17: Ep. 17 | Empowering Women in Tech with Jennifer Harris

Jonathan Tamsut (00:00) Welcome to the Overcommitted Podcast, where we discuss our code commits, our personal commitments, and some stuff in between. I’m your host, Jonathan Tamsut, joined by…

Brittany Ellich (00:09) I’m Brittany Ellich.

Bethany (00:09) Hey, I’m Bethany.

Jonathan Tamsut (00:11) We are software engineers who initially met as a new hire group at GitHub and found a common interest in continuous learning and building interesting projects. We continue to meet to share our learning experiences and discuss our lives as developers, whether you’re pushing code or taking on new challenges. We’re happy you’re listening. Today we have a real treat. We are joined by Jennifer Harris, the founder and CEO of Technology Management Concepts, a Microsoft partner.

Jennifer is also very interested in diversity in tech and company culture and innovation. And so I’d just like to say welcome, Jennifer to the pod.

Jennifer Harris (00:45) Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Tamsut (00:47) Okay, so we have a couple questions that we want to ask and sort of facilitate conversation. So I think, you this is the first time we’ve had kind of a business person. And I think that’s really cool that we have like a sort of an executive level person. So I think one thing we’re kind of all interested in is like, how did you end up where you are? what, how did you, you know, decide to, yeah, how did you decide to start your company? What inspired you to start it?

Jennifer Harris (01:09) How did I begin?

So I think like probably all of you, I always like solutions, know, I always could see businesses and just like found it. But when I was actually the last year in college, personal computers had come out and it was this idea that you could self do things. I think I always liked the idea that you weren’t so committed to having to use mainframes or wait for things. I was a terrible though software developer. I took like one Fortran class, you know.

It did inspire me and I went to this boot camp. left college. I went to this boot camp that was like gonna be computers and I moved to California and I got a job at Transamerica and at the time IBM personal computers had just come out and they were shipping this insurance company like everybody had to have a personal computer and I was 22 and my job was to tell actuaries who had been doing it for 20 something years that they didn’t have to wait man months that we could use Quattro Pro or you know the precursor to Excel and I would sit there and I would show them how you could you know but I

I had just learned it too, like I had learned it the night before type of thing. And I wrote like an access database that a bank, they sent me to a federal credit union in New Jersey. I’d never been on a business trip, you know, to show how a personal computer could, you know, do things. And I was just sort of playing around and my best friend from college had moved here and she was working for GTE, the telephone company. And we were like, we could probably teach people how to use these computers and they would pay us.

So we went to her laundry room in her rented house. We had a third partner. He was also doing accounting and we just sort of got a phone and we created a business. had no idea how. So that’s how we started and here we are.

Jonathan Tamsut (02:49) And what were you, so what were you selling initially? what, how were you, what was your product?

Jennifer Harris (02:53) So she had

found this, there was accounting software, people were still typing checks, know him typing checks and writing in big ledger books and they would send out their accounting. In fact, one of my part-time jobs before Transamerica was, you know, that’s why I see what we do now. There was a woman, I thought she was older, she was probably in her 40s, I don’t know, her name was Fern, and we would send out people’s financials and it would come back in green bar paper and she would add it on an adding machine every day.

And I’m here, I’m 22, and I would it in like an hour. And I would say, what are you doing? And she would say, I’m adding it. I’m like, does it ever add up wrong? And she was like, what’s computers? And so that idea, that this is so groundbreaking and AI and everything’s going to change everyone’s, this has been happening where the trust issues forever. So Brenda and I thought, well, we probably know more than everyone else. at the time, they were like Best Buys. They would sell accounting

software and there were ACPAC and Mass 90 and the precursors to what we have now and one of them was called Great Plains and we would go in give our business cards to the guys that Albania sold the software in the stores and say give our card to anyone that you sell it to and they would and someone called us and said can you come out and teach us and we learned it and we would go and just teach them and they paid us and we were just like my god and we went from the laundry room to like a one-room office where we had like a door desk you know like a door a real door.

two file cabinets. And we named our company and you know it really was homegrown. We would try to get people to use us and at one point we were like why are we having them use us? Why don’t we try to call the people that manufacture the software and have them you know sell it. And we hired a couple salespeople and we had no internet remember so we had every bad business decision you could make.

From a salesperson, we tried to collect money. They were paying the salesperson directly, know, those kind of things. Like we had no idea. But by doing it, you know, we went out to clients. We actually went to clients. And you got to learn like how people make everything from dining room tables to, you know, soups to, and that’s the coolest part of the job. And I recommend even you guys who make software to go watch Who Uses Your Software.

The most fun thing is to go on a manufacturing floor and just see like, recently I saw how shopping carts were made. I was like, It’s like, then it all starts to, and then you come back and you see they’re using the software you taught them to use. And it’s just, you know, really inspiring.

for me and that’s what Brenda and my partner do. We would see who used the check printing software when they paid us, know, who was doing, who had formatted their checks, that kind of thing. So that was sort of the way we got from being in the laundry room to actually selling it, but it was really truly didn’t know any better and just thought we could and we didn’t know we were women in tech, didn’t know anything. But we knew that we knew something other people didn’t.

and that we could make their businesses run better and that people will pay for that. So that was sort of the start and I didn’t have anything to lose. I wasn’t married, I didn’t have kids.

