EP 196: From Equestrian Arenas to Scaling Teams

Emily Zahuta, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition at Horizon3.ai, highlights how a chaotic yet loving Bay Area upbringing and elite equestrian training shaped a builder’s mindset grounded in discipline and self-possession. Emily chose demanding environments, learned to center herself in high-stakes moments, and earned trust through steady execution. The conversation also redefines success as something that evolves alongside leadership and motherhood.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. We have Emily Zahuda with us. She's currently operating as the senior director for TAN Acquisition over at Horizon 3 AI. Emily, thanks for joining me today.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, let's do it. Just start with your childhood. Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_03 1:04

So I'm a Bay Area native. Um, I was born and raised in Pleasanton, California. I spent 30 plus years right on the periphery, repping the East Bay for many, many years. I now live on the East Coast, but I love being from the Bay.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah. And you're um one of five siblings, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Yep, one of five.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Um, it was chaos. It was honestly chaos. So I was second to last in a noisy family. Like we were a big, loud, rambunctious group. We kind of took over every space we entered, which was just it's just how it ended up happening. Um, I always joke that my mom used to make like four steaks and four baked potatoes or something for dinner, and she'd put it on the table and we'd all just look at it like and you'd dive. I mean, if you didn't get your hand in there to get something, you were getting, you know, the small bit or you weren't gonna get anything at all. So it's like you fended for yourself in a family of five kids. Um, I also grew up with my stepbrother, who in turn is the sixth in our group, and he lived with us for like 10 or 15 years. So for many years, it was six of us in a crew, and it was just it was nuts. I loved it. I loved it, and I always thought I was gonna have a big family because of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

But you know, it's funny is like when you're talking about like diving for the food, I feel like that is probably why when you were starting out in agency recruitment, probably why you crushed it. Oh, absolutely. Like initial mindset of like what we kill.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

Yeah, you hold your own, and you're gonna be hungry eating Brussels sprouts and milk from the paint, like you're gonna be disappointed. So go get it. Yeah, it's you either get it or you don't, is basically where we landed. And um my parents were like my mom was a stay-at-home mom, very invested in our education and making sure that we were cared for, but there's only so much one person can do with a craziness of five kids, and so yeah, we kind of ran our own circus inside while she thought she had control over it.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

Yeah, it was good.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Um, well, I know that a huge part of your childhood was riding horses.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Yep.

Big Family, Bigger Drive

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Uh, when did you start doing that? How'd you get into it?

SPEAKER_03 3:05

So that's a good question. Um, I don't I can't I don't have a good answer for how I got into it, except for in Pleasanton in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a lot of open land. And we lived next to this house that had a horse named Taffy. And Taffy would be out in the pasture all the time. And I was three or four and I'd go missing, like gone. No one, but my mom would be on the verge of calling the police and I'd be with Taffy down the street. And she would always laugh and say, you know, Emily, you didn't meet him, but my grandfather was, he knew the art of harness making by hand and was very, very involved with horses to his core. So no one ever taught me, no one ever led me to a horse. Taffy and I kind of found each other. And I asked for many years to start riding. And one of five kids, it's an expensive sport. They put it off as long as they could. And when I was nine, which is why nine is my lucky number, uh, they took me to start exploring horseback riding lessons. And so that's where it started. I started riding these little wild ponies on a ranch that was totally crazy. Um, with a good friend of mine, the passion kind of kicked off from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, I wonder too, do you think your parents were terrified of you getting hurt? Like, I can't imagine like my little girl like getting on a horse. I'd be so worried.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

I know. I know. My parents were uh, so my dad like dabbled in professional baseball when he was younger. My mom was very conservative in terms of like girls kind of do the nice sports and boys do the dirty sports. I never got the sense that they were scared of me getting hurt. I got the sense that they were quickly tallying up the cost of what this sport was going to cost if I was any good at it. And um, I think they were probably secretly hoping it was a passing like fancy, you know, something but it would be in a few years I'd move on from it. And that's just not what happened. Um, I got really hurt riding, but it was the from my parents, it was like, okay, go back out. Like you have to get back on the horse. That old saying proves true, just keep going. So I don't, I wasn't scared either. Now as an adult, I'm terrified.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Oh, yeah. Well, as a kid, you're not scared of anything.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

You don't you don't understand, there's no sense of your own uh like your own fatality, right? Like it's just different.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

No, so there's uh just a quick little uh side story. So my girlfriend's son uh was at a a camp in Ecuador, and um there's like horseback riding lessons, I guess, and there's this picture of him that she just got sent out of nowhere of him standing up on a horse.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

She's like, What is happening?

SPEAKER_00 5:26

She's like, What the hell? I mean, it's funny because it's like you know, it's like it's here. He was like nine at the time. He's there's no fear at all. And like the camp, for whatever reason, was like okay with it taking photos, and it's so kind of wild.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

I was like, we what happens at the barn, it's like Vegas rules. You know, what happens at the barn stays at the barn. It's this weird kind of uh like little mini city, or it's governed by itself, right? There's no rules apply at the barn, but the rules that do apply better not break. And there were moments where my trainer would be grabbing lunch and we'd have two horses and we'd have a foot on one horse, a foot on the other, and trying to ride, you know, so like it actually doesn't surprise me that you got that photo. That typically those aren't sent to the parents, but you know, right? That's what I'm wondering.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

It's like, why is like whoever's like running that camp? Like, what are they like letting us do?

Finding Horses And Early Lessons

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Horse people are a different breed, they're just a different, we're just weird. We there's something in us that's just a little bit off, and to a certain extent, and then we kind of reality slaps us, and we're like, that was really dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Yeah, that's awesome that your uh girlfriend's son is into it too.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, definitely. You got like really deep into it though. I mean, I did. I mean, it started maybe as just a passion uh initially as a kid. I don't know if you kind of foresaw the direction you were gonna go in terms of getting highly competitive.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

So, one of the benefits and one of the shortcomings of not having someone to follow after in a sport is like you really don't know what you could do with it. And horses are this weird, it's not widely advertised. You're not watching people ride horses on TV, or at least you weren't as much. And so I had no idea. I just knew that I loved these animals and I loved riding them. Like I was pretty naturally good at it. Um, and so I was at this barn that was chaos. We were being trained by young kids. It was probably super dangerous. And I looked at my parents and I was like, I really want to do this, but this isn't the spot. Like, I just think there's probably a better place for me. And so they listened to me. It was the first time they really said, okay, let's go see what this is about. So we picked five or six barns. We did kind of a tour, made appointments, went and saw, met the trainers. And I had gone to three in the same day, and I was feeling really like, oh, so they're all kind of this way where I just don't feel like I click with any of them. And then I got to the barn I ended up staying with, which is Duran Show Stables, and I walked in and I was like, this is it. I'm here. And I just knew. And I met the trainer, and he was this gruff, didn't speak very many words. Yep, nope. And my parents are like, Oh, Emily is so passionate about horses and she really wants to come ride here. And his response was, a lot of little girls like horses. And we were like, Okay, you know, so he my parents were like, Well, maybe this isn't a thing, you know. So I started riding there, which is weird as a young kid. I don't know, it's just something about the place clicked with me.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Um what it was like, what do you think? Was it just like the the way that it looked, the personality, maybe you just gravitated to that kind of trainer?

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Yeah. So what I what I didn't know at the time is I had been exploring facilities that were really just you brought your own horse there, you did your own thing, you rode, maybe you trailrode, maybe you rode in an arena, all different types of riding, all different breeds of horses. And when I got to Duran, it was the first place where it was an established show facility. So what they were doing is breeding, training both horses and riders to compete on the world stage. And it isn't like driving to the Olympics. This is slightly different than that, but it was we have nationals, we have Canadian nationals, we have youth nationals, and like big money, big opportunity. And I had no idea what that meant. But what it when I got there, it was it was like clean, it was beautiful. The facility was like wood, the horses were all well taken care of, everyone had it's just silly stuff, like matching blankets for the horses, matching halters, like you could just tell it was an organized place that knew what they were doing.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

It was like elite, you could tell that they were just they were operating at a higher.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

I felt like I walked instead of going onto a soccer field in Pittsburgh with my kids, I felt like I walked onto like a turf field at UNC. Like I was like, oh, this is what it can be like. I like this. And then I think Rich, the trainer, Rich Duran, who owned Duran Show Stables, was kind of the opposite of my dad in so many ways. Like this man was quiet. Like if you got over time, you realize if he said, Good job, you should go celebrate because that's the best thing you could ever hear from him. Whereas my parents were like, You woke up today, you're our angel princess. Welcome to the room. We love you so much. You know, it's like I had earned the respect versus just being adored in my own family. And it was a really momentous point in time where I looked at this guy and I was like, I'm scared of you, but I'm excited to be good for you. And I'm, I love this facility. I love these horses. And it that's where it took off. And I never left that training facility in all of my riding career.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Awesome. It just also sounds like you're just the type of person. I think I don't know if it's like genetic or environmental, but you needed to be in an environment where you had to earn that kind of respect or success, right? Like you wanted to feel like you earned it, right? Versus like, you know, it's it's great to have that from your parents. Like it's really important for kids to feel obviously like their parents believe in them, but it also I think that there's a certain type of person that wants to go out and earn some that type of recognition as well, right?

