Neil Metzler: 0:03

You're listening to your next big thing. My name is Neil Metzler and I'm a Career Coach and startup mentor in tech. In this series of podcasts, you will hear inspiring stories of career reinventions stories of folks who made a change, to find fulfilment from work and satisfaction from life, even in this time of disruption. I hope you can take some perspective insight and learn how to do what you love and love what you do. My guest today is Priyanka Bharadwaj. Priyanka has diverse professional experience as a senior manager at Toyota and Amazon and as a respected and published thought leader on marriage and dating. She's now a VP at a fast growing logistics startup with over $1.4 billion in funding. We speak about her perspective as a working mom during career change. Priyanka share some practical advice and lessons learned from her MBA and work opportunities abroad in London, Barcelona and Bengaluru. Anyone with an interest in aligning their career dreams with their partners, stepping into thought leadership, or balancing work and family will benefit from this episode. I hope you enjoy it. Well, Priyanka Bhardwaj Welcome to your next big thing.

Priyanka: 1:20

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Neil Metzler: 1:23

Yeah, I'm really pleased to be here with you today. And I wanted you to invite, I wanted to invite you to share your journey, which I think hits on many points of interest for our audience here on the podcast. So you have joined big tech, you know, going to Amazon after your MBA. And you've also left from big tech, in order to or partly in order to grow your side hustle into a high performing high revenue business, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes. And, you know, you've also balanced that with family, you've worked internationally, like myself, and you've moved with family internationally. So that's something that's really important to me and close to my heart as well. So Priyanka, when you were growing up, did you always believe that you wanted to own your own business?

Priyanka: 2:19

You know, that's a really good question, one that I probably had never thought about, you asked, because I think like most kids, I wanted to be a lot of different things. I wanted to be an astronaut, an artist, probably a fashion designer at one point and an astrophysicist. But I don't think I thought too deeply about what I really wanted to be and why. The only thing I knew is I had very, very diverse interests in art, people watching writing, maths, physics, and thankfully, my parents found a way to sort of channel at least some of my interests, you know, into something that was a value back then. My dad's an engineer, he worked in a small private electronics firm, where he led manufacturing that he growing up, you know, he always taught me a lot of physics and electronics, and I thought it was really cool that he's actually working on something that I get to learn in school, which I didn't see a lot with my friend's parents. So I thought it was really cool. So I knew I, you know, engineering could be one of the options that I pursue. My dad actually had his own side hustle. At one point, unfortunately, that didn't take off. And you know, he ended up losing a lot of money. So I knew I knew what it meant to actually run, you know, start your own business and run it and you know, maybe not successfully but yeah, I you know, I had some idea. So, when I, when I was getting when I completed 12, then I was about to choose my undergraduate stream. I thought to myself, hey, you know, maybe if I pursued engineering and did electronics, I could be like my dad someday. So yeah, that's that's when I decided to do engineering. But once I went to engineering school, I realized that I don't really like the tech stuff at all. I found a lot of other things more interesting. I was part of a lot of clubs in college where I had leadership positions, I enjoyed learning operations research, or great organizational behavior and subjects like that. So that's when I knew that I was more interested in people and processes rather than, you know, electronics. I think at that point on everything I did was geared towards doing that better and better in every sort of, you know, role that I had posted. So, to your question about did I always want to be in business? That's really not until I was 18. But once I was 18, that that thought was definitely there somewhere in the back of my head.

Neil Metzler: 5:14

And what Priyanka motivated you to, to go into that after 18? Was it? Because that's an age where many of us were seeking more independence. We're thinking about our life goals, maybe for the first time, how did that connect with your your goals for your life back back in the perspective of that?

Priyanka: 5:39

I really hoped my dad doesn't get to listen to this. But I felt like because his side hustle had failed. Some part of me was like, Hey, can I try it, but actually, you know, do it successfully, right? Because at home, we would sort of repair a lot of electronics, fix a lot of little things around the house. And sometimes when he couldn't fix things, I would end up fixing it. So I always wondered if I could do a better job than he did at running a business. And so yeah, I was okay, I should probably go to business school, learn about business and run my own business, you know, some days. So I think that was really when I started thinking about business when I actually took my undergraduate sort of stream at 18. And you know, why I chose it, and so on. So, yeah, I think that was that was as immature as it sounds. And that was probably the reason why I wanted to run my own business.

