Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp
I help tech employees use their finances to create the life of their dreams by helping you take your financial confidence to the next level!Are you a tech employee who wants to learn how to better manage your finances?Working in tech you may experience extreme pay increases, which may allow you the ability to accomplish goals you've only dreamed of. However, if mismanaged, you can also find yourself stressed out and under pressure to increase your income in order to fit your lifestyle.The good news, is through education and a little bit of determination, you have the power to control your future and create your best life.Not only will we cover basic personal finance concepts, but we'll dive deep into tech specific benefits and issues that I regularly help my clients build strategies to maximize. (Examples: working for start ups, restricted stock units, stock options, and layoffs) Also, on a regular basis, I will have special guests that will highlight their stories with unique stories about their tech experiences.
Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp
Finding Your Influence with Stephanie Judd
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Stephanie Judd is the cofounder of Wolf & Heron, a company that develops experiences designed to empower leaders at all levels to be more influential.
Follow her story from her tech origins to helpings leaders and team members to be more influential.
- Dark Side and Light Side of Influence
- From CS graduate to the real world
- How she navigated the feeling of being underqualified
- The 9 sources of influence power
- Influence pathways
- Relationships being the most valuable currency
- Why storytelling is so effective
- Skills from tech that help her today
- Importance of finding community
http://www.wolfandheron.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juddstephanie/
In the day-to-day, what my job felt like was me sitting in a phase cube, in a sea of phased cubes, debugging somebody else's code.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. So not not as fun as that project.
SPEAKER_00Not as fun as my water fountain at all. Right. And I remember being, you know, I mean, I'm 22 at the time, and I'm thinking to myself, first of all, you know, I'm being a cocky little 22-year-old saying I'm smarter than this. And at the same same time, I'm I'm sitting there being like, is this really what life has for me? Like, is this what's in stuff in stored?
SPEAKER_03The next 40, 50 years of your working career.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness. And it was just so, it was so mind-numbing.
SPEAKER_03This is Techy Personal Finance Bootcamp where I help tech professionals in their 20s and 30s build a great life today without sacrificing their future possibilities. I'm your host, Lucas Cassard, certified financial planner and founder of Global Financial Planning, where I help educate, coach, and build strategies with my clients to help them take their financial confidence to the next level. Here's an important compliance disclosure. This podcast is for informational purposes only and not to be considered recommendations. Thank you for joining Tech E Personal Finance Bootcamp. I'm really excited today because I have a friend of mine, Stephanie Judd, is joining us. And I actually met her originally back at A Million Cups of Coffee. So if you're not familiar with that and you are either an entrepreneur or someone that wants to be in that entrepreneur world, you can look up online and see if there's a million cups near you. And we have one here in Fort Collins. And it was really awesome meeting Stephanie. She's uh one of the first people I actually talked to when I showed up to the first meeting. So since then, we've been a little bit connected with our businesses going in different directions, but checking in from time to time. So I think at the time, Stephanie, you were actually just committing full time to Wolf and Heron. I think you were doing it kind of partially with your normal job on the side. And now with Wolf and Heron, you're delivering experiences and workshops that are going to help leaders and organizations to be more influential. So what is it? Why is being influential so important for individuals and organizations? I believe you even like are talking specifically to the leaders of these organizations as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, lovely question. Um and yes, you're right. We just started in 2017. So we're now in our third year of business, um, and and feeling like maybe we're becoming an adolescent built business, maybe we're getting there, um, but we're having a good time along the way. Um, when people ask us about, you know, why is being influential so important, you know, it is it's always a really interesting question because the word influence is so loaded. And so whenever we start a conversation about influence, we actually do start first by defining it. And we say, oh, influence is the ability to affect how people think and act. And that in and of itself is actually very nuance agnostic, right? It doesn't, it doesn't have a weight to it in that same, in the same way that influence as a word does.