Discovering An Elite Training Barn

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Yeah, I think it was a combination. So when you're a part of a large family, or at least my expans experience of being part of a large family, is you you get a little lost in the chaos. And depending on what your older siblings do, your options to stand out are usually kind of pre-built for you. So for example, my sister, Molly, incredibly good at soccer, like really, really good at soccer. And my parents chased down that passion with her and we were all supportive. You know, I was at soccer fields on the weekends and just kind of following her around doing this. My older brother was a collegiate swimmer and incredible, incredible um butterfly swimmer for many, many years, went to Cal Poly for it. And none of those things, like the sports environment that I had access to, nothing lit my fire. And I, so I didn't have a place to stand out on my own. And I wasn't gonna be good enough to be a swimmer like my brother Mike or to be a soccer player like my sister Molly. I played all the sports and I was fine, but like I would rather be making daisy necklaces in the in the outfield in softball versus, you know, running the bases. And so when I found horseback riding, it had always clicked with me. It wasn't like I identified it and it clicked, like it just made sense from the get-go. And it was uniquely mine. And so it didn't matter if it was really gritty and hard, and it didn't matter if it came really easily and it was handed to me on a platter. It mattered that it was mine alone and I had to figure out how to do it and I had to succeed. And I was the only person in my family that did it. So I think it came from a need to stand out, to find my place, my footing, and recognizing that like I don't have to fit in a cookie cutter shape to mirror what my siblings have done. So it was the first time where I, Emily, had an identity on my own and being the baby of the family, my identity, well, second to youngest, my identity had been swim meets and soccer games on the weekends and traveling to various sports things and supporting my siblings. And so this one was just me. Um, I also loved like my dad was a natural athlete his whole life. I mean, could pick up any sport, like went to a golf tournament, hit a hole in one on his first. He's just really good at sports. And it used to just irk me when he'd be on the sidelines. Emily, Emily, you should do this. You should go to the center. Emily, catch the ball, come, take the ball. And it, I find myself getting like enraged, like, shut the fuck up. I don't want to listen to you. Don't tell me what to do. So I found a sport where he literally could say nothing. And that's awesome. It was the best until he learned, then he learned.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Right. Um, how long did it take before he started to give you advice and and writing?

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Probably a year or two. Okay, it took him a little longer to figure out what's I had a year of bliss, a year or two of bliss. I got my my parents ended up investing. I say investing because you know it was expensive. They bought me my first horse for my 15th birthday.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

Um, and that's awesome. Yeah, it was amazing. And this, it was a really nice horse, like a really special, special thing. And I think that's when he felt like he could have a voice on how things went. Like he had financially invested in my sports, so then I was a little bit more uh receptive.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Now he's financially vested in the process.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

So he's like, all right, let's at that point. Yeah, I had to listen a bit, but I I think it was it was uniquely mine, and it was a place where I wasn't like a Mattos kid, that was my maiden name. Growing up in Pleasanton, small town feel, everyone kind of knew who we were. My dad was the booster president of the high school, and like everyone just knew there were so many preconceived notions about who we were and who I was that I got to walk into this place and no one knew me, and I got to decide exactly how I wanted to show up. So that was my that was the big awakening at Duran that I got to have.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

You and your dad were very close, it sounds like, and he became very involved with you with the with do you call the sport riding? I'm sorry, like how do I refer to it?

Earning Respect The Hard Way

SPEAKER_03 14:26

Yeah, so I'm an equestrian, is what we say. But yeah, just call it riding. Riding is fine. Okay, um, yes. So one of five kids, my mom is terrified of horses, like doesn't want to be near them, scared out of her mind. My dad defaulted to being the parent that took me to all the things. So he was driving me to the barn. I would go after school a couple days a week, and then I'd go like Saturdays and Sundays pretty much all day. So he'd drop me off in the morning, come pick me up in the afternoon. And then when I got to the point where I was ready to start competing, he was like, I'm going with you. Let's do this. We traveled together. We drove hours and hours and hours across the country. We flew into new destinations he and I had never been to. And it was, I was kind of coming into my own as like a young woman with my dad, who is a very successful businessman, but also just like a just a kind person, easy to be around, chatty and like comfortable. And I got to know him so well over these, I don't even know how many years it was 10, 11, 12, probably six years that we spent together traveling and doing the horse thing. Um, and he made it a lot of his identity too. So he made amazing friends at horse shows and at the barn and kind of developed a whole network of his own people that he liked to be with. And so it was truly our thing together. And it was the one place for both of us where we were kind of away from the noise of the family. He got to go, we'd drive golf carts around the horse shows and he'd have a beer in his hand and he'd be in heaven. Entrepreneur of a small business took it over from his father, and he worked a lot. He worked a lot to make this thing successful. And so when he got away, he just loved being and having fun. So I got to see him relaxed, away from dad mode. I got to know him as a human being. We talked a lot about like what he believed in and what he didn't believe in, politics, religion, you name it. We were having these really deep conversations as I was pretty young, 11, 12, 13, 14. And it was our special thing to do together. And it was a net, it was a non-negotiable that he would go with me. And so you think about the trade-off that requires with a family of five kids and owning your own business, like he really committed to this. So it was ours together. I think he helped me translate the passion that I was feeling as like a true athlete to the rest of my family and to other people who didn't understand it and saying, no, no, no, this is a sport, like this is a real sport. She's doing this thing. And he video and share it. He brought it to life for me in a way that I couldn't for myself. So, yes, to say we were close and got to know each other through horses is an understatement. That was such a unique experience that a lot of young girls do not have with their fathers at that point in time. And I got it. Um, and so it was, yeah, like I feel so lucky to have had that time, all things considered, you know, what was to come. And it was the most amazing, probably years of my life that I look back on.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

When did things start to really heat up in terms of competing and traveling and well, so it happened really early.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

It happened a lot faster than I thought it was going to. I started riding, and I mean, I didn't know if I was good or not. I knew I liked it, but I was good. I was really, really good. And the the thing that I could do that others couldn't is you could put me on any horse and I could figure out how to ride it. And you could give me, so I'm gonna take a little side path here, but with competitive riding, especially in the sport that I did, the horses that are successful in the show ring and in competitions are ones that like come alive in that environment. So you are riding one horse to prep, you're training outside, you're getting ready for your competition, and then you ride through this tunnel into an indoor arena. And the horses that shine are the ones that like they something changes and they're a different animal. Like they're harder, they're they're like fire-breathing dragons, is how I would describe it. They like arch their necks, they're scared of everything. And if you can channel that energy in the right direction, you win because you can't take your eyes off of them. You just can't. Um, and you can do all the maneuvers in a way that's very easy for the horse because you're letting it be its authentic self to a certain degree. Where riders fall off, not physically, but you know, where they don't succeed is when they cannot ride a horse as it comes through the arena, right? Right through those gates. And so you either have a horse that's pretty dull in a competition, or you have a rider that's way outhorced and it's scary, and you can see it too. It's like a really scary, scary moment. And there wasn't a horse that outhorsed me. So what was cool is you could put me on these crazy animals, and I was like, this is great. I would ride, we'd win. I was cleaning up. So very early on, I was successful with this. And I think kind of going with the flow of the animal and learning to not fight and not resist and like unlock a bit and go for a ride, but also like control the chaos a bit was a big unlocking lesson for me in my life with horses. So when they saw that I could do that, and they, meaning my trainers, they wanted me to get a horse. They're like, she's gonna win. Like we could she should be riding at nationals, we should have her competing consistently. And so it was showing other people's horses at first. Then I got my first horse and she was nuts. Like, just she was nuts. I could trail ride her around the barn, I could take her, you know, through the hills of Livermore, but you put her in the show ring, and if you don't uh handle her the right way, she's trying to rear up and flip over on you like nuts. Um, and I I learned her, and we won everything. We won every single thing we went into. We won classes we didn't deserve to win in in some experiences. So that's when it it's what do you mean by that though?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Like, what do you mean by didn't deserve to win?

