Ungovernable Women with Portia Mount
"Ungovernable Women" (formerly The Manifista) dives into the lives and careers of extraordinary women who have redefined success on their own terms. Each episode offers a glimpse into the journeys of trailblazing women who dare to lead audacious, purpose-driven lives and the lessons they learned along the way.
Ungovernable Women with Portia Mount
Startups, Scaleups, and Transformative Leadership with Jabu Dayton
We talk with Jabu Dayton, Chief People Officer and HR consultant, about her career experience in tech startups. Her candid insights reveal how embracing confidence and assertiveness can help women, especially, overcome imposter syndrome and make meaningful strides in the tech industry. Jabu shares personal anecdotes about the startup world, shedding light on the importance of advocating for fair compensation and legal compliance - essential tools for overcoming missed opportunities and achieving equity in the workplace.
Have a question or comment? Email us at ungovernablewomen@gmail.com.
Book mentioned in this episode: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss.
Portia Mount on LinkedIn
Tiffany Waddell Tate on LinkedIn
Jabu Dayton on LinkedIn
Jabu Dayton’s Website
Hi, I'm Portia Mount, creator and host of Ungovernable Women, formerly the Manifesta Podcast, the lifestyle and career podcast for aspiring women. Our new name reflects our mission to reach even more listeners with stories of women who are breaking boundaries and redefining success. I have a favor to ask you, if you haven't done so already, please rate and subscribe to the pod. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, it boosts our rankings and helps more people discover us. Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to Season 5 of Ungovernable Women, the career and lifestyle podcast for aspiring women ready to break barriers. I'm Portia Mouw and I'm thrilled to be back with my co-host, tiffany Waddell-Tate, ceo of Career Maven Consulting. We've got a new name, but our mission remains stronger than ever helping women find their purpose, lead high-impact careers and meaningful lives. This season, we'll bring you the stories of women who forged their own paths to success. It's our time to shine. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Ungovernable Women pod.
Speaker 1:Today, we are diving into the world of tech startups and scaling companies with a true industry insider. I am thrilled to introduce Jabu Dayton, a chief people officer and advisor who's been instrumental in shaping some of the most recognizable names in tech. From the early stages, jabu has been at the forefront of building and scaling company cultures that drive success. Her journey as a Black woman in tech exemplifies what it means to be ungovernable, persistently innovating, advocating for change and paving the way for others in an industry that's historically lacked diversity. Jabu's insights on startup culture and scaling companies are invaluable for anyone looking to make their mark in tech or build a company that stands the test of time. Let's explore the world of startups, scale-ups and transformative leadership with Jabu Dayton.
Speaker 2:Jabu welcome to the pod. Thank you so much, Portia and Tiffany. I'm so happy to be here with you.
Speaker 1:We are delighted to have you here with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so pumped to have this conversation, especially because you have been on the leadership team of quite a few big name startups that we all know and love from their early stages. So I'm really curious about what drew you into the startup world and how has your perspective on startups evolved over time.
Speaker 2:Great question, tiffany. So I was not drawn into the startup world. It was 2010. And I was leaving my company that I had started a little company in South Africa. The company had not done terribly well and I was making my way back to the United States and I knew only a couple of things. I did not want to go back to retail I had been working in corporate retail and I did not want to go back to Seattle Washington and that's about all I knew. I didn't know where else in the States I was going to live. I didn't have a clear idea of what kind of job. I thought I was done with HR completely. I was so done with HR. I did not want to do human resources work again ever.
Speaker 2:And lo and behold, a friend sent me a link to a company for housing purposes only and it was a place where you could rent short-term rentals and it was dog-friendly and I had a dog. So that was important and I went back. I just decided I was going to check that out. But as I was checking it out, I started looking and reading about their culture and I was blown away. They could bring their dogs to work, they had equitable benefits and some work-from-home benefits, things that at that time were really progressive and very different from the corporate experience I'd had prior.
Speaker 2:And it captured something in me and there was only one job that I sort of could see myself in. It was called a customer service strategist and I had been doing customer service for the previous, you know, 15 years. I figured I didn't know exactly what tech was and I didn't know if I would fit in. I was pretty sure I'd be the oldest person there and I was not wrong. Their interview process was so bad it took three months to hire me and you think, oh my God and 20.
Speaker 1:So they needed you, they needed you.
Speaker 2:They desperately needed you. And 20 interviews. And what they didn't realize was, while they were busy interviewing me, I was interviewing them. By the end of that 20 interviews, I knew exactly what they wanted to hear. I knew exactly what they were looking for. I knew the whole company, because the company was only 30 people at that time. So it was a crazy experience and now, when I look back at it, I was 41 years old. This job that I was applying for didn't even have a title. So there was that voice in me that was like oh, I should be director level, I should be VP level. This is bananas. But I loved the company, I loved what it stood for at the time and I thought that this was a real break for me and I really knew that I was smart enough to figure the rest out, or hoped that I would to be honest, I was quite scared.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of imposter syndrome, so I'll stop there. But yeah, I love that you talk about imposter syndrome, being a little bit scared and not knowing all parts of the job. I have heard you say numerous times in our other conversations that women need to channel their inner white guy. And let's be candid, there are a ton of white guys in tech. Right, it's getting more diverse, but the preponderance of tech are still primarily white males. Maybe South Asian males might fall second behind. But what do you mean by that? Because that's always kind of stuck with me.
