Janelle James – Senior Vice President at Ipsos | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

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About The Guest

Talking Points

 

• 00:00 — Intro
• 02:22 — Janelle James’ origin story
• 12:43 — What is the one thing that has completely shifted in marketing over the last few years?
• 17:03 — Changing your logo to a rainbow flag?
• 21:50 — How do we uncover undercover bias?
• 33:48 — Does work from home have an impact on the ability of the company to have a more diverse workforce?
• 38:55 — How do you hire properly?
• 51:30 — Companies that are actually doing good for equity and inclusion.
• 55:33 — Is there anything else on which Janelle James is working currently?
• 56:27 — One of the biggest challenges faced by Janelle James in her career
• 59:08 — What is one of the biggest misconceptions Janelle James had seen in marketing and advertising?
• 1:04:20 — What would Janelle tell her younger self?
• 1:05:39 — Who has been a mentor to Janelle?
• 1:09:00 — A book or podcast recommended by Janelle James
• 1:10:30 — What does success mean to Janelle James?

Show Links

• https://www.instagram.com/janelle.a.james/
• https://twitter.com/janellejames/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/janelleajames/

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What is the Success Story Podcast?

On this podcast, you’ll find interviews, Q&A, keynote presentations & conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

The podcast is hosted by entrepreneur, business executive, author, educator & speaker, Scott D. Clary.

Scott will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned over his own career, as well as have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, notable figures, and politicians. All who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and insights.

He sits down with leaders and mentors and unpacks their stories to help pass those lessons on to others through both experiences and tactical strategies for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.

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Machine Generated Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, research, company, literally, consumer, brand, oftentimes, marketing, question, business, juneteenth, thinking, diversity, lives, bias, spoke, terms, career, perspective, understand

SPEAKERS

Janelle James, Scott, Scott D Clary

 

00:00

The new film 13 lives is coming to Prime Video. Well boys and their coach are trapped in a flooded cave from Academy Award winning director Ron Howard. How we got to get those kids out just too crazy. I said only chance. Experience the incredible true story. How sad is this? I’ve never done before. Nobody has that united the world today. Mr. 13 lives rated PG 13 maybe inappropriate for children under 13 and streaming August 5 Only on Prime Video.

 

Scott D Clary  00:30

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I’m your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot Podcast Network about Podcast Network has other great podcasts like marketing made simple hosted by Dr. JJ Peterson. Now Marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. If you like any of these topics, you definitely want to go check out the show how to write and deliver a captivating speech, how to market yourself into a new job, how design can help and also hurt your revenue, creating a social media ad strategy that actually works. If these topics resonate with you. Go check out marketing made simple wherever you get your podcasts. Today, my guest is Janelle James. She is an experienced global marketing strategist, consumer expert and diversity and inclusion specialist with a passion for changing the world. Her career spans over 20 years, includes multiple marketing disciplines, and has enabled her work to touch over a billion people. Her global work experience includes recognizable agencies such as Leo Burnett, Adelman, and Qatar, and supporting brands such as McDonald’s Procter and Gamble, Samsung, American Express, eBay, Disney and shell. She is currently a research director at Qatar, where she designs conducts and analyzes a wide range of studies for Fortune 500 companies and consults client partners on everything from consumer and market knowledge to inclusion to marketing plan development. Prior she was the executive vice president at Edelman and she wasn’t Senior Vice President at DDB. So we spoke about a variety of different topics spoke about how businesses are adapting to growing diversity, equity and inclusion concerns. We spoke about how to tailor your marketing to different demographics, different audiences properly, we spoke about what businesses can do to be more impactful in the DEA and AI space, that transcend and go a little bit further than just creating a rainbow logo. We spoke about how do you uncover biases in organizations. And then lastly, we spoke about some of the biggest misconceptions that she’s seen in marketing and advertising.

 

Janelle James  02:53

My career, my origins are what thank you so much for having me here. It is such a pleasure. Ah, I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I was born to two Guyanese immigrants. And my parents were from Guyana, South America, which is a very diverse culture, they have six different ethnic groups. So I grew up eating a lot of everything from Indian foods to Chinese. I’m and I grew up in Brooklyn, which is, you know, a melting pot, very West Indian neighborhood. And I think growing up there, it always made me I think, proud of my culture, but interested in other cultures, because it was sort of a working class, Pan West Indian environment. You know, being the child of immigrants, my parents always emphasize doing well in school and using education as an opportunity. So around the fifth grade, I got into this program called prep for PrEP, which opened you know, my family’s eyes to different educational opportunities and so from because of that program from middle school, through the end of high school, I went to a private all girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Called cheapen excellent school. But that very much changed. I think, my trajectory, and, you know, to give you perspective on chiefin the girls that go there are amazing. I can think of Nixon’s daughters Jackie Kennedy analysis, Estee Lauder, wow,

 

Scott D Clary  04:30

that’s an impressive alumni.

 

Janelle James  04:33

Yeah, well, very, very impressive alumni. And, and also really great. I think caring organization I loved. I loved going to school there for the six years that I was there, and I went to Harvard after that. But I you know, since I started at cheapen I’ve been in an amazing place where I was always navigating different organizations, academic institutions, with people Well, that didn’t really look like me. And so that was great because I got to learn a lot about other cultures. When I was in high school, I also did a summer abroad in France. So I lived with a family in San Jose there, which was incredibly amazing, immersive experience. And so I bring all this up before even getting to my career journey just to say that I’ve been influenced by so many different cultures. And I’ve spent my life around so many different types of people. And it sort of naturally comes together in the work that I do. I think as a marketer, when I started my career at Leo Burnett, I loved it, because it just made sense in a lot of ways you are helping a brand, understand how to connect its products to people. And in its most basic form, and that’s something that I found really exciting. Whatever I’ve done, we’ve always leveraged consumer insight, consumer research. And so I’ve done I guess, a number of rotations, so to speak, in different marketing disciplines. So I started in advertising, working for McDonald’s, while I was at Leo Burnett, and doing local McDonald’s advertising. So that’s everything from sports sponsorships to lobster rolls, and new local products, like the lobster roll in, in New England. And after two years of that, I got an opportunity to work still with Leo Burnett, but for McDonald’s, Italy. So I moved to Italy, worked on that for two years, which was amazing another immersive experience learning how culture, economics, politics can shape a brand, even with universal messaging, and a lot of same similar products. Stayed on at Leo Burnett in Italy, but then switched clients and started working on a number of p&g brands, in the feminine care space for Europe, Middle East and Africa, and a new product launch in North American western Europe. So all of my experiences increase in scale. And I was just doing a lot more learning about different audiences, learning how to connect them to different types of products and different types of services, decided to go to business school, that was a fantastic and phenomenal experience worked in banking for the summer, which just gave me a lot more perspective on business, finance, and helped to build my own financial acumen. After that, I returned to Leo Burnett, in a business development role for the company, I was a VP of Marketing innovation, helping them strategically build business in certain sectors as well as did I lose you?

