Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Marissa Orr: Lean Out - Women, Power and the Workplace | Leadership | E94

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

You might have heard of the book Lean In… but have you heard of Lean Out ?   In this week’s episode, we are talking with Marissa Orr, former Google and Facebook executive as well as the best-selling author of Lean Out. After spending 15 years working at today’s top tech giants, she transitioned her career to be a best-selling author and speaker across the globe.   In today’s episode, we’ll first sort out the differences between Lean In and Lean Out, the gender stereotypes that burden many workplaces, and we’ll uncover old power structures that still hold true today. We’ll also discuss Marissa’s time at Google, her uncomfortable interactions at Facebook, and how to make a real difference no matter what obstacles you face!   Social Media:    Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com   Timestamps:   01:47 - Difference Between Lean in and Lean Out 05:13 - Why We Have Gender Stereotypes 9:02 - Why Aggressive Women Have Consequences 12:00 - Google Personality Tests 15:53 - Legacy Systems and Underlying Power Structures 18:58 - Narrow Definitions and How to Get Outside Them 25:55 - How Managers Can Make Real Change 31:26 - Opinions on Ways COVID Has Changed the Workplace 34:33 - Marissa’s Journey as a Speaker 43:06 - How Facebook Wanted to Put Boundaries on Marissa’s Blog 49:52 - Story of Marissa’s HR Nightmare 55:21 - Why Marissa Stayed at Facebook For as Long as She Did 56:37 - Why Women are So Competitive 58:58 - Expectations After Marissa Published Her Book 1:03:24 - Marissa’s Secret to Profiting in Life   Mentioned in the Episode:   Marissa’s Book, Lean Out: https://www.marissaorr.com/the-book/ Marissa’s Podcast, Nice Girls Don’t Watch the Bachelor: https://nice-girls-dont-watch-the-bachelor.sounder.fm/ Marissa’s Website: https://www.marissaorr.com/ Marissa’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissaorr Marissa’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marissabethorr/

You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halitaha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast. And that's on purpose.

I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, how to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young, profiting podcast. This week on Yap, we're chatting with Marissa Orr, previous Google and Facebook executive, bestselling author of Lean Out, an international keynote speaker. While working at Google, Marissa attended every leadership conference for women being offered, but she was very disappointed with the advice she was given. Thus, she decided to start her own lecture series on female

leadership, which spread like wildfire. After she left the corporate world, Marissa transformed her leadership series into a book, lean out the truth about women, power, and the workplace. This book has completely turned the narrative for women in business on its head. As opposed to blaming gender inequality on women not acting like men, Marissa exposes corporate dysfunction as the source of the nation's gender gap, which still hovers at 80% despite being 50 years after the Equal Pay Act was enacted. Lean Out is now a massive hit being featured in Forbes, Fox, Yahoo Finance, and CNBC. And most recently, Marissa launched a podcast, Nice Girls Don't Watch the Bachelor, to continue the dialogue around women in the workplace. Tune into this episode to learn the differences between

lean in and lean out, two competing philosophies in modern feminism, and how the system still promotes male dominant traits in the workplace. We'll then dig into Marissa's time at Google, her uncomfortable interactions at Facebook, and how to make a real difference in your career, no matter what obstacles that you face. Hey, Marissa, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me today. Of course. So thank you for being on the show. You are extremely inspiring. You worked in the corporate world at Google for 13 years. Then you had a short stint at Facebook for over a year, about a year and nine months. In your corporate positions, you attended every leadership conference for women being offered,

but you were extremely disappointed with the advice you were given. You decided to start your own lecture series, which we'll get into in a bit. And that spread like wildfire and really set the foundation, I think, for the rest of your career. And after you left the corporate world, you released a book. It's called Lean Out. And it's changed the narrative for women in the business world. It's been featured on Forbes, Yahoo, Fox, and CNBC. So let's start off with a very, very basic question.

There seems to be two competing philosophies when it comes to women in leadership and modern feminism. And that is lean in and lean out. And for those of you who are listening who don't know about lean in, that was a very popular book. It came out in 2013. It was written by Cheryl Sandberg, who is the chief operating officer at Facebook. Then in 2019, Marissa, you came out with lean out. And Cheryl is actually 10 years your senior. You guys have a very similar background. You went to the same elementary school and middle school. You both worked at Google and Facebook. So on paper, you guys seem like twins. But in reality, you have a very different perspective. So tell us about your perspective on women leadership and what's the difference between the perspectives of lean in and lean out. I would first of all, I'd love to agree that Cheryl and I look the same on paper. But we did grow up.

in the same neighborhood a few years apart and both worked at Google and Facebook. I think we represent very different types of women. I mean, not the least of which she's very well educated. She went to Harvard and has all these really esteemed titles and things about her background, whereas I don't have much of that at all except a really voracious appetite for psychology and research and science. And I think that's how we sort of, our different perspectives were born. So with that long-winded introduction, I almost forgot the question, which was, was it to explain a little bit how it's different? Yeah. What's the difference between lean in and lean out? Yeah. So the crux of lean-in is that the gender gap is caused by these cultural forces that keep women down.

So that keep us constrained into these very narrow stereotypes and roles. So for example, we are told to sit still and be quiet. And so because of that as kids and then over time, we start to internalize those messages of society and we mute our ambition as a result. So one of the key premises in her book is something she coins the leadership ambition gap, which means that part of the reason that only, you know, for example, 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs or women is because culture and society conspires to keep us down and reduce sort of our goals for ourselves. and not take leadership positions, et cetera. Lean out, the premise is that the gender gap really has nothing to do with women. So the core message in lean in is that women need to change their behavior in order to close the gender gap and get more women in leadership roles. And lean out, my premise is really that it has nothing to do with women, that women are not

broken or deficient, but the system in the corporate world is, is such that it rewards certain traits that men have, not because they're inherently better or superior, but that's the way the system is set up. So, for example, it's a zero-sum game. By its nature, as a triangle where spots become more scarce, the higher you climb, it lends itself to people who love competition and are more adept at putting their needs ahead of others.