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but but often then we have to kind of pull apart the the the nuances of what influence can be. And we talk about the influence spectrum, right? And we actually look at, you know, what what I would call maybe the dark arts of influence on the on the left side. Right. You know, where it's um, you know, blackmail manipulation, coercion, these are these are absolutely real influence strategies. Yeah. And yet they're not, they're not gonna have that they don't have staying power. And if you leverage blackmail or coercion on somebody, they will find a way to get out of that, right? It's a very short-lived influence style. Um and so and so then we kind of talk about the bright side of influence. We talk about, you know, what is what is interesting people, what is engaging people, what will inspire people, right? And when we start to look at the bright side of influence, then people go, oh, yes, that's totally a thing that I want. I want to know how to be inspirational. I want to know how to get people galvanized, right? And so that is where that is where we start to get some traction. Um, and and you know, if I come back to your question, you know, why is it important to people? I do think that it's because people want to know that they have they want to know that they have an impact, that they can have an impact, you know, and and and have an impact in a way that's positive and leaves behind some kind of legacy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's interesting too, like how you've been able to understand like the those dark sides, those things that are more abusive of how you could use influence, those things don't last, like you said, because they're they're very people will figure it out, like, oh, I was I just made a mistake because I let this person talk to me this way and influence me and this thing it in this particular fashion. But when you are having those more positive ways of influencing, you're actually tying into probably some of the emotional uh and you probably are activating and inspiring people. So it's when people are together and galvanized, it's definitely a lot more powerful than a team full of individuals that uh don't trust each other and aren't willing to work towards the same goals because they all have their own agenda. So yeah, there's definitely you can see that being a huge benefit to organizations and even you just being a like an individual on a team. And from my experience, I'm sure this is your experience as well. Like you don't have to be a designated leader in order to be a leader, correct?
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's what we love about, and I think that's one of the things that I find so powerful about teaching the tools and skills of influence and inspiration in particular to people who are maybe just individual contributors because it allows them to step into a kind of leadership that they didn't know they had access to. You know, a lot of us define leadership as authority.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like some type of title.
SPEAKER_00Right, some type of title. And when we look at influence, we actually talk about the nine sources of influence power, and title or authority is only one of them, right? There's like eight others that are available to people that they they just don't realize is available, and they go, Oh my goodness, I can do so many things through these other channels, even though I don't have a title, which is really very empowering for people. So that's always fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and yeah, it just opens up different avenues for you to to grow too. Um, because no one like we're on a podcast now, I and I know you've been doing some public speaking for a long time. So you don't start out naturally comfortable, at least most people don't, of like doing public speaking or taking that first step towards like a leadership role or trying to inspire or share stories. Like it's it's scary stuff for sure. So, like, how how did you decide personally that this was your your calling and something that you wanted to do?
SPEAKER_00Oh, geez. Um you know, it's interesting when I look back at my career, there's a lot of moments along the journey that that w had some kind of defining, you know, uh influence on me.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna use the word influence.
SPEAKER_00And uh and I think, you know, so if I if I think about it, okay, so first I was young, and being young is just frustrating when you're the workforce because nobody takes it seriously. Right. And then and then I was um involved in um a small grassroots environmental uh nonprofit that had no money um but was trying very hard to make a difference in the way that they could. And then I worked in Africa in public health, and again, it was, you know, it was just like project after project, job after job, challenge after challenge, where my dominant role was to get people to do something new, do something different, adopt a new technology, try on a new skill, right? And all of the every single time along the way, I kept finding these moments where it was like, you know, like I need to learn how to be better at in inspiring people, at influencing people. And when I went to grad school, I actually went to grad school specifically for um it was like a dual degree combo of an MBA and um a master's degree in natural resource management and the environment, with the idea that that business would drive environmental progress. Okay, right? And and then of course I had two internships during my three years at school, and both of these internships are like 10-week programs where you know you kind of put together a presentation and go, okay, this is what you should do. Here's the financial case, here's the business case, here's everything, all the reasons why you should do it this way. And then a year later I'd call them back and be like, hey, how'd it go? And both internships I got the answer, you know, we really liked your presentation. We loved you the thoughts you had, but man, change is hard.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I was just like, you know what? If I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna learn how to, I'm gonna make a difference. I want to first learn how to how to inspire people and get people to change. Yeah, and so I actually went to work at a consulting firm that specifically specializes in culture change and employee engagement and galvanizing an entire organization around a new strategy.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00So fun.
