Why Community Matters w/Staff Comm Mgr at Vercel, Pauline Narvas

Morning, everybody. When I say everybody, I mean nobody. We'll take a minute to kind of get rolling. Um, all right, so Pauline, I gotta ask you a question though. So, so I, I, I still, um, we just finished Thanksgiving, obviously coming up on Christmas. Um, is there a tradition that you love? Is there a tradition that has to happen For it to feel like Christmas for you?

Oh, that's a really good question. For me, I just think as what needs to happen is someone needs to have Christmas tree. Like, yeah, whether that's my friend or in at home or whatever, I just need that to signify that, okay, now it's the end of the year, we're coming up to, to, to the end. And actually these days I noticed that every time I get to that point, I'm like, oh no, it's the end of the year. Have I done everything I wanted to? And then the anxiety and chaos starts to kick in before the end of the year. But, um, it's starting to feel very Christmassy over here.

Good. Does a Christmas tree go up like Thanksgiving morning, or like, like, when does a Christmas tree go up?

So if you asked me and I was back in the Philippines, which is where I'm from, um, the Christmas tree Get like is up at like September, October because it's like Christmas. I'm yeah, I'm that's fully serious because at Christmas, sorry, like Christmas is such a big thing in the Philippines and so yes, yes, that's amazing.

We need to adopt that in the States.

Yes, they start celebrating it very, very early. Like I'm gonna tell my wife early. I've never seen it anywhere else in the world. That's in God. Uh, and then yeah, so that's what happens. But for me, like now in the UK, it's like usually end of November, December, early December.

Yeah, I love it, I love it. Well, good morning everybody, we got people tuned in this morning. Taya, it's good to see you 2 times, 2 times. Taya, Emmett, it's good to see you. Jeff, Ricardo, JC, Luke from Nap Town. Everyone's a little sleepy working off the trip to Fan. If you had to Also, my hot take here, I tweeted this and posted it on Bluesky, is that turkey's actually good. You just don't know how to cook it properly. And so that is my hot take for this Monday morning. My dad made a great turkey. Shout out to my dad. It was fantastic. Really, really enjoyed it. Chris, it's good to see you this morning. All right, I'm very excited about this. I wanna dive in. I don't wanna do too much rigmarole. Listen, if you're tuning in, it's a podcast we've been doing for 4 and a half years. I wanna help people in the job search. I want to help people in their careers. It's basically like a career side of tech engineering podcasting. So definitely engage, say hey, let me know where you're tuning into. Oh, Nap Town. Oh, that's an actual place. I thought he was referring to tryptophan and naps. No, no, no. He was referring to an actual place. Did not know that. My bad.

Wow. Today I learned.

Yeah. So please say hey, engage. Again, this is a networking platform too. So please connect with every guest. I've had some amazing guests on the show. Pauline, haven't even really chatted with her, but I can already tell she's a badass. Go connect with her. She's awesome. And then again, please engage, say hey, ask some questions. It's gonna be great. So enough of me running my mouth. Pauline, let's give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for having me on your podcast, Taylor. I know we briefly just chatted, but these kinds of podcasts are really aligned to what I love to do in my professional life and also personal life. So this is all really good. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely.

So hi, everyone. I'm Pauline. And I work in community. And community means, like, a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And it was one of the, I guess, careers I had no idea you can go into and build and also, you know, find— have a career where you kind of can help other people. I did not know that was a thing, like directly help people. But yeah, I've been working in tech for a couple of years now. I never really know exactly the number because do you count the first time I wrote a line of code, which was when I was—

Some people would say yes, some people would say no.

Yeah, because I wasn't like in tech then. I was actually 8 years old when I wrote my first line of code. And that was all just from like playing around on my computer and then just creating random stuff.

Nice.