And research shows that women, or men compared to women, work, do better, perform better, and more motivated by these zero-sum win-lose games, whereas women are more motivated and perform better in systems that are win-win and collaborative environments. But the system is set up as a zero-sum competition, so it's biased toward people that are motivated by those types of games. It has nothing to do with women itself. And there's a lot of different aspects where we differ,

but that's really the gist of it. I think that's really interesting. So let's talk about you mentioned this kind of briefly, that we blame stereotypes for women not getting into leadership positions. How does this differ from men? Because there's plenty of positions out there that men really don't get involved in, whether that's being a nurse or a teacher is typically a woman's job. So how come we have all these stereotypes and we look at women like,

hey, you guys are not in the C-suite, you're not on board positions, but for men, we don't really look at that the same way. What's your opinion on that? Well, I think that's a big problem. and I write about that in Lean Out, of course, because what you're saying is that reflects a value judgment in society over what roles are more valuable and where we should be measuring women's progress. So we measure women's progress in terms of CEOs, but not in anything else, not in any professions that are really necessary for society and important, like you mentioned

nursing and teaching. But one thing I want to comment on in the beginning of your question was around sort of the stereotype issue. And one thing I talk a lot about in the book, a lot of Lean In, and it's not just Lean In, it's books, any sort of business books that are born of this sort of modern feminist discourse that has been spearheaded by Cheryl, but it's not just Lean In. It's just that's book really represents a whole category of the books that have dominated the past decade. But essentially what it says in Lean In and others is that, you know, women are punished for being aggressive or assertive, whereas men are rewarded as such. And that's a big reason that more women don't get to the top. And one of the observations that I make in the book is something I've noticed in my career is that the bossy, more aggressive women were the ones getting promoted, where it was the ones like me who sort of, I guess, fit more in with your idea of a stereotypical woman in terms of being nurturing and compassionate and being sort of very relationship focused and not as sort of cutthroat and aggressive. Women like me were the ones that struggled. because if you think about it, if you have a set of adjectives that describe a stereotypical woman, which are communal and collaborative and kind and caring whatever, and then you have the male version, which are more aggressive and desire for dominance and all that.

What profile is more likely to get to the top of a large corporation? Well, the male profile. So the question I posed in the book is, you know, why is it okay to discriminate against the stereotypical female profile? but if we discriminate against a woman that violates it, it's a national crisis. And there's a lot of research that shows that traits like being agreeable, like that's sort of more aligned with a female stereotype, are a liability in the corporate world. And that's not because they're not valuable. They are incredibly valuable.

Like I was just listening to your podcast with Chris Boss. I loved his book, Never Split the Difference. He talks about being likable as important. negotiations and in life. And that's commensurate with the female stereotype. So then why don't we see more of that get to the top? Well, because the corporate world is a structure that is designed to surface those more aggressive traits. It's a zero-sum game. It requires people to put their needs ahead of others. It's not the real world where there's some sort of equal power dynamic. Like he mentioned the Starbucks Cup. Like if they weren't nice to the person, they put decaf in the

cup. And I agree with that. I mean, I really subscribe to his philosophy, but it doesn't work in the corporate world because there's an uneven power dynamic and there's rules of the game that don't mirror rules of real life. Yeah. I actually was going to ask you about that whole likable thing that you just mentioned that it's less likely that a woman will get promoted if she's likable versus if she's more, you know, stern and bossy. But it's funny because I see, I see both. Like, you know, I recently had a situation. Yeah, and also, but I also see women being punished for being too bossy. And so it's like kind of like, like, what are we supposed to do?

We're punished if we're likable. Yeah. And it's like, I feel like where, how are we supposed to act? You know, why can't we just act like ourselves is what I always say. We can. And that's the problem, right? Is that part of why I wrote this book was to like take a breather from all of the voices telling us who and we're supposed to be and that how we are as we are,

isn't good enough and that we have to change in some sort of way. And you're right, there's a double bind for women because if they act aggressive or assertive, they're punished for that. And if they act within type, they're punished for that as well. But the point I make in the book is that aggressive women are punished for acting out of type, but it doesn't make them any less likely to be promoted. So while it is true, and I am agreeing that that's something that happens and it's not right and it's not the way it should be, but it's also not the cause of the gender gap because research shows that actually men are more penalized for acting out of type than women. So there's all this research in the book, and I'm terrible, I forgot the guy's name who did it. It's Tim something.

But it basically shows that men who act more in line with a stereotypical female profile are punished more in terms of less promotions and less earning, fewer promotions and less earning potential than women who act out of it. type. The gap between, if you think of a stereotypical male, the gap in earnings and advancement between a man who acts in type and without a type is larger than the gap between a woman who acts in type and out of type. So it's not even a gender issue. It's a matter of what traits and characteristics lend themselves to winning this particular game. And that's what I'm trying to point out in this book is that aggressive and bossy women certainly sort of suffer for a stereotype. And I think, and I'm not advocating that that should happen. It's not, it's not anything that I think is good. But that is not sort of the social issue that we should be

addressing when it comes to equality and women at work. Yeah. It's such a unique perspective. Like, I've really never heard anybody talk about, like, basically personality types and how it impacts the gender gap. So let's dig into this a little bit deeper. You talk about a personality test that you took at Google, where there was these like fiery types and then there were these, I forgot the exact language. Earth green. Earth green. Yeah.