Jonathan Tamsut (05:52) Yeah, no, that’s so cool. I mean, it’s pretty cool how like your career has sort of traced sort of the advent of the personal computer and then sort of the growth of software. Yeah, that is pretty cool.

Jennifer Harris (05:59) Yeah, followed it.

The personal computer, too, I think people forget, like when I say floppy disk, I mean it held almost no data. So imagine we’re teaching people how to put their inventory and their financials, and they’re having to decide. We’re having to like not make it so big because it’s not going to fit. And then when they got like 10 megabyte hard drives, they’re like, how will we ever, you know.

Jonathan Tamsut (06:09) Mm-hmm.

No.

Thank you.

Jennifer Harris (06:24) fill that up. And also people didn’t have access to learning, you know, so we would go to phone booths to do support, tech support, literally with a calling card. We’d stop and call people back and say, did you turn on the computer? Did you shut the door to the Fafi disk drive? You know, and so it was like, no one had seen this before. you know, and now you can imagine it. And so, you know, and people were scared. It was their jobs, right?

Jonathan Tamsut (06:28) Hmm.

Yeah, definitely interesting parallel to today.

Jennifer Harris (06:51) Yep.

So from there, you you go in and you start talking to CEOs and CFOs and you’re 23 and you’re 24 and you’re 25. So Brenda and I as women, now looking back, we never said we owned the company. And now I realized, you know, maybe we were saying it for different reasons. At the time, we just didn’t want, we wanted to be able to escalate a complaint, you know, to somebody. But we rarely said that we were the owners when we went in. And consulting was just consulting. And I really think the world is going back to that a bit. You really were going out and you were talking

Jonathan Tamsut (07:08) Hmm.

Jennifer Harris (07:19) businesses, you’re listening to their problems and you’re trying to see how you could, you know, help them and at the same time you’re trying to pay your own people and be profitable and, you know, make it and we through the 90s alternated having children so we would be pregnant, you know. Yeah, no we intentionally did that.

Jonathan Tamsut (07:34) Did you intentionally do that or was that sort of just, okay. Okay. Wow.

Jennifer Harris (07:40) Four years of people seeing us in terrible maternity clothes, because we went out to clients. So we did that, and we were true entrepreneurs. it was really, I never wanted to do anything else, and I never had a plan B. So it was very much what we enjoyed.

Bethany (07:56) That’s really cool to hear about the trajectory of your company and kind of how your role has evolved. I’m really curious, how has that role changed with you being a CEO over time? ⁓ How has that shifted your focus and what you’ve been doing?

Jennifer Harris (08:08) again.

So I never realized the hierarchy that as much as I do today, titles and the sort of separation, because to me, software developers, consultants, financial people, like there wasn’t as much of a…

you know, title thing. was you were a consultant and if you knew how to do it better, you were just a better consultant. And this today, it is insane, the titles. I hire people, I swear to you, I hire a developer. If I don’t put senior, if I forget or I just forget, like, and I put in the welcome email, you know, I hired Bethany, she’s a developer and I don’t say senior architect, it is just, know. So the CEO thing,

is being used and I do see that from the outside now there is quite a different you know respect that goes along with it and that by not using it particularly as women you don’t walk in with a certain level of respect so I do understand that. It’s also everything you say is looked at and analyzed differently and again as a developer and an entrepreneur like we like to try things just try things.

Say things, try things. So as a leader, I’ll say, I probably drive you crazy because I have all these developers and project managers. I’m just talking. Like, oh, we tried this or. And then I’ll hear, we disappointed you, Jen, or we didn’t do what Jen said. I’m like, why did I even say that? So that part is different. I think that most C-level people are entrepreneurs at heart.

I think most leadership below are executors. And so there’s a definite difference. I think that we all want, everybody that’s upset in corporate America, it’s because they want to get back to what they love. And they’ve let sort of the titles and the, you know, the SOPs sort of take it away and away, even though it’s the same group that sort of put them in. So it’s been interesting for,

me, if you’re my question, you know, like as the 90s, we had children. And so we were sort of doing it more as a lifestyle business, but that is different than life. Then when people say now they want that balance of, know, what does it I keep I have a mental block because I hate the words on life balance, whatever people say every time you have the interviews. For for Brennan, I it was it was a

Jonathan Tamsut (10:19) Work-life balance.

Jennifer Harris (10:26) privilege that we had our own business and could have children and you know do what we love. It wasn’t that we were going to stop working at four to you know it was more that we didn’t have a boss and we were able to be employed and still show up to everything and you know that way but it

Jonathan Tamsut (10:35) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Harris (10:43) became like a negative, looked at, you know, lifestyle business. ⁓ so we, as through the 90s, we were growing, but we weren’t respected in that way, even though we were doing well. And in 2001, Microsoft bought one of the softwares that we supported, Calcory Plains, and we became a Microsoft partner. And so that sort of changed things a bit for us.

Jonathan Tamsut (10:47) Mm.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you’re, so obviously the company just started with like, you know, maybe the three of you and then it’s grown. Like, was there ever a period of time where you were like, wow, like I’m in charge of this. I’m a little intimidated. This is overwhelming. Or was it like kind of gradual?

