Conscious Success Co (00:00.93)
Hello, Claire, it is so, so good to see your face again. Thank you so much for joining us on the Conscious Success podcast.
Clair Byrd (00:07.055)
gosh I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me and I'm excited to spend some time with you.
Conscious Success Co (00:11.378)
Yeah, I feel like I've been going through different people who have inspired me personally in my life and throughout my career and various chapters and inviting them on the pod. And you are someone who when we work together and overlapped at Twilio, you are working on the marketing team. And I remember we worked together for a project for Airbnb and like doing design thinking. And you came in and you were just like so brilliant and were able to take these like
really complex relationships and concepts and bring everyone together and align people. I think the thing that I probably did right more than anything in sales at Twilio is know when to bring in smart people to do selling on my behalf. And you were one of the people that I would bring in. And you just have so much wisdom. And you have such an interesting career journey. So I just wanted to share you with everyone listening. So thank you for being here.
Clair Byrd (01:05.556)
my gosh, that's so kind. Thank you. I'm really excited. I loved working on those projects with you and I loved doing those things that you just talked about. So I'm excited to talk about them.
Conscious Success Co (01:15.276)
OK, awesome. So I always like to start way back at the very beginning and get to understand little Claire a little bit. So can you tell us what you were like as a kid and what your kind of childhood looked like growing up that shaped you?
Clair Byrd (01:30.533)
Yeah, I'm very happy to share. actually think it's really formative and important in my story. So I am the same person that I was when I was four. And I think that I've gone through many shapes and phases of Claire as I've become a grownup and as I've grown into my career. But if I look back on the things that were true or reported to me as true about how I was as a toddler up until when I actually spawned into existence and start remembering things.
As well as some of the artifacts from that time, I have always been the most stubborn person on the planet. I have always been deeply interested in weird stuff. I was super obsessed with, first it was dogs, then it was rats, then it was horses, then it was different types of cuisine, that gets just over lots and lots of hyper fixations that I'm really interested in and remain interested in actually even into my adulthood. And I wanted to serve people my whole life. So I have a little book that is some-
kicking around somewhere here. like the Dr. Seuss All About You book, which is like a popular book that kids from the 90s have. And it's like a fill out book and it's like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And even when I was could barely write my own name and letters, I said I wanted to be a cook. And that's like documented in actual artifact history for me. And that's been true. Food has been central to my life for as long as I can remember. have a
I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Ohio, I have a Southern family, food is love to us, and I absolutely believe that still to this day. that the core beliefs around bringing people together and having community, being in community with one another and the importance of that really impact a lot of how I think now. And a lot of what I try to deliver in my day job, which has nothing to do with food, is to do that, is to bring people together around things that they love.
and give them an opportunity to be in community with other people who love those things.
Conscious Success Co (03:29.902)
Mm-hmm. love that so much because you so often, you know I'll talk with my clients about the dreams that we had as a child You know to be a chef for a cook or in food very often. Yes Sometimes that's what our career ends up looking like and that can be great But also we get to get curious about what were the reasons for that like once underneath that what's deeper than that? It's like bringing people together in community like sharing love like things like that were driving it sounds like that core desire
desire from a young age and that shows up even in your marketing and tech career today in a way that might not feel obvious.
Clair Byrd (04:06.766)
It does. also think that being one of the litter of kids, like I'm on the old, I'm the second oldest and the oldest girl, which means I'm the oldest sibling. And I think that having a whole bunch of young other people around you that you're sort of constantly in charge of and doing things for and on behalf of and helping shepherd this young life as a sibling, I think is also a really important part of my identity. And there were, I'm one of five. I have three youngers that are pretty materially younger.
Conscious Success Co (04:29.164)
How many kids are in your family?
Clair Byrd (04:36.518)
you know, eight, nine, and almost 10 years younger than me. And so they were little when I was a teenager. And I think that that, you know, that experience with helping people grow up and find their own path has been something that I miss actually, and it's why I spend time with people who are young in career who want to access tech or access other parts or like really thinking about what they want to do with their lives. I really love spending time with those people because it actually reminds me of my siblings.
Conscious Success Co (05:02.222)
Do you identify with the whole eldest daughter framing? Yeah. In what ways do you see that showing up today?
Clair Byrd (05:06.022)
100 % 1000 % Yes. You know, you get you get tasked with being the the manager of the family with no training, just sort of got to go figure it out. You get tasked with a lot of the emotional labor of the upbringing of the kids and the bringing the together of the family and the mediation of conversations and conflicts and and I deeply resonate with that. And it's definitely a role that I take.
Conscious Success Co (05:33.186)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (05:35.206)
within my family and also outside of my family, even in my peer group, I often play that role. have sort of an older sister energy even in my friend group.
Conscious Success Co (05:45.359)
Totally. And I imagine that's kind of good leadership training in a lot of ways. And it might have like a dark underbelly to it as well. It sometimes needs to be explored or addressed so that you're not self abandoning and always putting other people's needs in front of your own. understanding how to like corral people and be emotionally attuned and all of that can also really serve you.
Clair Byrd (06:05.381)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (06:10.182)
I think it does. It doesn't make me a low anxiety personality. think that, but I do think that being a somewhat high anxiety personality and being worried about the experience and the mental health and the lives of other people is really good, especially in I think today's world where everything can be somewhat self-centered, not setting yourself in many of those experiences, actually differentiating.
Conscious Success Co (06:15.35)
Yeah.
Conscious Success Co (06:34.263)
Hmm.
Clair Byrd (06:38.04)
It's actually different. makes you look and appear differently than the rest of the world when you're not centering yourself in an experience.
Conscious Success Co (06:38.35)
Mmm.
Conscious Success Co (06:45.068)
And I feel like that can be so rare today, especially in some cutthroat, revenue-driven organizations. it's, I don't know, it's kind of a distinctly more traditionally feminine quality as well. We don't necessarily see that as often in some of our male leaders, but it can also sometimes be seen as being soft or not being as
I don't know the word for it, not a strong leader, but it can be seen as like a drawback almost to not just be like ruthlessly focused on winning or on yourself. How do you see that and how does that actually make you the leader that you are?
Clair Byrd (07:26.276)
I think it's the difference between individual sports and team sports. If you are ruthlessly focused on winning, you're thinking about yourself and your performance. If you're winning as a team, you're thinking about other people's performance. I think about what my primary deliverable to my day job for my actual work is my team. Their happiness, their engagement, their success, their performance has very little to do with me.
Conscious Success Co (07:48.303)
And does that feel like that rolls up to your CEO or your board that you're reporting this out to? Or is that something you're measuring for yourself, but you still have these KPIs or deliverables that you're responsible for that have nothing to do directly with your team's satisfaction or happiness and fulfillment?
Clair Byrd (08:09.669)
I mean, I'm sharing and saying that like a high performing team is required to get those outcomes. I have a very strongly held belief that a disengaged team, you're going to get a sub optimal outcome, even if you have the best talent in the world. my perspective is that the best way for me to deliver the KPIs that actually matter to the business, the business outcomes is through a highly engaged and empowered team. And that seems to be true because we're crushing it and we consistently crush it.
