Tiffany Da Silva's 3 tactics to beat imposter syndrome

[00:00:00] Ramli John: 58% of tech workers experience imposter Syndrome, according to a recent stat. But in marketing, it's probably closer to 90%. I know this because, like many of you out there, I battle this pervasive feeling too. This is where Tiffany de Silva steps in. She's the founder of Flowjo and a highly regarded growth consultant. Tiffany is no stranger to the struggles. She's identified six actionable strategies to help marketers wrestle down that nagging imposter Syndrome. In this marketing powerups episode, you learn first, why you need to snap out of autopilot mode to conquer Imposter Syndrome. Second, how to deal with managers who exacerbate self doubt. Third, the importance of building a support crew to battle imposter Syndrome. And number four, a power up that's helped accelerate Tiffany's career. Before we start, I've created a free power sheet sheet to apply Tiffany's six tips to marketers to combat Imposter Syndrome. You can head over to marketingpowerups.com or find the link in the show notes and description.

[00:00:54] Addressing Imposter Syndrome in Marketers

[00:00:54] Ramli John: Are you ready? Let's go. Marketing power ups ready? Go. Here's your host, Rambly John. Super excited to talk to you about Imposter Syndrome for marketers particularly. I know you did a presentation, you've done this presentation many times. I'm going to link to it in the episode and show notes. But you talk about how 58% of tech workers feel that imposter Syndrome. And I have a hunch that's probably higher for marketers, maybe just because of the work that we do, the creative work. It's sometimes hard to measure. I'm curious, why do you think that is specifically for maybe why marketers are hit so hard in terms of this Imposter syndrome? Is it a comparison thing? Is it the hard measurability of marketing or is it to something else?

[00:01:47] Tiffany Da Silva: There's so many different things. Our world is always changing and always disrupting itself. I mean, we're in the middle of the AI revolution right now, so people are like, what's all the job? What's happening? So we're always kind of set off balance. So that's one area and also our career path, kind of it seems like there's only one path, and it's like to keep moving up. So sometimes we move up when technically we don't want to or when we don't feel comfortable to, but we feel like that has to be the next step. And so you get there and you kind of look around and go like, I don't think I have the skills for this, which is okay, but you were really good at your individual contributor job, right? So I think there's pieces of all these different things that we're kind of always thrust in the uncomfortable in our worlds. And sometimes those leaps that we take are bigger than others. And when we take those really big leaps, we're kind of set a little.

[00:02:45] Ramli John: Bit off course for a bit interesting. It's a little bit of you meant you were talking about.

[00:02:52] Tiffany Da Silva: Sometimes it's hard.

[00:02:53] Ramli John: To when I was young, way back then, I was like, I thought that the career progression is like coordinator, manager, director, or VP and then CMO. And it's not like, that what path we thought it was not reality. Sometimes it's like vertical or like lateral moves or something else is what I'm hearing. With one reason why marketers feel this imposter syndrome.

[00:03:25] Tiffany Da Silva: Because you feel like you should be doing something in a different path. And there's people on Twitter and social media talking about these 50 different paths. I mean, you're like, oh, but I've been working really hard for this one. Shouldn't I been doing this the whole time? Am I on the wrong path? And I feel like we're constantly kind of being shown this other side or other world, and we think we're not on it, but it just causes this kind of lack of confidence, so to speak. Even if you have the skills, which is kind of what imposter syndrome is. Kind of imposter syndrome is all about having the skills, having the experience, but just lacking the confidence in that.

[00:04:07] Ramli John: Yeah, I feel like the other piece sometimes wrecks confidence is people outside of marketing have an idea of what marketing should do. Especially founders or people you're working with. They look at other companies. It's so public out there. Oh, it's like, look at what HubSpot is doing. Should we be doing that? Or look at what Gong is doing with the social media. Should we be doing that? And sometimes it's like people give their unsolicited advice to marketers and without that thick skin, sometimes that takes away confidence. Would you say?