 

Scott D Clary  07:44

No, no, you’re good. You’re good.

 

Janelle James  07:47

Okay. Okay, so I’ll keep talking a business development role, which was fantastic, just in terms of, you know, working now on a global level of the company, as opposed to attach to a specific country, but just gave me more perspective on the industry. And my career after that really becomes a rotation of sorts, I was very interested in not only connecting with different types of consumers, but learning about different types of marketing services, businesses. And so I decided to move to a more creative advertising agency. And that’s how I landed at DDB working on a number of Mars brands. After that, I decided to rotate again, and went into PR with Edelman working on the shell business across 40 markets. And then after that, I decided to rotate into research. Research has always been a part of what I do in terms of connecting with consumers and understanding their lives, motivations, behaviors, and it just in many ways, felt like a very natural fit, absolutely loved my job in the work that I did, and did not think, you know, six and a half years in that I would still be in research, I always thought I would have returned to advertising after these various rotations. But it’s been an interesting home of sorts, because it’s allowed me to work across a number of different categories, a number of different marketing challenges, and a number of different types of consumers. So I feel like this in and of itself has been in very interesting immersion into just consumers in general of all types. And it’s provided me with a number of opportunities to not only connect to these businesses and clients in a more intimate way and learn about different consumers, but also a lot of the issues that we talk about in society today, you know, and how brands want to address them and make it part of their communication, communications. And so a lot of things that are relevant to everyday people I get to do research on and understand how that affects people’s lives and so on. are there so many things that we could talk about? You know, how COVID is impacting

 

Scott D Clary  10:04

there’s, your experience is very cool and social justice. No, I was gonna say your experience is very impressive. That’s, that’s like, and I appreciate that you keep compounding and compounding and adding on. So the work that you do the work that you do right now at least. So just walk me through, walk me through just to explain to everybody the research that you’re doing, how does it actually impact the consumer.

 

Janelle James  10:28

So I do, generally three different types of research. So I’m a qualitative market researcher. So I do qualitative and qual quant studies, which means at its heart of it, I literally speak to people in groups or one on one, to understand more about their lives and more about their preferences and choices when it comes to different products. And to help brands I will do roughly three, three different types of research. I’ll help them evaluate campaigns are creative in various different forms to make sure that it resonates and is relevant and is motivating to that particular consumer. So creative assessment is one type of market research that I do. Another type is product development, lots of companies will create products and in various stages, sometimes it’s just an idea of the times, it’s an actual product. And I speak to consumers to understand what could be better about that product, what could be improved, what kind of products they should make, instead, it doesn’t work at all. And that also helps to inform communications. And then the third sort of group, or set of research that I do is more foundational. So a brand might decide that they want to connect with a new audience that they’ve never connected with before. And I’ll do work to help illuminate that consumer for them. So for example, you know, I, not in the too distant past, I had a brand that was very interested in a media company very interested in illuminating the lives of black women in America, because they realized that was a very important segment that often set trends with the rest of the content that they create, like, they just noticed that whenever they create content that works for black woman, it works for everyone. So they’re like, let’s learn more about this target so that we can create better content overall. And so that’s an example of sort of a more foundational ethnographic type of research that I might do.

 

Scott D Clary  12:33

I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode HubSpot. Now, security is one of the major issues big tech is currently facing. From AI scrapes the data leaks, starting your business solidly can be just as difficult as growing it securely. HubSpot is on a mission to help your business grow better with a CRM platform that grows with you start your venture with hub spots, easy to use, secure website builder that scales with your business, as you grow and share your team of two is just as secure as your team of 200 was secure sign on content and asset partitioning, and scalable team permissions. Whatever comes next, make sure your business is ready for it. Learn how your business can grow better@hubspot.com. So there’s obviously a few a few key events over the past few years that have obviously been probably pretty relevant to your work. So so what what so you know, like people that are listening to this show, they all have a mind for marketing, but I don’t think they have the access to insights that you would have. So what are some? Pick a topic, it could be COVID, it could be social justice, it could just be general consumer behavior. What’s something that you’ve noticed that has just completely shifted over the past two years? And what are we what are businesses doing to deal with this?

 

Janelle James  13:54

Well, you know, diversity and inclusion is such a huge topic, I think not only marketing, but just for businesses overall. And I think that’s something that is top of mind and come up comes up in a lot of the conversations that I have, not only with my client partners, but also sometimes just naturally in the course of conversation with in the course of conversation with consumers, you know, as we’re conducting research, so for example, you know, I’m working on a study to help make clinical trials more inclusive. So it’s not just consumer brands that you might think about that are prioritizing inclusivity it’s all kinds of brands that are prioritizing that not only from a consumer perspective, but also from an employee perspective. And so that’s, I think, a pretty hot topic as well. Incidentally, I actually wrote my first opinion piece,

 

Scott D Clary  14:51

he wrote an op ed on this Okay, so what was the what was the what was the opinion? Let’s let’s dive into the opinion. Yeah, we can definitely

 

Janelle James  14:58

dive into the opinion. I mean, what’s fascinating is, you know, Juneteenth is a holiday. So that was last Saturday, a lot of companies are celebrating it or finding ways to celebrate it. And you know, the US just took a vote to make it a federal holiday. And I’ll be honest, it’s existed for, you know, a very long time. And I was an Afro American Studies and Sociology major in college. So that was the first time I’d heard about Juneteenth. And admittedly, I had not heard very much about it, living in the Northeast, and other places, since college until last summer. And so obviously, I knew about it. But it became part of, you know, our vernacular, our vocabulary as a country just last year. And I very much think that in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and the resulting social justice movements, you know, people were looking for a way to commemorate celebrate honor. And it was just timely, that, you know, George Floyd was murdered at the end of May. And Juneteenth was, what, two, three weeks later. And so a lot of companies were looking for ways to build awareness around social justice, racial justice, and brands began to talk about Juneteenth in a way last year, that’s never happened before. And for me, just, as I, you know, was bracing myself for Juneteenth coming up this year, I was just kind of cringing a little bit. I think a lot of professionals in this space, a lot of people of color, feel the same way. Because, you know, it’s not just about doing something to show solidarity, in terms of racial justice, or social justice, but authentically doing so I get the opportunity. You know, I mentioned I do work in terms of creative development and product development. And over the years, probably a little bit more in the last couple of years, brands are always looking to better connect with, you know, black Americans with black people in general. And I do test quite a bit of work or evaluate quite a bit of work with consumers that are targeted to this specific audience. And one of the things we consistently hear all the time, is that it should feel authentic, it shouldn’t just feel like you’re doing something

