Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Tutti Taygerly

Curt Anderson  00:00

Hey hey Damon dude Happy Monday, my friend. How are you, buddy?

Damon Pistulka  00:08

Awesome Curt

Curt Anderson  00:09

having a great day bad boy. So killer weekend, man. I just I cannot pretend I have no poker face today. Dude. I’m a little star struck. We have an absolute powerhouse with us today we have my dear friend, Tutti Taygerly. Happy Monday. How

Tutti Taygerly  00:26

are you? It is so good to be here with you curtain Damon. I’m excited. It’s a rainy Monday in San Francisco but got a lot of energy hanging out with you both.

Curt Anderson  00:37

So hi, Damon just doing Are you sitting down for this one? Like you need a seat belt for today because she is just a dynamo. So I’ve had the honor privilege I met today a couple weeks ago, we spent a whole weekend together. So let’s take a deep dive. So guys, today we’re talking with 2d from San Francisco to time TEDx speaker, book author. We’re going to dig deep into her book today. She writes for Forbes, she writes for Harvard Business Review, she writes for business insiders who writes for Fast Company. She’s Daymond. She’s worked for Facebook, Oracle, some of the top companies in Silicon Valley. And so we have a lot to cover today. Today before we get there. I have a question for you. Are you ready for this?

Tutti Taygerly  01:21

I don’t know. I don’t know. But yeah, let’s go.

Curt Anderson  01:24

That’s okay. Do you are just i The respect and admiration I have for you just off the charts. I just I love what you’ve done. Love what you’re doing love what you’re going to do in the future. My question to you is a little girl growing up now. Daymond she’s lived in? She grew up I believe if I 2d Correct me three continents seven different countries. As a little girl growing up. Who was your hero? Who was your heroes? A little girl growing up.

Tutti Taygerly  01:51

Who? That’s a good one. I have to say as a little girl I looked up to my big sister. She was nine years older. She so she she was this this bigger in my life until she went away to college. She was just the person who I thought I want it to be she did well in school. She was really popular. She had all these activities. And she seemed to be this kind, compassionate, wonderful person, this figure and being in my life that made everything better.

02:25

That is what a great answer.

Damon Pistulka  02:28

We haven’t.

02:30

Tutti  What’s what’s big sister’s name?

Tutti Taygerly  02:33

Her name is Neeraja.

Curt Anderson  02:34

No Raja Well, hey, how about Big shout outs on Racha for being a role model and a leader in your life. You know, award winning leadership coach, so obviously, your sister had a big plane as part. Guys, if you’re out there, drop us a note. Let us know where you’re coming from Happy Monday to you. You absolutely want to connect with today on LinkedIn, you want to check out her recent TED Talk. It is phenomenal. She has a great book. I see we’ve got Bob here today. Hey, Bob says San Francisco’s a great town. Basic. I love this under the I know, you know Bob the challenges we bring these folks, you know Daymond I don’t know about you on the show. And and like you’re like, man, I’ve got some catching up here to do. You know, it’s like you’ve lived like three lifetimes of what you’ve accomplished at such a young age. So let’s go here. I know you’re a valedictorian from high school. And you go to Stanford Daymond. I didn’t. I did not only not go to Stanford. I didn’t apply to Stanford today. You went to Stanford, just talk a little bit about you know, young girl growing up your big sisters a hero. You go to Stanford, where’s your career gonna go? Like, what are your aspirations? What’s going through this wonderful mindset of yours during college?

Tutti Taygerly  03:38

Well, if I back up for a minute, because there’s a lot that’s happening here, especially ceiling Bob’s comment about what an overachiever loves. My sister went to Stanford as well. And here’s the thing that’s in common with both of us. We both had a tiger mom. She was she was an immigrant as well. My my grandparents on both sides immigrated to Thailand from southern China. And you know, she she had a lot of drive she was that Asian tiger mom. And for better or for worse, yeah, there’s a there’s a lot of things you can be addicted to in life, a lot of patterns and behaviors that you can create in life. Some are more universally acceptable than others. For better or for worse, she instilled this fierce drive ambition Go Go Go nature into both myself and to my sister. So I think a lot of my early life and an early career what what am I who am I kidding, mid career like a lot of my career has been driven by this little girl who was expected to go succeed, achieve, achieve, achieve and just keep going and climbing all those educational apps. accolades get into these companies keep climbing the career ladder. And I see that in a lot of the people that I work with a lot of people in corporate a lot of people in tech it’s you just go with that single minded pursuit. But um that’s the beauty. That’s the beautiful, glowing shiny side to it. But you know, as you can imagine, not all fun and games.

Curt Anderson  05:23

Yeah, not all fun and games. Well, hey, and what’s mom’s name?