[00:04:48] Tiffany Da Silva: You kind of float with the wind. You'll kind of do all these different things and not really trust your gut when there was a certain system that maybe you've done this whole time. But now you're in this new spot, you're closer to the executive team, and now you're kind of feeling all this pressure that you maybe never felt before. And they're telling you again, they're sending you an article being like, let's do this thing. And it's like, especially like, AI, let's make blogs. How come we're not doing that? Why are we automating stuff? And it's like, well, we don't know, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, no, this company is doing it. It has to be great. And so unless you have a very specific way of doing things and you're very assertive in a lot of ways, then it's really hard sometimes to push those away. And I did not have that when I worked in house. I'll say that as a consultant. I do. Because really, when they say that, I'm like, you know how much work that is? Absolutely not. I've learned how to be that person. But in house, I wish I had that skill, but I definitely didn't. Maybe if I went back, I would.

[00:05:56] Ramli John: Be a little bit more like, nah, that's so good.

[00:06:00] Handling Imposter Syndrome and Setting Clear Boundaries at Work

[00:06:00] Ramli John: It kind of ties to one of the you have this presentation around strategies to overcome Imposter Syndrome. I feel like one of the strategies you shared is around unmasking your villain. And I feel like this is part of it. And you shared a story like there's somebody in your life that introduced takes away confidence from you. But sometimes, especially with your boss being there, you can't really replace your boss unless you look for another job, which makes sense. I'm curious, what would you suggest to people where they are in that situation where they need to make that tough conversation with their boss or the CEO, that they're one of the biggest reason why there's Imposter Syndrome in this situation?

[00:06:52] Tiffany Da Silva: Well, I think there's three kind of things I look at when I look at kind of unmasking your villain. And one of them is really assessing what's going on in your brain. So what kind of negative self talk is happening? Sometimes we're not aware. I call it like getting off of autopilot. Sometimes we have no idea this stuff that we're saying until I used to put a timer on myself and every time I hear a beep, I would go like, what was I thinking about in the last 10 seconds? And I realized, gosh, I have been saying terrible things to myself. So becoming self aware and actually kind of standing like I love. Michael Singer is the author of Untethered Soul. And he says when a negative self talk comes in to just lean away from it, which is such a simple kind of nice thing to think about, like, it's kind of coming in and just like, lean back, lean back, let it float away. And that has to happen first because when you're telling yourself that you're not good enough and this person's better or whatever, you are not in control of your thoughts. So that's that. The other thing is we find these people that we call our villains. So when you know who your villain is I always say when you're going on social media and someone could be a lovely person, but you stop and you hate them. And you don't know why. Because they're living like their perfect life, but they're, like they become this weird villain whom is just living, like this alternate universe that you wish you were living. And it's not like they're bad. It's not that you're bad. It's just you need to not look at that. You need to mute that because it's affecting your mental health. And sometimes bosses are that and that becomes a little bit more difficult to have that conversation. So my third thing is to just set expectation, really figure out what are my boundaries when it comes to this boss. And one thing that people don't really realize, I think in a work situation, that person doesn't know you. That person doesn't know how you work, how you tick. And they're sometimes almost expected to know everything on day one. But it's your job to kind of let someone know how you work and what is considered a boundary, because they're just going to work off whatever script they've been running this whole time. And they have certain expectations that they're setting and they're trying to set their boundaries. But unless you are out there saying, you know what, this is how I work, this is how I like to be autonomous, this is the system I've always had in place. Tell me which one you have and maybe we can start learning together on how the two mix. I like to have an expectations report card where it's like if I'm talking to a client, we know what is considered an ABCD and F. So when I go into a meeting, I know that if I'm getting this amount of leads, I am at a C, and we all know where I'm at a C, and that's fine. C's could be average. I mean, companies have done worse and lived for long lives, but knowing that I have a C, we can get in there, all that stress is gone. It's like, I know I have A-C-I know I get it. But this is what I want to do to improve. And so that's I think really important to really be able to set expectations. If you need to use a report curve like that, then do it.

[00:10:08] Ramli John: Yeah. I love how you're talking about this as being proactive in terms of setting that expectation. I think especially people who are early. When I was early in my career, I expected a manager to help me. That's what good managers do. But there's also that proactive side that we as marketers can take. You talked about clients. You're setting expectation to your clients, but this can also apply to managers where you're setting expectation to your VP or your CEO, whoever you're reporting to. And that report card is genius.