 

Scott D Clary  17:33

that’s smart. That’s marketing 101. That’s marketing. That’s marketing. But, but I know I appreciate where you’re going with this. And I actually have, I have a, I have opinions about this as well. And it just seems like every Okay, so I’ll draw, I’ll draw a very, like, I’ll draw from a very visual example. Every every company logo has now changed to a rainbow flag. Right? Yeah, what exactly? Is that doing something? Maybe for some companies, they’re doing a lot more than that. But I mean, what’s the actual tangible thing that you’re doing versus changing a logo? Or I don’t know, I don’t know what companies actually do besides letting people go home for the day on Friday for June 18. I don’t know if there’s other actions taken. But anyway, I’m just I’m curious what your thoughts are,

 

Janelle James  18:25

you know, it varies a different companies, I think, you know, the prime example that you brought up is a great one. You know, I think, at a basic level, showing solidarity in the month of June for pride, helps people understand that they’re safe spaces, that they can have these conversations. But I think the challenge that we have, oftentimes, is doing these efforts on a content calendar, you know, literally like, it’s June, let’s make sure we do everything for Pride Month, it’s February, you know, let’s make sure we do everything for Black History month in March. Let’s do everything we can for women, it’s Women’s History Month. And the reality is, you know, I’m a black woman every day, you know, and I think the same is true for everyone, you know, wherever you are, whatever. Whatever your identity is, I think it’s important for people to feel like they have that they’re important

 

Scott D Clary  19:28

everyday. So, so if you see a company, that’s what almost all companies now are, are actively showing support. And obviously, they should but after the month is done, as an individual that’s part of that group. How do you feel Do you feel like things have changed or do you feel like your company was just fitting into a content? Calendar?

 

Janelle James  19:57

I think it depends on the person you know, For some people that might be enough, for others, it might not, I think it also depends on the brand. What I would just caution a brand to do is, whatever you’re doing, make sure you’re always doing it. Because that’s how it feels more authentic. And that’s the type of feedback that I get from consumers. Oftentimes, when we’re testing work focused on a particular segment, you know, they want to know, not only that the company is honoring them at this particular time, or with this particular product, but that this company authentically wants them to be a part of their business that cares about them authentically. And so things feel more authentic, feel more genuine, when they happen all the time, not just when they happen, you know,

 

Scott D Clary  20:43

100% for a week, or a month, or a holiday or a day or a day, right, exactly.

 

Janelle James  20:47

Exactly. Yeah. So the opinion piece was was it basically touched on that. But it really highlighted, you know, one opportunity to feel more authentic and more genuine in terms of how you celebrate Juneteenth, or pledge solidarity with any community that is marginalized, is to look inward at your employees, because they’re a very important influencer group for all of your consumers, but also a very important stakeholder in terms of delivering the products and services that you have, and so ensuring that there’s a certain degree of congruence between you know, what you say publicly and your operations internally, that can really be an interesting link. Because there have been a few instances where companies have pledged solidarity, or pledge to give millions or pledge to support, you know, black owned businesses, but then internally, their, their companies, their employees, excuse me, are struggling with many of the things that they’re you know, they’re feeling isolated, they’re not feeling like, you know, they’re being treated equitably, or they’re not feeling included. And so, you know, it was just the opinion piece was really just a reminder, to take that step and also include your employees and sort of look inward at how you can authentically deliver on these these prompts.

 

Scott D Clary  22:19

One thing that I think is an interesting topic, and

 

Scott  22:25

you know, we can we can try and unpack as many different examples or high level examples as we possibly can in a short podcast, but we’re not, we’re not going to focus on people that are not making efforts, let’s focus on people that are making efforts, because those are the people that really do care. We hope so undercover, like undercover bias. So So undercover bias, meaning you may be biased in things you do and you don’t know, you don’t know it, right? You don’t know, if you’re, you’re speaking about this a little bit before and, you know, drawing the example of when you try and hire the way that you betray your company. Is it attracting? Is it attracting everybody versus just a group of people that perhaps are already in your company? Right? Or with your marketing? So how do we uncover undercover bias? Yeah. How do we cuz I think that this is something that’s interesting. Obviously, this is a step further than just than just signaling that you care about a cause. This is actually looking deep inside. Yeah. And I spoke about, like, you know, I’ve had conversations about how do I actually funny enough, now, I speak about bringing women into tech into sales, but I feel like, my actually my whole sales team is actually all women. So, you know, maybe, maybe that part’s been been checked off. But I mean, like, it’s something that I’m sure in many industries, it’s it’s not the case where you have a lot of like, maybe in tech, at least row culture or that kind of thing that you that you have in these types of organizations, and it just sort of just doubles down when you put it another job requisition. Now this Yeah. Yeah,

 