Tutti Taygerly  05:26

My mom’s name is Anita. Anita. So

Curt Anderson  05:29

alright, so Tiger Mom apps love it. Now, do you credit that would you say ambition discipline, like just take us a little deeper there again, you know, if you want to share, you know, grew up on seven different seven different countries, three different continents. I mean, you’ve looked at the life that you’ve lived is just crazy. Just off the charts. Getting my respect, admiration for you is just, you know, can’t even go there. Guys, if you’re just joining us, we’re here with 2d Tegrity. Again, drop us a note, let us know that you’re here. You absolutely want to connect with today. Check out her TED talks, check out her book, check out her on LinkedIn. But today he talked about your upbringing, mom, discipline, ambition. What was that?

Tutti Taygerly  06:05

Yeah. So we moved to a different country every three years because my father worked for Thai Airways. He was excuse business parlance. He was their growth guy, if you will, he was the guy who was responsible for saying, all right, if the company is going to test out a new route, say to Seattle, where we live for a year growing up, is there enough there there for the Thai public, for the consumers to to make this a viable route for Thai Airways. So he would be the person who would go into Seattle, we live by SeaTac Airport in Renton, Washington, Damon in my ninth grade year. And he would be responsible for setting up the ground operations, get it getting everything going, getting where logistics, the hotels, like working with the airport, staff, and he would do this at many different new cities around the world. So I grew up just learning that all right, you’re gonna go to a new school, you’re gonna go jump in and fit in. And most of the time, it actually worked out really great because there’s an international school system and an educational system that expects kids to come and go or change and transition is a good thing. Not quite so in a public ninth grade. Yes, school in Seattle has probably been the worst years of my life, because it’s very different cultural clash. But for the most part, I grew up with this almost chameleon like nature to wander between different worlds and then go in. But also my mom’s drive was, Well, you better do well in school, which happens with a lot of Asian parents and a lot of Asian immigrant parents. Because the belief is that education, and drive and hard work and continuing to do all that is the path to a better life for their children. So I think that’s why many, many Asian parents do that. And to the level of mean, when I tell these stories, some of this is ridiculous. But yet, there are knowing looks from other Asians or other people who have grown up with parents like this. This happens across all races and ethnicities, whether it’s an immigrant thing, whether it’s a Jewish thing, whether it’s whatever it is, but you know, there would be a Why did you come home with an A minus? Why is there a minus behind it? Get rid of it, make sure it’s an A or an A plus would be even better? The she’ll settle for an A, but an A plus would be even better? Yeah. And yeah, that’s the drive that’s instilled in me and the, I guess, the work ethic as well keep doing this. Yeah, keep trying. And it can get very, very negative to into, you know, burnout over achievement, excessive driving scenarios where it’s just becomes a grind, grind, grind, grind, all the things.

Curt Anderson  08:47

I actually love that again, we’ve gotten to say hi to a couple folks. It’s awesome. Kayla from Austin, and Hey, Karen jobs is great note here, product of a tiger mom wouldn’t be here without a rest in peace. Karen, God bless mom sending positive vibes to mom. And again, thank you guys for dropping comments here. Our mom’s related so I can to to just so much unpack right there. You know, Damon, I don’t know, like, I 2d Would my 2.3 when mom and dad have accepted my 2.3 Great. I’m just kidding. So

Tutti Taygerly  09:14

you know what, I’ve talked to different people and they’re like, man, would my life and career be different? If I had a tiger mom, there have been some, like, whipped into shape there. But yeah, I also I value it. I appreciate it. I deeply understand the place where she was coming from. This was the journey that she put me on and yeah, there’s the balance for every strength. There’s a dark side and the Reckoning and the dealing with it. And it’s all of those together.

Curt Anderson  09:47

Absolutely love it. Yeah. David, do you have something to add there?

Damon Pistulka  09:50

No, I just it’s it’s great, like you said, because I’m the product of those kinds of parents and but on the other on the dark side of it, it takes a while to, to understand that and really work through that and get it get get beyond it sometimes. Yeah, cuz you never enough, you’re never good enough, you know, and that that really can that really can hurt you over time. But it but it is it’s it’s just like you go into Stanford, it probably was, you’re going to Stanford, it wasn’t if I get if I go, it was like you’re going to Stanford. And it wasn’t, if there was no F in this, it was just you’re going to do the work you’re gonna get there.