Earth green. And fiery red. Exactly. So tell us about this personality test and also how somebody like you with a very stereotypical feminine personality can thrive at work. So I'll tell you this story about what happened with the personality profile because there's some nuances to it that I think are important. So when I was at Google, we did that.

this team-building exercise at an off-site where, and a lot of people do this if you work at a big company, this is a popular thing, but you take this survey before the off-site where you fill out all the details about your personality, your likes, whatever. And then when we got to the conference room in Mountain View at Google's headquarters, we were handed these thick black books with the results. And they were like these stunningly accurate maps of our personalities. And on the inside of each cover was printed one of four colors to represent one of the four major personality type. So like you said, I was a green, which meant I have a strong drive to help people. I strive for harmony, and I prioritize my relationships. And I make the joke in the book that

this was like the hippie group. And to underscore that point, they didn't just call it green. They call it Earth Green, you know, which is exactly the profile you want to project or the image you want to project in a room of corporate sales managers. But anyway, the opposite of green was red, or they called fiery red. And reds are competitive. They strive for power and control, and they prioritize results over greens like me who prioritize relationships. So the HR person running the exercise told us to get in groups by color. So I go over the greens, and as I'm seeing people around the room, this question just pops into my mind. I blurt out loud, what are the colors of our senior executive team? And the HR person clearly knew the answer,

did not want to share it, but everybody was now so curious, and it turned out nine, out of 10 were green. Just kidding. They were red. And it was a huge aha insight moment for me at that point because people in the room were kind of like, oh, that's not fair. We're only promoting, you know, reds. But I saw it very differently. I thought, well, greens like me who are motivated to build relationships, maybe we're not, maybe this is a motivation issue. Because if you're a green and motivated toward relationships, then management positions are not only unsatisfying, they can be uncomfortable because having authority over people in that capacity compromises relationships, because authority and relationships are in tension with each other. You dial one up,

the other goes down. For example, if you're on a team with a couple best friends for years, and suddenly you're promoted to be their manager, let's say you flex that position, right? you're like, I'm the boss lady now. You're telling them what to do. Your relationship suffers. But if you do nothing and you're still acting like their best friend, then your authorities undermine. So for people like me who are really motivated and rewarded by relationships, these positions of authority are not something, not only that we don't aspire to or that we just don't enjoy. And I was good at it.

I'm good at being a manager. I just didn't want to be. And there's one other point I was going to make about it. But anyway, point being, it was to me a motivation issue. If you're a green, a management position, you know, people are only going to work for things that they actually want and they're not going to work hard for things that they don't. So if management is a reward for hard work, I mean, you're only rewarding the people that actually are motivated by positions of authority, which is a subset of the population.

It's the old adage about people who ascend to positions of large power are motivated to acquire larger and larger amounts of power on the way. So again, it goes back to this systems issue because the reward for hard work, I mean, money, once you get to a certain level, becomes less and less the thing you're working for because it becomes incrementally less satisfying as it becomes a smaller percentage of your base. So what's left? Power and people who are really motivated like Reds toward position of power and control are going to work harder and get those positions more often than greens, not because they're more qualified for it, not because they're competent, but because that's the system that's set up. And as we know from behavioral economics,

cognitive, every discipline will tell you that structure drives behavior. So we can't really have any meaningful conversation about women at work or the gender gap without just talking about the structure that creates that disproportion in the first place. And then, sorry, there's one other thing that I wanted to say, which is the corporate hierarchy was designed a couple hundred years ago by men in the industrial age. It was the first time, you know, they needed to organize hundreds of workers around common business goals. So if you're a man setting up your organization and you're more motivated by competition, you set it up as a competition. It makes sense. It's their worldview. But it was also built for a time where the economy was large-scale manufacturing. And that

needs, like assembly lines and scaled production needs a top-down order power chain of command. But we're in an information economy now, and the entire world has changed. You need creativity and innovation, which don't thrive in a top-down power structure. It needs the opposite. But we're still using these legacy systems that were created a couple hundred years ago. Everything in the world has changed except these underlying structures. So that's really the very long-winded answer to your. your question. Yeah, well, thank you so much for explaining that. And so I think at the,

at the root of this all is really about how do we define success? How do we define success differently? Because not everybody is actually motivated by getting into positions of power. Like you said, we define power in a very male-dominated way. A lot of us who work in corporate, there's really only one ladder to success, and that's getting to the C-suite. That's what everybody in corporate wants. I work at Disney streaming. That's what everybody wants, including myself. I consider myself probably to be one of those red, fiery personalities who's ultra-competitive. But there's plenty of people who I work with who are super talented and who are leaders,

who do not want to manage people and who have opposite personalities of me. They're very creative. They contribute a lot. But they're never going to get to those leadership positions because it's just not their personality. They don't have it in them. So how do we then define success for those people? And is it totally broken?

where there's no hope for those people, they're just going to stay where they're at? Or what do you suggest to those people's do? And how do we start to define success differently in your opinion? So one thing that you mentioned, which is an important element of this, which is a narrow definition of power. But there's also an equally large problem here,

which is our narrow definition of leader. Because if you read sort of management texts from the 50s, 60s, you don't see the word leader pop up all over the place. It's manager. Today, over the past 10 years or so, when we've had this industry of thought leadership pop up, we've now used the term leader and manager synonymously. They're two very different things. There are fantastic managers who are also fantastic leaders,

but there's also fantastic leaders who are not managers. Before the last 10 years, we've reserved the word leader for people like Martin Luther King who didn't have a following because these people were worked, worked for him and that he held power over their salary and livelihood, right? He was a leader because he painted a vision for the future that people wanted to follow. They weren't forced to. So I think that when we talk about women not being in enough leadership positions, the problem is we think of that as management positions, right? So part of it is broadening our understanding of the term leader. Because if you say, people have said to me, so are you saying women don't want to be leaders? No, that's not what I'm

saying at all. I'm saying women, not all women want to be managers. Those are two, those are two different things. So I do think that we're thinking too inside the lines of how it's always been done and what we've always done. We've always had this structure. How can we even conceive of anything different? Well, it's not that hard if you try and just sort of get outside of those lines. You can make people, for example, I work very well with red type personalities. My daughter is actually dyed in the wool red. And actually, we work well together. She reminds me of all the things I need to do. But anyway, I work very well with that personality type because there is a yin-yang, a complementary set of skills. So like Cheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg have said so many times publicly

