Molly Graham is a technology executive, advisor, and board member whose resume includes helping both Google and Facebook navigate periods of intense scaling, serving as COO of Lambda School, leading operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and more. Molly credits relationships for opening doors and catapulting her career forward. Her story is packed with lessons on the outsized power of being a friend, how curiosity can forge meaningful relationships quickly, and how to build and make use of a personal council of advisors.
Molly Graham is a technology executive, advisor, and board member whose resume includes helping both Google and Facebook navigate periods of intense scaling, serving as COO of Lambda School, leading operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and more. Molly credits relationships for opening doors and catapulting her career forward. Her story is packed with lessons on the outsized power of being a friend, how curiosity can forge meaningful relationships quickly, and how to build and make use of a personal council of advisors.
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“You just never know who someone is, who they're gonna become, how they can be useful to your life and how you can be useful to theirs. My version of networking is figure out who someone is, whether you connect with them and then figure out ways to help them. And there will be a moment when they can help you.” - Molly Graham
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:30) - Molly’s early experiences of building relationships at Facebook
*(04:55) - How Steven Sinofsky set up a meaningful relationship for Molly
*(06:36) - Reasons why life is a barter economy
*(08:20) - Good networking is about good listening
*(11:46) - The importance of being useful: Molly’s time with Quip & the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
*(15:58) - The opportunity of taking risks
*(21:37) - Having a council to help with significant decisions
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Sponsor:
Who Got Me Here is brought to you by Connect The Dots, mapping professional relationships so you can find the strongest connections to the people and companies you want to reach. Visit ctd.ai to learn more.
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Links
[00:00:31] Annie: I am here today with the one and only Molly Graham. Molly got her start in the early days of Facebook. And then she went on to do really amazing things. Leading operations at Quip running the show at Chan Zuckerberg initiative.
[00:00:49] Annie: And then as COO at Lambda school, Molly is an expert in scaling companies. She's done some awesome things, is an all-around awesome person, Molly. We're so excited to have you on the pod today.
[00:01:04] Molly: I'm thrilled to be here, Annie.
[00:01:06] Annie: Thanks for coming. So, one of the things that I love to ask guests who come on is when I say the word networking, what comes to mind for you?
[00:01:16] Annie: And what do you associate with networking?
[00:01:17] Molly: I'm sure I'm not the first person. That's gonna say this, but I hate the word networking. I think that like the concept of networking, I like the idea of like, you need to build relationships in order to get ahead in life. So like walk up to random people at co this is my association with it.
[00:01:31] Molly: Walk up to random people at cocktail parties and be like, Hey, let's network. I give enough talks in the world and like speeches and stuff that I think people come up to me afterwards and try to network and meaning they try. Build an authentic relationship with me in 3.5 minutes, you know? And it just doesn't work like so networking, like when you think about it that way, I really don't like it I'm 100% about like deep, authentic relationships.
[00:01:56] Molly: I can build them very fast. I feel like early in this podcast, we should confess that you and I met because I interviewed you for a job. And then we became very good friends, which is much more how I work. So like, when I think about the good version of networking, I think. Like having relationship moments with people.
[00:02:13] Molly: And I think that can be working together at a company. So it can be like as long and deep as working together at a company, it can be as short as a one hour interview or a meeting that you have with a partner where you just think the person's smart and cool. And you decide to build a relationship with them.
[00:02:28] Molly: I guess it's the like way I network early on at Facebook. I realized that you do have to put effort into building relationships with people at work or in work settings, actually go out of your way to like, make a relationship with someone, but networking the way I think most people think about it is, is not a favorite of the Molly words.
[00:02:47] Molly: Mm-hmm
[00:02:48] Annie: So who's someone who in your career you've identified as a smart, cool person that you wanted to get to know. And how did you go about actually building that relationship?
[00:02:57] Molly:. I actually was thinking the other day. And then I'll answer your question, that there are three amazing women that I met while I was interviewing people at Lambda that I've now become friends with and you are one of them.