Janelle James  24:07

it’s a great question. I think you can actually analyze any process that you have for bias. And I’ll give you a give you a story. So last summer, you know, in the wake of all of this happening, I had a colleague who was in the midst of preparing a presentation for a big tech line, actually. And she said to me, you know, we want to talk to them, we want to help them be more inclusive in how they do research. They want to be diverse and inclusive and how they do research. And she’s like, can you tell me where bias lives in the research process? And before I could answer, she said, It’s in recruiting. Right? And I was like, not only is it in recruiting, it’s everywhere. And she’s like, What do you mean? I was like, well, you name a part of the research process, and there’s going to be bias in it. Then when I said that, it was like, it was like a Friday afternoon, and like, I want to see the presentation was like Monday or Tuesday. And she was like, can you just write this down? Can you just make a slide? And just help me understand this. And so literally that weekend, I made a slide, right. And I literally put like seven different process elements, and then two or three questions for each element that you could ask to understand where bias lives in that process. So I’m going to, I’m going to share that with you. And it’s something that we circulated quite a bit in the organization and us with this with this client and a few others. But I started with team composition, right? So and thinking about bias, just in a very, almost scientific way, you know, because bias is human right. And so interrupting bias, the the sort of premise behind it as interrupting biases critical for unlocking best in class research capability, and templates, routine ways of working, undue speed, all of these inadvertently invite bias into the process, right? Because you’re going to try to be the most efficient as you can with the way you do work. And it really creates preference for traditional approaches, if you’re doing any of these things. So looking at the first element of how we just conduct research, looking at the team composition, even on the client side, is the team agency or client working on the initiative, homogenous, and not only homogenous from an ethnicity or racial perspective, but from an education perspective, from just a background perspective, right? What skills attributes will be most valuable throughout the lifecycle of the project? And do we have that present in this team? Right, then we go on to the brief, or just proposal. So the brief is what the client will issue to the research company. And the proposal is how the research company answers that brief. So how are we describing the target in this opportunity? You know, bias could live in there? Are we leveraging or should we leverage insights or perspectives for many past projects? A lot of the times, you know, one of the things I’m doing right now, I mentioned with clinical trial research, with clinical trial research, oftentimes, inclusion or exclusion criteria, is just copy pasted from study to study. Right? That happens. That happens in a lot of studies, right? Not not just clinical trial, but just all over right? Companies will build on their learning by using learning from another study. Is that something we should even do with this study? Is that a question that we’re actively asking and choosing this time around? Or the research methods were choosing for this study best suited to illuminate the target? Right? Will the research methods inadvertently inhibit target audiences? So for example, you know, if you’re trying to I have I have a an alcohol client. And she lives in New York City. And she was telling me, you know, I was just walking down the street, in Harlem, and she’s like, I literally saw people on the corner, drinking very high end brands, not her brands, from very high end brands. He was like, they were drinking Well, wet. They were drinking, you know, Hennessy, and playing games. Like they were in their homes. Right, but it was like, outside. And she was like, what she was like, what an amazing thing. But this is COVID. I don’t know, maybe that was their way of being socially distant. And she was so fascinated by this. And what she said to me, she was like, Janelle, when we do our next study, I want to make sure we’re doing some grassroots recruiting that we can get that we can she’s like, do your databases do they? Will they get those people like that we’re just hanging out on the street, cuz she just wants to know when people are drinking wherever, no, in traditional and non traditional ways, and sometimes the methods that you choose to do research might not incorporate the full range of people, right? You know, oftentimes, right now, we’re thinking a lot about different levels of ability, right? If you’re doing research via zoom in this way, and you want to tap into, you know, people who are disabled, depending on your disability, you might not be able to, you know, do research via zoom or any email. And so you have to think about are the research methods conducive to reaching the target that you want? And that’s something that you have to critically think through in terms of recruiting, which was the original question that I received, are we sampling for inclusion? You know, are the databases that we’re using truly representative? Are we finding our audiences where they naturally exist? Oftentimes, when people want to do research, you know, with African Americans or with black people, for instance, it was always very interesting. They’re like, Okay, we want to do research in Chicago. We want to do Research in Atlanta, we want to do research in New York, maybe Baltimore. And it’s like, yeah, people live in Houston. So one of the great things about, you know, online research is that you can tap into national audiences very easily, and include people in your research that not you know, black people don’t only live in black neighborhoods, are you getting a full picture of the black community, for instance, and this is any community is

 

Scott D Clary  30:30

that is this? Is this a standard? Like what you’re saying, though, like a like the second, you start to say, well, if I want to if I want to get some data points from a black community, I’m only going to go to what I think a black community is, and I don’t look at those variables. Is that a standard? Is that something that you see repeating again, and again, and again, it’s so

 

Janelle James  30:49

it really depends. So I think it depends who you have on both sides of the equation, right? So here’s an example. Sometimes, a client might say, they already have the study in mind, because they have really smart, capable researchers on their side, right, but they just don’t conduct the research themselves. So they might design the study and say, I’m just looking to do research in these five cities, right? Other times with this particular target, other times, they might be looking for a recommendation. And so if they’re looking for a recommendation, depending on who they partner with, you know, they might say, you know, one of the things that I love saying, if, if a client is looking for research in a particular city, I will make recommendations. So I actually love doing research in Houston. Because Houston is actually one of the most diverse cities, I think people sort of forget about it. Sometimes. It’s the fourth largest city in the country. It’s huge. Right? I mean, Texas is huge, I think three largest cities, I

 

Scott D Clary  31:48

don’t Yeah, I don’t think people I don’t think people think about it as as, as a diverse metropolitan hub, you know, like, a melting pot, but it

 

Janelle James  31:57

used Ustym very much is. And so there’s a lot of everyone in Houston, when they say it’s the most diverse, it’s not that they just have a lot of black people, they have a lot of everyone, they have a lot of white people, they have a lot of Hispanic people, they have a lot of white people, you know. And so it’s a, it’s a great city to do research in, because people tend to be a lot more diverse in their thinking, a lot more cosmopolitan, any number of things. And so how you have that conversation about where you recruit. Debate depends on how willing the client is to consider other locations. And you know, locations that they consider for research are a function of where they do business, as well as who they want to learn about. And so you always want to make sure that you have people on your teams, if you work for a research agency that can help a client, make a decision and make recommendations to help them get the best understanding of the target that they want. And so it really depends who’s on both sides. You know, are our diverse audiences a monolith? That’s another big question that we asked. So for instance, if I’m doing research, all white people shouldn’t look the same. They’re not a monolith. Just just like, all Hispanic people are not the same. Just like all white people are not the same. And so sometimes when you’re recruiting people might think, Oh, just because that person is black, we have a representative sample. But no, for instance, all black people don’t live in black neighborhoods, all black people don’t have certain types of jobs. You know, at least 10% of black people are immigrants. Yeah. And that’s just that’s that’d be first generation. I wouldn’t say immigrant even though my parents are immigrants. Yeah, yeah. Well, it depends how you, it depends how you define first generation, because technically, I’m the child of immigrants. So I would be first generation, but if someone moved themselves, they would be first generation as well, you know what I mean? So there’s, but then you can have a Jamaican family that moved to the US in the 30s, or the 40s. And they still very much identify as Jamaican heritage, but they’re not considered, you know, immigrants at that point. And so just making sure your diverse audiences are not monolithic, is huge. So so that’s another big one in terms of recruiting. And asking the question, yeah,

 

Scott D Clary  34:19

no, I was gonna say Just on that point, because I just I’m just sort of thinking about how we have all been now sort of able to work from home or most companies have been allowing people to work from home. Have you seen that have an impact on the ability of a company to have a more diverse workforce? Because realistically, that should enable it? That should enable because now you can recruit from anywhere?

 

Janelle James  34:41

Yeah, I think definitely. That’s one of the things that I think I’m seeing sort of anecdotally it’s one of the things that I’m reading about. It definitely, I think lowers a number of different barriers, but the the only barrier is not necessarily you know, location or geography. You know, we were talking about access before and networks, you know, and a lot of where you’re able to work and the jobs that you know about our function of who’s in your network.

 

Scott D Clary  35:11

I didn’t mean to interrupt your your train of thought like I think that that point about continue to continue with with the different things that you’re looking for and research but then I think that what we were talking about before this call, I think that would be good to to bring up as well, the the access and the network piece.

