Join us as we navigate the fascinating labyrinth of the corporate world with Victoria Pelletier, a seasoned stalwart with over two decades of experience in the B2B professional services sector. Her journey takes us from the humble beginnings of dreaming to be a lawyer to an accelerated ascension as a COO at a BPO organization at the tender age of 24. We dive into how she has continually deployed technology as a potent catalyst throughout her career and the ways she deftly maneuvers the ever-evolving corporate terrain.
From rebuilding the cornerstone of trust and relationships that form the bedrock of successful business transactions, to understanding the critical success metrics, Victoria shares valuable insights into the business ecosystem. You'll get a front-row seat to her experiences in bolstering clients through their M&A journeys and her responsibility in reviving troubled businesses. We also explore the future of the workforce and the nuances of selling to multiple buyers - a journey that emphasizes the role of establishing a solid relationship with them.
As we shift gears towards the latest trends in technology and the ethical use of it, Victoria also shares her perspectives on personal branding - an art of setting oneself apart from the crowd. As we delve into this insightful discussion, Victoria stresses the power of our voices and the fact that leadership is not bound by a title. In a world dominated by technology and data, she throws light on the essence of authenticity, relationship-building, and the ethical use of technology in the world of corporate leadership. Get ready for an insightful journey that promises to challenge your perspectives and encourage you to embrace change with open arms.
More about Victoria:
Victoria is a 20+ year Corporate Executive and Board Director. Nicknamed the “Turn Around Queen” by former colleagues and employers, Victoria inspires and empowers her team and clients to change mindsets and drive growth in business, leadership and culture.
Victoria was recognized as one of the 2023 Woman of Influence by South Florida Business Journal, a semi-finalist in the 2023 50/50 Women on Boards Women to Watch, 2022 Top 30 Most Influential Business Leaders in Tech by CIOLook, 2022 Most Influential Entrepreneur of the Year by World Magazine, 2021’s Top 50 Business Leader in Technology by Insight Magazine and a Mentor of the Year by Women in Communications & Technology in 2020. HSBC bank awarded her the Diversity & Inclusion in Innovation award in 2019 and she was IBM’s #1 Global Social Seller ranked by LinkedIn in 2019 and 2020.
https://victoria-pelletier.com
0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to any episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased to have with me Victoria. Victoria, thank you very much for being on the show today. The way I love to do it, I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, so the floor is yours.
0:00:15 - Victoria
Awesome. Well, thanks for having me here, mehmet. I'm pleased to be here. So, Victoria Pelletier, I'm a 20 plus year corporate executive in the B2B professional services space and by that I like to describe it as consult to operate technology as the enabler, besides that, wife, mother, fitness fanatic, foodie, wine lover.
0:00:38 - Mehmet
Great. Thank you again for being on the show today. So you know, maybe it's a little bit of a traditional question, but you know, when I was preparing and I checked you, Rubio, and your experience, like you, got like a great story to tell. At least, if you can, you know, tell us about the journey, how you started and you know how things turn to you become in a leadership and executive position as you are today.
0:01:06 - Victoria
Yeah, sure. Well, the interesting thing is, you know where I landed? Wasn't what I thought I would be doing in that? From childhood I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I think my mother probably had me watching too much LA law, which will date me a little bit, but I was watching LA law in the 80s with her and I actually. I should also say I come from like extremely humble beginnings and I'm adopted.
My parents were lower socioeconomic status, no vacations, so I started working at a very, very young age, at 11. And when I graduated high school I skipped a couple of grades. I was young and went after university and I worked in a bank in their contact center, was incredibly flexible for my school schedule and it turns out I loved the corporate world and I got promoted into leadership quite early and so I kept putting off law school. I thought I would next year, next year, and I never went, although I can't tell you how many contracts I've, you know read now over my career.
But after six years in financial services I got recruited as a chief operating officer for a BPL business process outsourcing company and it was a pretty, very stretch roll for me at just age 24. I was also a new mother at that point but I'd been running large scale to contact center operations in financial services, which was their client base and then had a dynamic of like B2B, where you've got an additional sort of stakeholder you're serving, you've got your clients, but then you're also serving either their customers or their employees. And ever since then I've stayed in that realm and that was, you know, the early days of labor arbitrage for contact center technical help desks, service, sales kind of activities. And then I've stayed in it through a variety of variations on that theme since, including more recently IBM and Accenture.
0:03:08 - Mehmet
So is there anything special that you know you felt, because you were in financial services, that you shifted to BPL and then tech. So anything that you know attracted you to tech, or it was like just the destiny?