Neil Metzler: 6:42

Did you have any siblings, Priyanka, that also influenced your your decisions at all?

Priyanka: 6:51

It's interesting that you asked this question. So I did have my own siblings, who were already engineers. But all of my first cousins were older than me. And most of them were engineers. And we're, you know, either in business schools or preparing to go into business schools. So I didn't have to fight too much to really have things my way or like, pursue a certain career paths that was radically different from other people. I think also the time that I joined engineering, engineering was really hot in India. So engineering is pretty much like, the liberal arts equalent in India, where, you know, people usually say like, Hey, do engineering and then figure out what you want to do with your life, right? Because you know, at the end of engineering, you're going to get a job. And once you have your own money, yeah, sure. Go chase purpose, because you're not chasing your purpose on my money is what most parents would say.

Neil Metzler: 7:55

Very practical. Yeah. Yeah.

Priyanka: 7:58

So I come from a generation of Indians that did engineering for option value.

Neil Metzler: 8:07

That's a really fascinating point, especially as we've seen things like the student debt crisis, which I was a part of in the United States. And that's something that certainly influenced my thinking coming out of university. I had college loan debt that was suddenly very urgent for me at high interest rates. And yeah, I sometimes still wonder about the decision to go far away for college instead of staying locally. Especially because network is such an important part of what you get at university. And I went to school back east, but I've spent my entire career out west and abroad. But yeah, yeah. Always something interesting to think about.

Priyanka: 8:55

Yeah. Yeah. So for luckily, for Indians, if you were to study engineering in India, it isn't as expensive it is to study, let's say, in the United States, the ROI is definitely higher in India, if you were to study engineering.

Neil Metzler: 9:15

That's, that's really interesting. So you've talked about some of the external factors and the, the the why it was kind of normal or easy to step into that. But it sounds like you also had an inner motivation that was also reflecting on what you'd seen from your father's career. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. You've made these decisions early in your career and in your 20s, and you've taken big risks, but you're also loving some of those benefits of focusing on yourself first, and actually finding that opportunity to tune into our family and the family values, which I know in my life, sometimes I've pushed back on or even you know, moved around the world away from so in your case, tell me about then your two years doing your MBA and the long distance for your marriage at that time?

Priyanka: 10:16

Yeah. Um, yeah, I think when I, when I decided to apply for an MBA, on the one hand, I felt like, because of marriage, I really had to think a lot about what my next steps are. And I had to balance that with my partner partners. And I felt like at that age, right at that age, I felt like I was being tied down by marriage in some sense, and that I had to consider one other sort of stakeholder and the sole decision and none of my friends had to deal with age. And I was like, Oh, this is not fair. Why did I get married, then? You know. And also, at that point of time, my husband had quit his job. And he was freelancing, he was working as a freelance management consultant. And I would say, like, you know, we didn't, we didn't, we were doing okay, we didn't have trouble like dealing with like day to day expenses and stuff like that. But like, as a freelancer, your income isn't stable, right? It's very much dependent on work. And so I really felt like, I couldn't bank on anything. I couldn't just quit my job to go to an MBA. So it was a really difficult decision. But I'm so glad that despite being a freelancer, despite having sort of fluctuating income, my husband was so supportive and helping fund my MBA. At that point of time, like, whatever loan I could get, like the rest of it was covered by my husband. So I'm really glad that he was supportive. Since both of us were at a point in our lives, where we were trying to figure out a careers him as a freelancer is trying to figure out how to build his business and so on. I think we could really use that space and focusing on our own careers at that point of time. So it was a conscious joint well thought out decision where we said, you know, what, we can brave two years, it's, it's fine. We keep visiting each other. And you know, we can make it happen. So that was one of the reasons why I applied to a business school in Europe because it's closer than the US and cheaper Of course. So yeah, so that's, you know, I decided to do an MBA in those two years. Maybe the first year was okay, because I was so caught up in my course and you know, really wrapping my head around living independently and my husband was also enjoying his newfound freedom from the wives.