[00:03:10] Molly: And then there's another two. And I. Legitimately spent an hour with each of them. And then we've just like stayed in touch. I think my earliest experiences with building relationships with people that I was working with came from Facebook and a lot of it came from sitting in meetings with people. And, you know, when you're young, you don't know anyone.
[00:03:30] Molly: And you're sort of like, I wanna make friends actually honestly, is probably how I thought about it. And someone would say something smarter, interesting in a meeting. And over time, what I started to do was just then ping that person afterwards and say, Hey, do you wanna get coffee? I would laser in on someone as like, oh, Hey, you're smart.
[00:03:45] Molly: This is how actually I became one of my best friends in the world. I became friends with it, Facebook and she and I worked on a project together. And then I was like, wait a minute. You're fun. And then we just started hanging. That is true of many of my like Facebook friends, which now you would call my network realizing that someone's like smarter interesting in one context.
[00:04:03] Molly: And then you actually, I think the biggest step for me was like taking them out of that context and then having coffee with them and sort of being like, who are you? Tell me your story. One other really good networking. I guess it's a networking story was when I first started at Quip, I knew nothing about SAS and enterprise software.
[00:04:19] Molly: And so I was meeting people all over the valley. and I made two of my very good friends by, through that like process of just pinging people and asking for help. One of them was like very, very senior at a company called Atlassian. And I just like went and asked him for advice. And then I tried to find something I could do for him in return.
[00:04:42] Molly: And I. Introduced him to a group of friends that were sort of all meeting and once a month, having coffee and talking about operating big companies. And then he and I have been friends ever since, and we have helped each other in a lot of different ways. And then my other friend is a woman Corley Hughes who we famously, like to say was 20 minutes late to the first time she ever met me.
[00:05:02] Molly: We were set up by a wonderful VC named Steven Sinofsky, who is coral's mentor at Microsoft Corley. He was like, have coffee with this woman. She's amazing. She was the COO of product hunt at the time. So we set up coffee. She was 20 minutes late, which for me, I don't like him when people are late. She was like in debt from the minute she walked in the coffee shop where I was like, who is this woman?
[00:05:22] Molly: And then she literally became one of my best friends. We just really hit it off. And we worked across the street from each other and we've done a lot of different things over life together, but it took me about. Two months of knowing poorly to figure out how deep and interesting her biographical story was.
[00:05:39] Molly: So at some point we were having coffee and I stopped the coffee and I said, wait, what's your deal. Can you just go back in time and tell me your whole story? But it literally took us like two months or three months of being friends before I knew all the different, fun things she had done in life. Cuz it was a very much.
[00:05:53] Molly: Superficial relationship at first.
[00:05:54] Annie: And I think that the piece there, like, just asking people about their experience, asking for their story and tuning in and really listening that is maybe all too rare in this world. Right. I think when people think about networking, they think of it as transactional.
[00:06:09] Annie: There's like a strategic talk track running in the back of people's brains. Like, how do I make this useful? How do I make them like me? And I just love. Sort of just show up and learn about people and be curious about people and kind of see where connections get made from there. I think that's actually really helpful advice for people who want to build those kinds of deep relationships.
[00:06:31] Molly: One of the things that you realize when you've been working for some number of years is that life is a barter economy. And so it. It is never a good idea to think what can this person do for me tomorrow? Cuz honestly you'll miss all the things that make them interesting and the best things about them in the world.
[00:06:48] Molly: You just never know who someone is, who they're gonna become, how they can be useful to your life and how you can be useful to theirs. My version of networking is figure out who someone is, whether you connect with them and then stay in. And like figure out ways to help them. And there will be a moment when they can help you.
[00:07:07] Molly: I'm not like mercenary about it. I'm not like, what are you gonna do for me this week? I think like, life is a barter economy. You help people over time. They help you. But that only happens if you build a like real relationship with them where they know you. Care about them beyond just what can they do for you?