Conscious Success Co (08:22.574)
Hmm.
Clair Byrd (08:38.245)
And I think that if you as a leader cannot tie your team's engagement and performance to KPIs, that's a you problem. That's not your team's fault. That's bad planning and that's bad leadership. So it's my job as the leader, the marketing leader to figure out what are the things we need to go do and then who do we need to do them. And it's my team's job to figure out what we are doing, why and how.
And because it's also not just from the perspective of keeping them engaged and empowered in their own, how they spend their time. Cause I think that that's really critical. Time is our only finite resource in the world in reality. And so it's really important for people and to their engagement with their job and thereby their performance in their job to have autonomy and empowerment over how they spend their time. But I also can't in good conscious or with any level of,
of logic hold people accountable for things if I'm telling them how to do them and that's in opposition with their recommendations. So like for me to be able to actually hold people accountable to anything, they have to be in charge of deciding how to get it done.
Conscious Success Co (09:38.283)
Hmm.
Conscious Success Co (09:46.414)
Hmm
Gosh, I love that so much and your focus on engagement and empowerment. And it's something I talk a lot about, about we do our best work when we're in what I call creator mode, where we feel collaborative and creative and innovative and we're in play and we feel impact and purpose and joy. When we're doing that, we're able to think divergently and do our best work and collaborate most effectively, which is what you're saying leads to those KPIs and that sense of ownership of, OK, Claire is
clearly setting the direction, but I'm responsible for how this gets done, and I feel like an owner, and I can go do it. And something, I was actually just with some girlfriends at dinner last night talking about this, but my intention for the Conscious Success podcast is not only to highlight women who've been in corporate and pivoted to entrepreneurship. I don't believe that that is the only way to have a consciously successful career. But I do think there's many examples of
corporate companies that are not leading in the way that you're leading, where people feel disempowered, where they feel stuck or a cog in a machine, or they're just the next time that there's some type of reorg, they're going to be let go, and they don't believe that leadership cares about them anymore. How do you maintain this in a world where that isn't necessarily commonplace or the norm?
Clair Byrd (11:04.697)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (11:12.517)
I totally, I was gonna say actually that I find this my style to be the exception to the rule. I think that having personally been in both environments, like I wanna be in a garden, I don't wanna be shaped by a carpenter, I think. And so I really am just, you know, be selfishly projecting onto my people what I want in my own life. But I think that...
Conscious Success Co (11:18.169)
Yeah.
Conscious Success Co (11:27.031)
Mmm.
Clair Byrd (11:40.622)
It's definitely an adjustment. Every time that I bring someone in from an environment where they have been disempowered or where they have been over-managed or they have been micromanaged and given tasks instead of presented problems to solve, there is a rehabilitation period where we go through the stages of grief, the dismantling of the narrative.
And it takes a long time for those people who to actually trust and believe that what I'm talking about is true. And the thing that matters is follow through. like consistently following through on my promises to the organization and modeling the behavior that I want to see from my leaders and from the people contributing to the teams is the most important thing to actually getting that done. And I find, you know, that's hard for a lot of people, you know, follow through and consistent follow through and being like one of the temporal values that resonates most deeply with me is being reliable as gravity.
Conscious Success Co (12:11.727)
you
Conscious Success Co (12:23.555)
Mm.
Clair Byrd (12:34.019)
That is what really matters. And so I make promises to my team around how we operate together, what I expect from them, what I expect from myself, and then I consistently show up and make sure that they see me doing those things. And that they see me going to bat when I tell them I'm going to consistently delivering, you know, commentary or feedback from the rest of the organization, even when it's bad or hard, because it's the right thing to do and it's what I would expect them to do.
Conscious Success Co (12:48.559)
Hmm.
Clair Byrd (13:03.821)
So I think it's really just about follow through and then giving people opportunities to unwind this narrative in a safe environment where there is no risk to them. It's like, can I pro, I always think about, especially for those that I consider to be like my high potential cohort, people who I see as like future leaders are really, really talented, potential executives. Like how do I give them a little playground in which they can really expand their strategic.
vision to give them an opportunity to really take a big swing at something or a shot on goal that might be scary if they were coupled with a lot of executive visibility or lot of, there was a lot of risk hanging on what they were doing. So how can I free space in their life to allow them to do those things without risk? Because after they have done that a few times, their risk tolerance becomes higher and then they'll take those bigger swings when it matters more. So it's just intentional.
Conscious Success Co (13:57.946)
And how do you actually remove that risk for them to allow them to feel that space, to be in that creative vortex in play and build their own self-trust?
Clair Byrd (14:08.356)
So I think there are two components. One component is like just capacity planning. We consistently under capacity plan so that there is, there is slack in the system so that people can go out and ideate and have something and have a creative idea and then be given the resources across the organization to actually go deliver it because like nothing sucks worse than coming up with an idea that you are super excited about and you think is really going to impact something and then have no ability to deliver it because no one else can help you. So like the whole system has to support this idea.
Conscious Success Co (14:14.927)
Mm.
Clair Byrd (14:38.702)
And then the other thing is just showing or not showing, building a culture of a growth mindset, right? That like the work and the delivery is divorced from the outcome. And the review, like when we do reviews, when we talk to employees about their performance, we talk about the work, not necessarily the outcome. Because if we did something and it didn't quote work to deliver the business outcome that we wanted, that doesn't mean the work was bad.
Conscious Success Co (14:44.751)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (15:05.934)
That means that we were incorrect about our hypothesis around how that thing was going to work. It means that we were wrong about how the market was going to receive it. And then we learned something from that and then we will get better because of it. So like the growth mindset, I think is really critical to this and understanding that like the work and the outcomes are divorced from one another. We still have to deliver an outcome. And so we get creative about how we do that or we take, you know, different levels of risk based on what we're trying to achieve.
So like we are, for example, not gonna tie up, you know, our expected like 80 % of an outcome in some theoretical risky never before done thing before. That makes no sense. So like it's sizing the opportunity, giving people space and then really reinforcing the growth mindset, which is that the work is separate from the outcome. Everything is an experiment. If it doesn't deliver the outcome we expected, there's nothing wrong with the work. The work was good. The outcome was not what we expected for reasons. Take those reasons.
Conscious Success Co (15:43.819)
Mm-hmm
Clair Byrd (16:02.318)
pour them back into the system and get better next time.
Conscious Success Co (16:05.368)
I mean, those two things are just so, so big. And again, not true of most organizations. I think most organizations overcapacity plan, and they give everyone 120%. And then there aren't resources for those creative ideas. And that oftentimes fuels burnout in organizations, or disengagement, or disempowerment. And then also that, OK, yeah, divorcing the delivery from the outcome and really having the ability to
Clair Byrd (16:16.014)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (16:34.384)
learn and get curious and be like, how was our hypothesis off if the delivery was good but the outcome was not and not shaming or making their performance review subpar because despite delivery, the outcome wasn't there. And again, I think both of these things
Clair Byrd (16:38.254)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (16:50.006)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (16:54.352)
feel countercultural in a way or certainly not the norm. How have you developed this or had such confidence and clarity in this being your leadership style and your vision? And have you had challenges selling that into various organizations where you've been the leader or a misalignment with other executives who don't see things the same way? And if so, how have you navigated that?
