to add something to that, too. So I think that kind of goes back to understanding the goals, if you can break things up into bite sized pieces where people feel very comfortable that they understand this as what I'm responsible for. And then also at the beginning of every Scrum, which is that stand up daily stand up meeting, right? You say, hey, these are the resources I need. And these are my blockers, like this is preventing me from doing x. And so it becomes very clear as a leader, what do I need to get my team to make sure that they can be successful?

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. And it works in it's it's not nebulous, right. It's very crystal clear. It's like, today, we anticipate doing this, and then you know, so like, I would actually sit down with everybody like, Okay, what did we accomplish yesterday? Did we hit our goals? Did we not? Do we need to refresh? Do we need to think and it helped also, for me, you probably see this too, is getting an understanding of where people's minds are, right? And helping them actually reframe, because somebody might have been like, well, I'm gonna accomplish this today. And it's like, well, in my mind, I know it's not possible. But it's like, Okay, I need I need you to work through this on your own. Tomorrow, we're going to have a discussion about and it could be a coachable moment where like, Well, why didn't I get this done was like, we had a really nebulous goal. Or you didn't really think through like, there's a couple things that I know that you don't have. But over time, like as our team kind of jelled, we are able to have those discussions in earnest, when people are setting their daily goals, right. And as opposed to like coming back, I thought that was, I thought that was a really great way to manage and I love like your your definition. And thank you for defining Scrum that was always good, I've definitely gotten some comments of like, I didn't really understand what you're talking about there. So the other thing that you said, which I thought was really, really interesting is understanding what your team where they want to go, you know, somebody may just want to kind of rise up in the ranks of your organization and be the next you. somebody on your team may want to go out and be a CEO, somebody may want to have their own startup, you know, like, they want to be a co founder or a founder somewhere. But if you understand that early, the conversations you can have with them, to help them frame up why we're doing something and how this goal helps them with their their other goal. Yeah, their big goal. I think that's, that's an amazing observation there.

Yeah, I think it's really important to, to getting well both to understanding your team on a work level, but also understanding them in how they operate just in generally. I think that being an empathetic leader is important, or a servant leader is what I've heard other people call it right. But I think it's really important to, to being an effective leader, and also being a leader that people want to work for.

Right. And I think to the transparency, if you can get from your team, what they really want out of life, right? And their their career goals and their aspirations, the transparency and the conversations and how you can tie like, here's a project that I want you to work on, you may think that this is just busy work, I don't like it. But this is the reason why I think this is good. Because if you want to be me, right, at some point, like you're gonna have to delegate this down and explain how it's done. The only way you can do that is this, if you want to be a founder or the CEO of a company, this is a metric that's really important to you. And if you have to work through it to get there, right, and I think that being able to have a transparent conversation, where it's like, I think a lot of times, people have goals and aspirations, they never tell their their superiors about them, you know, because they're just like, I don't want them to think that I'm not committed to being here. And then, you know, there's, you just have these misalignments, right? And it's like, Why just do this busy work? I can't wait to leave, I can't wait to leave, as opposed to saying like, well, what I'm doing today has a direct impact on where I'm trying to go. And this is why and then like, I can have that transparent conversation with my boss. Right. And we're working on this together. And I think that that's, that's just an incredible observation you made there.

Yeah, it's, I think that leaving the ego at the door is really important with any team. Like, you don't want to be the person who comes in saying, I know everything. You want to be open to learning and growing from everybody from the intern to the CEO and the president. Everyone has something to teach. But the other piece of that is that when you have a team that really feels like they can be transparent with you, they're a lot more open and a lot more willing to come to you when they run into those kinds of issues early to make sure that you're able to give them the resources to make sure that you're able to kind of direct them into a different direction if that's what needs to be done. But I think that it makes sure that the work gets done and the work gets done efficiently. But also that people feel like they belong there that they feel that they have ownership. And then they're going to want to do kind of their due diligence and even go above and beyond, within the work, especially as an engineer, and as a data scientist, again, just understanding the business and understanding how the business runs is important. And I know that some engineers just want to look at the code and or they just want to look at the numbers. But if you can look into the numbers and say, Well, you know, the metrics that you thought you needed to look at is really not as important as this metric over here, or the forecast that you put forth a week ago, doesn't really make sense in this particular economic situation that we anticipate in the next couple of months. Like, I want my team to feel like they can come and say those kinds of things. I don't want them to feel like they are strictly there to do the engineering and then go home. And that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a great point. You know, it's like, you can have a job that's built on checking boxes, right. And it's like, I did what I said I was gonna do, but the reality is, is like, especially if you know, that it's not helpful, or like, that's not the end goal, like to your point of like the forecast, if you look through the forecasts, and it's like, Yeah, all these numbers they take in the time they make sense. But you also know, on the side, you're like, well, the new economic situation, this no longer is really valid. Yeah, like one, you could say, Okay, what I ticked and died and everything, and everything looks good, right? Like done. Or you can say, like, yeah, the functionality of this sheet is good. But it's not, you know, what you're really aiming for. And I think it's misleading. And here's why. And here's some other examples. And I guess, once you give folks the ability to kind of connect those dots in their brain as to why maybe taking that extra level of thought, or, you know, follow through is so important to developing their career, like, you'll find that people will just naturally want to do that. Right? Let's, let's take this in a little bit of a different direction, right. So, you know, we've talked about where you've kind of brought people up in areas where you already have expertise. But there's also times in your career where you've got to bring in an expert that kind of sits outside of your, your realm. And it's mission critical to your project and the success of your project. How have you, how do you successfully integrate, you know, other people kind of into your projects in areas where you aren't the expert, and you really, truly have to rely on them to provide you, you know, with with the information that you need to make the right decisions. And kind of similar to what we're talking about not just being like a stickler for my scopes, as I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. And like, check the box. Here you go. It's like, Yeah, I did XY and Z. But again, like, what you're really I think you're looking for this is the angle and making sure that they feel like they're brought into the team so that you actually have the outcome that you're looking for.

