MasterStroke with Monica Enand & Sejal Pietrzak
Join tech industry mavericks and thought leaders, Monica Enand & Sejal Pietrzak, as they share insights and tools from their personal playbooks as Founders, Tech CEOs, and Board Chairs.
Conversations will explore strategies around leadership, navigating private equity, time boxing, micro and macro trends shaping the business landscape, and game-changing tech trends, such as AI and the need for transparency.
Season One features guest Hasan Askari, private equity founder and managing partner of K1 Investment Management and Merline Saintil co-founder of Black Women on Boards (BWOB)
Creator, Executive Producer & Managing Editor: Georgianna Moreland
MasterStroke with Monica Enand & Sejal Pietrzak
Courage - The Difference Maker; Thriving in the Age of AI and Rapid Change
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In this powerful episode of MasterStroke, Monica Enand and Sejal Pietrzak dive into the age-old debate of luck versus hard work. While talent and the willingness to hustle are common, they argue that courage is the true differentiator – the variable that separates those who reach their goals from those who don’t.
Courage, they explain, is about pushing through the fear of failure and staying resilient when faced with setbacks. Monica and Sejal share early career moments when the challenges felt overwhelming, but it was courage that carried them forward.
The conversation shifts toward AI and its transformative impact on the world. Monica and Sejal encourage a mindset shift—one that embraces this new wave of digital revolution. In a world that’s evolving at lightning speed, resistance to change only holds us back. Instead, we must face it with courage and curiosity.
This episode sheds light on AI’s growing role in our lives and how it’s accelerating the pace of change. AI is change, and navigating it requires adaptability. Life is about continuous learning, and embracing AI means leaning into the future with an open mind and a willingness to grow.
Georgianna Moreland - Creator, Executive Producer & Managing Editor;
Matt Stoker - Editor
If we look back a year to where we are now, the world has changed pretty significantly.
Georgianna Moreland:Building, running and selling multi-billion dollar software tech companies is what they do. They are founders, board chairs and CEOs in the software and technology space, leveraging artificial intelligence. They are wives and mothers. They are immigrant daughters. Join us as they share their insights, strategies, experiences and explore important issues shaping our world. Welcome to the Masterstroke Podcast with Monica Enid and Sejal Pietrzak.
Sejal Pietrzak:So the question, you know, if I were to summarize is is it luck or is it hard work, and how did we get here? So why don't we start with that question, monica, and what do you think for you, for you, and maybe not just for you, but just. Could it be also in general that we could talk about it, or maybe just your specific experience?
Monica Enand:Yeah, no, actually. Well, I think all the listeners who've reached out with their questions and comments and feedback we really love hearing from everybody and I absolutely have thought about this quite a bit and I think I've come to this conclusion that I think talent is in abundance, like there are lots of talented people in the world. In fact, I think there are more like everybody's talented in some way. So I think there's tons of talent in the world and I think the willingness to work hard, that's in abundance, like actually a lot of people who I see work long hours, hard work. What I find that is not as abundant and seems to make the difference between the people who kind of get where they want to go and don't. I would say it's courage. You know, I think when you think about talent and hard work, it's hard work is about consistent effort and I think consistent effort it's like table stakes, like you have to consistent, like there's nobody who just puts in a flash of pan, you know, in the pan of effort. I know that those are the stories we like to hear about overnight successes, or we hear these stories and we think, oh my God, then one day they woke up and an apple hit them on the head and they invented Facebook, or you know, that's not ever what happens and it never happens that quickly for anyone. It's consistent effort.
Monica Enand:I think skill development is hard work, like you know, especially in the world today where constantly skills are needing to be changed and upskill and you have to learn new things all the time. That's hard work, I think you know being a good learner, you know all the uncertainty that comes with change and I think, to innovate and to be creative, you know there's a fine line between stupid. A lot of good ideas sound stupid at the beginning because they are not heard before, and so, again, it's like you have to have courage to look stupid, like you have to be willing to look stupid, sound stupid because you're going to do something that hasn't been done before and most people are going to go. That doesn't sound. I mean, I can't tell you how the number of times people told me like that's not going to work.
Monica Enand:You know, and I think you have to overcome the fear of failure and be willing to just go. Failure is something I'm going to learn from and I'm just going to keep going and put yourself out there and be resilient in the face of failure and all of those things, whether it's you know, be willing to take a risk, be willing to look stupid, be willing to overcome failure, speaking up for yourself. All of those things I kind of embody as courage and I think that's that's in my experience in watching a lot of people in their career. That's the difference maker.
