Podcast

Episode: 99 |
Tiffany Pham:
Be a Mogul:
Episode
99

HOW TO THRIVE AS AN
INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONAL

Tiffany Pham

Be a Mogul

Show Notes

Tiffany Pham is a mogul, and she wants you to be a mogul too.

Tiffany is the Founder and CEO of Mogul, a platform reaching 18 million women per week – users can read trending content, take courses, solicit advice from other members, find job opportunities. Visit onmogul.com

Mogul organizes an annual conference called Mogul X, billed as the modern millennial classroom, and the next one is this Saturday, September 8 in New York City – topics include Finding your mentor, finding your purpose, Building resilience, building your financial future, side hustles, building a business to work remotely – looks like an awesome day.  Registration fee is $250, but Tiffany kindly offered a discount code for listeners of this show – enter the code Unleashed at checkout and you can register for just $99. Or use this link: http://bit.ly/2wC5gAr

Tiffany is ALSO the author of a new book out today, You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do it Yourself, and Do it Now.

One weekly email with bonus materials and summaries of each new episode:

Will Bachman: Hello, Tiffany. It is great to have you on the show.
Tiffany Pham: Thanks so much, Will. Excited to be here.
Will Bachman: So, Tiffany, in your new book ‘You are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, and Do It Now’, you have a chapter about becoming a mogul from your bedroom, and it talks about what seems to be the real genesis of your firm Mogul, which was when you got on the list of the Forbes ’30 under 30,’ and you didn’t even know you were being considered, and after that a lot of stuff started to happen. You started to get contacted from all over the world. Talk to us a little bit about that experience of getting that news and how that led to you getting the idea and starting Mogul.
Tiffany Pham: Absolutely and thanks so much for that question. So, what happened was that I did end up being put on this list, didn’t know what it was, but then all of a sudden started receiving emails from all around the world from young women who saw that list and asked me for help, asked me how I ended up getting on the list, how I got the three jobs that the list was talking about, and what those three jobs were in particular were me working at CBS, working at nights as well as side hustles, but the Vice-Mayor of Beijing to also L.A. Talent. L.A. Talent producing feature films together and documentaries.
So I was working on all these three jobs when all of a sudden when that mist occurred and all these emails came in, all of a sudden it enabled me to hear from these young women that wanted these jobs and ultimately be able to share advice with them, therefore, advice that enabled them to also gain the same opportunities, but also interviews and promotions and every single time I would write them three pages worth of advice, they would tell me that my letter had changed their lives, that all of a sudden they got that opportunity, or interview, or promotion, you never thought would be possible, and so every single day this would happen.
I would get more and more letters. All of a sudden, it turned into hundreds of letters, thousands of letters and that’s when it occurred to me that instead of sharing all this one-on-one behind the scenes, what if we had a platform that millions of us could share our obstacles and challenges and struggles and then from that, be able to share our ideas and opportunities amongst each other and become that much better and stronger together.
And so, as I looked around, it made sense because there were other problems out there like this, but only a handful, and they were all usually male millennials, typically 90 to 98% male millennial users on such platforms of information exchange. And so, at that time what happened was that I had written a book called ‘From Business Strategy to I.T. Roadmaps’ at the time, teaching others how to better build up their I.T. and it made me realize that maybe I didn’t have the millions of dollars to hire a team of engineers, but the one thing that I could do was to eventually teach myself how to code and build this myself.
Maybe I could do this, I could teach myself how to code Ruby on Rails and that could be the final way in which I could help all these young girls lives, and so that’s what I ended up doing every single day. I would work with the presidents of the media corporation I was apart of, CBS, and then subsequently ended up then working with all my various jobs, Vice-Mayor of Beijing, also English Talent and Hollywood thereafter on my production, then 3am I would be done with everything and I would teach myself Ruby on Rails and after a couple of weeks, I built the first version of Mogul.
Will Bachman: That is amazing.
Tiffany Pham: Yeah, and that’s where we are now today ever since that launch grew exponentially and then now have since become one of the largest female millennial platforms worldwide.