Competing On Fire-Breathing Dragons

SPEAKER_03 20:06

So in a competition, um, if you're doing flat work, so there's two types for in my world that I rode in, which is um you can do over fences, so jumping and flat work. In the flat work competitions, you're showing off both the like the quality of the animal you're riding, you're showing off their gates, you're showing what they can do. You've got like 30 horses in a small arena, you're navigating between what I described as like fire-breathing dragons, some being managed well, some not being managed well, like a pretty dangerous situation in the scheme of things. And you have three judges, and the judges stand in the dirt and they have a notepad and they're looking like this. And so what they see, they're judging you on, but what they don't see didn't happen. So there were classes where I might be back here and something like picked up the wrong lead, where it's a it's a gate that horses do. It has to lead with a certain like, if you don't, you've got it wrong, you have to stop and start over until you get it right. And normally that would be like a you're out. There's no way. And there were moments where I would fumble, but the good was so good that what was seen, I would get, I would make it through. So I come out of classes crying because I was like, I didn't deserve that. I messed up. And I remember my trainer came up to me one time and he was like, I want you to listen to this and I want you to hear me very well. There are gonna be times you deserve to win and you don't, and there are gonna be times you don't deserve to win and you do, and you take them all with your chin up and you accept it, and you move forward and you're better than next. And it was like, okay, I can be, I can be at peace with that. Like, we're not gonna go toast to the terrible ride I did, but we're not gonna knock it either. Got in there, did the thing, got the award, moving on. What are we gonna work on next?

SPEAKER_00 21:37

That's really good life advice, too. I mean, it was and it's like if you just do the right things consistently over a longer period of time, you know, hopefully you're gonna be successful and progress in the right direction. But I mean that that's also I had similar experiences. Actually, a week after my 17th birthday, I started competing in Muay Thai, which is pretty like you know, aggressive stand-up uh sport. Yeah, and there was like similar experiences, right? Like highly competitive, and and there's also situations where it's like it's it's a hard sport. I remember a fight where um the guy literally couldn't get up off the ground and I lost the fight off points. And you're like, this doesn't make sense. Like it doesn't make sense. Like he's it's basically like a knockout in the final round, but the clock counted down before 10 seconds was up, and then you know, I lost the fight. Um, and then there was other situations, I mean, vice versa, right? Where you win by split decision and you're you know, you don't really know, but it's um absolutely yeah. I I experience anyways, it just made me like think about that experience, you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:33

It's kind of like uh like statistically, what's gonna happen is gonna happen. How does it feel when you look back on your time? Did you work on the right things? Did you focus on the right struggles? Do you walk away with your Chin held high. If you won and someone else didn't and you're crying because you won, like, how shitty is that going to feel for the other person? Like you stand there and you say, You show up for it, you take it, and then you go and you beat yourself up in the arena later when you are practicing that thing that you've messed up and you're doing it 50 times and crying and swearing and getting through it, and then you move on. Um, the other thing I'll say about my trainer though is it didn't matter how well you did. Like you could, I could have won a$20,000 class with roses in nationals. I could have beat, you know, 150 other riders. When I came back to the barn, it was you're I'm cleaning out souls. This is where I was telling you. So um I got back from my first national competition and I I cleaned up. Like we really did. And I was like, I first time back at the barn. I'm wearing my nationals jacket champion across the back. And I'm like, no one can touch me. I'm number one. And he goes, Hey, how's it going? I was like, You are way too chipper, like something's up. And he goes, Do you want to ride? And I was like, Yeah, I'm I mean, I'm here. I want to ride. He's like, Great, you have to clean all the tack in the tack room, every single piece. There were like thousands of pieces of tack. So, what's tack? So, tack is I actually did a speech on this in fourth grade. Tac, not a thumbtac or a tic tac. Um, it's tack is the equipment you use on a horse. So it's usually leather and metal pieces, harnesses for their face, bridles, bits that go in their mouth, um, saddles, straps, like basically all of the things you need to train a horse and condition a horse and for you to stay on and have some version of control. And so when you're done, you hang it back up in the tack room, which is where all the tack goes, very in in inventive name, and you moved on to the next horse. So there were days I'd ride like seven horses in a row and you'd take your tack, you put it back, blah, blah, blah. But it didn't get cleaned very often. And so you can imagine it was like sweaty and gross and hairy and spitty from the horses. And so he looked in the tank room after getting back from the show and he's like, Yeah, we're not riding any horses until this is cleaned. And I was the only person who was coming out like five days a week. So he goes, You want to ride? You earn it. And I'm thinking, I did just earn it. Like, I want everything you put me on. He's like, No, that's not what earning it is. You go do the hard work and you show up for the fun. We don't just get to do the fun stuff. So that whole day I sat pretty pissed off in the tack room, sweating, mad, covered in like saddle soap, like disgusting. And then when I came out and I was obviously like, you know, pretty dejected over the whole thing, he's like, Here you go. And he passed me this horse that he had never let me ride before. And it was like, Okay, my stripes will be earned. This is not just winning. It's not about just showing up and winning the big things. It's like, what are the work you're gonna do every step of the way to earn the next thing? And it kept me really humble and it kept me like not believing that I was as good as I was, and I think that helped me be more successful, weirdly. So the whole thing was just very confusing um and good for my emotional mentality, my emotional health, and challenging for, you know, like I it's just it's hard to explain. It's you were never, you had never succeeded, is basically what it came down to. You were never too.

Winning, Failing, And Centering

SPEAKER_00 25:46

I think you're explaining it really well. I think it's the um I talked to athletes. We had um uh Reese on the show. He's a founding talent member of a company called Dust, which is just scaling like to an extent uh insane extent. Um probably like his episode, but he was a professional footballer for Wimbledon before he got into talent. Okay, and and so he got like a scholarship when he was like 16 and like went on that wave for a few years. And you know, he talks about finding center. Like it's like you come off the win, you come off a loss, it's like you have to reset. And that's just I think that's like one of the most important things you can learn playing sports. I mean, there's other ways to learn it too, like, but it's it's just like that finding center and maintaining like it's something that I don't know how I I did I like when I was an athlete and like I was literally doing Moy Town to Make a Living for like four first four years of my adult life. Um like coaching and like doing competing, all of it. Um I don't know honestly if I frankly knew how to find center. It's something that I think I've learned like later in life, yeah, as an entrepreneur, now of like a decade in where I can win a big contract and like find center, or I can lose, and I just realize like it's just part of the game.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

I I think you need a mentor to help you center.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like you learned that lesson early on, which is freaking it's awesome that you had that experience.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

It is because when you're on a high or you're on a low, I think this applies to both situations, right? Like maybe you've lost a number of competitions, or you've just you can't get out of the slump, or you've been on a high and you haven't lost in a while and you're about to compete again. And in your head, it should be I do what I know how to do. Like I know how to do this work. I've trained for this work. I am like humble and centered in this moment that I know I can I'm capable of what's in front of me, versus holy shit, I've been winning, I can't lose. The pressure's so high, I'm gonna fall. There's only one way to go from here and it's down. And I think that's where you have athletes that can kind of sustain success or come back after a big setback versus those that hit the high moment and then crumble. I think he was doing me probably the biggest favor he could have in squashing me down a bit and being like, you're fine, you got a lot to learn. Because I showed up to every single competition, like, I have to prove myself. And there it's never, it's not earned. There's this, I didn't, I don't deserve anything I'm given. I have to go earn it right in that moment, right in that time. So the centering is a perfect way of saying that, which and that's truly translated to every single moment in my life, professionally, being a mom, you name it. Um, and so yeah, it was good for me.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

