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Nobody Wants to Talk About Failure

with Natacha Gaymer-Jones of LegalTap
Sep 21, 2016
8
Back to Podcasts
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Nobody Wants to Talk About Failure | 100 PM
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Nobody Wants to Talk About Failure | 100 PM

Suzanne: Would that there was a course like product management when I was out building product for the first time. I think I could have saved myself a lot of certainly money and time misspent if I had to have a lot of the tools like lean model canvas, like lean principles generally.

I mean, I know certainly lean manufacturing has been around for a long time, but even these concepts of the lean startup that Eric Ries and Steve Blank brought in, these are concepts that are only a handful of years old. You know, this is a discipline that's reinventing itself at rapid pace and we have the exciting opportunity to be right here on the edge of it.

Natacha: Yeah. Definitely I mean I started my career in project management and I started doing web development. I was a web developer that became a project manager in 2005 and at the time, everything was based on waterfall method of you scope the project in the beginning and then you scope the project in the beginning - a design phase, a development phase and then you deploy it and then six months later, you get what, you bring something to market, but even back then, the market had changed in six months which is why the concepts of agile got brought up and now I don't want to age myself, but basically 12 years later, the roles, the responsibilities and the tools for product management, project management, they're all kind of like in a big soup pot being mixed around and depending on like whether it's a Fortune 500 company or a startup or a person that's like a two-person product team trying to figure out what is the best way to apply the right tools is the question.

So I can definitely see why you would want to be able to provide a resource for product managers to find or want to become product managers or whoever from the CEO down to find what's best that is applicable for them because I think a lot of times that people spend a lot of time trying to do what they think is the right thing in product management and they spend a lot of time just kind of not actually getting pen to paper and actually being able to test their idea.

Suzanne: So you mention your agency experience. You've been the director of production for a couple big agencies here in Los Angeles. You also have your own product consultancy, Iolite. Tell us about what Iolite does, what made you leave the agency world to root yourself more firmly in product.

Natacha: I left the agency world because my experience was being a project manager, and being a project manager was you got a defined set of requirements. You went to the creative director at the agency and they would create these beautiful designs. You'd give it to a developer and then you would launch it, and these were typically advertising campaigns and advertising campaigns didn't have as much feature rich potential changes as a product does and I thought that I wanted a challenge because advertising is the same as it's been 50 years ago. We have a concept, we have a campaign. The brands basically give an RFP to the agency, the agency pitch for the business, they win it and then they basically execute it. The agency work was very waterfall project management method. There's a start and there's a finish. You typically don't have changes along the way. You only have changes really along the way when you're in the creative process and I like that world, but from the technology standpoint, I saw what is possible and that you can ... I want to build things and building an advertising campaign isn't overseeing it and launching it successfully. Building something to me is actually seeing someone use a product, whether it's a tangible product which is physical or it's a digital product where there's a transaction happening, there's an experience happening. There is some sort of satisfaction or a problem's being solved.

And that's why I moved from the agency world as a project manager to my own consulting company as a product manager. So three years ago when I started my consulting company, I got a lot of different projects where the person that needed the app that was built or the person that needed the website that was build, you know, had their end goal in mind, but what they didn't think about from a 360-degree perspective was what are all the nuances that are going to happen when this is launched, such as are you targeting the right people, how is customer service being handled, what are your baseline analytics, what does achieving success for your project mean.

I mean obviously if you're an overnight success and you have millions of dollars in the bank the first month, you're an overnight success, but that is one in a million startups, you know, one in a million businesses, and so...

Suzanne: Nine out of ten fail. That's the real staggering statistic.

Natacha: Right, and so it's almost parallel to the fact of we've all been there where we've said one day I'll open up my own restaurant, and then the first person that says to you is like oh, you know, 90 percent of businesses, restaurants fail within the first five years. And then you take that understanding and you think wow, so 90 percent of the businesses, restaurants fail in the first five years, that means that 90 percent of those restaurants were self-funded or someone was writing a check to an organization/business that wasn't actually producing any sort of profit, and the actual statement of that doesn't make any sense.

That's even harder to change because once you've built the restaurant and branded the restaurant, the only thing you can change really is the menu items and a little bit of the signage, and you don't have that much control where in product management, when you have an app or an idea, you can change the concept of it, you can change who may use it. If you apply the right tools and not necessarily build it upfront and then just hope it succeeds, you know, and I think that a lot of entrepreneurs have the mindset where they are like my logo's done, I'm going to build my project, I have $10,000, I'm going to build this app and I'm going to launch it.

