Chief People Officer w/ Erica Anderson Rooney | Ep. 221

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we sit down with Erica Anderson Rooney, founder of HER Collective and former Chief People Officer, to talk about what actually holds people back in their careers.

Erica shares her perspective from years in the C-suite making decisions on who gets promoted and paid, and why so many high-performing women still get overlooked. 

We also get into how AI fits into career growth and what it takes to move from doing everything right to actually getting ahead.

LINKS:

Erica on LinkedIn

HER Collective on LinkedIn

HER Collective Website

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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[00:00:00] Erica: It really does lean that credibility and the fact then that I got it into Success Magazine and into Mel Robbins, then it just becomes this snowball effect because people wanna pick up and piggyback off of those big names. So that has been my trick.

[00:00:15] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the BizDev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined Per Usual with Gary Voight, by Gary Voight. Someone, he's here, unfortunately he's here.

Hi Gary.

[00:00:26] Gary: You're just jealous because of the episodes that I hosted when you were gone are just getting way better numbers, but that right? Yeah.

[00:00:34] David: that right? Are you lying to me right now? It's like a 600% increase

That's cool, man. I'm out. Have a good one.

[00:00:41] Gary: all.

[00:00:42] David: Four years is long enough, man. I'm tired of talking to you. More importantly, we are joined by Erica Rooney, who is the founder of her Collective. Hello, Eric. How

are. Hey, I'm great David. How are you?

I'm wonderful.

I cannot complain. I have we start these things off with some random questions.

Are you ready? Alright. are you a notes app or a paper person?

[00:01:07] Erica: Ooh, both, but that's like a DHD ping pong brain, 

[00:01:11] David: that's intense. So you bring an iPad and paper.

[00:01:13] Erica: I, no, I use my transcription apps on my phone and I will

capture it all there, but then I still do bring pen and paper because I still sometimes wanna make note of something or I'm like, wait, we gotta go back to that. And that's something that it just can't be done digitally.

[00:01:30] David: That's fair. That's fair.

[00:01:31] Gary: I'll take notes digitally and then rewrite 'em on paper so that they're closer by and not taking up screen real estate.

[00:01:39] David: You're so obnoxious. Yeah.

No one cares, Gary.

[00:01:43] Gary: Okay. I'll go back on mute.

[00:01:45] David: Yeah. Get back on mute. Big party or small gathering.

[00:01:49] Erica: Ooh. That's also hard to chill. Gosh, I'm such a middle of the road girl. I think it depends on the day because. If I'm vibing 'cause it's my book party or like I just did something big and I wanna celebrate, bring everybody, let's have a blast. But there is something really fun and like just last night I had a very intimate dinner with a small group and I love being able to have much more intimate conversations and get to know people better.

It's just a totally different vibe. So I'm gonna have to be like, again, boring middle of the road. It could be either.

[00:02:22] David: Okay. Alright. Now that means you're forcing me for this last question. It's very polarizing. Are you ready?

[00:02:29] Erica: Yes.

[00:02:30] David: Mayonnaise Pro or against?

[00:02:32] Erica: Oh, absolutely not. Never. I will not touch Never no mayo for you. See, I found something you mayonnaise it. is a hard line in the sand. Wow. Okay.

[00:02:43] David: I'm kinda like that with mustard.

[00:02:44] Erica: Where did is, don't be rude to mustard. What did mustard do for you? But

mayonnaise is just like oil and eggs.

Blend it together. It's disgusting and it smells and it looks gross.

[00:02:55] David: See, this is why you look like you and I look like me. See that's right there. Okay. Alright. So we've gotten to know you a little bit. So tell me about her collective. It's, is it's always capital her. I've noticed that when

[00:03:07] Erica: Yeah, I've just always made a capital. It doesn't stand for anything. I tried to think of a cute acronym one time. Her collective was really just the space that I wish that I had as a young woman in corporate America going up through the ranks because I think so many. Women graduate college and they get into corporate America and they've heard all these war stories.