Will Bachman: So, talk to us, for someone who hasn’t logged on or hasn’t visited your site, there’s kind of a discussion forum where people can post articles and then comment on it, there’s also jobs, there’s also a learning aspect to it and there’s a safety aspect where you can report sexual harassment. Give us a little bit of a guide to the site for someone who hasn’t visited it yet, walk us through what is on it.
Tiffany Pham: Sure, of course! So, currently you can go into the platform and as a a single user yourself, post articles, videos, jobs, events, products and that in itself can become your use of the platform because you wish to post, you wish to voice your opinions, your insights, your ideas, but what happens is that collectively if every single user does that, it then enables the whole platform to surface all the incredible conversations that therefore our users are collectively having across each of these posts and then ultimately showcase what’s trending amongst women’s minds worldwide and that’s what’s so exciting. Then you can really see what’s on top of women’s minds all around the world and ultimately that’s why then people collectively return, not only again to share their own voices, but to hear other’s ideas as well and collectively become that much better and stronger together.
Will Bachman: And let’s go through some of the different aspects of it. So, talk to me the safety at work piece.
Tiffany Pham: Absolutely, so, what we do further is that the platform then enables everyone for connection, information, access knowledge from each other ultimately how we’ve been drives the revenue that enables us to sustain that innovation and then furthermore create global impact because we have the One-for-one model with United Nations that enables us to provide the educational resources in the U.N. for every dollar earned, ultimately bringing those educational resources over to women all around the world who would otherwise not get access to them. How we drive that partnership and [inaudible 00:06:19] with the U.N., therefore, is through different divisions of Mogul that enable us to drive [inaudible 00:06:26] back to our users while also deepening relationships with our respective partners, we do this across different types of needs.
First, the job opportunity need, the economic opportunity need. What this means is we here partner us through the H.R. departments of our partners to provide them with access to different softwares available to our platform but enable them to track, pertain and advanced diverse talent. So through this arm, they can post jobs and internships on the Mogul platform that then enable them to highlight the top opportunities available to their workplace. So, then also use our software and technology from our platforms to train our workforce on inclusive leadership, then unconscious bias and ultimately therefore ensure their workforce is continuing to be a safe and inclusive environment.
And then lastly we also have a safety at work tool that enables, again through our platform, for company employees to report feedback through their H.R. readers in real time for us to help showcase anonymous or non-anonymously what’s happening inside the workplace and therefore continue that safe and inclusive environment as well. So the collection of the three H.R. tools and softwares that we have available enable all of our respective Fortune 500 partners and more beyond to enhance diversity and inclusion for the workplace and help impact women’s lives inside at work.
And then subsequently we’ve done have other aspects to Mogul platform as well that then help us actually serve our users as well outside the workplace such that then they can personally, professionally develop themselves outside of work, that is through our book offering. We have different books coming out from ‘You are Mogul’ coming out September 4th next Tuesday, so then, ultimately-So, then, Mogul X, which is an annual conference, happening this year on September 8th, where we’re bringing the best of the best of the world together to teach our users about every subject matter within a Mogul’s life, in real life.
And then subsequently, also our Mogul Learning Courses, over 1,200 courses that we have available on the platform covering different subject matters within a Mogul’s life from engineering to career onto education, finance, travel, health and fitness, relationship and more and ultimately those courses enable every person to become the best version of themselves. So, that’s very comprehensively, all that we cover within the Mogul Organization that enables us to accomplish our overall mission of enabling women through information access, economic opportunity and education.
Will Bachman: Yeah, what a fantastic mission and the Mogul X that’s coming up this weekend on Saturday the 8th looks absolutely amazing, I mean, what an incredible set of topics you have coming up and an amazing set of speakers and it seems like, from the description of it, it’s gonna be designed to be very interactive and really encourage people to get to know one another. Talk to us a little bit about Mogul X coming up this Saturday.