At General Assembly, one of the most important things that I have tried to not only keep in mind for myself for all the projects that I ran but is what is like the path to least resistance? What can we get out there as quick as possible where there can be the right set of eyes or many sets of eyes to give feedback so that the feedback that I have I'm able to look at, and I can be like you know what, our demographic isn't 50 plus. Our demographic is really like the 35 to 50 crowd, and the way that we found that out is by doing something super simple such as paying honor bucks to Google surveys and got some responses back and I got feedback, and I'm able to take that feedback and show an angel investor or show an investor hey, I'm able to test my product. It's not even built yet.

So I think one of the things is is with what I've learned over the past three years is that in some ways, I have like a toolbox, and when I open up the toolbox, I know how to when I need to create a project plan, I'll create a project plan. When I need to test the market, I know how to test the market. When I need to put together a pitch deck for an investor, I know what needs to be in the pitch deck because I know what's worked and what hasn't worked.

So you have all these different tools. Do you need to use them all at the same time? Do you have to use all of them? You don't have to use any of them. That's the most amazing part. The fact is is that you just have to have the knowledge that you have access to do these things and know some basic concepts of product management I think really is the key to being out there and actually being successful.

Suzanne: And I agree. I think you bring up the concept of validated learning, right, which is so critical to product management thinking now, and it's funny. I often have these sort of moments of insight where we'll be talking about concepts like problem-solution fit, product-market fit, and I'll have a student invariably turn to me and say it just, it seems so obvious. What you're basically saying is don't do anything unless you know that it's working or it's right, and that moment is exactly... It's phenomenal how much still to this day entrepreneurs and builders are diving right in to the solution without thinking about who is the customer really, and even if I thought about who the customer is, have I been able to even prove that out from a basic level of going out and doing some customer development, going out and doing the interviews, you know?

I know from running The Development Factory, we have customers come in all the time and say I've got this great idea for a product. Can you build it? But they haven't themselves planned a strategy around customer acquisition. I'm reminded in your anecdote about restaurants. You know, Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, one of my favorite restaurant books and I worked in the industry for many years, and it's that same trap. Restaurant owner opens a business. They don't think about any of the realities of the difficult landscape, and then they're just what if we serve burgers? What if we have a salsa night? You know, trying to make all of these iterations from inside. And product is the same. It's very difficult in my opinion to reverse engineer a customer acquisition strategy onto a product that's already been built if you haven't already provisioned for those things and tested them along the way.

It's just like now I've got this thing. Does anybody want it?

Natacha: When someone has an idea, they know what they know and they either are going to do what they know and then once they're done with what they know, they're going to ask for help, and so you flip that upside down with product management and you're basically saying no, I'm not saying to basically have decision paralysis and not move forward. It's saying take all of the information that you actually have, lay it out on the table, look at it like it's kind of like a puzzle, and instead of trying to fit the immediate pieces that snap together, look at what the bigger picture looks like so that you're able to see more your more forward thinking, so.

Suzanne: Have you worked with a lot of women in tech, or has it been mostly men as your peers and collaborators?

Natacha: I wish I worked with more women in tech. I would have to say that you, when I first met you, you were probably one of my inspirations in terms of you're like me, I'm like you, where we are passionate about technology. You know, we have the same drive and hustle to get shit done and yeah, I mean I wish I worked with more women in technology. I'll have to say, though, that when I was starting Legal Tap, one of the biggest things that I thought was potentially an in was me actually to pitch to women venture capitalists, and I'll tell you within my outreach defined investors that were willing to take meetings, I had more women that responded, women VCs that responded to hearing my idea than men because at the end of the day, when you submit your pitch back to a venture capital website, you're basically going into an inbox where there's a thousand other people with a thousand other ideas and you just hope they read the title of your subject line and they click open and they give you a chance.

Suzanne: Is it difficult? I mean, I know you're a great leader. You're a great collaborator. Have you found it difficult being a woman in this space and taking up these sort of leadership roles and these strategic roles? How has the market embraced you?

Natacha: That's a good question because I recently had an interaction where I actually was pretty disappointed with, you know, the interaction with a peer. You know, when men in business assert themselves to make a point to help the better of the project, more times than not, people will be quiet and listen if it means that they're going to make more money. And when I recently demonstrated the same assertiveness within the same environment where I can better a product, and this is a corporate 500, Fortune 500 company, it's taken as it's not my responsibility to make that type of statement, and it seems as if men in technology are allowed to make statements where they can wear many hats, where the women that are hired are needing to basically prove themselves in their specific role.

