The Winding Road w/Leslie Greenwood, Co-Founder of Women Wednesday

All righty, you're doing this thing. Good morning, good morning from a very rainy Nashville. It is supposed to rain 4 to 6 inches over the next few days, so I may just float away, to be totally frank. So TBD. Right now we're still good.

It is also raining in Dallas and 49 degrees, and it's gross, and I feel like I'm in Ireland.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, uh, I, I read some stat like a year ago or so where technically Nashville has— what was it? Is it Nashville has more rainy days than Portland? We just don't get as much rain as Portland, or vice versa, or we have more rain than Portland. Um, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it rains a lot here. But, um, good morning everybody, happy Tuesday! Excited for this episode this morning. I know I say I always am excited, but I am excited. I mean, you know, I, I think I think when your job, and we'll get into Leslie's background, when your job is to meet people and to have really good conversations, if you are wired that way, it can get you pretty excited. So I am excited for this morning. Excited to have this conversation with Leslie. And again, shout out Alicia Novin for making the introductions. Alicia Novin and I started back our series Unghosted, which is Torque's resume LinkedIn critique series that we're doing once a month. And so Alicia and I are back doing that. Alicia and I made this connection, so shout out to him. Also the power of connections as always. But again, if you are tuning in, welcome. We're starting to see people tuning in. Please say hey, would love to hear from you. Again, what I always tell people is this is a networking really platform. I started this show 5 years ago next month. And I started this as just a way to give back to the engineering community. And really over the last year, what I've realized is this is Really, uh, this is really a networking show where— and this is the meet— I guess it's a meetup, you know, we can call it a meetup, Leslie. It's a virtual meetup where you come, you hang out with a wonderful speaker, uh, you can connect with people in the chat, um, and, uh, make some friends. Again, it's like I tell people, and I see some people doing it— shout out Richard, uh, he's not here yet, he usually tunes in— but shout out Richard. He's starting to do what I always say. I say if you connect with every single speaker that I have on the show and you connect with every single person in the comments, your network is gonna be insane. And that's what I want. I want you to network off the back of me. So please connect with Leslie again, but send her a note. Tell her you saw her from obviously the show so she knows where you're coming from. Um, before we dive in, Ricardo, Taya, Mark, Chris, Daniel— there he, there he is, there he is. Alicia, good to see you, buddy. Oh, Roxy's good to see you. It's great to see y'all this morning. Nashville traffic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it just rains in Nashville, things go nuts. Steven. Also, Dallas got crazy traffic. I was in Dallas in December for a conference. Crazy, crazy traffic in Dallas. Um, Jonathan, it's good to see you again this morning. All right, so Leslie, enough of me yapping. Let's give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there.

Awesome, awesome. Well, uh, again, I want to shout out Alicia. When we first talked, we— Alicia and I had never met. So Alicia is just a random internet connection who sent an email nominating his boss for Wednesday Women and then connected me with all these amazing people. And so he's like, how do you know Alicia? I'm like, I don't, totally don't. But we had a great call and here we are today. So let's see who I am and what do I do. So I am Leslie Greenwood. I am the founder of 2 companies. One is Chief Evangelist Consulting, which is my community consulting business. I used to be the VP of Member Success at Pavilion. So probably similar to what you have at Torque about professional development. But this is for go-to-market professionals. And now I do that for a living on my own. I'm sure we'll get into my unemployableness, which I think I just am for my own sanity and benefit. So I love working for myself. And then also I am the co-founder of Wednesday Women. So if everybody would please follow Wednesday Women, it is a platform just to uplift executive women leaders. So oftentimes, and just like you kind of mentioned at the beginning, connect with these people, follow them, increase your network. Oftentimes these women that have these amazing titles, we don't know who the women are behind them. And they may not be out there tooting their own horns. And so our job is just to suit them for them. And, and yeah, so that's, that's what we do there. And, you know, I've done a lot of other things, but I'll let you kind of drive me through that track because we could be on that winding road for a long time.

