B (3:46)

That's exactly right. That second point around creative workarounds, when you feel like you're at a disadvantage, when you feel like other people can do something better than you can, or feels that way anyway, you get really good at creative workarounds, as I mentioned in the beginning here. And Grace, you and I have not met each other in person, but I'm short. Like, really short. Like, when I. When I have really tall posture, I can hit 4ft, 11 inches, but I don't break 5ft tall. So in a crowd at a meeting where I walk into a room, people literally don't see me. They look right over me. I'm overlooked sometimes because of my height. I'm brushed aside. I'm dismissed even before I've had a chance to say my first word. But what I realized is being short, actually, just like being Indian, as I mentioned in the beginning, can be a superpower, because I think sometimes when people underestimate you at first, you have the chance to surprise them. You learn to move differently. You become really agile, creative. You build tenacity. You have grit, you know, like, it's. It's silly things. And I think about this now, that. That seemed very benign back then, but when I was little, even now, like, I can't reach a high shelf in the kitchen, I. I can't do it. So even at that early age, I had to build in workarounds, right? I. I'd climb up onto the. The counter, or I'd pull up a chair or I'd jump higher or whatever that might be, but I had these workarounds that I had to figure out. And. And again, that seems very simple, trying to get A plate off of a. Off of a cabinet height. But when you're at a young age learning to figure out different ways to solve a problem than is traditional, that actually is very pervasive into other areas of creative thinking. Or when I meet a new client and I can already tell by their body language or things that they're saying, that they judge me based on what they see. Oh, she's little. She probably doesn't have a lot to say. I wait for it. Like, I let them kind of almost be lulled into that false sense. And then I surprise them, delight them with what comes next. Whether it's my speaking or how I'm listening to them or offering solutions to hard problems, I think it really does catch them off guard in a good way. One last example of this, and I love this one. There's a comedian that I follow, Michael Jr. Who's just. He's so funny, but he's also so profound. And he talks about having grown up with dyslexia, and when he was a kid, it was really hard for him to read, and so he'd have to kind of look at context clues, see and watch for sound, see how other people were interpreting things. And so it built a lot of creativity. And he talks about how that was such a huge foundation for him in his comedy now as an adult. And I've heard him speak her and give comedy talks and things like that for a long time. But recently he did a TEDx talk, and he talks about this idea, and it's fantastic. So I highly recommend that if any other listeners are interested in that.

A (7:03)

Awesome. And, yeah, I love kind of that idea of. One of the things that I say all the time is like, the only limitations that truly exist are the ones that we put on ourselves because we, you know, there are things that will be setbacks or hurdles that we have to climb, but limitations truly only come from us deciding we cannot do something. And that's actually kind of a great segue into this final point of how do you embrace limitations or confront those things?

B (7:34)

Totally. Yeah. Grace, when we. When we do embrace them, when we can look at those things and say, all right, you know, this is a hard area for me. It's not to say that they become your superpower overnight. Right. These are things that we might have to go, okay, I don't understand finance that well, so I'm going to get a mentor. I'm going to take a course or whatever that might be so that you can build it up. But there are. When you lean into those limitations. Oftentimes we find untapped potential. And so when we can lean into that challenge, start to make something that might seem like a weakness or a disadvantage, and we turn that into minimally, something that's at par, it's neutral, or sometimes even something that becomes strong for you, that unique characteristic, what you're doing, what you're building there is grit. You're really learning how to take that thing that you feel like might be holding you back, or other people are telling you that it's holding you back, and you flip that script and you figure out how you're going to make that thing that is your limitation and make it be your differentiator. The thing that makes you different can become your differentiator. So I think it's all about leaning into it and going, I'm not going to let that hold me back. It's a mindset. It's a mindset shift that we have to say, I'm going to take that thing that I'm worried about, I'm scared about, I'm fearful about, and say, I'm no longer going to let that hold me back. I'm going to let that become my superpower.

A (9:08)

Absolutely. Well, Liz, thank you so much for joining me today on the Becker's Business and Private Equity podcast and sharing these thoughts. I enjoyed our conversation immensely, and I hope that the listeners out there were inspired by the points you had to share today.

B (9:22)

Thank you. Grace, always so good to talk with you.