It was really, really I think it's it's still something that I've tried to pulse check on myself. Like, am I am I centered? Am I do I have the right perspective and approaching for me? It's it's like primarily professionally because my goals are so insanely aggressive and uh growth-oriented with like my companies, and it's like but I I have to, I'm so obsessed with it because I've been through market crashes, I've been through 2021 when the market was scaling like crazy. Like I've I've seen these things, I've seen like the highs and the lows, and my whole perspective is just like I feel like completely evolved to just constantly checking myself. Like, do I need to go up a little bit? Do I gotta go down? You know, do I have to like humble myself a little? Like, where am I doing and like where is my attention? Is it going toward the right things? Am I being consistent like relentlessly and obsessively consistent with my activities? Like, it's like the whole blocking and tackling and doing this stuff on a day-to-day basis that like is gonna lead to long-term success, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:15

It's so interesting because I swear to you, until this moment, I really haven't thought about what my trainer Rich was doing in that moment, but that's exactly what it was. Like, that's he was removing the mental game from being anything from showing up and doing the hard work. And what is what does my body need? What is this, what is my partner as in the horse need? What is this competition asking for? And delivering versus trying to hold some standard that it didn't matter. No one cared, no one cared enough. Like you go and you prove yourself every time and time again, and you work on the thing until you're good at it.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah, it's um just uh another episode you might like. We had uh Joe Wilson on the show. Um, he's like a uh he started a couple companies, a few companies. He also ran Microsoft in Europe. Like really, yeah, like so just casually like he did that for a while, you know. Um, and he he talks about like moving from a hero to a builder mindset. And I I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but essentially he's like the hero mindset is like you gotta go out and you gotta hit, you know, the you know, get the game-winning shot, or or you have to just knock it out of the park this one time. He was like, Life rarely comes down to a one moment type of situation. It's like you have to get out of this like hero mindset and get into this. I don't want to just solve a problem once or win once. I want to build something where I can win repeatedly in the long run overall.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

And so it's like that's exactly that's a perfect way of describing it.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah, I think so. It kind of is like, oh damn, like he could he articulate it in a way that I hadn't really thought of. And I'm because I think like there's times where I've definitely still I find myself like creeping into that hero mindset, like, oh, I gotta crush this month and I have to close this big deal. And it's like, well, let's not worry about that. How do I make sure I how do I close 10 big deals this year? Like, let's just start to build that system so that like I can make it repeatable versus thinking I have to knock it out of this park, knock it out of the park on this one thing, you know.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

And it it I think this is twofold. Like it tends to be really hard to build the thing that continues to succeed. Like that's a different level of hard work. And it's also really hard to be the hero in that moment. But the more rewarding work is the builder, even though in our minds we kind of romanticize the idea of being the winner, the number one, the champion, the hero who shows up and swoops in and solves the problem.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:32

Um, I think the real heroes are the ones that don't let the problem exist in the first place because what they've built is so solid. So, like you don't get rattled in the moment because you're built, you're always improving your craft. Um, you're solving problems before they become problems. You don't need a hero if things are prevented, uh prevented, you know, like there's just these moments in time where I think you could be a hero where needed, and once or twice you should feel that feeling because it feels really good.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

It does feel kind of cool. But like you shouldn't have to be like odds are stacked against you and no, that's terrible.

Builder Mindset Over Hero Moments

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Why are we setting it like you haven't done something right if that's your reality, time and time again? Something's broken. And yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Um, and I think, you know, going back to like formative years and talking about my dad and and this trainer that I worked with, Rich. So my father was a man, I've had to memorize this over years, a manufacturer's representative in the electrical industry. And so he was basically like a reseller. He had this huge warehouse of forklifts, which obviously made it really fun for me to go visit. And um, he employed probably 30 or 40 people at any given time. And it had moments of wild success and it had moments of like barely keeping the lights on. I remember when it we turned the millennium to 2000, they were afraid they were gonna lose all of their data on their computers. Like we just didn't know what was gonna happen, and it would have been a major, it would have been the undoing of a business that had been 100 years in the making or 70 years in the making. And so I came from a humble man who showed up to work every day to go do the hard thing, even what whether it was like riding the lowest of the lows or riding the highest of the highs. And those were so the lows were so deeply low in that industry. And the highs were like untouchable. You know, we'd put a boat one year. Like these things were obviously it came down to financial uh earnings, right, for the success of his business. But like he every day he put on his work clothes, he put on a tie, he put on his shine shoes, he shined his shoes every day before he put them on, and he'd go and build the thing every single day. And I think without realizing it, horses kind of aligned me to that mentality. And then watching that he was supportive of me being at the barn for hours and hours and hours and working on my craft and cleaning tack and doing the thing. Like I think he really related to that. And so it helped us have a bridge where normally a 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old girl, you're like speaking another language to your 40, 50-year-old father. And we were like eye to eye. We were locked, we just knew exactly it was very similar, our mentality on things.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

I hope I can have that type of relationship with my me too.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Me too. So, you know, so yeah, it I do too. I think it sets the bar really high.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

It does. It sounds like just like this ideal.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

It was don't get me wrong, he the man could be so annoying. Drive me up a freaking wall, you know, like no one's perfect, right? I had so much fun with him, and that's what made his loss just it it like tackled me. It it physically crumbled me um to the point where I was like, this is it. I I had my fun, I did my great work, and I think now I die with him. Like I'm pretty sure that that's what happens because he was the shining light of my family. So to give you context, um he when he was 54 or 56, I think it was 54, he had a massive stroke out of the blue. So he went to work one day and called my mom. And he was like the person who would never go to the doctor, you know, sick as a dog. He's like, Yeah, I'm fine. And he called my mom and he's like, I think I need to go to the hospital. And she was like, What? You know, what's happening? So she drove his office was in Hayward, California, if you're familiar, from Pleasanton to Hayward, went and got him and took him to his cardiologist in San Ramon, John Muir. Where so we'll thread the needle with my mentor, Kim Birch, there at some point. Um, and within 24 hours, he was dead. His stroke was so catastrophic that we saw movement in his body and we were like, oh my God, he's okay. And what experts saw was like, that is the highest form of brain damage. Like he was shifting his body in a way that meant he was not there. It was he was gone.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Oh, poor guy.

Father’s Influence And Sudden Loss

SPEAKER_03 35:47

I know it was awful. It was awful. And so five kids, my little brother was 12. Uh, I was 15. My sister and brother were both my sister was a freshman in college. My brother was at, they were both at Cal Poly together, thank goodness. My oldest sister was back in Pleasanton, but like he literally went from here one moment to gone the next. And so that was a that was a big moment for me where I could in my brain, I'm like, what does this mean for me? What does this mean for my sport, my passion, my love? Selfishly, like I didn't know where I didn't know how to move forward, or if I was allowed to, or if that would have been, Emily, your dad just died. Like, we don't want to talk about what you need in this. And so I backed off. I just kind of took a back seat. We were all in shock for a year. Um, but it was like, it was very, very uh scary to find my footing and to like, can I do this thing? Can we afford to do this thing? Is my mom gonna wanna support me in this way? And so, yeah, I mean, it took us all to our knees in our own unique ways, but I would say it was really, really hard on me because he was kind of foundational to the horses. And so, what does it mean when he's not there anymore? Um, and that was probably like aside from finding horses and finding that passion and knowing I was good at something that was different than everyone else in my family. That was the moment where I was like, oh, life is hard. You know, life is gonna be full of these unexpected turns. And are we gonna go build or are we gonna lay on the ground? And frankly, we did a combination of the two and kind of took some time to figure it out. But yeah, it was, it was pretty nuts losing him so suddenly. And he was, I will say he was so foundational in my life, but my siblings felt the same way or a similar version of it. Um, so he somehow made himself kind of critical in all of these kids' lives, and then he was, you know, not there. So we all we were reeling for a long time over that, and that changed everything for me.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

And I think you said you also started working at a relatively young age, right, to help support your passion. Does that start when your dad passed so that you were able to help support so um yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

What changed was the work had always been happening. So I was at the barn after school most days, and then all weekend long mucking stalls, cleaning tack, working horses, you know, all the things that go into caring for a show facility. But I wasn't getting paid for it. I was just existing. It was like I was happy to be there doing, and it allowed me to ride all the horses I wanted to ride and get lessons from my trainer. When he died, it was the the lights kind of went off in terms of what was available to me financially. And so we had to redefine how we do this. And so I took some time away. I don't know, I can't remember how much time I took away, but it was significant. And when I came back, I remember the first day I went back to the barn and I was sitting in my horse's stall, and my trainer comes in, he's like, Hey. And I said, hi. And I was so nervous to like see him or see people that I knew. Are they gonna look at me differently? Like, what do they say? And he said, Are you ready to go to work? And I said, Mm-hmm. And he goes, Okay, come on. And from that day he started paying me. And so that translated into me going to horse shows and competing in a way that I had before. Now, my mom wasn't financially devastated, but it was a totally different ballgame because she didn't work. And she had two kids in college, another one, you know, a sophomore year of high school. So, yes, that's where work started meaning something more than just access to horses. It meant like I can kind of control my own destiny. I if I'm making the money, then I can do the things I want to do. That's where that took off. I was like, oh, well, you could be paid for this stuff, and this is great.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

And I think at this point, you were about to graduate high school. So you you were working, you were competing. And then it was it when you went to college, were you still competing, or at that point had you decided?