10:33

What do you think about that today? Was that is that that spot on? Or what

Tutti Taygerly  10:38

would it mean? It gave me a sense of confidence in my own ability, and a sense of knowing, and I’m gonna say privilege, very, very privileged position that I had parents who were educated, who were able to give me so who were able to push me in this way, my mom knew what this was a she had, you know, she had gone to Wellesley, she had gotten herself from her school in Hong Kong, when her dad who in that age maybe did not want to spend the money and resources on his daughter, she got herself to Wellesley by getting by going to the US Consulate and saying, hey, I want to go to school in the US, I need to get funds to get there, and arranging an early version of a Fulbright bright scholarship for herself to get there for as an overseas, Hong Kong Chinese person. So she had some of that in her DNA and her jeans and like that, for severance to pass on to me. But I think right now, I don’t know if this is our age. I don’t know if this is me living in California, where yes, if you don’t know anything else, sure, there is a commonly accepted path where yes, you can get recognition, you can get the checkmarks, you can go to Stanford, and that would always be there. Of course, I tell my kids something different, right? The landscape of getting into college is completely different. Now, everyone’s learned that you can have this 4.0 GPA, and that’s still not going to be good enough, which can be heartbreaking. But let’s just say I grew up in a different time where college acceptances levels were completely different. But if you can go and drive and get all of this, then sure. But I think a large part of what I talk about now is what is sustainable success. Right? These are all the external markers, those gold stars that you know, as a little girl, I love getting those little gold stars of achievement. But um, as Damon was starting to talk about it starts to become empty hollow. Not enough. Yeah, I coach many, many successful billionaire startup founders, they’ve exited their third startup. And they’re like, Okay, what’s the next one? What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing that I’m gonna chase and don’t get me wrong? This is a very elite, fortunate privileged position to be in. But they’re equally as unhappy as some, let’s say Russian or Ukrainian refugees who I can also coach and mentor. It’s not necessarily about these external trappings of success.

Damon Pistulka  13:17

Yes.

Curt Anderson  13:20

Damon, I told you this was going to be good. So I I know I’m going all over today. I just have so much that I want to pull out here. So we’re going to be talking about sustainable success your high level award winning leadership coach, your coaching companies from Fang you know, the Facebook’s Amazon’s a top of the top Fortune 500 companies, as you said all the way down, you know, not down but with startups. And so you’re just really a powerhouse. You focus a lot of women entrepreneurs, women of color, you have a great TED talk that you just did. We’re gonna drop that into the chat box. I dropped it on I know what’s on YouTube Damon, you’re gonna get it on LinkedIn for us. Yeah. So before we get into I so I want to cover a little bit you know, Dad, you know, just going all over the world opening up these new routes and just you know, almost like foreshadowing what you do because like you help people pave the way for like new routes I like I don’t know if you’ve seen the symmetry with that. And your dad, I just think that’s just so dynamic and what you’re I just love what you’re describing with your mom, talk. If you could I just end this is just my own well, being college, Stanford, you became like this great designer, web designer. We’re gonna talk about Facebook Live. When you went to college, just like what was going through the mindset? Did you kind of see where your career was gonna go? Like, what did that look like college and then like Oracle and like some of your first jobs coming out.

Tutti Taygerly  14:37

So I think college was somewhat pivotal to me, because in my school, which was a very academically rich school. I was valedictorian, and going into Stanford for the very first time I just walked in with bravado. I’m like, I am really good. And I am going to step in into not normal calculus, but the best calculus class ever, which is 43. Honors. And keep in mind and a school the size of Stanford, there were about 30 people in the Honors calculus class. Yeah. I, when I started attending it, I really realized that I could not hang i And the funny thing is I ended up meeting a classmate of mine, who was in that elite class, probably about four or five years ago, I walked into a meeting at Facebook, and he was there and he was running a major data science division. So you knew that you knew that he had the pedigree, and he was actually doing that, right. I was completely lost in the class. And but I, I’m stubborn, I’m a really stubborn person. So I kept going, I kept going, I went to the professor, I begged, I asked for help. And through all that, I think I eked it out with a C. And I was like, oh, man, I’m really not that good at this compared to, you know, the top, whatever it is point oh, 5% of the world. And I’m like, Yeah, I’m not bad at math, but I’m not really that really good at it. It took me two years of persevering. I had a computer science major and a computer science degree because that’s what you do, right? That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re, maybe you’re supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, that’s the acceptable professions from Asian parents. But I was like, Alright, now, a little rebel, maybe maybe I’m in Silicon Valley, I’m in the birthplace of all this, I’m gonna go into computer science. I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t very good at it. You I would pull all nighters and all nighters and all nighters and I would code and I would code down to the metal of, you know, not just the C++ but like, all the way into like Lisp and all the different like, robotics programming languages, and I knew I could hang. But it was really not as easy to me as some of the other brilliant people around me. And after a while, I wondered why I was pushing so hard. And one of the things that I found when I just paused for a minute and was that if I actually followed my interests, my interest took me to a whole smattering of classes that were an interdisciplinary major, which is what I eventually graduated in called symbolic systems with a focus of human computer interaction, and symbolic systems combined computer science cuz I had already ground my way through those classes, cognitive psychology, linguistics and philosophy of mind. So it was this beautiful meld of like the fuzzy stuff and the techie stuff, which, honestly, is what what I ended up doing in Silicon Valley for 22 years, I was not necessarily a visually trained graphic designer, but I was a problem solver and helping to understand and build these bridges between the sometimes complex world of technology and how humans want to interact and empathize and be with this to make themselves have better tools in the world become better people in the world and be amazing thing is that’s also what I do as a coach now, I don’t necessarily build products, but I help people build themselves and create their place and their future visions in the world right now. And one slightly ironic thing is I was a double English major for a while. I love to write I guess you don’t know this yet either, Kurt but I’ll drop it in the checkbox accolades. I spent six months studying at Oxford University night so I studied English literature from in the tutorial system at modeling college and then also I studied and learn poetry from William Wordsworth, his grandson and when I went back to Stanford, I dropped it I thought that all this English literature and writing it was it was too frivolous there was no space for this in my life I was just gonna go on and take my human computer at interaction my design work my computer science were gonna I was gonna Forge and get my first job at Oracle and just climb up the career ladder and ironically enough is my second or third career I’m, I’m an author. So the writing came back it took what 20 to 25 years but came back