They've seen the Me Too movements and they think this isn't gonna happen to me and my corporate crew is gonna be so different and I'm not gonna be held back by the patriarchy, and there is no system. And then they get in there and then they start getting these little things where they're like, wait a minute.

Like why did I just get passed over for that? Or like, why, how come this person got a bigger raise than I did when I'm doing all of the work? And I got very. A little bit of luck, a lot of hard work. I hustled my way to the top of the corporate ladder in hr. I was a Chief people officer and it wasn't an easy climb, and I, as a chief people officer, invested in a executive networking group for women.

It's called Chief, and I'm still a member and I love it, but it's $8,000 a year. So like you ain't gonna be in a membership like that unless you are already in the C-suite making some dollars. And I'm like, the people who really need the help are not the people who are in the C-suite making the dollars, they're the people who are trying to get to the C-suite. So I launched this collective group and I thought, let me see how this goes. And I invited women in for a whole year long container, and we meet every single week. We do executive coaching, they have access to monthly masterclasses. But then as the world really started to grow and evolve and as my work shifted more from just. Women's empowerment work, but to also stepping into AI and becoming an AI educator, I was like, there's a lot of ways we can ju up this collective with some ai. And so then I brought in and a lot of different AI technologies that would really help advance women's climb a lot faster and it would accelerate their climb up the ladder.

So they've got these very personalized and specialized agents in there that are tailored for women in corporate America. One is a resume rebuilder, and it essentially removes any gendered or soft language that women are more likely to use in their resume. So for example, they'll say, oh, I collaborated with David on this podcast episode when it's no, girl.

You led that. You led it. So it's forcing them to use the masculine language that gets picked up more so in the a TS tracking systems. And then also it will push them on KPIs and stuff like that. But there's a whole bunch of different agents in there to help them with that, and it's really just with the mission to get more women into positions of power and keep 'em there, which is what we all 

[00:05:45] David: So let me back up for a second, just practically speaking, see if I'm wrapping my head around this. So I am a new grad or new. New employee of a company that's your, that's who your target first, is that Right?

[00:05:59] Erica: could be anyone in corporate who's not in that C-level position, so

[00:06:04] David: could be high level or you want lower level peoples

[00:06:06] Erica: it could be both. And originally I targeted the people who were earlier in their career, but as I was targeting that group, I got more and more senior level leaders. And so it's really become this blend. And it's great because you've got. So many different generations in the workplace and we're bringing them also together in this collective.

But they share a lot of their experiences and their stories. But it's really ended up being a lot of mid-level senior level managers more which is perfect because a lot of those people have been in corporate for a while, they've had some success, but then they're just stalled and they're just like running on this hamster wheel and they can't gain that traction. And that's where we're finding a lot of our clients coming from.

[00:06:44] David: Okay, so I am a mid to senior level lady and working in large companies, does it matter or is

this is a big matter, but you're seeing more mid to mid-size to large. But any size,

Okay, and I am paying you a monthly fee. A yearly fee.

[00:07:02] Erica: we do an annual subscription because I price it insanely low.

[00:07:07] David: Okay. So I sign up for a year and is it in person? Is all virtual?

[00:07:13] Erica: All virtual.

[00:07:14] David: All virtual. Okay. And it's all over the country, or am I put into a cohort of a hundred people or 10 people or?

[00:07:22] Erica: Right now we have our meetings on Tuesdays at noon, and everyone is welcome to join there depending on. The day, I would say we usually get about 25 ish people who show up live. And then from there they can watch the recordings if they can't make it live 'cause they've had a meeting pop up or they're out of town or they have a client call. As we grow and scale, we will probably split out into either location base or just a certain type of cohort. I haven't really figured out how I wanna split that up yet, but we're not at the splitting up phase. The segmentation phase, I should say.