Oh, I know. Yeah. And it's so tough, right? Because I love having deep conversations and, and I try to keep this 30 minutes so people can hop on, hop off and kind of go to their next meeting. So yeah, lots to cover today. And again, shout out to all the comments. I see you. I've been trying to throw everything up. Roxy loves Leslie. You know what, Roxy? I said the same thing. I told Leslie as well. Her glasses are fantastic.

Amazon.

All right. So look at your background. We have a lot to go over. I think the big thing that I kind of want to highlight, at least launch off with, is you had the 9 to 5 for 5 years at Pavilion, and then you just left and you just You just went to go do your own thing, right? You moved on and, and you've been kind of— and I think that that scares a lot of people. Um, I know before I joined Torque, I was thinking about doing that. Um, you know, I know a lot of people don't know where to start. A lot of people, you know, kind of retired 9 to 5. Can you just kind of give general thoughts on where you're at Pavilion and, and really what made you jump?

Yeah. Um, you know, I was at Pavilion first as a member, then, um, you know, pitched myself to be the VP of Member Success. So kind of like you, I was in charge of all things, uh, content Yeah. Strategy, everything. And that was when we were going from 2,000 to 10,000 members. I was just there for 2 years. I'm still a member. I still participate. So we went from 2,000 to 10,000 members in 2 years.

Awesome.

We also built the entire learning curriculum within member success. I was finance. I called people to pay their bills because otherwise they'd end up on my churn sheet. And by God, I was not gonna have churn. You know, if I could save a churn off my KPIs, I was going to do it. So I called many people on collections. Not my favorite job. And so, you know, I think it was just time. It was time. It was a mutual decision. And, you know, it was— I was so burned out. I did not know, like, when people talked about burnout, I will tell you, I was just like, poo-poo people.

Yeah.

Pull up your big boy pants. Let's go. And then it hit me like it had been coming in a slow roll. And then it finally just hit me to the point, like, I was, I mean, I was shot.

Yeah.

Because, you know, it's a, as you know, 24/7 community and I love being in there with the members and I love helping. And even though I had a team of 18 at one point, there was still always so much to do. So if y'all are not appreciating your community managers, it is smooth like a duck, smooth on top, and there are wheels going. All the time.

Everything's burning all the time.

Everything's burning all the time. And it took 18 people for it to look like smooth like a duck on top.

Yep.

And that was working like way more hours than we ever should have. So, and, you know, as I transitioned out, I, you know, I talked to a mentor and the mentor said, I want you to create an ideal life profile. And what that was, was tell me what you want your life to be. And write that down, and then we will work on a job to fit into your life. I don't know about the people on this call, but I have never done that. I've always fit my life into my work. And that was a really kind of cool idea to me. And, you know, it came on that consulting was the way, you know, that I wanted to do it. I am a really great early-stage scrappy person.

Yeah.

Who becomes really indispensable and kind of annoying, um, once they get really, you know, like we start putting structure in and I'm just busting against the walls for structure. And, um, that's why I'm unemployable. Like, I'm just not— I'm not meant for other people's structure.

But I love the awareness though, right? And listen, I mean, I, I know, you know, we're obviously joking a little bit, but, but like, I think— and that's kind of— that, that was one thing I'm a little like— I think we're a lot alike. I mean, just obviously learning your story real time, I'm kind of that same same way. I, I buck— I push back against pretty much everything in the nicest way possible. And, but, but when I was interviewing, like, for this next role, like, I was very like, hey, this is what I bring, this is what's not gonna work, take it or leave it. And I don't know if you can speak to that, just like how important I guess getting to that mindset is, because if you take a job that's not a fit, I mean, you're gonna be miserable.

Oh, 100%. And I will tell you, the— there's— I mean, this is a quote that I've used in 2 interviews in both of my last 2 jobs, which was, I will play inside your sandbox, but you have to tell me where the boundaries are.