[00:10:43] Tiffany Da Silva: We love that Angie shot Muller. It's not me. It was her telling me to do it. And I'm giving her full props here.

[00:10:51] Ramli John: I imagine it's like a rubik's. You know, when we were in high school, we're both based out of Toronto, so like the Ontario public school system, they would have this rubrics where know based on these qualities. And then if you meet this, you get an A or you do B. So you're actually trying to align your grading so it's not a surprise at the end of the quarter where do.

[00:11:21] Tiffany Da Silva: It with your friends. And during COVID I think a lot of people got to kind of almost do a reset and see, who are my close friends, who are those people that I want to keep in my life? But as we kind of open up a little bit more now, we don't know necessarily what is considered to be who are our ride or dies, who are the people that maybe come to us for things, but they're never there for us like, really creating a rapport card for them. So you know how to prioritize your friends and your time. Because sometimes I think about my ride or dies and the idea that I'm not there for them when they might need me is like, crushing. But sometimes certain other friends will kind of take up space when they don't necessarily deserve it. And so it's very pragmatic and logical way of kind of thinking about things, I realize. But sometimes I find if you want to get the most out of life, you got to have certain structures in place that help you do it.

[00:12:17] Ramli John: I love the Ride and die. Ride or die. That's such a cool it's such a good we're going to talk about the Shine crew in a bit, but before we do one of the challenges, especially there's a lot of things moving in tech. There's been layoffs. I'm also seeing a lot more marketers jumping full board on terms of their creatoradvisoryconsulting.

[00:12:41] In conversation with Tiffany Da Silva: Assessing When It's Time to Leave Your Job

[00:12:41] Ramli John: Do you have any advice for marketers who are in a situation where maybe it's time to move on? Do you have any flags or kind of signals that maybe the situation you're in, your boss is the villain and it's time to escape that situation?

[00:13:01] Tiffany Da Silva: Something at the road. Yeah. I mentor a lot of people, and sometimes they're in a situation where you're like, you got to go. And I know from the second I meet them, like, man, they got to leave that job. When I don't want to be the person that says, like, you got to leave that job. It's unhealthy. I want them to kind of start thinking about what the future looks like in the perfect job. What does that look like? Even? Let's say this one becomes perfect. What does that actually mean? And some people may say they care about the fact that I want a personal life or I want to take time out with my kids, like I'm allowed to go to appointments, or they invest in my learning more, all these different things. And then hopefully when you start creating this dream space, you're looking going like, oh, I'm not in this will never become that.

[00:13:56] Ramli John: I'm in a nightmare.

[00:13:57] Tiffany Da Silva: Exactly. But also you have the basis, and I think this is really important to know when you're looking for jobs, what is really important to you and how you're going to sell yourself to a new company, keeping in mind the things that you never want to do again. And it's like you're never kind of going back and saying, like, oh, my old company did this, it was terrible. No, it's like, you know what I would love if a company actually really supported the fact that I'm a mother and really supported my education, because I'm curious. I really want to learn more. I want to be the best at what I do, and I would love if a company would help me be that. And so having those types of conversations right from the beginning not only makes you look really like, okay, this person knows what they want. And so they definitely have a different sense of confidence, but also putting them to task to be like, oh, I'm sorry, no, we don't offer money for education. You're going to have to figure that out. Which in my day, it totally was the case. It'd be like, you figure yourself out. We're not going to give you any money. And they'd say it right off the bat. And I'd be like, okay, well, he seems kind of cool, so I'll stick with him. But now I feel like there's so many more options for that. It's a way different space. So, yeah, I just daydream, spend time. Daydreaming, I think is important.