And I'll say that to... I have a friend of mine that was one of the first female New York firefighters in the 80s and when she became a firefighter, her captain said to her, you are going to have to work harder than all these guys. You're going to be the first one in and you're going to be the last one out because you have to prove yourself because these guys at the end of the day are going to judge you, and I will always remember why she said that, because since day one, I've never thought that I had to prove myself more than these guys. I've always worked as hard and I've had enough passion, but when I hear what I heard the other day, it makes me realize that I am female, you know, and I believe that, you know, building a good product doesn't matter your gender.

It doesn't matter your sexuality, your race, your whatever it is. If you have a great idea and you can make, you can improve something or you can build something, that's all that should matter, you know, and I think that we definitely still have a long way to go, but I'm a director for a women's tech organization here in LA that promotes women and technology. We have monthly networking events. You know, slowly as we have these similar types of networking events and more women that are helping each other rise up, you know, I think it will help, but at the end of the day, you know, it's almost about women need to empower other women. Men do not need to empower .... men need to keep empowering women as they have been doing it, but at the end of the day, like they as they say, when you go to your employer and you ask for a raise by the statement of saying I'm asking for a raise, you're stating you don't deserve it.

You need to basically state that you need a raise and the reasons behind it, which is why you need to have data to prove why you are successful, and that relates to the exact same reason of building a product, which is you can validate, you need to be able to validate the reasons behind building something. So you need to have that same mindset in my opinion of why you are fit for the job.

Suzanne: You make the point, you know, it doesn't matter, gender doesn't matter, sexuality, race. I agree entirely, you said as long as you've got great vision. What is the kind of person in your opinion that succeeds in product management? What are the skills and the traits that you have to have or exemplify to be good at this job?

Natacha: You need to not be able to focus on one thing, which is funny to say, but you need to be able to see the broader picture. You need to be able to consistently ask questions about how to make something better. You need to look at the product from every angle. So you need to put yourself in the shoes of the customer, which always should be first. You need to put yourself in the shoes of the company, in different roles of the company so you can see how everything can shape.

The right skill set for a product manager is someone that basically can think on their feet and they can wear many hats and they don't get too distracted on one item and they look at all of the potential outcomes of what can happen and they have an understanding of what the baseline success is for the product.

Suzanne: You mentioned Legal Tap when we were chatting and I think for our listeners' benefit, so Iolite is a product consultancy. What you do is you work with entrepreneurs and businesses who either have products or want to bring products into market but don't necessarily know how to go about doing that, and you help them across architecting, bringing in a technical team if that's what's required, user experience design, all of these things which are in your wheel house. These are skills that you've built up. And in the process of running this business which you continue to run and have success with, congratulations by the way, you brought to life a product of your own, Legal Tap.

Natacha: Yeah.

Suzanne: Tell us about it.

Natacha: Well, and I brought a product to life of my own and I saw all of the things that we have taught at General Assembly happen and I've seen the failures and the successes of the project, you know, and it's now, we launched the second version of it about a month ago and, you know, just to back up, my business partner, he had an idea. He was the funder of the original version and his goal was to get it to market as soon as possible because he owns an online marketing agency, and he wanted to convert and make money. So through the process of the V1, I did product research. I said you know, are there any apps that do video legal advice in the space? I found that there was. There was two.

I looked, I did every, I researched everything about that company, from the owner of the company to all the features, I downloaded the app, I figured out what didn't work, what worked, then I realized wow, I'm already in the design phase of my project. I actually made the same mistakes that I tell students at General Assembly not to do, but I found myself in that same mistake. And the reason why was because just as much as I want to apply the right mindset and tools to the project, I fell into the trap of getting really excited and wanting to get into the design of the app, and I found out that, you know, I wasted two weeks of a design resource when I found out we shouldn't do certain things with it.

So within the beginning of that project, I reset the project twice to make sure that the requirements for the initial V1 launch met the expectations of the market, and through that, I also found features that I wanted to add and I didn't want to add them to prevent the launch of the initial version. So then I was like so what do I do? So it's in the backlog. So then when V2 came around, you know, was the assumption that I was going to make all the items in the backlog part of V2? No. I actually then went back to my competitors and realized that they had pivoted and totally changed their concept and now I'm the only one in the space with a video legal advice app, which is amazing. So sometimes it takes time to build your product to get it, not only to get it to market, but to give it the eyeballs that it needs, and you know, currently, we are rerecruiting lawyers.