Right? I would say that this is a part of my daily life as a data scientist. So a lot of the work that we do is based in specific industries that have a lot of nuance, and then not only within the industry is there nuance, but within the organization, there's nuance and being a consultant, you get to see all kinds of things that are happening there. And so being a being proficient in the business is important. But I would say that it's not something that I'm ever going to be an expert in. My job is to be an expert in the numbers and to be able to tie that to business and be able to say to the business leaders, or to the subject matter experts, because I know enough because I'm I know enough to be dangerous here the kinds of questions that I want to pose to you guys, so that so that we can work together for solutions. And so I'm constantly bringing in people who are business leaders, I'm constantly bringing in people who are subject matter experts to give me both the vision of the organization and also the vision of the industry as a whole. To be able to lead my investigation really is what I'm doing as a data scientist is a lot of investigation. And to be able to make that actionable for them, if I bring them a load of numbers and pretty charts, and this is what I predict will happen in six months. That's great. But if it's not something they can do anything about it, it really becomes just numbers on a page is no longer important. And so really relying on those people bringing them in and making them feel heard and making them I understand that what they have to say is integral to what we're doing is the first piece. But I think the other piece is just not scaring them with the technology. I think, I think the first thing that a lot of the, especially my hires out of college or my hires, who only have a few years in, the first thing that they want to do is say, Oh, we created this predictive analysis based on a, a classification model, that's looking at a two points, you know, two point forecasting model, and I'm like, that's great for me, I want to know anything. But when you're presenting to the business leader to the business subject matter expert, if they don't care what model you use, did they, they don't want to know that you use the two point rolling average. They want to know, what does this mean? And what do I need to deploy now, like, what are my next steps. And so being able to communicate in that way to business leader, I think is also really important so that they don't feel intimidated or scared. And I also just want them to know that, yes, I'm an expert in technology, and data, but that doesn't negate their expertise, their expertise is just as important. I can't do what I do without them. And so clearly communicating that making them feel comfortable and making sure that they feel like they can really talk to me and communicate with me about their organizational needs, and about the industry needs is really important to me, and I think creates an environment where you're able to get down to those really important nuggets that you can pull out of data and really be able to get to forecasts and analyses that are able to make a change, and not just some numbers that make the board feel like oh, we have artificial intelligence we're in, we're doing great. Now you want something that actually can do that change, and really impact the organization.

Okay, so this, this is what I heard. And I'm gonna summarize it real quick, you can tell me if I'm like way off base. But when you work with other people that bring expertise that you don't have, you spend a lot of time making sure that they kind of understand the value of the expertise that they're bringing to the equation. You also query them, I guess, use a lot of questions, based on your experience to help draw out, you know, draw them into the process right in to make them feel valuable to the process. And then articulate kind of like, where you're trying what the outcome should look like, or what you're hoping the outcome should look like, in a way where they feel like they are part of the team, not just somebody that's providing data or information into your your output. Right.

I mean, they are part of the team, right? Just about making sure that they they understand that from exactly from the get go. Yeah. Awesome.

So you mentioned earlier that you have a mentor group. I think that's one thing that's also been very consistent across all the folks that I've talked to is that they they do have mentors, and they're all in different, different capacities. Some are very specific, but I guess explain explain your mentor group and how it works.