Neil Metzler: 12:59

Oh, man. We're gonna have we're gonna have Kartik on next on you're expecting and ask him. Yeah, yeah.

Priyanka: 13:12

So yeah, I mean, I guess I would nag him constantly because he'd quit his job as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. And to get I was freelancing, trying to figure his thing out going on bike trips, spending more than he could make and things like

Neil Metzler: 13:32

banker to freelance and bike trips and time with the boys. You know, watching sports in the pub. That sounds amazing to me. I'm not sure if that's what he was up to. That's what I'd be up. Shortly after that.

Priyanka: 13:45

Yeah, exactly. He was really trying to figure out his career as well. So I think he he enjoyed that space that he got without having to be bogged down by providing for someone. So yeah, so the first year was great. But the second year got a little difficult because we really did miss miss each other a lot. And I was also traveling a lot. In my second year, I spent my summer traveling across Southeast Asia, I was working, I was interning them. Then I spent a semester in Michigan in the US. And yeah, so it was quite difficult. So by the end of my MBA for my last semester, he actually came and stayed with me in Barcelona. And so that was quite nice. But yeah, I think that time went by really quickly now that I think about it, you know, feels like a blur.

Neil Metzler: 14:43

Well, I'm happy to hear that you had that time together in Barcelona, because that sounds really romantic. And I'm happy to hear that after all of those hoops that each of you had jumped through him with getting his feet into freelancing you with your International MBA and your rotations abroad. Michigan in Barcelona. Happy to hear that.

Priyanka: 15:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Neil Metzler: 15:04

Can we talk about visas just for a moment? Because this is a topic that for many of us is always there always in the background of some of the decisions and the trade offs that we make. So could you talk about how the two of you maybe manage some of those challenges and those trade offs?

Priyanka: 15:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. Like visa is such a big thing. And especially coming from a country that doesn't have free visa most countries, it obviously makes things more complicated. So when I went to Barcelona, I was on a student visa, and my husband couldn't have possibly got a work visa, so he would have to be on a tourist visa, and he wouldn't have been able to work. So I don't think it was never an option for him to move with me and live with me for the two years. However, in the last four or five months that he stayed with me, he was taking a break from freelancing to write his book. So he spent that semester when he was with me to just simply right, throughout. So he ended up publishing a book, once we were back in India after my MBA, so that way, you know, he was trading off income, but kind of using that downtime to write what she'd been meaning to write for sure. So yeah, I mean, that was complicated. And obviously, because of that, we had to be really careful about where we went post MBA to, to live, because both advice would need to work.

Neil Metzler: 16:50

Can I ask Priyanka, when you were working internationally? Was this tough on family when the two of you were in in different countries? Because you'd gotten married, I'm sure that some, some aunts and uncle's might have loved for you to stay in the hometown, one of the hometown or the other, you know, put roots down, etc. How did you manage? Any any, you know, aspect of family in that time?

Priyanka: 17:21

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Actually. Yeah, I think it's not very easy to do what we did. Because we were married for four years, by the time I moved away, and by that time, you know, we should have ideally have had a two year old child by being given solid standards. And here I was, you know, not even thinking about having a child and being ambitious about my career, which was probably not not great from a lot of people's point of view, but at least a very close family, like, my parents are cartherics immediate family. They were really supportive. They were, they were great in terms of, you know, understanding why I was choosing to do what I was doing, and they were really supportive. But of course, you would have like the odd random relative who would make a snide remark about your life choices. But I guess the great thing is Karthik and I were aligned. So I don't think it affected us.

Neil Metzler: 18:31

We talked about developing careers and developing the relationship. How did you decide to start a family together?