Clair Byrd (17:17.444)
I think the genesis of this entire thought process is again, it just comes from the kitchen. I'm like a one trick pony. I worked in a kitchen professionally. have this brigade, like a huge level of orchestration and planning and thinking goes into delivering food in a scaled environment. You have to think about everything from like how many carrots you're going to cut up today.
to how many people am I expecting to serve today and how many do I think are gonna get this dish versus that dish? There's a ton of like planning and orchestration that goes into actually delivering those experiences that I think get undervalued culturally, at least in North America. But regardless, I didn't go to school for what I do. I had to like observe my way into being a successful leader. And the whole way that I did that was through experimentation.
So like hypothesis, experiment, observe outcomes, recycle. So like this is how I became the leader that I am. And again, like I'm just selfishly projecting the way that I want people to learn onto others and it just happens to work really well. And I think that it's easy to show or to start to show a track record of success, of incremental success, because like even though 1 % every single day doesn't sound like a lot.
if you actually zoom out and look at like 1 % every day for a year, that's 3X an outcome. So I think that there is a little bit of an investment in my style, right? Like you have to believe in an experimentation oriented style and a growth mindset, or at least let me convince you that it's worthwhile. And it generally lands much better with leadership teams who are very first principles oriented.
Conscious Success Co (18:42.0)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (19:02.532)
who are gonna start with, what is the actual problem that we need to solve? What are the things that we think we need to do to solve it? Why do we think that those are the things that we need to do to solve it? How would that actually look in reality and how do we know it's working? Just like the components, the piece, the components of strategy. And because that framework slots very nicely into an experimentation mindset where it's like, well, here's what I think, here's why I think that, here's how we know it's working. And then you can observe whether it's working or not.
Conscious Success Co (19:02.576)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (19:20.037)
Mm.
Clair Byrd (19:31.906)
then recycle those learnings back into the same experiment.
Conscious Success Co (19:35.504)
And I love, sorry, go ahead.
Clair Byrd (19:38.608)
no, I was just going to answer the second half of your question, was, you have, I experienced friction? Yeah. So especially with sales, like I adore, my God, my sales leader, Tim at Temporal is like my bestie. love him. And he has a similar mental model for this, but we do have a lot of friction around how we measure performance of people. like sales team, right? This is hard. And I could understand why this is really hard to adopt for a sales traditional enterprise SaaS or just SaaS oriented sales model.
because people's performance is dependent on the actual outcome that they drive most of the time. And how much you get paid is also actually dependent on that as well. And so this is antithetical to that culture. And so I think that that has been challenging and there has been some friction around that, but we're working through it in that my goals
And the outcomes that I'm trying to drive are to support the entire global sales organization, as opposed to just individual moments in time. And again, if where we have started to level up our relationship and we started this way, but it's starting to proliferate now across the rest of the organization is that I tee the sales leaders up with opportunities to talk to me about their problems. And then I solve their problems as opposed to the fate. I don't want them to come to me and ask me for stuff.
I don't, again, I want to garden, not, don't want to be shaped by a carpenter. And so like, if you come to me and ask me for X, Y, or Z, sure, we'll deliver you X, or Z, but is that actually going to give you the outcome that you want? I don't know, because I don't know what the outcome is. So we have gotten to a point of trust in our relationship and us, my team, consistently showing up and following through on the things that we say we're going to do for them to give us this space where we can get into creativity and divergent thinking and play.
Conscious Success Co (21:08.281)
Hmm.
Clair Byrd (21:31.595)
and talk about what are you actually trying to do here. Okay, strategic growth leader, you've got the biggest companies in the world, what are you trying to do? Don't talk to me about what you want, talk to me about what you're trying to achieve. And then you can become a partner to them in a way that you don't often, I think, with many of these relationships.
Conscious Success Co (21:34.659)
Hmm.
Conscious Success Co (21:40.676)
Right?
Right.
Conscious Success Co (21:50.191)
And I love what you're saying. It's like, okay, foundationally, you have to be as reliable as gravity. And just that, most people are not. And when you are as reliable as gravity, you create a window of opportunity to really earn someone's trust. And then you can go back to that first principle thinking and you can figure out what they're actually trying to do and solve the problems. And, you know, I love what you're saying about how sometimes that can be like, antithetical to how sales cultures are run. You know, it's like you either hit your number or you don't. And obviously I come from
Clair Byrd (21:54.979)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (22:02.957)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (22:19.382)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (22:20.114)
and sales background. And it took a long time for me to really kind of
think about that and understand my own perspective and where I've landed is ultimately like we are always in this like co-creative dance with the universe or the market or product or whatever that is, right? And we can always control part of the equation, but we can never control the whole thing. so, you know, oftentimes I'll say to people, you actually don't have complete control whether you hit your number or not. There can be macro market shifts. There can be a product that gets delivered and it's subpar, whatever. Not to say that from a you get to
Clair Byrd (22:34.39)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (22:40.375)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (22:54.834)
to opt out and be disempowered and blame someone else. We're not here to do that, but to refocus on what you can actually control. How do you actually show up? How do you actually think more creatively? What is the one micro action that you can take that leads to the next? And if we operate in that way, which it sounds like you very much do, that is the surest way to guarantee or come close to guaranteeing those outcomes and hitting your quota or whatever those KPIs end up being. And it sounds like...
Clair Byrd (23:05.368)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (23:23.988)
backwards or that if we take the pressure off, then we're going to underperform. But I often see in my own personal career and with so many of my clients that it's the opposite. When we do that, we actually focus on what can move the needle. Would you agree with that or what's your take?
Clair Byrd (23:25.507)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (23:36.675)
I absolutely agree. was gonna say like, hope is not a strategy, right? So like, sorry, hang on, my phone is ringing. Let me fix this quickly. I didn't hit D &D before we started. Okay, I absolutely agree with you. I don't believe hope is a strategy. I think that has to do with my high anxiety personality that I mentioned earlier. And that you can do whatever you can, whatever is in your control. And whatever is in your control is actually like a...
Conscious Success Co (23:42.991)
Yeah.
Conscious Success Co (23:48.56)
It's okay.
Clair Byrd (24:04.734)
a fair bit wider than I think most people think it is, as long as you're willing to step backwards and think differently about what you're trying to achieve. And how I view my role in support of a sales organization in particular is to give them the space to do that. It's like figure out what are the things that they need to make sure that every single territory is healthy.
that every single person is achieving, that the quality that we are delivering on our commitment to the sales team is as high quality and as consistent and reliable as possible so that people can stop panicking about hitting their number and step backwards into what is the outcome I actually want to drive. And I think, again, the way I think about that is creating the garden in which we all play. But it is hard to get there.
Conscious Success Co (24:51.601)
And in that metaphor also, you you are a gardener, you're not God, right? You can plant the seed, you can water the seed, you can put it in the right part of the garden that gets the right amount of sunlight. But ultimately, you're not the one that's like, oh, and now the seed is going to germinate at this exact moment or day, right? And so it's like, we can control some of the factors. And it's not to say we're not just like, well, hope something grows in this garden I have not tended. But at the same time, like, we don't have complete control.