SPEAKER_03 39:48

I was still competing. My priorities had shifted a lot. I wanted to be a college student. I wanted to go experience the whole thing. What changed was I was planning to go to school on the East Coast and ride and be competitive with riding in college. And I physically couldn't make myself leave the West Coast after losing my dad when I did. And so I ended up going to Santa Clara University and it was close to home. It was like 35, 40 minutes from home. And I would still drive and compete and ride and train. And so it allowed me to maintain that for a while. Um, upon graduating from college, though, so like two weeks before I graduated, my trainer, who we were in contact, obviously, because I was still riding, not as much as I used to, but he called me and he said, I found, I found you another horse. And I was like, I'm not looking for a horse. And he said, No, no, no, I found a horse. Like, you need to pay attention to this. And so I went out and looked at her and I bought her. I bought her because I saved the money from selling my first horse that we had won so much on. And that was a huge, huge investment. And that money just sat. I invested it over during school and I used a bit of it to buy this horse, but I was like, that's not gonna last very long when you're show when your bills are, you know,$3,000 a month, and that's not even including like what I need to do to survive and live on my own. So I had a job lined up from the day I graduated from college and I started working immediately to continue to pay for that. And so it it it kind of like fueled the fire. I would say it probably made me take the wrong job, but I was working nonetheless. The paycheck was a paycheck at that point.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

On a side note, before we jump into your career, did you want to talk about what happened like when you were traveling about it? Or do you want to skip over that? So so um it sounded like it was a pretty impactful situation as well. So if if you want to share, we could talk about it. If not, we can, you know.

Grief, Work, And Returning To Ride

SPEAKER_03 41:37

Yeah, no, I I think I do. And so obviously lost my dad, sophomore year of high school, chose a school that was local, and I was finding my feet again. And it had been like four or five years since losing him. And I was starting to feel confident. Like for the first time, I was like, I can do stuff, I'm killing it at school, I'm doing great, I'm living on my own, 35 miles away from home, feeling very independent, still driving a car my mom owned. And the opportunity for me to go to abroad popped up. And normally my answer was like, I'm never leaving, like, I'm not going abroad. That's not an option for me. I don't want to leave my family. I'm too close to my siblings. Like, mm-mm, not an option. And all of a sudden I was like, I'm going to Italy. Like, I'm gonna go to Italy and I'm gonna study abroad and I'm gonna learn Italian and live with an Italian woman and I'm gonna do this whole thing. And my mom was like, Go do it. You know, this was by the way, 2000. This was the market crash, the big market crash. This must have been, I forget what year it was, but like it was a bad time to be doing this to like go spend money in another country. Um, and I went and I was, I felt like untouchable. You know, I had mastered my sport, I'd gotten into the school I wanted to go to, and I get to walk around Italy. I'm speaking Italian, I'm drinking cappuccinos. And uh, this group of friends that I made while I was there, somewhere from my school at Santa Clara, we decided to go to Oktoberfest for a weekend and you know, super fun. We we got there, we had no plan. So we were standing in line for one of the big tents, and that's like the thing you do. You go into the tents, there's music and beer, and it's like a whole experience. So we were waiting in line for the tent. And um, when I say wait, we were there for like two and a half hours trying to get in. And so you could, there were spots to buy beer, spots to get food. And so each of us would take a moment and like go bring some stuff so we weren't just sitting in line doing nothing. And this guy behind me that I didn't know until we were in line, but we had been talking with him with our big group, came with like six steins of beer in his hands and he passed them all out and he passed me one. So this was my first beer of the day. And I drank maybe this much of it. And all of a sudden, uh, my friend that I was with at the school in Italy, his name's Lance, he looked at me and he's like, What's wrong with you? I was like, What are you talking about? And he goes, your eyes are rolling back in your head. I'm only like, What's wrong? And he and I don't remember any of this. And he went to take me back to the hotel and then come back once they had secured a tent. And two of our other friends started getting into a fight randomly. So his attention went over here. And when he turned back, I was gone. And I think it was the person that passed me the beer that ended up taking me because that guy was also gone. And about 15, 16 hours later, I came to in a hotel room somewhere in Germany, no idea where I was. And uh I woke up to my phone ringing over and over and over again. I was like, what am I hearing? And I have no memory of like we'll get real raw. Like, did I get dressed? I don't remember. I stood up and I grabbed my phone and I saw a man walking away from me. He was in the room with me, and I bolted, like I ran out the door, and I forgot my purse, which had copies of my passport and cash and things that I needed. And I was so drugged. That I could not figure out how to open the door to get back in the room to get my stuff. Like I was clawing at the door. So, anyway, long story short, I was found by a couple of German girls. They used my phone to track who I'd been in contact with. They sent me the police department. We filled out a whole report. I had to do uh they sent me to the hospital to do a rape kit, but they didn't have anyone on staff that could do it. So they sent me to the police department where I had to do it with a translator in the room, which was absolute hell for anyone going through anything. Um, and it was like the moment where I kind of the the main feeling, like even as I'm telling the story, I would say it feels like I'm getting kicked in the chest by a horse. Like it took my breath away because just when I thought I could do it, just when I thought I was okay and could stand on my own and I was going to be successful and it was all gonna be good, I was knocked down harder than I had ever been knocked down before. So my mom flew to Italy. Somehow we found each other in Florence Airport. We stayed for a week and then she ended up taking me home. So I didn't even stay for my whole abroad experience. Coming out of that, I was I was probably more rocked by that physically than I would say even when my dad died. Um and I told you, like I could I was a young adult and I uh skipped two quarters of school and I slept in my mother's bed every night. Like I was mentally very in a very bad place. Um, found a great therapist, worked through it, and one day I was like, okay, I think I'm back. But like it was it was a setback to say the least. It was like I was clobbered by that one. Um I was still a student at Santa Clara, I still had aspirations, I had not yet purchased the horse. Um, but I knew I like I I don't know. I just I kind of lost myself for a year or two there.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

How did you fight through that? Because like from the from the outside in, it's like every part of your life, you just it's like you overcame and you graduated and you had a job immediately. And like look at your career and your your family, and like you've just frankly, like on a like outside, it's like you've been able to persevere and crush everything.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

So how I mean, how did you get through that?

Study Abroad Trauma And Recovery

SPEAKER_03 46:55

I will say I had no plans to. I had fully, I think my mom like dragged me to a therapist because I was like, I was like, this what's the point of this? This is so stupid. Like, I just I can't figure out what I'm working so hard for. Like I just want to lay here and exist. I felt I just I was I was lost for a good amount of time. The thing that pulled me out of it was knowing that after college a new beginning would start. Like I knew that I could kind of redefine my life as I wanted to define it. I was watching my sister and brother after graduating from school, working jobs they loved. You know, they had a set they had a level of freedom financially that I was in my house with my mom, you know, all the time, still reliant on her for providing to me. And I think it was just, I can't stay this way. Like I can't lay on the couch and watch Real Housewives all day. I need, I needed to get up and get out. And I it took, it took actually, I remember one of my friends in school was like, What's the plan? Like, what's your plan? And I was like, I don't have a plan. She's like, You need a plan. What's the plan? And I started thinking about that. And I was like, well, first the plan is to go back to school and finish, and then I'll decide what's next. And I think every milestone, how however big or small, I hit after that experience, it kind of got the adrenaline going, like, okay, you can do this one thing and we keep going. But I'll say, James, like, even to this day, I live with a sense of when's the next thing gonna happen? When is that next bad thing gonna plummet? And I will be clobbered by it. And so so much of my career has been built on stabilizing my world. Um, how do I prevent X and Y with this builder work and kind of making sure that everything is in order and I can pivot as needed? I didn't ever want to be blindsided again, is basically what it came down to. And so that was kind of the fuel that drove me, whether that's healthy or not. That's that's essentially where it came from. Um, so yeah, I I ended up, I did fine. I graduated school, I did really well. I had a job from someone I met through horses, and I started my professional experience, but I was pretty, I was pretty like wary of the world and shaky on my feet at that point.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

And it took some time too to get your footing professionally. It sounded like that first experience was a little bit rocky too, particularly based off everything that you were overcoming and how hard you fought. Because you did fight and you you grinded it out and you got to the point where you had a job lined up, you were able to purchase your horse despite all the challenges and everything you went through, you made it happen, and it still wasn't over. Like you you got that first job, and then it it didn't go exactly how you expected it to, right?