Damon Pistulka  19:36

man this

Curt Anderson  19:41

so the book is made believe in what I love is you know, break patterns to find flow and focus on what matters. Now, Damon, you know, it’s America, guys. Anybody that has a top of the hour appointment I just wanted I want to share a couple things about today real quick. So Damon, you know I love talking about testimonials and things. You ICU dropped undrafted. You’re on LinkedIn. I have it on YouTube. You want to check out today’s TED talk it is a dynamo she has to I dropped in one she has we have her book we have tested no demon. There’s a link to her testimonials. If you can see some of the comments, I’m getting chills if you see if your comments that people say about 2d. So here’s a couple in 2d I’m gonna embarrass you for a minute so plug your yes you are. Rudy is a rare coach that will tell you the hard truth and call you out when I’m playing small 2d deeply impacted my life and leadership. 2d helped me become more confident in myself. This one has been an there’s like dozens there’s like tons. It’s a whole page dedicated to just what how 2d is truly changing lives. 2d If I have this one, right? Someday, when I’m finally famous, I will have 2d tagger li to thank I mean, like, I think I think Karen threw a little drop might drop back here, you have another like, drop right there. So today, you are really bringing it so you know, Oracle, Disney, Facebook Daymond before we went live, you’re talking about Positive Intelligence. Today, talk a little bit about this, your career trajectory, your path that you’ve taken, anything that you want to hit, especially I want to I’d like to dig into Facebook. And then I want to make sure that we have plenty of time I want to dig into like your superpowers and how you help your clients how you’re changing lives.

Tutti Taygerly  21:30

Yep, absolutely. So let’s say I was climbing the career ladder very, very aggressively. My my first job at was at Oracle and I stayed there for five years. And I want to be very, very, very deliberate about this about this choice, because there’s multiple things happening for people who are immigrants who are first generation immigrants, especially to the United States. And there’s a lot of things happening right now with tech layoffs, which is, I very deliberately chose a stable company, as opposed to the number of startups that I got offers from, because I knew that they would give me immigration stability, they would, they would support me for an h1 B visa, and a path towards a green card in the United States. I sound like valley girl, California, I’m very, very aware of this. And this is because I was educated in an international school system where my English is better than my tie. But as a. So if we think about what’s happening now, with tech layoffs, on some level, if you are a US citizen, and I’m talking to an American audience, assuming this year, you’re safe, because you could find another job, you might have a safety net. But if you don’t, if you’re on a visa that was tied to that company, you might have I don’t know, if it’s 30 or 90 days, whatever it is to find another job and shift and, and this is your whole life. This is where you’re living. This is a tenuous family situation you might have established here with your kids, that is a completely different level of safety and security. And I knew that deep down and I coach and support a lot of immigrants first generation this this level, we’re looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Like I mean, this isn’t the base base, we’re not you know, we’re not in a war torn country, but it is some level of stability and security. But with that taken care of working at Oracle check, you know, I knew they were going to sponsor my green card. I could then go up and hit hit those goals. And, you know, figure out what I was going to do with that. And then keep going to the next job in the next job. And in my career. I was very, very fortunate I, I ran design teams, we built many, many digital products starting at Oracle with enterprise level products. So basically Products for Human Resources systems, people, HR people to run their systems for how to create enterprise products, like an early version of zoom for how to do video conferencing, how to run like payroll and expenses. And I learned to design for people for people’s needs, but also to understand what a business needs as well. And moving from that I moved into worked at Disney helps design Disney parks and resorts which was amazing to figure out what the digital experience is of rides that you might have while in park and then unify the experience for people of different parks around the world. Because there’s almost always going to be a park online with California, Florida, Tokyo, your Disney and Paris and just figuring out what that whole ecosystem is. And I spent decades in design firms. So very, very privileged to be working for top brands. and brand strategy firms were all the companies would come to us, the Googles, the Nokia’s, at the time, the LG, the Microsoft, Sony’s coming to us and say, help us envision what the future of X’s the future of mobile computing the future of connected homes, the future of social networks, help us envision what’s what it’s going to be. And my team and I and as would be the creative director, would through design, envision a video, a digital screen and a prototype for what that future might be in 10 plus years, and I believe in that future promise of bringing a vision, a dream to life via prototyping via design you’re creating, you’re helping people live and visualize it. And then I ended up leaving the consulting space because that was just the dream. I started moving into startups, and then into Facebook, because this was the the grit, the execution, the work, the operational efficiency to make this dream, a reality through running and iterating through many, many small experiments, and very amusingly, in this full circle, that’s what I do with people. When I coach them, I help them envision a future dream of what their leadership is going to be what this so filling life where their personal and professional lives are imbalanced, where they gain sustainable success, help them visualize what those dreams and goals are going to be. And then we run a lot of small iterative experiments to get them there. It’s product development for people.