We can go into that. But that's how I first got into tech. I knew it was a thing. And then getting into, like, the sort of startup world and actually working in the industry, I would say around, like, 6, 7 years ago now. But I've had a very interesting career where I started as an engineer. frontend engineer specifically. Then I moved over to DevOps and platform engineering. And then went into DevRel and community for a small startup. And now I'm staying in that kind of space.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I've been kind of around in the, like, tech community and tech industry. And, yeah, I am based out in the UK. And I travel a lot. I know this isn't the traveling podcast, but I could talk about that for hours too.

So I may. So Henri Helvetica on Twitter, I'm Blue Sky, posted that he wants to give a talk on just how to travel to tech conferences, like literally just how to travel better. I said, that's brilliant. I said, that's brilliant. So I don't know, maybe we have a follow-up podcast, Paul.

I have several blog posts about that.

Oh, do you really?

Yes, seriously. Yeah. I've been blogging for a couple of years now and this is actually one of my topics.

Top 3 travel hacks real fast. Go. This is not part of the pod, but top 3 travel hacks. Go.

Um, maintain your same routine that you have at home.

I'm realizing that.

Sleep and food as much as you can. 100%. Um, you have to exercise. Do not skip on exercise.

I don't do that. I don't do that.

Yeah, you have to, to like keep energy levels up. Um, and then also bring a notebook everywhere. Um, I started doing this recently and it's just the best way to capture quick notes and Also, my phone runs out of battery and then I get stressed when I connect with someone and I don't know how to get their details.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Love that.

I love that so much. I've actually, listen, we're not gonna, we can do a productivity podcast session if we need to. I've ditched Apple Notes. I do Apple Notes reminder, I do Apple Reminders if I'm on the go, but I write everything every day that I have to do. And the repetition I've realized over and over rewriting your to-do list every day has allowed me to remember things so much better. That's my little productivity hack. All right, let's talk about community. We're not here to talk about travel and productivity hacks, even though I think that'd be a great podcast. So we may need to do that. Man, where do we start? Why should companies, let's just do high level. Why should companies have a community-first mindset moving forward?

Really great question. I feel like I can yap on about this for hours, but—

Seriously, we're gonna try to cram this into 30 minutes and Yeah, we'll try our best.

So yeah, so for me, obviously it feels like I'm very biased when it comes to this question and why I think companies should push for community-first sort of mindset. But I have seen this happen in previous companies I've been at, current company I'm in, and also in not even a company, but an organization and movement. I've seen the impact of community in all of these different areas. And from a company perspective, I think having this community-first mindset helps these companies build this strong, loyal community base. And in the case right now, one thing I'm— the thing I'm mostly building right now at Vercel is creating a customer community. And as part of that, we build— as we build this community, we build this platform where all of our customers can like connect with each other, learn from each other, collaborate. And then as a result of that, this fosters like a sense of like, I belong here because I am connecting every day with other customers who face similar issues, who's like, who's seen, who may be more knowledgeable than me, and I'm learning from them. And it just creates this like another sense of belonging and builds this trust because people come in and they're like, oh, thank you for helping me with my question. Or this is a cool project. Thank you for sharing how you built it. And then it really goes into this mindset of turning these customers into then advocates because that naturally happens as you keep showing up in these spaces and being like, hey, I can help you. Or hey, this is what I built. And this just like, for me, I've seen it lead to like brand awareness, like very positive brand awareness, like organic growth through like word of mouth. And also once you have these like set advocates, I have seen this like in my old job, for example, where they then become so into your community, so into your company and its culture, they go out and advocate for you to the point where they are willing to be like, hey, let me host this meetup for you. Just give me a budget or help me with something. I just want to get other people excited because I really believe in what you're doing. And yeah, I've seen that happen so many times, and especially in a smaller company, it does wonders. Really helps with the brand. So yeah, that's high level.