Clair Byrd (24:57.303)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (25:06.954)
Yeah, exactly.
Clair Byrd (25:16.194)
Yeah.
Clair Byrd (25:20.93)
It's why we plant more than one tomato plant, right? it all comes back to strategic thinking. How do we create the environment in which we can all thrive? And then what are the things that we need to make sure that there is redundancy in the system?
Conscious Success Co (25:24.088)
Yeah.
Conscious Success Co (25:30.833)
Yeah.
Conscious Success Co (25:39.216)
Yes, and if people are so worried about failure or not hitting their targets or a bad performance review or the outcome, even if they're doing the right delivery, not going the way that they wanted, if they're so focused on that, they're not thinking strategically. They're not thinking opportunistically or creatively or figuring out what is the step that they can take. And I think this is what so many organizations and so many leaders and so many individual contributors don't understand or get wrong. We have to shift from that
Clair Byrd (25:53.003)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (25:58.158)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (26:09.319)
based reactive mindset towards that creative based mindset and like that is ultimately where we win.
Clair Byrd (26:17.059)
Yes, 1000%. I think fear is the great limiter of all great things. And I wish that more people would have this philosophy, to be honest. I've heard in my former life and around a boardroom table very frequently, I've been like, why are we not getting the... I know this person is capable of incredible things, why are we not getting them? And I'm like, well, have you reflected on the environment that you've put this person into?
Have you taken a moment to introspect about how you might be impacting this person negatively to where they would not feel safe to give you that kind of, or you've disempowered them? You've taken their freedom from them? There are so many things that people are well, what process? And I get into this conversation a lot with one of the people that I've worked with for a very long time now about process versus culture.
Conscious Success Co (26:46.339)
Are they afraid?
Clair Byrd (27:10.935)
I think that lots of people like to try and process this problem. We need a better planning process. We need a better budgeting process. We need a better innovation process. We need a labs team. There are like 27,000 process ways that people try to solve this when the answer is cultural. The answer is do not create an environment of fear. Empower people to do their best work through freedom and autonomy. Give them the space that they need to, to actually have those ideas and divorce the work from the outcome. And like doing that will unlock that for you in your...
talent pool and it's just, it's, for me, it's very, very clear, but we do try to process this instead of just culturally solving the problem.
Conscious Success Co (27:48.442)
Yeah, and I'm so glad I'm sure everyone listening is like, wow, that is the kind of leader and culture that I want to be in and work for. Like, I'm not currently looking to return to tech, but if I were, I'd be trying to get a job at Toy Temporal right now in your organization. Because that matters so much who is at the helm and who is setting the culture, whether or not we enjoy our work and can succeed. And so often it's like, it's not about the
Clair Byrd (27:57.219)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Conscious Success Co (28:14.251)
what we do. It's about the how we do it in the culture that we're doing it within. And I think sometimes today, if there are a lot of kind of quote unquote toxic disempowering cultures out there, it can feel like, I just don't like marketing. I just don't like sales. But we're not actually solving the right problem.
Clair Byrd (28:19.969)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (28:30.464)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (28:34.498)
Yeah, I don't have anything to add. That's very well stated.
Conscious Success Co (28:39.633)
And I want to come back to what you're talking about earlier of all of this comes from working in a kitchen. And from what you're saying, OK, so delivering food in a scaled environment requires planning. It requires taking a step back and thinking strategically and having some type of strategy and hypothesis. You're not totally willy nilly throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. But at the same time, there is this experimentation. And there is this observation and the hypothesis and the experiment.
Clair Byrd (28:46.092)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (28:57.366)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (29:09.587)
observe and the outcomes and recycling that. So that...
is like kind of two parts of our brain or this productive tension that oftentimes I see people lean into one or the other. They're either really good about like making the plan and having the strategy and focusing on the process and trying to control everything. Or they're like, I'm just in the growth mindset and I can learn and I just like roll with what feels good. But I don't have any of that structure. And I so often find it is in that productive tension between the
Clair Byrd (29:21.762)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (29:40.362)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (29:41.785)
the structure and the creative flow that allows for the best outcomes. And it sounds like some of that came from your work in the kitchen. Does that feel true? Or can you speak to us more about that experience and how that shaped you?
Clair Byrd (29:54.615)
Yeah, I'd be happy to, it absolutely does. So I knew that I wanted to do something with food since I was little, like I mentioned, but I had never done that in any real capacity. And my genesis for actually working in the kitchen instead of like being a waitress in the front of house as most young women are, was a failure in the system. So I was working at like a local chock house type of spot maybe.
Conscious Success Co (30:21.966)
How old were you? Bring us back. When in your career was this?
Clair Byrd (30:23.842)
Ooh, I was starting, I was 17. So I was pretty young for, I graduated and started uni when I was 17. it was that summer. So I would have been 17 going on 18 when I first got it started in this world. And I was waiting tables like you do. And one of the line cooks for a Friday night where we had like 45 or 50 covers on the books already, you just didn't show up.
And so there was an immediate breakdown in the system. And the chef at the time came out to the front of house and was like, can any of you make a salad? And I'm like, yes, yes, I can. can make a salad. I am happy to make salads or do whatever you need tonight if that's what's needed. And so they put me on short order, which is like apps, salads, soups, expediting, some other things like that. And I never went back to the front of house.
Conscious Success Co (31:03.441)
You
Clair Byrd (31:18.402)
And I got to see for the first time ever how the kitchen actually operates an organism. And it's informed a lot of my thinking about how teams should work. Because like when you're in environment where you have, you must do all of the planning and all of the prep, it's called mise en place, right? Before service starts, because service is so intense that there is no space at all the entire night to do any more prep until you are done. And if you run out of something, you are out. The system has to work.
And so, and the system is also interrelated nodes that are completely autonomous from one another. And so, you know, like the person who is on, there will be a chef who calls an order. Lots of your audience, I'm sure has watched the bear. The bear is very real. It's a little triggering for me, but that is how it actually works. I can't actually watch it. makes me itchy, but, someone will call an order.
Conscious Success Co (32:01.675)
You're like, I can't actually watch it.
Clair Byrd (32:09.568)
And then all of the individual components of that order will go and do the thing that they need to do for that order. And then they will be reassembled at the exact perfect moment in time and set. so understanding what your role is, what you need to do, when and how within the authority of your little universe, and then how it relates to the other teams is critical for a kitchen at work. And so, and then you also, because people are humans, you have to have enough T-shaped capability to flex between places.
Because, know, like for example, there were like many times when I would like accidentally touch the hot oil in the fryer or burn myself or cut myself, et cetera. And I would have to yell, get on my station and have another chef step in and get on my station. And so I actually tell that to my team now. I'm like, I need you to think about how you're going to get on some, get on X person station here, because like you might need to be their backup for whatever critical failure might happen right now.
at this moment in time, because again, it's like ultimately you're delivering if you're thinking of even though it's not food on a plate and fire and hot oil and knives and crazy people. It is at least a personalized experience that is specific to a person at the exact moment in time that they need to have it, whether that's an analog in person event type experience or digital one, it's all the same, structurally. And so when I'm talking to my teams,
I'm talking to them about how they create this like extreme ownership and autonomy over their little microcosm of the world with enough understanding of what someone else is doing to be able to get on their station. So this has informed my entire operating philosophy and how I do things.