Curt Anderson  26:43

It’s product product, people. All right. All right, we’ve got to be critical. You’re coming. So glad I joined. We’ve got this comment here. truly inspirational. Makayla says, Hey, we’re in Thailand is your family from I spent most of my memorable days in Chiang Mai. If I say that correctly,

Tutti Taygerly  27:03

Chiang Mai and my young son, my family’s from Bangkok. My father unfortunately passed away. Right before the pandemic, but my mother and my my entire extended family is in Bangkok. My sister is the only one here in San Francisco with me.

Curt Anderson  27:20

Awesome. All right. So Tony, this is let’s just let we’re not pulling any more punches. Damon this dude, this ain’t no party, right? Let’s get to this go. This ain’t no fooling around. That’s one of our favorite, favorite famous lines or to the so you know, again, back in those testimonials, people talk about how you brought clarity you help reduce the overwhelm valuable, you know, a valuable presence. You get help people get unstuck. This line I love from your website, number one secret to shifting your mindset. Can you share like what are some folks when you’re digging deep? Say there’s somebody out there listening right now they’re like, man, Tuesday, that’s me. I could love I would love some of your superpowers strength here. I’m looking for a mindset mindset shift. What? How do you take people there? Good. Good.

Tutti Taygerly  28:07

So I primarily work with high achievers, people who have been running, running, running, working hard and just gaining a lot of success in their lives. You know, this kind of, you know, maybe the product of Tiger parents or perhaps a product of their own perseverance just to go go go and run because we chase these milestones, because that’s what the world says success is getting that next title, getting that next promotion, getting that gold star, gold star gold star. So I’m going to set this up as really, this is the type of people that that that I work with, because I do believe people’s contexts are different for where they are. But this is the type of people that I typically work with. And what happens with a lot of these people is they keep running, running, running, striving and then eventually hit a ceiling, some type of ceiling. And we don’t know what the cause of the ceiling may be. Because I typically work with women, people of color and immigrants. And yes, there are systemic biases, unconscious biases in all of our workplaces. We’re human, it’s very human to want to be with other people like us. Whether it’s from same race, same gender, same way we were brought up that’s very human. And a lot of ways that’s how the corporate world was was set up. It was a world that was set up with understandings with older white males. This is how the system works not for better or for worse, it simply was how it is. So people may run up against particular ceilings. And it may be because of systemic bias, unconscious biases. It may be and there’s only so much you can do with that. So then I work with people to be like, Well, how do you want to navigate your way around this because the system is Is there and what can you do. And then other people that I work with have because I work with white men as well, we’ll run up against a high achiever ceiling or limit, where you are your own worst enemy. It’s only when you start to shift mindset, when you start moving from believing that you are the work you do. I call this performance currency, that and that’s what we’re rewarded for in school. You do your work, you get the gold star, you get the A. But and one of the women who I first heard this forum is this dynamo, black financial, visible woman named Carla Harris talks about moving from performance, currency to relationship currency. Because in the early years of our career, it is always work, work, work, do that report, do that Excel spreadsheet, do that design, do that, like beautiful research project. And that’s what we’re, we’re rewarded for in the first years of our career. But sometimes, then we hit a limit. And the limit may be because it’s too hard for women to keep continuing, right? If you start looking at the data, women graduate from college and higher numbers than men enter the workforce at similar numbers and then drop off when they reach the higher positions. We won’t go into lots of queries and rationales are why but there, there’s there’s limits that that people hit. One thing to help break through them, because we’re not solving, we’re not boiling the ocean care, we’re not solving systemic injustice is. But one way then is to shift from simply being valued for the work you do and produce, which has a limit, which has an impact on you, which is based on grinding towards relationship currency, which is the stuff that’s fuzzier, the stuff that’s not actually taught in school, the stuff that you may not know how to do, because you’re worried there’s like a, you know, there’s like an old boys network or old boys club that’s really hard to break into, but it’s creating these professional relationships with your peers around you. It’s with the people who from the power dynamic might be behind you, helping uplift them. And then also being unafraid to have these conversations and build these relationships with people who have power over you. Not from a sense, because some people will say, I don’t want to do that. That’s, you know, bootlicking that’s not me, I don’t want to do that. But all of this is about changing your currency from the performative doo doo doo to relational, creating, building trust relationships with people, because all in all, when people fight, we will fight to the death over this one thing that I won’t let go, you better do that report or run this project this particular way. I know because I’m the expert. And yeah, most often, you aren’t going to be the expert because you’re closest to it. But that doesn’t matter. It’s about the relationships, you build with the people around you to be able to sell your ideas to be able to persuade your ideas, to be able to persuade them that this is the right path to go. So if I give like one tip for a mindset shift, especially at work, for longer term, more sustainable success, it’s really focusing on the relationships and much less some performative nature of what you do. It is because a long rant