0:03:24 - Victoria
Well, so I'm a very early adopter of tech, for sure. You know, sort of at the first I mean, I recall like dial up and you know hearing the sound of that and being on it, and I think that's because my first serious boyfriend was in tech as well, and so that was probably what you know encouraged me and went down that path. But the reality is I, tech is the enabler to do more, different, better. And so, whether that was in the contact center days and I had large tech clients doing, you know, their technical help desks on, microsoft was one of my largest clients early on doing all their kind of tier one, tier two tech support. But just even seeing, I spent a decade running corporate travel businesses, the use of technology, whether that was the booking engine, but also how to get more efficient and effective in delivering operationally.
So for me it was how do we leverage technology to streamline the very, in many cases, routine activities that we were doing and allowing, you know, the employees to focus on more human centered type of activities engaging with customers? How do we allow them to just focus on kind of the exception base? So that's actually where it came from. And then I started working for technology first companies, you know, like the likes of IBM, where, although, yes, we're talking about consulting around processes and implementation and development of technology and then running it for them as well, I've always kind of come at it with the approach that that we're not walking around with a tool kit of things we're selling. We're solving problems for our clients and technology processes, people all of that need to work together to solve for those challenges.
0:05:13 - Mehmet
Great. Yeah, I know it's a great transition and experience. There is one thing that stopped me also as well, victoria. So when I was reading the bio and preparing I've seen something is like you don't like to subscribe to state school but at the same time you are in the corporate, and the reason I'm asking you this because usually when corporate becomes big, it becomes kind of the status quo itself. So how did you manage to have this? Because that challenging status quo is the. I would say it should be the mantra, it should be the North Star of everyone who likes to be in entrepreneurship and change things. So how did you manage this equilibrium? And as someone who works also in corporate, I know it's not easy, so would love to hear your thoughts and your experience with that.
0:06:07 - Victoria
Yeah, I've been a part of 18 mergers and acquisitions for the companies I've worked for. I've also supported many clients as well, with our own M&A journeys. It's given me this lens on constant transformation and trying to see what's worked best in one environment versus the others. How do we bring them together? I'm usually accountable for turning around businesses or often distressed businesses, and that means you need to do things differently. Those things, coupled also with the fact that I've moved around every two or three years, in some part because of M&A and other part by choice.
I'm not married to what has been the status quo. In many cases, I didn't hire those teams, I didn't build the processes, I didn't choose that technology. So instead my frame of reference is here's the goal or objective or where we're getting to, here's what our strategy is, and let's figure out what the best path is. And I'm not looking to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak, but challenging the thinking and this notion of this is the way we've always done it to move forward and I operate with radical candor, to be incredibly direct and be really transparent, but doing it from a place of care and compassion to move us forward. I don't like the passive, aggressive ways of the meetings, after the meetings. So that's become a big part of the brand that is Victoria that people know me for, and challenging the thinking and challenging hierarchy is what's necessary, quite frankly, in business.
0:07:52 - Mehmet
That's another perspective I never thought about, but it's nice to learn from your experience, victoria. Now Another thing and I'm focusing a lot on this part because I want to relate to some other topic. I will ask you later. Now, people think usually that corporate especially the ones without mentioning any names here so no one gets offended but they tend to become we call them the slow dinosaurs. They think smooth, very slow bureaucracy you start to need a lot of approvals to do even a very small change. So how did you manage? Because when you also challenge the state's goal back to that, we need to be agile. So what is the success formula that you used to get this?
0:08:46 - Victoria
So that does continue to be a challenge for me and frustrate me to be super like Frank about it with some of these really large corporates. Now I should also say I've built and bought businesses and have been heavily involved in the startup and founder world, and so I try and bring that into these large corporates, and in many cases for me it's meant breaking the rules and doing things differently, and so I won't name names either. But there was one of these companies that I worked at where I was leading a large like client portfolio and there had been a challenge with a really large like project that had gone wrong, and so there was some reputational damage for our organization and we would need to build trust and hopefully get back to growth with this particular client. And the way that this big giant was operating was they had all of these different offerings, everything. Let's say we've got data and analytics, we've got our software group, we've got hardware, we've got all these different things and we were trying to pair people from each of those practices up with the client.
Well, that's not the way the clients organized and nor is that the way we would build relationships. So I broke the structure, for example, and said I own this business, so I'll make sure that I align the team accordingly. And I aligned them to. It would happen to be a financial services client and said, like you've got retail bank, you've got insurance, you've got wealth management, like that's the way they're structured. So what I did is aligned the team and I put my happened to be my data and analytics person was aligned to one part of it, my like digital and UX guy, you know, with the retail bank, like all of this, and that is what built relationship. But it required for me. I got challenged internally at that organization because these people were asked to sell specifically for their product offering and I said that's not the way the client buys. So we're going to build relationships with the clients. They're going to own it and then, if it's their subject matter expertise, they have the opportunity to deliver it. Otherwise they'll leverage other members of the team.