[00:15:19] 42 Agency: Building Predictable Revenue Engines

[00:15:19] Ramli John: Before I continue, I want to thank the sponsor for this episode, 42 Agency. Now, when you're in scale up growth mode and you have to hit your KPIs, the pressure is on to deliver demos and sign ups. And it's a lot to handle. There's demand gen, email sequences, rev ops and more. And that's where 42 Agency, founded by my good friend Camille Rexton, can help you. They're a strategic partner that's help B two B SaaS companies like Profit, AWOL, Teamwork, Sprout, Social and Hubdoc to build a predictable revenue engine. If you're looking for performance experts and creatives to solve your marketing growth problems today and help you build the foundations for the future, look no further. Visit 42 Agency.com to talk to a strategist right now to learn how you can build a high efficiency revenue engine.

[00:16:04] Ramli John Promotes Copy AI on His Podcast

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[00:16:47] Imagining the Future and Creating the Ideal Situation in Business

[00:16:47] Ramli John: Well, let's get back to this episode. This is so good. You're just like imagining the future of what the ideal situation looks like, and then if your situation is not there, maybe creating a plan on how get there. You kind of scope out. You're setting the expectation, going back to what we just talked about as to what you're looking for in the ideal situation you want to be in. I really love that. I want to talk about that ride or die now. So cool.

[00:17:20] The Importance of Solid Relationships in Business

[00:17:20] Ramli John: I know you're part of this Shine Crew. You mentioned it in the presentation. Why is it so important to have those people? I love how you put it in that presentation. You said people who are willing to bury the bodies with you as well. You call your Shine Crew who are willing pick up the call in the middle of night. Hey, I need to I know it sounds dark, but bury the bodies with you? I guess you found those people. First of all, what is the Shine Crew and how did you find your Shine?

[00:17:52] Tiffany Da Silva: Yeah. So the shine crew started. I was starting to speak at events, feeling just like I did not belong there. And one day I was at a speaker's dinner and Joanna Webb from Copyhackers was sitting next to me. And I was like obsessed. Biggest fan girl that ever was. Purchased literally everything. She would, you know, this was my moment to meet her and get to know her and all the things. And she says hello in a lovely way. Hi, I'm Joanna. What's your name? And then, because I don't do small talk really well, I was like, do you ever feel like a fraud? And she looked at me and was like, you know what? All the time. And just hearing that from someone. And me and her kind of got into this conversation about what it was like to be a woman in tech. Other people started hearing like, Gia Laudy and who was that? Andrew shot Mueller. All these people kind of joined us. Talia and we realized in this conversation that we didn't have people around us who are really like our wingmen, so to speak, at work. We weren't having these important conversations about finances with anyone. We weren't telling people about. We didn't have people around us who were in the same trajectory we were with our careers. And so we made a pact that we would kind of keep talking. And we knew what that meant at the time, it turned into a slack group. But then as we were kind of walking out, we were like, what are we going to call ourselves? And I just listened to Call Your Girlfriend podcast, where they talked about this idea of the Shine theory. And the idea is, if you don't shine, I don't shine. And I said, why don't we be called like, the Shine Crew? I totally forgot that I was the one that named them. It was Joanna that reminded me. Later, again, imposter syndrome. Like, Joanna must have done it. She's lovely at this thing. It was her. But, yeah, the Shine crew was invented. And one thing that I will say that started from one conversation, when I go to networking events, sometimes I watch people and they're like, trying to meet everyone and they're handing out their cards and this flurry of activity, right, that is null it. I go to an event, even to this day, look in the corners, look at the people that are like, maybe a little bit quieter, kind of just setting the scene. I go up to them and I introduce myself and I make sure I have long conversations with people. And you know what? Those people may turn out to be friends. Maybe they turn nothing happens in that moment, but the next time I see them, they may become a friend, but my conversations start like that and I make sure then to follow up with them later. And over time, I have found that I have all these little groups of friends, all from different areas, but as soon as we get together, it's deep conversations and I make my time for them and nothing else. And I have little Shine crews everywhere that have been born, whether it's grow class, which is where I'm an instructor, or we have this slack group here in Toronto called DMM, like Digital Marketing Mastermind, which is like 60 of us. And it's just like you create this crew of people and you can make it yourself. It's no one else's job, it's like you and it only takes one person at a time.

[00:21:00] Ramli John: That's so good. I think that shine theory. If you don't shine, I don't shine. We don't shine. That's so good.