Tiffany Pham: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for those kind words! Mogul X is definitely so excited, it’s gonna be such an incredible day of learning and transformative experiences as our users from around the world convene in New York City, in Times Square, and it’s actually gonna be in a setting that is made up of different classrooms, so every single classroom with cover different subject matters from finance, to working it, to hustling, to personal issues, failing forward or traveling or health and wellness and ultimately, all together, again representing every aspect of Mogul’s lives that typically our users we seen want to improve and so every single one of these tracks, before they’re broken down into more classes that are made up of classes such as different components that we’ve seen particularly interest our users within a specific track.
So, what that means is, for example, in the failing forward track, we have the topic ‘Later, Haters’, which is being taught by Lizzie Velasquez, dubbed by the internet as ‘The World’s Ugliest Woman’, so unfairly, so terribly and she was able to turn that hatred into such beauty and positivity and it was just a great example of what to do when you’re faced with such negativity, undeserved negativity. So, she is going to be teaching the class ‘Later, Haters” hands-on learning and subsequently the next class will be Molly Bloom teaching ‘Changing the Game’.
She is the subject of the movie ‘Molly’s Game’, in fact, and will teach how to overcome personal downfalls and climb up from there, change the game for yourself thereafter. So, she’s incredible, everyone’s so excited for her, her class, her teachings and subsequently one of my own personal friends, wonderful friends, is Mariane Pearl, who is coming from Barcelona, teaching on building resilience despite the obstacles you may face.
Her husband-she befell a personal tragedy 10 years prior from her husband, who unfortunately suffering major consequences at the hands of ISIS and ultimately as a result, with his stuff, she’s commemorated her life towards- she spent her life now-dedicate her life towards commemorating his memory and now she will be teaching on that on how to rebuild resilience, how to dedicate your life toward continued good beyond that and I’m just so excited for her class too, so those are just example classes within the Failing Forward track and every other class too, it’s different hands-on, still building, I myself will be teaching a class on how to turn your biggest role-models in life 100% of the time into your biggest advisors, investors, champions, allies, as I’ve done with my biggest role-models.
Sheryl Sandberg, Suze Orman, Arianna Huffington, Melinda Gates, how did I do that 100% of the time? I’m going to teach every secret I have tips, tricks, strategies, step-by-step, it’s going to be a life changing class for everyone who takes it. So, every single class is like that, super excited for it and then hopefully all the content from the conference will then be available to the Mogul platform after as well.
Will Bachman: That’s amazing. I would love it-would you be willing to share some of the tips that you have on [crosstalk 00:13:40]
Tiffany Pham: Finding your mentors?
Will Bachman: Finding your mentor, that sounds amazing. That sounds amazing.
Tiffany Pham: Sure, of course. So, some of the early tricks and tips, you know not so much tricks, but really just the necessity of figuring out who you look up to in life. Who do you look up to so much that you would love to learn from them? You would be willing to do free things for them just to learn. Think about who that is and then think about what you want to do five years from now. Is there something imparticular that you wish to achieve this year, five years from now, 10 years from now? Think about those answers and then align them. What I mean by that is, for example, I thought to myself as a little girl that I would start a company one day and so as a result, I ended up thinking about all of the steps I would need to learn in order to start a company one day.
I thought about starting with eventually content, learning about content production, content distribution, marketing, branding, scaling, product and technology, finances, strategy, operations and more, and so all of these make up a business. Then, I thought, “Who are my biggest role-models within this space?” So, I was pretty thoughtful about who it was that I admired within each realm and then subsequently ended up reaching out to each one of these respectively.
For example, within the first-that space of content production. I would reach out to the people that I thought were so great at producing content. Who could I learn from that I would, like, be willing to do anything? I would reach out, and that included for me, someone who is still a great mentor to me to this day, who has been a [inaudible 00:15:33], great content, producer, provider, also the Chief Content Officer of AOL at that time, subsequently reached out to those people, for example, and gets on in a very specific way, always offering my help up and definitely in my class I will literally share the step-by-step and what is said in the email, but those were all just as fast, it’s an email that conveys how much you have learned about them, that you know about them, how much you admire them.