[00:07:25] Annie: I think that's the thing that's really intimidating to people sometimes. Right? Like you meet someone like, oh, that's a cool, interesting person. I really like them. Everybody's busy. Everybody has a million things going on. How do you take that? and then, you know, translate that into a real relationship. I think that's something that's intimidating to.
[00:07:46] Annie:A lot of people. When you listen to people, if you ask the right questions, they'll tell you who they are. I grew up in Washington DC, and for a lot of reasons, I went to cocktail parties a lot that were very boring. And really the skill you learn in cocktail parties is to feel silence because silence is awkward.
[00:08:05] Molly: It's both a strength and a weakness of mine, cuz I feel silence. But one of the things you learn. Is to ask questions. And once you start asking questions, you learn that there's something interesting about every single person in the world. You just have to find out what it is and to find out what it is.
[00:08:20] Molly: You just have to ask enough questions like following threads. When people tell you things, either they tell you a story or they answer some, a previous question. Like for me, that skill of asking questions and then listening in order to find the next question, I think probably trained. To be good at building relationships, because I think I probably listen differently in interviews than the average person.
[00:08:45] Molly: Like I heard a set of things in my interview with Annie, that a taught me that we should be friends and B taught me who Annie is, what she wants to do in the world. What she's thinks her strengths are. That is true of a lot of these people. I've built relationships with. Stayed friends with when you find people, you connect with a, build a relationship with them and then B, and this is something I learned at Facebook at Google and Facebook, and after was like, stay in touch with them.
[00:09:12] Molly: build a system around is staying in touch with people, actually keeping the relationship current. And I'm not like world classed. I know people that are, but like one of the things I learned when cuz I was at Google before I was at Facebook, I was there for a year and a half in communications that so many of the people that I was at Google with in that communications department left and have gone on to run communications at some of the most interesting companies in the valley.
[00:09:36] Molly: And it taught me that. The way that you quote unquote network, the way that you like get interesting job opportunities over time is to stay in touch with people, be useful to them. And eventually at some point you might wanna work with or for, or have them work for you. I learned from someone at Facebook who is a very good relationship builder and maintainer, and they like.
[00:09:57] Molly: Had a honest to God spreadsheet. They basically had a CRM for their personal relationships and it had all birthdays. It had like significant life events. That person actually like made sure that they were reaching out on a regular cadence to these people. So Molly's version of that, which was way more dumbed down is anytime I, um, leave a.
[00:10:19] Molly: I make a list of people. I don't have birthdays. Like I don't have any of the other stuff. I just have a list of names and it's just a reminder to like, stay in touch with people. I think the best people in the world at building and maintaining relationships have a really methodical way of making sure that they always stay in touch with people.
[00:10:38] Molly: And I think that includes reacting to like life events or promotions or whatever. The main rule that I've learned is like, you just don't wanna reach out to people only when you need them. Cuz they know, like I know the relationships in my life that are like transactional, where the person's only gonna ping me when they need something.
[00:10:53] Molly: And I see an email from them and I'm like, oh, you want something? Like, what do you want. And you just don't wanna be that person. You wanna be the person that people are like, whoa, I'm so excited to see your name in my inbox or in my like text threads. Like, that's awesome. Like once in a while, check in with people with no agenda, it means the world to them.
[00:11:07] Molly: We think people are busy and don't want that ping, but like everybody does, everybody wants to feel like someone cares about them and is thinking about them. And doesn't just want things from them.
[00:11:17] Annie: Yeah. And I like that it can just be not just checking in. I think sometimes we underestimate how valuable that can be.
[00:11:24] Annie: Okay. I wanna talk about a big break that you got in your career. Could you tell us about something that you would count as a big break that you got in your career and how did relationships play a role in getting you that opportunity?
[00:11:41] Molly: Every single job that I've gotten, I've gotten because of a relationship.
[00:11:46] Molly: Quip, which was the company that I went to after Facebook was my former boss at Facebook. And then the Chan Zuckerberg initiative was founded by mark Zuckerberg. And one of the things I write about is the idea of being useful. My greatest compliment in the world is someone saying you're really useful.