[00:21:11] Finding Your Shine Crew: A discussion with Tiffany Da Silva

[00:21:11] Ramli John: You kind of gave a little bit of some tips for people to find you shared here's why it's important you have the support group. There's people who will shine with you. You gave a little bit of a teaser of how people can find their Shine crew, talk to people and connect with them. Do you have any tips for people who are listening in right now to find their own Shine crew, so to speak?

[00:21:35] Tiffany Da Silva: Yeah, I think it's all about figuring out who your network find the things that you love to do. I think I'll start there. Find the things that you love to do. So I go to live music now. There's a crew of people now that I kind of have met in my journey of finding live music. I'll tell other people and be like, I've been doing this thing and they're like, next time you go to this kind of show, give me a call. And so now I have these people from all everywhere just kind of joining me, and now I've become friends with them who I maybe didn't know them really well before, if it's work. I had one of my mentees came to me and said, I just don't have any friends. So she just moved to Toronto and she's been here for a while, kind of stuck in work. And she's like I'm like, OK, then you're a designer. Find a designer group here in Toronto, go to those types of events, meet one person, start there, one person, let them know that you're new to that will be enough for them to be join. Joining. When I go on stage and ask people to find their Shine crew. I have been so surprised by the types of shine crews that were created. There was one of like a group of dads who just kind of like met each other at the talk but wanted to talk about being dads and some of the challenges they have. So now they have a Shine crew of dads. I met one where for me, all my official Shine crew is all women. But I was talking to Luke McCarthy and he's like, wait, I'm in a Shine crew? Are you the reason I'm in a Shine crew? And I'm like, oh she's my other Shine crew know here in and so it's like watching that happen has been just beautiful because it's almost like by creating a name for it, you have permission to make it. Like I just read this thing about making a Shine crew like I want to do it. Do you want to? So it's like it gives people permission to create it even like a knitting group of marketers that give sweaters to homeless people. They knit sweaters for homeless. Just wild. So yeah, it could be anything. It's just follow your hobbies, follow what your job is and find people within that space and one at a time.

[00:23:47] Ramli John: That's so good. You mentioned follow your hobbies. There's also the piece around finding people who you vibe I don't know how to say that word where there is that same energy to help each other out. I want to help you generally help you as much as I want to get help from each other. So that's super cool. I want to shift the final tip. We've talked about unmasking your villain. We talked about finding your shankru.

[00:24:20] Tiffany Da Silva on the Importance of Visualization in Achieving Goals and Legacy

[00:24:20] Ramli John: One other thing that I want to cover is around this idea of visualization. You talked about actually in that presentation you showed this video from Nike where visualize what success looks like for you but your legacy. And you mentioned also interestingly enough that this is one of the hardest things for you. I'm curious, first of all, why is visualization so important and why is it sometimes so hard for people for marketers even to visualize what their legacy can look like?