 

Janelle James  35:27

Yeah, of course. So recruiting is one part of the process, how you develop the questionnaire, you know, when we’re doing research, it’s not like you’re, you’re winging in the conversation, you literally create questions, and you can, you know, be dynamic in terms of how you have the conversation, but we literally create a guide that we align with our client partners. And so in terms of creating that guide, you want to make sure that the questions in the guide are checked for implied bias or traditional assumptions. I mean, even something really simple as gender in this day and age, how you ask a gender question, how you ask an ethnicity question. It literally literally needs to be open ended, check all that, check all that apply, because you could be insulting people in a way and they don’t feel comfortable, and they could literally shut down on you. Are we using gender neutral or anti racist language? In terms of how we ask questions? Do all the questions provide an out for unexpected feedback? You know, I’ll have see surveys and things that just sort of come across my desk or come up in social media. And just as a researcher, I look more closely at them just to see how people ask questions. And oftentimes, there’ll be multiple choice, and there won’t be a nun, or there won’t be an other. But sure, yeah, well, that there should always be, it should always be

 

Scott D Clary  36:52

that right, that right away would would, would hurt the the integrity of the data, because now that that person that falls into either of those none or other camps,

 

Janelle James  37:00

yeah, you’re forcing someone to choose and a choice that’s not applicable to them is not there. And if you’re truly taking a position where you want to learn something new, almost every topic you should provide an out for them. Like one of the things I’ve sort of trained myself to do in terms of asking questions. It’s always, you know, whatever. I’m curious about, like, you know, what’s your favorite TV show? I’ve trained myself to say, what, if any TV shows do you like, because maybe they don’t like TV at all? And just by asking, you’re forcing them to then they might be thinking, Okay, well, I have to give him my favorite TV show. But I really hate

 

Scott D Clary  37:33

so your dad is your dad is useless. It’s garbage. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

 

Janelle James  37:40

So, you know, making sure that your questions provide an out is huge in terms of how you’re developing the guide, in terms of how you conduct the fieldwork, you know, is the moderator flexible and able to relate to a number of audiences, I think that’s a really important one, when you’re conducting potentially live research, is the moderator employing techniques that encourage sharing diverse stories. You know, oftentimes people will say focus groups are awful, because they have a lot of groupthink. And I always say, you know, focus groups are awful, if you have an awful moderator, you have to know how to ask people questions, you know, in a way that they feel comfortable sharing a dissenting opinion. You know, one of the things that I’ll do oftentimes is, if someone makes a very strong opinion, I’ll say, great. Does anyone disagree with him? Because when you ask questions, then people feel comfortable disagreeing, like it’s okay to disagree, you know, and there are lots of other techniques that you can do. But these are things that you should be thinking about when you’re conducting fieldwork. And looking to make sure that you’re avoiding or interrupting bias where it could exist in the analysis, you know, Are we under are over emphasizing parts of the data artificially to achieve the desired diversity? Right? So oftentimes, someone will look at a sample and this is for qual or quant research, they’ll look at a sample and say, Okay, well, you know, we will overweight this criteria, because that’s what we really want to learn about. But if you’re over weighting something that’s already wrong, you just have more wrong data.

 

Scott D Clary  39:25

There’s so many like as you’re as you’re discussing this, I’m just thinking back to like, like hiring and recruiting process now, and how all these lessons everything you’re now this is this is this is the the million dollar question. When you’re trying to find somebody that’s going to be successful in a role where you do have to eliminate certain not not people in turn, but like if they don’t have the skill set, they can’t be in that role. So how do you bring over these lessons and learnings from from your research and your market research and background and then you bring these into In an environment where you don’t, where you get the right questions, so you can get people who are qualified for a role, but you aren’t removing anybody based on making them feel uncomfortable, or

 

Janelle James  40:11

I think a couple of things. So one, just in terms of closing this conversation out, I think you can audit any process that you have, you can audit any thing that you’re doing to really understand where bias exists, this is not just how we do research, right, you can take a look at the steps in anything that you do marketing, recruiting, to understand and just asking critical questions about where it can live. In terms of, you know, if I’m working on an engagement, or there’s an opportunity, well, here’s, actually, here’s a really great example, I think you can oftentimes, it’s how you’re able to think about learn, you know, a particular skill set or a particular genre of information. And so, if diversity and inclusion is important in your work or in your role, and you don’t necessarily have that experience, then you bring in consultants you bring in, you know, I’ll give you a great example, I was doing research for a CPG brand, and a C skincare brand, very successful skincare brand. And they were looking years ago to launch a new product for black woman, and just in a lot of the research they conducted, they realized that this was an opportunity. And they also realize that they sort of under index with black women and black women use a lot of skincare products. And so, after I did the research, I made a number of recommendations that they absolutely loved. And they said to me, they were like, Hey, do you know, any consultants that we could like partner with, to bring this to market? Because and I was like, me, I can do it, you know, I had to figure out how to do it with my company. But what and they literally brought me in as a quote unquote, Voice of the consumer consultant. Now, what I ended up doing, in large part was a lot of the things that I did in my past life, you know, writing briefs to for the media company for the, for the advertising agency, I would help talk them through, you know, creative, and what could be potential issues, you know, as the voice of the consumer, I was bringing a lot of this perspective, throughout the creative development process, I was literally an extension to the brand team for about nine months. And I went all the way like I went to the commercial shoot, which was what I would have done in advertising, helping them with casting how to think about this. And it ended up launching very successfully being one of their most successful launches literally in their 100 year history. And what was fascinating about that, I mean, their agency lineup never changed, right? Their insights team never changed. And they had a good amount of diversity. But what they realized was they didn’t have the skill set needed for this project. And so I think companies can do a number of things you can bring in assistance when you need it, particularly in the short term as you figure out how to ramp up for the long term. So I think there ways to, and now in this day and age, I’m sure it’s so much easier to pull in freelance or consulting talent than it would have been in the past. But again, you know, I think working through your networks to figure out who might be best suited to bring in that perspective, whether it’s short or long, or on a long term basis. And I think if, you know, I think the other thing that’s really interesting about diversity and inclusion is, you know, helping people realize that this is not just an initiative for HR, this is not just an initiative that lives in one part of the organization, it’s really a route to innovation, or can be thought about, like change management initiative. And from that perspective, everyone should own it. And so whether you feel like you’re part you have some sort of diverse identity, or the initiatives are targeting you, it still should feel like your responsibility to help make the organization more diverse or inclusive or equitable. And from that perspective, everyone can participate. Because at bare minimum, even if you’re not one, if even if you’re not part of one of these marginalized groups, you know how to navigate your organization and that culture, and you can be a bridge.

 

Scott D Clary  44:31

So one point so let’s so let’s do that. That’s going to segue into another story that you’re telling me before See, I told you, we should we should have just done these stories at the beginning because they’re all really good story anyway. So like, one 1.1 point on this. So let’s not diminish how important this is for diversity, but everything that we just discovered and spoke about for the past 30 minutes. These are all just best practices, in terms of any taking any product to market. You If there’s no difference, like if you already know how to if you understand the concept of taking a product and getting the data points in the research and the consumer insights, apply that, apply that with the same tenacity that you would when you want to make money to the other parts of your organization. And that’s, that’s really what it is.