SPEAKER_03It seems like a lot of that was kind of out of that frustration, like, oh, like what the heck? What do you mean? Like, you didn't take my grade ideas. So I think that's how I operated a lot early in my career too. And they're probably even still uh to this day, like, yeah, you see, you think that you have the answers or you have like some great options, and yet people just don't want to accept those things, and it's frustrating as not being excited about these things, pouring your time and energy into these things.
SPEAKER_00And so, and I think I think if I if I look back at the the specific research that I've done on influence since then, right? Like I now look back on those days and realize how how myopic I was in some ways, in that I was very much like, well, I have the logical reasons why you should do it this way, so why aren't you doing it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00And I have I have the financial reasons for why you should do this, but you're not doing it. And and at the end of the day, people don't do things because it makes sense or because it make you know makes them money. They do things because they're emotionally compelled to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. And or their gut tells them to do it. And I didn't know how to tap into that part of a human being back then. And so naturally I was frustrated because the things that I was trying to do just weren't getting traction.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's awesome that you were able to kind of navigate that avenue and find a way to now you are having a huge impact. I know we'll probably dig into it a little bit more here in a second, but yeah, I know you're speaking with organizations, lots of people that you're doing these workshops for. So your message is being spread wide and far, especially as your business continues continues to grow. So uh we'll actually take this back because one thing I didn't know about you, and we started uh exchanging some emails just a few months ago, and uh, you actually do have a tech background, and so we're like, oh, you should definitely come come on the show. So tell tell everyone kind of that was that origin story of Stephanie Jedd. What did that look like? And and so we got a little glimpse of it there, but um, like how did you go from being in tech to where you are today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question. So I started actually, I did my undergraduate degree in computer science, and I actually loved studying computer science. I loved computer science theory. Um, I actually the track that I did when I was at school was specifically in computer graphics and you know, like fast rendering, which what you which is what you need when you're doing you know computer like video games, and then and then you know, photorealistic rendering, which is what you want when you're doing architectural designs, for example. And for me, there was something fascinating about modeling the 3D world and then figuring out the algorithmic kind of logic that would that would identify the light and the color so that you could depict it on a screen. Like that was so cool. It was so, so, so cool. And I remember in my senior year of school, the capstone project that I had to do was to develop a 3D environment that you could move around in and look and look look at different things. It's really just a you know, here's a showcase of all of the different things that we've learned about graphics. Yeah, and I made this super awesome water fountain that was like depicted on the screen. And what if you know anything about computer graphics particular, it's something called a a um particle system. And so you actually model every single particle along its own trajectory, and you have that particle kind of get rendered on the screen in a special way, and you could, and I had even exposed the variables like how much wind is there, right? And how much sunlight is there, and you could you could you know move these different variable kind of sliders and affect and impact in real time this this waterfall, and it was such a fun project.
SPEAKER_01So what happened?
SPEAKER_00Right, then I entered the workforce and and I was doing technology consulting, okay, which felt like a good fit because I had the technology sort of CS background and consulting was a good space for me because I I do have a lot of need to interact with people, and I wanted to be kind of I wanted to be traveling and I wanted to get exposure to a lot of different kinds of problems that technology could solve. And so it was a good space for me. Um, and yet in the day-to-day, what my job felt like was me sitting in a beige cube in a sea of beige cubes, debugging somebody else's code.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. So not not as fun as that project.
