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Ep 46: What You Wish You Had Known at the Start of Your Career | Bonus Episode
67 Plays3 months ago
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-46
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Deanna Papedis on adopting a strategic mindset and keeping your eye on the big picture: 1:05
Hardeep Singh on congratulating yourself when you reach a career milestone: 2:10
Vineet Shahani on dealing with career lows and leaning on your communication skills: 3:50
Nguyễn Vu on establishing strong relationships with people who can move the needle on your career: 6:09
Sagi Eliyahu on knowing when the world is ready for your idea: 8:49
Connect with us:
Deanna Papedis - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanna-papedis/
Hardeep Singh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hardeep-singh-863b1617/
Vineet Shahani - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vineetshahani
Nguyen Vu - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nguyentvu/
Sagi Eliyahu - https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliyahusagi/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading CLM platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
00:00:11
Speaker
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00:01:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Do we have time for me to write a book about that? I'll buy it. this um I mean, there's so many things I wish I had. I mean, you know, if you have the foresight of what you're going to learn over this long of a career, right? I would say that, you know, when you're when you're in operations, you need to have you need to be able to scale. listen And I was very meticulous coming out of law firm life. Like I had to dot every I and cross every T. yeah When you're in operations, you just, you can't focus on that. You have to focus on the big picture, which is what are the priorities for the business? How are we gonna support our teams in order to to keep up? And in order to do that, you need to not be editing every I and every T. right
00:01:50
Speaker
And so I think if I had known that to be able to say like, okay, focus on the big things, you know, don't really kind of get in the weeds too far all the all the time, that probably would have helped me over the years. That's great. But I could probably come up with a hundred more things if we had the time. I think the first thing I would tell myself would be, it's a concept now I call ATOP, which is at your own pace, right? like I mean, one the thing that came to me, so let's everybody's everyone's running their race. Right. And and your job is to make sure you're finishing the race. Don't leave anything midway. If you finish first, that's great. But the job is to finish. And and the and the analogy that I drew when I was talking to one of my friends was, you know, when someone comes and tells you, you know, I just ran a marathon.
00:02:39
Speaker
The question that you ask them is not, did you come first? The question you ask them is, oh man, that's awesome. What time did you finish it? And when someone says I finished in two hours, the answer is mind blowing. And someone says six hours. I'm like, still mind blowing. Finishing a marathon is ah is a massive thing in and of itself. You don't have to finish it in three hours. So I think that someone would, of course, when I was young, I was, you know, I want to, you have a checklist, you want to do this, accomplish X, Y, Z, you know, by by certain time. And I think that for me was, I would I would tell myself that that you know just just relax things will happen at the wrong place just keep doing what you're doing the other thing for me personally was and I'll tell 23 year old me or like a younger me was money is not the goal. right Money is a great byproduct it is not the goal so I think that is something that.
00:03:26
Speaker
I realized at some point a failure early on in life so I mean a couple of years back failure which I consider failure early on because you know you hopefully live till 60 but I think that was a massive moment of just clarity in life that you know this is not the goal it's a it's a good thing to have there are a lot more important things you want to do in life and that should be the goal and once you start on something finish that or let let other things happen to you on the side You know, I think the thing about being young and enjoying success when you're young, you know, whether it's like getting into a school you want to get into or getting a job you want to get into is like you sort of feel like things are always going to be linear. Like there's going to be this just trajectory that you're going to follow and you're going to spend X amount of time doing one thing and that's going to lead to the next thing and then the next thing. And what you can't account for and you can't appreciate until you live it is that the market life like
00:04:19
Speaker
All these things that are not really out of your control, they just they intervene. And you'll have lows, like I've talked about. like I've been laid off from jobs. like I've had struggles finding jobs. um I've jumped into things that are at a stage where it's very unclear whether it's going to go anywhere. A lot of times, like you know only in like hindsight do you do you reflect on the fact that this is all part of like a journey and holistic and all that. In the moment, it's hard to do that. so Again, if we're like doing a hypothetical where it's like, what could you tell your younger self? yeah like I would say that those those things are going to happen because they happen to everybody. I think though the ways to deal with it is to... ah like One thing I did wish I did more is like verbalize it more, talk through it more with people, use... like At different points in my career, we didn't have things like LinkedIn or other outlets to be able to vent or
00:05:08
Speaker
Talk about your point of view to more people like use those things. I think learn from The like things that didn't go the way you want and and do your best to not have those things happen to you again um Take advice from people that have been there reach out to people like cold I mean on linkedin just be write a thoughtful message people will reply um And then I guess the last thing is just it sounds really corny, but like just ultimately like kind of have this deep belief that like you're a good communicator, especially if you're a lawyer. I mean, you're generally a better communicator than most people in the room. You have foundational skills that you can rely on and will lead you to good things. You can have that as a North Star.