Yeah, high level. I won't necessarily— I mean, we could get into a little bit more weeds, so I definitely want to keep it High level for people watching, but I definitely think we need to— TORC needs to put on a virtual panel for importance of community. And I definitely want you to have that part of that panel for TORC. So we'll definitely get a little bit more in-depth panel on this. But for me, I think you said it right. I think it's turning people in from customers to advocates or customers to superfans or whatever term you want to say. I am curious, like your journey, Like, how did you get into community? I think a lot of people want to get into this. So my hot take, I just came up with this, my hot take is that DevRel now is community.

I can talk about, I totally, totally agree. Totally.

Okay. Yes. Explain. I have thoughts, but yeah, it's your podcast.

I have so many thoughts as well. So in my previous company, I will always reference my previous company 'cause it's the one I've spent the most time doing this type of job. But in that role, I was basically building this community from the ground up. It was a community mostly hanging out on Discord, Discord community, all great. And as part of community management, it was more about managing that space, making it friendly, creating the culture, et cetera, et cetera, getting people to turn into those superfans into that space. But then on top of that, I was also doing like developer relations type thing, which is the traditional educational piece, like going on YouTube and giving these talks, giving livestreams about, like, that product. And then getting our community to then be like, oh, that's cool. Pauline, like, from that company did this, and now I know how to do this. And for me, both of them just work so well hand in hand because the educational part, the technical education part, which is a huge part of, like, DevRel, that needs to flow into the community. It needs to, like, kind of layer on top, if that makes sense. So for me, community and DevRel makes the most sense because you need to have that synergy to then the content that you've created, to then pass it on to your community for them to really absorb it and be like, yeah, I get you. I understand exactly what you're saying. I get the mission. They get excited and it just becomes this place for user-generated content or that community. So yeah, that's my take on it.

Yeah, it is interesting because I hear a lot of A lot of posts I see on Bluesky and X around, you know, DevRel's going away. While I think it's— while the term is going away, I think it's now shifting to community-centric roles. You know, I saw this early on. I've seen a few. It was like 6 months ago when I was at my last job, and I started to see some newsletters and some articles and blog posts written from founders Going the most important role over the next few years is going to basically be a head of growth role. And really, if you read head of growth, it's community and growth are kind of the same thing. Like, if you really kind of look at, yes, I'm sure you can poke holes, whatever. It's job descriptions that vary. But at the end of the day, growth is community. And I think what's happening is that role is shifting right now. Now, and so I love that you agree with that as well because that makes me feel not crazy. I want to pull back out of this a little bit real fast. How did you? And again, I see the comments. It's we have a ton of people tuning in this this this morning as well. It's wonderful to see y'all. Somebody, Nishant comes in. I mostly I mostly agree. Yeah, yeah, we're not speaking absolutes here. DevRel is all about community. What would you say? But would you say it's just marketing? Many early stage startups see DevRel as a way to boost numbers, to drive growth, and all they expect from it is another huge question. You wanna tackle this real quick and then we can talk about how you got into community?

Yeah, this is a really interesting point because for me, community is one of those really, it's one of the reasons I love this role. It kind of touches on everything. If you look at the like traditional marketing funnel, like top of funnel, bottom funnel, middle funnel kind of content and things that happen in there. Community kind of fits in every single one if you think about it.

Really does.

So it's kind of like, yeah, is it just marketing? But I don't know. For me, I don't have a marketing background. I don't know what the—

Neither do I.

Yeah. So I'm kind of, for me, I don't think I wouldn't say it's just marketing. And in the roles I've done so far, I've never really put 2 and 2 together. And I actually have a blog post about this. I can share it afterwards. But one of the things I learned was that community is just one of those— it shouldn't actually sit under marketing. And I feel very strongly about that.

You said community shouldn't have to sit with marketing.

It should not.

No. Where should it sit?

So it could—

Wait, I'm gonna see. Go ahead. I have thoughts, but go ahead. I wanna see if you have—

I have 2 places it could live. The one that makes most sense to me right now is in customer success.

Interesting.

And that kind of function.

Didn't expect that. Yeah.

Or engineering. But it really depends on the type of organization again and how they organize themselves.

My hot take is its own new department.

Oh, I like that too.