What you are doing helps establish credibility within the few sentences you have to share, ultimately, what you are working on and get them excited for it and then from there, offering a give, enabling them to realize that by meeting with you and agreeing to this five minute phone call or 15 minute tea, that it will be something that will be valuable to them as well because it doesn’t-it shouldn’t be one-sided, and then ultimately from that, other strategies are needed within this letter to ensure that they reply but that includes everything from suggesting specific times and dates so it’s to ensure that they, even further need to reply because if you leave out dates and your every vague about when they might be available and you tell them the next few months, then they’re never going to reply really with a specific date or time, you’ve got to do that legwork for them.
And then pinging them on a regular basis is gonna reply, not overdoing it, but an average sales email, you might only get a response within later six emails so, think about that when you don’t get a reply, it’s okay, you can try again, they’re not going to remember your name if they’re a very important person anyways because of the volume of emails they get, so just keep trying, and then ultimately what you’re left with is that as you go and contact all these various role-models across all the realms you want to learn about and contribute towards, then ultimately what happens is that you’ve now collectively reached out to 50 role-models and of those 50 role-models, 10 will end up then saying yes to a 5 minutes phone call or 15 minute tea and two will actually then come up with an idea of some form and ultimately one will change your life.
So, we [inaudible 00:18:00] 50 because even though just those 10 reply and just the two may meet, that one that will change your life will transform you forever, so it’s really important to make those [inaudible 00:18:13] today.
Will Bachman: Amazing. One of the topics you mentioned was doing a side hustle, you know, this podcast the subtitle, of course, is ‘How to Thrive as an Independent Professional”, so we certainly celebrate side hustles and people that turn the side hustle into their career. Would love to hear from all of the content that’s posted on Mogul, we’d love to hear your perspective what are the most common themes among your users around-interests inside hustles, what sort of are the barriers that women see, preventing them from moving forward and ideas that you have on how people can overcome those and move forward and create this side hustle when they hear that whisper in the ear.
Tiffany Pham: So, your question is what is-I’m sorry on the side hustle [inaudible 00:19:14], could you repeat the main question?
Will Bachman: Sure. So what are some of the common themes that you hear of questions that people have about side hustles and how to overcome the barriers to getting them started.
Tiffany Pham: Oh, okay! That’s a good question, so, the most common questions I hear about side hustles are, I suppose, where to sign them in the first place and then how to balance them. So, the first question, how to find them in the first place, the side hustles that I found were actually found through the approach that I just shared with regards to contacting your role-model and mentor. So, typically after I would contact all of my role-models across the different areas that I wanted to learn about, I would actually sit down with them for tea, as mentioned, or [inaudible 00:20:08], but I would always start the conversation by saying how much I admired their latest submission, here’s what I’m working on, but I would love to learn more even about their latest work and things that they’re excited about and I would always be very watchful. I would always be hearing exactly what they were saying, listening to see if there was an opportunity and anything there was to say, “You know what, I think that’s so incredible. I would love to learn from you on that one and to help you on that specific project or collaboration in anyway possible for free like my time offered to you, I just want to learn from you, but I know that subject matter already to some degree.
I would usually try to make them realize that I typically had some [inaudible 00:20:55] experience, if not an extremely relevant experience that could help me really tell it in that specific collaboration with them, and then from there I would sensually say, “You know what, I’d love to help,” and then from there, usually by the end of the meeting, there was lots of smiling and yeses. It’s never going to close unless you actually follow up with an email thereafter to lock that side hustle so I would usually, then email and say, you know, “As we discussed, would love to help you with this,”, and then ultimately from there I’d all of a sudden then have a collaboration with someone that I admired so greatly, that would I knew for sure would subsequently enable me to learn a lot from them and then subsequently also I would be able to learn a lot from the opportunity itself just with hands-on training this time.
So, side hustles were so key definitely to accelerating my own professional path and those success with Mogul and I definitely recommend for everyone to find those side hustles by having a lot of conversations, explaining a lot, many great things will come.
Will Bachman: Let’s talk about some of the key themes of your book ‘You are a Mogul’.