And this, as I said, it was a distressed kind of portfolio given this challenged initial large project, and I said it was going to take 18 to 24 months to rebuild confidence, trust and growth again with that client. We did it in 15 months, but I had to instantly battle internally around that to break it, and so that's one example. And then there are just others where, you know, I'm a little bit of the beg for forgiveness versus asking for permission type of individual and my you know mantra is about we're going to do the right thing, and right thing for our clients and our employees should mean for our shareholders as well. But, to your point, we don't need seven layers of approval to get that done. Don't get me wrong. Like you know, if we're spending large dollars, I'm going to, you know, seek some permission. I don't want to get fired for those kinds of things.
0:11:56 - Mehmet
Yeah, what other challenges you face like other than this, like you know what kind of obstacles you face down the road, victoria.
0:12:05 - Victoria
The some of the biggest ones for me, and you know, have been around.
Although I've worked for private companies earlier in my career, the last long time probably 10 or 15 have been for Fortune 500 companies or even 100 companies, public companies that are focused on the quarter to quarter results, and for me, I'm much more around the long game.
When I talk about doing the right thing, that means you know, even on how we sell.
Relationship based selling takes time and many of these companies I work for they just want the quarter to quarter results and I see trade offs that are made that I think are the wrong thing to do in many cases for our clients and for our employees, and so that's something that is is a consistent challenge for me.
So I made the decision a while ago to leave my last employer and I am in transition and looking for that next C-suite role and a big part of my, you know, thinking around where I want to land is in a smaller organization where I have the ability to drive and affect more of that change and I'm not as bound to some of the commitments we've made, you know, to our shareholders in a public setting like that. That truly frustrates me and don't get me wrong. I mean there's. I understand the needs to do that at time, but what I'm seeing is a consistent need to do that quarter after quarter after quarter. That makes it more and more challenging to get back on the path towards this longer term relationship you know that we've built with our clients.
0:13:50 - Mehmet
Or need. Yeah, you touched on a point which actually I was keeping too later, but because you brought it now, so that's great and good timing. You mentioned relationship selling and you mentioned you know the. Usually I live that as well, you know myself and I've seen, like other you know, friends, colleagues living that and I can understand by the end of the day. You know it's not a charity, but do you think that someone should step out and I don't know, somehow educate investors? You know shareholders in as we call it? You know, layman, you know like sentence I mean the way of staying in a very simple way, what means the relationship selling and why it needs time sometimes.
0:14:44 - Victoria
Oh, I do think, mehmet, there needs to be some education around that. You know, what I see is this you know, I think there's a little bit of for many companies, you know, build it and they will come Well, and that might be the case, and you know I got the latest Apple iPhone when it came out, right, so there's a little bit of you know that when it comes out. But the reality is and again, I'm mostly in the B2B professional services space and I have to consistently, you know, remind people that people do business with people they like and they trust and therefore they want to do business with. So that means everything from around the focus on our own individual brands and people are buying from people but also to and I have a lot of this conversation in the tech space and that's many times in the companies that I work for. People have grown up through technology and are going out to have a business led conversation. Not all of them have been educated in how to do that. So I usually say I go back to that banking, financial services client we're trying to understand, like what's the strategy for you know the bank? So when you speak to a top executive that owns the P&L and that, by the way, they get P&L to technology. That's the and. So what's the business strategy? The ability to have that conversation and many times for me that's also understanding.
I'll ask the leaders themselves, like, how was success measured? And for you personally in that organization, again building trust and then coming away and developing solutions that tie directly back to not only the strategy or the problem they're trying to solve but connecting it deeply to their own individual success. But that does take time. So when I worked at this one company and you know where this distressed client portfolio I told them 18 to 24 months because we need to rebuild relationships, trust, credibility, find new people to build relationships with, because some of the old ones were not no longer, you know, fans of ours. And I said it's going to take 18 to 24 months, one quarter in. Where's the growth? Where's it coming? I'm like guys, what part of this would you not understand when I said it's going to take time to rebuild these relationships? So it's a constant education, reeducation for many of the leaders.