 

Janelle James  45:19

Yeah, I think the challenge is, it’s easier for people to understand or spot discrepancies when they’re part of that group. Because they know automatically, something’s wrong, right? And so the challenge is, how do you spot discrepancies? If you’re not?

 

Scott D Clary  45:35

Okay, so tell me the story about you said, you were working with an organization guy comes up to you, I think, and he says, like, Hey, I’m not part of any of these groups. How can I help? Because I’m sure, like, let’s let’s just be, let’s be honest, I’m pretty sure that has gone through the head of many people in many companies over the past two years. Right. So

 

Janelle James  45:56

yeah, to set it up. Yeah. So I’m doing work for a media company. And you know, so many brands today, they want to learn more about the evolving demographics in the country, you know, when you look at Gen Z, for instance, and that’s what I find so interesting about Gen Z. So the oldest person in Gen Z right now is maybe 24. Right? Gen Z is the most diverse generation that we have, it’s almost 50% People of Color. In some parts of the country like California, it’s 60% people of color, right. And so one of the things that we have to keep in mind, like if we’re creating products that literally appeal to the future, they need to feel diverse, and, and be inclusive, right, not only for the 50, or 60% of the people of color, but also for the 40 to 50%, people who are not of color because they’re accustomed with people of color, right? It’s just a higher expectation. And so, because of this as we are helping our client partners, you know, understand changing demographics, and how to think about consumers how to think about Gen Z, how to think about all these things, we often conduct these like workshops, to help them action, the learning, and potentially understand any barriers that might exist in their organization to reaching this type of, you know, inclusion, diversity, etc. And so doing, you know, a series of workshops with about anywhere from 10 to 15 people. And you have to think a lot of these people are in these workshops with their boss, we’re trying to understand, you know, where in their processes where, you know, they could be more inclusive, more diverse, and talking about many different things. So in some ways, a very uncomfortable conversation. And one of the things I didn’t expect was a few people actually reached out to me after the session to talk. And one gentleman that reached out to me, you know, he said, Well, I’ll say, when I do these workshops, I always like to tell people, that I come from a place of abundance, right? This isn’t a zero sum game, it’s not about loss at all. It’s how do we improve the processes that we have, so that it can feel more inclusive for everyone. So that’s always the the premise sort of, like positivity. And so, you know, reached out to me afterwards, and he’s like, I’d love to talk because I’m still struggling with some of this. And I didn’t necessarily feel comfortable saying everything around my boss. And so we ended up having this conversation. And he said to me, you know, I know my company isn’t very good at like diversity and inclusion. And he’s like, I don’t know how to think about this. He’s like, I’m literally a white guy from the Midwest. He’s like, I felt very comfortable talking to you. So he’s like, I just feel like, I need ideas. Like, I want to be on the bandwagon. But like, how do I do this? And so I said to him, I was like, first and foremost. You know, as I mentioned before, this is about abundance. So I think it’s always about making the processes that you have in place better. But I think the key thing to understand is, it’s not only about bringing more diverse people in, that’s surely a part of it. But you need a champion on the inside, to really bring this to life, and you need people who understand how to navigate the culture. And so that’s definitely something that you can do. The other thing I would say, is recognize what diversity you bring to the table as well. Because just because you’re a white man, mean that you don’t bring a unique perspective to the table because diversity is not just about racial diversity, right? You know, you’re working in California, how many people on your team are from the Midwest? So I’m sure you bring a perspective and upbringing

 

Scott D Clary  49:48

but also from a frame of mind to I think he said, Yeah, no, no, it’s true. But I was gonna say like a frame a frame of mind, like the fact that the guy’s asking you this question is indicative of enough that there’s there’s there’s somebody that wants to do something, or change something in a good way. So that’s, that’s a major,

 

Janelle James  50:06

of course. And Doug is scared. Because, you know, oftentimes I think when a lot of firms make these decisions, and you know, every firm every brand is on a different journey. But sometimes, I mean, don’t understand what the actual goals are. We want to be more diverse. What does that mean? All types of employees are asking questions internally, not just not just the black people, or this Vanik people, or the LGBTQ plus people, right, everyone wants to know what this means and what we’re actually working towards. And I think having clear, you know, clearly articulated goals on that front is is really important.

 

Scott D Clary  50:44

Very good, very good. So, you know, it’s so funny, when, when we first started this conversation, you’re like, well, we can talk about a whole bunch of things. And then like, you know, diversity is like a portion of like, what I do, and then you go into like this, you like the most clinical like educational, like, I feel like, you know, I just got like a full behind the curtain view of how we should actually look at diversity, it was very, very good. Thank you really,

 

Janelle James  51:09

like, you know, you’re welcome. I mean, one of the things I love about diversity and inclusion, just as sort of like a topic area, it’s the thing that I love about qualitative research is interdisciplinary. It can apply to everything. And so you can end up having, you know, I didn’t really think about it at the time. But when I was in college, you know, I was a double major. And Afro American Studies, for instance, they had professors from almost every different department, they have history professors, they had English professors, they had sociology, professors, you name it, because it was literally interdisciplinary. And so as I think about diversity inclusion, I literally think about it that way, you can get experts from anywhere. Because it can apply to every category, every business topic, everything

 

Scott D Clary  51:58

Do you have, do you have? And I didn’t prep you for this. So you know, I’m sorry, if I if you if you don’t have to wrap your head. But do you have examples of companies that are doing more than just putting up a rainbow logo or letting their employees off on on, you know, on Friday companies that are actually doing it? Well, and you have stories about how they’re doing it? Well, rather than doing it right.

 

Janelle James  52:23

It’s a good question. I think every company is on a different journey, depending on their category. So doing it well, I don’t think it’s just

 

Scott D Clary  52:32

yeah, you’re you’re sorry, honestly, I’m not I’m not a researcher. So I’m to, you’re very like, Okay, well, what is what? How do we quantify? Well, let’s be careful, let’s, let’s define Well, first, I’m sorry.