that their partnership, that this secret sauce to their great partnership is that they focus on what they're good at, and they lead in this partnership fashion. So Cheryl's really good at scaling and putting operations and systems into place for things that already exist. She did that at Google, too, and she took over sort of the AdWords organization. Mark is very good at creating new things that don't exist. He's very into the strategy and the product side, and he has no interest in sort of the operational details, right? I always found it strange that they, talk so publicly about how important this partnership is to their success without realizing no one else in the organization was allowed to do something similar because you can't partner with

somebody that's good on the management side because they have the position of power. You can't work in sort of these complementary ways because being an individual contributor is seen as sort of a lower power position. But there's no reason you can't have parallel tracks and sort of retool the system. You really want to keep your top performers if they don't want to be managers. And they do this all the time for engineering, which I make a footnote in the book about, but I don't highlight it. And I think it's an important point. It's very well known that people that are really good at coding and engineers don't want to be managers.

Why? Because they love coding. They want to stay on the doing actual work. And from a business standpoint, it makes sense not to put them all as managers because if they're great at coding, you want them to code. You don't want them, you know, those skills, if you're good to coder, doesn't scale by managing a team. But that's true in all aspects of the business. So like you mentioned the creative stuff, I'm super creative. It's not just that I'm a green. I don't want to be a manager.

I'm creative, which is I don't think link to any sort of color. I've never done the research on it. But it's an element that I think a lot of people relate to. I really like to dig into the project, do the work, you know, sort of managing other people and taking information from up top and giving it to people at the bottom. I mean, it's soul-crushing to me and other people really love it. So I was really good at storytelling at Google in terms of creating sales pitches and presenting all the time to the sales team. And when I was really successful at that, how is I rewarded with having to manage a team to stop doing the thing that I loved and what I was good at?

So it was a loss for me and it was a loss for Google. So I think the structure we have now, it doesn't work. And I think to your point about being ourselves, we can only be ourselves as we're not putting these arbitrary value judgments on what's valuable and what's not. And I think that, you know, you can change the rules of the game and retool the system, but that takes a long time. I don't think we need to wait for that to happen because you can also change rules of the game or you can change how you play it. And that's what I mean by defining success on your own terms. Just because the corporation says this position means that you did well, you succeeded, you advanced, doesn't mean that that's how it has to be defying for you.

It took me 15 years to realize I was working really hard for things that I didn't want. I was, instead of sort of figuring out what it is that I want and going after it, I was just sort of following a script of what I'm supposed to want, you know, the next promotion. And I'm looking around, well, this person didn't work nearly as hard as I did and they got promoted. So now I'm pissed. And now, you know, I've got to fix it. I've got to get to that position.

I didn't really want that position, but I really wasn't defining what it was I was aiming towards. So it was easy to just use what the system spit out as the goalpost, and that's part of the problem. So really, one of the messages in lean out, because lean out doesn't mean quit your job or reduce your ambition. It just means leaning out of anyone else's story for who you should be, what your career should look like, and what success means. So that's really what that piece of it is in terms of defining success on your own terms. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for breaking that down. So in your book, you say the system is broken and you say it's because of how we pick winners

and how we motivate people. So I think we gave a good overview of both of those things just now. So like you said, it's up to us to define our own success criteria. But in terms of people who are in management positions, who are leading customers, companies right now, how can they act differently and do things differently so that they aren't just picking those fiery red personalities for promotions? And how can we actually make a change if we are leaders ourselves? That's a great question. And it goes back to this idea that in the corporate, so women have dominated academia every year since 1982, right? So the question becomes,

why doesn't that last after graduation in the work world and the predominant theory is, you you know, this culture thing. I think it's much simpler. I think in school we have grades. We have objective ways to measure our work and our impact. And in the work world, we don't have grades. So instead of measuring people on the outcome of their work, we measure them on how they behave on the way to that outcome. So I'll explain what I mean. In the office or on Zoom, whatever these days, in a knowledge economy, we're not producing widgets. We can't count. Like, I made five. You made seven. You did more work. than I did today.

You know, a lot of times we're dealing with the ambiguous and invisible strategies that might not sort of take shape for a year. So in these environments where it's really hard to tell who's doing a good job or, frankly, who's working at all, what happens is our brain's default to whatever's most visible. We have a real bias for visibility. And so it becomes the people who we see the most, talk the most, talk the loudest, work on the most visible projects, self-promote, you know, are the most self-aggrandizing, the ones that, you know, desire to dominance, they're dominating a meeting. These are the things we see. And so we start to use them as proxies for work and leadership

and impact. And these visible behaviors, they do, they correlate more highly with men again, but they don't correlate more highly with good performance or leadership. So the real answer is a shift to really objective ways of measuring somebody's work. work for as a creative person again, one of my real strengths is being able to do something that takes someone who's very linear, maybe two weeks to do, and maybe it'll take me a couple hours. Look, there's a lot of things that they, you know, linear people do that I, you know, I wish in a million years. But that's one thing I do very well, but one thing I was penalized for at work. Because then what am I doing for two weeks? It didn't matter if what I did was better.

it was the fact that I wasn't visibly working on it as hard, right? And it's sort of the opposite of what we want to be rewarding at work. You don't want to be punishing people for being efficient and creative, but that's what ends up happening. So I think that there are, you know, we throw technology at everything in this world, but we don't throw technology on getting better grading people on their performance. And another example I use in the book is in college. Like my roommate and I took all the same classes,

but she was very conscientious and went to all of them. And I was lazy and, you know, studied the night before. And we got very similar grades. And I would, you know, use that as an example of, like, in school, that was okay. Because we both got a 94. It doesn't matter how I got the 94. And it was a really big wake-up call at work. Suddenly I had to focus on how to present my work more than I ever worked.