Priyanka: 18:40

Yeah. So we always knew that we wanted to have a child and we had, we were, we were open to it a couple of years into getting married itself. But you know, it didn't happen. And so we felt like we were sort of putting our careers on hold to be able to have a family and because you're trying to balance those things. And then we made like a trade off. And we said, You know what, let's just focus on our careers for now. And you know, when we feel more settled, we can have a child. So since we've made that decision, I felt like when I completed my MBA, I felt like that's a nice break, because I get to start again. I'm considered a fresher when I go back after graduate school, right? So that sounds like a good time to sort of have a child and that's why we decided to time having the child just when I complete the MBA so that I can take out however long they want before actually start working till I feel settled enough to you know, focus my energies on my career. So that's, that's how we decided to have a child When we did, and I realized this is such a tricky sort of decision for a lot of people, because I don't think you always have the luxury of being able to time these things, because you can plan all you want, but they really happen when they happen, right. So I felt like, I feel like this is this is a topic that a lot of women juggle with, because it affects their career a lot more compared to men. Because you don't lose out on a promotion. You don't stay back for a year. Of course, it's great that there are things like paternity leaves and stuff like that. But I don't think child births pregnancy affects careers for men the same way it affects women, no matter how much you try to sort of deny it and say, Hey, I'm going to go back to work a month later or whatever, right? So yeah, that was a tough decision, but one that we luckily had the luxury to make. And it panned out the way we planned.

Neil Metzler: 20:58

It's interesting, the cultural context in which we start our families and the workplace cultures, where we play those roles, right? I know, in the United States, I had a manager who, so I've worked in the US and Germany, as well as the UK. And I had a manager who he was gone, I think, for 72 hours while his wife was giving birth, and then he was back on the desk on Monday. And I I asked him, What are you? What are you doing here? And he said, Oh, you know, I'm taking the weeks later. We've got it synched up. So she's taking her time now. And then I'm taking some time later. And then in Germany, we would have a pizza party for a colleague who was going away for an indeterminate amount of time, just to celebrate her career milestone, as a becoming a super high powered career mom, and pizza and beer and non alcoholic beer. And yeah, so I, I've been in both those cultures. And I wonder what it was like for you in the workplace, returning to work after this period that you described.

Priyanka: 22:11

Yeah, it's really interesting that you contrast the two cultures. So when I completed my MBA, I was six months pregnant then. And I came back to India, and I really didn't want to move to UK to take up my job at Amazon. Because there were multiple things, I didn't know how I'd actually handle a baby on my own without the support a family and things like that in a new country. And the second thing was, I knew that my husband would have to be uprooted. And he would need to build a new network in the UK. He previously worked in the UK for a short while, but like, a majority of his network is here in India, because he went to schools in India. So I knew that, you know, it would be a lot of responsibility if I moved away. So I was desperately trying to find opportunities for work in India. But I remember very clearly a one for this one interview when I was eight and a half months pregnant. And I didn't have a very big belly. So it was really hard to tell that I was pregnant, and I was clothed in a way that you couldn't actually tell. And we had a few rounds of conversation. And we got to sort of the final stage is discussing compensation when I could start and things like that. And this guy asked me when I would start and I said, Oh, I'm going to be having a baby next month. So maybe a couple of months after that, you know, and this, this was a startup and you're now a unicorn, actually in India, but. And he was like, Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. I was like, Yeah, that's fine. He couldn't tell that I was pregnant. He didn't realize in the couple of meetings where it had like face to face in person meetings. And he was like, Okay, let me let me come back to you. And, you know, we'll take it forward from there, right like that. It very gracefully ended. I didn't for a minute think that this was something that would affect him. Because by that point, when Amazon had made me the offer, I told them, hey, I'm pregnant. So I can't really start right now. And so I'd like to start the following year, and they were like, Oh, absolutely. Take your time. Like, you know, that's so cool that you know, you're gonna have a child and stuff and I was like, Oh, that's so cool, right? And then here's this guy who I never hear back from after at all because he has no idea how to deal with this. Right? And this is not the kind of stuff that would happen. to a guy, one, he's never going to tell the guy that he actually I'm having a good, like, in 15 days.