[00:08:00] David: Now if I know anything about managers, male or female. It is when I get to a certain level, I probably just want to talk to you 'cause I think I'm special. Is that an option? Do I, do you offer consulting of some sort to, to the people who are willing to fork out some cash or is that no. We do this as a group.

[00:08:20] Erica: So I will have one-on-one sessions if people need it. And sometimes you find that. Certain women are in a particular situation and maybe they don't want to bring it all to the group. And so in those cases, we will sit down and we will have a one-on-one session so they can opt up for a one-on-one session or even a package.

I will do one-on-one coaching, but that is very few and far in between because the bandwidth simply isn't there. 

[00:08:41] David: Sure. No, that makes sense. So what are you doing? I know you're an author and we could talk about that, but you're doing a Tuesday meeting. What is, what takes up the rest of the week? What is running her collective as it were? What is that day to

[00:08:55] Erica: Yeah I'm also a speaker and an author and all of these different revenue engines all feed her collective and then her collective feeds the other revenue engines of my business. And so when I'm on stage, I'm pushing her collective right inside her collective. Those women know they can bring me into their organizations, into the boards that they sit on, into their communities and stuff like that. When it comes to also, another avenue of my business is AI education. So I go into different organizations and I'll train them up on ai, get them all set up on either copilot, Gemini, I'll flush out their practices and get them going with a playbook so that everyone in their organization becomes AI architects, which is really a cool. Kind of term for people who are just like very AI focused. They take everything in their process and they figure out how can AI remove the routine and allow me to focus more on the remarkable work that creates her collective. So sometimes what I'll be doing is a lot of the biz dev. Stuff for her collective, whether that is working with leaders and figuring out our partnerships there, because I often act as just an extension of an organization.

People will reach out to me and they'll say, Hey, we want 10 seats for her collective, for these women, because then they're providing that support for an entire year. For their cohort, and it doesn't break the bank for them. So I'm working with those business leaders, or I'm thinking about my next topic, or we're getting the social media up to date, or we're boosting our ads.

There's so much that goes into running a business when you think about what I'm actually doing, interfacing with the people. It's one 10th of it, 

[00:10:28] David: fair enough. So you mentioned ai and what's interesting from I don't wanna assume anything, most people we speak to that are into AI are nerds like me, that this is my job is development. So AI and development are like peanut butter and

jelly. They work very well together. I don't gather, based on what you've explained, you are a nerd.

[00:10:49] Erica: I am a non-technical junkie, is what I'm telling people.

[00:10:52] David: So how

 It's interesting to, it's rare, Gary, correct me if I'm wrong, we have not had that very much when talking to people, they're all nerds. Everyone's interested in ai of course, but.

[00:11:03] Gary: yeah the most. Common use cases we've really gone into with AI is people creating systems that use AI and try to sell it.

People who are using AI then within their own organization or it's a lot of sales tools that we've talked about and stuff like that.

[00:11:20] David: that's true. Yeah.

[00:11:21] Gary: But yeah, early on it was like persona based stuff when people were trying to sell their AI programs Yeah. You don't hear about those as much anymore. yeah, no, we haven't really like real world use cases for the non-technical user is not something we've really discussed.

[00:11:37] Erica: yeah.

[00:11:37] David: let me dive into that a little bit. How does a non nerd

get into ai? How do, what does that mean to you? Because it probably means something very different for me, nerd, than it does to you. So what does it mean when you say, I am a super AI architect. Awesome. I'm good at this stuff. What does that mean to you?

[00:11:57] Erica: Yeah I'll tell you this first. Like I never considered myself a technical person.

[00:12:02] David: Sure.

[00:12:02] Erica: And I often joke like I married a technical project manager because I can't figure out how to operate my dang tv. And this is like my running joke, but I started dabbling with AI when chat BT first became mainstream I don't know, 20 21, 20 22.

