Latest / Girl in the Game / Build Your Own Table

Transcript

Build Your Own Table · Girl in the Game

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you building a career, growing a business, or searching for your next big opportunity?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then this podcast is for you.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the Girl in the Game herself, your host, Gail Dickey.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, I'm Gail Dickey and welcome back to Girl in the Game.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: We've covered a lot of ground together in these first 10 episodes.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Opportunity, the pivot, relationships, hearing no, walking into the room when you're not sure you belong, knowing your value, reading the room, making the ask, all different parts of the game.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: But today I want to bring them together around one idea.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: At some point, you have to stop waiting for somebody else to decide when it's your turn.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you have to build your own table.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know you've heard the phrase get a seat at the table, and believe me, I understand it.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I spent a good part of my career walking into rooms where there weren't many women sitting at the table.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I was the only one.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Getting into those rooms mattered.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Being heard in those rooms mattered.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Learning how those rooms worked mattered.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what I eventually figured out.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Getting invited to somebody else's table is only one form of power.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Creating the table, that is another.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean everybody listening should quit their job tomorrow and start a company and order business cards at, say, founder.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Please don't do that.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Building your own table is bigger than entrepreneurship.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It means creating enough value, enough relationships, enough knowledge, enough credibility, and enough options that your entire future is not dependent on one person deciding whether you get invited in.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's freedom.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And freedom in your career comes from options.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: If one job is your only option, that job has tremendous power over you.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: If one client is your entire business, that client has tremendous power.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: If one person controls your access to an industry, that relationship has tremendous power.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if your entire professional identity is attached to one title at one company, what happens when the company changes the title or changes you?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: You need something that travels with you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Your reputation travels, your relationships travel, your ability to solve problems travel.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Your curiosity travels.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Your knowledge travels.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Your ability to walk into a room and create value travels.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is your game.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody can reorganize it out of you.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I learned this through a career that didn't move in a perfectly straight line.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in legal.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I worked as the paralegal, and legal led to studios.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Studios led to television.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Television led to syndication.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Entertainment collided for me with technology.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Technology collided with gaming.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Gaming collided with media.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Media collided with strategy.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then strategy collided with the world.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And each time I took something from the previous game into the next one, I didn't throw away what I knew.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just used it differently.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the reasons I keep telling you not to define yourself too narrowly.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: If your answer to what you do is only your current job title, you may be missing your own bigger story.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you really do?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you build audiences, maybe you sell, maybe you make complicated ideas understandable.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you connect people.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you see where consumers are going.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you know how to take an idea and get it into the marketplace.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Those abilities can live in a lot of industries.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Your title is temporary, your game is bigger.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where the first nine episodes started fitting together.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Opportunity matters because you have to reorganize the opening.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Pivoting matters because the game will change.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Relationships matter because nobody builds anything importantly completely alone.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hearing no matters because you cannot create anything new if your rejection stops you.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Walking into the room matters because sometimes you have to enter before you feel completely ready.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing your value matters because you need to understand what you bring.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Reading the room matters because your idea doesn't exist in a vacuum.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Making the ask matters because nothing moves until somebody puts the ball in play.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: But then you have to do something with all of it.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's episode 10.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to give you one distinction that I think matters.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: There is a difference between having a career and building a body of work.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: A career is a sequence of jobs you've had.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: A body of work is what you have actually put into the world.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: The ideas, the businesses, the shows, the teams, the relationships, the people you helped, the problems you solved, the things that exist because you decided to act.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's career goes exactly according to plan.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Mine certainly didn't.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: But a body of work starts telling a story about you that is much bigger than any one job.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: So ask yourself, what am I building?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not just where do I work?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: What am I building?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you do not have to be 25 to answer that question or to even ask that question.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be 40.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be at the beginning of anything.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most dangerous ideas we have accepted is that careers have some kind of expiration date.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: They don't.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: The game changes, your role in it changes, your priorities change, your leverage changes.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the most interesting chapter starts at the chapter everybody else thought was supposed to be the big one.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: As long as you stay curious, as long as you keep learning, and as long as you're willing to be a beginner at something again.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: That last one can be tough because once you've been successful, you get used to knowing what you're doing.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then suddenly there's a new platform, a new technology, a new generation, a new business model, and somebody half your age knows 10 times more about it than you do.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to them, learn, ask questions.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've never understood why people are embarrassed not to know something.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm much more concerned about pretending to know something and missing what's happening right in front of me.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Curiosity keeps you in the game.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Ego can take you out of it.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're younger and listening to this, the reverse is true too.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Don't assume experience is irrelevant because the world has changed.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody who has been doing deals for 30 years may understand human behavior, negotiation, timing, and relationships in a way no technology has replaced.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: The interesting stuff happens when those worlds meet.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's another reason to build your own table.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: You get to decide who sits at it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Bring in the people who challenge you, the people who know what you don't, the people who tell you the truth, the people who are generous with information, the people who can disagree with you without making it personal.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you find those people, keep them.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of the biggest misconceptions about success is that the person at the top did it alone.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody does.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there's one more part of building your own table that matters enormously to me.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Once you have access, use it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Open the door for somebody else.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Make the introduction.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Say the name of the person who isn't in the room.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Give somebody younger a shot.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Call somebody whose career has stalled and say, I thought of you for this.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't lose your seat by creating another one.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: You make the table bigger.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's the real point.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Girl in the game was never meant to be about winning at somebody else's expense.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's about understanding the game well enough to make smarter moves, to recognize opportunity, to recover when things don't go your way, to understand people, to take risks intelligently, to create options, and eventually to help other people do the same.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings me to what happens next.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: For these next 10 episodes, I want to talk directly to you.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted you to understand why I created Girl in the Game.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to give you some of the things I wish somebody had explained to me when I was walking into those first rooms.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't certainly have only one story.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely don't have all the answers.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So now I want to make the table bigger.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Beginning with my next episode, I'm bringing guests into Girl in the Game.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not interested in simply reading their resumes back to them.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can Google that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know about their game.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Who was the opening they saw?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: What was the no that nearly changed everything?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: What room did they walk into terrified?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Who opened a door?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: What did they get completely wrong?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: When did they bet on themselves?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: What did success cost?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: What do they know now that they wish they knew then?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe most interesting of all, what game are they playing now?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because the people I want you to meet didn't get where they are because everything went according to plan.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody interesting does.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: They adapted, they learned, they took chances, they built relationships, they made mistakes, they got backup.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And somewhere along the way, they figured out how to play the game.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the conversations I want to have, not interviews about accomplishment, conversations about how it actually happened.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I want.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I want you sitting at the table with us.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Gail Diggy, and this is Girl in the Game.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: If there's one thing I want you to take away from these first 10 episodes, it's this.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're not just a player waiting for the game to tell you what happens next.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can learn the game, you can question it, you can change your move, you can make the ask, you can open the door, and sometimes you can build an entirely new table.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Next time, there'll be another chair here.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't wait for you to meet who's sitting in it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you've been with me through these first 10 episodes, subscribe, like, and send Girl in the Game to somebody you want at your table.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you see the game differently, you play the game differently.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right, see you next time.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it for today's episode of Girl in the Game.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will be entered in the grand prize drawing to win a chance for a private VIP day with Gail Dicky herself.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to head on over to girlinthame.com to pick up a free copy of Gail's gift.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Submit your question for Ask Gail.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then join us on the next episode.