Od obsługi klienta do dyrektorki marketingu | Podcast Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 10

And we'll switch to English. Dzięki. Hi Abby. Hej, hej. Ciąg dalszy nastąpił od obsługi klienta do dyrektorki marketingu Yeah, we'll add that Abby is somewhat connected to Will Heimann, who we talked to in one of our previous episodes. They're married. You can tell, I guess, by the last name. But today we're going to hear her side of the story of moving from the US to Poland and also building a career here, because I think it's particularly interesting in terms of

The American Dream vs The Polish Dream and how that turned out for y'all, right? Yeah, totally, totally. I have no... I had no other dreams, really. I didn't know I was 23 when we moved to Poland. I was out of university and was just on an adventure with my new, relatively new boyfriend. And just thought, okay. And had no work experience, no professional experience. And that's very not me. I'm a very type A, planned, responsible person. But when I got with this boy, I just completely was like, let's go and have fun. To jest właściwie cały Will, ten głupi ruch.

Ok, więc pierwsza wyjątkowa kwestia jest, kim chciałaś być jak dziecko, kiedy urodziłaś się? Miałeś plany? Oczywiście nie marzyłaś o wyjściu do Polski, myślę. Tak, nie marzyłam. Zawsze myślałam, że zrobię coś z zwierzętami. Zawsze była mi łatwiejsza urodzić się z zwierzętami, niż z ludźmi. Nie grałam z ptaszkami, czy czymkolwiek. Zawsze miałam zwierzęta. By my side and so I always thought I would do something like that as a child. But then as I just continued through my childhood and teenage years that kind of fell to the side and my practical, responsible thing came through and I think it just seemed easy to, I don't know, kind of follow the crowd and just kind of do this typical business management study in college and these other things.

We get open. Yeah. But it's a very significant realization that we should follow ourselves than the crowd. Yeah, to take the time to be thoughtful and listen to yourself and think about what makes you feel naturally settled and good and at peace. And that's part of my maturation and maturity journey is to think more about what am I doing when I feel good inside and then how can I do more of that versus how do I randomly pick stuff to do to try to like, you know, fund my life. To jest naprawdę interesujące. Dokładnie tak jak myślałam w tamtych czasach, pracując z zwierzętami czy czymś innym, o czym wciąż trzymam się otwarte w przyszłości, ale sposób, w jaki robię pracę profesjonalną teraz... Uwielbiam to.

Uwielbiam części marketingu. Jest tak wielu części marketingu, zwłaszcza teraz, to się zmienia. Even more complicated and confusing than it was, which I didn't think it was. Especially at your level now, right? Like the director of marketing, so like you connect all the parts. So that's even more complicated, plus there's people, there's teams to manage and stuff, right? It is a lot. And I came up through what's called now, thankfully it came to existence while I think I was coming up in my career product marketing, which felt more connected.

Podcast Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned! The closest to kind of connection that I could get just trying to figure out what are these human beings trying to accomplish and do and most of them were small business owners or you know had their own side hustle or they were artists trying to sell their art online to you know do that balance of my the thing I love to do but I need to make money from it and that felt

That's interesting. How did that happen? After several years you've decided to switch from the bigger company to a startup environment and then after some time you came back to your original company and position. Przed kilkoma latami czułam to syndrom impozji. Czy jestem dobra w pracy? Czy jestem dobra w tym, co robię? Czy jestem tylko dobra tutaj? Czy jestem tylko dobra w tym, co robię? Bo wiem, jak nawigować w tym, w tym systemie i z tymi ludźmi naprawdę dobrze. Więc miałam wiele wewnętrznych strachów. Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned.

Czy to jest możliwe dla Ciebie w Stanach Zjednoczonych? Czy to jest możliwe dla Ciebie w Stanach Zjednoczonych? Czy to jest możliwe dla Cię w Stanach Zjednoczonych? Byłam tutaj, w Polsce, więc nigdy nie czułam się... I to było całkiem międzynarodowe. Było też bardzo dużo polskich ludzi w tej przedsiębiorce, tak jak mnie znaleźli. I to było też bardzo międzynarodowe, co było jedyną rzeczą, którą znam. Więc szczerze mówiąc, nie wiem, jak bym robiła w organizacji, która jest głównie amerykańską, w USA. To jest dla mnie tak wyjątkowe, co jest śmieszne, mówiąc jako wyjątkowa, tutaj w Polsce.