Yeah.

If you don't, I will be running down the beach building something out— not building something else that's not important, but, you know, in that early stage land where everybody's doing everything, right? Like, just like we did it in at Pavilion, we build every— everything. And, um, and I said, I understand I also need a long leash. But I end and I acknowledge that it's long enough to hang myself.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, I was very clear in both interviews that that is how I work. Now, granted, that's not going to work for everybody.

No, it's—

I'm 54. So I'm in a different stage of life. I'm not trying to exit a company. I'm not trying to be a billionaire. So I don't know. I don't know that I suggest that for all of your people, but like, I think being mindful of that would be good on what's— where you think your boundaries are on that.

100%. So, um, yeah, I, I— and I agree with you on that 100%. So talk, talk about— you move on from Pavilion. I think a lot of people, you know, try to figure out what to do on their own, right? I think there's many different avenues. You could develop a product, you could do consulting, kind of maybe a services-based thing. What was kind of your thought process? Because I kind of went through that too. I was like, do I create another market talent marketplace? Do I, you know, do I do con— you know, content community? Because like, what— like, talk to me where your head was with that, because I think that's a really important kind of next step for people wanting to go on their own.

You know, I thought I was going to do customer success because that was my background. And actually, I didn't know I was a community builder until I left community— until I left Pavilion and found out, oh wait, I'm a community strategist. I— this is what I do, right? I talk to a lot of people. I also, you know, I heard lots of ideas. I'm telling you what, I— in the first 2 weeks, I was told to write a book, start a course, start a podcast, start posting on Twitter, and let's see, Twitter and TikTok.

Yeah.

Like, I need to do all these things and, like, you know, sell PDFs and all this kind of stuff. And it just got very overwhelming. And yes, I did try that. I had a podcast. I tried to start a course, but ooh, that was not for me.

Okay.

Um, you know, so I think it's very easy to get distracted by all the ways that you can do it. I think it's really finding like, what do you love to do? And really kind of take in all the feedback and then maybe you put it in ChatGPT and tell, ask it to tell you themes and explain your personality and say, what would you recommend? Because there are so many things that I did try that.

Yeah.

I really— it would not have served me. And I'm still actually figuring that out. Like, I didn't know my ICP for my business for 18 months. Like, I finally got it at 18 months. Like, it is specific and very narrow and niche.

Yeah.

So it's still an evolution.

I, I, you know, I kind of want to dive into a little bit— Roxy comes in, exhausting. Yeah, I, I do want to talk about kind of the networking side of things and kind of like doing the TikToks and the Twitters and the podcasts. You know, obviously I'm out here and, you know, I'm doing the whole thing, and I'm very blessed to have support to do it, but I did it by myself for a very long time. And obviously you tried it and it's a lot. Talk about just the power of just getting yourself out there at least, right? Because I think, again, I want to shout out Richard. Richard hopped in here and he's starting to follow up and hang out with my guests and like do calls and he's doing it in public and it's very simple, very methodical. And he's not, he doesn't have a podcast. He's not posting audio recordings. All he's doing is he's doing a picture and he's posting a recap on LinkedIn. Just talk about how you don't always have to do a lot to be effective.

That was the biggest waste of my time, to be quite honest. My audience is on LinkedIn. I work with go-to-market leaders, CROs, VPs of sales, marketing, customer success. They're all on LinkedIn.

Yep.

Um, and so I diverted my efforts into places where they weren't. Um, they're also— all of my business comes from just— I mean, for your audience, and I'm sure you do this as well, you tell your people, and I can see you doing it here now, is that like, be in community with people. You plant your seeds, you give without expectation, and one day you will, after you tend and sow and pull a bunch of weeds, you will harvest.

Yep.

All of my business comes from community with a tangential small amount from LinkedIn. So it's actually like, it's more like a person from my community will tag me in a post in LinkedIn that will start a conversation. So I, all of it comes there. It's like 100%.