SPEAKER_00Not as fun as my water fountain at all, right? And I remember being, you know, and I mean, I'm 22 at the time, and I'm thinking to myself, first of all, you know, I'm being a cocky little 22-year-old saying I'm smarter than this. And at the same same time, I'm I'm sitting there being like, is this really what life has for me? Like, is this what's in stuff in storage?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the next 40, 50 years of your working career.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness. And it was just so, it was so mind-numbing. Because even though I was traveling and I was getting exposure to all these different projects and and and industries and how technology could solve problems no matter what, it was all super interesting. And the fundamental day-to-day activity of debugging somebody else's code just just drove me out the door. I was in that role for uh maybe two years. Okay. Um, and then and then I found an opportunity to go to Nicaragua. This is me trying to just like flip what's the other side of the coin. I've worked at a big consulting firm. Let me try something else. And I I went to this tiny little grassroots environmental nonprofit, and my role was going to be um like a technology process-oriented role. So my job was to help them codify their processes, they were growing from eight people to 30 people, and they needed to start to become more institutionalized.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they they appreciated my two years of corporate experience, and I appreciated the fact that this was everything that my two years of corporate experience was not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And yet I was still doing, I was still doing a techy kind of role.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um, and when when I left that job, I actually then went to, I was like, okay, both of those were two extremes of of one spectrum. Let's find something in the middle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I worked for the Clinton Foundation um in Rwanda. And that that role, it was in the nonprofit universe, but it had a lot more money, a little bit more institution underneath it, you know, it was like, we are a stable nonprofit. And that that felt like a nice, happy medium. And then my role was um to develop a software system essentially for the public health of the entire country to collect information about themselves. So the pub, you know, the Ministry of Health was trying to solve problems like, you know, let's let's get access, let's get vaccines to everybody, or you know, we want to understand what is, you know, what is the disease burden in a certain area of the country. And yet they didn't know because all of the information that all the health facilities were keeping, all the data that was being kept, was kept analog. And so the Ministry of Health, which is making decisions at a national level and trying to find funding at an international level, doesn't know what they need. Right. And so my my job was to basically build a system that would collect that information and analyze it and spit out reports that were useful and could help make data-driven decisions for the Ministry of Health. And so again, technology problem, right? And so here, and and in this particular role, I was basically building the software from zero. Um, and so I think in some ways I was way underqualified, way underqualified. Um, and in other ways, you know, they needed somebody who was young and hungry and willing to learn with them because there was a lot of learning that we all had to do in order to do that successfully. And so, you know, at least I had I had an opportunity to apply technology knowledge and my computer science in a lot of different environments and a lot of different spaces. Um, but but parallel to that journey was this simultaneous journey that I described earlier, where I'm learning, you know what, like I'm building this technology solution, but nobody wants to use it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. And I'm trying to, you know, implement this new process at this environmental startup, but nobody cares, right? Like nobody wants to do it. And so, and so like this technology track is happening, and simultaneously I'm I'm learning a lot more about my need to be a better influencer. Yeah. And that's why, that's why I went back to grad school.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so yeah, you get excited more with the actual people being able to act and not not give them the tool necessarily because they might not know how to use it or they might not want to use it. And definitely comes down to it with their their financial stuff too, right? Like people know how I bet you would be like financially successful. Well, you don't spend more than you make and and you save. It's kind of like working out and stuff too. Like you don't eat junk food and you exercise and you'll do fine, but it it's not always easy because that's not what feels good. That's not all the crazy kind of emotion and all the behavioral aspects.
SPEAKER_00Um absolutely, that's actually really good parallel. That's a really I mean, absolutely. It is, you know, we we talk, you know, I talk a lot about how knowledge is actually kind of lame on the universe of influence, like in the influence universe. Um, we we actually say knowledge is the ante to play, right? You need to have the knowledge, you need to understand the the environment, you need to have expertise in order to begin the influence game. But it that's where it starts, not where it ends. Right. And a lot of us are like, well, I told you that you need to exercise and eat right. Why aren't you doing it? Or I told you you need to stop spending, right? Why aren't you doing it? It's like, well.
SPEAKER_03And that makes sense too that like it's it doesn't knowledge doesn't really matter that much because you don't have to be aware of all these things now because Google, like you find out anything you want to know, but like what's actually gonna make you commit, commit, follow take the time to to learn whatever it is that you might have to to take the time to actually build that knowledge. But yeah, practically anything is at your fingertips. You might not be able to do like a successful brain surgery uh based off of a Google search, but most things you'll need on a day-to-day basis, you probably could. Um, and it's just a matter of whether you want the want, desire, uh, if it's right.