So really, if you're a manager and I tell anyone, not just women, the more you can get. And there's companies doing this in really interesting ways like Bridgewater, the hedge fund, where they really try and make it more of a meritocracy using algorithms and technology, but we don't all work at places like that. One thing you can do is when you have performance conversations with your manager, ask them for very clear, tangible outcomes that they want for the quarter and discuss order to the half, and ask what would sort of what kind of measurement can we use to gauge, how I'm doing against those goals.

And then use that as a foundation for every single performance conversation. Because what I found is if you don't have that, a manager at the end of the quarter can sort of use any anecdote or false perception of you throughout the quarter to influence your score or your ability to get promoted. So the more you can ground conversations and objective ways that you've impacted the business and you're consistent about them, it might not be a panacea, but at least it helps. And that's sort of until we get better on the technology piece, I think that's one way to address it on a day-to-day basis. At YAP, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence.

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Hello, Yap, gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life, and the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real, you can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform, and they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business. And I love that QuickBooks helps you you get paid faster, pay bill smarter, and even gives you access to funding when opportunity pops up. So QuickBooks can help you with bookkeeping, can help you with getting paid, can even

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that we work. We all work from anybody who's a knowledge worker is pretty much working from home. I haven't been in the office at Disney since March. We're all working from home. And I found that everything is more results oriented now. Now, I know that you're not working in a corporate situation now, so you might not have a complete opinion on this. But I've noticed that it's less about, you know, having to be like stuck at your desk anymore because they can't, they have no power over that anymore. They can't see us anymore. They only see us. They only see. the results that we have. So do you have any opinion on how COVID has shaped our system good or bad when it comes to the gender gap and when it just comes to how we judge productivity and things like that?

Well, do you guys use video conference at Disney? Both. Yeah. Okay. So again, like you said, I can't speak to this from personal experience, but I do speak to, you know, over the past six months, I've talked to thousands of people in my virtual talks and, you know, friends of mine, that are still at Google and work wherever. I have heard similar things to what you're saying, but the majority of people I speak to actually tell me the opposite, which is they're finding they're working longer hours than they were in the office. And that because people, and this might be a kudos to Disney,

because if you guys do have your setup in a way that does focus on results, your way ahead of most people, because in a lot of companies, they're still sort of not that objective way to say at the end of the quarter. You know, I pulled in this much in sales or whatever it is. And it's even harder when there's no face-to-face opportunity to drop by the boss's desk and sort of, you know, make yourself heard for five minutes. So people feel more of an obligation to be on video, show their face, email more because there is no other way. your boss doesn't sort of see you leaving for a client meeting, you know, and see you in a conference room presenting or on the team meeting. So actually, what I've been saying, and, you know, this is

interesting feedback that, you know, I need to sort of consider a little bit because I've been speaking on the opposite scenario, which is it's increased the pressure and it's increased the amount of work, but not increase the amount of productive work. And it's increased the amount of productive work. and it's increased the amount of publicity kind of work. And I think work expands to fill the containers insofar as how long people are working. And so now we're home. The containers bigger. So people are expecting, when there are no objective results like grades,

then who's ever more motivated to be seen as the good one sets the new benchmark for which everyone else on the team now has to compete with. So I see it as the same issues manifesting in a different environment, but clearly there's pockets that it's great news that are working in the opposite way. Yeah. And it could be a fact of my personality that I'm very good at making my work very visible and I'm very good at videos. And so I can shoot a video and use my podcasting skills to kind of stand out where maybe other people aren't having a tougher time. Maybe it's just easier for me. Okay, so let's talk about your time at Google when you started this women's lecture series because I think this is really cool that you started this sort of not side hustle, was like an

entrepreneur within the company, then you took it out and you started doing speaking series at other companies. So how did this come to fruition? Why did you do it? And talk to us about that journey because I'm sure there's lots of people out there who wants to start speaking and want to start their own thing. I started, okay, so I have really. really have always been fascinated. I've done so much reading and research just because I'm

interested in it and sort of gender and psychology and evolutionary biology. And, you know, then I got into a whole thing on business books and behavioral economics. I don't know. I'm all over the place. But over 15 years, I did a ton of reading. I've always just been sort of very interested in gender. And excuse me, I've, I did a lot of writing before college and in college. and then not again until I started writing this book, except I did write a ton of email, but apart from that, there was always sort of... Right, exactly. But I think there is this creative person inside that just was trapped for a long time. And when, toward the end of my career at Google, I just started feeling like, I don't know how to

describe it, but I felt, and it's funny because my role at the time that I started this was the best one I'd ever been. I was so happy. I loved it. Maybe that's what it was. I was also on stage a lot presenting to salespeople all the time. And I sort of had this aha of like, oh my gosh, I love being on stage. And I love writing and then performing my writing, which was really what I was doing at Google. And I'm quite introverted, actually. So you wouldn't think. I hated speaking up on meetings, but get me on a stage. And I was like, total ham. So it kind of made me sort of wake up a little bit like, oh, I love doing this, but I don't love doing it about online video advertising, which is what I, you know, I was doing it for in my job. And like you said, in the beginning, I was attending all

these women's workshops because after Lean In was published, Google went all in on like female leadership programs, all this stuff. And, you know, having always been passionate about that, I was like, sign me up. But over time, I became so disenchanted because it was so, it seemed just, It started out with great intention, and I think that it was good at first, but it morphed into this beast where women in the most high positions at the company would get up and lecture us, and then everybody wanted to sort of get involved because it was good for their career, and we couldn't really be honest about what was going on. And sometimes on stage, it would be like a woman I worked for who hated women more than

anyone else I've ever worked with, and she's telling us about female empowerment. So it just felt bony, and it angered me because this was something. I cared very much about. I'm also a single mom of three kids. So I have very tangible, real challenges that I felt like I wasn't even allowed to talk about. So I just got more angry is what it was. You know what? I'm sort of thinking of my answer as I'm talking and now I'm getting to it. It was, I just got angry. It was so phony and I hate phoniness and phony about a topic super important to me. And so that really was what inspired me to write my. own perspective. And then because in parallel, I had been doing these trainings at Google,

and it was the first time in my career, I really got to write my own stuff and present it, I've started to see how much I loved it. So I think the anger combined with sort of discovering a little bit of what I liked, I just felt compelled in a way I can't describe. And it didn't really take off at all like wildfire because at first, it was five of my friends in a conference room that I made them sit there while I presented this thing I had. But then over time, more women started to show up. And I started going out, looking for other opportunities to present this. It was very fulfilling to me. And when I went to Facebook, there was a big part of me that thought, oh, this is the perfect place to expand this platform. Because in my mind, I thought, you know,

I'll do this for 10 years on the side and then maybe start my own thing. Facebook's a great way to accelerate that program, your birthplace of Lean In. And they came to me as, you know, they tried to recruit me for something totally unrelated. But in the recruiting process, I asked a million times, I really feel passionate about this project.