Jennifer Harris (11:17) I think for Brendan and I it was not as much as people not understanding that you’re in charge of it. I think there’s this misnomer, you own your own business, you like you get to do whatever you want. Or people listen to you all the time. It’s the exact opposite, honestly. Nobody listens to you, everybody. But.

Jonathan Tamsut (11:31) Yes.

Jennifer Harris (11:34) No, think John, the biggest thing is that because there wasn’t the internet and there wasn’t the same way to get information, we would just make things up so much and then you find out you’re wrong. And it was such trial and error. I think that I don’t wish to not have the information now, but I do think that you don’t learn as well as when you’re forced to go out and sit in front of a client and sort of screw up and have them fire you or have to live through the rejection and the…

Jonathan Tamsut (11:53) Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Jennifer Harris (11:58) My very first client, gave a freight business card, our first business card I had, and he called me out on it. He like, that is so, he didn’t know it was, because that’s so unprofessional. You don’t have a crisp business card. Now I remember this 37 years later. And you don’t get to have as much of that now, and I think we’re not as resilient a bit. But Brendan and I became partners of Microsoft.

First we were Great Plains partners. We had to travel to conferences. had listening to you guys. It was so different from in education. It was going and having to meet people. And it’s not even networking. It’s just being part of a community. So you get the software updates when they come out and you know what to your clients and they refer you clients.

you know, you can hire staff and so you had to go to these conferences that we had no idea, you know, what we were doing.

Jonathan Tamsut (12:51) So do you see the role of a CEO, is it more, I mean, I guess it varies at companies, is it more, in your experience, company vision or sales or strategy or just all of the above?

Jennifer Harris (13:01) People feel safe

when you feel good about it, right? When you’re authentic. So when you believe what you believe, whether the people think you’re Elon Musk and you’re, know, whatever, people want to follow people that believe in their vision and right or wrong. And so a CEO that doesn’t, shouldn’t be a CEO because number one. And number two, you have to the wherewithal to take the risk because you’re,

You know, I have millions of dollars of payroll every two weeks. You know, I have to sleep at night. And I do. My husband’s like, how do you sleep at night? I go, don’t know, I just do. And you have to be able to say, make a decision, make a decision, stand by your decision. If it doesn’t work, you know, be able to say, okay, let’s try this. So I think to be a CEO that either A, hates their job and hates their whatever is not.

You really have to believe what you’re doing to be successful. And I think people know if you’re in it with them. They sort of know, you know, they know if you’re authentic. But you can’t have a company full of CEOs. You have to have executors and you have to have number twos. And I am so grateful for that. I think people feel like there’s a scarcity and everybody has to have the same role.

Jonathan Tamsut (13:57) and

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. That’s interesting. I definitely been part of startups where, I mean, every startup I’ve been part of, I felt like the CEO had a really strong vision. ⁓

Jennifer Harris (14:17) And people have to know, I was not CEO.

Brenda was president in Zio, and I was secretary, vice president, and treasurer, because I didn’t care about that. And she did. You have to know who cares. You have to know who’s that person who… But you also have to know what’s good for your startup. And the brightest person might not be the CEO, or the person who even owns the most, you know, of the stock. It’s the person people want to follow. Right?

Jonathan Tamsut (14:35) Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (14:42) When

did that switch for you? Both.

Jennifer Harris (14:43) It switched

actually recently. So we grew to be about 20 something people.

project managers, developers. Now remember, we don’t do the tech, we don’t even know how, we didn’t even know how to do it. So when you start hiring technical people in a technical field, but we were finance people and we knew how to make a business and quite often finance, technical people don’t quite often and they don’t surround themselves. It’s true, know, monetizing yourself. You’re so smart in the one area and you do it for free or you work too hard or you don’t see if there’s a financial gain. We could. When Brenda was the one went going to the conferences, though, she was the

outgoing

one and I ran consulting and through the 2000s we were probably you know we made two or three four million in revenue we did SOWs we had contracts we were real legit but in 2010 she got cancer and for about nine months she said now you have to go to conferences and I was like no.

I’m not, definitely not. She could drink more than me, she could hang with the guys, you know, and I was like, no. And she would just like be on the phone while I was like walking through the streets of Atlanta, because conferences, Microsoft conferences, they don’t talk to you. They’re clicky. You everybody’s great planes, which they bought, the whole culture was to talk to everyone. And then when Microsoft bought them, literally the first conference, like they were talking to each other and not us. And we were like…

You know, it’s very, very hard. But she passed away in 2011 and Satin and Nadelic came on that same year. And I just saw, was like, oh, this is gonna happen and we have a chance to make something happen. And I was so probably traumatized and I had 27 people who depended on me to make a living. And that’s when I sort of had to start.

It wasn’t just like happening anymore, you know had to raise my gate

And I was alone, so that made it different. Also, I had imposter syndrome that 10 years terribly when she died.