Tę dynamikę i zestawę, nie wiem, czy mogłabym ją teraz zrobić. Nie wiem. Użyję tego. I to nie jest coś, co ja... Moja biedna matka, ale to nie jest coś, co uważam za... She's still trying to like talk you into going back. She would like it. She's just retired. She had a really long career at university in Arkansas. She was a leader, you know, so I get a lot of my career motivations from her and watching the way she has actually managed her career and I seek her advice a lot. But she's just retired, so she's like... Ciąg dalszy nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned.

Może teraz jesteś bardziej polską niż Amerykaniną. Tak, czuję się zewnętrzną, kiedy wracam do USA. Nie czuję... To jest bardzo interesujące, co powiedziałeś. Mówiłaś wcześniej o czymś bardzo ważnym dla mnie. To nie jest coś, czego lubisz. Co lubisz teraz, jako dyrektor marketingowy, po tym, jak wyszłaś tutaj, gdzie teraz jesteś? Co lubisz w twojej obecnej pozycji? For sure. Now enjoyment really comes from helping others on my team have these type of breakthroughs where they get to some really important conclusion or they like have this really big idea or they found a way around some problem.

That's really where... That was done for me, right? I had rows laid out for me for how to develop myself and how to actually improve my skills as a product marketer and be pushed. And I'm continuously pushed. I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep improving myself, but I have to remember now to put it back in. In the same way that it was put into me in the time and investment, into this big team. It's an international team, it's an international company. We operate across quite a few markets and languages and there's a lot of folks. And so that's my current balance is to not give so much that there's actually nothing left for me. But that is where the enjoyment comes is when one of these folks that are managing a smaller team or a unit

Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned. Continuation of that, I think in a slightly different form in marketing leadership. It's certainly not the, for me the enjoyment doesn't come from the technical side of navigating like the SEO. Navigating SEO always for me was like a nightmare and made me want to scream. Just, just, just like eliminate. Eliminate SEO. Eliminate that?

Because it just felt like a rigged game. It felt not like marketing at all, just a rigged game to Google. And that just felt to me not fun. And now it's even more complex. Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned. Give them the resources and space they need to go figure that out please, because that makes me want to shut down.

So what I'm hearing is that what brings you fulfillment and satisfaction at work is a purpose. And that purpose is not necessarily building a business. If your boss is listening to it, are listening to it, I'm very sorry for saying that. The purpose is to help people. You did that at the beginning of your career as a customer support specialist and you do it now. That's right. I developed people for the benefit of the business. I enjoyed working at this startup with this founder that had a vision in higher ed. I wanted to develop... Ciąg dalszy nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned.

Psychology and different aspects of individual humans that are making various decisions in their lives and work is a big part of our lives. To figure out how that motivates them, whether they're a customer, figure out their motivations or an employee that you're trying to figure out what their motivations are to help them develop and then the net result is ideally a better outcome for your employee, for the person you're working with and also the business if somebody's improving. So that's what... Ciąg dalszy nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned.

Może to być nasz background, kiedy chcemy wspierać ludzi, którzy prowadzą operacje. So I think that's the really important thing for all of us to remember that the purpose doesn't have to lie on the front line. Totally. Yeah, I love that. I mean, we're just human organisms, animals trying to get through all of this and it's pretty unnatural. And all of this time on the computer and quite separated, you know, it's quite a natural tour like human natural bodies. And so it makes sense that we need We need support and there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the background to make it so people can perform well in these kind of unnatural conditions. All of this sounds super positive and great.

Beautiful, but what about the hard part? So was that like moving to Poland or like taking on the career that you took on? What were like the difficult parts like that you had to go through? Yeah, and moving to Poland was like this honeymoon period, really. I didn't know anything about work or stress or, you know, responsibilities. I was just like, yeah, just completely chilling. And then I had this job where I got yelled at sometimes on the phone. I was like, oh, whatever. I didn't really know what was coming as you... Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned. 10. Names mentioned.