Would I be able to continue working on it? Would you? And every, oh, of course, this is Facebook. Of course we're going to, you know, blah, blah. That's an echo as planned at Facebook at all. It was a horrible experience. I write about it, you know, in the book, the prolog. You can also find it on Medium.

on my medium page, why working at Facebook inspired me to write Lean Out. And it was terrible. And I met Cheryl Sandberg my second week. And there was a part of me that thought, oh, this is a shortcut. She'll love, we'll meet each other. She'll love that I'm doing all this stuff. She'll give me the, she'll give me the platform I need. Like, I had all these crazy fantasies about what was going to happen and actually led to my demise, but figuratively speaking, but at Facebook, again, And I was in such a horrible place mentally emotionally that I sort of returned to work on this series as a life raft, basically. At some point, I was at a women's thing at Facebook. And I just, the anger returned.

And I thought, you know what, instead of getting self-righteous about all of this, I need to take myself seriously and share my truth and tell my story and share, you know, what I think and feel. And that's really what gave birth to the real commitment to turning that lecture series into a book. And now I'm speaking on it full time. It's amazing. It's amazing how passion you had 10, you know, years or so ago has led to your ultimate, you know, goal now. And same thing with me. I started a young and profiting podcast as a side hustle in 2018. Now I own a podcast marketing agency. We're doing so well. and it's like two and a half years in, and I'm ready to, you know, hopefully become a full-time entrepreneur as well. So it is possible to have a side hustle and turn it into your full-time thing.

It's not easy, though. I will say it's... It's not easy. You have to be really hard work. When I started at Facebook, decided to turn it into a book and I was still working there, I would wake up at 4.30 every morning and work on it for an hour before I got the kids up to go to school and off to my job at Facebook. And it took me, I had to change my, my whole personality, basically to become disciplined. And I think once things in my life got bad enough, like, finally I was able to take the thing I needed to seriously. So I just, I do want to say it's very, you can turn it side, but it requires like a lot. Yeah. It does. It requires sacrifice, you know, and organizing your time in a different way and you're not going to have enough, you know, the same

amount of time for your relationships and things like that. But also that it's, you can do it in small steps. I think people get overwhelmed by the idea. Oh yeah. And I think that's what stops people. But if you start like you did dabbling in something you really enjoy like I did, then, you know, it could eventually turn into something over time. Completely. My first, when I first launched my podcast, I was launching a podcast every three months. And then it became, you know, every month. And it was every week. Then, you know, it just kept escalating. And I got a team and processes and that's how you scale. So I completely agree. Okay, so I want to dig deep on something that you mentioned previously. You mentioned your time at Facebook and you hinted to the fact that it was a

very different culture from, you know, your time at Google. And, you know, you told them about your little side hustle project that you had in advance of working there and then you had some backlash when you actually started working there. Like I said, Heather Monaghan is one of my mentor. So I listened to your interview with her and you guys were talking about how they made you take down a blog post that had like four views on it because it was something that didn't agree with. So tell us that story. What did you do when that happens? And how can somebody who has a side hustle advocate for themselves when they are doing something that's totally legal? It's non-competitive. It's none of the corporation's business, in fact. So what did you do?

And tell us a story and how others can learn from it. Yeah, it was crazy. So I worked, so I grew up at Google, my career. Like I grew up in my career at Google. I started right after grad school and was there from the time, you know, it was 23, 24, up through whatever. So it's a very weird company to grow up in because it's Google. And I was sort of, you know, you start to think that's how, well, I knew that's not how all companies operated. But I thought that's how all tech. companies were. And Facebook would be the same as Google. And Google had its issues. I'm not saying, you know, they were, you know, it was like utopia. But they were, you know, when I was there, I think maybe they're different now. I don't know. But they were tolerant of conflicting mess or internal debate or open debate. And as long as it was respectful, you know, dissenting views, They actually have changed since then. But anyway, that's how I grew up, so to speak.

And so I was speaking, when I was at Google, I would speak, you know, I was at pace and new school and doing all. Nobody cared at all. Like, you could write a blog post critical of Google. And as long as you weren't sharing confidential information or whatever, they just didn't care. It was not that way at all, Facebook. And I was really surprised. They're very strict about.

everything to do with messaging. So even in the sales realm, there were these very strict ways that you had to talk about the product, at your presentations, and they were very controlling over that. And I wrote, so like, for example, I spoke totally separately from Facebook at a medical conference and I spoke on innovation and I had to get my deck approved even though it had nothing to, you know, it was just that kind of thing. It was new. So then when I was going through this hard time, I just started writing for the first time since college. And I posted a couple articles in my brand new medium blog, which like you said, like literally it didn't have. All it had was my name.

It didn't link to any social media. It was just my little sandbox. And when I would write something, I would send it to my best friend and my parents, and that was it. And it never mentioned Facebook or Google. You had no idea who I was from writing this. And I wrote one about self-deception. And then my other post was about how innovation gets stifled in large companies because innovation is compromised by big egos. Okay?