Neil Metzler: 25:07

It doesn't have to.

Priyanka: 25:09

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so felt really bad. I think at that point of time, in fact, I almost felt angry for how, like, you know, the culture and Indian companies is so much more. So much less open compared to Europe. Because I had a great experience in Amazon, like, people were super understanding that I'd have to leave work at five every day, to go pick up my child from the nursery, and you know, things like that, or if I had an emergency, or if my child is sick, I could call in sick work from home. All of that, right. But what I also appreciate as they didn't allow me to bask in my motherhood, Glory forever, because I remember, my, my daughter was probably seven, eight months old. And I was asked to go was it a, a winter in Poland. And I was like, Oh, I can't really leave my child because I'm still breastfeeding my child. And so I can't, you know, do overnight trips and stuff like that. And I remember at that point of time, you know, my manager and other like, senior cat, other cat leads and stuff like that. They were like, you know, what, they're, you know, suck it up, I'm sure there are arrangements to make to make sure that you know, you continue to feed your child like, you know, they'll obviously get explicit, but like, store your milk or like, do whatever, like, pick up your life, you're not really you've got to figure out your ship. You're like, you're, you're in charge of this. You're the leader of this part of your business, and you've got to take care of your stuff, right. I thought that was cool. I thought that was really cool that they believed in me so much that I had to go there to go get that job done. And that I will learn to figure it out. Right. That's very different from stonewalling. You are never? Yeah. Talking to you just because you're pregnant.

Neil Metzler: 27:19

This interview is over. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Priyanka: 27:25

Right. Yeah. So yeah, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood affects careers. Yeah, that's the that's the reality of it.

Neil Metzler: 27:33

Do you feel? Can I put you on the spot and ask, as you look back in the past few years, do you feel that becoming starting a family and becoming a mother has changed your career progression? Or slowed it down? Or has it just changed the way that you make choices?

Priyanka: 27:58

I would definitely say the latter. It's really changed the way I make choices. I think one of the biggest upsides of being a mum is that I've learned how to prioritize, I'm super efficient, I've learned how to prioritize. Because it's really easy to get sucked into your career, not pause for a moment and just keep working and working and working. Having the additional responsibility of tending to a small human, really makes you snap out, switch off from everything for a moment and just live in the moment a little bit. Right. And everybody needs that like to be able to live in the moment, at least once a day. So yeah, I'm super glad to be a mum. And I don't think it's negatively affected my career in any way. Or at least, I don't see that way at all.

Neil Metzler: 28:55

That's a brilliant, that's a real I really love that answer there.

Priyanka: 28:59

Yeah, but I just want to caveat that by saying, I can only say this, having the benefit of hindsight. But if I had to make this decision of Oh, my God, when do I have a chair? Will it affect my career? Or like what's going to happen? It's a super difficult one.

Neil Metzler: 29:16

What do you mean, tell me more about that.

Priyanka: 29:18

I think there's never really like our careers today are so fluid and dynamic. And there's no Hey, get into this job and spend 30 years and retired from this job after 30 years, right? Like, you're constantly moving. You're constantly learning. You're never most of the people from our generation don't feel like they've arrived in life. Right? So when you really pause and say, Hey, this is the right time for me to take a pause in my career so that I can focus my energies on building a family for the next couple of years a year or whatever. I think it's really difficult to find the moment to find that time. And I don't think anyone is fully ever prepared to what having a child of parenthood throws at you. So for me to say, you know, I have no regrets. And it's wonderful. I'm only saying this because I've crossed the bridge. But if I were on the other side, it would be harder to figure it out.

Neil Metzler: 30:25

If you know me, you know, I'm concerned about gender gap in tech, women in big data, or a nonprofit building the data science and engineering workforce of our future, because there cannot be equity in society, without equity in data collection, curation and decisions, learn about the new data revolution, and how you can be a part of the solution at women in big data.org. So you were going to tell us about how you moved into your first opportunities out of university? And what you kind of learned from those opportunities, right?