0:17:14 - Mehmet
Again, you know, just not asking this question to blame or to you know point to anyone out there but what do you think about? You know people who tries, although they say, yeah, we believe that, yes, it's a relationship, you have to build a trust, you have to do this, but at the same time, what they do in the background is that they try to I'm not sure if this is a verb but like robotize or make it like a solid, rigid way, like, yeah, if you do a, b should happen for sure, and if B is not happening, this is because you're not doing A, though you know we didn't see the result that we were expecting, you know, at the end of this quarter, whatever. Now, why do you think like such thing? I mean, of course, like should be processes, there should be you know some playbooks to do things like. We know this in tech, so you will more experience that we actually Victoria and this.
But again, the human touch how, how much is the human touch factor? Because, yeah, it is science and art, I agree with this, but I believe is that the human factor in this is is have more, I would say like result on all this. It have like more major factor in getting the results. What do you think of that?
0:18:43 - Victoria
I agree, and there's a book that was put out a number of years ago, the Challenger customer, and it's a follow on on the book called the Challenger sale. And the Challenger sale was about the individuals and the buying types and their behavior and how to sell to these different types of buyers. But the Challenger customer was looking at the more and again in a B2B environment and at the time and so I can't remember how many years ago it was published I think the numbers increased. But at that point they said there's 5.3 or 5.4 buyers for every purchase. Now that's now being made and understand again what success is measured and how each will come to the table. So for procurement or finance, it is going to you know what's the lowest cost. The person who owns the customers will want to understand what is the experience for my customers? What's the satisfaction? They, you know are there. You know defects I need to understand. You know those kinds of things to. Maybe, if it's an employee related, you know sale or transaction, what's the employee experience going to look like? So they're all looking for different things, but you're not going to uncover that and get those 5.4 buyers Again.
I think it's probably seven or eight now to be in, particularly for large enterprise, to get them on board, if you haven't built a relationship with them and you do not understand what is important to them and the constituents that they're serving. And so that's a relationship that needs to take place to uncover and have those conversations, and I think that's what gets missed. And so, when we think about technology, it's like we go straight to the CTO, the CIO, the CTO, to have these conversations, but they're not the single decision maker here and in many cases they don't own the budget. And so we have to be having and this is where your point like it's like I think you know there's all these sales operations and processes are like well, we presented, we had meeting one and we did this and we presented and we responded to the RFP and we presented pricing, and so why is this not working? We should be at 30 to 40% potential. I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, like let's take a step back here.
0:21:03 - Mehmet
Yeah, like, I believe, like I hope I have some friends that listen to the podcast and they are actually in sales roles and I think they would be so happy listening to this conversation. Now we are now between you and me, like we are, you know, speaking their language, that sometimes they cannot say it in front of you know even their colleagues. So, and speaking of that, and I know you talk also, Victoria, about you know, the change of the workforce of the future, and you mentioned, like yourself, your own transition. Honestly speaking, I did the same at the beginning of this year, right, so, because I believe we are on the verge of something to change, Like I don't know what it is. You know, and this is why I speak with experts and leaders like yourself, Victoria, to shed some light about you know, how the workforce will be in the future.
0:22:02 - Victoria
What do you think so. It's funny. I am a professional public speaker as well. I didn't, you know, mention that in my bio and one of the topics I spend the most time on is what I used to call the keynote the future of work. Now it's. The future is here, it's here and now, and so it's a multitude of facets when we talk around how work is changing. Technology 100% at the forefront, it's changing how we work Absolutely.
What gets left behind as more and more technology and automation comes into play and the skills are changing so rapidly? The shelf life of skills on average is now less than two years, and so understanding the skills that are required for today and how do you connect that to this strategy in the future and where things are going. So how do we need to take control of our own careers and also as leaders in business? How do we need to think about the skills required for future? Are we building it? So? Are we educating teams, as the skills are required, both functional hard skills, of whether that's technology or finance or you name it, but also the human skills. What's evolving and changing? Can I build the talent? Do I go by the talent? Do I borrow it? Is it automated All these things, so that's changed the way we need to look at our workforce and the skills that are required.
The other thing is obviously and I think most people have gone to where the work gets done. I think hybrid is here to stay. There's lots of remote first companies, but there's still such benefit to having people together in person to innovate, to problem solve, and so I'm a big fan of the hybrid work. But then also what's changed dramatically is what employees want to be doing for work Doing work that they believe is purposeful and impactful, and so I think that the role of leaders is to help, particularly for entry level, newer or mid level employees, to understand how the work they're doing contributes to the company as a whole or to their customers, the community, the world at large, depending. What it is so wanting to be connected to purpose, things that we value and the type of leaders that we're working for.