[00:12:03] Molly: Like you really move things forward, get things done. Like I think of you as someone that makes things happen in the world. That for me is what the word useful means. And I think in all my jobs, I hope, but particularly in my early jobs, I really tried to be. . And what that meant was that I think people thought of me as someone that got things done that just like you could trust with an initiative or a big problem or whatever.
[00:12:26] Molly: So when Brett left Facebook and went and founded Quip, we sort of said, we'd like to work together again. And I think because I had been so useful to him at Facebook, it felt like a no brainer, hopefully for him to like hire me at Quip. And similarly with mark, like when I left Facebook to go learn what it took to build something from nothing.
[00:12:44] Molly: And I think he. Hoped we would work together again, either that I would come back to Facebook or we'd find another way. And then when I left Quip, he and his wife, Priscilla called me and said, Hey, we're building our philanthropy there, a job over here. That might be interesting to you. All of those happened because I was.
[00:13:01] Molly: Useful and got things done in previous lives. And then I stayed in touch with each of them. Obviously I think like the reason I went from Google to Facebook is because of a relationship.
[00:13:12] Annie: Love it, Brett, by the way, was the co-creator of Google maps and the CTO at Facebook who later started Quip where you worked and now he's the co CEO of Salesforce.
[00:13:22] Annie: Can you tell us about another time when a relationship at work led to an exciting or unexpected opportunity for you?
[00:13:29] Molly: For sure. The one I always talk about is totally unexpected and out of left field was at Facebook. So I spent the first years at Facebook working in HR. So I worked in HR and recruiting on culture and employment branding.
[00:13:41] Molly: And I did a project at the end of that time. Rewriting Facebook's. And for that project had to work with like market Cheryl and a lot of members of the executive team. And. Honestly, I don't know how this all threaded together, but basically that project was really hard and I did an okay job with it. But in the process of it, I started working with a guy named Chamath, who a lot of people in the valley have heard about.
[00:14:07] Molly: He has his own podcast, the all in podcast, but anyway, CHMA ran at the time mobile and growth at Facebook. And I think because I had been useful or noticeable or somehow. Project. He scheduled lunch with me, which is very scary. Cuz usually when schedules lunch with you, he's gonna yell you. And I like went to have lunch with him and he said, okay.
[00:14:31] Molly: Anyone that knows Chamath will understand this, but he said, you're wasting your time in HR. What are you gonna do? That's actually useful come and work for me. And I was like, Chamath like, I don't think I'm gonna come work for you. And he was like, well, why don't you come work for us, oh, interestingly, who's now the COO of Facebook.
[00:14:48] Molly: He was like, come work for Javi on international growth. And I was like, I don't know. I feel like he's got an amazing team. I'm not sure he needs me. I'm not sure it's like the right fit for me. I can't remember, he said a couple of other things, and then he said, Hey, do you wanna, why don't you come, help me build a phone?
[00:15:02] Molly: And I was like, First of all, we're building a phone. That seems like a terrible idea. Like why would we do that? We've never done hardware before, like anyway, long list. And then, and then I was like, why are you talking to me? Like, I don't know anything about the mobile industry. And I don't know anything about literally anything that would be useful to building a phone.
[00:15:19] Molly: And he was like, I think you're good at moving things forward. I left that lunch and was like, this can't be real. Like we're not actually building a phone. And I went to my boss at the time, Lori goer and I said, Hey, are we building a phone? And she was. is Chama trying to recruit you. anyway, long, very long story short like that.
[00:15:41] Molly: I went eventually and worked on the phone. I worked on it for three years. It was a four year project. It was a huge failure as anybody that has followed. It knows. And I learned more in that three years than I ever possibly could have imagined. My intention had been to stay in HR until we went public, which was another two and a half years away.