But I was using it as a glorified thesaurus and it actually came out when I was writing my first book, glass Ceilings and sticky Floors. But I would be like, help me come up with a better word than collaborate, and it would give me 15 words and I was like, Ooh, I like that. Or I would say, help me write a transition here, because my editor would tell me I needed a transition. And I saw how much better that was than trying to go to thesaurus.com. Think about it, so I loved it, and I just started messing with it and playing with it from there. And I was in hr, so I continued down my lovely HR path, but I could see the speed in which it could help me spin up things for my side business.

'cause at the time I was a full-time chief people officer, so I just kept learning more about it. And then what's really interesting is I have a business partner who does a lot of these AI technical trainings with me. He's A CEO. And so my background is people hr. I was a chief people officer for so many years, so I understand. People and change management and all of those things. And I was having breakfast with my CEO one day and I was telling him like, oh, I created this agent and listen to all these things I did. And he's you're getting pretty technical. And I was like, ah, you're right, whatever. And he kept pushing me on it and he's I want you to be my co-host on this podcast, AI Voice or victim. And I was like, I have absolutely no background in ai. You know this, I'm not a coder. He's no, but look at all you're doing. And he kept. Forcing me to look at what I was actually doing. And so for me, I actually very much so had a limiting belief that I was not a technical person, even though I was doing very technical things with the, with ai, with the technology.

Right now, I can't code for BLEEP right? I don't know anything about all the coding degrees and I don't claim to. What I do know is how to work with the AI machines, and then I have become diligent enough to put myself through the certifications and the classes and create trainings based off of what the need is out there, which then forces me to use it. And I think what's interesting about AI is like you don't have to know anything about technology to be successful with ai. You just have to know how to talk to the machine. And I like to talk for a living. Okay? I'm a speaker, I'm an author. I have two podcasts, like I can talk. And so now that I know how to talk to the machine, it's like that is my lifeline. And so to answer your question, how does a non-technical person become this AI educator who's out here teaching technical companies how to get it into their organization? And the biggest piece is that this is a people. Management operation when you're looking at it from a corporation wide thing, right?

This is one of the first technologies in a very long time. I think since email, I'm gonna say it compares to email a little bit where it shouldn't be owned by it, in my opinion. I don't think it has the people skills to run this type of organization. And I say that with love and I 

[00:15:19] David: What is she saying? Gary? I don't understand. What is she saying, Gary? 

[00:15:23] Gary: most of the CEOs of these AI companies don't really deal with people too well either. It's like the scene from office Oh my gosh. 

[00:15:29] Erica: it really becomes this change management kind of exercise. And yes, you need people who are educated in technology and AI ENC coding, but when you think about it, it impacts every. Function of the organization and every role in the organization. And so that is a people function. And so I really believe it belongs tucked up under human resources, and I believe that it belongs tuck up, tucked up under HR now, but you know.

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[00:16:55] David: So I wanna change directions a little bit. You have mentioned a couple of times you are an author, you got one of your books hiding behind you. How did that come to be? Like, did you have the idea for you had her collective going on, you were a chief people officer. Where does a book fit into that?

[00:17:13] Erica: So the book was actually out before her Collective, and I wrote that book in the height of COVID when I was a full-time chief people officer in tech. We had gone fully remote, but it was a brand new role for me. And because we were fully remote, that means that meetings were multiplied. I was working 60 hours a week.

I was waking up at three or four in the morning to write this book. It was bananas. But the backstory to that is that I have this podcast that is. It's the same name of the book, glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, and it's all about shattering the limiting beliefs and the toxic behaviors that keep people stuck.

So that's imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, burnout, worrying about what other people will think of you, et cetera, et cetera, right? All those little devils on your shoulder that whisper into your ear and tell you all the things that nobody wants to hear, right? And that we don't say out loud. As I was having this podcast over the years, like these buckets and these themes just kept rolling out and back then the podcast was actually called from Now to Next, and it was just supposed to be about helping you to the next rung on the career ladder. And that's when I started calling them sticky floors and putting them all into these buckets and. I was just getting into the speaking business and understanding how that worked as a revenue stream when a really well known thought leader and speaker that I respected said girl, you gotta write a book. Like number one, you have all the content, you just gotta put it there, and then it becomes your credibility, like you've got this published piece of work. And I was never a person to say, I'm gonna write a book. Then I was like that little seed had been planted. And so I just started writing.