No one had ever seen this article except my parents. I don't even think Sarah, my best friend read it. Okay? It was boring. And then one day I got this email from corporate comms at Facebook to tell me to take it down. And I was like, I was very. floored because I couldn't even figure out how they found it, right? Like how this isn't something I shared with anyone and it wasn't connect.

It was like its own island. So then a friend of mine who worked for HR, she ran HR for Big Bank, explained to me that they use these software packages to find any place in the internet where some employee that or a person that has the name of your employee has posted something. So I guess that's what happened. they read it and asked me to take it down. I was shocked because, like I said, it's still up there on my medium page. It's like the second article I ever wrote. I mean, now it's all connected to my social, but back then, I mean, no, not at all. Did you take it down or did you say no?

I said if I changed it to my initials instead of my full name, are you okay with that? And then she came back and said, I think at first took it down. And then I was just so pissed. I went back and asked later on. She said it was fine if it was just my initials. So it just, my initials, my name wasn't anywhere on it. And then first thing I did after Facebook was put my name on that sucker. Yeah, I'm surprised. I'm like the most popular person at Disney streaming on LinkedIn. I'm so surprised that they aren't like at me like all the time asking me to take things down

or reviewing my stuff before I post it. At first they were, you know, even though I disclosed that because I already had Young and Profiting before I started there, I disclosed. I disclosed it. And at first they were giving me some issues and, like, the legal team kept contacting me. And then now they just, they kind of just let me do whatever I want. So it's kind of nice. And Google was encouraging of that stuff.

But it speaks to the culture at Facebook. And I also think that there's, it's really, you know, if you think about Charles Samberg's narrative on women, she spent a year on a campaign to ban people from using the word bossy. There is an intent to control language, and I think that that's reflected in the women's stuff and also in the company itself. There is a mission to control everything about what people say. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts, and fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better.

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there's a woman who basically recruited you to join the company. She gave you so many compliments. She made you feel really welcome and like you were going to be a great fit. And then you got to the company and she ended up bullying you so much for so much so that somebody else reported it and you had to like take a course on bullying and whatever. So tell us about that story and also what are some of the lessons that you learned from that. Yeah. So I got a call from I refer to her as Kimberly in the book. She's the senior executive at Facebook. And she called me in March of 2015 about a role at Facebook she wanted to recruit me for one of her directors is someone I'd worked with closely at Google so he was recommending me and I wasn't ready to leave Google I was pretty

happy at Google at the time but Kimberly is like one of the she's just super over the top charming like knows exactly what to say to make you feel like she gets me she was like super she's very flatter it was a lot of flattery and this went back on for many months I mean, it was really a courtship. And over maybe, I don't, nine or ten months of this back and forth, not every day, but like we spoke. And we became friends and she finally won me over. And then my third week at Facebook, she just totally turned on me in a way that was so dizzying and confusing. And, you know, she wouldn't acknowledge my existence in public.

She wouldn't reply to any of my email. She undermined me or made jabs all the time. I was like, I had no idea what the hell was happening to me or why. It was horrible. And I eventually found out that it was, so she used to work at Google too. And I knew her, but we had never worked together. So in several different ways, I found out that there were other people that she had done this to in the past, who I had connected.

Essentially, she was pissed about my meeting with Cheryl and saw it as some. Oh, I didn't give that contact. So I reached out to Cheryl, my first week there to see if she would have a second for a quick introduction, hello, the next week. She was speaking at our sales conference in San Francisco, my second week of Facebook. So I just sent her an email saying, like, you know, oh, I'm from North Miami Beach. Like, nobody in tech is from North Miami Beach. So it was like a hometown girl kind of thing. Like, you know, I'd love to just shake your hand and meet you in person real quick.

But she ended up giving me 20 minutes on her. her calendar. We met for about half an hour at the conference, the two of us. So I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like, you know, Charlotte Sandberg's maybe my best friend. And like, this is, you know, all these stupid fantasies. But Kimberly saw this as, because she didn't, she wasn't there in the meeting. She doesn't really know me that. She saw it as like a political maneuver, you know, because here she has been courting this relationship with Charles Sandberg for three years trying to like spread her feathers, you know, like a peacock. And here I am my second week. I I go on. So I could see from that perspective, if you're that type of person, why you might

describe those intentions to me, but it's laughable if you actually know me. I'm like horrible at politics. So anyway, she just was pissed and wanted to do everything she could to not only get rid of me, but humiliate me and like drag me through the mud in the process. And so someone else reported it, but we had to go through an HR investigation, which was a nightmare. I had no choice but to participate. Of course, she was found innocent. And then next thing I know, I'm on a PIP, a personal improvement plan where, you know, they say you're going to be fired if you don't improve. Number one, I didn't want to participate in the investigation. And I was told that there's a very strong anti-retaliation policy that if I do participate, I won't be punished. So that investigation ends.

And like a month later, I'm on a PIP. I'm like, what is going on here? So, you know, of course I say something to the new HR person who didn't know about the investigation. And I'm like, isn't this protected? Suddenly I'm like off the pit. It's very clear cut legal thing that they did. But I knew eventually I'd be fired. It was impossible to do my job. And by the way, I still have the performance improvement plan document in my drawer. And sometimes they go back and laugh because the biggest reason for it was my failure to develop good relationships. with Kimberly and her team. So it was just a really, really horrible experience. I went from this job I loved at Google where I had this great reputation and I was loved by the sales team and I was really well respected and I had this great setup where flexibility. You know, it's like an old timer. I'd been there forever. And then at Facebook, I was like a frigging pariah with leprosy. It was just

terrible. And you start to really question, like, who am I? What am I doing? And that's really what forced me into being honest with myself about me and who I am and that that world was never going to be a place I could fully manifest, I guess, my talents and potential. Yeah. So there's, there's two questions that I want to ask you. So one is, why is it that women are so competitive and nasty to other women in the corporate world? Like, so let me start with that. first. And then the second question I have for you is, why did you wait until you were fired at Facebook? Why didn't you just quit? I'll answer the second question first, which is I'm a single mom of three kids and financially independent and I don't get money from anyone. So to basically say, screw you,