I want to, I want to dig in, I want to dig into that a little bit because I still think I think LinkedIn— I made a post about this Friday and a lot of comments, a lot of thoughts. I still think LinkedIn is like the most underrated platform, like, like in terms of business. Like, in my perspective, if you are in the B2B space and you're like D2C, TikTok, Instagram, everybody else in my opinion should just live on LinkedIn. What are your thoughts on that? Talk to me just about your findings more on LinkedIn?

Yeah, I, I'm definitely a LinkedIn girl. I try to post almost every day. You know, it's hard because some days you're like, no one looked at my stuff, no one cares, all that kind of stuff. And which is the reason why you should just go ahead and post because no one cares and no one read it. So just go out there and start. I probably had what, maybe 500 followers, and they were realtors from my first tech job when I started. Yeah. You know, and I have 17,000-something. And, you know, you get the notes from now and then that says, you know, I really loved what you said. It helped me today because I was having a bad day.

Yeah.

Um, and, you know, that will happen. But yeah, no, 100%. And honestly, I don't talk about business a lot on LinkedIn. I will occasionally. Obviously, community and networking is such a part of my life.

Yeah.

Um, I talk about that, but I'm not talking about my company. I'm not talking about my wares. I'm not talking about my services.

Sure.

Um, people do business, and I actually don't even post on my company page anymore. People do business because they want to do business with me. They don't do business— they don't care about my company. And so me establishing trust and authority and a vulnerability that allows me to create rapport with people quickly and easily Is the most important thing for me. And sometimes that means I'm just gonna say shit.

Yeah, you know what, I— listen, this is, this is a hot take here. I think what Leslie just said, people want to buy from people, people don't care about companies. I, I mean, my hot take is I think that's that way across the board.

I do too.

And I think that's why community teams are so important in today's day and age. We—

I—

people want to buy— I want to buy from Leslie. I don't want to buy from the company, I, I know Leslie's going to take care of me, right? And that's one thing that we're— I'm very passionate about Torque and what we're building. Like, people want to— people are going to want— people resonate with Jason, people resonate with Brianna, people resonate with Hema, people resonate with me in all different ways. And they're going to want to be a part of us because of us, not because of Torque. And I think, like, if you're in— if you're in marketing for company marketing, like, you need to get over yourself a little bit. Because it's not— because you all aren't the ones moving the needle. It's the people moving the needle.

And you do it right, the people move the needle for you because they love your company and they will talk about you. And a quick segue into Wednesday Women, which is my accidental business. You know, we got 10,000 followers on a business page.

That's crazy.

Which is crazy in a year.

LinkedIn throttles business pages, FYI, social media people.

Yeah. And in a year with all organic because people resonated with what we said. Our tone is still vulnerable and open and it's still probably a little bit too much founder-led, but it's going to have to be that way because people want to buy from us or do business with us. So yeah.

Yeah, 100%. So talk about Women Wednesday a little bit more. You know, I know, I know, you know, there's a lot of people in the chat. How can they get involved? Just kind of, just kind of give the, give the chat kind of a high-level overview of that.

Yeah, I'll give you my elevator pitch.

Love it.

Give it to me. Probably haven't practiced it or had enough coffee this morning.

We can workshop it now. Don't worry.

Yeah, no, it's on the front page of our website. If you go to wednesdaywomen.org, the first part says we are here to celebrate executive women leaders. You should Follow. Let's see. Follow, learn from, and be inspired by. I love it. Our goal is to get more women on stages, podcasts, and panels in more LinkedIn feeds. Because of course, what you hear when you see the manel, folks, this is a term, manel, a panel of all men. Yeah, they're almost always white dudes.

Yeah.

When you see the manel, people will— and you call somebody out on it or you ask, they say, well, I didn't know any women experts.

Yeah.