Speaker 2:Yes, contrary to popular belief, white men can be excellent profiles for us to observe behavior, confidence, ability to just walk in a room and own the energy, ability to talk and give opinions about things that they don't actually have experience in. And I'm not even trying to be funny. What are you?
Speaker 1:saying Jabou, wow, I'm leaning in, I am leaning into this, please do share more.
Speaker 2:They have things to teach us as Black women and any type of women actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, I want to say also it was white men that gave me the breaks that I have. Most of my clients are white men, so we have no problem with white men. But what I needed to learn was, instead of feeling left out of the conversation, how to integrate myself into the conversation, whether I felt invited or not, whether I was scared or not, whether you know, I think a lot of times, you know, and again, I was a grown person, I was 41. I was waiting always for somebody to invite me, welcome me and, like Jabu, we just really want to hear what you have to say. And that's not how my experiences were for most of my life or most of my career. And you have to not care, and I would use stronger words if this were not your podcast, but- you can.
Speaker 1:You can use any words you want. No, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You have to not give a fuck what anybody else thinks. And that does not mean you don't move with grace or love or you know high vibe, but you have to move into that room and own it and when it comes your time to talk, you need to talk. And you know those. Those muscles only get developed by, by using them. But while you're trying to trying to use them and get warmed up, watch how the bros move and copy everything they do.
Speaker 1:Well, everything Do we copy everything they do, the things that work for you 70%, 70%, maybe even 80%.
Speaker 2:Listen who's getting paid the most White men and white women.
Speaker 1:This is accurate. This is accurate, jabba, I have to say I just want to kind of co-sign on what you've said. Most of my biggest career opportunities have come from white men, just truth be told, and the biggest salaries that I have negotiated. I had help from white men where I literally would take my offer letter and say because we know that black women make what? 68, 69 cents on the dollar, asian women make a little bit more and white women make like 85 or 86. I'm not getting these numbers perfectly right, but that was in my mind.
Speaker 1:And I went to a white male mentor and I was like hey, this is my offer. It was for at a public company, what do you think about this? And I got I promise you I don't think I would have gotten better advice from somebody else Like it's just so, yeah, so I love the frame that you're set. I love the frame that you've set there, which is really like there's the way white men move in spaces and it's like there's no self-consciousness, or if there is, you don't know it right, you don't, you don't see it. And there's a and there's an assumption of. I believe what I'm also hearing you say is walk into the room Like you belong there, as opposed to waiting to be asked in and invite it to the table, step to the table and, because you wouldn't be there, frankly, if you didn't belong there.
Speaker 2:So I love, I love the frame. That's right. It's not charity. There's no charity, they don't have time for it. The 44 person company they did not hire me because they thought I was an addition of cost. They didn't give a fuck. Right, I was the only one at my level and so, and what was beautiful was, you know, the founders were all under 30 at the times particular company I'm talking about and they'd never actually had professional jobs, so they'd never worked with HR. Oh my God, wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:So they were taking- Sounds frightening actually to me.
Speaker 3:Sounds like an HR nightmare actually.
Speaker 2:Oh it was, and it was a beautiful place for me to learn because I was coming from a very traditional HR space. So, I was seeing fires pop up. Now, mind you, my title was not global HR, yet it was customer service strategist. But I was like well, this is illegal, like we are not, you can't do that.
Speaker 1:You can't do that in the state of California.
Speaker 2:Stop right now. These are not salaried. Our customer service team is not salaried. They need to be hourly. And where is their OT? And, in fact, where has their OT been for the last three years? I made the-.
Speaker 1:Overtime. You're talking about their overtime Three years of retro pay for overtime.
Speaker 2:Oh my Very bad, very bad. It actually wasn't that much money, but the idea of doing that was something that was so new to them and they let me do it. So God bless them.
Speaker 1:But I'm just saying Well, otherwise they would have had the break suit off of them at some point later too.
Speaker 2:I mean they still may have, but it's just you don't always get listened to by these folks and so you win where you can and you're trying to protect your people and take care of the lowest paid individuals on the total poll and then work with the rest. But I do want to point out that the genius in what you said, portia, was that you took your offer and you took it to someone else to help you review it and to help strategize?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I wanted more money. Just to be clear more money.
Speaker 2:And I was scared to do that. Oh, I was scared too, I was scared to do that.
Speaker 1:So, like I'll give, you, I was scared too.
Speaker 2:In 2011, these people were paying me $75. I mean 75, excuse me, 75 K. Yeah, Basically $75. Cause this is in California.
Speaker 1:Let's just, let's just say in California, in California.
Speaker 2:And God bless people who are like that's still a lot of money, cause it is but. And God bless people who are like that's still a lot of money because it is, but. Bottom line, I couldn't actually afford to live in a city of San Francisco, so I would go apply for apartments and they would say you need to make three times as much. Oh my God. And so I luckily was pushed to Oakland, which was a much better fit for me anyway, but I literally wasn't able to afford to live there and work the way that I was working for this company, and by that I mean I was in there at 5 am in the morning and I would leave, you know, whenever I left at night. And the only reason I could do that was because my dog came to work with me and I was so coming from my own business to startup world. All I knew was how to work and have no other life.
Speaker 2:So that part was a match for you like, just like the ethic, the work ethic of having to just, yeah, cortisol girl, I was hooked and addicted. So but what I'm saying is, if I had done that, if I had asked for advice, if I had gone to other people I was too embarrassed to, I would have done much better. And most of the women, who were mostly white in that situation, did that with each other.