Facebook, I'm going to do this book was just trust me, I wanted to quit. And every week I do my budget and see, but just felt completely irresponsible. You know, I have a house and a household and kids, and I live in a nice neighborhood with good schools. I mean, this just wasn't even an option. So what I did was work on the book knowing I was going to be fired to get the salary and the stock and everything I could so that when I was fired, I could use that as my money to take a bet on myself because it requires a lot of money to do something like, what I did. And I based this, that was my plan, save up as much as I can so that I could live on that money while I try and forge this new path. So that's a very easy question to answer. The first question was, I think that women can be very nasty to each other because, and competitive,

because work is a competition. Corporate world is a zero-sum game. And I think that the vast majority of women when being out of that world now and having met tons of more women outside the corporate world. When women are working together toward a common goal, their relationships are their power and their currency. And when you put women in a zero-sum competitive scenario, it erodes the very fabric of their relationships and it erodes the very thing that makes so many of us strong. So I think that women aggress toward other women. in ways that are covert and underhanded and seem nasty. And men aggress for other men in more direct, overt ways.

And we almost expected of them. And men don't use relationships as like emotional weapons like women do, because women connect to other women through relationships and these sort of like really deep connections. And then when you're competing again, it's very easy for women to turn around and then it's not easy for women. It's easy for women that are really competitive and trying to get ahead to then flip the script and turn that against other women. But I think that women in environments like I read about all these women all over the world that are dealing with like these severe economic issues.

And these women in these villages and communities come together and like change their corner of the world for themselves in these amazing ways. So I don't think it's that women are like always mean and competitive to each other. I think they're like that when they're working in a world that requires them to do that in order to succeed. Yeah. It's kind of like that's the only way to get to the top anyway. So you might as well have that like crab in a bucket mentality, I guess, because you're not going to get rewarded for anything else. Okay. So you left Facebook and then you came out with this book.

Were you worried that you were going to get backlash for this book? did you get backlash and did anybody reach out to you like Cheryl Sandberg and like what happened? Did people retaliate against you? I think no. I think that first of all, the thing I was worried about most was that I was afraid, honest to God, that Kimberly was going to hire a hitman to kill me. And I went around to tell, I went to my family and friends. I was like, if I die under mysterious circumstances in the next few years, you must investigate her.

Like, it's her, I'm telling you. And part of that was because I was reading this amazing book called The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout at the time. And it was a great book, but not necessarily the great book to read when you're outing a sociopath, you know, publicly. So that was really my biggest fear. I still sometimes get afraid when I watch, like, movies or whatever. I'm like, oh, shit, is she really going to kill me? But anyway, that was what I was afraid of. I wasn't afraid of backlash.

I don't know why I wasn't. I probably should have been. But I wasn't because if you read the book, it's hard to get, I don't know. I think it's hard to get angry because I'm trying to be very fair and objective and take different people's perspectives and show why we're not making progress on this issue and the faulty logic. I don't think I'm dragging anybody through the mud as a person. You know, so, and, you know, I only talk about lean in in the first chapter, maybe this a little bit in the second. After that, I don't even talk, although I do take down other books. But I think that maybe my, I haven't received backlash because I think that maybe my intention came through really loud and clear, which is my intention is to help women.

And if Shell Samborgan and I have different ways of doing that, then that shouldn't be controversial if our goal is the same, right? it's only controversial if somebody has a vested interest in their way being the right way. But if both of us care about it, because I do think that lean in is helpful for a lot of women. I loved it when I first read it because I was in a place of, I was uncertain about my career. I didn't know why I wasn't getting ahead and she had all these answers for me, which just were easy, but ultimately weren't right and I was sort of, I think, hoodwinked by it. So I do think that women that aspire to be, you know, CEO of a corporation, this is probably a very useful book because you're looking at experiences from somebody who's been where you're trying to go.

My issue with it is women are not some big monolithic brain where we all want the same things and want to get to the same places. And it became this like, if you don't agree with lean in, you're anti-woman, which is ridiculous. So I do think it does help. But I wrote this because I never saw anyone like me with my challenges, my voice that I could connect with, talk about any of the real challenges we all were facing. So I didn't get backlash. I never heard from Cheryl because she's got much bigger things going on. Like, you know, she's at the Senate, like on the Senate floor every other day.

And she's never mentioned lean out, partly I'm sure, because she's smart and knows that if she said anything or acknowledged that it exists, It would be the best thing that ever happened to me because people are still finding out about my book. Everyone knows Cheryl Sandberg. So, like, even if she went out there and was like, Marissa Orr is the worst and, you know, that's why we fired her and lean out sucks. I would be like, yes. Like, finally people have heard my name and they know about my book. So, no, I haven't heard from her. I'm still crossing my fingers that I do.

So, yeah, that's the story. That's so funny. Maybe I'll have Cheryl on my show and then mention it. Maybe have both of us at the same time. I still harbor these. I'll just, yeah, I'll ping you in. I'll ping you in randomly. I still think we would be good friends if we, if she.

I harbor these. I'm like, you know what? If she knew me, we still would be really good friends because we're allowed to disagree. Very cool. So the last question I ask all my guests is, what is your secret to profiting in life? My whole thing in life is to stay true. to who I am and figuring out what that even means. Cool.

And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? Well, you can find me and listen to a much better answer to that question when I'm more articulate on my podcast, which is nice girls don't watch The Bachelor and just a heads-up. Actually, I'm a big loyal fan of The Bachelor Nation. That's supposed to be irreverent and a joke, the title, tongue-in-cheek. And then I am on Instagram, Twitter, at Marissa Beth Orr. My middle name is B-E-T-H, so at Marissa Beth Orr. On Medium, it's just at Marissa Orr.

And then I'm also on LinkedIn. Very cool. So we'll put all her links in our show notes. Thank you, Marissa. This was such a great conversation. I loved it. Thanks so much for having me. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast.

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