That's not an excuse because there are many out there. And if you follow Winsome Women, you can meet 2 every week and add them to your follow list. And then sharing their authentic voices. You know, I have calls with women that are amazing. Like they have CMO of Grammarly, VP of Learn of Albertsons, Fortune 50 companies. But what people want to hear— the title is great, it's flashy. They want to hear about the woman behind the title. And so that's what we focus on. So we're very— our presence is LinkedIn. We're actually not a community. We are just a movement.

And we talked about this a little bit on our call.

Yeah, it's just a movement. So follow us, the things you like, comment, engage, follow the women that we present to you every week. We just— for your group, because I know you run a little bit more technical, we just finished a series on women in privacy.

Okay.

Privacy, cybersecurity, and risk. They're the ones that have the unsexiest jobs that really no one really wants to have to deal with, but they do it all the day. I think I might have seen one of them on this call too. And just, we did a whole series just highlighting women in privacy, and it was really, it was a really amazing thing.

That's awesome. You know, I do want to, I want to kind of pull, kind of recall our one-on-one conversation we had because I think it's I think for the people watching, they obviously know kind of what we're trying to do on the Torque community side of things and whatnot. I do think our chat a little bit about, do people need another community? Right. And you and I were chit-chatting about that, like Women Wednesday. You said it's more of a movement, not a community. Can we unpack that kind of a super high level? Give me your thoughts because we had some good banter around that during our one-on-one call.

Yeah. And actually, I mean, it is really one of our things. Like, we believe that executive women have Really too much to do already. Already we, we can probably agree on that. And they don't need to have to go somewhere else to spend 15 minutes to get value. Our goal is to deliver value without expectation. And I think that's, that's why that's part of the virality of what we do is that we don't— even the women we feature, it's like, fill out my form for 10 minutes and engage with the post.

Yeah.

And I will blast you all over social media. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I think, and I used to teach a class on this, it's like there's communities that you love and engage with. And I, when I say engage, it's 2 times a week for 15 minutes. There are some you keep because you might have a question you might want to ask in there. It's not one you really engage with, but you just like might have a technical question. And there are really ones that you need to just take off your Slack side panel, you know, and just get rid of them or your Discord side panel or I don't know how Discord works, but like you just need to get rid of them and clean them out because it's mental clutter to take away from the places you can really learn, grow, and make those connections that will make a difference in your job. And I know you talk a lot about this, but like, if you start— I'm just going to lay this out super— I'm going to be as plain as day. If you start networking when you're looking for a job, you are too late. You should have started 2 years ago. So if y'all are not networking now, almost all of us are going to need a new job in 2 years, 2 to 5 years. Yeah, you, you are in such— I, I see it every day. You are in such, um, a negative. You're starting at -5, correct, instead of starting at 0. Yeah, or +10 if you're not properly networked.

Yeah, yeah. And again, that's, you know, really the goal for Torque. And, you know, um, you know, my— this is a little bit more job search oriented. Brianna, who, who you've gotten in touch with, is obviously— hers is a community focused one. You have Jason, who really is highlighting just people in tech more along their career journey, but still, you know, along their tech journey. And then Hima is really, in my perspective, like basically our really Mexico, LATAM version of Jason's podcast. And so, you know, really for us, we want to provide you, I mean, if you message Leslie right after this show and go, hey, loved your conversation, saw you on, she's gonna get back to you, right? That's how this networking starts.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what Really, my ultimate goal for Torque is, is for you all to just network off the back of us because Jason's got a heck of— I mean, all of us have heck of communities. Um, and so, so that's what, you know, again, we're super passionate about. But I agree with you, if you are waiting, you are behind. Very, very behind.

Yep.

Um, so as, as we kind of— again, time flies when you're having fun with friends. As we kind of wrap up here in the last 7 minutes, I, I do want to really kind of really let you kind of say maybe some words we haven't gotten to, or encouragement, or anything that, that's still on the top of your mind that I haven't asked Any questions about?