Tiffany Pham: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Will Bachman: So, you start out with a fantastic story about how in college at Yale, you took on the role of starting out as a financial analyst for the daily paper and end up becoming the publisher. Tell us a little bit about that story.
Tiffany Pham: Of course! So, what happened was that I was the shyest student on campus and-
Will Bachman: That’s hard to believe.
Tiffany Pham: It’s potentially hard to believe, but it’s so funny that when I look back I was so shy and I am always really shy, actually, well maybe not anymore, but at the time up until a couple years ago, I was always very shy the first year that I started something. That meant at Yale, that meant at Harvard Business School, that meant when I was starting out in the media industry and starting my first job, like, I was always shy in the beginning and always took me about a year to get my footing, and then I was [inaudible 00:23:08] by the second year and then I would hit my stride and then things would go really in the direction I had hoped.
But, it always took me about a year. So what happened at Yale was, sure enough, I started, was very shy, could barely talk, could barely go to class even because I was always trying to read the book-the textbook because I wasn’t able to concentrate [inaudible 00:23:28] classes, I wasn’t someone who could learn very well through audio, but I could learn very well through visual, I was a visual learner.
So, anyways, I would read a lot, be in my room. For the consequences that I was barely integrated I felt by the end of my first year at Yale. By my second year, I pushed myself, I thought my grandmother, you know, she was such a standout, she was an inspiration. All my role-models, the ones I did look up to as I was reading their books and biographies, they stood out, they pushed themselves, they were courageous, I should try to do something more. So what I did was I joined the Asian American Students Alliance. It’s funny to say it now, but at the time it was the exact opportunity, the small little step that I needed and that I encourage everyone to take whenever they go after an opportunity, just take that small little step. Even if it’s not the perfect one, it could lead you to that perfect one.
So, I took this one, I became their webmaster and so just maintained their website. As part of the positives of being the webmaster of this association, I was able to sit in on our board meetings and as part of the board meeting, one time, the staff turned the page of our schools newspaper and all of a sudden they were showcasing that this paper had printed a racist cartoon. The racist cartoon was something that got people so livid that the room was ready to throw a protest. We were gonna protest down the streets, we were gonna throw away this newspaper and that’s what everyone else was encouraging as well.
I looked at it though and I thought to myself, “That doesn’t seem to be the right answer here,’ and in fact then I started flipping through the paper and I got to the back cover and on the back cover was an ad for a financial analyst for the newspaper and I thought, “What better way to change this paper, who probably had good intentions but had a lack of diverse staff, which might lead to this kind of racist cartoon, what better way to change them than to actually join them?”
And so I actually then wrote to the email on that ad and met with the publisher of the paper, only to find out that actually the paper was going to be bankrupt, that they were in significant debt and that the school was floating them. So, I started to realize that maybe there was an opportunity here to really not only help the paper out by diversifying it’s staff, but first and foremost help it survive so I actually, as the shy student I mentioned I was, went door to door, literally rolled up my sleeves and pushed myself to sell ads as a financial analyst, even though it was called financial analyst, yes I was examining financial, but obviously again we were in debt, so I became the sales person for the team and not only that, but I became half of the team because we were only two people now, the whole staff had dwindled down completely from probably what had been dozens of four to just two people because everyone was jumping ship.
So, I literally became such good friends with all these restaurants and would dine there all the time to build relationships with the owners, they would of course-then of course since there’s some advertising ones, I asked them to and subsequently got Yale agencies to advertise anyone, any cooperation that wanted to recruit me for their internship program such as McKinsey, I would get them to advertise as well. I remember they pulled a full page ad from that one (laughs) and so basically, got all these organizations to advertise and overtime, [inaudible 00:27:20] the paper, from near bankruptcy to record profit ability, in six months actually.
So, it was an amazing experience and by the time then that I ended up looking over the newspaper as the publisher itself by the subsequence master, I ended up having such passion for that paper that I was able to recruit so many friends from across campus who wanted to be part of the team. We grew from two people to 30 strong students from all over and ended up joining the [inaudible 00:27:51] this paper back to incredible health and that became one of my first entrepreneurial experiences, meaning there’s a multi-million dollar budget ultimately, as then we were able to bring them [inaudible 00:28:03].