So I saw an article yesterday and I said we talked about not naming names, but I didn't write it and I've never worked for them, but it was an article written about PWC, the consulting tech and finance giant as well, but around some of the ethics and how clear it was. No one was going to challenge the CEO, and so they've agreed to implement all 23 of the findings and recommendations. That, I think, is what we're going to see more and more of the need not necessarily that there needs to be investigations underway, but rather more and more companies moving towards that kind of leadership, and I think I'll speak for me. I mean, I want to be one of those leaders that people would follow into the proverbial fire, but because they believe that, or one they trust me and recognize that I'm going to have their back. I'm concerned about who they are as humans, and so that's a big shift for many of the certainly the legacy older school leaders, maybe a little less so from newer ones coming up.
0:25:33 - Mehmet
Do you expect to see some resistance from these old players?
0:25:38 - Victoria
Yes, because I've had many of them and so I've worked for there's my ever call working for an organization whom they were very comfortable. They had some. For example, there was a senior sales leader who was a top performer in terms of bringing in sales into the organization. However, he was absolutely toxic in the way that he worked and spoke to and engaged with employees. It was a core effect. I mean name calling, swearing at people, canceling meetings last minute, expecting that they were just drop everything to be available to accommodate him. Consistently. There were multiple HR investigations underway because there were so many complaints.
And I remember having my team members who needed to engage with him come to me and talking to our leaders about it, who were not prepared to really address the situation because he was a strong sales performer so they resisted, they did nothing about it. So actually you know my I'm a big believer in control the things you can control, and so in this case I remember saying to my leader who wasn't prepared to deal with him. Then I said let's be clear none of my team members will support and engage on any of his sales deals going forward because I'm not going to put my team in a position to be berated and put down and all these sorts of things. And we're talking about like within the last five years, that you know that this was happening and I continue to see it, but more and more resistance is coming to that. So I think organizations who who are resisting and aren't prepared to address that are going to see significant backlash. Now we saw this, you know, quiet quitting the great resignation.
I don't use phrases of those are good for headlines, but the reality is like that's what's been encountered. Pendulum swung a little bit because right now the market's not incredible. So people are tolerating more than they were even a year or two ago. But it's going to come back.
0:27:39 - Mehmet
Yeah, I'm not sure in which publication I've seen this article, like when they ask people, especially if they are working with big corporates. So they prefer to do one of two things and one of it, like, like you mentioned, I mentioned, like they go, prefer to work for smaller companies because you know they can shine more, you know they can, their work can be seen, you know, obviously because it's smaller team. And the other one is people who want to actually be by their own, like they want to be in an entrepreneurial journeys and not controversially also, like I had multiple guests that they said what their companies? Because we talk about text, what their companies? Now, you know they're playing the stick and carrot game. So you know giving more perks.
You know, like on the salaries, in a way that someone would have to think a million times before before, you know, thinking of quitting, which is interesting, by the way.
But I believe that then you know people and this is my own thought about this you know if you put too much pressure on people, after some time people will say you know what, like I'm quitting. Now it's not quite quitting, it's an actual quitting. It's actually like shouting that I'm quitting because at the end of the day and we also discussed this on the show I believe you know mental health, you know well-being is something way more important than, of course, like everyone wishes to have a nice check every month and, you know, like a stable, but at the end of the day, if you're not feeling comfortable in the workplace, you know it will not work. So like shifting gears a little bit here, like because you also you go on public speaking and you go on different events and I know you do a lot of interviews as well. So in the tech scene right now, of course, I know the first answer, but what are the current trends and expectations you're hearing and seeing?
0:29:55 - Victoria
Oh well, who hasn't been talking about generative AI and how that's going to change and evolve the way in which we're working? I mean, so that's almost at the forefront of every conversation when it comes to tech and business and operational leaders figuring out how are we going to leverage this and what are the ethics behind it, the guardrails, and so there's, so it's you know, that's at the forefront. But the ethical, the other pieces around, sort of that ethical use of a lot of the technologies, whether that was and while I was at IBM, that was around, you know, facial recognition, for example, was, you know, one of those, although they've come under fire because they just want a massive contract, government contract related to going back to doing some of that work. And then also, still foundationally, data and analytics in terms of how are we leveraging the data in the business.
Many companies trying to figure out how to monetize that, but the common for large, again, I spent a lot of time with large enterprise. So, you know, is there a data lake? What are the consistency around it? The orchestration layer, again in many of these like very fractional or set businesses that are not operating and maybe they come together through acquisitions. So, again, how to leverage that and look at that very differently would be another. And then just the I will say the war on talent for like, for technical talent as well, just continues to be at the forefront for all of them. There's just there's so much demand for it. And how do you upskill? Going back to that sort of this ill conversation I said earlier, like how are you upskilling to get ahead of the need and then retaining, you know, that talent?