 

Janelle James  52:48

Well, it’s not even about defining? Well, first, I think the company has to define it for themselves as well, right? Because everyone’s on a different journey in terms of where they started and where they’re ending up. But also, I think, what’s important for their consumer base, what’s important for their investors, what’s important for their employees? And so well, I would say is how well they’re meeting the needs of all of those audiences. Like one of the things that I found so fascinating, you know, as I was doing a little bit of research, for my opinion piece was that there was a an instance where I think it was, you know, I can’t remember the company right now. But the shareholders actually sued the company as well, they had a number of employees go to the media to talk about discriminatory practices. And after that happened, a number of shareholders got together and also sued the company for breaching their fiduciary responsibility. Because they felt like the discrimination that existed didn’t really protect the brand. And I found that so fascinating, because I just never thought of it. It was very, it was a natural leap for me to think about, you know, disgruntled employees, because they were marginalized. But it literally did not. It did not occur to me, that shareholders would get together and sue the company. It’s that’s

 

Scott D Clary  54:17

a powerful statement, because you think that but that But realistically, that’s what will make a company changes practice, right? Without shareholder like, yes. Okay. There is there is a lot an enormous amount of pressure, if there is something that’s brought into the media spotlight and whatnot, of course, you know, canceled culture is a thing and that’s something that companies worry about. But I mean, if it’s coming from the opposite end, that’s That’s enough pressure ended up because then there goes your executive board like there’s, you know, CEOs fired if the shareholders that’s very interesting. I’ve never seen an example of that. Ever. Very interesting.

 

Janelle James  54:56

Yeah. The tip for me honestly, if a company is doing on it well is, if it’s authentic, you know if it’s authentic, if it’s genuine and if it doesn’t feel like a one off yeah,

 

Scott  55:11

yeah. I think that’s what we have to be careful the company that are falling into that trap. Yeah, very good. Well, that was that was a masterclass in in research and no, I’m serious. You you undersold yourself, you definitely undersold yourself? Well, okay, so I think that you know we can do like a we’ll do we could do like a whole other episode on just some of your ideas on on advertising and marketing? And maybe we’ll do that in this. Yeah, I’m gonna do that in the future. So because this was we I try and kept these at about an hour because I don’t think people listen for much longer than that. So. So what we’ll do, I like to pull out some some like career insights you have, and you’ve had an incredible career. So just some life lessons, almost like rapid fire. Before pivot into that. Is there anything else that you’re working on now in in your research? Or, or where you want to progress in your career that you wanted to bring up?

 

Janelle James  56:16

I don’t think so. I mean, I’m at an interesting point, I think I’m feeling a lot of connectivity with with everything. And so well, you know, I talk, I literally talk to people for a living. And so it just keeps you so grounded. Just in terms of what’s going on, like anything that’s important in the media becomes naturally important in my work, because it’s understanding how people are experiencing these things. So yeah, no,

 

Scott D Clary  56:51

no, good. So that’s so like, listen, that’s, so that’s a good place to be in, that’s a very good place to be. Okay, let’s go through some life lesson that you’ve uncovered over your career. You’ve had a lot of different roles. Yeah, what was one of the biggest challenges that you’ve had, moving between companies or, or doing different things over the course of your career? And how did you overcome that?

 

Janelle James  57:20

You know, it actually goes back to something that we touched on before. I always think learning and navigating a new culture is a challenge. And so at some companies, it’s a little bit easier than others. The other thing that I think is fascinating, is, company cultures can change as well. And that is probably a little bit more difficult than joining one that’s difficult to navigate in the beginning. So for instance, you know, one of the things that I find fascinating about marketing services, is just the amount of m&a activity that happens. And so for instance, when I was working at Leo Burnett, probably about a year or two, when they were purchased by poesis, we went from being a totally private company to being a public company. And lots of implications. I mean, you know, at the beginning of my career as a 20 year old, I’m like, the Christmas party isn’t as big as it was. But, you know, there are lots of changes. And I think that’s been one of the interesting things, I think, along my entire career journey is just always thinking about how ownership structure potentially changed as a company. And I love working in marketing services, because you get the opportunity to partner with lots of different clients, lots of different work in lots of different categories and have literally to print jobs, oftentimes without changing companies. But ownership structure can change the culture of a company, sometimes overnight, and that’s something that I think we’re always learning and trying to figure out how to navigate. So, you know, cultures, even organizational culture, so yeah.

 

Scott D Clary  59:18

No, I was just gonna say that that’s a smart one. And I don’t think anybody’s ever brought that up because they’ve all sort of focused on personal problems, but that that’s a good lesson for people that are younger in their career to to understand. I think the thing is, right, like people don’t leave the job, they leave the boss, right? So take that at a macro level and anyone thinks anyways, all right. What is one of the biggest misconceptions that you’ve seen in marketing and advertising? That you’d like to debunk

 

Janelle James  59:50

that I would like to debunk the biggest misconceptions I actually don’t know Mark. I literally can’t even think of a marketing misconception right now. Um, one of the things that’s one of the things that’s really funny that’s coming to mind, and hopefully this fits the bill is oftentimes now, you know, you’ll see in social media, when there’s an example of advertising gone wrong, people be like, how did this happen?

 

Scott D Clary  1:00:27

Well, I think there’s been a few of them. It’s right. There has been,

 

Janelle James  1:00:30

like, was this a black? Was there a black person at this company? Did they even share this with a person of color? Like, how could How could this be? I mean, it’s never, as I understand it, a lot of those instances, it’s not always the same reason.

 

Scott D Clary  1:00:49

Well, it’s an interesting, no, no, but it’s, it’s so I’m just thinking about, I’m thinking about Burger King on Twitter, saying that all women should stay in the kitchen as a as a Twitter thread, which turned was horrible. And then there was the the one a few years ago, who was the one of the one of the, was it one of the Jenner, one of the Jenner daughters, like handed a Pepsi to and like, solved world, whatever. But like, do you have an idea, because I have no idea how some of that stuff gets approved. But if you have any idea, I’m sure people would want to know because.

 

Janelle James  1:01:35

I’m so tickled by this. Um, I think it happens a couple of different ways. But oftentimes, I think I’ll give you an even better example. In recent weeks, I literally have friends. Right, reaching out to me saying, Oh, my God, my company’s to do something crazy for XYZ holiday help. And I think what I’ll definitely give my friends advice, right, on how they should handle something, oftentimes, a company might not be leveraging the right resources to that whenever they’re doing, there could be. And I’m speaking about this in a very general way, because it’s not always the same thing that happens, right. But I think it all boils down to not having the voice of the consumer in the room and actively speaking up. And that voice of the consumer can take a lot of different forms.

 

Scott D Clary  1:02:56

There wasn’t. So

 

Janelle James  1:02:57

I would say, there wasn’t the right type of research. Even there wasn’t representative research, there might have been no research. But oftentimes, I think what it comes down to is not having fully gotten perspective, from the target audience. The other thing that I would say social media moves very quickly, and oftentimes, more quickly than anyone. Then many of these companies can can move.

 

Scott D Clary  1:03:33

I think it was, I think it was a great answer. And it was actually not a misprint. It wasn’t a consumer misconception about what marketing is, and isn’t it was more of a brand misconception, and you’ve had big names that have swung and missed. So I think that’s smart. That’s very good. No, it’s good. Very good. Sure, yeah.

 

Janelle James  1:03:56

You know, I want to go back to your your other question, actually, where you asked me about,

 

1:04:06

yeah, yeah.