And then before I knew it, I had an entire manuscript. I ended up getting with a hybrid publisher. That's the route that I went so that I could get it out fast. I didn't wanna do the whole traditional publishing route, but it ended up working out really well for me. It got featured in Success Magazine, Mel Robbins ended up endorsing it, and so that got big name on the book, and that book came out one month after I quit my corporate job. Was how long it finally took to get out. But I quit my job, the book launched and then it was off to the races, and then three months after that was when I launched her collective.

[00:19:17] David: So I know nothing about books except I can read them. That's

about as far as I get. Yeah, that's a, that's something. And Gary didn't believe I could read. It was

[00:19:26] Gary: No, he listens to 'em. He's just trying to flex.

[00:19:29] David: He's just talking about, he's talking about emails. I don't ever read my emails anyway. There's a known thing. If you send me an email, I will re, I will answer either the first question you ask or the last, anything in the middle is gone.

and once you get to know me, you learn that very quickly Anyway, so I, and I preface all that 'cause I don't know anything about the book business. But does your book exist to give you credit so you can go speak? Or is it enough of an income stream all on its own like this podcast exists so I can meet people.

Literally, that's why we're here. I enjoy talking to people, meeting people, and networking with people, and that's how this began. Is the book a similar thing, is look, I got a book that means you should hire me to speak. Is that the engine that happens like.

[00:20:14] Erica: It is a big differentiator and a credibility driver in the speaker world. It really is, and I had no clue about that, but. When I got into it, I noticed that's who was producing all these books, and you have a framework and that's what you're speaking on. So you put it into the book. And I thought, okay, that's really interesting.

But in the world of social media where everything is out there, it's like you do have to have something that sets you apart. And you do get hired to speak on a lot more stages when you have a book. I can say

that from when you have author attached to your name, yeah, for sure.

Yes. And like my own experience being able to say, Hey, this book just came.

People are like, oh, really? Oh, and we can buy the book and give that as a giveaway for our people. Oh, yeah. And so a lot of my gigs, even almost two years after that book has been out, people still want to tag that on and be like, Hey, can we buy 500 books? Now your question about money making on it. So there's three different avenues that you can go when it comes to book publishing, right?

There's the traditional, which is like your pengu house, all that good stuff. There's hybrid and then there's self-publishing. In the height of COVID, everybody became a published author, right? And sure, you're a published author, but there's like different categories that you fall in, right? And so if you're gonna go the traditional thing, you've gotta do book proposals and they pay you a large amount of money upfront. And then you write the book and then royalties come in. But it's point. Oh eight, and so you really get all your money for the book upfront on that. When you go hybrid, you're essentially paying them to project manage your book. So they will help you find the editor who will do that for you.

They'll, all sorts of stuff. You can pay for however much you want or don't want, but for me, I was a full-time chief people officer. I didn't have time to figure out how to do this, so I was like, yes, let me just pay someone. They take it all the way through publication. And so you are paying upfront to have it done, but then you are getting the bulk of the royalties.

And so every quarter I'll get a check for whatever my royalty amount is that my book sold, and it could be 12,000, sometimes it's 2000, if I didn't have a big quarter, something like that. But I end up seeing more of that revenue. From the book that way. But when I first met with a hybrid publisher, he was like, what are your goals for this book?