Jonathan Tamsut (16:27) Yeah, I mean, that’s so tough.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that must be, I mean, yeah, we’ve, that must be just so difficult being like thrust into, you know, the. ⁓

Jennifer Harris (16:38) Well, the imposter syndrome,

you know, I just had to write a book, a chapter about it and I listened to your list too. It’s a weird thing you don’t know when you’re going through it. You don’t realize it until later, but when she was alive, you have someone that you go, that you’re with. So you sort of don’t think about, I good enough or am I enough or, cause they tell you, oh, you were great or oh, you know, that was terrible. But when you’re alone, all of those questions in your own head do not answer as confidently. And even when you’re complaining like Bethany,

can come and say, da, da, da, da, right? And someone might be, poor Bethany. But that’s not exactly what you need. You sort of want someone to say, OK, either buck up or go do this or that’s terrible or they are awful. But it’s hard to find that voice because it has to be someone going through your exact same journey. And that is very unusual. Everybody comes to it with a different.

you know, So for me, it was really imposter syndrome. like, can I do this? Am I doing the right thing? And know, a constant people supporting you, but not really. So that trajectory has been, this right now is really fun. I’m like the pimply.

short, know, awkward redhead like I was. Twelve-year-old that, you know, grew up and, you know, all of a sudden people want to be your friend, you know, the guy that becomes 6’2 in the football. And it’s been very interesting to have people now reaching out that in 2011 were not that.

Jonathan Tamsut (18:05) there’s so many interesting aspects to it. Like the growth of technology sort of alongside your business. Like obviously you’re sort of owning a business with your best friend and then your best friend dying. I mean, that’s just such a, you know, interesting.

Bethany (18:05) you

Jennifer Harris (18:18) think that

the thing that I see, there’s an Esther Perel statement I talk about all the time where she says you should be married three times in your life if you’re lucky to the same person, you know? And it’s true with businesses, you know, people used to work at their business forever, right? There was this loyalty thing. Now there’s like you have to change. But actually what it is is you have to be where things evolve. Because if you change your job and you do the exact same job.

Right? Just a different place. That’s not that cool. And if you stay somewhere where they’re not evolving, and you’re doing the exact same job. But if you can find the right group of people, and they evolve as things change, that’s the coolest thing, right? And we were forced to a bit because of the death and technology changing in the world. And I’m really grateful that I took that, that I was able to sort of grow with it. And that’s the part that

I think is the magic that I was able to do. And you see right now a lot of people thinking it’s going to stay how they’ve done it, and it’s not. And that’s what’s happening.

Bethany (19:13) I think too it resonates with just facing imposter syndrome but not almost feeling gaslit by that imposter syndrome. It’s like, am I actually feeling this? Yeah.

Jennifer Harris (19:20) It is. It’s the invisible.

Yeah, I am. I was asked to write this chapter in a book called Our Women Still on Mute. And when I read these other women’s stories, and they were just like, they came to America. They have these stories, right? And I was like, what am I going to write about? And I did this big transaction this year, and it’s 1 % of women. 1 % of women have businesses over a million dollars.

1%. But women, if you look up in any chat, in any research, women are the, they’ll say women have most businesses. Women are the biggest, the fastest growing industry. And then you try to get that statistic of how much, how much revenue. You know, it’s small, small. And it’s nowhere. And then one place I found this statistic. It’s like 1 % of women have businesses over a million dollars, so less than 1%.

get any investing. And so then I must have asked every tool why that statistic isn’t there. It’s because it’s invisible. Because they don’t think women were getting half the investment. So they don’t track.

And right. so when I was telling people of my experience, this is successful women too. They’re like, really? We can’t believe that we hear that women we know show, you know, we see women, you know? And so cracking the glass ceiling or having imposter syndrome is dismissed because it’s not even looked at. It’s an invisible glass ceiling. People don’t even talk about it. And that

was like a moment where I was like, oh, people are not interested in my story of being a woman doing this. They’re interested that I was able to build a company and get huge payout and do things. But when I say this, 1 % of women, even to women in tech and all them, not interested. They don’t even know it exists. the numbers are going down, know, of successful women and women in leadership. So it’s a…

That’s been eye-opening for me.

Brittany Ellich (21:14) That’s really fascinating. think one part of my career, I’ve always been involved with like the women who code and women in tech groups. the groups often, the folks that actually go and attend them are the folks that are just starting out. And the real retention issues they have are women sticking around five or 10 years into their career instead of, you know, those first, I mean, it’s also really hard to get women starting, but.

Jennifer Harris (21:35) What do you think? What do you think? Because

I’ve done so many of those and I actually refused to do one this year and because of that it’s not helping. The topics aren’t good. I have, I think I have, I’ve been thinking about it, I don’t know the right answer, but I have a few. And last year women were crying at a conference, Women in Tech. They were crying, three of us talking about it. And I went up to one of these women and I thought, why are you crying?

And they’re like, we’re badass. We do everything. No one talks about it. They say, because you guys all sit here in this room, 100 of you or more, and you don’t talk to the person next to you. It’s insane.

Brittany Ellich (22:08) It’s true. Yeah, I struggle with creating genuine relationships there, I think, than generic tech groups. And I’m not sure exactly why. I also have I’m not currently involved in one. One, a lot of them closed. So a lot of them closed.