[00:24:54] Tiffany Da Silva: Yeah. So for me, one of the most important things I ever did was think about what my legacy is going to be. So really like looking in the future, figuring out the life that I want coming back. We were talking about this before coming back and saying like, okay, does it align with where I am right now and how do I realign myself to get to that legacy? And one of the most important aspects of that is actually daydreaming and thinking about what are the things that you actually want? And we don't do that as adults. When I was a kid, I knew that I wanted to live in a loft in the city. I wanted a brick wall and I wanted to be in tech and all this stuff. And I got it. I got it because I lived and breathed that dream when I was a kid. But somehow over time, we lost it. So when I was sitting in front of this woman who is my coach, who I talk about in the Imposter Syndrome talk, she had asked me to, if you're going to create this legacy, I want you to live it, breathe it. I want you to embody it. And I went, like, not like, not really a visualization. I lost that skill. And she goes, okay, well, what does it feel like when what do you think it is going to feel like when you actually hit this legacy? And I said, I feel inspired. I feel motivated. I feel all these things. So in order to do that, I started looking on YouTube, and I started trying to find videos that made me feel that whether the inspiration, the motivation and this Nike ad is just like the embodiment of that feeling for me, I've watched it, I swear, over like a thousand times. I still get goosebumps. It's one of those really well done pieces of content. And when I started watching it, I watched it every morning for like, months, I would make sure that I matched that moment, that visualization that I had to that feeling. And I would say, like, okay, maybe I can't get there with my visualization. Maybe I can't feel that motivation yet. But I'm going to kind of put the two together and watch this video first, feel that feeling, then immediately start thinking about what I want in the future. And somewhere down the line of doing that, things started to happen. I started to be able to create that legacy for myself slowly, but because I was able to match these emotions to it. And I think that's, like, it becomes kind of easy. And one thing after kind of sharing this, this man came up to me after, and he's like, you know, I had to try to find my video also. And it took me a really long time, but then my son took his first steps and watching him struggle, watching him kind of like, struggle, fall, struggle, fall. He did that a couple of times, and then he just started walking. And I caught it on video. He's like, I watch that every morning. And no matter what my day is going to be, I know there's going to be ups and downs, but you know what? I'm going to do it. And his legacy is going to be to create this beautiful world for his kid. And so that matched it, and that's what he was able to do. And I think if we can find those videos that we can watch over and over again. There's a Folgers ad that I used to watch of a little kid that used to be like, I love my house. I love this. It's the cutest video you've ever seen in your life, but that would pet me up in the morning and get me moving and be like and I would go around my house being like this, I love that. But it was like, so I can get that energy or excitement right, and so I can kind of get to the goals that I had to for the day. So it's a great visualization technique, and I think it's really important for people to do that.

[00:28:33] Ramli John: Reminds me of this exercise that they did in high school where we did a dream board, where we would cut up pictures out of magazines, stick it on a poster board, and this is my dream board. I feel like sometimes, as adults, you mentioned it, we've lost that ability to daydream of the possibilities and guess we just kind of go with the flow, essentially. And sometimes that you're saying is like, having realizing what could be possible can open up more doors than you think is.

[00:29:06] Tiffany Da Silva: Yeah. And you hear these stories of these people that say, like, my whole life changed after this moment. All these bad things happened, and then everything changed because you probably sat down and actually asked yourself for the first time in, like, 15 years, what do I actually want? And you were able to visualize that future, and you started to create it. You started to realign yourself to it. And it's not rocket science, but it's like sometimes you're so in the shuffle, and you're kind of doing your day to day that you forget. And so, yeah, definitely, I'd say spend some time daydreaming wherever you can, even if it's a couple of minutes in the morning. And if meditation is your thing, then definitely do that. I meditate myself, but I do always add when I'm calm, the little kind of couple of minutes of the kind of things that I imagine for myself ten years from now.

[00:29:56] Ramli John: This exercise is also great, especially if at the moment, you feel like an imposter or I'm feeling the imposter, and then you zoom out a bit and realize this is just one moment in time in the larger scheme of things that you realize. I think you mentioned this. Think this will pass, or something like that. Whatever you're going through right.

[00:30:19] Tiffany Da Silva: You shall pass. Yeah. And I think also when I try to zoom out like that, there's, like, a situation where my business was a few years ago where things just was not going well. I was losing a lot of money. I did not like the look of my bank account. Everything was really scary. And then I got out of it. I just got out of it. Things worked well, and then it happened again in the beginning of this year, where it was like, I didn't know what was going to happen, and I could have just stayed in that state and just gave myself all the negative talk of like, you deserve this, you're bad at your job, whatever. I could have gone down that route. Instead, I remembered the last time that happened. And I'm like, how did you even get out of that? And it's like, I don't know. You just work. You just did your job. You kept doing it well, and it just happened again. It was just like a weird slump and it came back. And so I always try to remind myself of times when, you know what? You didn't do it, but you did this in the past, but you're good now. And it's that resiliency that I think it's what kind of keeps us going. But remembering all the moments where you had to be resilient and you kind of got through it is really important because we're all going to fail. No one's going to be perfect, but it's how you deal with it.