You know, I guess my encouragement, because like we did call this podcast or this show The Winding Road. Yeah. My journey in my career has been from retail to, you know, just regular business to my first accidental job in tech where they gave me 100 shares and we exited to a Fortune 250. I mean, seriously, people, this never happens. But I thought, wow, this is great. This is how startups work. Yeah. Um, um, to, you know, to customer success, to being a stay-at-home mom for 2 years. Like, I have it on my LinkedIn profile. It's kind of my, like, you know, when people put their ex-FANG stuff on there, I'm like, I'm an ex-stay-at-home mom. Like, I just put it out there because I'm like, I'm gonna be fancy too. So yes, I used to just change poopy diapers and, like, read to my kids.

Huge.

Um, so, um, I think my You know, and then coming to, you know, working at Pavilion and increasing my network and now being out on my own and being asked to be on these podcasts. I was talking to my mom before this and she's like, when did you become so social? Like, when did you— like, when did you like doing this stuff? And I'm like, I don't know, but you should maybe watch me on LinkedIn today and, you know, and then you can see.

Yeah.

But yeah, so I mean, it's just, it's so different. Like, someone called me LinkedIn famous the other day. And I'm like, dude, I'm a Midwestern housewife, a 54-year-old Midwestern housewife. That's still how I see myself. So like, where you're at right now is not dependent on where you're going to be. I think we talked in our conversation, this is Leslie V17. There are at least 10 more versions of me, and I may not be doing any of this stuff in 4 years. So I don't know. I guess the The, uh, words of encouragement are for those out there looking to make a move or are in the middle of making a move is like, you know, follow, follow the path. When a door is open and the path is clear, you very well may need to walk through.

Man, I, I— that's so good. That'll preach. As I say, you know, for me, I, I, I think, yeah, I was talking to my— I was talking to my wife about this too, uh, the other day. Um, we were, uh, we were at dinner and, and she was like, she goes, it's funny, Taylor, you've completely transitioned your career without ever really, like, seamlessly. And, and, and I went from a traditional heads-down recruiter to essentially marketing community in the dev world, right?

Mm-hmm.

And I really resonate with what you said. I think a lot of us can get so caught up in what's your 5-year plan, what's your 10-year, what's your 3-year. And it's like, to me, like, that's not even a thing anymore for me. It's like, where am I at presently? Where do I want to go? And let's continue to work through that. When opportunity arises, I think you're right, step through the door. I think a lot of us, an opportunity can be yelling at us in front of us and we're like, nah, right? So like, I think like having community around you, having people around you to encourage you, but then like when you see, when you see the lane, go. Yeah.

Yeah, there's 2 asterisks to that, is that many people walk around with blinders on.

Correct.

So they're not looking for the doors because they're in the spot. Like, they think they're in the spot. Well, the spot always changes. So, you know, take off the blinders to look for the doors and to be realistic about what a clear path is. I mean, I took a job, the job that brought me down to Dallas, and I knew the path wasn't clear, but it was my first VP role. But I was fired 8 months later. After moving my family across country. But we were meant to be in Texas. It got me my next VP role. I love it. And, you know, and I got hired back by the parent company the next day. So I just took the 3-month severance and took my old job back. I mean, they brought it. So, but yeah, it was definitely an ego hit. But so like, yeah, just be honest about what a clear path looks like. If you're climbing over barbed wire, it is not a clear path.

Correct. 100%. That's so good. All right. So I do kind of rapid fire here with the guests. And again, thank you all. The chat's been—

You didn't tell me about this.

Say what?

You didn't tell me about any rapid fire.

Yeah. I never tell anybody about it. Rapid fire questions. A handful of questions. First off, Leslie, Valentine's Day is quickly coming up. What's your go-to Valentine's Day candy? Ooh.

Oh, they have pink M&M's. I love M&M's. So the, the, the Valentine's Day— I'm just gonna go— no, they're the same. Okay, okay.

I love it, I love it. Um, next question. I tell everybody, um, if you were to wake up tomorrow and I tell you that you can't do what you are doing now, but I will pay you the same— like, money's not a problem, I pay the same, whatever— what hobby would you pursue?