 

Janelle James  1:04:08

How do you know a company is like, who’s doing it? Well. And so, you know, what I said before was, you know, are they doing it authentically? Is it not a one off, but I think, do they have a way to consistently include the voice of a consumer into their operations into what they’re doing? I think, after reflecting a little bit, that’s also something else that I think is really important, because if you have a constant stream of that perspective, that is that is helpful. You know, and using that to inform decisions as well, it’s

 

Scott D Clary  1:04:49

good advice. That is very good advice. Okay. If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?

 

Janelle James  1:04:57

Yeah. If I could tell my younger self Would

 

Scott D Clary  1:05:01

you tell your younger self one thing, like your younger self, one piece of advice, one piece of advice.

 

Janelle James  1:05:08

Probably trust your gut. I’ve really enjoyed, I think my career journey. But every step of the way, I’m always I always end up doing something that I never thought about and planned. I mean, when I was in college, you could have never told me two years later, I would be living in Italy, that just seemed so far fetched. But what I’ll what I’ll say is that, in the course of my career, I literally come upon these opportunities, and, and have the chance to embrace them. And sometimes they’re scary, sometimes I might be a little bit too naive or ignorant at the time. But just really trusting myself and the decisions that I make, because they usually turn out really well. But I think instinctively, we all have, you know, these barometers. And you know, when something’s not going well, and you know, when something is going well, and just trust that I

 

Scott D Clary  1:06:09

like to pick one person who has been incredibly, incredibly influential in your life. And who is that? But also, what did they teach you?

 

Janelle James  1:06:21

Oh, my gosh, this is gonna sound so. But it’s

 

Scott D Clary  1:06:25

everybody, first of all, everybody’s cliche for this answer this question rather. So it’s fine.

 

Janelle James  1:06:32

It’s my mom, she’s literally been there, through everything. I mean, and just so supportive. As I mentioned, to you, My parents immigrated from Guyana. And so it’s always, you know, in her mind that, you know, they came to this country for a better life, and all the decisions they’ve made, the opportunities that they’ve exposed us to have been a result of that. But also, you know, she’s been this incredible support, like even even today. I mean, I, I mean, we don’t have enough time to talk about all of the things that my mom has done. Like, for instance, I asked her a question like, why was it important for you to go to college? And literally, her answer was that, so that when my daughters were in college, that I could help them and provide perspective on you know, what might be difficult? That’s a very, it wasn’t a thoughtful

 

Scott D Clary  1:07:27

answer. That’s a very thoughtful answer. I can tell you right now, if my kids asked me that, maybe a lot of them but like, I did not have that foresight. And

 

Janelle James  1:07:42

the thing is, she did have a little bit later because when, you know, in Guyana, my mom, I want to say with like, not yet a bachelor’s degree was like a bank manager, she was like a very senior person, right Grinch, she was in her 20s When she came to the US. And so when she, I believe, had an associate’s degree. So then by the time she decided to get her bachelor’s degree, she might, I remember going to a graduation, I was like, in first grade, first grade at my mom’s college graduation. And that was the only day we got to, I got to miss school half day, I literally never missed a day of school. And it was to go to her graduation. And so she was old enough, where she was very thoughtful about what she wanted her children to achieve, and how she could actively play a role in that. And at some point, her ambition shifted from, yes, I’m an accountant. I’m, you know, a controller at this million dollar firm. But I’m actively thinking about how to inform help, you know, I, I joke around with people because, you know, take your daughter to work days a thing, I’m like, I think my mother invented that, because she was always taking us to work. Before we’ll take Your Daughter to Work Day even existed, you know, it’s like, come in for a few hours to help us file, you know, helped the accounting department or, you know, the fragrance company. So there’s a lab, so we could like, help in the lab. I mean, that was crazy. Or talk to her boss. Like she was always you know, if I had a day off from school, she would literally ask her boss if she could bring us to work to to work, and we would work.

 

Scott D Clary  1:09:30

That’s good. Very good. recommend a book or podcast for people to go check it. I

 

Janelle James  1:09:37

mean, is there even a question success story?

 

Scott D Clary  1:09:42

What’s good at a year, that’s not allowed? That’s not allowed. Something else or a

 

Janelle James  1:09:49

podcast? I listen to so many different podcasts right now. And a lot of them are driven like by topic, because there’s just so much out there right now. So I think it’s really hard to

 

Scott D Clary  1:10:01

you got to pick one. You got to pick one. I know, I know. I know, like, look like, behind me. There’s like you got to pick one

 

Janelle James  1:10:11

that I religiously listen to. Literally, there’s only one. And so, you know, I went to Harvard Business School. There are two professors that I had that I absolutely loved. One of them was Mahir Desai. He’s He’s a finance professor and youngmee Moon. She’s a marketing professor. And they have a podcast along with another professor, and it’s called HBs after hours. And they talk about a range of different business topics. And they’re pretty funny. They’re really funny, actually. And that’s, that’s the podcast. That’s the podcast.

 

Scott D Clary  1:10:50

Good. I’ll check it. I haven’t heard about that one. I’ll have to listen to it. Thank you. That’s a good recommendation. That’s a good recommendation. And what else? What else? Did I not ask you that last question. Last question. What does success mean to you?

 

Janelle James  1:11:06

Success is happiness, but it’s also providing for my family. I have a three and a half year old daughter so now I’m like, always actively thinking about that. It’s happiness and happiness. For me. It’s it’s providing for my family. It’s being comfortable. It’s achieving your dreams. As corny as that sounds. But yeah,

 

Scott D Clary  1:11:33

that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. And then most importantly, how do people find you connect with you? Social whatever, whatever you want to drop?

 

Janelle James  1:11:41

LinkedIn. Janelle James, I’ll tell you a really funny story actually. So

 

Scott D Clary  1:11:47

my there’s a there’s a comedian. There’s a comedian there’s a

 

Janelle James  1:11:54

Twitter handle is at Janelle Jas. And then you know sometimes famous people would follow me and I’d be like, Huh, why didn’t take digs follow me? Figured and then I started getting a slew of people a great show last night at Chanel James, you really rock and flake what’s going on here? So um, yes, there’s also a comedian named Janelle James. Who’s got a handle actually kind of friends. It’s so fun. Yeah. So I would get her DMs or like messages on Twitter. She apparently we have similar email addresses. So she apparently has gotten a slew of emails of mine. So it’s kind of a funny thing. But yeah, I’m on Twitter. I’m on LinkedIn.

 

1:12:52

What’s up, y’all. I’m David. And I’m justice. And the DOJ podcast is now part of blue wire network. considering getting back with the ex want to know if a pickup line work or maybe you’re just stuck in a frenzy. Don’t trip as advice had no price, and we’re always gonna keep it true.

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