00:46:31 · Nikhyl Singhal
[00:46:31] S0: Yeah. I love that. And I think that's a lot of the focus of this podcast is to not focus on how to execute the work, but the soft skills needed to get the most out of one's career and the peers and the folks and the resources that you have associated with you. Maybe as we kind of round out the today's episode, I think a lot of listeners hear your story, hear how connected you are with the work and how long term focused you are. But I think there's a lot of excitement around the career journey that you've already had. And my sense is the natural question is how does one get a career like Markie? What do I do to be more like her? And I'm curious as to... I'm sure you've given this advice to many people given how inspiring you are. What's the secret to your success? What's your career story that you might be able to sort of suggest to others that they can maybe steal from to accelerate their own journey?
00:47:39 · Markie Wagner
[00:47:39] S1: I don't know if there's a secret. I do think that there are personal attributes that have led to me ending up where I have today. I think the first one is being honest with myself in terms of judgment about the types of work that I spend time on. I'm not the type of person to make up excuses about why something that really is boring that I'm working on is actually cool. I think a lot of people will do that and almost make up reasons why a bad quest is good to get themselves out of bed. But I think those people also often end up in cases where they feel unmotivated. They don't really care about their work. Like, oh, but this work is so important. Why am I unmotivated? I think your brain knows when what you're doing every day is important and not. And so I think for me, a lot of the energy that I've had around the work that I've done has come from picking good quests and being brutally honest and listening to my taste, like what is worth spending time on and not spending time on. It's very hard to motivate me to do things that I don't find interesting, extremely difficult. So I had no choice but to do work that I thought was interesting.
00:48:48 · Nikhyl Singhal, Markie Wagner
[00:48:48] S0: Yeah. That's the first one. So it sounds like judgment, picking the right things and making sure that you're in it early so that you can see around corners maybe a bit before others see it is sort of one thing that I'm hearing in your story. But I'm also hearing some characteristic personality characteristics that allow you to separate yourself from maybe others that maybe have the right thought. We all know people that are pretty thoughtful about things that matter, that they see trends that are happening, but they don't always punch through like you. [00:49:28] S1: Probably the next trait would be I'm a very gritty person. Once I lock onto something, it's very hard to get myself to look away until it kind of comes to fruition and to conclusion. So I think that was another core trait. A lot of the stories and kind of chronicles of elementary, middle, high school is like when everybody else had said, oh man, that would be so cool, but it was too hard or how would I go and spend time on that? I just got very unhinged about the thing and did whatever it took to get it over the line.
00:49:58 · Nikhyl Singhal
[00:49:58] S0: What a great way to conclude today's episode. I think your story of perseverance and grit but then being matched with great quests and great judgment, I think has led you to the expertise that you have both in AI as well as in being a coach and mentor and inspiration to, I think, tons of folks that are in career. You're just getting started and so we're so lucky to get a chance to see you kind of in this sort of few first few innings because there's so much of your career story left to unfold. I can't wait to invite you to a future episode and hear kind of the latest both in terms of how AI is unfolding as well as how your own career is unfolding. So thank you today for joining me. Thanks for listening to The Skip Podcast. Please share it with your friends, leave a rating and a review. Most importantly, if you have a question on content that we have presented here today or on other topics that I've covered or even things you'd like to hear that relate to career, please find me on Twitter or LinkedIn, and I'd love to hear from you. On Twitter, you can find me at Nikhyl, n I k h y l. Can't wait to see you in two weeks, and thanks again for all your help in supporting this podcast.