Will Bachman: That’s incredible, but, I mean, what a story.
Tiffany Pham: Thank you.
Will Bachman: I’m always interested in the daily routines of successful people and so I’m always asking guests about that, I recently-we just did a short episode on my own morning routine and you talk about a day in your life in the book and wanted to see if you could share with us your typical daily routine.
Tiffany Pham: Absolutely. So my typical daily routine starts out with, actually, the night before. I will look at my calendar and I will look at everything I have to do the next day and just visualize success and just think about every single meeting that is in my calendar for the next day and think about, “Do I have the right components for this meeting to be a success? Do I know what I’m going to say? Do I know what the other person wants? Do I know what the overall goal is,” and ultimately I just get myself mentally ready, then I visualize success the night before and when the day occurs, I literally have already gone through the steps because I already envisioned it.
And this is just a quick minute exercise, it’s not so as expensive as [inaudible 00:29:18], but literally by the next day, I know the whole seem-less day. I’m so familiar with it because I’ve already gone through it. So what [inaudible 00:29:28] performer, rehearse the night before or, you know, rehearse for a week, for a concert or a tour. For me, that’s like a daily rehearsal and at night, just before I go to sleep, so I actually start off my day the night before visualizing, then I sleep, I wake up early, I had to work out, really try to keep myself in shape.
After the first few years, it wasn’t so easy beginning of the first few years of Mogul, definitely-that was the challenge for me, that was probably, out of anything, Mogul businesses thriving, that was probably the place where I was weakest, was exercising and working out and that was hard for me, especially as a former athlete. And then [crosstalk 00:30:11]
Will Bachman: What’s your-what’s your exercise routine?
Tiffany Pham: My exercise routine is I go to a dance studio in Chelsea in New York and it’s incredible because it’s basically, for 60 minutes, moving your body and dancing to moving music and being taught by the best dancers as well. In particular, I loved these specific dancers who dance for the basketball team here in New York, the football team here, on Broadway and then the head teacher, who in fact, was the sounder of the whole studio, herself teaches Sandra Bullock and Reese Witherspoon and Karli Kloss and Taylor Swift and just is an incredible dancer herself and obviously teaching them as well.
So, anyways, love her. She’s actually in the book, actually, now that I think of it, [inaudible 00:30:58], so definitely, I’m happy to give her the shoutout. She’s one of the Moguls that features one of the 10 alongside my own story of Mogul and our team. And so, I think she’s incredible, she’s definitely transformed the lives of many successful women who didn’t want to exercise, but once they found her studio, like, find it so fun and a lot of the other students are incredible, you know, amazing women as well throughout New York and L.A. so it’s almost like I kind of think of it as the equivalent of The Old Boys’ Club but for girls, so it’s fun, it’s alive and very successful, anyone can come.
Anyways, so start off their dance then go after to the office and quickly have typically have breakfast with someone whether it’s external or with a team, but always with someone. Definitely love the world, never eating alone, I think that’s so key to always ensure that you’re continually connecting with someone or eating in a way, therefore you’re building and bonding. Building relationships and ultimately then usually kind of walk all the way across the floor of our company to get to my area, so as a result I have to pass by all of our various companies apartments in order to get there.
So, then kind of walk through all their latest issue or challenges, I love to hear what’s going on for real, like the true challenge of what’s happening, so I can help address it all along the way across the floor, [inaudible 00:32:33] I get to my desk, my office and then ultimately then the rest of the day is kind of a blur as you’ve seen in the book, it’s back to back to back to back. Meetings with the Chief Marketing Officers of our partners, the Chief Talent Officers, the Chief Learning Officers, all across the different companies that we work with, all of the Chiefs Suite Executives and subsequently also [inaudible 00:32:57], press meetings as well as product meetings as well as marketing overall meetings, sales meetings, investor meetings, operations meetings, hiring new people and then at night, finally, the day is done by five, six PM in the office and then I’ll typically usually have a couple of other meetings as well.