You know, we finished a Beta. We tested the hell out of it. We have the same attention with the VCs that we had last year, but this time they know we're serious because we not only dumped in more money in development, but we invested more time in the research and the end goal, which is really to provide the original concept which is providing the public access to lower cost legal services, and we are still on that, we're still on that path. One day - which will be soon hopefully - you know, there will be the traction that I want to see with the app, but it hasn't been an overnight success. It's been me consistently working on that product and that's the one thing that I have to say to anyone with an idea that they want to build is that you cannot lose the steam that you have with your idea.

You have to keep at it. You have to burn midnight oil. You have to do all that. One of the things that I do just for inspiration is I follow Instagram profiles of entrepreneurs and sometimes the quotes that I read when I want to go to bed at ten o'clock at night and I know that I have two to three more hours of work to do, I go to this Instagram page and I look at it and I realize that, you know, this is the time right now where it's either I go to sleep or I continue working, and, you know, sometimes I don't feel like I'm not getting the traction that I want to see, but what I know is that ultimately like I'm on the right path. But one thing that I consistently do is I check myself and I make sure that I'm not focusing on the wrong thing within my product. You know when you need to pivot when you've spent so much time in a specific track and you're not getting the traction that you need. So the question is how do you build a product? How do you build a process that is agile enough for you to actually choose success and not be locked into what you've originally set forth?

Suzanne: And I love that you share the failure stories as well, and I agree wholeheartedly. It's phenomenal how we can know what the right thing is to do and then still ourselves fly over the right thing because building is exciting. I mean, that's the sexy part. Designing is fun. Building is exciting. Having something that you can see and touch is way more inspiring than having a bunch of data from some A/B tests that you ran on a couple different sort of acquisition channel strategies. I mean, digital marketers would argue. They'd be listening in and going that is the exciting part. What are you talking about? And they're right in that regard.

And I think the other point that you bring up which is a good one and an important one about pivoting but also about perseverance. You know, I think publications like Tech Crunch as an example do the startup community or the future entrepreneurs, the future product managers a disservice because if you sat around and you read Tech Crunch, you would be under the impression that everybody except for you is getting traction and getting funded, and you know, that's part of the model of how that particular platform works. They're certainly bringing news into the community, but the truth is it does take a long time. The truth is it is a lot of struggle. It is a lot of reinventing yourself over and over again and it always takes longer than you think it's going to take, I mean unless you're one of those handful of very fortunate people to have the right funding, the right time and really be able to scale or throw a lot of money at solving it which certainly isn't the solution. You know, we've seen a lot of companies throw a lot of money at trying to be successful and fail, but it's hard. Product is hard.

Natacha: And you know, to kind of go back to something that you asked earlier which was was something that I've seen in the tech startup world here in LA, I want to almost age myself, but I grew up... I didn't grow up. I went to college in Seattle. The original tech bubble burst. I quit college, a computer science degree, at 18 years old because I was offered an $80,000 a year job in 1998 to be a macromedia director developer to basically work on this app that this company had, and they had the beautiful office, they had the sexy receptionist, they had ... The owner was driving a Lamborghini and six months later, we all get laid off.

I'm back in school and I was like oh, what happened? And it's so weird because that was a blip on the radar of my career where I hadn't even started my career, and I was able to luckily fortunately have that experience so when I moved here to LA, you know, 12 years later from San Diego, I then interact with people that are like we have beautiful offices in Santa Monica. We just got a Series A funding. You know...

Suzanne: We drive Lamborghinis.

Natacha: Well not necessarily Lamborghinis. It's probably more like a Prius here in LA. It's a souped up Prius.

Suzanne: Or a Tesla.

Natacha: Or a Tesla. Let's get that right. But, you know, it's the same. The same thing's happening. You have all of these investors that are spending money investing in startups that are failing within six months because they literally don't have the right plan. You know, I have a story where I was actually pitching for some work at a startup in Santa Monica and it was this music tech platform and it was the same thing. Come to our offices. See our beautiful office. You know, let's go to lunch. There's the gym across the street.