[00:15:58] Molly: I had no idea at the time, but I just sort of like had that in my head and Shama completely changed the trajectory of my career because he taught me that I could do more than I thought I could. I did no idea that the skills that I had were transferable from running and leading. Projects in HR and recruiting to an industry that I knew nothing about.
[00:16:19] Molly: And I was useful on that project. And I also learned how to learn on that project because I knew nothing. And he tossed me into rooms with like hardware engineers and just was like, make things happen. And I went from knowing absolutely nothing about the mobile industry. Absolutely nothing about hardware, mobile phones to being an expert for a brief period of time.
[00:16:36] Molly: And yeah. So Chima, as he will tell you was responsible for like, Big change in my career and yeah, that none of that would've happened without him. I did at the time. It's funny. Like I talked about like the idea of having a council and like, at the time I had a very different council than I did today, but one of my wonderful friends who is on my council at the time said to me, Hey, like you should go do this.
[00:16:58] Molly: Like you think you're good? You've proven that you're good at doing stuff in. and running these big complex company wide projects, like go see how actually good you are. And I will like never forget that piece of advice. And I've given it to about 25 people since me.
[00:17:11] Annie: How do you know that? You're in a moment? To go see how good you are.
[00:17:16] Molly: Well, it's one of my biggest pieces of advice for people inside of scaling companies, scaling companies give you the opportunity to take risks. Your first job, when you walk in the door is to prove that you're good at things. So you should spend first year or two doing that because you don't get opportunities until people look around the room and think, oh, I need Annie on my team because Annie's great at getting things done.
[00:17:38] Molly: You have to prove that you're good at getting things done, right? So you're one year two of scaling company, whatever for six months is I am good at making things happen or this discipline that I've been hired into, then people are gonna, hopefully if you're good at things like you're gonna get offers that are like, Hey, come do this thing with me.
[00:17:55] Molly: Or, Hey, would you be interested in doing this thing? Or you might say, Hey to your manager, I'd like to go do that thing. The only people in the world that will make bets on you. To do things that you are just not in line with your resume are like your managers and other executives inside of scaling companies, because they have needs, you're a known entity.
[00:18:15] Molly: They're gonna put you in and try you out. Half of it is like being in the right place at the right time being on someone's mind when they're thinking of a new project. And then the second half is saying. I think at Facebook, I was super lucky for a variety of reasons. People thought I was pretty good. I wasn't like if the phone failed, like I was gonna get fired, I just wanted to go see how good I was.
[00:18:40] Molly: I wanted to go try this thing. But I had a safety net. I had a safety net of like, Hey, you're not gonna get fired if this fails. So I feel like the two things are go inside a company. That's gonna take risks on you and say yes, but. You know, I think it's easiest to say yes. When you have a, a safety net. I think that's super, super helpful.
[00:19:01] Annie: And I love the idea of just being willing to say yes, and doing things that you find a little intimidating, a little scary, a little, a little over your skis, and then being useful, sticking to your values in terms of how you show up to relationships, making your own luck right after you've been given that opportunity in a.
[00:19:22] Molly: Yeah, I do think building relationships. And real authentic relationships. That's what leads to luck like luck comes from people you've worked with in the past or people you've built relationships with. I feel super lucky for all the things that I have been asked to do, but they have all come from me having built a relationship with someone and then them being like, oh, Molly would be useful for that.
[00:19:44] Annie: I guess I'd love to kind of switch gears and talk about how you pay it forward. How have you helped other people? To achieve sort of their goals and get access to opportunities. I know you've done a lot of this. How do you think about
[00:19:59] Molly: that? Well, first of all, I think like your job in life, when you've been lucky is to pay it forward and I've been super lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
[00:20:09] Molly: Like. It is easiest for me to advocate for people if I have a relationship with them, because I know what pitching to other people, you should definitely hire this person. I know because I've worked with them before. That's an easy situation for me to really make sure that I like bolster that person's chances at whatever opportunity they're interested in.