It's because that's what we're doing at Torque, and I really truly believe that it is its own department. Here's the reason for that, is community in my, in my neck of the woods touches platform growth. So top of the funnel, getting people onto the platform. It engages middle of the funnel, what activities are we doing within the platform, and then what type of content are we putting out to engage the community? I don't know about you, but that's a lot of stuff. And what I do is I think— and, but, and we interact with every single department. I'm on calls with the product team. I have a weekly standup with the product guy. I'm like, hey, here's what— Ken Collins, right? Shout out Ken Collins. He's amazing, head of product. Like, we like talk about all this stuff, right? I'm on calls with engineering. I'm on calls with other divisions, I mean, all over the place. And so for me, I truly, truly think, in my opinion, I think we're gonna continue to see it. I think community is going to be its own department. And even hotter take, I think community is now going to be marketing.

Oh, that is a hot take.

Very hot take. I'm gonna— this is a safe space this morning. No judgment or all judgment. I don't really care. But in my opinion, I think we're not gonna have marketing departments anymore. We're gonna start having community departments and marketing's gonna start falling under community. Now there's gonna be a lot of people, especially the marketing folks, gonna disagree with me. I don't care. It's my show, not yours. So here we go.

That's really, really interesting actually. I'd be interested to see how, if that kind of like develops in the— Yeah.

I mean, they probably won't. I'm wrong a lot. You can ask my wife, but that's just what I think. Hanu comes in. Yeah, I believe that community should be a brand new department. Yeah. Again, like even if you don't agree, like I totally get it. I totally get it. So Pauline, how did you get into community? Right. I think, I think again, a lot of people have asked me, they're like, how do I do? I would love to do this, yada, yada, yada. What do you look for maybe when you bring on people, when you interview people, and how did you get into it?

Amazing question. Again, I'll try and make it really concise, but essentially I actually have a degree. I actually have a degree in biomedical sciences.

Okay.

And I was set to go into like the medical kind of field, that path. But I knew it wasn't something that really aligned to what I wanted to do. But I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I'd been coding and learning how to code, like I said earlier, at the age of 8. And that was mostly from, like, hobby projects.

Sure.

And actually, my blog now, pauline.com, is— it was actually one of my first projects that I still have years later. And it's basically my posts from over the years of random thoughts about random topics, but mostly these days community building. And, yeah, as part of, like, just building my technical, like, knowledge, I stumbled upon a community course that was called Code First Girls. And Code First Girls really changed my life. And I will talk about that for the rest of my life probably. But it's a course that runs in the UK, nonprofit organization that helps bring women into tech by teaching them like different tech skills and things. And I discovered this group, I became a student myself, I had known most of the basics of coding because I was building my own thing on the side. But it was really nice to have a teacher tell you exactly what to do. So I did that. And once I finished the 6 week's course, I volunteered to be an instructor. And so for the next 4 years of my degree, for like 12 hours a week, I would dedicate to teaching women at the university how to code. And it mostly, it was like front basics of frontend development, and then also like an advanced Python course. I did that. And it was the thing that really like lit me up. And I just loved helping other people and seeing people's like lightbulb moments. So as I was doing that, I was also getting involved in different, like, tech communities and meetups in my area in Sheffield. And I gave a lot of talks about this group, about what we're doing, and how it's really important for us to find connections with— so these— I have a talented pool of women in tech right here. And I want to connect them to people in industry looking for their next software engineer. And so for the next, like, 4 years, on top of my degree, that's what I did. I, like, wanted to connect these folks. together. And I did successfully. It was really fun. It was like we really built this organic community based on a course. And so when I graduated, I decided I'm going to go into tech. And luckily, I ended up working at a big telecommunications company in the UK called BT. And at BT, I had the opportunity to be a software engineer. I did front, back, and then also, like I said, DevOps and platform engineering. And it really gave me this sense of like, wow, I know exactly I know the tech stuff now. I have a good idea of how this all works. But then as I was doing that, I still did courses for Code First Girls, teaching it now in a new city in the UK called Leeds. I was also going to London, to the London HQ to give a few talks and give some ad hoc courses to some kids in London. It honestly was my purpose for years. I really lit up knowing that every single day, I was enabling someone to learn how to code to then be able to change, like, the course of their future.