Damon Pistulka  33:38

was great, because it’s for anyone you said it, in early part of your career, you’re doing doing doing, but if you want to continue to go, it is the relationships you build that will will by you helping others you will continue to be able to go and yes, it’s going to run into you at the end. But it’s it’s so cool here. And you see this right here. And you say, we got

Curt Anderson  34:04

to do How about these comments here for you? Yeah, we’re getting you know, relationship currency dropped the mic there. And parents says I could kiss you. So this is I think kisses guy. All right. So so again, I want to be mindful of today’s time. You know how I know how busy she is. And so I 2d has a great TED Talk, two great TED talks, once you just gave last month and today, I can’t let you go just yet. We got to keep it going. Keep this party rollin for another minute. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, great book that you want to check out today’s book, you want to check out today’s website as you can, you’re just getting like a little sliver. I just want a powerhouse to the you know, lovingly challenging. These are the comments that you know, you call it like you see it so I just you know, and again, I had the honor and privilege to spend a great weekend with you. We were at this retreat, and just I was just blown away by your acumen, your determination, your enthusiasm, just all the above So, let’s go here. I want to talk about your TED talk. Okay. You gave a wonderful TED Talk gave three great tips, suggestions, if I have that correct. Can we go there for a minute? Can we just talk about your I really encourage, invite, implore. I am telling you, you will thank me later, you want to check out to these great TED talk today talk about the strategies that you have in that great little speech that you gave last month.

Tutti Taygerly  35:23

Yeah. So who let me pull back for a little bit and then pull into the stream? Yeah, because I ended up stepping off this career treadmill, about three and a half years ago, out in the aftermath of what I would call a pretty hellish year. You know, it was a year where I got divorced, my marriage fell apart. So my whole dream of climbing the career ladder, having a wonderful husband and perfect two kids house in San Francisco was smashed open. You know, and in that same year, my both my father in law, who had known since I was 18, and my father passed away. So in the aftermath of that, that was like the crumbling of this armor and facade, really helping me evaluate, like, on the surface I had at all, I was like, an exec, a working mom, beautiful kids, beautiful husband, and that just looked to the outside world like success. And really, I was using work, and workaholism and feeling that man, I was building beautiful products for the world from launching new video products for Facebook for building add products to help small businesses get the word out. And yet, I was struggling, I was struggling with the ethics of working at a company like Facebook, I was struggling with the hours that I was working, I was struggling is what is the impact that I want to make out in the world. So that was my shift into my second career and into entrepreneurship solopreneur ship, maybe back to the roots of what my dad was doing, really pioneering out. And it’s a long winded way of getting to your questions. Very quickly. I

Curt Anderson  37:08

would do it real quick today. But I want to look at these comments you’re getting when your next session, what a great way to start my week. And hey, my dear friend, Renee, good now is here today. She’s here in New York. And she says 100%. So Renee, thank you, everybody for joining us, man. I’m glad you went there, I felt like I was right on time. So I didn’t go there. But please take, take the ball and run with it. Of course.