And I was like first I wanna make the money back. I'm giving you 'cause hello. And he point blank was like, you will not make your money back in book sales. I'm just gonna hard stop you. And I was like, really? What? He's no, you will not. He's but you will make it off. In speaking revenue. And sure enough I did. Like you just need a couple gigs to pay that off and it really does land at credibility and the fact then that I got it into Success Magazine and into Mel Robbins, then it just becomes this snowball effect because people wanna pick up and piggyback off of those big names. So that has been my trick. I will say is for this book I have coming up, I went self-publishing route because I had learned so much about the process during my hybrid publishing. I still paid out a chunk to get a really great editor because I feel like you cannot scrimp on that, and I think a lot of self-publishers might do that. And then I went with a partner that helps you carry it through the self-publishing. And so when you interview those people and you find the right one, they'll help you with your cover design, getting it out there. And now I'm just waiting for the books to ship.

[00:23:40] David: So you've mentioned Mel Robbins. I feel like I should know this name,

but who is Mel Robbins? 

[00:23:45] Erica: yes. So for anyone who doesn't know, she was just an average little Jane like me, right? Except for she has this story where she was $800,000 in debt. And then she started her process of getting herself out of there. She wrote a book called the 5 4 3 2 1. She did a TED Talk and all of that blew up. And now she is just a motivational speaker, a self-help person.

She's got several books. She, her most recent is the Let Them Theory book. It's this green book. You may have seen it. And it's whole let them be whatever they wanna be. And then let me. Do whatever, but she's got the top rated podcast in the world. I think she won an Emmy for it. I think it's number one on all the podcast charts right now, but she's just a very big name world in the motivational speaker, self-help area. So she's, she, I, she's who I would aspire to have a career like one day, 

[00:24:38] David: fair enough. Fair enough. So I wanna come full circle here. So we talked about AI and we talked about your book. I met a guy who is a coach in this area. And while he was coaching us, he was like, I wrote a book for y'all.

[00:24:54] Erica: Oh,

[00:24:55] David: And what he does basically is take a lot of his notes and his coaches coaching stuff that he's done and he focuses it and has AI write a book. Is what happens.

And AI writes a book within a few hours

and then he works with the AI afterwards to edit it and make it sound more like him. 'cause he's not writing it originally. And he'll have a new book that's very focused and he'll do it in one day.

I can't say anything about the quality of the book.

His advice and stuff is amazing,

but I don't know if the quality of the book, 'cause it's AI is any good or not. But my question is do you think that the clout you got with. Writing your own book will go away because everyone's gonna have a book. 'cause they can all just do it. Now, it's not a matter of it used to be a big deal.

Oh, I can publish it myself. That took away that incredibly long process and that made anybody, could be an author. But now literally, I could put my name on a book today that was, is brand new written and it could become from all of my emails or all my transcripts from my podcast, right? As a cheesy example. And I could say, I have a book. Is it a good book? I don't know. Do I care? I don't know. But you, you can see where that's coming.

How does that fit, and do you think that changes things?

[00:26:10] Erica: that's why I think you have to have the credibility stack.

[00:26:12] David: That's 

[00:26:13] Erica: like you've heard me mention my book many times, so that's stack one. You've heard me mention Mel Robbins a couple times. That's Stack two. Must be good, right? I told Success Magazine, Hey Mel Robbins endorsed it. That's Stack three, right?

So when you start stacking it, so if somebody just comes up to you and you're like, I have a book, then it's okay, so what? Who doesn't? But then if you're like, oh, but I was in Success Magazine and this and this offer, then it's oh wait, tell me more. And so 

[00:26:37] David: you're a new author, what? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I'm just thinking you have those stacks. That's awesome.

[00:26:43] Erica: But I was a brand new author when that came out. I didn't have anything else sure. But in AI land, my question is just, I'm a lady who wants to follow in your footsteps and I want to write a book, and now everyone's got a book.

[00:26:57] David: Now I have to answer all of these ugly questions that you didn't have to answer because it didn't exist. So now they're like you have a book. Everyone has a book. How do you get Mel Robbins, for instance, to pay attention to when she's got now 10,000 people saying, look, I have a book. I'm

just wondering how much that changes things in a real way. You're, you came, it's so funny, it's just been a few years, but that's a huge difference between two years ago and now. Do you

think that hurts anything? Like your next book? You already, now you've already got credentials, so you're fine. But a newbie, are they in a really a pickle?