Right.

And so I kept building these things, kept going to these courses, and then eventually the pandemic hit. And that was, you know, slowed everyone down. And I ended up building lots of online communities specific to, like, DevOps because at that time I was a DevOps engineer and there wasn't a lot of people who looked like me or, like, who who, like, didn't even know that DevOps was a thing. And it's also, like, at that time, it was really picking up pace, especially with, like, the cloud computing world with AWS certifications and cloud native and things like that. And I really wanted to tell people about this space. So I created an online community during the pandemic. And we used to do, like, little virtual events together, really connect every day to talk about different things we were doing in our day-to-day jobs. And then, yeah, at the end of that, I was like, you know what? find more joy doing this, whatever this is, because I didn't know there was a name for it, than coding. Even though coding and then spinning up servers on AWS was so fun, I still find it useful now.

Yeah.

I find more purpose connecting people. So then I went to Twitter where all good things happen. And I tweeted, hey, everyone, what is this role that I'm describing? And I basically described what it is. I can probably find the tweet again.

Yeah.

went viral for my standards.

Sure.

And people connected with me and they were like, oh, hey, Pauline, do you want to jump on a coffee chat and I will tell you about my job? And a lot of these people were like developer relations folks, community folks. And I connected with them over the pandemic. And I was like, hey, I am— let's talk. Let's like connect. And when they told me about their role, I was like, this is it. This is what I want to do. And luckily from that tweet, It ended up being, like, my ex-colleague Mike found it. And he was like, hey, we're actually hiring at my old company. And he was like, do you want to chat? And, yeah, then literally later that week, I resigned from my platform engineer role. And I moved to a very small team, 20-team startup, very risky, doing a job that I think— like, I thought that I could be good at. And I was like, you know what? Life is about taking risks.

I'm gonna go for it.

And then I ended up here now. And it's been like, I think like almost over 3 years since that tweet happened and made its rounds.

Amazing.

And it really just changed, changed my life. And that's why I'm here now in community.

That's awesome, man. You're gonna have to schedule part 2. We're gonna have to schedule part 2 cuz we're kind of like already coming to an end and like, oh, sorry.

Yes.

No, no, we're just sorry. Well, you already scratched this, sir. We'll, we'll do part 2. What is your biggest piece of advice for people who, like, tactical piece of advice? Because I feel like to get a job in community, you have to do it before you do it.

100%. Can someone take that cut and just put it on a reel or something forever for me to share?

Don't worry, I will get my social media team to do that. It's like the only role. I think it's because So my buddy Brandon Arvey, he, he did a lot of my content for a long time, and he said it best. He goes, content— community and content is kind of like giving somebody a ball and say, go play. And you're like, what sport? And you're like, I don't know, just figure it out. Like, you're basically having to create a sport, a game that has no rules. Because what you're probably doing, community— and I want to have a call with you just one-on-one to pick your brain on what you're doing at Vercel because I want to adopt it at Torq. But, like, we're all doing community, but we're all doing it differently, which is the crazy thing.

Yes, yes. It is really interesting. I mean, like, when I was moving from, like, my old company to Vercel, I tried to see what— like, I knew the things that stuck at my old company. But then the scale was really— well, it was tiny. And then now I have this bigger community and like bigger brand and things like that. It's like a lot more to think about. And some things that kind of worked for a tiny team may not work very well here. And right now that's what I'm trying to figure out and understand like what sticks. But yeah, like to answer your question around like my advice for this, for someone getting into community, exactly what you said. You have to kind of do it before you get your first gig. And if you— sorry, I'm promoting so many links, but if you want to have a look at paulinenarvas.com, that's my portfolio website. I need to clean it up, to be honest. But in that—

Is it Pauline again? 2 P-A-W-L-E-N?