Speaker 2:They were smart enough to go to each other and say, hey, let's offer and I didn't learn that until much later, which is kind of a shame way that I knew that wasn't good money, aside from not being able to get apartments, was the recruiter who offered that to me. One day we're sitting there. We've been working 12 hours together, side by side. He just starts laughing and I you know that feeling when someone's laughing at you, not with you, and I was like why are you laughing? And he was like I still can't believe you took that offer.
Speaker 3:You got you got, you, got, you, got you got.
Speaker 2:oh my God, I didn't know I was coming.
Speaker 1:Like I'm feeling ragey just listening to you tell me this.
Speaker 2:It was so mortifying. Can you imagine? My whole face went red Like I was just horrified and I I was like, and he was a person of color, so this is a person of color saying this to me.
Speaker 3:Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Did he offer you the job?
Speaker 2:He offered me the job, and he offered me that, and he didn't say but I'll tell you what this did for me.
Speaker 3:I'm managing myself right now.
Speaker 2:These are all blessings. Everything is what. Do you know? What came from that? I actually get hired now to advocate and help candidates negotiate their salary. My clients hire me, my companies hire me to help folks from underrepresented sometimes of color, sometimes not and they say we want you to help them negotiate because we know they don't know how. And I will tell them this is what I do and I don't ask permission. I will help anybody, and there are countless people that I have done this with, with permission or not, that can tell you I changed their damn life because I told them. No, no, honey, you're asking for 80. It should be 145. That is a significant difference.
Speaker 1:Life-changing.
Speaker 2:Life-changing. It's a life-changing difference and what is not done to us, we need to do for others.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Say it again, that's the mandate what is not done for us, we need to do for others. That's it. And that man taught me something very important and I still have feelings about it. Right, but I had an opportunity. I didn't manage it well, and the next time I did better, and the next time I did better, and now I'm just fine. So it's all well and good. But anytime you're in a room with someone and you can see that they're falling and they don't know what they're doing and they're making the wrong choice, just take them to the side and say hey, can I give you just a little bit of help here? They have to trust you. So people are going to have to trust you, and sometimes they don't, but like I've helped so many people that way, so we can actually thank him for what he did to me, because that's how I don't know if I want. I don't know that.
Speaker 1:I want to thank him. You know, libra, we're petty, we're kind of vengeful, we're pettier.
Speaker 3:Sorry Tiffany, sorry Tiffany. I mean I really appreciate that you took a really shitty situation and made it positive for yourself and for your current clients and I also want to name for our listeners what I heard, which was all the positive, amazing outcomes. It's impacted the way that you work and the type of work that you do, but everyone who looks like you isn't for you either.
Speaker 3:And that's really important when you're going into space, small startup environment where I'm assuming that one or two, maybe three of 30 were people of color and we might assume that someone might share our gender identity. They might share our skin hue or whatever, but you can't make those assumptions. So I also want to make sure our listeners can use that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Brilliant point, tiffany, and I learned that very well in the corporate setting the hard way, and you know again like I don't look at any of these situations as negative, really, because I can use all of the data I learned and help coach people and work in human resources and choose my clients because I only choose clients now that are going to let me do the work that I think is important and support people in a way that I think is important. So it, and I don't want to make it seem like I learned that lesson in that moment I did.
Speaker 2:I was horrified. I felt so much shame. I was like mortified and and so I do do want like sometimes we gloss over these things and we get to the success story before we really focus on like there was a good eight years there that your girl had to really work on. Like okay, what was the upside of that experience?
Speaker 3:I love that, jabu. I'm also curious because in these stories that you're sharing with us, I'm also hearing that there are some elements of the startup culture, especially in the early stages, that new or emerging startups could learn from. So you named that there were a lot of HR pitfalls, maybe some legal eagle issues, and there were some opportunities from an equity standpoint in terms of how they were building employee benefits or sourcing for new employees. But what are some of the cultural differentiators that make a startup rise to ascension compared to those who fizzle out after a few years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. Also, it's a combination of things, right? Most of the companies I see that do really well have a product that can sell and make money already. So I have not worked or seen products work very successfully that are not already monetized, are not already driving sales. Now, those sales might be small, they might be minimal, they may not be global, but there's something. So this company that I worked for got 3% to 6% of every nightly engagement that they had, so there was always money coming in. It wasn't a ton. I started with them in 2010. They started in 2008, and they struggled to get funding. No one would believe that now, right, but like they struggled for three years to get any kind of funding and then, right, as I was there, they turned the corner and it felt like everybody knew who they were from people thinking it was a weird idea. So you know it's like you have to be progressive and visionary, but it has to make business sense.
Speaker 1:You got to make product market fit has to be. Is is super important. Product market fit Yep.
Speaker 2:And I think the thing about this company it had that really functional tactical like here's where I go to get this thing that I want. And then it had beautiful aesthetics. So you would look at someone who maybe wasn't living in a fancy place. You could go, look at other places that people live that were beautiful, and you could dream about maybe living in those places. Maybe it was just a couple nights, but that gave you a little bit of a fantasy, or you know a warm feeling or, and so it's expanded since then.
Speaker 2:But those were the early day kind of markers of success. And then, quite frankly, it was us. It was me, it was the other women of color. There were two other women of color there that were in lead roles in founding what I call founding roles at the company that you never hear about now, Like you just never. They never got the publicity, but we're the ones that did the hiring, we're the ones that went out into the community, we're the ones that built it brick by brick. Now, I'm not saying that the engineers and all the other people that made it function in those sorts of ways were not also critical, but most of the time, startup people and founders forget about the internal people. I call them and my book will be called one day the people who actually do the work.