[00:27:31] Erica: I don't think they're in a pickle. I just think the game changes a little bit. Like I don't, and for example, yes, I have the credentials on that book, but I don't have Mel Robbins on that book. But I think you always have to remain relevant and you have to constantly be thinking about how do I stay relevant?

How do I put myself in the rooms with the people who can make me more relevant? Am I putting myself in the right circles because. It's not necessarily like I tell people all the time, and I know you don't know who Mel Robbins is, but I'm like, my work is not that different from Mel Robbins, like at all.

The only difference is discoverability. So you also, and that's where this a, we're coming back full circle now. The red thread is pulling through, like AI is the devil. We are going to all have to know. Is, how are we all showing up in answer engine optimization, like tools? How are we pulling up in chat GBT?

Because I don't know about y'all, but I don't ever go to Google anymore. Like I go to whatever and I'm like, Hey, I'm looking for an 11 year wedding anniversary for my husband. 'cause that's coming up. What's the gift for that? And where can I find it? Like I don't even go to Google. So

[00:28:39] David: even if you do go to Google, it's still ai. 

[00:28:40] Erica: correct, but it's just that whole concept of you have to be relevant with what is going on in the world and how that's changing and what does that mean for you and your business, right?

How we did SEO back in the day is totally different than how we do it now, right? So you just have to continue to stay on top of those things, which can be really frustrating as a business owner because again, like I don't consider myself techie, I don't know. Where to put metadata and what does that mean, but you have to know like, where is it best that I outsource my time, right? Is it, should I spend all these hours creating my own website for the book, or should I just hire somebody who knows what they're doing with that? I should probably just hire somebody, right? I spend my time cultivating the networking and the relationships and the people that will help drive the book forward. And so you do that constantly. You're gonna be in the right rooms with the right people getting right. Credibility.

[00:29:36] David: Nice.

[00:29:37] Erica: Can't say

[00:29:38] Gary: That reminds me of.

[00:29:39] Erica: Sometimes there's a little luck to it.

[00:29:41] David: Oh, I think that's true for every career ever.

[00:29:44] Erica: Yep.

[00:29:45] David: I don't care who you are. There is always, and I won't go off on a tangent, but I've always found it interesting when people refuse to say that when whatever they're successful in, it could be, cooking to tech, to whatever, and they ask, what is luck?

And they're like, I make my own luck. There are those people and I'm just like, I just don't, I don't we're not gonna be friends. It just that, it's 

[00:30:05] Erica: have to believe like in this serendipity of the universe sometimes because. Things just have to fall into place. And yes, you had to work to be wherever you are or not work to be wherever you are, but for all of these dominoes to line up sometimes, like when I talk about the credibility stack for my book, right? Mel Robbins doesn't do book endorsements anymore. Hard stop. Like her team told me that. 'cause of course, I reached back out and she was like, good. Basically they told me good luck or good for you that you got one a couple years ago. 'cause she doesn't do it anymore. So be happy with what you got. Fair point, right? But you've gotta keep thinking, oh, I'm about to lose my earbud here. So excited about life. I had reached out to them, then she was just joining the board of my publishing team, and I was interviewing with two different publishers, and I said, if you can land me this endorsement by Mel Robbins, I'll sign with you. So of course they got it for me, right? Because I was able to get that. At the same time, I'd also reached out to the success magazine about featuring me in something else. I was doing a completely different pitch and they were like, oh, we don't need that pitch, but do you have anything coming up in November? And I was like, oh my God, my book comes out in November.

And they were like, I was like, and it was featured by Mel Robbins. They're like, oh, perfect. Done say less. And so that was pure luck. Like I had nothing to do with that. Like we could say I hustled my ass off to get there, and I did. But I didn't orchestrate all that magic in the background.

[00:31:30] David: Sure. Yeah.