[00:31:33] Ramli John: This reminds me of what you just said. Reminds me of an advice I heard from Manuela Brassano, the head of marketing at fellow app, where she has a wins folder. She has this folder with a bunch of Wins and storing that. Like, hey, remember that time I was able to overcome this business struggle? It's just a great helpful tip that I've heard from other folks. I should create.

[00:32:02] Tiffany Da Silva: Mine's called Happy Thoughts, and it's a folder of my desktop.

[00:32:07] Ramli John: So good. Happy Thoughts, you come up with the greatest names. You should be called a naming consultant.

[00:32:16] Discussion with Tiffany Da Silva about the Role of Positive Reinforcement and Growth

[00:32:16] Ramli John: Like, shine through.

[00:32:17] Tiffany Da Silva: My own company. It's so funny because my own company, Slow Joe, like the box, the couple's bucket list is just couple's bucket list. It's just like that is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. It's very SEO focused. But like other stuff in my life, I have these fun little names, but.

[00:32:36] Ramli John: Happy Thoughts itself is very clear. Like when Negative Thoughts is coming in, open up the Happy Thoughts folder and then really bask yourself in that. That's so good. I'm not looking for specifics, but do you store images? Do you maybe even like letters that you write to your future self? What is in your Happy Thoughts folder? Like, what kind of stuff do you store in there?

[00:33:02] Tiffany Da Silva: I'm going to start doing letters to my future self. I like that idea. Thank you. A lot of it actually comes from I'm an instructor at McMaster. I teach SEO SEM there. And at the end of the year, you get this feedback, right? It can be rough, I'm not going to lie, but sometimes you get these just love these people who just spend a really long time sending you really nice things about how you've helped them. Or I'll get like a year later, I'll get my students coming back and sending me something on LinkedIn about how my big thing is when I teach a course, it's not about getting the job. It's about what you're going to do on day one. I feel really strong about that's what a good course should help you with. And so hearing that they knew exactly what to do and hit the ground running always gives me that. And so that and images of my family. And actually I have pictures all over my house of just like, happy moments. And so I'm always reminded of things like I literally 20, just going down my stairs of just moments in time or even photos of places I've been to around the world, but just like one little thing that will remind me of that place. Those things just kind of give you a little smile and it makes you feel just out of the moment, which is what I expect.

[00:34:23] Ramli John: That's so good. Thank you. I'm going to start doing that as well, taking photos and testimonials and just hit me in writing letters to your future self like, you can do it, you can get over this. That's so good.

[00:34:36] Tiffany Da Silva: Yeah. You know what, it's funny because I recently read like a journal entry for some reason. I picked up a book in the middle of like it was 2021 and I had written something to myself and then of course, just put in a bookshelf, never looked at it again. And I reread it recently and I was just like, wow, so much happened. And you don't expect sometimes in a year or a year and a half how much could happen and my confidence, how much it changed and how I felt like an adult when I was reading or being like, wow, you have matured in two years. But it's nice sometimes to see that, of being able to compare yourself to your past, because then it gives you a lot more confidence in the future. If I learned that many lessons in this year and a half, imagine the lessons I'm going to learn in the next six months, a year, two years.

[00:35:26] Ramli John: That's so good. Thank you so much for sharing that.

[00:35:28] Tiffany Da Silva on Career Power Ups and Embracing Learning in Marketing

[00:35:28] Ramli John: I want to share garris and talk about career power ups. Those are things that help accelerate your career. That could be anything that we've chatted about. But you've been in marketing for a while now. You worked at Shopify Achievers. You talked about being a marketing instructor at Master University, which is this big university here in Canada. Also at grow class, you're the founder of Flow joe, I'm curious what's a few things or maybe one thing that's helped accelerate your career during this past few times in your marketing.