Speaker 1:Ooh, yes, yeah, and my book will be called one day, the people who actually do the work.
Speaker 2:So maybe a little less sexy, because we don't look like them, though there are more of us in these spaces now than there ever were, and so I don't know that that's even true anymore, but it is the thing I love about the tech space in particular and now I work kind of across marketplaces is that you're not always caught up in a lot of red tape, so you can see the impact of your work much more quickly yeah, move, they move faster, satisfying they move faster and then you also can see your failures.
Speaker 2:So the main thing I would say also about successful startups is is they fail faster, and that's a term. I don't even know who first said that, but you can study lots of companies that figure out either that they've hired the wrong person quickly or the product fit doesn't work and they pivot and they go. And so for action oriented people like myself and I know you guys are too these are incredible fits for us culturally because they allow us to actually do work. I don't do so well in a corporate setting where I need permission from a whole string of people before I can operationalize something I know needs to be done for my people.
Speaker 1:Well, don't go to industrial manufacturing then.
Speaker 2:It's funny, I never had the idea of going there.
Speaker 1:It's funny, I never had the idea of going there. I mean, it's a different. But what you're speaking of are the shifting cultures too, and the reality is is like when you have a software product, a SaaS product, versus your bending metal that needs to hold up a bridge. You know it's like it's different, but I think also you're talking about the ethos of the moving fast, breaking things, decision-making velocity that startups have that allow them to get to the right if they don't have the right product market fit. They get there faster because they move at a cadence where they're iterating constantly and then when it doesn't work, they're not sitting there like, oh my God, for a really long time. It's like this didn't work, okay, let's scrap it, let's move on to the next thing. And I think, more companies. Having worked in a startup environment, having worked in a kind of a legacy company, I do think that ethos could be used more in legacy companies.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure I agree, but I was just wondering, like, when you're describing these people that you were looking for when you were hiring, what are some of the elements that those people had as people who do the work? Like, what are you looking for when you're looking for those people?
Speaker 2:So I don't consider myself a DEIB specialist, but I do. Everything that I do is, hopefully, imbued with that sensitivity and consciousness. So, for example, I had a customer service team of 16. I was asked by the CEO to grow it to 150. Well, how am I going to do that? And I was told to build it out domestically and internationally because we were moving into Europe. And so what I did know how to do from this retail experience previously was we actually were hiring 100 to 200 people every couple of months for a sale or a holiday. Now I actually knew how to functionally do that. How do you interview people? How do you get people in the door? That's a lot of people.
Speaker 2:That's a ton of people and I didn't appreciate that at the time I didn't know that this experience that I was having in this corporate entity, which I thought was a miserable place to be, was actually setting me up for success later in life, because a lot of people don't know how to do that. It would be very overwhelming for me.
Speaker 2:It was just like okay, and then I just went and did it, and that meant that I operationalized the process of interviewing, screening, you know bringing in, flying them in, you know finding them places to stay, and then you know enrolling them and onboarding them officially. So it was like every two weeks I had another 12 people coming in the door to do this process and we were constantly interviewing. So 20 minute interviews for the whole day, that's all I did for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, and so I think what I always looked for was that which this isn't going to sound necessarily too scientific, but I looked for someone that had the customer service energy, professionalism that I had grown up with. So I also grew up I would work in the summers working at restaurants. So I think people from restaurants are incredible.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God Great education.
Speaker 2:Hire them to do anything, because they will fucking figure it out Um same so, restaurants, retail.
Speaker 2:I hired a lot of stay at home moms, um, who had actual work experience but they didn't want to go back to a full-time job, say. And then I hired folks straight out of college, literally. I remember one guy I'm still in touch with a lot of these people. He had just graduated from college the day before. I hired him the next day, flew him to San Francisco the next day and he was starting at this company within two weeks and he stayed there for, I think, eight years.
Speaker 2:So, even though these decisions were made very quickly and repetitively, I had a real sense of what was going to work for my team, and part of that is you have to know what you like and you have to know what you work well with. So we always want to have diversity and inclusion, but you also have to know this type of personality isn't going to be necessarily a great fit for this team, or actually I have a gap here and I do need this kind of person to challenge some of these ideas. But a lot of times in customer service teams you need it to work smoothly. You need a little bit less of the dissension or the resistance or the challenges. Maybe you might need that more so on an engineering or a product team, but it is just about knowing and testing out what works and what doesn't and then moving really quickly to get it done.
Speaker 2:So, luckily for me, I have a sense of that already, a belief. I know how to do that, and then I also like to create the platforms and the operations, the workflows that support it. So I did all of that at the same time and you know it just, I got really lucky with the most amazing people. So I'm really proud of the work that I did there. And then that launched my whole rest of my career doing HR and tech, because people knew it's kind of a small world. People knew the work that I'd done. They also knew the really specific scaling work that I had done, because 50 to 500's my niche yeah, yeah, and you know other I can easily work in other spaces, but I love this space where nothing's really in place yet and it's you're a builder, creative from scratch I'm a builder, yeah, yeah, build, yeah, build my way.
Speaker 1:Build versus optimize, yeah, and it's like there really are two different types.
Speaker 1:Um, I feel like each other just just kind of along the lines of people and talent and finding the right talent. It seems like there was a period where there were all these exposés on startups and just you know, just you know, and I think to the point you made earlier, you've got people who are very bright, they get a lot of with a good idea and a lot of money, but they're not necessarily leaders, they're not managers. And you know idea and a lot of money, but they're not necessarily leaders, they're not managers. And you know, without you're like no kidding, and without disclosing the names of you know any of those companies.