Jennifer Harris (22:21) So they closed because

they were calling it in. what I found, what I think I wish I had had and what you guys, what men do, and John, I’m not calling you out because I sit in these groups, is they naturally don’t mind, and John, you’re not atypical, but Bethany would end this call, next week she might call me if she was gay. And go, hey, can we get together, have a drink? And then on that drink, say, or you, Bethany, hey, I have this

startup that I’m doing, will you invest? Right there. We would never in a million years, right? It’s just not done. And so these women in tech groups, they are people sitting around complaining and even talking about mentors and talking about allies, but they’re actually not showing people like me that did that. You should only be seeing me and about people that are have done it and are willing to mentor you.

and truly teaching some of the things that we didn’t get taught. And if I sit on one more Women in Tech call, Microsoft or other, that want to talk about what they want to talk about, and I’m like…

No, it’s not helping anyone. It literally isn’t helping get into the positions that will help. But I don’t know the entire answer. I just know that I spent a lot of time on things, and they all got dismantled, so clearly.

Brittany Ellich (23:28) Yeah, I certainly…

Yeah, yeah, and there

doesn’t seem to be like anything that has really filled up that vacuum. So what is the advice then that you would give to like a young woman entering a career in tech or even better somebody who’s five to 10 years into it debating if they want to stick around?

Jennifer Harris (23:45) in. Yeah, I

think the first thing I had to learn was not I like to be liked and I like to not talk about my goals in a way that was looked at as maybe

too ambitious and I think there’s a scarcity. So women are the least supportive of women, successful women, because there’s a scarcity I think. I tried to think about this because I hear women say all the time, I like working with the guys. I like working with the guys, you know, and I say.

Do you have a best friend? Do you have a mom or a sister? Yeah, I said, then why at work? And it’s really because there’s this sort of underlying competitive, it’s easier to work with a guy. They also sometimes like being the gal, the girl, in male-oriented fields. A lot of the women in software end up being the project managers of the dev team, which I thought was really interesting. a lot, a lot, about four, and this was a year ago before AI was doing it, raised their hand, they’re like, so I got a promotion.

to run a team of 10 guys. And I end up having to be their therapist a little bit and you know, yeah. And it was, I don’t know why I was so surprised. Of course we’re running those teams. Of course that’s something we would sort of gravitate to. But we don’t take advantage of it is what I would say. So you got promoted to be that, right? You need to promote yourself. We tend to talk well about the people below us as managers. We like to, you know, shout out the people below

us, our people, our team. We have no problem talking about that. We have a less problem being ambitious for ourselves and you know what? No one’s going to invite you. So that’s the number one. Get out there. Everything John’s doing, I’m sorry, you to do twice as well and twice as much and that’s the other thing that’s so evident. If he’s not networking…

have to network. It’s not fair, but you do. And that is because there is an implicit bias.

You know, just people don’t know how to talk to me. They just don’t know. They don’t know what to say or whatever. So what I would say to young women is stop trying to be liked and have a goal. And if you have a goal, make it happen now. You can’t put things off. You can’t ask 12 friends. You can’t, you know… Do you know that women are adopting AI at half the rate of men in professional life? And do you want know why? What do you think? Because I was fascinated by it.

Brittany Ellich (25:55) I didn’t

Jennifer Harris (25:58) In personal life, no. In our work lives. We don’t take risks. We want to know everything. We want to be perfect. We want to tell all the, you know, we’re not going to, we’re not going to put our jobs on the line. Right? But we have a president or someone will fly the plane that has no idea, but we’re not going to. And so that’s going to hurt us, right? Cause it’s a gender equality AI, you know, and AI is really, right?

And so the only thing I could say, I you guys tell me more is that if I said to you right now, hey, come work for me, right this minute, I have a startup, I’m doing it, come work for me. And there was a guy that started, you know, was one of the key members of Snap saying it and reinventing it now. That guy’s going to get more play and more ability from even young women.

because there’s a sense, And because there’s not enough people, who else is there? Who women did found these companies that you might want to go work for? And so I’d say take a risk on yourselves and other women too, because the guys aren’t going to do it for you. the girls don’t either, but some will. Like if I said it, I mean it.

Brittany Ellich (27:05) Sounds like the girls aren’t either.

Jennifer Harris (27:09) Just don’t have your own implicit bias, you know? If you are in a women in tech group and you don’t call that person when you come in town or you know someone and you’re not trying to…

know them, you should know each other, actually know each other. That’s how opportunities come because that’s, it’s all relationships. It’s not sending your great code to someone. It’s not going to be a contest. It’s not going to be, you know, it’s going to be who you know. And I did not know anyone. That’s what I found out. And it was told to me pretty bluntly two years ago.

I’m going on stage next week, this is the last story I’ll say on that, but I’m going on stage next week because I did not know any of the C levels of the conferences that Microsoft had. I didn’t know Microsoft people, and I did not know, and these guys that I’m trying to buy now are doing it who I know have less revenue than me. Okay? And they were getting it. And so in March, I said to someone who was putting on this big copilot conference for Microsoft, was like, I don’t know the C level.

And they introduced me to the guy last like two months and he’s like, you’ve been doing booths spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with us. And the only thing I knew was I had a feminist as fuck hat that we give out at a woman’s day. I wear your hat. And so he talks to me, goes, my God, you have to do the keynote with me in Bellevue. And I say, okay, and I look at the day before and it’s all my competitors, which I wasn’t invited to, that had already been set up.