And I spoke to the CTO over Facetime and I said they decided to, the CTO was very smart and he wanted like the latest tech on his platform and he's like we're hiring Xamarin developers. And I'm like wow. I've heard about a lot of technology stacks, but I have not heard about Xamarin, and this was two years ago, and I was like, he was like it's a Microsoft-based platform, this, that and the other, and he's like the problem is, is we can't find any Xamarin developers in LA, so we're now having to relocate them from other parts of the United States and that's taking a long time, so I then was quiet and I said has a single line of code been written in the six months that you have been in this office hired whatnot, and he's like no, we're still working on the app. We're working on the roadmap.

And it just was crazy to hear because six months later, they were done, you know, because they went to their board meeting and they had nothing to ... they couldn't prove anything versus that same concept, the same business idea applying potentially hiring the Development Factory or hiring Iolite Consulting where, you know, instead of the $3 million that they got from the investor, they only have $100,000 and they say we have $100,000. We're fortunate to know that you know what you're doing. What can you build us to get that $2 million check to actually build our dream? And you know what? You'll find a way to build something that will get them to the next chapter of that investment.

And I think that that's ultimately the funnest challenge of being a product manager is how can you be lean? How can you be cheap? How can you save the customer money? How can you save yourself money? How can you save yourself money? How can you basically be successful by pinching your pennies and getting exactly what you want and not being like the other guys, and so I think that that is, you know, my ... I would like to say in five years from now that I was able to start and help a bunch of businesses become very successful with using as little as possible, whether that's technology or whether that's cash, you know, and it's more mindset and brain power and collaboration of understanding how to build from a core vision and like being able to be very valuable with it.

Suzanne: What do you think is I was going to say the right blend of skill set, but I'm not sure that that's really the question. What advice would you give to somebody who's listening in, thinks product management is for me. This is exciting. It's creative. It's scrappy. It's all the stuff we've been describing, we've talked about in other episodes here, but they've got no technology experience. They just have the will. Where is the best place to start in your opinion?

Natacha: I'm not going to basically answer that from a company perspective saying, you know, if you're single, you should work at a startup because get ready to work 90 hours versus if you're married, you know. But I actually I am going to start with the actual ... You have to ask yourself where am I in my life right now? Right? Because there are, you can hold the project manager title and you can work at a startup and you actually won't be doing product management responsibilities that you learned, for example, like you won't get an opportunity to build a lean model canvas. You won't get an opportunity to do that. You might get an opportunity to build a fancy roadmap in Google Docs or potentially if you have Photoshop skills, they'll also ask you to design something because it's a startup and they don't have the resources.

Versus being a product manager maybe at Google where you might be able to use and apply all of your thinking because budgets are endless and you can actually ... They're hiring you for your brain. So it's almost like you have to ask yourself what do you want to do? What do you like to do and then you have to find the company that best suits you and you need to ask those questions. If you want to go work at the Google, you need to ask what am I actually doing on a day to day basis? Like what are my deliverables? What am I going to get to create? You know, am I going to be able to create scoping documents? Am I going to be able to work directly with the creative teams or the technology teams because again, you know, you don't have to be technical to be a product manager, but you have to be able to understand how you can apply your own skill set to solve a problem by using tools that you've learned.

Suzanne: Well, it's interesting that you frame it that way. I think one of the things that comes up with startups for sure is that your title as product manager will mean a lot of things that it might not mean in a larger and more structured organization. And sometimes that's part of the fun of it is that it's the only time where you'll get to touch a lot of different things and then to your point, some of those things might not be all that glamorous. You're going I want a product management job and it's like what we really read right now is coffee and some late nights and if you can write any code that would be great, too.

I'm not entirely sure that working in a large organization, budgets aside, always affords that opportunity. I think one of the sacrifices that comes with that is you're touching, you know, my business partner's brother is a product lead at X-Box at Microsoft and they're responsible for kind of like one feature inside one product inside one stream of so many products which will not include Linked In as of the recent acquisition, by the way, for Microsoft, but so you know, there's a trade off there. You get structure, you get budget, you get resource, but you don't get to sketch and you don't get to wireframe and you don't get to be as scrappy in some cases, too, and that is I think just about personality fit. I agree with the point.

Knowing who you are, knowing where you are in your life, knowing what kind of environment you thrive in. Some people really need structure. Some people do very well if they know this is the box that I'm playing inside and I'm going to be the best person inside of that box, and some people, and I put myself in this category, I'm like don't put me in that box. I don't want table flip. I don't want that box. You know, I want freedom and chaos and that comes with its own challenges, too.