Speaker 1:I'm just curious, especially in this niche that you work in, what are like some common mistakes that you see A lot of our audience are like maybe they're side hustling it, they're trying to build their own, I think. I think people have the entrepreneurial bug and they don't realize all the pitfalls that come, you know, come in place, with trying to, you know, start your own business. So I'd love your thoughts on on what do you see over and over again.
Speaker 2:Over and over again, I see founders who think that HR compliance liability is all something they can just figure out on their own.
Speaker 3:What what are you saying? You need to have a skill.
Speaker 2:Bad idea. Some experience, some knowledge. I don't know why HR is deemed so they will bring in. This is like a classic fix non-fix. They'll bring in a chief of staff and no HR experience, typically someone fresh out of school. Now again, we can Google a lot of things.
Speaker 1:But not everything employment law Just like we would in Google medicine.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and just the sensitivity to be sitting in a room and hear something and know, oops, time for me to call the employment lawyer.
Speaker 2:This is a no-go, or just human beings are non-predictive. So sitting in a room, no judgment, listening to your employee and trying to think about how you can support them better, as opposed to I just need you to do the thing so I can get the money or whatever. You know, some founders are very oriented in that in that way, but ultimately very smart kids who have been taught by a lot of the same people, they've gone to a lot of the same schools. They have no management experience themselves, no people management experience themselves, and yet they are convinced that they can do this without help and a lot of times they do very poorly at it. And so then I'm being called in to kind of scrub and audit and clean up the messes and some of those things you can't clean up, because now you have made an impression with your employees. They are not impressed and all of that could have easily been avoided with an inexpensive consultant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 3:Can't Google an HR handbook.
Speaker 1:I was going to say don't Google employment law. So this is boys and girls, do not Google employment law. I will just say people think anyone can do marketing. As a chief marketing officer, I will tell you people do think anyone can do marketing. They do.
Speaker 3:It's the same thing. People have a lot of thoughts about being able to do a lot of things.
Speaker 3:in my experience, yes, I had a client once that had more than 500 employees but they didn't have an HR in-house person and I was like what's going on here? So some of us are out here flying by the seat of our pants and we're thankful for people like you, Jabu. So I am curious about your experience in these like really fast paced, high growth startups You're turning around. You know 100, 200 headcount in just a couple of weeks. Have you experienced burnout and, if so, how did you manage it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I didn't even know what burnout was. I was really addicted to working and getting things done and the impact I was seeing and I really one of the things that happens when you have burnout is you start to, you get a little delusional, you, you, I wouldn't take a vacation. I would not take a vacation, like I thought if I was gone two weeks the company would fall, like, and that's, and you, you actually will talk and meet a lot of people who think that about their jobs, and that's when you know they have lost touch with reality or they haven't built a strong enough team that they think they can leave it. Either way, it's not good, it's not a good look. So, um, I think I was really struggling.
Speaker 2:Like you know, the first thing to kind of go is your physical cause. You're just sitting in, you're working all day, and so I would do these, you know, trail runs on the weekends and I would get injured over and over and my knees were crazy and, um, you know, I wasn't sleeping well, I all I could really think or talk about was work, like I really didn't have a life outside of that and work was really fulfilling. And you, you have this group of people that are similarly focused. So you don't feel like you're missing anything. You have a mission. So it has taken many, many years of me, you know, really being physically having to stop because my knees were like being blown out, and so now I do yoga. You know there's just huge shifts that you have to make in order to get that under control and it is an addiction, I believe. So you're addicted to the adrenaline and the cortisol and you have to replace that with other things and that takes time. So I have friends that I'm observing them going through this change and I just know it's going to take time. Like you are used to having a full dance card and you really don't know how to live life without that and you still lost Like.
Speaker 2:I remember the first day I had an unscheduled day, nothing planned and no work to do. I was scared, like I literally didn't know and it's crazy. This is like maybe eight years ago now. But I knew then that I really need to focus on getting myself back to a more balanced, integrated place and so I started developing kind of my spiritual side, my physical side, getting that back on track, how I was eating at the time I started doing intermittent fasting, which you know there's lots of different things to think about that now as I'm in my 50s, but at the time that was an amazing, empowering experience for me to learn that I could control how my body looked and felt and control when I ate.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of like developing more self-discipline around self-care, which sounds so much easier than it actually is, and then also, additionally, the thing that not everybody talks about financially, and then also, additionally, the thing that not everybody talks about financially looking at my finances, why am I spending everything that I make? How is that an example of self-love and self-care? Well, it's not, but that's a very common thing that people do. When they have scarcity notions, they will blow through anything they make and then wonder why they still feel poor. So I didn't have anybody really to talk to about these things, but I was just steadily. The one thing I think about myself is that I will look at myself and just brutally like, do an interrogation and audit of what's working and what's not. But it's taken many years and I may not be there still. It's a work in progress.
Speaker 3:So how do you then harness the learnings that you got for yourself in sort of this HR chief advisor role for startup leaders who are trying to infuse that culture while they're building something rapidly.