SPEAKER_03 49:51

Right. So at that point, even though I was pushing through, I was letting a lot of the world kind of happen to me. Um, and I got into this job, and I I the job was with the American Heart Association, and I think generally the American Heart Association is great, like no knocking on on the organization itself. But it was a really poor experience because it there was no one there who was like, you're smart, you're good, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take you under my wing and make you great. It was kind of a a world of people who were pushing each other down to try to get to the top. And I hadn't experienced that professionally in my education. I just hadn't come across that, except in extreme competition, but I had the skills to overcome it. I knew what I needed to do to overcome it. Whereas in this job, I had to learn it all. I was, I was a heart walk coordinator, but I weirdly had all of these connections in various health systems because of people I had met through horses. And so what I was supposed to do was plan a couple of big nonprofit events. And what I ended up doing was securing big donations for the American Heart Association. So they were very happy with me generally, but I was like not fulfilled, not doing the work I wanted. I'd secure, you know,$100,000 from uh John Muir, for example. And my paycheck was still like I was making$36,000 a year. And I thought, I am killing it. Like, this is great. And then I the no more money would come in. And I was like, I don't, how does this work? Like A and B, we're not getting to this. I'm not sure how to make this work for me. I couldn't move out of my mom's house. I had met my husband early in that job. I met he was my boyfriend at the time. We were so in love, we wanted to move in together. And I was like, I'm trapped here. And so it was through that job where I was like, I can do hard things. I'm doing the work of three people above me. I'm securing these big donations. I'm not seeing any money off of it. My older brother, Mike, who's now in cybersecurity too, which is kind of wild, was in sales. And he's like, Why are you working for a nonprofit? I get it, Emily. It's the American Heart Association. Dad died of a stroke. They go hand in hand, but like, get out. What are you doing? And he's like, You need to go get a job in sales, go make money and like be in control of your own destiny. So I finally got the courage to sneak out. I like interviewed in private one day after I had a lunch meeting and I went to this recruiting agency and met Carolyn Betts. And she, instead of putting me with other sales companies, she was like, You need to be a recruiter. So that's kind of how all of that was born. I wasn't gonna work for something that didn't make sense for me anymore. It was that pivotal time where sometimes we take jobs and sometimes we create opportunities, and I realized that I like creating opportunities and I was gonna follow that path for the rest of my career versus just be stuck in something that didn't fulfill me at all.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Hey, by the way, before we keep going, do you have a hard stop at 1130?

SPEAKER_02 52:37

Let me double check. Um, I can go, I can give you 15 minutes past. So 1145.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

If we want to, if I mean if that works for you, we're yeah, that's true. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

Um is this okay, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Yeah, I'm having a great time. Are you? I hope you're yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:00

Okay, I just it's so weird. It's like it's my story. It doesn't, it doesn't feel that interesting.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Are you kidding me? This is like because it's mine, but it's like it's incredibly interesting. It's incredibly uh valuable to uh people listening too. I mean, I'm leading the conversation, but in a way, I'm also kind of following your lead on what you want to talk about, right? So it's um I'm learning a lot from you. I frankly I find your story like really inspiring. Well, thanks. You're a very impressive person.

SPEAKER_03 53:28

Oh, thank you. That's so nice.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

So, so so you got you started recruiting on the agency side for Betts recruiting, which I think those of us that came up in tech are very familiar with. Um, you know, I've I'll tell you I I wasn't games.

SPEAKER_03 53:43

Like I walked in, I was like, what does a recruiter do? The only reason I knew to talk to a recruiter is from a good friend of mine, Kayla McDonald, who was like, Oh, you should talk to Carolyn Betts. She can help you find a job. And I was like, Great, that's who I want to talk to. But I didn't understand what a recruiting agency does. I thought I was gonna have to pay for the service with my big paycheck that I was getting from the American Heart Association. So I was stressed out. I was like, I don't know what this means. So that was that was the path there. When people say they stumble into recruiting, like I truly fell in the front door of recruiting.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Yeah, yeah. So I've done like almost uh 200 episodes. One guy didn't stumble in. What like literally, I'm not kidding you. One guy intentionally didn't stumble in because his dad was a an agency owner and he grew up in the business, and so he kind of he wanted to continue uh down that path. But um, anyways, it's just sort of funny.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

It's like we all sort of so funny, it's so funny.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

So, yeah, that was how I mean I I was working in San Francisco on Montgomery Street, and I was dressed very casually. It was casual Friday at the American Heart Association, so we were allowed to wear jeans, and Carolyn could meet me that afternoon. And I was like, I can't go into an interview with jeans and an American Heart Association t-shirt on. So with my absolutely zero dollars in my bank account, I actually think I called my mom to transfer money into my account. I went to Banana Republic down the street, bought a whole new outfit, and basically ran to the interview because I needed to show up well, because they were gonna be the deciders of where I worked next. You know, they were like, What can I earn? What companies are you willing to introduce me to? And that was the start of it all. And I will say, you know, Carolyn saw something. I don't know what it was. I don't know if it, I'm not sure. I can't even remember what I talked about in that interview. But I remember her popping her head in the door and saying, You're looking for a sales job? And I was like, I yeah, I think I want to, I wanna make some money. Like, I want to be in charge of this. And she goes, Why don't you consider working here? This is a sales job. And it was a hundred percent commission for the first yeah, for the first year and a half. And I was about to sign uh an apartment lease with my then boyfriend, and I was like, I'm not sure how I make a hundred percent commission guaranteed with my ability. And by the way, my boyfriend at the time was a bartender, so he was not killing it on the financial side either. So we had to figure this out really quickly. Um, so it was a big, big change. Like we went from polar opposites.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

Wow. So let's fast forward. Um right now, you're senior director of talent acquisition for Horizon 3. Yes. Previously, I mean you were director of of recruiting at Segment and then Lattice. Yeah, these are big companies that you were and you received.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

They weren't big when I joined, they were small. Yeah, segment uh Lattice was the biggest I had joined. And when I when I stepped foot in there, there were about 350 people.

SPEAKER_00 56:35

Oh, okay. So it's still earlier.