Conscious Success Co (33:49.233)
And I love that get on someone's station too. It's like, wow, you get to be supported by others. Like when you burn yourself with hot oil or you cut your finger, like that's going to happen and that's OK. Somebody else is there for you. They're going to get on your station and vice versa. And I imagine that contributes so much to the culture that you're trying to build as well.
Clair Byrd (33:54.24)
Hello?
Clair Byrd (34:07.741)
Yeah, think that that shared understanding of what we need to go do is critical. I've observed in other teams and companies where that didn't exist, where you get this throwing over the fence of stuff to other people and you would receive it as a receiver and you're like, what is this thing? I ordered a hamburger, this is a steak. And because the person making the steak didn't understand what the order actually was, they just got a thing that said, we want some meat on a plate. They technically did their job.
Conscious Success Co (34:35.772)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (34:37.439)
And so like understanding the context between the functions and understanding how they work together to deliver that experience and understanding the actual input is really important for everybody to be successful together.
Conscious Success Co (34:49.042)
And I just think it's so interesting that working in a kitchen as a, know, line cook or shorter to cook, whatever you said that it was, and, you know, running a marketing organization, it's, there's so many things that are the same, right? Like, it's not that different in many ways where you're like, okay, we need to deliver a hamburger to this customer's plate in a timely manner that's still warm, blah, blah, blah. Like, it's not that different than delivering a in-person event that needs to
Clair Byrd (34:54.614)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (35:08.672)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (35:18.849)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (35:18.996)
go off that's cross-functional or whatever that is. And so I think it's so interesting that sometimes, oftentimes when I'm speaking to women, especially if they're going through any type of career redesign or pivot, they're like, I don't know how my skills or experience from cooking could possibly be applicable to tech. But I think you're such a proof point that it does connect. And actually working or having varied experience can make you even more of an asset. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Clair Byrd (35:49.258)
Yes, I select for this. So when I am hiring people, I generally will select for someone who's come out of a different industry or who has service experience or who understands what it means to deliver things to people. Because ultimately, people are still people. And their expectations, like the site, the consumer psychology of like the experience that you get when you're using your bank app is actually pretty similar to the one that when you're going to your favorite restaurant.
you have a like a base level of expectation of how that service is delivered to you. And they're they're similar to one another. And so like there is a ton transferable skill just in things that either people who have been in service, hospitality, people who have been stay at home parents and had to orchestrate a life like there are tons there's so much transferable experience there as long as you can back up and look at the shape of that experience instead of the things that you did. Which is again, coming back to this like
It's not the what, it's the why and the strategic how. It's like, okay, what are we doing here? What are the components? And then how do those components map to other components?
Conscious Success Co (36:59.58)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
I love that so much. So, okay, so you were 17, you're working in a kitchen, you're learning all of this, you probably don't understand how you're going to apply this in the future. But talk to us about, did you think at that time, okay, I'm in the kitchen, I love this, I want to make this like my career, you're in uni at the time as well, like talk to us about 17 year old Claire, where were you at? And what did you think your career was going to look like? Or what were you orienting towards?
Clair Byrd (37:22.954)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (37:30.623)
Yes, I fully thought that that was going to be my career. I still do. Please see former when I said most stubborn person on the planet. I knew I wanted to do it. Getting into that environment and actually being in action. I love the pressure of the kitchen. I love all of the things about it. Like I love being in the weeds. I love being 40 tickets deep and not knowing how you're going to get through it. But you get through it through pure determination, grit, and the power of friendship. It's like everything that I want.
Conscious Success Co (37:37.489)
Ha ha ha!
Clair Byrd (37:59.905)
in my life. And I moved to California to cook. I did not move to California to be in tech. happened, I very luckily landed in a group of people who introduced me to this world. And then when I was working in fine dining in San Francisco had a really the bear experience, like the bad version of the bear, not the fun and inspiring version of the bear experience where I was just, it was abusive, the environment that I was in. And I decided that
I was either going to fall into the pit of despair that many people in food do with substance abuse and other terrible stuff that's going on in their life, or I was going to make a change and prioritize myself. And that's what I decided to do. And so at that moment in time, at this point, I moved when I was 21. So I was a 22-year-old, no professional skills outside of the kitchen person in one of the most aggressive and competitive talent markets in the world.
And I'm like, what are we going to do with that? A little bit. Well, I'm looking backwards. I don't know if it was, conscious, conscious confidence, but there was something there, you know, that like made me think I was capable of doing this. And even just like being from the middle of nowhere in the Midwest and moving to San Francisco, California, one of the biggest best cities in the country. There's always been a little bit of an audacity type of thing, fear or risk tolerance, lack of fear.
Conscious Success Co (39:01.202)
Yeah, were you freaking out or were you like, I'm going to land on my feet?
Clair Byrd (39:29.163)
that I'm just not wired for. But yeah, I'm well, I'm wired to be highly risk tolerant, not super fearful, et cetera. But in that moment when I was like, okay, I'm either going to get deeply physically injured, fall down a rabbit hole of bad behavior, like all of my peers around me in that environment doing, or I was gonna make a change and prioritize myself and figure out a way forward so that I could
Conscious Success Co (39:32.956)
You're not wired for fear, you're not wired to-
Clair Byrd (39:56.961)
Eventually, this is the conscious part of this decision. Come back to food and Bev, which is my first and last passion with more control over my circumstances and my position in that hierarchy and in that system. And so. I had a stroke of luck in that the first friends that I made when I moved out here were people in the early open source community that was forming in the Bay Area.
And I figured out a way to apply some of my other skills. So like, I'm a pretty decent writer. And I did go to school, right? Like my parents were like, no, you may not just not go to college and become a chef and like be do that. That's not an acceptable outcome for you. So you have to go to school. And so I studied English lit journalism. So decent writer, also terrible career path, but you know, at least it made them happy that I was pursuing a higher education. And so decent writer.
figured out how to find a way to use that skill set to make my way into more corporate environment.
Conscious Success Co (40:59.538)
How did you actually do that? What did the opening look like that you found?
Clair Byrd (41:02.432)
So I volunteered. There are tons of charitable organizations that need help with stuff, just literally anything all the time. And so my strategy was, like, okay, well, I don't have tenure, I don't have length of experience, but I'm a workhorse. Can I stack up volunteer experience? I can do like seven or eight projects over the course of the next six to 12 months.
to illustrate that I am capable of doing these things. And so what I was focused on was like, was 2010, this was inbound marketing, content marketing, et cetera, was being formed at that point. And it's pretty easy to like look at. And so again, where I come back to observe what is going on and hypothesize how to do it and then figure out if it works, to observe what some of the influencers are in the space were doing and then do that for free for charitable organizations that needed help.
and I did that while I was transitioning out of food, and then got a job at like a tech recruiting firm for a while, editing resumes, helping with cover letters, again, using the skills that I had and then use that experience to land a job with a very, like, like the crosshairs of my former life and my current life. so this is the recommendation, the advice I still give to people who are trying to enter tech from, from another industry.
is to find a tech enabled version of what you already do. And so I ended up finding a spirits company. This is again, 2010, this is pre DoorDash, like pre Uber Eats, all the things that was trying to create like a software enabled individual spirits brand. And I'm like, okay. And they were looking for someone who was going to do recipe development and content writing and events and community stuff for them. And I'm like,
I can do most of those things and I am willing to be a slave. Like I'm willing to do this for no money at all because I was a chef, right? Anything above 10 bucks an hour was a raise for me.