Speaker 2:Well, all of the attributes that I'm describing to you are exemplative of a founder personality, a CEO personality. So we may not be CEOs, but we may have that personality. So, given that that is really truly my personality, and I have tried many times to start my own businesses and I really always will it's very easy to coach someone from that place of truth. I know what it's like to feel burned out. I know what it's like to think your worth is determined by how much you make or how your company's doing. I know how it is to take huge risks to put it all in, to leave and go to another country to start another company. So there's no judgment, there's no shame. It's just. How can I support you to get to this next level where you are actually living a life that you love and enjoy and have joy in? Like joy is the next level step that we're all trying to attain.
Speaker 1:I love that, and I can imagine the founders you work with really appreciate that, because they're going fast, they have a ton of pressure and the more funding they get, the more pressure they have, and needing to have someone who is in their corner and is not part of the rabble like is, I think, a really and and who can be truly a confidant and a trusted advisor. I think it's a gift, so I love that you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's something that most CEOs have never experienced. So they've never had a partner. Even if they've had a co-founder or COO, they haven't had someone they can just talk to honestly about what's working and what's not. And so having someone that also can keep you on track, like yeah, I know you feel that way, but that's not legal, I'm going to need you to cease and desist with that. Please, let me just help you. Oh, I've had a lot of those conversations too Like we can't do that.
Speaker 1:We can't do that, please God.
Speaker 2:Please please God this new way of moving and seeing and presenting the product or whatever it is that you're working on, and I see HR as that a lot as well. It can be sensitive because it's about people and it's about emotions, but it's still about supporting them to be the best leaders that they can be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Jamba, you haven't talked a lot about this, but I think and maybe this is a great place to talk about sort of the trends in HR. But you're really like, when you're a chief people officer and I don't know that people fully understand all that's imbued in that role, because it's not just hiring people and making sure people get paid on time, you know you're an advisor, you are you're working with the board, you're working with boards, you are one of their chief risk management officers, like there's so much that goes into it, and so I just, you know, I'm curious, and maybe this is the maybe. Here's. The question is, as you've, as you've watched the role of chief people officer, even the name has evolved, right, you know we went from chief, you know CHRO, which is still used in, particularly in legacy companies. What are you seeing in terms of the evolution of the chief people officer or even just in HR more broadly? Take either or both questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I may suck at this question because I work so uniquely with my clients and in my own way now that I don't follow a lot of traditional mores. But I will say the chief people officer being sort of a more progressive sense of someone that advocates both for employees and for the company, so trying to find integration of both sets of values and bring them together so that you're both kind of headed in the same direction. That when I started this work was not typical at all. Like HR, people were were considered the enemy by employees and some, some still do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say depending on where you work. Yeah, you see our faces.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of TikToks about HR leaders.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of TikToks and they're not wrong.
Speaker 1:They're neither human nor resourceful. We see a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are some miserable people out there. People are saying not me. People out there. People are saying not me people are saying, I'm also saying I am also saying too so I learned from some of the best worst HR people in the world. I literally learned how to let people go from their jobs because I was fired. So in such a bad experiences like that. And now I try to teach my people you should fire people the same way you welcome them on board.
Speaker 1:Yeah, say that again.
Speaker 2:Oh my.
Speaker 1:God, so many bad, so many bad firings. So I've been fired so badly where I'm just like I just you want to reach across and slap them. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, so you know there's still people, I'm sure, who are like, yeah, whatever. But I really try to go into every conversation I have, whether it's with my CEO or an employee, with the intention to bring the highest good to that situation. Oh, I like that, the intention to bring the highest good to that situation.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:I like that and you can't always.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's going to be what it's going to be and people take themselves to the places that they get to. But there are times when I can tell an employee look, you seem miserable here, which I wish someone had told me in some of my jobs and actually some people did you seem miserable here, why are you still here? Like, why are you still here? Try to find yourself in a place that feels good to you. If this isn't it, you do know you don't have to stay. Like I do think there's a feeling of like being trapped that people sort of absorb. So I know I'm wildly off of your question right now, but I would say, yeah, I hope what's happening in the HR space is that HR people are feeling that their work is really sacred work and holding people's trust and it's really tough to do this but holding employees trust and holding the CEO, the founder's trust, and honoring both of those perspectives and then trying to find something in the middle that serves both that's not always going to happen. So you need to be an adult enough to be able to say to your CEO and this is where a lot of HR people struggle People mistake HR.
Speaker 2:So recruiting is a yes role Recruiters. You say I need 20 people. The recruiter says, yes, let me go do that for you. The recruiter says, yes, let me go do that for you. Hr is a no role. You say to the HR I need 20 people. Hr says no, boss, we don't have the structure, the money I get into the finances right Like we don't have the insurance. We're not able to do that now. If you want to start doing it slowly over the next four quarters, so if you start as a recruiter and then you become an HR person, you have to develop the know skill Interesting.
Speaker 1:Super interesting.
Speaker 3:And both of those people need to have the EQ quality that you described Like. When I hear you say boom that part I hear is put the human back in HR because people have kind of forgotten that you're dealing with people Right and you don't have to sort of-. Right Not widgets, not widgets, not avatars. Even in a distributed company or online, they're still humans and they have whole lives that we're kind of responsible for. So I appreciate that yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, on the other side of it, people sometimes like to think that HR is also inhuman. So, recognizing that this is someone you know, like I have been brought in and you know a girl has to eat, so I'm going to make some money too, and so I have had years, especially the last four years, where all I can, the only jobs I can get, are reorg layoffs. And the thing is, they don't tell you that at the beginning.
Speaker 2:They tell you once they've hired you, we're going to be cutting 50% of the company. You're helping guidance to do that. And then you're in this horrible position where the employees don't know you don't trust you and they shouldn't, and then you're also needing to usher them out the door.