Tutti Taygerly  37:33

So well, my birth first book really wrote about it’s called Make space to lead. I’m a designer. And I know that in between all the doing doing doing, you need the space for ideas to just stay, you cannot be creative on a timeline. And I knew that from building fantastic products that billions of people around the world use, I knew that. But I’d never applied that to my own life. So that was what my first book was, was about creating the spaciousness the rest time, the downtime. Yeah, there’s still gonna be the doo doo doing. But most high achievers that I work with don’t have trouble with that part. They have trouble with the counterbalance of the being. And I’ve always found that in my life through surfing, through really being able to glide and the flow of like being able to ride waves in the ocean, which is needed to both have the structure and the rigor to to paddle to train to kind of get get your ass out in the water. Hopefully, I’ve been mostly clean moused. But first one I draw, you’re fine, you’re fine. I’m just getting out there in the water. But then it’s also the the waiting, the waiting, the patience, the gestation time. That’s that’s the flow state as well. So that was really a huge impetus of how I coached people to get this level of making space for creating sustainable success. Because I know that’s how design works. That’s how creativity works. That’s how that’s how flow works. And that was a lot of my work for a couple of years. And then I started realizing, as you talked about my my TEDx talk, that doing all that is great, it’ll get you to a certain way to a certain level. But yet as I started working with more and more people, I realized I was coming to work with women, people of color and immigrants where there’s going to be a ceiling that you hit if you don’t understand the system that we were live and work within the system of lineage and where we have come from and the system of the country we’re in where we there are stereotypes and biases. So my latest TEDx Talk is based on the research for my second book, which is called hardworking rebels, how to lead and succeed as Asian American women. And for the past, probably a year and a half. I’ve been interviewing I think I hit 60 on on Friday, just Asian American women who have been successful in their careers, whether it’s in tech, whether it’s his dog jurors, whether it’s his lawyers, and really trying to glean the secrets of how are they gaining this, this level of professional success. And I start to share these stories, these, these stereotypes of the model minority, you know, Asian Americans are meant to be smart, hardworking, but also men to stick your head down, shut up and just get the job done back to the performance currency that I was talking about earlier. That’s why people like hiring Asian Americans gotta get good work or be, but don’t talk too much, you know, just there’s a ceiling there. And breaking through some of these stereotypes. At is, when I’m talking to people, it’s really working about working on individual strategies to break through. And one of which, which I think is universal to anyone who’s ever felt like they’re an other that they don’t belong and, in in their, their life in the professional world, in a corporate world is, especially if they’re a quiet leader, is to move from a sense of humility, which a lot of times is an Asian cultural value, to think collectively and think communally. But to be able to know that you’re straddling both worlds, you might be an immigrant that has come from South Asia, East Asia. But if you’re in America, and you’re working in the corporate world, you’re gonna have to run little experiments to figure out how you advocate for yourself, how to move from humility, to advocacy, using any number of strategies, it may be building up that relationship currency with a boss, who you’re intimately connected with them, they’re gonna lift you up, it might be by starting to advocate for people in your team around you. It might be by by advocating for the work and selling the work. So there’s all these little strategies that you can do in a way that’s not going to turn people off. Because I’m sure we’ve all heard the research studies where the same traits that in a man would be called assertive, and a woman, they’re called aggressive. It’s the exact same traits you can, you can shift the name, make it a male name, make it a female name, this is the biases of the system we live within. So the strategies are to figure out how to move from humility to advocacy, in a way that suits you in a way that is going to be heard. Because if you just go fight, fight, fight, fight, fight the whole way, is going to be like punching your head endlessly against a wall. And that’s not always going to work. So that’s one of the strategies I will pause because I could keep talking about this forever. But there are more strategies in the in the TEDx talk and more stereotypes to dismantle.

Curt Anderson  42:54

Absolutely. He 2d. How about this guy right here? How about Mr. Luis drops us a note. So Luis is part of our group, as a matter of fact, and you guys just wrote a great article that came out where was it?

Tutti Taygerly  43:08

What Harvard Business Review, I wrote an article about how how to lead when you might be perceived as a difficult person, just five questions to ask yourself about how, how might you be make yourself recreate yourself to be a better leader? You know, are your expectations too high? Are you do you have unreasonable expectations for your team, just unreasonable perfectionist like things that are not attainable? Or are there ways for you to set a high bar and help people coach people to achieve them? So that’s one of the tips and questions and there you can check it out in, in Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business

Curt Anderson  43:45

Review with our buddy Luis and so in the Hey, how about this, Karen’s adding your book to her book club voting poll? So how about that? So go, Judy, I know we’re coming into the bottom of the hour. I know this man, I could talk to you for hours. And I don’t want to cut this short. But I just want to be mindful of everybody’s time as we’re coming in. Let’s go here. Any, any last parting thoughts that you’d like to share with anybody that’s either looking to, you know, really make that breakthrough? You know, you talk about courage through fear. How about if we went there for a minute, you know, like, how about could you share with anybody? How do we conquer those fears with just relentless courage to drive through?