For no reason, nobody's asking me to do it, but I was just, for some reason, paralyzing myself. And as I noticed my salary increasing, I created a connection between how hard I was working, which usually there is a correlation between how hard you, the effort you put in and what the output is. But I was over... My math was all wrong. I was putting way too much in for what really was necessary to come out. And so I was just exhausted. I was stressed, so unhappy, so dependent on my new salary that I was getting that I thought, well, I can never shut this down. I can never slow down for a second or it's all gonna go away and I'll lose my Polish residency card and we're gonna have to go back to Arkansas and it's gonna be my fault and just so much.

Obviously don't. Asthma, that's one area of my life where I just kind of let it go, my personal life. But in the professional life, I just, you know, I'm like white knuckling it, as they say, just to like exist and survive. And that's in Poland was always for me just a relief, because from the US, I think I just felt less stressed as a human existing here than I ever did there. Exist and survive, very strong words here. Yeah, that's part of my problem, you know, was just these really big words about like surviving and there's some doom happening right behind me, even though it's sunny and there's no danger, I'm in this nice room.

Od obsługi klienta do dyrektorki marketingu Honestly, I think it was around like December or January this year. I was in a rough place around November of this year, just really piling it on for no reason and finally returned to work there. Yeah, ended the year. Yeah, ended the summer that comes in. Yeah, and it just finally hit, you know, you can't... Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned.

Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned. It would be awesome if it would be only one person's fault. It would be easier. So that's been the challenge. Living in Europe is what I feel kept me. Yeah, so you mentioned

You mentioned therapy, you mentioned living in Europe, so I'm trying to list the things that help you overcome these challenges. Is there anything else that helps you stay sane and stop manufacturing that stress? Some amounts of physical movement is also what's... Ja nie jestem dużą, jak Will, bierze półmaratony, a on jest tak dyscyplinowany z ruchem i nauczaniem języków, co jest niesamowite, a ja jestem jakby przeciwnikiem dyscypliny, intensywności. Ale, wiesz, byliśmy tylko w Dolnej Śląsku w tej ostatniej tygodniu, w naszym ulubionym miejscu, Międzogórzu, i chodziliśmy i chodziliśmy, wiesz, przez około 8-10 godzin, i to załatwiło dla mnie tak duży stres, tak mocny stres w kościele.

So physical movement. I go to the gym a couple times a week, which really helps. And then just before I start this day of like, you know, eight hours of meetings and mind, head only working is to at least like walk, to at least get outside birds and trees and grass and not this computer and all this trauma. I would add the contact with nature to that physical movement. Zdecydowanie, tak. Drzewo, wiesz? Kiedy widzisz drzewo, to mówisz sobie, patrz, jak ładnie, jest tam, robi swoje najlepsze, więc to pomoże. Tak, to mi pomoże. Dodaję coś, bo wczoraj pojechałam z chłopakiem, nie wiem o Poznańsku, ale tutaj przestały mowić drzewo i lądy, co sprawia, że wszystkie wildflowery,

Byłem na porządku i on mówił, że nigdy nie rozumiał ludzi, którzy to kochają. Teraz to robię. Oh, tak? Tak. Ja też nie byłam wcześniej człowiekiem naturalnym. Gdy się urodziłam, coraz bardziej to podobało mi się. Tak. It makes sense. It does. I I had this moment this morning that I just felt, and I don't know why, because I sometimes wake up, I think it's also age and stuff that happens, but I just sometimes wake up with this tight chest for no reason, absolutely no reason. And then I had this moment, I look at the grass and I looked at my dog and I just like put my shoulders down and like sort of felt that I was just walking like this and then

This doesn't happen when you're in front of a screen, unfortunately, which is a big part of our jobs. Yeah. I feel like you're just present. What we talk about a lot is how you're in your head, living in the past or in the future. And that causes a lot of that disconnect with your nervous system. And when you go outside, you're typically much more... Ciąg Dalszy Nastąpił odc. 11. Names mentioned. The only thing we're in control of in this life is how we react in the moment to different things that come up. And you trust yourself and believe you're a capable adult who can take care of things. You can handle anything that comes at you in a moment.