0:31:45 - Mehmet
Yeah, I agree with you, like again, like these things, I asked just, you know, to highlight that guys, this is happening. You know, these are where things are moving on. The data is something very important and this is I think maybe I was still doing solo episodes, like I didn't have guests at that time and one of the you know topics that I brought and I talked about that every CTO, every CIO, should be sitting with you know, the leadership team and thinking how we can leverage the data to generate money, to generate income. So this is, I think it's top of mind of every executive now.
0:32:22 - Victoria
Yeah.
0:32:23 - Mehmet
Again. It's good you mentioned it, Victoria. Now, something I love, I'm passionate about, you did it very well and I'm trying to do it myself, which is personal branding, right. And I believe and I want to hear your opinion and you know your experience about that People ask me what you, why are you doing this, like you know, why are you trying to build a personal brand? And my answer is, for me, it's because it's not because I want to show off, it's because, you know, I want to help people by recognizing me as expert in X, y or Z, right. So I want to hear your opinion on this, victoria, and how did you manage to get this? Because I know you have done a great job, you know, with your personal branding. You're a very well-known face, so I want to hear your you know, first thought about why it's important and how did you manage to get the success you have today?
0:33:25 - Victoria
I don't think I had the vernacular 20 years ago in saying personal branding, but that's what I was starting to do when I made that shift from a B2C environment of financial services into B2B and leading sales and client management teams and trying to understand how it worked.
Receiving RFP like how, how one? How do you get invited to it? But then when you receive, how do you differentiate yourself? So, going back to the relationship-based selling that people do business with, people they like trust and want to do business with, I recognized obviously there's an organizational brand I needed to work on in you know, in that first C-suite role for me, but then the brand of who I am and who my team are, to differentiate ourselves against others. So again, I wasn't calling it personal branding 20 years ago. You know that probably came in the last 10 or so years when you know the phraseology came about, but again it's around. Well, I should say for me, personal brand is four pieces to that broadly and where I see many people focus on and you said you want to be known as a subject matter expertise in you know X, y and Z, and so that's the foundational element of that. But then the other pieces are when there's, you know, people who are exceptionally talented and knowledgeable in the space that you are, how do you differentiate yourself, whether that's to get hired, to sell to or hire people. And so then the other pieces are also about what's your story. You know who are you as a human, what are your passions, your interests, the things that you value, because that's what initially sparks connection with people, those shared, you know, common passions, interest, values. And then the next piece, however, is what makes you different, what is your unique value proposition? So, again, I've been leading large consulting tech and services teams, and so why are they choosing someone on my team or me personally if I'm standing in front of them versus my competitors? And so for me, for example, that's things like I talked about my radical candor, but it builds trust instantly. I tell client. I remember telling a client last year I said Patrick, I do not think that you hired Accenture or myself and my team to tell you what you want to hear, and so it's kind of like I think the people on the call are like what? And then I went forward to like, challenge him on some things, and that's. But that's a differentiator for me Also, the fact that I'm maniacally focused on being the right kind of you know, I call it human centered or heart centered leader that's empathetic. I still drive strong business results and I'm focused on DE and I. Those are all differentiators for me.
And the last piece and this might be a little bit of why you also do you know the podcast and build your brand is what's your legacy, what do you want to be known for? And so, for me, my proverbial tombstone is not going to have written on it the sales and revenue and profitability that I drove for the companies that I work for. It's going to be around the impact I had on other people. So I do public speaking and I, you know, share my experiences, because I there's so many things that in my late 40s I wish my 20 year old self would have known. Now, what I've listened to her, I don't know. But can I share my experiences? Can I make the workplace, my community in the world, you know, a better place? Did I raise two good humans? Those are all the things for me I think about. And you know, developing the you know, the narrative around those sort of four elements is what gets you known, and so this is actually one of the first times in my my own life where I've ever actually been intentional around seeking a new role, because I'm usually found and that's because of the strength of my brand.
When I was at IBM, linkedin recognized me as their number one social seller worldwide. You know their phrase, you know for for brands and they had me develop the education for their executives as well. So it's critically, critically important and what I tell your listeners they need to build their brand, much like building their network when they don't need it, so it's there for them when they do so. My older son is 23 years old and I'm like, buddy, you've come out of college computer engineering and I'm like I'm like, dude, you need to get on LinkedIn. He's like oh, that's for old people, mom. I'm like but that's where your, your employers, perspective employers are and start to build the brand so they start to know who you are and not just who your mom is.