[00:31:31] Gary: But you were doing the reaching out to them to try to get them. Yeah,

[00:31:35] Erica: You gotta hustle, but you just have to trust that it'll work out for you.

[00:31:39] Gary: Now, Erica, we usually wrap up with the question three pieces of advice for a new entrepreneur, but you're in a position here where you can maybe be a little bit more specific and give us three pieces of advice you would give to a woman in a corporation, to move up the ladder.

Top three pieces of advice. 

[00:31:59] Erica: I think the first piece of advice is not accepting the BLEEP that comes your way. And there will be BLEEP, you have to know how to play the game, right? Like my biggest message for women. Living in 2026 where it's almost like we're going backwards in time. There's the trad wife that's all over TikTok BLEEP and things like that. And women are leaving corporate in droves. For every one woman who's promoted to a director, two women are leaving corporate America, right? Like we are hemorrhaging women in, in positions of power at this time. And so my advice to them would be, you have to play the game to change the game to win the game. And right now we are living in a world where there is a 132 year pay gap that is expanding. There is a leadership gap, there's a representation gap. There's a confidence gap. And so we can't win the game yet, but we can change the game, and so we've gotta get in there and we've gotta start doing that, even though it sucks.

And sometimes that means playing the game, and a lot of people don't like to play the game. So play the game would be one piece of advice. Knowing your worth would be the second piece of advice. I often tell a story about how I almost left a hundred thousand dollars on the table, but the fun piece about that is that I actually taught myself how to negotiate.

Nobody else ever taught me that. I did my own research. I wrote my own scripts. I figured it out on my own, and I went in and I was very ballsy, and I asked for a hundred thousand more dollars than what I had currently been making, and I got it. But I almost didn't. So knowing you're worth and asking for it would be number two. And then number three would be find your people, right? There's all kinds of kinds in the workplace, and there's gonna be BLEEP everywhere you go. And there's gonna be fabulous people everywhere you go. Find your people, fit in with them, do your good work, and as long as. You are aligning with your core values and you feel like you're doing good work, you're in a good place, and take everything for what it's worth.

Take your lessons, then climb on up your next rung of the ladder.

1, 2, 3. It's

[00:34:01] Gary: All right.

Eric, if anybody wants to learn more about you or her collective or find any of your books, where's the best place for them 

[00:34:09] Erica: so you?

can just search Erica Rooney on Amazon and you'll get both of those book links, but they're both a Barnes and Noble and book Ilion, or whatever the bookstores are that are out there. But I always just say Amazon 'cause everybody knows that and they can easily find it there. You can learn more about her collective@joinhercollective.com. And then if you're like, no man, I just like Erica, I don't need the whole collective thing, you can find me@ericaandersonrooney.com. But I will say too, I live here in North Carolina, so I'm on the East coast, but my other permanent address is LinkedIn and so you can always find me there.

[00:34:42] David: I understand that. We'll make sure we put all those links in the show notes too for everybody to Thanks guys.

thank you so much for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

[00:34:50] Erica: Yeah, I love it too. And David, this is why I started my own podcast too, is just to talk to people I wouldn't normally talk to meet people I wouldn't normally meet. And you know what? Maybe that's my bonus piece of advice. Get out there and start a podcast like this one. I.

[00:35:03] David: I heard an interesting stat just yesterday. 53% of all podcasts that have been generated in the last year have been AI generated.

[00:35:12] Erica: Yeah.

[00:35:13] David: L it's the notebook LM

from Google that is turning everything into podcasts. So

there you go. We're real. We're real people. Gary's not real, but

[00:35:22] Erica: Gary's not real. He's a hologram.

[00:35:24] David: robot. 

[00:35:25] Gary: No, I'm one of those AI personas.

I'm like her, but not

[00:35:30] David: But not not Scarlet Johansen. Alrighty, on that note, thank you so much again. We will be back next week everybody.

Have a good one.

[00:35:39] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's Wife. Yep. I finally took the mic or rusted it away from David. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software. This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel.

Want to connect, shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.