Speaker 1:That's awful.
Speaker 2:Graceful way. So it just is kind of like no one really this is the other thing I would say no one really owes us anything Like no one owes you anything in life. So anything you get is a blessing and we all need to be caring and graceful and loving to each other to the furthest extent of our capacity. Even if somebody is firing you, there's just no reason for it to ever get crazy. Save that for when you're home, at home, and yet and yet, and yet no.
Speaker 1:But I appreciate that so much, Jabu, because I do think we're kind of in an age where some of those basic leadership skills are being forgotten. Companies are cutting a lot of corners, you know, in tech, a lot of times they don't even do people development at all. There's no sending people to leadership courses or anything like that. So people are really, they're really bad at the hard parts of this, of that job. And you're talking, and I what I hear you also, you know, arguing for, is like we're talking about whole human beings and people's livelihoods too. That's the part I think that always really bothers me when I see these mass layoffs is that it's like you know, you had to have known when you were scaling, hiring all these people, yeah, Like you know, it's just I want to you would think, but they don't.
Speaker 2:A lot of times they listen to a board. I know, you know investors and they want to see them scale. They want that to be the news and they have no idea. A lot of investors have never built their own companies, or it's like a one-off thing, or they went to school and they worked at Goldman Sachs, but again, they had not built their own company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't know how to make payroll. They don't know what it means to make a payroll.
Speaker 2:They have no idea what and why one payroll company is better than another payroll company. They just don't know these things, and yet they have nerve to tell their CEOs and their founders how to do them, and that's where the problem lies. So if you have a weak, young, inexperienced founder who doesn't know how to separate themselves from their board in terms of leadership, it's going to be a problem.
Speaker 2:So, again, as you mentioned, those are things that I coach on too the delicate relationships that you know, and it's about being conscious and thoughtful about all the people you have around you. As a founder, who's on your board? Yes, I know they can give you money, but are you going to like working with them?
Speaker 1:Oh, this is a good one.
Speaker 2:Structure, good culture, cultural values, like have they built a company you would want to work at? Probably not, so these are things people don't think about when they're looking for funding.
Speaker 1:Do you I know we're hitting time, but do you I'm curious do you advise your CEOs on board recruitment or when you're coming on board? When you're coming on board, is the board typically mostly intact? I'm glad that's not my dog, because usually my dog well, he'll be jumping out of his face sometimes my dog, because usually my dog.
Speaker 2:Well, he'll be jumping out of his face sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm happy to advise on that and happy even to interview potential board members for people, because I think that's a lot of times the founder doesn't know what to ask, doesn't know what to look for, and there are real warning signs. I mean, I've worked with a couple of CEOs this year that had boards that were incredibly dishonest and you know I could tell you stories, but you know it just. You may think it's not a big deal, but then when you're trying to run your company you're going to find a lot of opposition and resistance and or maybe they have different politics than you do. You know I have a.
Speaker 2:CEO and her board member. One of her board members was, you know, fundraising for Trump and that goes very counter to her own personal political beliefs and the beliefs of the company, which is a green tap company, and so there was a lot of like friction there, which you know. We think politics shouldn't play a role in our professional lives, but they do.
Speaker 2:And some of our inability to have these uncomfortable conversations. To be honest, I think it's a cultural like it's a viral disease. I'll speak to American culture. None of us knows how to do this in our personal relationships, in our intimate relationships with family members, in the church, in the community, whatever are the collective spaces that you live in and work in, and we all are struggling with how to say the uncomfortable things, and we have to get better. We take it all with us to work. There's no degree of separation. I wish there was, but there's not.
Speaker 3:That's so good. All right, Jabu, before we jump into the fun segment of the pod where we ask you some ungoverned, ungovernable questions.
Speaker 1:And sometimes unhinged. Sometimes unhinged too. Just so you know, You've been warned.
Speaker 3:Perfect. I'd love for you to leave with our listeners the number one thing you think most startups should focus on to aim for long-term success. What would that number one thing mean as a chief people officer and advisor to startups?
Speaker 2:no-transcript. The better your company will scale and grow and the more chances you have to be successful. I truly believe that, and all of the companies that I've been with started with HR from, and all of the companies that I've been with started with HR from, let's say, zero to 50. So considered very early in the tech space but, honestly, the earlier the better.
Speaker 3:Well, in the show notes we're going to have info about how folks can find you if they need to hire an HR advisor. Listeners or make a recommendation to maybe your boss or your boss's boss to hire an HR advisor if you work at a startup.
Speaker 1:And we know a lot of startups need the support, so we're not going to call anybody out, though, Okay.
Speaker 3:So, jabu, just to kick off our lightning round, we have a few questions for you. The only rule is that we don't want you to overthink it.
Speaker 1:We want you to share with us the first thing that comes to mind I could do that I think.
Speaker 3:Okay, first question what is a motto or phrase that defines your personality or mindset?
Speaker 2:We got to get it done. Get it done. You didn't die. I'm going to do two, but did you die though?
Speaker 3:okay, okay, so the pipeline from this isn't legal to. But did you die?
Speaker 2:I'm a complex person. I am in tatters, don't?
Speaker 1:I'm in tatters. Okay, I let me, let me. Let me pick my jaw up off the table. Jabu, what is one book you find yourself gifting or recommending over and over?