[00:20:27] Molly: It is very easy and fun for like one of the greatest joys in the world for me is coaching people, mentoring them, helping them be successful. If I'm their manager, that's really fun for me. It's one of my greatest joys is like, Hey, what do you wanna do with your life? How can I help you do that? Yeah. And I think
[00:20:43] Annie: that your strength at that goes back to what we were talking about earlier, cuz I know that when we've had conversations about like, what do you wanna do?
[00:20:50] Annie: Where do you wanna go? What are your goals? One of the most helpful things you've done for me is to say, Hey, what I heard you say is X, Y, and Z, right? You kind of like in a moment where maybe I feel lost or I don't know the answer. It's really helpful to have people who. You are connected with, who have listened to you, who have worked with you, who know you say, here's what I see in you.
[00:21:13] Annie: Here's what I think is possible. And you can only have those types of conversations. If you're showing up to really know the person and have a real relationship with the person, I think that's really. Special and really helpful.
[00:21:25] Molly: I think like that's what people have done for me. Right. Is someone very smart in the world said you should have a board of directors for your life.
[00:21:34] Molly: Kind of like a, and I think of it as more of like a council, a council of people when you're making a significant life's decision. These are the people that you. Call and say, Hey, I'm thinking of doing this. What do you think? And the times that I've made the best decisions are when I've both used the council well and listened to them, sometimes you don't listen and then you're like, whoop should listen.
[00:21:52] Molly: um, that board of directors, that council for me has been just, you know, invaluable at holding up a mirror and saying, Hey, for example, you left this last job for the following reasons. Like, this is what you were saying to me at the time. Why are you going and taking another job that looks exactly the same or something like that?
[00:22:09] Molly: Being on someone's council takes like time, energy work and it has to come from like a deeper place, you know?
[00:22:14] Annie: Is there anybody on your council who you hadn't worked with previously?
[00:22:19] Molly: Uh, yeah, I have friends on my council and I have people that I, I have a coup I have like former bosses, but I have more like peers, like people that I worked with.
[00:22:29] Molly: And then I have people that I just like have encountered through work life. They were like partners or something like that. And then I've just become really good friends with them. There are people that have just been invaluable to me.
[00:22:42] Annie: And what's the common thread though. They all know you, they all care about you.
[00:22:45] Annie: What's the common. For everyone in this eclectic group of council ?
[00:22:50] Molly: members know what someone's background and DNA and story is someone once said to me, people don't give you advice. They just tell you what they did or what they would do. And like, I think that's always helpful to just like put a lens on people's advice from what they're telling you, what they would do.
[00:23:05] Molly: Probably the common thread is like similarities between like who we are as people, like how we make decisions, how we make choices, like how we prioritize the world.
[00:23:13] Annie: You do a lot of writing. There's the famous. Very useful. Give away your Legos sort of hallmark startup piece. And you do a lot of writing on LinkedIn.
[00:23:24] Annie: You have a newsletter where you share lessons learned from your career. I'd love to hear just about what brought you to the writing and how that writing has. Impacted the way you leverage your network.
[00:23:40] Molly: So, first of all, there's two phases to Molly writes a lot, one of which I did zero writing, but I get a lot of credit for things that were put out under my name.
[00:23:51] Molly: So, uh, there's four articles that I put out with a wonderful venture firm called first round. And one of the smartest things that first round did when they were trying to build. blog into an empire, which they've done is that they wrote for you. So they would say, get on the phone with me for an hour or send me a PowerPoint presentation.
[00:24:10] Molly: This woman named Camille rickets. Who's just brilliant. Could take mumbo jumbo that you threw at her and turn it into beautiful, thoughtful works of art. Each piece that I did with them came from like a presentation or something that I. Had done. And then I would send it to them and say, Hey, this may be useful to your audience, which is like, sort of like startup founders.
[00:24:31] Molly: And then they would turn it into a blog. Post Legos came from a presentation. I did, it was a presentation for engineering managers and it was just like, Hey, like here's how I think about managing inside of scaling companies. And I have. As Annie knows my brain works in like weird metaphors. Most of which really don't work and Legos happens to work really well.