First Job, Misfit, And Money Reality

SPEAKER_03 56:36

Uh-huh. And then Segment I joined before they had 100 people in the door, and we scaled everything up to, you know, well, we were acquired by uh Twilio, and that became a really big company really fast. So I've seen a lot of scale in the years that I've been in-house.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Right. And that's essentially what you're I'm looking at Horizon 3. You know, they do like this on premium, they do this hiring trends thing. I don't know how accurate it is, but it says your sales department has seen 2800% increase. Is that is that actually like it's true? No, no, it's hard to do it.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

That is, by the way, one that insights tool. If you don't go on LinkedIn and click insights for any company you're considering looking at or selling into or having a conversation with, and if that chart is not up and to the right, I would ask some serious questions about what's happening and what they're doing and what their plans are. Like, that is such a great sales uh tool for me as a recruiter, talking to people who are interviewing with a company that's like downward trending. I'm like, what are you doing? That's a zombie company. We're not doing that. Um, so insights is where I spend a lot of time on recruiter. But uh yeah, so I've always shocking or not shocking based on my experience. I love the build. I live for the build. I didn't know I loved it until I helped build Bets Recruiting. And I think when I joined, there were like 12 or 14 people that had worked for the company in in total. And I think there were like eight currently employed. So we were pretty small there too. So moving over into tech, 100 people was like unheard of. It was really big for me. And I truly felt like I was faking it every single day I walked into that job. Um, until one day it kind of clicked and I was like, oh no, I know how to do this stuff. And I don't know if I always knew or if I'd learned on the job, but like I'm not faking it anymore. So that was a big, that was a big moment in time.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

But like when you get there, right? When you're like, wait a second, I've done this once or twice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:23

Yeah. I I remember I was sitting on a call with my CEO and he's asking me questions and he's asking me the question and I'm like panicking. And then I the answer came out of my mouth. Like somehow it was like, oh no, you do know this. And I was like, whoa, where did that come from? And I was right, I knew it, but I think we are our own biggest blocker in terms of you know what we think we're capable of sometimes. And I had to really, I had to earn my stripes, I had to take a back seat, I had to build the thing, I had to meet with every single person and understand exactly what their role in the company was. I had never had exposure to an organization that was like relatively sophisticated in terms of structure. Um, so it was like drinking from a fire hose, quite literally. And we had to scale that thing fast. So yeah, it was we dove, I dove right in and yeah, faked it for many, many months.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Hey, I've I've been there too. I remember yeah, you gotta do it.

SPEAKER_03 59:15

You have to spend you have to earn your strikes faking it a bit.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

A little bit. Yeah, I think I've learned over the years it's like solve one problem at a time. And I think that I thought at times with my professional progression, the first problem is getting the job. The second problem is I'll figure out how to do it when I when I have it. And I think the only way I was able to pull that off in some cases was building relationships with amazing mentors. I would I would find somebody, you know, there's there's certain jobs I I took. I mean, particularly in the early days of starting my embedded recruiting and RPO firm, uh, which is over we just had our 10-year anniversary uh recently, which you know how that game goes. It's a different than contingent, but it's like you know how that oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:58

Oh, I know that's a hard business. So 10 years, I mean that's great, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

So I remember like in the earlier days, I'd build myself out. And there's a couple times I build myself out in like leadership roles, and I would interview. I mean, I I knew enough to like I and I had a track record of success with these companies, but they would need somebody to come on six months or a year for like a VP or a head of role, and I would I would do it. And you know, there was times where like I was like I knew I would have to do things in those jobs that I'd literally never done before, and it's like, okay, like I don't know how to do this, but they're asking me, like, you know, like have do you have experience or like can you can you do this? Usually I would say I would I respond by saying, I can get this done. Yeah, here's how I would approach it. Yep, and then like you know, I would I'd get the position, and then I'd be calling people who had done the job before. I'd be like, hey, like, how do I do this one thing?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:53

Yeah, and now you have chat, but you know, that's you know what I learned too, and you probably figured this out, you just said it essentially, is I don't know that there's a job unless you are a trades person where your focus is this one thing that you do over and over and over again, and you are master of your craft. I think so much of your job and your career success is based on who you know and how you access them at certain points of need. So I could take any job just like you could, and I could probably figure it out because I've made friends with people who know how to do that thing. And I'm like, walk me through this. Yeah, send me that template you use. Like, that's all it is. And so I had to like change my mental math of that's not cheating. That's using the network that I built, the people that I knew and trusted me and I trusted to get it done. And you can do anything.

Stumbling Into Recruiting

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Yeah, you gotta, you gotta go for it. I think that that's like the biggest, and that's maybe something I've learned as an entrepreneur. But I mean, I even have like really brilliant people on my team that I sort of have to remind them like, we gotta solve one problem at the time, at a time. Like, what is the next thing we have to do? So it's like when I think when some folks are thinking about professional development, it's like get the just focus on getting the job. If there's things you don't know how to deliver, that's great because like it's that growth that is gonna make you want to be able to do the things you haven't done before. Solve one problem at a time, what's directly in front of you. Maybe that's something we learned as athletes. I don't, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:12

But I I don't I I don't know. I think life gets really overwhelming when you try to solve all your problems. And I think that's the same for you know, finals time in school. It's the same for quarter end, like it doesn't matter what it is, but you have to be able to check the boxes and get through the list and prioritize ruthlessly. Um, one person, so when I went to work for Betts, instead of being managed directly by Carolyn, there was this woman working there who had started the business with Carolyn essentially, and her name's Katie Hughes. You might know her. She's been in uh Venture Capital for a while now. She's she's created an incredibly successful career. Actually, she'd be a really impressive person for you to talk to.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:51

Can you spell her last name? I'm gonna look her.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:52

H-U-G-H-E-S.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Katie Hughes. She sounds so familiar, but I don't know. She was a draper.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:59

Yeah. She was with uh so she I can I can still remember like my first one-on-one with her.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

Um and first employee.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:12

Yeah, she was the first employee. So she started, she was like right, she was Carolyn's right-hand woman. And um, I was obsessed with this person. I was like, you are so successful, the way she held herself, like she just had it figured out, at least it looked that way. I don't know if she actually did.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:27

You know, you never know.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

But over time, so she kind of she said it in so many different ways, but she's like essentially what she was saying is, I like the idea of you taking the stretchier thing. I like the idea of you reaching bigger than what you think you can reach for. Instead of building your confidence by knocking out these quick wins that you know you can already do, I think you'd be better off reaching for the big, big goal and kind of incrementally getting what you need to go up for it. And so I remember when I called her after I was leaving Betts, she was no longer at Betts, she was in the VC world at that point. And I said, Katie, I have this job offer from a company called Segment. I can't even tell you what they do. It's so technical. I don't understand it. And I have another job offer from a company called Nerdwallet. And Nerdwallet's cash was a little bit less, but the culture was fun. And the manager was this guy I'd known for a long time. It felt very safe and fun and exciting. And I knew I could do the work.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

Who is who's the manager of the Nerdwallet's one of my biggest customers? That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

Um, what is his name? Uh, what is his? I'm gonna tell you right now. It's a funny name. Do you yeah?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

I worked with um, well, anyways, I don't even know if he's still there. I was just curious because I I've been working with him for a couple of years. Who do you let me see who I work with uh somebody on the the revenue side primarily, Mike Ross, who runs runs revenue for them.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:44

The fact that I can't remember this guy's name is embarrassing. It's like uh I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

Oh, okay. I mean, it's I can't remember. I was just wondering if you know some of the same people over there.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:54

So the the weird thing is I just adopted this German Shepherd dog, and she was like the light of my life. I loved this dog so much. And Nerdwall, it was dog friendly.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:04

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:05

It was like that was one piece of it, and the job seemed cool, the vibe of the company was great, their office was amazing. And then there was Segment who was in uh where were they? They were like dog patch and of San Francisco, weird kind of office space, like the most cerebral people I've ever talked to in my entire life. But like something made me want to consider it. So I called Katie and I was like, okay, here's what here's what I have in front of me. And she said it again, and she was like, I like the idea of you taking a stretchier role. And so I that was like the segment was a huge turning point for my career. And I think a lot of that goes to her voice in my head, and her voice actually in my ear being like, Don't be stupid, take this job. Yeah, so I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

No, you did, and he made it happen and he got a promotion.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:52

Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

Then you ran lattice, and now you're at Horizon Three, which is scaling to an insane extent, looks like.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:58

Um Horizon Three is scaling like crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

We are so cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:02

It's um, yeah, it is it's hard work, it's really hard work.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

Well, I'm sure you're crushing it. That's from what I can tell in this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:10

I just have a feeling you're it's the type two fun, James, is what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Yeah, yeah. Um, well, hey, look, so thinking about your your future, we were talking about like the person you want to become, like your your value kind of system, how you think about your career and success and professional progression to the top and these types of things. It sounds like your definition of success has changed a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:35

Yeah, it has.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

Could you tell us about that?