Conscious Success Co (43:02.803)
And how are you paying your bills for this, like six to 12 months that you're like volunteering or doing things for no money?
Clair Byrd (43:06.544)
I had a full-time job. I still worked in food. I had evenings. Like I said, I'm a workhorse. This is not sustainable for many types of people. I worked in food. I had night shifts and evening shifts at my food job. I then got my job with the tech recruiting firms doing resumes and stuff I did during the day. I had two jobs. evenings that I was off from my food job and weekends, I would do work for my charitable causes.
Conscious Success Co (43:11.195)
Okay.
Clair Byrd (43:36.582)
and deliver for them. And then I was able to transition out of food and into tech recruiting full time and then got that time back to continue to invest in my skill set and then found this other company that needed someone who was like, had no money, super startupy, trying to figure out where they were, trying to figure out their place in the San Francisco hospitality scene. And like, well, I have relationships with people in the hospitality scene. I know lots and lots of folks in restaurants who are buying for their bar program.
I have lots of friends who can staff this stuff for free. I know how to write recipes. I know how to write other types of content and I can copy the rest of these inbound marketing tactics. And so like that combination of things seemed at least enough to convince them to let me do that job. And so I got that job and that was the start of my marketing career, officially. Like I'd had other sort of similar like summer jobs for like local e-commerce companies and stuff like in the before times.
when I was still in Ohio, but my reels, the real started by like Silicon Valley marketing career was that moment.
Conscious Success Co (44:37.457)
And so you are in a kitchen working in a restaurant and are like, I'm gonna go down a bad path. This is toxic. I need to get out. I am in the heart of Silicon Valley. I wanna break into that. I don't have necessarily the resume that's gonna allow me to do that. And...
Clair Byrd (44:46.943)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (44:56.025)
yeah, it might not be one step. It might be a couple of different steps. But let me reverse engineer kind of how to get there. And let me figure out the glide path or the transition path where I can stack enough of that together to build enough credibility to get someone to say yes, and then got your foot in the door and kept building. And I just want everyone listening to like, really hear that because so often we can take a disempowered mindset where it's like, well, I just don't have the experience or I can't do that in like one hop. So it's not possible for me. But that's not usually or
Clair Byrd (44:59.547)
Mm-hmm. Exactly.
Clair Byrd (45:05.311)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (45:25.939)
if ever how it really looks, it's being willing to make trade-offs and make sacrifices and say, yeah, I'm going to work two or three jobs for a little while as a means to an end to plug this skill gap. But it doesn't mean I can never get there. I just have to figure out how and what I'm willing or not willing to do in order to make that a reality. And so it sounds like you didn't fall prey to that trap or mindset of, well, there's nothing I can do. You just figured out how to open new doors that might not
Clair Byrd (45:30.015)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (45:42.975)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (45:55.802)
not have been available to you on the starting line.
Clair Byrd (45:59.456)
Yeah, I would agree with that. I also think that my naivety was an asset in this world. I didn't know that that was a thing. didn't have, there was none of that in my head that like, oh, I just don't have the experience. So how could I possibly, I was like, how nobody has this. I just assumed that because everything was so new that nobody had, and that's clearly wrong, right? There was like a Silicon Valley pre, pre 2010. I just didn't know anything about it. And so I went in with this maybe like naively enthusiastic, optimistic out, out.
Conscious Success Co (46:05.01)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (46:29.203)
like perspective, but I actually think was very advantageous to me because I didn't get in my own way around stuff like that. And I didn't take the initial knows as a, an indictment of me or my ability or my talent. I took it as like, okay, I'm not there yet. And so I think that that was really, important to not, to not get in my own way.
Conscious Success Co (46:53.031)
I mean, it's so important.
so important to be able to say like, this doesn't reflect my inherent worthiness or ability, right? This is just a business problem, or this is just a skill gap, or this is just something that, you know, I'm continuing to iterate on. Once we internalize it and be like, I'm bad or have any shame or have any like, you know, self criticism around that, that's actually where we get stuck versus just like, okay, more to learn more to try more to experiment with. Where do you think that came from that orientation?
Clair Byrd (47:00.595)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (47:07.807)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (47:19.943)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Conscious Success Co (47:25.042)
to the world.
Clair Byrd (47:30.279)
I honestly don't know. Like, I will need to actually sit here and reflect for a second and see if I can uncover and answer in myself.
Conscious Success Co (47:35.409)
Was this a part of just like little Claire where you're like, I've always been who I've been and this has just been who you've been since the beginning?
Clair Byrd (47:40.316)
Yeah, I think that interests are scratching the same part of my brain that all of my various hyperfixation and weird interests are. I have lots of strange hobbies. I do lots of stuff that people are I can't believe that you do that. I'm a mounted archer. Ride a horse and shoot a bow and arrow at the same time. I'm like, yeah, I'll send you some pictures. And people are like, were you an archer as a child? Or did you do horses? I'm like, yeah, I'm from the Midwest, you do horses.
Conscious Success Co (47:57.652)
Stop it, you are not.
Clair Byrd (48:10.097)
any actual like meaningful or practiced or probably safe way, then they're like, how did you get I'm like, it just seemed cool. Just just go try the thing. Why not? You know, I think this may be related to the fear part. Like, I'm not afraid of that. I'm not afraid of trying something and not being good at it. Or I'm not afraid of trying something and hating it. I just am like, well, I don't know if I can do that thing. Or I don't know if I like that thing. So just try to do the thing. So I think that that is probably where some of this came from.
because I didn't really even become aware of this being weird until I was in more like my, my first bigger job. So, my first bigger job being this company called Envision is like a proto-Figma, raised a bunch of money, like hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I joined that company, you know, maybe five, five years on in my tech journey and took over content marketing there.
didn't know anything about design, learned a lot about design at that company, built a really fantastic content program. And then my boss who hired me quit like sort of quickly and without a ton of transition time and put me into the head of marketing role, very under qualified, had to figure it out, held that job for almost two years. And it was only in the context of that environment where I even started to be aware of what would be perceived as an inadequacy.
where I was talking to our board members who are Harvard Business School grads, and I'm talking to other executives at other companies that look more like the people who are in our community, like George and Sarah, from Twilio, who have a completely different pedigree than someone like myself. And that was when I actually became aware that this was even a thing. So like I said, I think that this lack of fear or whatever it is, optimistic, naive,
sort of mindset can actually be really beneficial to folks because you don't automatically get in your own way.
Conscious Success Co (50:13.49)
And when you started to become aware of that being a thing and being like, I don't have the same pedigree, did you let that affect you and your confidence or did you block that out?