Speaker 2:okay, people are gonna think this is hilarious, but tim ferris four-hour work really changed you recommended it to me I, I did, and he is such a white boy. He's better now. Yeah, yeah he's matured. I feel like he's matured a lot um he has matured right, right so, but you know 100% it's just such a big thinker and the way that he thought broke up any like the idea that you could work for four hours a day, living which is not it's aspiration.
Speaker 1:It's the aspiration made me think oh I don't have to work seven days a week. Yeah, it's the aspiration, so that allowed me to get really creative best purchase under 150 you've made oh my god I love how she's talking to herself like so many parts, so many purchases, so many purchases recent maybe think of recent purchase answer that question.
Speaker 2:Like I have problems, like I have recently had to. Like my vision is going basically and I love women who wear glasses. I always have, but I didn't need to wear them.
Speaker 1:Now I have, like all the you have the scattered readers around the house, nice.
Speaker 2:I do because I may need them at any moment, and the way that I found out I needed glasses was I was on a date with a younger person I won't say significantly, but he may have been a significantly younger man and I was looking. I couldn't read. Read the menu. I could not read the menu I'm dead, I'm dying.
Speaker 1:Well, hang on, I'm invested, I'm invested, I'm invested. What did you do? Did you take a picture of the menu and then try to enlarge it?
Speaker 2:I did, and then finally that wasn't working and it wasn't smooth. I can't really read and I'm dying was, this was a? This was a restaurant, as I sat on their board, so I I like, so they were all being incredible of the right.
Speaker 2:It's a really dope restaurant in san francisco and they have multiple restaurants and they set it up like a startup, so they have investors, like they're so amazing, so smart, and this was a new menu and a new one of their restaurants and they were just like taking care of me in this most exquisite way and I really needed to be able to read the damn menu. And I didn't know this guy well enough and he was like this beautiful man and I really did not want to admit that I, so I just finally I said you know, this is the cop out, right. I said to the person helping us like could you just tell me what it is that you really, really love? I suggest a wine. I was like could you read the wine? That's smooth.
Speaker 2:But as a result I had my first Hungarian wine. Look how bougie I sound, but I had my first. I experienced things I would not have experienced because they were helping.
Speaker 1:This is a master recovery and you couldn't read them.
Speaker 2:Master recovery. Thank you, I was really trying it was the first day I agree it was the first date. I agree it was important.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what? This is why I love Tiffany, the lightning round, because it never ceases to just completely, just slay me, okay. Well, this, I feel like this may undo us all here. It may end us, which is what is a secret, unpopular opinion that you hold. Don't hold back, don't hold back.
Speaker 3:The people complain too much. Yes, with no action, cause you already said you're about your act. I just want to complain. You want to complain, you just want to come and talk.
Speaker 2:You talked to me about this last week, Like what you? Have you made any changes? No, you just talking. I just don't.
Speaker 3:So you're not a Virgo. I've got questions because this is giving Virgo energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do have Virgo and I'm trying to think where my placement is. It's in a very important place, but I'm a Scorpio, sagittarius, cancer, moon, taurus rising.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't know you had the Taurus.
Speaker 2:That explains a few things and I love my favorite. Not that I would ever discriminate based on astrology sign, but my favorite hire for my own team are Virgos. I adore them, naturally, naturally.
Speaker 1:Naturally, virgos can get shit. They get shit done. They can be a little, they can be a little, they can be a little much.
Speaker 2:They are never too much for me. They never complain. They're so sweet, thank you. Thank you, Jabu.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Jabu. There was just a little slander in the chat, but I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's just the Virgos that are born on Beyonce's birthday.
Speaker 3:That's all.
Speaker 1:I'm saying let the record state I didn't bring it up, we have done enough of this so it wasn't me, for our listeners.
Speaker 3:I do share a business with beyonce, but I didn't I'm looking for my virgo placement tiffany this way.
Speaker 1:This tiffany yes, there's a birthday with beyonce. We just we have to share this every episode, just to make sure everyone knows.
Speaker 2:People need to know my Virgo is in Pluto.
Speaker 1:The people need to know.
Speaker 2:Virgo is in Pluto. That is a very weighty placement.
Speaker 3:It was the talk about it and do nothing for me. I was like, oh, we got to be connected, because what are we doing?
Speaker 2:And we did not die Sisters from another mother, but did you die, though? These things are all connected.
Speaker 1:But did you die? You can't play flip cup in the office, but you need to make sure everybody's alive at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's why HR. When I was HR at a lot of these startups, I did not go to the parties, because nobody wants HR at the parties, so I would just.
Speaker 1:This is true. Nobody wants HR at the parties. Don't.
Speaker 2:But yeah, don't make it not fun.
Speaker 2:Last question for you, jabu what does it mean to be an ungovernable woman to you, it is a great description for someone who will not be contained, managed or otherwise constrained, and if you think about the journey that we're all on which I'm assuming you're all in this with me together we are all trying to expand and become our greatest self, whatever that is, and so someone who is being governed is someone who is being contained and constricted, and they are smaller than they should be, and I am absolutely not for that. No ceilings, no ceilings, no ceilings, nothing.
Speaker 1:No ceilings. Javu Dayton, thank you so much for joining us today, for kicking down some wisdom and having some fun with us too. Thank you for having me Adore you both we us too.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me Adore you both.
Speaker 1:We appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Ungovernable Women. Our producer and editor is Megan King. Our social media manager is Destiny Eicher. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you listen to your pods. Your ratings help other listeners find us. You can follow and DM us on Instagram at ungovernablexwomen, and TikTok at ungovernablexwomen. See you next time you.