SPEAKER_00I mean, they talk like to to bring it kind of into a morbid fate this area, they talk about addicts, right? And addicts aren't willing to change until they've hit rock bottom, or however that's defined, right? And the idea there is again that like you know, you can tell a person a thousand ways to Sunday, you know, what they should do or why they should do it or how they should do it. And it's not until they commit personally that things shift, right? And so the true true influence is learning how to inspire others to commit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so what's there's the it sounds like there's like different spectrums, different ways you could kind of uh toggle the switches as far as leveraging that influence. What is there like a universal one, like a something like be be a nice person or be funny?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question. Um, so influence has two components to it. Um, the first component is power, and power is something that we can build no matter who we are, what we're trying to do. what our context are power is something that we can work on from from day one.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And that is what we have a lot of control over an agency. Although maybe your title is the one that people kind of it's the one we focus on, but it's also not all that important. But there there are nine sources of influence power.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And you can work and build any one of those nine and they really are situationally agnostic. Then the other half of influence is your pathway, which is the approach that you take or the specific avenue or channel that you use to be influential. And that can look like you know our everyone's favorite making a logical argument. That's everyone's favorite and yet that's really that's really just the baseline. You have to be able to do that. But that's that's pathway number one out of 10.
SPEAKER_02Yep cool.
SPEAKER_00And then there are there are other pathways like um appealing to authority. How many times do you have a little kid say to his brother, but mom said we have to do it. Right? Like that's an influence pathway where there where he's appealing to the authority of mom. Yeah right or or um you know the most inspirational pathway of all is to lead by example.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And to live with full integrity right in in in the channels that you're trying to you're trying to influence in others. So so pathway is very contextual though. It depends on who you're trying to in influence it depends on what you're trying to influence them to do. It depends on the relationship that you have with somebody you know it's like there's so many factors that go into choosing what is the right pathway. And frankly you probably have to try all 10 before you figure out which one really works with that person. Yeah unless you get lucky and the first couple unless you get lucky um but I will say the dominant currency the dominant currency of influence is relationships. And so if you can be if you can be a friend if you can be a a colleague if you can be a human being that is relatable that is authentic that has integrity that is what makes a difference like most that's the biggest thing that you can do to really influence your ability to have to have influence.
SPEAKER_03What's crazy and I don't know if it's just from just me being like growing in my career or just being more exposed to things throughout my career but these things like storytelling and authenticity I don't I don't remember hearing these things like more than four or five years ago. Like where how come all of a sudden people are figuring this stuff out was there like some recent study that you're aware of or that's a good question.
SPEAKER_00You know I think it's been I think it's interesting I I do think that the cultural fabric of the country is shifting. You know as as we become more politically polarized and simultaneously there's this rise in in mindfulness and meditation it's like this weird kind of dichotomy that's presenting itself. And I do think that we are starting to you know that I guess there's also this trend in you know high performance and and like who like being your best self.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and like all of this is kind of it's illustrating or bringing to the surface this desire to to influence ourselves and influence others and be be you know a leader in whatever way that means right it's like I do you want to advocate politically or do you want to you know bring people together or do you want I mean anything it's like I think there is a conversation that's happening even though we don't yet necessarily use the words influence all the time there is a conversation that's happening around how do we impact people and how do we how do we impact ourselves frankly I actually went and got myself trained as a life coach and all of that training was like how do you how do you work on yourself right and so did it help you personally well like or is it is it something absolutely absolutely and I mean and it was totally relevant to to my work in the in the world of influence because it all is connected you know and when I think about um you know storytelling you you mentioned storytelling specifically storytelling is communication it's a it's a style of communication communication is an influence power source and so if you can and we actually talk about communication is not just about getting your words and facts across it's about being compelling and it's about being effective and and having a compelling and effective communication style is a lot harder than just a bullet list on your PowerPoint. Right? Right storytelling is a pathway that leverages the communication power source and storytelling lives in the universe of inspiration instead of you know of the like on that influence spectrum. And so storytelling is an inspirational pathway that leverages a power source. I mean it's like it is it is such gold when we think about influence and so it's not surprising that storytelling is becoming a hot topic.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yeah I've the storytelling it makes a lot of sense from that inspirational standpoint uh tapping into people's emotions and and like I've just noticed that's why I wanted to do podcasts and have guests like you on here is like I really enjoy listening to podcasts and understanding like this person's different for me but then like you'll hear these things and you're like oh like that's really cool. Like I can totally relate to like this part of it and then kind of feel connected kind of feel inspired and and and driven to be like oh yeah like there's more to like the world than what we realize and you only know that by talking with people and starting to hear different stories and and it's fine too like hanging out with the same people and your same friends and whatnot. But those stories get told over and over you don't get as much uh from them but when you're able to like tap into people like outside of your normal comfort zone, your normal social circle like that's where you can grow and expand in however way you want to do it. You can do it from a career standpoint from a personal growth standpoint. And I'll I'll have to hit you up outside of the show just wondering about that the life coaching aspect because that's something like I really do enjoy like helping to like motivate and be more inspirational. Like I'm like 99% like a positive person regardless of what what the situation I'm like oh like and and I think it would apply towards like my business other than obviously like the show and the other content I produce that like it'd just be so nice to kind of similar to what you said and maybe I just have to take you up on your workshops and stuff too where it's like I want to make sure that all the time I'm investing in the background like on the the the strategy guides I'm creating for my clients for the research I'm doing that all that hard work that I'm doing that it's not for nothing that people are able to use it and then want to implement it because of uh the influence however I'm gonna have to look into your your services for sure and see how I can map those things in because yeah it's still a pain in the butt. Luckily my clients are all great so that's everyone that wants to work with me actually is very committed to to moving forward. But I still feel bad for the people like I'm not able to help especially when I know like they share with me their situation. I'm like oh man like we need to get this straightened out or you're just gonna keep going down this slippery slope.