And so last week I said, hey, there must be an old boys club here because all these guys. And he said, well, you never made yourself known. Nobody knew. And you’re the only one that I invited to go on stage and open up. Don’t try to compete with them because you missed that. And it was sort of hard to hear. But it’s sort of uncomfortable because I would rather have been on the panel.

and be just with him, because I’m shy. But I have to do this to show other young women, right? Because all the rest of them are all guys on the day before. And then Microsoft will try to out their woman executive. You know they will. She’ll be the first person after me who has no power, by the way. And they’ll do their executives. And those women are not role models in that way, right? Because…

They’re just not sat in them. They’re not, you know, and so I guess the thing I would say is meet people, put yourself out there, make sure you’re known, and don’t complain that you’re not known. Like we have to do it and it’s so uncomfortable.

Brittany Ellich (29:26) Yeah, yeah, it’s hard. I think a lot of, you know, women are socialized throughout their life too, to, you know, try to be demure, you know, like try to not be boastful about what they’re doing. And it’s a very uncomfortable thing.

Jennifer Harris (29:33) Right?

Well, and it’s so, yeah,

it’s so, I talk about processor syndrome. Someone, some guy said to me like, you’re so revved up. I took that as such an insult. Oh yeah. I was like for weeks. I was like, Oh my God, I was too. And it was someone who wasn’t even part of our world. Like it was someone who had been coaching us, a coach who wasn’t, didn’t have a.

And this was in January and this guy that I’m going on stage with he’s like, I love that you’re so revved up. He said, I I love, thank you for saying that. Why did I need that? Why did I need that? Right? That’s the, that’s the thing. Why did I let someone say those words make me feel?

I don’t think Steve Bomber killed that everyone was telling him that he was right. Why did I care? I did. And so yeah, it’s uncomfortable. It really is. But I guess if your goal is to be self-employed or to have something cool or to do something or, you know, whatever, even the most awkward male founders, Zuckerberg or whatever, they’re out there.

Brittany Ellich (30:35) They’re doing quite well for themselves as well. So yeah.

Jennifer Harris (30:36) Right? So awkward. He was so awkward

that he got all these college girls to put their picture. You know what I mean? If you think about it and what women founders do you know? Can you look at, do you even say off the top of your head that you would even know their name?

Brittany Ellich (30:50) Yeah, that’s a point.

Jonathan Tamsut (30:51) Yeah, very few.

Jennifer Harris (30:52) And if you do, it’s the Devil Wears Prada or Martha, you know, like you can’t be Oprah. I mean, it has to be somebody, right? know, this was something that’s who we know. Like, come on. So that’s the, that’s the.

Jonathan Tamsut (30:55) Mm-hmm.

Brittany Ellich (30:58) Mm-hmm.

CEO… yeah, the CEO of Blue Sky. That’s… I actually don’t know her name. Put it forward.

Jennifer Harris (31:06) Yes. Let’s see, the main, does a person coming out of, you

Bethany (31:08) You

Jennifer Harris (31:09) don’t know her name, and is she doing stuff that’s like being quoted in the news? Is she?

Jonathan Tamsut (31:14) So time.

Brittany Ellich (31:14) Yeah,

mean, think part of it, yeah, part of it is that I’m very active on blue sky, so I see a lot of the stuff related to it. But if you weren’t.

Jennifer Harris (31:18) Right. To think of a kid in school right now, like,

or a young professional, would you try to meet up with her, I guess?

Brittany Ellich (31:26) I mean probably, but I don’t know, maybe not. No? Yeah, that’s a point.

Jennifer Harris (31:27) Have you? See, we don’t like, right? I know.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:29) You

Jennifer Harris (31:33) I know. It’s so like, I hear these stories of these guys, well, I tried to, you I went and tried to meet so and so and had a meeting and like, really? How’d you do that? I cold called him.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:42) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (31:43) Wow, yeah, that sounds terrifying.

Jennifer Harris (31:44) So that’s the journey I’m trying to pay forward now, you know, is like I’m talking to people.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:44) Yeah.

Jennifer Harris (31:48) There’s no benefit to me. People think I’m trying to do this brand. I’ve even had some people say that, you know, even in my own company. And what I’m trying to do is sort of show I started in a laundry room and I’m here, but it was against all odds it really was. And you can do it too. Everybody has this opportunity, but only a few people are gonna do it because you have to believe in yourself and you have to really feel like you have value in what you’re doing.

so used to before the thing about being a CEO is you can’t blame anyone. I can’t blame the leadership and I can’t blame the you know the world and the economy and and the politics are terrible and I want to move out of the US and you know everything because I have people depending on me and so it really creates a situation that most people if you think of your life think of a day in your life and don’t blame anyone.

for your situation, for anything that you do all day long. It’s all your choice. That’s like, you know, the other side of that, there’s very few times that we do that where we really have that self-awareness to say, I could get out of the game, I don’t have to do this. But we all sort of have that agency, right? We could all quit.

I said that to John, was like, could all quit. You hated so much, quit. And we don’t, and so that’s sort of the main thing that I found in as women we do, we wanna sort of collaborate and find a better way and we’ll just wait and we’ll stay in a situation longer than we need to. And so it’s been.