Priyanka: 31:03

Sure, yeah. Yeah, as I was saying, I joined engineering because I thought it might be interested in the technical stuff, because I had an interest in math and physics. But I quickly figured out that, you know, it's the tech stuff just doesn't fascinate me as much. I enjoyed a lot of the electives that I took, which is operations, research, organizational behavior, all of this stuff that helps you manage businesses. I was also very fortunate to get a lot of opportunities in terms of running various clubs and organizations within you know, college that made me realize actually love empowering people and building organizations. So out of engineering school, when I got an opportunity to join Toyota, it was a management trainee position, I just jumped on it, because it had nothing to do with designing electronic circuits or, you know, programming or anything. Yeah, it felt right up my alley. Yeah, that was great, because I got a really cool position. That was that gave me a an overview of the entire operations of Toyota in India. So I was really lucky to get that role, because I had a lot of exposure to very senior management got stuck into all sorts of projects, you know, spanning the entire business of Toyota in India, and so that, that was a great learning experience. For me. I don't think at any point of time, I felt the need for business school while I was at Toyota. It was only after being in for three and a half, four years, unfortunately, you know, the business wasn't doing that great. And automotive industry being a cyclical industry. Sometimes you just don't have work, right. So I'd gone from managing, you know, 1112 different projects at once to doing pretty much very, very little work. And so it got very, kind of not so challenging after a while. Okay. So I was actively looking for a change. But having done operations for so long, it was very difficult for me to break into a different function. But I was really keen on learning new functions, because I knew I wanted to run my own business at some point. So I wanted to sort of learn a little bit about sales and marketing and finance and NDAs seemed like a great sort of shortcut to, you know, getting an overview of all these different functions and possibly even changing careers quite easily. So that, you know, I get a more well rounded experience. So that was, that was pretty much how I went from undergrad to, you know, working at Toyota, and then that leaving to business school.

Neil Metzler: 34:18

Okay. So, you've gone through university and work experience at Toyota, where you've got this wide, broad perspective, as you mentioned, overall of operations. It sounds like you've gotten some more clarity about or on the path to clarity about what you like and what you don't like so much, as you talked about, you know, kind of mechanical, electrical engineering versus people and organizations and teams. Is that right?

Priyanka: 34:51

Yeah. Yeah. And I think what was really, maybe, you know, just to add to that, what was really helpful was to be able to work with such senior leaders. And to really get into their heads about how they think about business problems, and understand problems from a very strategic perspective was really helpful in shaping the way I thought about my own career.

Neil Metzler: 35:18

Oh, can you give us an example of one of those mentors or maybe a project that really opened your perspective?

Priyanka: 35:27

Yeah, for sure. It's made such a tremendous impact on me this example that, in fact, I've even written a business case study for my business school on this particular topic. In the last year that I was at Toyota, we were, we were undergoing a lot of loss. Because a product, a car that we had launched for the Indian market didn't really do very well. And in order to contain those losses, we had to completely revamp our operations and cut costs like crazy.

Neil Metzler: 36:03

So let's take a step in a different direction. Now, you we've talked about your business experience at both Amazon and Toyota. We talked about some of your motivation. And you took an interesting step to develop a business called Marriage Broker auntie, so what, what is marriage broker? onsie? And how did it start?

Priyanka: 36:28

Yeah, marriage pro grantee, started in 2013. I got married in 2010, I was only 23, then I was the first among all my friends to get married. So I think a lot of my single friends found refuge in discussing their dating troubles with me. Because I wasn't competition, I wouldn't judge them. And you know, just listen. And I was also vicariously still living my single life through them. One such discussion led to a couple of my friends getting together. Luckily for me, they also ended up getting married, eventually. So I was like, hey, maybe the fact that I'm sharing all of these experiences, with my friends about being married before they get married, is is useful, right? So somewhere along all of these discussions, I think I discovered methodologies to reverse engineer good relationships, because I was already married, then. I was helping these people who have no idea what it is to be married to figure out how to choose partners to be in good marriages. So I was like, okay, maybe I should try and see if this is valuable for more people outside of my friends network. And that's when I started a Facebook page in 2013. Because people still Did that make sense? So yeah, that's how that's how it started. It was just a hobby passion project, which I ran alongside working with Toyota. Luckily, for me, too, because it's a factory. It's a manufacturing setup, they work on fixed hours. So you just clock in and clock out, you don't think about work. Like, once you're home, there's no laptop, there's no email that you get to anything. So I had a lot of time in the evenings. So yeah, I was able to sort of run this quite quite peacefully alongside work. So that's how it started.