0:37:56 - Mehmet
Yeah, by the way, just you know, funny enough, you mentioned this. Some people asked me like, do you try to do it in another platforms? I said, look like if you want to do it right, you should succeed in the one platform and then you might think to expand this. And this is how you do even it's ABC business. So you start with, let's say, one shop and then you start to open branches in other cities and states, like if you are in the US and other places, other countries. So you need to have a focus first in one place because, honestly, when I tried to be everywhere, it didn't work with me Right. So I get distracted. Because some people, they love Twitter, which is now X. Some people, I don't know, love something else. So, for me, because it's like, first, more professional, it's like more B2B you know this is what I love to do also as well. So I knew that LinkedIn is my place. But what I took away from what you said, it's something I hope the audience will repeat, that part where you were mentioning so, first, of course, to be known as a salt leader or, you know, the subject matter expert. I love the other two you mentioned. So authenticity being yourself. So people knows, for example, victoria, as Victoria, you know, like it's not only you know the executive at X, you know, so for you as a person, they trust. The other one is relationship, which is, you know, I can share my experience Like I'm new to this, by the way, in LinkedIn I've been long time and people, they were pushing me to write more and said you know what? I don't have time to write, maybe it's better to record, you know, that's why I did the podcast and I can tell you guys, in nine months, my network grew by 200%. Right, and you know, I find myself now talking, for example, to people like Victoria, like I'm talking to you, victoria, you are an executive. I'm talking to CEOs in Silicon Valley. I'm talking, you know, to angel investors I don't know where you know, so, so and these things. It's not for the sake of just, you know, making noise, it's because, maybe and by the way it happened and I shared about a couple of days back, one of my audience reached out to me and he said I connected with the guest and now we are working on a startup idea and I said, wow, this is, this is the thing that I want to hear, and people ask me okay, do you have a large, you know, audience? Yeah, I'm looking at, I'm fine, I'm doing well. I would say still baby steps.
On the podcast, I promised myself, if every day I get one because I do daily if I get one download or listening per day, that for me more than enough, like it's enough for me that one person, he or she, they are listening to me and they will get something out. And it went. Yeah, it was very slow at the beginning. It was very hard for me. It was I'm new to the whole thing, but you know, I'm enjoying too much and when I see people like yourself, victoria, passionate about this, I get excited. I start to speak also myself. So thank you for sharing this Now as we come close to the end.
We talked a lot about leadership and you know I told you, the majority of my audience are either in the tech space or to be founders or entrepreneurs, or maybe they already founded their companies. I know that you have a lot to tell them. You know about leadership and you know how to be a better leader, how to be a more humble leader and why. It's not about the title. I want to hear your opinion and what you would advise fellow entrepreneurs.
0:41:32 - Victoria
Yeah, one of the last things you said, mehmet, is important to me around. It's not about the title and I talk about this a lot like there's we are all leaders. Our voice is our power and so whether you're a new hire into a company or fresh out of school or you're at the top of that hierarchy, we're all leaders. So I want people to understand that and recognize that it isn't purely, you know, by title or how many people that you're leading, et cetera. So that's number one.
Two is and I come to this because I made some mistakes early in my leadership journey my first actually leadership role was at 14. I was like the assistant manager of the shoe store I worked at when I was in high school, but that executive role at age 24, I was the youngest executive by at least 20 years and I was the only woman. And because of my sort of origin story and trauma and adversity in my youth, I also was always trying to prove more and better and I showed up as a leader who was very clear on how success was measured. I've always been clear on the outcomes for which I am measured and incented against and that we need to be driving. But I came to it and I got a nickname. I think I found out when I was like 28 years old that my nickname was the Iron Maiden, and it's because I felt like I wanted to ensure that everyone knew that I belonged there. I don't love the phrase imposter syndrome, but just for lack of a phrase.
I probably felt a little bit like the imposter because I was so young and although I had a number of great successes and experience under my belt and I was the only woman. So I feel like I showed up, I was all business all the time. I'm not gonna tell you openly that I don't know something Now. I'm like I don't know what I don't know and I'm gonna go and find someone who does or I'll educate myself and come back to you on it. But I wouldn't have done that then. But actually, more importantly, when I think of what makes a great leader, now I wasn't authentic and vulnerable and open and transparent, I guess, at all business all the time. So Iron Maiden came, I delivered exceptional business results. I made some really tough business decisions around performance, around structure, and it impacted other people's livelihoods, unfortunately, but I never showed them how hard that was for me.