Tutti Taygerly  44:23

So I really believe that we’re all afraid. And, man, the world is a scary place around us, right? There’s wars, there’s layoffs, there’s still threats of COVID Depending on your risk level. I live in San Francisco. We’re very COVID conservative in this part of the world. And yeah, you’re gonna be scared and it’s how do you push through it? I have a 12 year old daughter she on bout a week ago, she came up to me and she was like, Mama, I want to change Well, I’m like, Okay, where is this coming from? She’s in sixth grade. And I won’t go into all the reasons because yes, my children grew up being dog food at on on Facebook video and Facebook Live, which means I tested all our products on them. So they’re, they’re very adverse to being talked about publicly right now. So I won’t go all into all her reasons for switching. But she had some really good reasons she advocated for herself, I, I was the behind the scenes facilitator to get her into the school that she wanted. And last Thursday was, you know, her first day in February, two thirds of the school year and walking into a brand new school, and it’s sixth grade. And you know, as we’re walking in, and we’re waiting, like, there are like, big boys running down, people are checking her out Who is this new kid. And what I told her was that I was really, really proud of her. And, you know, ultimately, because she had been agonizing for a while, do I stay? Do I go and like, ultimately, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter, like in you know, three years, five years down the road, it doesn’t matter if you went to school a or School B, there is no right or wrong choice here. This new school could be the best school ever, you could get the best sixth grade the best seventh grade year lab ever. Or it could be really shitty, because I could happen to like you might get bullied, you might have no friends. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all okay, I told her, I was so proud of her for having the courage to advocate for change in her life, you know, for doing it for going in terrified, she was terrified. And to keep doing it total, I was so proud of her for that. Because it’s all those little actions and moving forward to make a change in your life. That’s what you do. And you’re stuck. You try a little experiment to make a change. And it’s not about the outcomes, the outcomes will come. It’s about that mindset of one little thing, one little action one a little change. It’s a science experiment. My my ex husband has a has a PhD in chemistry. And it’s the running the experiment that’s important. The results don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it succeeds, or it fails. Of course, we want more success. But it’s the process of going through and gathering the data and seeing what happens and then iterating through it through the fear through the fear you keep going one little step one little step and then surround yourself. Surround yourself with the people who love you to give you the confidence to keep going. How about that is the last words

Curt Anderson  47:48

what we say after that 2d, on our little program here, Damon I have these things become the moments of silence. And so when you just dropped like this total value bomb that you just dropped, we just we just wanted to like take a moment just to savor it. So guys, I were gonna wind down. I could Tuesday I have, we have to have you back. This sucks to cool, you are a gift. I am so grateful to you. I deeply appreciate your friendship. I’m looking forward to just a dynamic we a year of like learning from you just like absorbing all of your energy, or just like ounces of your energy rather, I should say but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So guys, you’ve been out there. If you’ve been sitting down listening to this, just embrace and I encourage you, I welcome you. How about we stand up for a minute and let’s give a roaring round of applause for our dear friend 2d. And how about this? I have no words currently saving every bit. How about this? I can’t say thank you enough to it. And I know guys. All right, we’re gonna wind down so what a great way to kick off a week like I have chills. I had chills like halfway through the majority of this little interview here. Today any parting thoughts? We have your TED Talk? We have your website in there we have your LinkedIn where can people find you? I know you have like a retreat coming up anything else you want to share? As fired before we wind down?

Tutti Taygerly  49:14

I’m pretty active. I’m pretty active and out there. My my first book is called Make space to lead if you go to make space to lead.com that is how you can find me. And look. I love talking to people. If you liked listening to this, connect to me on LinkedIn and reach out. I will answer because one of the biggest joys of my life right now is not working 80 hour weeks building the world’s biggest products free for billions of people. But it’s the connection. It’s the ability to really inspire talk to people shift and inspire people to make a little change one person at a time. There’s plenty of ways to find me but if this inspires you reach out happy to chat and send your resources point you along the right way. Might be with me it might be with someone else, but it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a wild journey. Well,

Curt Anderson  50:11

how about well and on this one How about Karen says Call her and assassin you killed it. So yeah, Aaron thank you guys thank you for everybody being out there today we we I can’t express how much we appreciate you joining us here every week. And so today again thank you from the bottom of my heart everybody’s heard out there boy you just made us all just that much better with your with your blessings today. So, guys, I want to wish everybody a great incredible amazing week go out and boy just be someone’s inspiration just like 2d was for us today. You just go out and just be someone’s inspiration and we’re just making the world a better place. So 2d, hang out with us for one second. We have one last comment from my dear friend Renee 2d Amazing inside joke that raising a child have one big science experiment and I know Rene thank you for joining us today to the hangout for one second guys have a great amazing, incredible week and we will see you soon so

Damon Pistulka  51:07

see ya. Bye everyone. Have fun. All right.