Natacha: Yeah. I mean, I spent, you know, most of, up until three years ago working for companies where it was 9 till whenever you're done and you get a 401(k) and you had a salary every two weeks and you know, I took the jump to start my own business because I was done with being in the box, you know, and one of the most interesting things is that again, you have to ask yourself where are you in your life because if you're switching from a different career directly into product management, you know, there is a learning curve, so you have to figure out are you willing to take that learning curve?

Are you willing to take the late nights to learn the tools to be able to do all the things that you might need to do and I think that there's a lot of amazing schools out there like General Assembly that are able to teach and encourage the practice of product management, but ultimately it's again it's the person, it's how they apply themselves, it's how they stay consistent with their goal just like the entrepreneur with their product itself. I think that ultimately, the role of the product manager is putting themselves in the role of the founder and being able to stay consistent with that vision and that will be successful because ultimately, the founder is looking to you to basically be a team player and be successful.

Suzanne: Do you have, and you mentioned your tool kit, your treasure chest of experiences.

Natacha: I wouldn't call it a treasure chest. It hasn't made me a ton of money yet, but I'll tell you it's put smiles on my face.

Suzanne: Fair enough. What about essential books, you know, thought leaders, podcasts, you know. If you were going to tell somebody you can't get into this business or you shouldn't get into this business at the least until you've read or listened to these. Anyone that you can recommend for us?

Natacha: You know, it's interesting like on the topic of product management, I don't have like the one or two that comes to mind, but something that I want to say that's available out there that I find extremely fascinating is that iTunes University offers free online podcasts I guess or it's almost like curriculum for technology and I've found that you can take an iOS programming course through iTunes University in collaboration with Stanford for free, and it's being... if you're not technical and taking a few of those classes I find very helpful because you can kind of start to see what the world would be like.

Suzanne: Are they all programming or...

Natacha: No, they're not. Some of them are scoping requirements. Some of them are what is a technology stack? When I use the word stack, what the hell does it mean? It's not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you know what I mean? It's like...

Suzanne: That sounds delicious, a peanut butter and jelly stack?

Natacha: No. Peanut butter and jelly stack. I'm sure someone's already pointed out that, you know, that's the thing, too. It's like listening, just listening, to anything that you can get your hands on that starts bringing you into the fold I think is good. My best advice, you know, obviously there might for those that are listening at home or in the office or in their car is that they might be ... People might not be fortunate to live like in New York, in LA, in Austin, in Detroit, where there's maybe these tech networking events where they can meet people, but if you are in a city that has networking events, I would, tech networking events, I would extremely encourage that because the best thing that you can do is ask a million questions and there are a million people that would love to answer that because that's the one thing that you need to ask is when you're a product manager is a shitload of questions because if you don't ask a shitload of questions, you're completely in the dark, and that I think is one of the most important skill sets.

So learning about product management, learning about technology is ... listening to things you don't even think you'd want to understand, to write down the questions to ask the person that can answer them for you, and I think that that's the best way to kind of throw yourself in it, or, you know, come up with an idea for a project yourself and make it a one-year long commitment to learn how to, you know, build a Wordpress theme or learn how to build an app or learn how to design and Photoshop because what you'll get out of that is you'll realize that you are way more creative than you thought you were to begin with.

Suzanne: I love that. Last question. Since we're asking questions and it's a skill that product managers need, that last question, do you have like a mantra, quote on the side of a mug? I know you gave me the I love spreadsheets mug, but now I need a new quote from you.

Natacha: Life is a verb.

Suzanne: Life is a verb. What does that mean?

Natacha: Well I'll ask the question back to you. What is the definition of a verb? What is a verb?

Suzanne: A verb describes how you do something.

Natacha: Exactly. So that is at the end of the day how you do something. Life is constant evolution of recreating who you are, recreating your surroundings to make yourself happier. So if you basically can just kind of ... I go by life is a verb because when things get me down, I always realize that it'll all work out in the end because you can't, just as I said, you can't focus on that one thing and that project to get you distracted on the 99 other things you have to do, so you just have to know that sometimes it will work out and it will be the way that it was supposed to be and that's how it is, and that's not to say that you shouldn't plan and focus and things like that, but I go by life is a verb.

Suzanne: Natacha Gaymer-Jones, Iolite, Legal Tech, General Assembly. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. I really appreciate your insights.

Natacha: Thank you.

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