[00:24:49] Molly: So thinking about scaling companies as a bunch of kindergartners, trying to build a Lego sculpture. So first round was like the first four articles. And then about a year and a half ago, I found I was repeating myself a lot, both with my team at Lambda and on calls. Founders that had reached out, asking for help.
[00:25:07] Molly: And every time I found myself repeating something, I would just put it on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is just great for like writing down a thought that you have, and then it actually goes away. I mean, I would start putting it up there and it resonated with people or at least I think because I'm not trying to get followers.
[00:25:23] Molly: I'm just literally trying to put lessons out in the world that, so I don't have to repeat myself all the time. I can just send people blog posts. So over time, Gotten more methodical and longer form. Um, what I'm trying to do is just take everything I've learned for the last 15 years and put it out into the world so that it's helpful to people that I'm never gonna meet.
[00:25:42] Molly: And the emails that I get that make me the happiest are ones where it's like, I would never have met this person. And they're like, oh my God, thank God you wrote this down. That's like the people I'm trying to talk to, cuz I'm just want to figure out how to. Useful to use that word again to people out in the world.
[00:25:57] Molly: You can't know everyone. I turned it into a blog and actually it's been really like good for me from a discipline perspective. Has there been
[00:26:05] Annie: anything interesting or surprising that's come from the writing?
[00:26:10] Molly: I think it's probably what I said. The best thing that's happened from the writing is people emailing.
[00:26:14] Molly: And this is true of Legos too. Legos was like the first experience where I was. whoa. Sometimes we don't know the power of the things that we know. Like I wrote, we put first round, put the Legos article out and it definitely took off in a way that none of us thought it would. And I got so many emails. I got emails.
[00:26:33] Molly: From people at Safeway that were like mid-level managers at Safeway being like this article is so helpful to me. And then I got an email from a guy who was founding a startup in Africa, and he was like, this resonated so much for me. We went from two people to four people last year and it was just so hard.
[00:26:48] Molly: So I think the fun thing for me is like, you think, you know who your audience is and then sometimes like your writing or things you put out in the world or things you say are just like helpful to people you never could have imagined. And that's
[00:27:01] Annie: cool. Yeah. I think that's super cool. It just, it just expands the impact expands the being useful.
[00:27:09] Annie: So of everything we've talked about today, what do you think is the single most important thing for people to keep in mind if they want to. Build their network or be a better networker, AKA relationship builder.
[00:27:26] Molly: So if your goal is to be a better networker, I would say real networks come from authentic relationships.
[00:27:33] Molly: And then from there, I would say, if you wanna know what it takes to build authentic relationships, I think like, Learn who people are actually get to know them as humans, like care about them. As humans listen, like ask questions and listen, and then you build friendships with people. And from there, I think from friendships, life is a bar economy.
[00:27:51] Molly: People will help you you'll help them. You don't wanna be too much in someone's debt. You don't want them to be super far in your debt. That's like what a transactional relationship is. So like, the question is always like, how can I help someone? And then in the future they'll owe you and like, that's great, then they'll help you get a job.
[00:28:07] Molly: They'll introduce you to someone, whatever. But I think like for me, it all starts with like actually caring about people as people and them knowing, and feeling that you care about who they are and not just like call them when you need.
[00:28:20] Annie: My takeaway is there's something interesting about everybody in the world.
[00:28:24] Annie: And so how do you get curious about what that could be? I love, I love that, that you said earlier, just, yeah. Find the interesting thing about everybody. If you assume everyone has something go on the hunt for, how do you get curious about it and then kind of go from there. Molly. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
[00:28:40] Annie: It has been such a treat to have you on and learn from all of your experiences. Where can people find you if they want to learn more from you?
[00:28:50] Molly: Mostly on LinkedIn.
[00:28:51] Perfect.
[00:28:52] Annie: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Molly. Such a treat to have you.
[00:28:54] Molly: Yep. Thanks Annie.