Clair Byrd (50:18.59)
Okay.
Clair Byrd (50:24.606)
I mean, I definitely had a crisis of confidence and it did start to impact me in ways that I started to observe, like actually impact me, not in my own heart, but the way that I was treated and perceived. And that was an interesting period for me. But I think it also formed up, this was formative, like how I approach opportunities, which is like come in, figure it out yourself and then grow from there.
Conscious Success Co (50:35.891)
Hmm.
Clair Byrd (50:52.606)
I was never the type of candidate that people were going to hire to take over a 40 or 50 person team. I was going to be the person that they were going to put on a specific problem and see if I could solve it and then give me permission and access from there. That's okay. That puts a chip on my shoulder and then triggers the most stubborn person on the planet to go and prove everybody wrong.
Conscious Success Co (51:11.484)
And you were the one who would solve those problems and then build so much trust. I know that George and Sarah, you became someone that they just knew. If I drop her into any situation, Claire is going to solve this, right?
Clair Byrd (51:23.006)
Well, hopefully, hopefully that's how they I mean, I feel like that's somewhat true. But and that's a different type of profile. And that's okay. And like, this is one of the things that when I, again, when I'm mentoring young and career folks who have this sort of thing, I'm like, there are lots of different ways to be successful. There. And I'm like, there are some archetypes, like there are archetypes for leadership. And when I describe one of the archetypes and the archetype that I am and many people who come out of industry are I'm like, you are an athlete.
Like you're not like a super specialized, very well educated, deep subject matter expert on something. You are an athletic person that can deploy against many different problems. And that's good. That's not bad. They're different. And so like, I think that there are several different leadership archetypes and the one that I've seen to like resonate the most with and how I have been introduced to opportunities in my career to date have been through that lens, which is like, have like,
a wide portfolio of problems that we need to go solve, I need someone who's going to go take them down systematically. And that has a place and a time in a company's trajectory. It's not, you know, and again, these things are not bad. So.
Conscious Success Co (52:30.196)
And knowing that there are archetypes and that you don't need to be every archetype to be worthy or successful and to know not every archetype might be needed in a certain stage or phase of a company, and that's OK. But knowing, having that sense of self and what you do bring and how you do operate and then being able to be strategic about like, OK, yeah, they need an athlete here. So I'm going to go in and I can be successful by doing that and what comes naturally to me. Yeah.
Clair Byrd (52:51.006)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Conscious Success Co (52:59.188)
So you're now in tech. You're working your way up. You're now obviously leading. You're the CMO at Temporal, multi-billion dollar company. When and how did you reintroduce cooking into your life? Was it always there on the side? Did you totally put it down for a while? What does that look like?
Clair Byrd (53:21.018)
I'm very loyal person. So like I've never really put down any of the things that actually claim my heart, not fully. And so food has always been a part of my life. The way that that showed up was through, I host a lot. Yeah, I'm like the host house in my community, like the hot, the high holidays, the parties, the things that convening events, they often happen in my house. And, and that's something I cherish.
You know, like I think there are a lot of threads that you're pulling on that like that these are core to my identity around bringing people together in community around being the person that's going to like herd the people into a place and connect folks who I think have interesting connection points and introduce connective tissue among like lots of different parts of the people that I'm connected to. And and so for a long time between 2010 and maybe 2022, it was a lot of that.
And it was also a lot of partaking. And I think that this actually, again, was like a very good and natural evolution of my relationship with food was I went and just like, I've taken down like 130 Michelin stars or something. And that's on purpose. We do that as a hobby. So we go and we go and like experience as much fine dining as we can in as many places around the world as we can.
And that's like a very privileged thing to be able to do. And I'm very grateful to do it. And I also live in a place with like extremely high density of Michelin stars and high quality fine dining. That's like research for me. So like, like to go into those experiences and then try and figure out how they made that thing that ended up on my plate and then take that learning back to my own kitchen and introduce it to my own skill set. So there's been a lot of research.
a lot of posting where I force my friends and loved ones to be my guinea pigs as I experiment with new things. food more professionally came back around for me very recently. I started doing slightly more formal things. I would officially cater my friends' baby showers and their birthday parties and stuff like that, like officially cater. They would never pay me to do this, but I would take on the...
Clair Byrd (55:37.582)
management of the food for whatever experience they were trying to deliver. And then the transition back into something more professional and not so deeply intertwined in my own community was pretty happenstance. So I don't actually know how this happened, but Airbnb was rolling out services, which is like one of their new pillars of their platform. They reached out to me proactively.
And they were like, hey, you look like maybe you do food and you are in the area, one of the areas where we're going to pilot this service. Would you be interested in being in the pilot of the service? And so, I have no idea. I mean, I have to assume that they have seen my Instagram or they looked at the stuff that I book on Airbnb experiences or, or, or I don't, I honestly don't know.
Conscious Success Co (56:15.868)
And how did they know you did food?
Conscious Success Co (56:31.54)
So you were already booking Airbnb experiences where you were letting people.
Clair Byrd (56:34.299)
Yeah, like when we travel, when I know so like when we travel, we will book food related experiences. I don't know. I don't actually know how this came to be. It's a little it's a big I literally don't know. I have not been able to find out. And and so they reached out to me. And I thought about it for a while. And my logical brain was telling me that this was a stupid idea, because I have a very big full time job. And among other things, I travel a lot.
but I really wanted to do it. And so I started thinking about, if I really want to do this, how would I make it so? And then came to the table with a product offering for their services launch that served my needs and theirs. She was like, I don't want to cater. I don't want to do meal prep for people. I don't want to do large events. I want to do specifically small.
highly curated, multi-course fine dining events. And I'm like, well, if that works for you, Airbnb, then I will produce a service listing that is in that nature. And then I will do that as long as I can keep control over the quantity of engagements that I end up with. so I've been really grateful to work with the Airbnb team a little bit on.
the experience for service providers and where I think some of that can be improved. It's already a fantastic experience for service providers. And so I did that. launched that last year. So it's almost exactly a year ago. I actually launched on the platform and did my first real professional gigs as a chef again.
Conscious Success Co (58:15.253)
Wow, OK, so that's called Fair by Claire, and it's a service that you can book through Airbnb. And so you've limited the number of slots or the number of events that you're going to do in a period of time. I'm so curious, though, like, OK, you're a CMO. You're traveling a lot. You have a very busy and full workload. It's not a light thing to then do a multi-course Michelin-type experience for Airbnb or for the
Clair Byrd (58:24.317)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (58:27.975)
Yes.
Conscious Success Co (58:44.551)
for the customers of Airbnb. How do you actually fit that in? How do know your schedule far enough in advance when you can accommodate that? What does that look like when things go sideways at work and you're also delivering an experience?