SPEAKER_00And so like those are the people I really want to figure out how to to help them when they don't even know but um well it's interesting I mean it it there's so many thoughts that come to my mind when you talk about that. I think you know I'm sure you know how important your relationships are to the success of your business. For sure yeah you know your business like of course the currency is relationships even though you're talking about money right you know yeah the money is that's just secondary. I mean people have to they have to trust you they have to like you they have to want your advice they have to be they have to believe that you have their best interest at heart like all of those things are important and they're they're have nothing to do with with the money that's moving you know yeah yeah yep and and even with the money that goes into like their relationships their relationship with money their relationship right because of how they interpreted how their parents use money or their grandparents like they've had all these different relationships that impact how they use stuff and and sometimes like oh yeah like we always go out to eat that's our thing so that's why we spend all of our money like doing that right you guys can probably have a good time without eating out every single night like right you know it's it is it is interesting. I actually I had to do a lot of work with my relationship with money when I went into entrepreneurship. Yeah yep that's a good you could do it beforehand it's part of the time but um yeah as long as you're able to do it and make your business survive and relationship survive uh yeah definitely good motivations to have those money conversations right especially because I'm like I just want everybody to know like hear my message come for free come for free and then two months later I'm out of business right so it's it's been a really interesting journey for me to to think about yeah my relationship with money and because I also have a business partner you know we're also navigating her relationship with money and how do we how do we price things and why do we price them that way and what do you know what are we trying to do and and do we want to pay ourselves this month or not? Right? Or you know like do we want to use the money to reinvest or like so many different things that we have to think about. And it's it's yeah no for sure.
SPEAKER_03Well and and your your emotions and your behavior come into play because there's so many ways that you can talk yourself out of doing one thing or another or tricking yourself that you should invest in the business but it's something that's not actually going to add any benefits to the business. Like there's so many ways that your your thought process and behavior around money.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well and well I was gonna just say the the other thing that comes up then is that I become so aware of how my decisions are made right they're not logical. It's all just gut. It's all just emotion. It's like this is what I want to do you know and and man I don't know how many times I finesse the numbers so that it tells the story I want it to tell.
SPEAKER_03Exactly yep and that's the thing that a lot of people don't realize is like unless you inject something that is external you already know the decision you're gonna make before like before you vocalize it.
SPEAKER_01It's so true.
SPEAKER_03Yep and so and and that's sometimes even vocalizing it actually helps you be more logical because now it's not all in your head like you're having this internal struggle with yourself where if you say it out loud to someone well now there's some accountability factor and that's that's definitely where I'm able to help from a relationship standpoint of like hey they're paying me but that doesn't necessarily matter unless they're feeling like they have some type of accountability to that relationship and make progress between mediums and things like that. Yeah perfect so obviously you've um honed your skills and crafts of public speaking and influence and all these things has how have you used like that tech background to like leverage your work now with Wolf and Heron because um it sounds like you were doing like the different consultancy and so all that stuff meshed really well back then and now you've had all these different changes in your path and and you've been running Wolf and Heron for three years now like how if and if in any way at all did those skills transfer over to how you're able to help people now so yeah that's a really good question.