Sejal Pietrzak:You know I've got to agree with that. You know it's interesting because I was thinking about the same question and you know, interestingly, our very first episode was about being brave and and courage. You know, I think about the times in my career when it would have been just easier to quit or to leave what I was doing, because it got at times super hard, or at times maybe I didn't feel like I had I was succeeding as much, or maybe at times it felt like I was working 24-7 and I wondered is this worth it? I didn't have control over or manage over what I was doing at that particular time and what I've found is that it does come back around. It doesn't stay 24-7 all the time.
Sejal Pietrzak:It may be a project or maybe something that takes up a lot, but having that courage to stick with it and to try to see the light at the end of the tunnel and that it is not going to be like this forever, or having the courage when you might have a boss who you're like God, this is not the right person for me. Right. Having the courage to then make the change but stick with it through. Whatever it is that you know you're doing, if it's a project or whatever, but then having the courage to stick with it and then having the courage to stick with it and then having the courage to to move to something better or or different, I would agree.
Sejal Pietrzak:I think that there are so many points in my career where I looked in and I never probably thought of it as courage, thought of it as courage, but now that I look back and you know you saying this whole notion of courage kind of makes me think, yeah, it probably was. I was thinking it's persistence, right, but that's courage too. It is All of this. I guess it is true. I mean because it's easier to just give up.
Monica Enand:Yeah, I think with AI, it's just a matter of shifting your mindset and maybe being willing to be trained in a different way, just like anybody has done in the previous. Yeah, I mean, there has been innovation after innovation has done in the previous. Yeah, I mean, there has been innovation after innovation. The threat of that innovation is always scary, whether it was digital, you know. Whether digital to the music industry, to the, you know, to every industry, going digital has been, you know, a big, scary thing. I think the AI transition. Actually, we're more prepared and talking more about than we ever have in, whether you say the industrial revolution, or whether it was, you know, robotics or or just even when computers came in right.
Monica Enand:Exactly, and the digital revolution and the broadband revolution. I think, in fact, in this revolution, people are very openly talking about what happens and how do we reskill and how do we? And clearly this is going to be so largely disruptive. The one thing that you can't do is put the genie back in the bottle, like there's just no you know, once technology happens. I think the hard part right now is you're basically trying to navigate, learning new skills, doing new things, and it's so rapidly evolving that, as soon as you, you don't even know where you're going, because the if, if, widely available AI can replicate what you're going to learn today. I don't know what you, you know.
Sejal Pietrzak:You don't know what to learn because it's all moving forward so fast it's moving so fast, but, annie, you just want to try to stay ahead of it. I was at a event where someone was speaking about AI recently just last two weeks ago and he's been involved with software for 30 years and involved with you know. He created AI tools back in 2015, 2016. And he said in all of his years of being working with AI which is almost 10 years now, he said in the last 45 days, I've learned more and been seen more rapid change than in the entire nine plus years combined 45 days and so essentially what he's saying, since 2025 started, that was really I was, I think. Of all the things that I heard at that conference, that was probably the most eye-opening and remarkable. Really, in the last 45 days, more has been happening with AI than in the last nine and a half years combined.
Monica Enand:Absolutely, it's so. The pace of change is so incredible and the pace of innovation right. There was just this little step, like the knee in the curve, where everything starts to, everything starts to work and we start having applications and the technology moves so quickly.
Sejal Pietrzak:It's interesting to me that you know I always thought of AI as, oh, we've got to find ways to do. You know you see AI today with chatbots right and you know that's been going on for a long time right or on the phone, where you know an AI assistant will answer the phone and then be able to, you know, try to answer your questions, or a chatbot on the computer. But it's so much more now where I mean, you know, and a lot of people. What's interesting to me is that in some places like Silicon Valley and within tech companies, I'm finding that it's so much further ahead than what you know people. I was talking to somebody recently who said I've never even been on ChatGPT or any of the AI tools, whether it's perplexity or anything else and I said, really, you've never even played with it. They're like no, and I'm just so surprised.
Monica Enand:I was having a lunch with some older folks, people in their late 70s, early 80s, and they are using ChatGPT and they are using it regularly to plan trips, to write things for them, to explore and find things, to pick out what to buy.