Clair Byrd (58:59.303)
So I try to be as conservative as possible with what I do allow to get booked and just be proactive about when I'm gonna be not available. So like, for example, I've had my Airbnb services calendar blocked completely for the last two months because we have a major conference coming up for my day job and my focus needs to be on that. So it's really about prioritization and fairness of my time. So basically my thinking around how to manage
sort of the conflicting priorities is that I want to do both of these things and it is a core value of mine to be reliable. So I need to figure it out. And it has been very rare where I've needed to actually not follow through on a commitment to a guest because of something else in my work life. Like I will be honest, there have been times when I've had to not follow through with a guest because my oven broke or.
things out of our control, right? Things that I cannot control and there's no way for me to fix it. But I do my absolute best to make sure that if I commit to doing something, I'm gonna do it.
Conscious Success Co (01:00:05.021)
And what is the value that you get out of doing Fair by Claire? Is it monetary? Is it creativity? Like, why do you do it?
Clair Byrd (01:00:11.736)
No. Don't be a chef, people. If money is a priority for you, that is not the way to do it. I'm really grateful and I love this model because you can set your prices. I am delivering a very specific type of service. I'm not the type of chef that's just going to shove luxury ingredients into a menu to try and the price or the margin on the menu. That is not my style.
Conscious Success Co (01:00:15.764)
Hahaha
Clair Byrd (01:00:41.38)
But the outlet for me is both creative because I have to work around a lot of constraints. So one of the things that I try to specialize in is accommodations to allergies and accommodations to dietary restrictions and lifestyles. And so, you know, like if you are on a strict, you know, specific type of diet for either an allergy or a preference or a religious, religious, it's just fine dining becomes much less fun for you. And so I design around those.
requirements that people have. And I think it's super fun. Most chefs think that stuff is boring because it, you know, and terrible because it impacts the chef's creative vision. But like for me, this is a jointly designed, jointly created thing. Every single menu is custom. I never do things more than once. And, and they're designed around what you're trying to deliver you the customer is trying to deliver for that moment, because the vast majority of the time, I'm serving a customer.
who is celebrating something or is trying to bring their friends together or just had kids and can't do these things anymore, or there are so many reasons that are so deeply personal to them, that it's my, I think, feel it as their service provider to deliver that extra special experience that they would deliver for their own loved ones and friends if they could do it with their own hands.
Conscious Success Co (01:01:58.09)
And that's what you're delivering, but what are you receiving? it like, what are you getting out of it that makes you say, you know what, on top of my more than full-time career, I'm going to devote a portion of my time and energy to doing this.
Clair Byrd (01:02:08.624)
Mm-hmm.
Clair Byrd (01:02:12.572)
Primarily creative outlet. So I am still a right-brained oriented person. My job is a lot of math now, which nothing wrong with math and no shade to the people who really love math. I do not really love math. So I have found that keeping this part of my life alive and active makes me a better leader in my day job because I have an ability to outlet this creative energy into something. And I need the, I'm selfish. I need the feedback loop.
Like I want people to tell me the stuff is good. Like I want people to say, that's really interesting. I would have never thought about that. That is deeply gratifying for me in both worlds. So, and so I really enjoy that. I really enjoy the creative process and I love pushing myself to like think about things differently. And that's why I give myself these rules where I'm like, no, you don't get to repeat a menu for a client. It has to be new every single time. And, because that kind of like forces the thing that I'm looking for, which is a creative outlet and to really push myself and how I think about.
my own art. So I think that that's the primary thing. I also just love being in people's spaces and seeing the thing that I love so much in my own community play out in front of me and being a part of that. For example, was very early also, I was super nervous about this. I was the experience around, that was the foundation for a proposal. that was like, so someone proposed to their now wife at my
And I was like, my god, this is like a one, I'm honored to, my god, so important three, better crush it as far as like delivering an amazing experience for them. And then it was so fun for me to just go super above and beyond for them. Like I took on the floral design and I figured out how to like turn their space over. They rented an Airbnb, they came in from out of town. I designed their menu. Like I did a lot of things for them that for me was just, it's just scratches my service itch.
Like I really love doing those things for people and then watching them experience that and just love it. And so that's what I'm getting out of it. purely, it's that it's not monetary. Like I would love, I have a grand vision of what I want to do in the future once I hopefully take this next company to a meaningful exit and can retire from tech. But it's that.
Conscious Success Co (01:04:20.629)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Clair Byrd (01:04:33.104)
Like what I want to do is I would love to have at some point a hospitality concept where all of my burnt out, tired friends can just come and exist and be like, experience these curated experiences that are just for them. And that's what I want to do.
Conscious Success Co (01:04:47.125)
I love that you have that vision, that you keep working towards that vision, that you can see like, okay, hey, in the immediate term, maybe I do need to work another job that is going to contribute or give me that freedom monetarily to be able to do this in another chapter of life. And you can see how those line up so that there's that motivation while not letting your passion.
Clair Byrd (01:05:01.083)
Mm-hmm.
Conscious Success Co (01:05:11.833)
wither and die or like that creative outlet go away. And I think it can be very hard to do that. And I'm sure it doesn't come without, you know, a lot of prioritization and trade offs and all of that. But I just think it's such an important example that you're demonstrating here that that is possible, even if it's not easy to do. And you know why you're doing things. And that feels clear.
Clair Byrd (01:05:28.444)
Yeah.
Clair Byrd (01:05:37.264)
I think that is also really important. I feel so strongly that especially in our culture and especially women are encouraged to wait to do the things that they really want to, like until they're stable or until their kids are grown up or until they're insert myriad number of reasons why you would delay your own satisfaction and happiness. And for me, being an elder sister and choosing things that really helped me like center
other people in those experiences, this is for me. And I think that even if it's just one thing that you're doing for yourself, it's so important to remain in balance and also remember what's important. Like I said, for me, the duality of my life really helps give me a much more rich experience. Like the duality of being a tech executive whose job it is to deliver like hundreds of millions of dollars a pipeline and sell
touch computers all day and like reach the world's billions of people in the world and the world's developers and make them happy and successful. The duality of that with like entering someone's home under the pretense of delivering a food service to them and they have no visibility at all into my other life is really interesting. And I think that helps me remain grounded, humble and keep things in perspective around what actually matters because like,
I can get very wrapped around the axle if the campaign that I launched is not going the way that I want it to and get super stressed out and focused on it. And then walking into a kitchen where there's a two-year-old toddling around and they're trying to celebrate their anniversary, that's what matters. And I think that that really helps me. So like that experience really keeps me in my seat, in my feet on the ground.
and with a lot of clarity around my own personal values and convictions and what I care about and think is important in this life.
Conscious Success Co (01:07:35.774)
I wish we didn't have to wrap up because everything you say is just like pure gold and I cannot wait to book an experience. I'm gonna get on and figure out when your calendar opens up and make it happen. You can see my two two year old toddlers toddling around and I'll get to see you in your zone of genius. But this has just been such a joy and I hope everyone listening has just like gleaned as much.
Clair Byrd (01:07:37.722)
haha
Clair Byrd (01:07:45.273)
Hahaha
Clair Byrd (01:07:50.809)
Hmm
Conscious Success Co (01:08:01.582)
wisdom and insights and takeaways from this as I have and it's just really inspiring to speak to you always. So thank you so much for being here and just sharing it with all of us.
Clair Byrd (01:08:14.715)
I'm so grateful. Thank you for taking the time.
Conscious Success Co (01:08:17.494)
All right, thank you, Claire.