Can you pay me more though?

Sure, why not?

Okay. I would travel. I would just travel. I would travel and I would go— I mean, this is my other networking tip. When I travel, I go into my community and I drop in their local channel and I say, hey, I'm going to be in San Diego next week. Anybody want to grab coffee? I would travel around the world and have coffee with—

That's the way to do it. Great. Just vibe out at coffee shops.

Yeah, exactly.

Outside of traveling and obviously coffee, what are some other hobbies you have? Just fun things you like to do outside of work.

Uh, ooh, hmm, you're talking to a startup grind workaholic. Um, so, um, I do like to read and— oh, oh, well, I guess this is not really a hobby, but I love trash TV.

Like, I think it's a hobby.

Yeah, yeah, all the Real Housewives.

What's your go-to trash TV?

Real Housewives of everything. I will watch all of that. My husband makes so much fun of me.

My wife loves that too.

Oh yeah, yeah. So that's, that's, that's my, um, that's my hobby, which is unfortunate that— but that is true.

I love it, I love it. Uh, well, obviously want you to— I always ask people, um, to give a shout to somebody in the community that who's doing some really cool stuff. So if you want to give, uh, any— anybody specific shout in, in Women Wednesday.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, let me give a shout. Well, I'm gonna give a shout to my co-founder Melissa Moody.

Okay.

Um, she was a CMO and co-founder of a company called Gated She is a product leader but also marketing leader. So she probably loves a little bit more of this technical stuff than I do. And Yelena, and I will not say her last name, Georgievich. I will put it in some comment somewhere.

Okay.

But she's looking for her next role. She's an amazing podcast producer, marketing. She's an amazing writer. And she works with us as a contractor, but she's looking for her next role. So I'd love to get her in touch with someone who can really appreciate her talents the way we do.

I love it. That's awesome. Um, and then, uh, next question: any books— or I know we just talked about TV shows— but is there any movies, books, anything you've read lately that you just really enjoyed?

Uh, movies or books? Uh, oh yeah, well, this is easy. If you looked at my LinkedIn post from yesterday, it was all about Wicked. It was about defying gravity and just take that.

Yeah.

So it really kind of ties into this conversation. So favorite movie right now is Wicked. I'm listening to the soundtrack. It gets me hyped about just like, you know, I'm just gonna go do my shit and, and people, you know, just need to watch out.

I love it. That's awesome. Last question as we wrap up. And again, thank you all so much for tuning in this morning. Um, we'll be back tomorrow with my guy Nick Taylor, um, at 9:30 AM Central, um, to talk about how to navigate really big conferences for network working. So hopefully see y'all there tomorrow because I'm going to Amsterdam in 2 weeks to speak and it's a 7,500-person conference and I'm terrified. Last question. The show is called Guidance Counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college. But now as adults, we don't really have anybody to turn to and just ask for general career advice. If you could go back in time and tell young Leslie something about career stuff, what would it be? Biggest piece of advice.

Forget about money and status. Ah, do something that you're passionate about and the money and status will come if that's important to you. But like, I think status as I was younger was very important to me. Like, I want to be a doctor or a vet or something because that was important, and I never did do any of that stuff. Um, so yeah, do something you're passionate about and then figure out what your superpower is. Try to— then you can articulate it very easily.

So good, so good. Yeah, and it's like Jason just said, Jason's hosting a DevOps panel later today. It's gonna be a great conversation. So go check out our Torque community page on what time that is. I don't know exactly what time that is, but anyways, thank y'all again. Leslie, thank you. Stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. But y'all have a great Tuesday. If this resonated, if this episode resonated with you, would love for you to share this obviously on your LinkedIn. Obviously connect with Leslie and support Wednesday Women. And y'all have a good one. We'll see y'all tomorrow morning, 9:30 AM Central.

Thank you, everyone.