And I came into work one Monday it was probably like within a matter of months after hearing the Iron Maiden phrase and someone said to me we were talking about our weekend and I said I was crying.
I got into a movie theater and I was crying.
The movie was just like so emotional and she kind of looked at me and she's like Vic I thought you'd be, you'd laugh at people who cried at movies, and I will tell you that crushed me, because that is not who I am, and so, for me, being a good leader, I've learned, is about being really authentic, and authentic means one.
I'm gonna share with you my story. I'm gonna share with you some fears and insecurity. I'm gonna tell you I don't know what. I don't know. I'm going to be vulnerable with you Because, again, that builds trust. People now believe that I have their back, and so I think that's something when we're talking about, you know, the future of work or what's evolving and changing, this kind of era of really responsible leadership, doing the right thing and being much more sort of human centered and recognizing where whole people that show up every day versus being a cog and a wheel. That's more important, and that's where I spent a lot of time trying to get my own leadership team focused and acting, talking, you know, behaving in the kinds of ways that you know we would, we want to be and, for me, the kind of leader that I would want to work for.
0:45:32 - Mehmet
Great insights and great advice. So, you know, for the founders, be yourselves, you know, don't try to behave like someone else. You know, if I can summarize it this way, victoria, like, be yourself. Everyone has, at some stage in his or her life, some adversity, I would say you know. So we don't know each other's stories.
So this is something very important that you touched on and it's a very, actually emotional. You know what you mentioned when you know, like someone thought that if you see someone crying for watching a movie, crying during watching a movie, you know so because, unfortunately, sometime and this is why I started to do, at the end of each episode, I'm bringing this human factor because, okay, yeah, we talk about startups, growth, sales, marketing, you know AI, all these, but we should not forget, I say you know the human element because you know we. And back to your, you know the topic that we you discussed also as well about. You know relationship in sales, and because humans deals with humans, so you buy from someone who's a human also as well. So, victoria, like I think you enriched us today with a lot of experiences, a ton of experience. My final thing that I do with all my guests and, by the way it's not a tricky question. Is there anything that you wished I would?
0:47:05 - Victoria
I should ask you It'd be a longer topic. The one thing you didn't ask me that's super important to me and I think we all need to be really concerned about is diversity, equity and inclusion, particularly in tech, because we still have a very, very long way to go. So I use a phrase strategic intentionality that I think we need to be to do more, different and better and be much more representative in the workforce as a whole, but also very, very specifically in tech, to see it much more representative of the communities in the world that we live in.
0:47:43 - Mehmet
I agree with you and thank you for sharing this. Just a fun fact, when I asked this question at the end so some of them I get, they think that I'm trying to trick them and they said, okay, do you want me to say something first? I said no, no, no, it doesn't have to be something personal, but maybe because when I prepare sometimes, by the way, this is also I like to be transparent. So people ask me do you prepare the questions? So sometimes, yes, of course, I have like a couple of points, but majority of the question they come out during the discussion. So this is why, also, I ask at the end this question, because maybe I missed something or maybe a topic that we should have brought. We didn't. So this is why I keep this space open for my guests. Victoria, thank you very much for being my guest here today. A lot, as I said, a lot of experience you shared with us, where people can find more about you.
0:48:37 - Victoria
So I have a single landing page, which is victoria-healthyaidcom. That will allow people to choose where they wanna connect with me. Like you, Memet, I'm very much on LinkedIn, so they can link it to connect with me there through X, through Instagram, Facebook, whatever, but the landing page at victoria-healthyaidcom, we'll get them there.
0:48:59 - Mehmet
Great. So I would make sure that this will be in the show notes. So, guys, feel free to reach out to Victoria, and this is the way I end my episodes. I love to hear feedback. It's not only about talking all these topics, I want to hear also what do you think? Is there anything you're not liking? I'm appreciating all the positive feedbacks, all the encouragement, but I like constructive feedback because always I try to see I'm sure that I'm not perfect in this. I need still to fix a lot of things, actually, maybe by having a studio, proper studio. This is my hope. So anyway, keep them coming and also, if you're interested to be on the show, don't hesitate.
This is a space. If you have some experience you want to share with us. If you are working on a great idea, building a startup, you want to share it. You're not getting a PR space. Reach out to me. No issues Doesn't matter where you are in the world. My guess majority of them they are in the US. I'm based in Dubai, some guests in New Zealand, some guests in all around the world time zones. I'm lucky to be kind of in the middle, so I can afford all the time zones. So don't hesitate, reach out and thank you for tuning in. See you soon. Bye-bye.
Transcribed by https://podium.page