SPEAKER_00So first and foremost the obvious thing is that when I'm talking to tech clients I have some credibility. So we've had clients like Facebook which is amazing and even you know smaller companies like Indiegogo and really small companies like Pixfana these these are companies that are all in the tech world and and my technology background especially as a a woman in tech just makes me feel comfortable in front of that audience and it makes me also just show up in a way that they are open to receiving me. And so that that's like the obvious and first thing that I would say. And I think you know yeah I can speak some of their language. I am 15 years out of date at least but at least I can speak some of their language. But then if I think more holistically about the skills that I developed in computer science as a major and then in the roles that I had right out of school there's there's a couple things that I hold on to that I think make me successful as an entrepreneur and and as a as a you know teacher of influence. And so the the one is just I have an analytical brain that likes process. Right. And I don't know how many entrepreneurs I come across especially entrepreneurs that are um in the creative space who like who have a lot of trouble with beginning middle and end process. Right and and being able to think about and preconceive of a process and then follow through on that with my clients is a really powerful skill. Right? It's just like project management 101 right which I learned which I learned because I was in tech um and and I know that you can learn it in a lot of different ways but that that like I remember learning project management when I was a in um in that technology role right out of school. And then the other one that I would probably point to is is just straight up problem solving.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know when I was when I was training in computer science and beyond I mean man problem solving is it just as a business owner for sure. Yeah as a business owner as a client relationship manager as a you know oh crap we didn't print the right materials now we have to solve the problem in the next 45 minutes like all all of the things right it's just you know and and I think again if I think even when I think about the ways that my business partner Kara and I work together we are actually very much like we have a problem what is the process we're going to use to solve it is the first question. And then the second question is okay let's like what do we need to know right but we're very processed problem solver people.
SPEAKER_03Were you always like that from like the beginning of the business or was it like early on it was like oh crap like what if like we're gonna go out of business or it's like oh nope we just need to find out what the the solution is to this problem what the process is going to look like to to get that end result.
SPEAKER_00Um I think you know Kara and I both had the the seeds of those skills. I think they've been honed for sure by being an entrepreneur and we and maybe elevated to the point that we have an articulation about it whereas before it was sort of a subconscious thing that we would do. Yeah that makes sense but but absolutely I don't think we would have survived even as long as we have without already having a lot of that strength behind us.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. Yeah so one of the things you mentioned when you're talking to these tech companies just being a woman having that women in tech background was that something I know I see like a lot of great organizations and just community with women in tech these days I know your tech experience was earlier 2000s is that accurate oh yeah oh yeah what was that for you did those communities exist?
SPEAKER_00So it's interesting because I have heard the statistics actually that there are fewer women graduating with a computer science degree now than there were when I graduated whoa for real that's that I don't know don't quote me on that like I don't know if that's true but when I talk to women they say oh it was so much better back then than it is now and and I don't like whatever I don't know what I do know is the optics of it which is that I do I agree with you I see women in tech support everywhere now right I see women who code I see you know I see I see like Google women you know there's just like so many women's groups within companies you're right even within companies like there's just so many women's groups and so many support systems built and and I get hired as a as a as a learning and development person to come in and train women in tech. Like there are there's there's funding for it. Like that did not exist when I was when I graduated and I actually remember I mean my first role technology consulting consulting is not specifically male dominated technology consulting maybe a little bit more so but I I have this vivid memory of being on a project in Austin and flying down Monday to Thursday every single week to a team of 45 people and there were two women right it's like we were so few and far between and then on top of that because we were coming out of the um the dot-com bubble like the economy was like crawling its way out of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s and so the company when I when they hired me I was the first hire in nine years what the and so I was nine years younger than everyone else yeah at least right and so I'm 22 the next youngest person is 31 right and so and I'm just so I'm so isolated.