The joy of my life that I’m able to now talk to people and tell my story and hopefully inspire one person or two people. It’s also a different challenge now. So I don’t know if John told you, so I did a big transaction at the end of December. And when I did it, I met 80 men in finance, 80 young men between 30 and 40 telling me, trying to do this deal. There were no women in private equity, none.

And so I’m in this position now where I’m working by choice and I love AI and I think that if you guys, I hear your podcasts and I hear your pessimism and this, but you’re doing it from a place that you’re already there and I don’t think you understand that. Like the rest of the world, industry, the people using it.

You’re so far ahead that when you have fears and you’re saying about adoption, you’re already adopting it to a point that you can’t even imagine that the rest of the world doesn’t see. And they’re gonna lose their jobs. They are gonna lose their jobs. Because they literally don’t think it’s here at all. It’s like not thinking computers are here. And honestly, you know, and so, you know, I go in these companies and I hear people and they’ve

you know, 20 people in accounting and 20 people in marketing and they’re still doing a development of an app that’s coming out in two years. And you guys are already so far, so far ahead of that, that you losing your jobs, you’re gonna be employable. Them losing their jobs, they’re not.

And they’re not. And it’s going to really, that’s what’s gonna change the world. It’s not gonna be the AI itself. It’s gonna be all these people, all these people trying to figure out. So I’m in a position now where I can sort of talk about that and have some credibility. And unfortunately, it took getting a lot of money and a bunch of men believing in me for me to lose my imposter syndrome. So what I would say is lose it, lose it now. You’re smart. You’re you.

You guys are doing this. It’s cool. I listened to all your podcasts. I only understood a tenth, but I tried. So that was my story.

Jonathan Tamsut (35:04) Okay, so shall we move on to the fun segment? Does anyone have anything else? Okay, so I guess we can move on to the quote unquote fun segment. yeah, that was, you’re right, this entire podcast was one big fun segment.

Jennifer Harris (35:12) I thought that was fun, Okay. John’s

listening to what he should have known, but he probably never heard all these years that I listened to. He lives it.

Jonathan Tamsut (35:22) No, it’s, yeah,

I’m, no, it’s nice to have like a dedicated hour to actually talk about these things.

Jennifer Harris (35:29) When I went through this deal,

by the way, I went to my family and I was like, I could do something that could set us up for the rest of our life or whatever. They’re all like, so what does that mean? Cause I’m a mom. And I said all along, like they would say like, I hope you’re not so stressed, Jen, or you should take time for yourself. And if there was a guy going through a huge deal.

Jonathan Tamsut (35:37) Okay.

Jennifer Harris (35:49) Can you imagine being told you should really go to the spa and not close, you know, at $40, $50 million? No, we just think that it’s way too much stress for you, So the sexism that I experienced wasn’t just from inside, it was outside. John, you were supportive.

Brittany Ellich (35:59) That’s such a great point.

Johnson are very rare position right now where he is in a group of women in tech.

Jonathan Tamsut (36:05) Hahaha

Jennifer Harris (36:06) But he lived it and he could see right not from a bad place He could

see that it’s looked at in this weird way. Wasn’t it sort of what do you think? He was good. I’m not saying my kids are great But just in general the way our friends or people thought I was just busy

Jonathan Tamsut (36:14) Yeah, I…

Yeah, I mean, you know, we all, know, we all, for the listener, Jennifer Harris is my mother-in-law. ⁓ We all, yeah, we all love you, Jen. We wanted you to be happy, but…

Jennifer Harris (36:25) So you could cut this.

See, see? I don’t think a man, John, I don’t think, well you ladies tell me, do you think that if this was a guy doing a big case, and you can cut this, a big case or the biggest deal and they were getting $50 million something that their children would be like, we just want you to be happy, Dad or daughter or father.

Jonathan Tamsut (36:31) Yeah, I don’t know.

Brittany Ellich (36:48) No, absolutely not.

Bethany (36:50) we? Should we ask them how they’re doing?

Jonathan Tamsut (36:52) Men need to be happy too.

Jennifer Harris (36:52) Well, I the thing

Brittany Ellich (36:53) ⁓

Jennifer Harris (36:55) is that like it’s setting up the whole family for life and it’s like taking the stress off the dad or the mom and it’s like generational. So yeah, you want you to be happy, but to spend a year to do something like that. Yeah, no. Or you want the dad or mom just to work forever.

and be like, you know, and so it’s like, people don’t, women get this though, we just get like, you wanna be happy, we just don’t want you to be stressed, but go ahead and work and support everyone forever, you know? That’s the…

Brittany Ellich (37:21) both in the

house and at work.

Jennifer Harris (37:23) Yes, and

do both jobs and be in charge, yeah. So that was the biggest takeaway for women is we don’t get celebrated when we’re working hard with something. We don’t get like, if you were doing a project and you were gonna work 24 seven, but it was like the joy of your life, you were creating something, you were so excited. We don’t get the support from our…

that if a guy was like, I’m going to school or I’m doing a startup or I’m doing something or a deal, the whole family would be like, let dad work right now. We should just give him space or John’s got this big deal and I’m just like, want him to get through his finals or whatever. It’s very different and that was actually my stress. That was my biggest stress of the whole thing. That’s why I I wasn’t calling you out in general, but it was that.

was it’s really gendered and it’s because no one has seen a woman do it. We don’t see women do it so we don’t know what to say, you know, to it. So now you can do the fun part. You can cut that, John. I wasn’t calling you out in particular but it was so obvious that’s what I got.