[00:36:03] Tiffany Da Silva: Yeah, I think ever since I first started, I always followed my passion for things. So if I wanted to learn something, I went ahead and learned it and kind of dug deep. And if I wanted to learn more and wanted to be paid for it, I find a job that would help me with the premise that I may not know this, but I will based on me learning this other stuff in the past. I've done that. That is really important. I found that I never stop learning. And even I mean, I've been marketing for 20 years. I never stop learning. If Ga Forest taught us anything, you cannot stop for a second bubbling it that's really important. And people hearing that you're that type of person is really important. Number two, always mentor. Now, I'm not saying be a mentee. I'm saying always mentor. From the time I was like 25, I was mentoring already. People in university by 30, I was mentoring people that were like 25, 26. Now I get to do all the way up 20, up to 40, and even, sometimes even someone older who's restarting their career and they don't know what to do, that being a mentor. And I'm not saying it's official in official capacity. It could be you catching up with someone every month, every couple of months, or there's official programs out there. But doing that as like, you're giving back will teach you so much about what you've learned in the past. It will connect you to new, interesting people. It will keep you understanding what the world is like, kind of for people coming in. It helps you be more empathetic and sympathetic to kind of the struggles of people who are maybe 1015 years younger than you. And it also allows you to be grateful for the situation you're in at the moment and what you need to be doing differently. And so I think there's so much that can be learned from that. And if you do have like, I have certain people that they don't know that they're my mentor, but I just like, every once in a while, I'm like, if this is for dinner, let me buy you dinner. And then I just like and again, it's not like I'm going to pick your brain. I would never write someone and be like, Pick your brain? No, I'll be like, I'd love to buy you dinner, or I'd love to buy you a coffee, and I just want to know about what your days are like. And people love that. They love doing that. So I think being curious, stick to learning, and that kind of will help you figure out what you want to do. I used to have a bucket list when I was a kid. One of the things was I wanted to create a product. I didn't know what that product was. It turned into flojo, turned into card games, but it was just this little piece of like I didn't know what it was, but it was a thing on my list of bucket list things to do. And then, because I am not very creative, I came out with a product called the Bucket Clip mom's Bucket List, couple Bucket list. But again, it was based off this weird little lists and dreams that I had that I just kept pecking away at and like a side hustle, kind of just kind of dolly side hustle is a very slow side hustle at that. But it was something I was passionate about and just kind of kept working at and see what it would be like. And so keep doing those things. And it doesn't have to be with work. I mean, it could be. I picked up my piano again for the first time in 20 years and started playing. And whenever it is, it's so cool to kind of go back and do those things and go back to the things you love to do as a kid. I'm sure there's an adult version of it and it is so much fun when you kind of get into it.

[00:39:40] Ramli John: That's so funny. You said adult version a few years ago. The whole boom with coloring, adult coloring.

[00:39:48] Tiffany Da Silva: Books.

[00:39:51] Ramli John: This is so good. And the whole idea about learning is so true. Marketing, especially this past few years, has I mean, the past few months, has really accelerated AI and J Four and what's going to happen with SEO? You really have to have that culture as marketing. You have to have the culture of always be learning and also always be teaching.

[00:40:16] Tiffany Da Silva: Because I've had friends so good that they're seeing this AI thing and they're going, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to deal with that right now. And for me, this is a big deal. This is the difference between us having jobs and not we just need to learn how to use it. It is a new thing. And so what I would do is incorporate it, whether I was talking to a friend and just like, look at this funny thing that I did, because I knew that they were kind of hesitant because it was something so new. And as adults, sometimes you do not want to jump in. But then I found a way of reaching them, whether it was like, let me make a story for your kid, or they're the hero, and let me show you how to do that. Or show this person how they can talk to their boss by writing a letter using chat GPT or a legal document, like figuring out how to make a scary legal email so someone could send the person that's living in their house like a tenant, just like finding ways to inquire. And then they go, oh, I love this thing. This thing is great. But always be trying to teach some of the stuff because, you know as a marketer what's coming. And if your gut is telling you, like, something big is happening, bring all of your friends, bring all the people that you've been working with with you. And don't be the one that's like, I swear it's going to be a big thing. Don't be that person. Show them all these cool little examples of how you use it. Make them a picture on mid journey. Kind of try to incorporate them. So, yeah, that's what I would suggest.

[00:41:46] Ramli John: That's so good. The learning to teaching is like a huge it's reaffirming what you know, essentially, especially if it's new.

[00:41:56] Tiffany Da Silva on Asking for Help in Marketing Career