Scaling At Segment And Lattice

SPEAKER_03 1:06:38

Yes. So I was a career woman, um, one of, like I said, one of five kids. Like I knew what a big family looked like. I was like, not for me. No, thank you. I want to. I want to make money. I want to do my own thing. And so I was not going to have kids. Met my soon-to-be husband. And his big thing was like, I'm okay with not having kids. But if either of us wakes up one day and decides we want them, like we need to be okay with that, or we shouldn't get married. You know, this is like kind of a critical conversation we're having. And I always said, Yeah, yeah, for sure. If you want to have kids, I'll have them, but like it's not on my path right now. So this will come full circle. He decided, he came to me, he's like, I think we should have a baby. And I was like, ah, okay, okay, all right, we'll do it. And I got pregnant with twins, which is such a blessing. Oh my God. I say it like twins, but people try their whole adult lives to get pregnant. Um, and I was at Segment at the time, and I was met with a really amazing maternity leave policy. I was met with a company of people who were so like embraced the fact that I was gonna be a mom for the first time and found out I was having twins. I felt incredibly torn after my maternity leave. I think I spent four and a half months out and I was coming back and I'm like, how do you do this? How do you go back into an office five days a week, commuting to from the East Bay to the city, leave your babies at home and go be a successful adult and then come back? Like I just it the math was not mathing for me. I couldn't figure out how to do it. And it kind of rocked me because my definition of success had always been the version of you go be the number one. Like if you're gonna, if you're gonna be the best, it's because you're in that number one seat, which to me was, you know, chief people officer or CHRO. And I I I had been repeating the fact that that's what I wanted to be my whole life, and or at least my whole professional life. And now all of a sudden I was like, I don't know that I can say that anymore. I don't think I want that. So it was kind of a reckoning in in my heart and in my soul of like, what is important to me? And when I laid it out, my career was incredibly important to me. I loved the work I was doing without a question, without a doubt. Like I enjoyed every minute of the most of the minutes of the work that I did. But I also felt like this reality of me being a mom felt more, I felt home for the first time in since you know being a young child in my own house that I grew up in. Like it was this kind of, I did not expect to feel the way I felt as a mother. And I thought, like, you tell a woman that their job is to be a mother and I'm gonna come after you. But then I had these kids and I was like, oh, I think this for me, this I'm supposed to do this. This is what thank God, right? Because if it had been the other way, that would have been scary. Um, and so I had to marry the two extremes. I I loved my job and I was obsessed with these babies and my husband. And um, my definition of success changed to being a whole human. Whereas I was celebrated constantly for being the ruthless climber to the top. No, I want the number one spot, nothing's gonna get in my way. And so I was like a trusted person that they could throw a lot on me because it wasn't gonna go anywhere. I was gonna take it and run with it. My definition of success changed to being, I want to be the person that shows up for her kids, is a good mom, a loving mom, but also represents what my mom didn't represent in my own house, which was a definite, you know, very normal for the time to have a stay-at-home mother. I wanted them to see me, my twins are boys. I think they needed to understand that like women work and we are responsible for things outside of the home. And my job isn't just to like change your diaper and clean the house. And so I stopped going for the CPO mentality. That's not to say I don't want that to some degree, but my definition of success changed. Am I making great money? Am I happy with what I'm doing? Do I feel fulfilled? Am I making impact in the work I'm doing in my job? And am I making impact in my home? Am I feeling good about the work I'm doing in my home? And if I have those things, then that is my success bar. That's it. I would say I was comfortable saying that internally for a long time before I was comfortable saying it externally. And the more I said it outward, the more I realized so many women and so many people are in the exact same position. So that was a that was a big moment for me to one recognize it, and then two, to say it out loud.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:49

It's probably and the cool thing about it too is it's getting back to that like hero versus builder mindset, too. It's like you're you're focusing on your family, you're you're still focusing on on your career, which it sounds like you're finding maybe a different balance than when you were younger in terms of that prioritization. And but you're still you're building in in both directions. I mean, it's it's like okay, maybe there isn't this obsessive, like, I gotta get that top spot. But the reality is like it's probably gonna happen. Like that's I think you're what you mean like you're just not obsessing on like winning that title, like exactly, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:24

It doesn't have to be my North Star, but I can still arrive at that destination.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:27

I probably will, just with the the momentum that you have in your career. It's like it's it seems like a logical progression at some point.

Networks, Mentors, And Stretch Roles

SPEAKER_03 1:11:34

It might be, but it would have to be, it would have to have balance. So who I work for right now, her name's Tori Renzel. She is she's amazing. I think she's a year younger than me. And she was just promoted to our chief people officer. And she has two young kids, wants to grow her family. And so she kind of represents exactly who I am and exactly what I want to be. And so she's given me someone who is family first, who respects kind of that there's nothing more important than what happens outside of work, but also is like aggressively passionate about what she does for work. And so I didn't have that until I met her. And um, and actually Kara Alamano at Lattice II was a bit of that for me. But I didn't have the grit from from that I see with Tori. And so it's it's changing my perspective. She's like, So what do you want to do? And I was like, well, I want to keep going up the lot, like I want to keep charging upward. And if it can look like this, and if I can be a good mom, and if I can be a good wife and a good partner to my spouse, then let's do it. Like, why should I slow down? Why should I stop? So I think two things are true. Um, I think more opportunity for women, frankly, who have kids, like workplaces are more friendly to women. This drive to be hybrid or slightly remote has been a huge shift in letting brilliant women kind of climb this corporate ladder that they didn't have access to before. And then also, you know, recognizing that I can have both. I absolutely can have both. And it's okay to want both as long as I know what my, I always talk in terms of um bowling bumpers, what my bumpers are. Like where am I not comfortable pushing out of? And can I find a company or a or a leader or a mentor that respects those boundaries, that understands those bumpers, but still lets me exist with in in here. And I still get to have this like rich, full life outside of it, and both complement each other. So I mean, I I think the the addition of kids into my life has made me a far better manager and a far better worker. Uh, prioritization is ruthless and easy when you have really clear boundaries. Um, and it's made it like I there's no question what comes first, second, third in my professional work and what comes first, second, third in my personal life. And so I think that level of clarity came for me with motherhood. And I think it comes to other people at different moments in time. But for me, becoming a mom has made me able to run a way more diverse team, which has lent to far greater results than I ever expected or experienced before. And it's given me this lens of like, what is the human behind this question asking? You know, what is who is the person sitting in the chair that's saying, Hey, I need this time off, or I'm not gonna meet this number because of this thing that's happening? I would say 10 years ago, I would have been like, okay, well, this is probably not the spot for you if you can't make it happen. And I think it was it was a little ruthless. And now it's like, tell me more. What's going on? Like, let me let me understand what's happening and let's see if we can marry the two and blend it. And that's gotten so much more out of people than I could have ever imagined. It's been a big, big eye-opener for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:47

That's great insight.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:50

It's been helpful. Thank God I learned it. I mean, I still look back on a couple of people that left for a different job when times were really hard at a current job. I remember building uh Bets Recruiting Abroad, and one of the girls decided she wanted to go to another company. And I was like, I can't believe you would leave me. Like, I can't believe you would do it. And to this day, I still feel sick over the way I reacted to it because she was just a human and she wasn't happy and she wanted to do something different. And I wish I had been in this seat at that time to say, go do it, go follow your passion. This sucks, I'll figure it out. You need to do what's right for you. So it's there are lots of lessons learned.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:24

We're all on that journey of of maturing as leaders and managers, and it's I yeah, I definitely look back on different situations when I was starting out at the company like first five years, and I'm like, man, I would totally handle situations like it working for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:41

Yeah, it's I think it's critical we go through it, and it's really critical we learn from it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:45

There's only one way, I mean, you just gotta go through it. You have to. It's it's the logical steps, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:49

It's the it's the builder portion of being a good leader, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:52

Yeah, for sure. Well, hey, Emily, it's been an incredible conversation. Um, I find you to be a very inspiring person, and uh you definitely went over a fan. I'm really hoping we can we can keep in touch just because I would love to. Yeah, I'm excited to see what you you do. Um thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:10

I'm excited too.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:11

Yeah, um, but yeah, thank you for coming on today and sharing your experiences and a little bit about yourself with with everyone.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:17

Yeah, thank you. Um it feels good to talk about the things that you kind of avoid talking about most of the time. So I appreciate you being focused on the whole human. And I think that that's a really interesting perspective you're getting. And it feels so good to talk about. And there were so many connections that I made as I was speaking to you that related to where I am professionally because of all of these life experiences that I had just not put together. And I'm like, oh my God, this is exactly what you're talking about. So you're onto something here. I love it. I'd love to being a part of it. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

Yeah, I'll I would love to keep in touch and you need to find Katie Hughes and interview her.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:51

And I'll make the introduction, I'll I will.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:55

Yeah, I will. I've got a couple people for you.