00:05:49
Speaker
And it sounds a little hokey, but I think you just have to have that faith. And that's like sort of what I think is impossible to really have at a junior part of your career. But a person that's been through it will tell you that that's really going to happen. And it's really important that you kind of keep your head up and keep moving forward.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah, this is a this is a great question. I or so definitely earlier in my career, early on in my career, and perhaps even to this day, I thought that if I put my head down, I did the work, I did the work well, I would be recognized and sort of rewarded for that. You know, I've come to since come to learn that that's you only part of the battle, right? yeah ah You know, you have you had to have strong relationships with folks that can move the needle in your career. You have to do right or wrong, and perhaps this isn't the right term for it, but you have to do a little bit of self-promotion. Obviously not bragging, no one wants to hear that, but a bit of self-promotion. So I will say earlier in my career, I didn't get
00:07:02
Speaker
a promotion that I felt I deserved. and And when I asked about it, I was told the people that needed to approve the promotion didn't feel like they knew my work well enough. You know, again, I had assumed I only needed to do good work and my manager would sort of take care of the rest. and And I initially felt that my manager hadn't pushed hard enough for me. That was wrong. I later learned that my manager actually went to bat for me. He he tried. But the process, like like many other things in-house, required buy-in from others. And so I realized it was on me to make sure that key people knew what I did and more importantly, why it mattered.
00:07:45
Speaker
right so So no one really doubted the work I was doing was important, but they didn't necessarily appreciate my role and contributions you know to that work. so see So I learned that if i if i I didn't want my work to be that that proverbial you know tree that falls in the forest that but no one heaps, I needed to build better relationships with key people. ah who had who could have that impact on my career and make sure they understood what I did now. That's a lot easier said than done. And it is something I work on. I try to work on, ah you know.
00:08:21
Speaker
through through every job, you know, every day. It's something I have far from perfected, but it's at least something that I now recognize as, again, in in my view, important. And again, earlier in my career, it was just, I'm going to work, I'm going to build the hours, I'm going to do the good work and check all the footnotes, right? And, you know, that was certainly part of it, but that that wasn't the whole the whole picture. So that's that's something that I've definitely learned through the years.
00:08:49
Speaker
I would say two things. One, it's a known fact, but it it is, you've got to live through it to fully realize it is that timing concept. If you have again a new point of view or an a new idea or something you want to build, you're by definition early. Like ah if it's a common sense already, than you know then it's not there's nothing new there. So you're already coming with something new. So by definition, definitionian you are early to the market. The biggest important thing is like, how early are you? and you early Are you a year early? 3 years early? 10 years early? 20 years early? right and People talk about poor like market feed, they talk about a bunch of things. I find all of them good for some things, but sometimes oversimplifying it to an operational level of what you kind of need to do. People talk about talk to your customers early.
00:09:39
Speaker
but they don't talk about what you need to ask. And so I think to me that if you can try to focus on analyzing by talking to customers, by talking buy you know shipping early and fast stuff, to you know but what you're actually measuring is how far is your vision from the market is right now and how and how long before this is going to be the norm. That would be a very helpful tool in your decision making arsenal is is what I think. That's great. Thanks for tuning in to season three of The Abstract. Our guests span the globe from the US to Europe to Asia and job titles from general counsel to COO, executive recruiter to head of legal ops. Our guests are redefining what it means to have legal training and to be a part of the legal profession.
00:10:34
Speaker
That'll continue in season four, where we'll even have some folks on who are now CEOs or presidents of companies. Hope to see you next week when season four of The Abstract drops across Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, and on social media near you.