Yeah. So I basically have been very blessed just in life, just to randomly run into people that have been really important to my journey. I would say that each person that I kind of bring into that space kind of attributes something special, something different that other people don't, but they definitely kind of all ladder up to what I'm looking for. In kind of understanding my career understanding, again, life in general, I think it really does take a village and it really is important to, to have a team behind you. But I will say the biggest thing that I've learned, and I will say that probably has been jumped started in 2020. Since we are all, you know, separate from one another and having to talk through video. And all of that is just reaching out and asking people and not being afraid of hearing No. So I reached out to a lot of people who are in my field who I admire from afar and had been admiring from afar for for years trying to just kind of watch What they do and see where that applies to me. But especially in the last year, and I've done this before, but especially in the last year, I've just been, I'm not going to be shy about emailing someone or reaching out on LinkedIn, or, or if I have a phone number calling, and just saying, Hey, you know, I really enjoy what you do XYZ, I think that you have a lot to teach. And I think that I can provide value in this way. Can we have a zoom meeting, the 30 minute zoom meeting, or maybe one day when everything is listed, we'll be able to have coffee or something. But I think it's just really important to talk to people who have been where you want to be? And who knows the path, their path? And just really understand what did they do to get there. In addition to that, I think that it helps you to zoom out, like when you are in the thick of it, you are looking at the details and the minutiae, and when you have the opportunity to talk somebody who's already been there, they've looked at it from, you know, a 50 foot view already. And so they can come back and and tell you, these are the things you need to be focused on from the 50 foot view. And I know you're in the minutiae right now, but these are the things I wish I would have known from that 50 foot view. So I think it's really important to make sure you have somebody who who has that vision. And how's the response been? Oh, it's been great. People are, the thing is, if you're not afraid to hear no, you'll end up hearing Yes, a lot more than you think you will. So, I think that getting over that fear of rejection is hard for people. But if you're just willing to hear that no, once or twice, three times, maybe I've just found that people are so willing, and so able, and they just want to help. So

yeah, I think I think that's amazing, right? And that's a message that everybody needs to hear is go out there and ask. And people assume that, you know, the answer is going to be no or they're too busy. Or like, why would I do that? And your experience is the people say, Sure. I'll talk to you. You know, and that's helped you tremendously.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's amazing. I think that people genuinely want to help. And so most people will say yes, is what I found.

That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that's the if there's anything there's a golden nugget there is that people will say yes. And then wrapping this up, right, the last question I asked everybody is if you could go back in time, some point in time and tell your younger self one key piece of advice, like one, when would you go back? And then what would you tell yourself,

I would probably go back to, I probably say the very end of my undergraduate degree. Because that's when I got into there were a lot of like group projects, and I think they were okay, you're about to go into the real world and hear the things that you need to know, working with a group and that kind of thing. And I think the thing I would tell myself is that being self sacrificial is not it doesn't get you where you think it's gonna go, like, thinking I can do all the work myself is not. It's self sacrificial, is not sexy. Let's put, um, and I feel like if I had gone back in all the way, even to those college group projects, and not been the one to say, Oh, I can take care of that, and this and this thing over here, and, okay, yeah, I'm gonna take on half of this project, and you other for people who are also on this group, you know, you take on what you can, because I carried that into my first job. And I carried that into my first management position. And not only was it not beneficial for me, it also wasn't beneficial for my team because they weren't getting the best of me. They were getting the rundown, tired. I can't think that far ahead version of me. And so I think it's really important to understand that you have to you have to understand when you can balance things and when you need to delegate and not try to do it all on your own.

God, that's great. That's great. You know, I think I'm like going back to my college days too, right? And thinking about those conversations where you're in a group, especially in a group of people you may not know Know that well, and maybe you're sitting around the table and you realize, like, if I step up and I just kind of like take the lead here, we'll get this thing done and we'll move on. Otherwise, we may just be sitting around, you're looking at each other for three or four hours. And you know, the next meeting will be pretty, pretty poor. But, yeah, that would be tough. But at the same time, I agree. Because like you, you tend to take these things on and you keep carrying that load. It's okay, well, that worked, right. And you just keep doing it. Keep doing because you think that's gonna work. But your experience is that as you've grown in your career, like that does not work.

While not at all, the more responsibilities you get, the more things that you are your are under your purview. The less you can say, Well, I'm just gonna do this myself, because eventually you just run out of hours. Yeah.

Yeah, so you've got to you got to start being comfortable with that awkward silence, where it's like, Who's gonna take this? And it's like, yeah, I think my personality is like, Alright, fine. I'll take it right. Like, I'll do it. Yeah. Let's listen. Let's move this thing along. But I agree. Totally. Ashley, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Yeah, I've learned a lot. And I just, I think your, your career, what you do is so fascinating. And like I said, we may have to come back and have another conversation on like, how you figure out when, when to call me. I've been on the site or I've been thinking about something or I just saw the commercial. I don't know how that's done. But thanks again. And thank you. Awesome. That concludes this week's show. Thanks for listening. Please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform or directly on the site. Your comments are truly appreciated, good, bad or indifferent, and we'll help make the show better. This is Jake Wiley with Wiley on business and we'll talk again in two weeks.