Neil Metzler: 38:45

So I have a question for you about these limiting beliefs. You didn't use the term limiting beliefs, but folks may use that term sometime or, or boundaries. And I wanted to zoom out and talk about the idea that careers are no longer linear, right? You told me that resonated for you what does that what does that mean for you Priyanka?

Priyanka: 39:12

Yeah, I think when I quit Amazon, and I started running Marriage program to full time no one around me. My family included like my parents included, really understood what I was doing. They were hoping that my madness wouldn't soon and and, you know, the the I knocked some sense into my head or something like that. I mean, they really wanted to support me, right? That's my family. They really wanted to support me, but I don't think it makes sense to them at all. Because why would someone, study what they studied, put them through schools paid for those schools, built a career or 10 years along a certain path and completely abandon that to go do something else, right. And so when I started off, I really didn't have any professional network or credibility to bank on apart from the one that I had with my clients. But unfortunately, the nature of the relationship is people don't want to talk about being coached. They, they feel like they're not good enough. And that's why they needed help from somebody, and they don't want to really put it out there in public and say, Hey, I got help from someone. And that's why I'm a better professional today. Right? We all believe in innate abilities and talent and working hard to get something is just somehow uncool. Right. I mean, that's, that's how that's how the world perceives it. So I think it was really hard for me to be a legitimate entrepreneur, because the startup community in India and especially in Bangalore, is very tech focused. So if you're not building an app, or if you're not scaling, you don't get the front row seat to entrepreneurship, in terms of the connections, in terms of the network's people always are up to talking to you, they will happily sit down and have a conversation with you. And it's a very entertaining topic, dating love, they will talk to you. But when it comes down to investing in your company, or helping provide the resources and networks for you to succeed, it's a lot harder than it is if I were to be building. I don't know, a crypto platform are a SaaS based solution for some Sure. Right. So. So in that sense, I was starting from scratch in terms of building my own sort of network and community. And so in that sense, it wasn't a linear paths. I was I was going somewhere. And then I turned and I started going somewhere else. And even in the future, right? I don't know where I'm going to go. And I don't believe that these things have to directly add up to something because you know, there's so much to do in life. And if I only went straight, I'd miss out on the crossroads.

Neil Metzler: 42:52

You're so right, Priyanka. And we've spoken now, in the first half about career we got into entrepreneurship. And now we get to wrap up with you know, the human side. So I really appreciate the way that you've woven these pieces together in your career. And I'd like you to share with our listeners, where can they get in touch and follow your work? Where can they read the articles that you publish?

Unknown: 43:18

So I have a regular newsletter that I kind of write on a monthly ish basis. It's called ShapelyGal. So you can find that on shapelygal.substack.com That's usually where I share a lot of my work. Also, people can follow me on Twitter.

Priyanka: 43:40

My Twitter handle is Pri_Bharadwaj. I do post fleeting thoughts and links to stuff that I do.

Neil Metzler: 43:52

I've been enjoying your Twitter presence, and I'd encourage people to check you out on Twitter. And if you like what we spoke about here today, check out Priyanka's substack. Because there's also a great archive of all of the articles you've written there. And I think that would be really insightful for our audience. So Priyanka Bharadwaj, thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you. It's really fun having this conversation with you. Thank you for inviting me. You've listened to your next big thing. If you like what you've heard, please drop a like and subscribe, and you can always keep in touch with us at Cloud champions dotnet