SPEAKER_03I'm the I'm like the only woman on the team the only person in their 20s on the team I I I yeah it was a bad fit well and at least if anything it kind of helped move you in the direction of where you're at now which I know you just kind of love in life and and the value you're able to add in people's lives. So yeah everything tends to happen for a reason. And I'm really it's awesome though that the woman in tech is I'm happy for just now um because yeah it helps give a voice to something where a lot of people didn't always feel comfortable or feel like they had the community which I feel like the I've found a little bit of a community for advisors like me and financial planners like me where like I had the same experience. Obviously I I'm not a woman and and that wasn't the the situation I was running into but I'm like a Mexican young young Mexican guy going to a financial advising where it was all old white people and they were all dressed the same I came like in a I came in a dress shirt but it was like a bright red dress shirt. Oh yeah like no one wanted to talk to me they thought like I was someone's kid or something like there's been a few times where they thought like as a server and stuff too like it was crazy that similar to the tech industry and and yeah its diversity issues.
SPEAKER_00I mean there's so much power in community yeah yeah you know and being able to find community wherever you are find your tribe is like what will hold you to a place yep you know and and like when I was in that role I couldn't find my tribe and so I left right and I and I wandered for a long time. And I and like absolutely that is that is so real. And so I do I do laud and uplaud the the organizations that are out there now trying to provide community in in ways that they can.
SPEAKER_03Yeah it makes it makes such a big difference. Yeah and and since then I've found an organization that has people that have the same kind of mindset as far as how they feel financial planning should be and and yeah I don't feel out of place like I did then but it definitely pushed me like it pushed me out of like one end of the industry. I had to figure out like where do I actually belong because that that was clearly not it. That was more of that commission commission sell stuff even if you don't even understand how it works as a and and definitely that dark side of the influence too is what they were teaching at those conferences a lot of times it wasn't that long ago it was like six seven years ago. And so it still exists yeah yeah perfect so I know with the the closing of this I want to um I know that you have different events I don't know if they've already passed unfortunately for this episode um this is probably gonna come out like a month or two after we recorded it is there anything like more you can out from now that you can share with people as far as an event that they might want to attend and so we did just launch public events okay which is just kind of awesome.
SPEAKER_00And so now we have a plan to do an event in you know an event somewhere in the country at least once a month. So far we've been doing sometimes two or three and we're we've been lucky to even book some events in Europe which is lovely. We're super excited about that. I would say you know I we do have a workshop coming up in two weeks. That's not relevant for this podcast but we have we have one coming up again in Denver at the end of January and then another one in May that's probably going to be in Boulder. We don't have the details sp like worked out yet because we're still looking for a venue um but you can find information about the events that we offer to the public on our website.
SPEAKER_03Yeah what what's your website?
SPEAKER_00Our website is wolfandheron.com that's W O L F A N D H E R O N dot com just like the two animals yep yep and I don't know why that reminded me of like some like law office commercial or something like you know we have gotten that many times where people are like are you guys a law office because for some reason Wolf and Heron feels like a law office. It also I think could be a British pub.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah yep it wasn't necessarily a name it was the uh like how you were like wolf and heron well we've had some confusion some people don't they don't hear it right and they they don't know how to spell it so that's why we spell it out now. Yeah so before you take off from this episode today is there like one thing that you kind of can look back on and say that like if you if you could share this information with anyone like what would that one gold piece of information be? Ooh anyone anyone or people in tech or entrepreneurs or if you had one single thing to say to someone only one golden nugget?
SPEAKER_00Yeah um well then I would probably lean probably on our content um and say that there are a lot of ways that you can inspire someone else and if you feel like you have no agency right now that's not true. There's a lot of tools and skills available to you that you can build and leverage right now even if you're only 22 even if you're only if you feel like you don't have powerful people in your corner there are a lot of things that you can do that will help you become more influential and have the impact that you want to have.
SPEAKER_03Awesome that that is truly an awesome nugget so I'm glad that I put the pressure on you. Awesome well thanks for coming on the show today Stephanie and yeah I just know that there's gonna be a lot of people that really enjoy this and find a lot of value in it. Well thanks for having me thank you for listening to PsychPersonal Finance bootcamp remember if you like what you've been hearing to subscribe review and share with your friends and colleagues I'm also still taking suggestions for future episode topics and guests. If you want to take your connections to the show to the next level you can find me on LinkedIn or on Facebook Techynext at PsychePersonal Finance Bootcamp.