Oh no, just like my actual name, like, Okay. holynavas.com. Yeah, um, that showcases all of my work over the last couple of years, and I, I wish— I think I could find snapshots of, um, what it used to look like, but I have had this domain for almost 10 years, and I have, I have added to it, I have changed it so many times, and every single time I added something, like I did a talk or I did a podcast or I I talked— I wrote a new blog post about community or something technical, I would put it on here and then I would share it everywhere. I was like my biggest advocate. I was like my own social media team.

That's true.

I was the person that was like, look, look what I did and look what is possible in communities that I helped build. And as you— the more you put yourself out there and create this like personal brand— I really don't like that word. I try— I kind of cringe every time I say it, but Honestly, having this personal brand has really helped to 10x my career. And so whenever someone new asks me, how can I get into a role like yours? How can people start approaching me to help lead their community? I'm like, you need to put yourself out there. You need to be the one in people's DMs, in their LinkedIn comments, on Twitter or Bluesky or whatever. You need to be out there talking and advocating for yourself the same way you would advocate for a community. Because unfortunately, no one else is going to do that for you. You really need to take the driver's seat and just go out there and do it. And there was many times where I read my old posts, I'm like, oh my God, that was so cringy. Why did I post that? Or why did I share that specifically? And it's not a perfectly worded blog post, but I'm so glad I did it consistently over the last couple of years because it definitely helped really pave my journey into community. So that would be my number one tactical advice. You don't need to have a website. You can just use LinkedIn.

You can use like— I've never had a website. I've never had one.

There you go. There you go. You really don't need it. But for me, it's always like a good space to have because it's like, oh, this is mine.

Yeah. Golly, so many thoughts. Again, I want to give a shout out to Jason Torres. I hired him. He threw a virtual conference to raise money for a friend's wife who has cancer, and he raised $10,000, over $10,000. And ran a 2-day conference. I don't know about you, but I haven't done that. So it was Jason's first job in tech, and I hired him because he did the work before I knew that he got it right. Uh, a girl I just hired, Hema, down in Mexico, she is a part of all the conferences and all the Discords and all the meetups. Like, literally, I got a Slack from her just now as I'm live. She goes, hey, she literally started today. She's going to be at a conference with us on Saturday in Mexico. She's like, hey, how can I help? Here's what I wanna do. I said, go run with it. Like, again, you have to know, you gotta do the job before you do it. Another thought too. What was it? You were talking about community and, oh, so saw a very interesting TikTok post and we'll kind of wrap up here and I'll ask Pauline some rapid-fire questions that I have. But I saw a TikTok post. It was a fascinating post about how there's a new wave coming. So the first wave was the internet. The second wave was social media apps. The third wave is content creators. And it's how information is being basically being received from your customers, right? Or the community or individuals. If you think about it, the internet was the very first way we got information.

Mm-hmm.

Social media, Instagram, all that stuff, Twitter, whatever, was the second wave on how to get information. People are getting their information from creators. And my thing, I think creating your own brand, if you want to do what we're doing, if you wanna do what Pauline and I do, you have to do that. You have. I think community is the influencer world of tech. If you don't wanna do it, you don't have to do it. Don't worry about it. If you don't wanna do it, don't do it. But I think this community trend is mirroring that article I read. Let's be honest, it wasn't an article. I don't read it. It was a TikTok post and it just, that's where it's going, right? It's where it's going. So thoughts on that, Pauline?

Totally, totally agree. And at the end of the day, like, I will just say this, like, customers, community users, they are more likely to kind of buy and also advocate for and use tools, especially in the dev tool world, from people that they trust. It doesn't really— like, the brand is also very important. The brand that you work for, the brand that you're part of, super important. But like, honestly, at the end of the day, we're all human and we just want to connect with other humans. And if a human that we like, who is very like personable, who's out there, who is like helpful, they are more likely to be like, oh yeah, this person is part of this thing. I trust that. So I'm going to take part in it.