Monica Enand:They're doing amazing analysis and it's the first technology that I've seen that kind of adoption. Yeah, there's going to be definitely a big difference between who uses it and who doesn't, but it's so easy to use that you know, anybody can. You know. I think that there's a point at which, with all technology, where it gets good enough that people are willing to accept it. And when you talk about having a conversation with a computer, you know we can all remember it's not been that long ago where you called the airlines and you had to repeat your name and repeat, or you called into a customer service desk and when you heard that voice answer you just had that feeling of dread. I think we're very close to the tipping point of where, if you hear a human voice, you're going to be like oh no, do I have to talk to a human?
Sejal Pietrzak:It's going to be flipped.
Monica Enand:It's going to be like oh no, it's so much quicker, more efficient for me to talk to. You know, my kids are not willing to call anybody for anything. They're going to figure it all out online and they're going to figure it all out with the.
Sejal Pietrzak:Oh, I don't like that. I don't ever like to call, if I can help it.
Monica Enand:Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a preference thing that that. But obviously when you do have to call, you know usually you can't stand. You know I start I, I. Whenever I call in, the first thing I do is go agent, agent, agent just to see if I can get the thing to get me to an agent. Um, you know God, I won't follow the tree, I'll just go agent, agent, um. But I think that now, uh, now it's gotten so good where you don't even want that and you don't even need or want to talk to a human You're going to. The speech is going to be so good.
Sejal Pietrzak:Yeah, I mean so much. I don't ever walk into a bank anymore. I don't ever walk in Even my groceries. I buy everything online and it gets delivered. Oh yeah, and so it's interesting, right. I can't remember the last time I went to go pick up maybe once in a while, but pretty rare that I go pick up takeout Like it just gets delivered, like everything is on one of those kind of DoorDash or Uber Eats or one of these, and so it just.
Sejal Pietrzak:I feel as if, in some ways, life has gotten easier because of that. You know, working and traveling and doing all that. I used to always say that you know, having the smartphones made working with children, being a mom, so much easier because I felt like I could multitask with everything, even when I was on a plane and having Wi-Fi on the planes, of course. But now, with AI, it makes things so much faster and easier. So interesting. It makes things so much faster and easier. So interesting.
Sejal Pietrzak:One of the schools that my son applied to for college this year. It's a tech school and one of the questions I think it was Caltech at the end of the application, I think it asked him did you use AI for any of this and, you know, I got to imagine 100% of the applicants had to have said yes, especially if you're applying to a STEM school. Yeah, but what's isn't that interesting, though? Like they're just making the assumption, and if you're applying to a STEM school and you don't use AI to help you with your application, that might actually be seen as a negative, right, right, and so I thought that was a really interesting question to ask.
Monica Enand:Sejal. It's interesting that we talk about courage so much and that we have talked about courage so much throughout this podcast, because I think this new era that we're all boldly going into whether we like it or not, let's call it the AI era is going to require a lot of courage from a lot of people.
Sejal Pietrzak:Yes.
Monica Enand:How do you see you know the the the rapid evolution of AI in our lives. How do you see that impacting people? And and how do you see the role of courage in that?
Sejal Pietrzak:Throughout our lives. We're going to start seeing AI and we probably already are impacting us. I see it in very positive ways and I think some people maybe see it in more negative ways because they're maybe scared of it.
Monica Enand:This AI era if that's what we're going to call it is something that we need to embrace because it's coming and it's coming. We have to have the courage to be willing to change and be willing to learn and embrace it and figure it out and try it and fail and, just you know, get in the habit of constantly learning new things, because that is absolutely one thing that is not going to change. As soon as we learn it, there's going to be more innovation and we just have to stay kind of ride the wave and it can be fun. Once you get over the, once you get kind of accustomed to the fear and getting over the fear of the new thing, it can be a lot of fun to see how many things are going to evolve and how they're going to evolve. I think the world is going to look a whole lot different 10 years from now than it does now that's really interesting to think about.
Sejal Pietrzak:You know how different will it look six months from now, or a year from now, or 10 years from now? It's fascinating.
Monica Enand:I mean, it already looks incredibly different if we look back a year to where we are now. The world has changed pretty significantly.
Georgianna Moreland:Thank you for listening today. We would love for you to follow and subscribe. Monica and Sejo would love to hear from you. You can text us directly from the link in the show notes of this episode. You can also find us on the LinkedIn page at Masterstroke Podcast with Monica Enid and Sejo Petrozak. Until next time.