And so, those might [inaudible 00:33:24] kind of small or special projects, whether it’s working with our team on new initiatives set that we have for the future or the book or a conference and then subsequently I walk home sometimes with some of our executives. Many of them live nearby so that’s always fun and then from there, work at night, have dinner, then continue working late into the night until midnight and then from there, around midnight, typically the day quiets down so there’s many less emails coming in and I can just spend the remaining hours so that I’m the [inaudible 00:34:07] and that’s, like, a really nice luxury as a [inaudible 00:34:12] and being able to just have an hour [inaudible 00:34:14] because I remember back when I first started, a lot of my advisors, investors would say, you know, that they look forward to the day when I could sit in a dark room and just be thinking of the future and the kind of visionary because of that type of thing and I definitely think that [inaudible 00:34:36] sit down and think, and that’s everyday after midnight, so love that time to myself.
Will Bachman: Tiffany, are there any books that you have particularly gifted often to other folks, or that just have meant a lot to you?
Tiffany Pham: Yes, absolutely there is so many incredible books that have inspired me as little girl, I mean, even now, and so the books that inspired me as a little girl include everything from “Ramona and Beezus” by Beverly Cleary to books about Eleanor Roosevelt, which were so inspirational back then and today it’s such a pinch me moment to think that I am such good friends with her great-granddaughters and-it was so inspiring for me at that time as a little girl to read about her and be inspired by her resilience and her fortitude. I’m also very inspired by business books like “Built to Last”, I think about that book all the time. The book that ultimately taught certain characteristics of winning companies, that includes, for example, having a cult-like culture.
Don’t take cult as literal cult, but just that the culture in itself is so distinct that someone who isn’t fitting in with a culture will quickly realize it and the company will realize it so that it can continue to build the culture as it is now and so, anyways, these are sorts of characteristics that the book shares and that I’ve kept with me over the years, as after I’ve read that book, I’ve tried to implement many of those characteristics within Mogul.
Other books that have inspired me include Dale Carnegie’s books ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’. So amazing, he’s a big reason why if you look up myself or Mogul today you might see me quick reading, and often times described often as a calm leader, and that’s because Dale Carnegie, when I was learning how to speak English when I was little, would always say over his audio tapes that I would listen to in the car to keep calm, to not stress out, within moments in which you are experiencing major stress to just think about whether this moment is still important, that five years from now you’ll be needing to make sure you make this right decision, in this moment.
You know, most likely the answer is almost always no, so, think about every moment that you’re so stressed out and just take a step back and think of the big picture and the future and whether it’s important five years from now, and then you’ll ultimately be able to let go of the stress and, so anyways, I practiced that as a little girl all the time, before I even went off to college, I was already practicing that level of mindfulness. And so that’s why I’m what many people considered very, very calm and stress-free and it’s all thanks to that book so books definitely influence my life and that’s why I have such a love for books and we have such a love for books inside Mogul as a team.
As an organization, we in fact even celebrate books. Every single year on our anniversary we actually go to a Barnes and Noble bookstore and do a full on unlimited shopping spree to celebrate our love of books and education. And so across the U.S., our team grows and picks up books and books and sometimes not books, I certainly seen team members celebrate further by even picking up some, you know, cookbooks and magazines and fun electronics too, but books is always the core of what we enjoy and are passionate about at Mogul, so, yeah, books can change your life and we’re happy to continue that love and passion for everybody.
Will Bachman: That’s incredible. Well, loved your book ‘You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do it Yourself and Do it Now’. That is being published on September 4th and for any listeners, the Mogul X on September 8th looks absolutely amazing day in New York City if you’re in New York City, it looks like a really rich full day of learning and connecting. Tiffany, I wanted to thank you for being on the show, it’s been really, really quite a pleasure and a privilege to speak with you.
Tiffany Pham: Thank you so much, really appreciated it and was so fun speaking with you, so thanks so much and I hope you’ll join us too and Mogul X, and if not we should definitely get you some free tickets for you and some listeners. Excited about the next time and excited to meet you soon in person.
Will Bachman: Thank you.

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