Exactly. That's it.

Mic drop.

That was great. Yeah, we gotta do a part 2. All right, rapid-fire questions here. First question is, if I told you that you woke up tomorrow morning, you couldn't do anything in tech, you couldn't do your job now, you had to get out of tech, but I'd pay you the same amount or more, money would not be a problem, what would you do?

Wow, that's actually— I'm upset now. I love tech.

I like to go, wait a minute.

I was like, wait a second. I think actually Um, I would be, uh, like a fitness instructor or something.

I love it.

Yeah, like a boxing instructor maybe, because I do boxing already and I would love to teach that. Um, yeah.

I love that. I love that. Uh, second question. Um, I— and it kind of mirrors this, the question I just asked. What do you like to do outside of work just in general?

Oh, very good question. Um, so outside of work, I love blogging. Exercising. Like I said, I love boxing. I do yoga, I do Pilates, I do like weightlifting. At one point I wanted to do powerlifting competition, but then COVID happened. But anyways, love all the fitness stuff and getting involved in those types of like sports communities. I also just love to travel, and I know that sounds really cliché, but I love just collecting flags. That's it.

I love it. I love that. Third thing, what's going on at Vercel that people need to know about?

Well, if you want to get involved in the Vercel community, we had done a soft launch on a community platform that we're still building from the ground up. It's over at vercel.community. And if you have any questions at all about anything related to the Vercel ecosystem, drop by there and then we're more than happy to help from the community team perspective. We're also going to start launching soon. Some, like, live sessions and live shows where you can connect with the people behind Vercel as well as our community members and our customers, uh, to learn more about how folks are, like, utilizing Vercel, v0, Next.js, and all that good stuff. So yeah, please check it out.

Also, Torque's doing the same thing. We have Jason with his Tech Commute, we have me with Guidance Counselor 2.0, and Hima is going to have something as well down in Mexico.

So love it.

There you go. Um, last question and we'll wrap up here. Again, thank you so much, Pauline, for coming on. We'll definitely do a part 2. Um, stay on so I can say bye to you backstage, by the way. But, um, so 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 or anything to really turn to and just ask general advice from. So what would be the biggest piece of career advice you would have told young Pauline?

Oh, the thing is, all the things that I said earlier about like building a personal brand, taking the, uh, you know, taking the driver's seat and just like rolling with it, it's stuff I would say and I did anyways. But I would also just say like there were many moments in my career where I was scared of being me and I was scared of being like authentic.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, especially in a very male-dominated like industry, there were times where I was like, okay, you can't be too much today. Like everyone else is just like, hmm, you just can't be like over the top. But I realized the more I kind of broke past that, like, and I became a bit more authentic, the more these types of opportunities opened its doors to me. So now I literally would say to young me, don't like be ashamed of who you are, keep showing up and stop trying to pretend. to be someone you're not because you are perfectly fine the way you are and show up in these spaces. People will welcome you and you just have to keep going and leading, leading with that. I love that.

That's awesome. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out on Guidance Counselor 2.0 this morning. This is the only one for this week. Tomorrow I got something new tomorrow morning, so I can't go live. And then I leave for Commit Your Code conference in Dallas. I'm giving a 2-hour workshop on the job search. On Thursday. So I'm leaving Wednesday to go be a part of Danny Thompson's conference is what everyone's calling it, but it's the Commit Your Code conference. And then back down in Guadalajara in Mexico on Friday. So, or yeah, Friday, Saturday. So really excited. A lot of travel later this week. So the vlog will be back. Content will be flowing. So again, everybody go connect with Pauline. She's a gem. I'm not just saying that because I'm live with her. I'm saying it because I've been following her for a bit. Uh, but y'all have a great one and we'll see y'all next week with lives. Otherwise, I'll see y'all on the social medias.

Peace. Thanks, everyone.