Bethany (38:20) you

Jonathan Tamsut (38:25) No, it’s, yeah. No, I mean, you

we all have cognitive biases and for sure there’s, you know, you have people think of a picture of a CEO, it’s probably gonna be a man.

Jennifer Harris (38:35) It’s advice, I think we just, we’re gendered. We just are, we have how women are supposed to be and how moms and you know, and we’re trying to fight them, right? I think it’s a lot easier for a guy to say, I don’t wanna be looked at anymore as the, know, having to make the money and the provider.

Jonathan Tamsut (38:43) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Harris (38:53) So now the fun start. John’s like, okay. Do you see I made him a cute girl?

Jonathan Tamsut (38:55) But no, know this

has been a great episode. This has been interesting. think this is a really cool perspective, but let’s.

Jennifer Harris (39:02) You know I love him

more than anything, so it’s okay. Okay. Okay. I’m talk to you guys separate. Anyway.

Jonathan Tamsut (39:04) Let’s do the fun part now that I’ve been put on blast. ⁓ Okay, yeah, basically we’re just gonna…

⁓ Yeah, so we’re all gonna go around and talk about a tool, a website, just something that we use that really makes our life easier or is more interesting.

Jennifer Harris (39:16) Okay.

Jonathan Tamsut (39:28) Cool, yeah, you, Brittany, do you wanna start? Or?

Brittany Ellich (39:30) Sure, yeah,

yeah, I have something in mind. Yes, so I have been on first responder this week, which just basically means for my team if something goes wrong. uh-oh.

Jennifer Harris (39:32) you

I can hear, something went with the sound.

Jonathan Tamsut (39:41) yeah, there is like some background noise. I believe we have the ability to remove that in the edit.

Brittany Ellich (39:46) Yeah,

Jennifer Harris (39:47) Okay.

Jonathan Tamsut (39:48) Yeah, so

if you hear some background noise, don’t worry about it, Jen.

Brittany Ellich (39:51) Yeah, yeah, it’ll be all cleaned up.

Yes, tools. Yes. So I’ve been on first responder this week, which means that if something goes wrong for my team, then I get to deal with it and respond to it first, ideally. And something that I’ve been working with actually all week is trying to figure out there’s a bunch of different Slack channels that I’ve been a part of. And I’m trying to find some automations and some AI tools that will help me bring it all into one spot and be able to triage it better and resolve these

issues faster. So I’ve been using the Slack workflows for doing things like adding emojis to something to have it like go to a list and then there’s another other workflows where like if you send a message then you can you know have something change in that list and stuff and yeah just exploring those. think Slack workflows is my shout out tool right now that I’ve been really enjoying.

Bethany (40:40) Mine is kind of lame. Not lame, but it’ll sound like I’m very biased. honestly, this week I’ve been using CoViolet like nothing else, just between giving updates, making sure my language is clear for different audiences. But also I’ve been doing a lot of dashboarding and we’re using Azure Data Explorer, which has its own query language called

Custo query language or KQL. And I’ve just never been big in KQL or been able to wrap my mind around it with all the other types of query languages there are. But Copilot has been amazing for just saying, I want to do this thing, please translate it in KQL. And that would be amazing. And it’s just, it’s done it pretty well. And if it’s, if it’s off, I’ll say, tweak this and it’ll do that.

It’s been, made my life a lot easier this week.

Jonathan Tamsut (41:32) Cool, yeah, my tool that I actually just set up two days ago is a plugin, is an Obsidian plugin called, I think it’s called Obsidian Copilot. And basically it allows you to turn your Obsidian Vault, which Obsidian is like a note taking vault, into basically like your own personal LLM powered Wiki. So it’s pretty cool, I recommend you check it out.

Jennifer Harris (41:55) Am I unmuted? Yeah. Actually, Copilot, so I preach to use whatever’s out that week, whatever’s good, even though we sell Copilot, right? But Copilot has all these new stuff now. And so what I’ve been doing, it’s a tool, but taking the transcripts from different calls and not the recap, the transcripts, and then putting it back in to say, what was the call about? What did we really ask? Who was talking too much? What didn’t we ask?

tell us in deep research, using the research, the new research tool. And it’s really been my favorite thing right now because so often we think we’ve asked, we think we’re saying something we’re not and the feedback.

is so you’re not defensive so it’s it’s been really great and and i will say that i was using only claude then i was really into perplexity and now i’m back to copilot this week did all these new features come out this last three weeks or something that i’m that are now there i think they did okay so that’s been mine

Jonathan Tamsut (42:50) Yeah, there’s just so much.

Jennifer Harris (42:51) We don’t use Flac,

we use Teams, by the way.

Jonathan Tamsut (42:53) Of Okay, I’m going to read the sort of closing script, so I think we’re gonna wrap this up. So, Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your insights. It was really a pleasure hearing your perspective.

To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to Overcommitted. If you like what you hear, please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you like to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky and share with your friends. Until next week, bye-bye.

Jennifer Harris (43:20) Thank you guys, that was great.