Sukhinder Singh Cassidy quotes: the ticket titan tells us what’s up.
“Work harder than anyone else. And at some point when you’ve done all you can possibly do, let go of the outcome. The latter advice being much harder than the former.”
“You don’t know if you don’t try.”
“I say persist, just hang on. The other thing I say to myself is everything is cyclical. I remember when I graduated, I went through a very tough time. My friends got in great jobs and thrived and it took me almost a year and a half to get my dream job. I was very self-questioning during that period. And then you know, things reversed and I was flying high and other people had tough times.”
“I’ve learned that my risk tolerance is high. Partly it comes from having had to figure out that time after college when I was having trouble getting hired. And then it finally worked.”
“I always say to people, once you realize you’re employable, everything else is okay. I’m always willing to let go of something before the next thing shows up because I have the sense that I could put food on the table.”
“The other part of it is that I’m very impatient. Whenever I think I’m stagnating and not going to get where I’m meant to go, I have this anxiety. So the anxiety of not getting there overwhelms the fear of uncertainty. So I guess I just trade one fear for another. People see that as risk tolerance, but it’s more this sense that I’m supposed to contribute something more or learn something more.”
“Nothing good ever lasts indefinitely and you’re not nearly as good as you think you are when times are great. So persist, hang on.”
“When people thrive, it’s because their fear of missing out on an opportunity overtakes their fear of failure and compels them to take action. Better yet, they keep acting, building a fundamental risk-taking muscle that underweighs the importance of any single choice in favor of continually ‘choosing.’ Personal success does not come from making one singular ‘correct’ or ‘big’ decision. Rather, long-range success comes from tackling numerous choices that are aimed to optimize future possibilities.”
“I’ve encountered failed choices, misfires, unexpected headwinds, and all other types of pitfalls that I had to learn how to confront, analyze, navigate and incorporate into my new path forward.”
“Your job is one of influence, and one of bringing specialization.”
“Tokenism is about how you treat somebody once they get there.”
“If you just put your head down and if you’re really great at your job, that’s enough. One of my key lessons was, that holds you pretty well up until the junior and midpoint of your career. And at some point you learn that if you’re not heads up and attuned to the agenda of other people around you, their perceptions of you and their understanding of what you do, it can become a barrier to your career.”
“You realize at a certain point in your career, if you want to keep progressing you do need to become attuned to everyone around you much more proactively and learn to embrace these different stakeholders—whether or not they actually influence your day-to-day job or not.”
“When you look back on your biggest mistakes, they’re often hiring mistakes and firing mistakes. Nobody says, ‘Gosh my mistake was hiring the right person.’ Most often people say, ‘Almost all of the things I regret are people decisions.’ When I look back, it was often the case where it wasn’t a competency [issue], but a culture fit. And I let that situation stand too long. I’d say over the years I’ve tried to make those decisions quicker. Because there is never a good outcome when you wait too long.”
“I think if you are any kind of empathetic leader, your first thought is well maybe this will work out. So I would just say the other challenge—and it’s an ongoing one—is to have the courage when something’s not working to call it sooner. I think that does take a lot of courage, particularly when you’re attached to the person or the outcome.”
“Entrepreneurship means to me possibility. I feel pretty strongly that if you have an idea, all it takes to make it happen is you starting to iterate. If you can imagine it then you can create it.”
“Dreaming of what I need to deliver next week, next month and next year all keep me up at night. As a founder/CEO there is never a night where you don’t dream about your ‘baby’ and what it needs to survive and thrive.”
“You control so much and ultimately feel like you know you have ultimate control over the output. But that is a perspective that leads you to get personally attached to every outcome, including your ego and your sense of self—as opposed to feeling like you just are doing the best you can. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but sometimes it does. And you’re going to survive in either case.”
“What excites me the most about my job is the variety. I can go from the completely scientific (data analytics on video purchasing habits) to completely creative (viewing the first cut of a video from a new expert on Joyus) to the completely impactful (how do we change the ratio of women in the boardroom) on any given day, and it keeps me energized.”
“I’ve grown and changed as a leader. I would generally call myself an impatient person and that probably hasn’t changed. But what has changed is early in my career, I fundamentally felt like I could orchestrate any outcome, like I was in control of my destiny, 100% of the time.”
“I really feel like over the course of the past 20 years I’ve actually learned that the leadership mantra I should be following—and I try my best to follow it—is in fact, you’re not in control of the outcome. You’re only in control of the input.”
“I think there is a moment in time right now, where everybody recognizes the severity of the problem of gender parity—not just inside of tech but outside it as well. For the first time in my lifetime, I’m seeing a number of different platforms and approaches that use technology to solve the problem. There are platforms around talent, around boards, around entrepreneurship, in seed funding for women that can accelerate the rate of change. That’s an exciting thing to witness and be a part of.”
“It’s very fair to say that one of the big risks of missing diversity is not having a voice of the customer in the room, which is shocking. Women make most of the buying decisions in B2C companies. The risk is high and it is accelerating because most businesses are changing at an accelerated rate—either with regard to who their customer is or who their next generation customer is. And at a minimum they are changing with technology trends.”
“I don’t believe in acting like a man in a man’s world. Women succeed because of their uniquely female traits: we’re great listeners, amazing multitaskers and empathetic to boot. Why shouldn’t we also be able to express our femininity through fashion?”
“You can’t just coast by on style. You also need credibility. The combination of both does wonders for a woman’s most important asset—confidence.”
“Besides Joyus (of course) my go-to app is Kindle on my iPhone. While there are newer and more novel apps, the reality is I do all of my reading in little snippets on the phone, anywhere, any chance I get. It’s the way I get small doses of reading pleasure.”
“One company I’m loving right now that most folks outside of Silicon Valley haven’t yet heard of is Medium. It’s the place where thoughtful, smart and eccentric posts get published. It’s become an important self-publishing platform in a very short amount of time. Medium is where I first started using my voice to influence issues I care about beyond technology, such as diversity in the boardroom. It’s been an important platform for me also to frame and share my more substantive views on impactful topics.”
“I use most of the social platforms, but refuse to document my entire life in tweets. I try and use my public channels for my public voice and keep most of my personal channels personal.”
“I’m relistening to Good to Great on Audible and Conscious Business by Fred Kofman, who I had the pleasure of working with when I was at Google.”
“To fellow working moms, I think the only other key piece of advice is to do what works for you and what you love and try and manage the guilt as best you can. I always see women who are guilty about what they’re missing at home while they’re at work, and guilty about what they can’t contribute to at work while they’re home, myself included. But I try to cut myself some slack, and I’m getting good at living with the guilt, or better yet, what I strive for: being able to let it go.”
“I don’t lead a life that is balanced each and every day; it’s always skewing one way or another over longer cycles because of where my focus is needed most in any given period. Ultimately, I hope for balance measured over a lifetime where I look back and can feel as if I had impact in both my career and at home.”
“I don’t think there is any set answer on the right thing to do for your career or home; every set of choices has a sacrifice because your time is so limited. Career-wise it’s so important to love what you do because the opportunity cost of being away from your children is high.”
“But most of all I think if women can feel comfortable and satisfied with making these choices, and then let go of the things that matter less and, most importantly, their guilt. Then there is a better chance to truly enjoy and maximize your time on either end of the equation.”
“Relax; it all works out as it’s meant to. You’re going to end up exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
