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Nicola Mendelsohn

lines on the record: 123
first: 2022-08-15
most recent: 2022-08-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That's bold, that's extraordinary. So few leaders do something like that. I mean, it's one of the reasons that I love what I do is get to learn and be inspired by him. He's incredible. Absolutely incredible leader. He sees things that others don't necessarily see. And he's always right.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, having, you know, Mark Zuckerberg pivoting the whole company as he did last year, changing the name of the company and going, this is what we've done for the last 17 years. Here's where the new thing is going to be. This is where we're going to.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally. I heard a great speech years ago from a guy who'd climbed Everest, who basically said, you don't climb Everest. You get to Basecamp one, and that's your thing. And then you work out how you get to two. And you never climb Everest. You go from point to point. And certainly in chaotic moments, it's like, what are the things you can control and what are your small milestones that you need to get to in order to either get out of the chaos or to hit the North Star?”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the secondary worrying is what I was talking about, which is well, I'm going to have chemo, it's not going to work. I'm going to die. John's going to marry a wicked woman. Children are going to be miserable. Boom. I'm exhausted. And it's miserable and depressing. That's just giving the power away. And she was right. I mean, it was such good advice just to kind of say that don't allow yourself to do that. And I think. You know, I think that is something that people do with bad news. You take yourself into a different place of all the things that could go wrong. But I think people do that in all aspects of life. If you go for a job interview and you start to worry about not getting it, well, that's not going to be very helpful, is it, in terms of how you're going to present yourself? So yeah.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From what you fancied doing, you know, different personalities of the children coming through. But I think That has made a difference.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take people on the journey with me to help work out what it's going, and then I'll write it down, and then I share it. And that's really helped me to be really thoughtful about what I want to do in the next year. And certainly with the family, it's involved a huge amount of travel. We absolutely love traveling and seeing different places and exploring. And we sit together and we kind of go, what do you want to do this year? What are the things? And when the kids were smaller, you know, some of the things that they wanted to do were kind of little things. I remember there was one where I think Sam just wanted to go and have a Chinese meal. I'm like, yep, we'll have a Chinese meal. And his brothers and sisters laughing at him for going, you know, you underplayed that one.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually practiced something called vision writing, which is You write as though it's a year from now, and you set out looking back on the year you've just had what you're going to achieve. All the research says that if you write stuff down, then you share it with people, you're more likely to do it. And I do it around my personal life. I do it around work, and then I do it around community.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I did. So I took control of some of the things that I could control. And so there was enough evidence knocking around about lifestyles and diets and things like that, especially with a disease which is about the immune system, about reducing inflammation within the body. And so I had a shocking diet. I was really not very good at exercise, i.e. I did none whatsoever. And so I did build that into my life. So yeah, they were, I guess, some pretty big changes then that I did make.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“didn't make a lot of major changes you know a lot of people that get a diagnosis like this do look their life in in that moment and go well getting divorced spending all that off to vegas i didn't do any of those things because i think i'd been very intentional about the about the life that that i have and been very purposeful about some of the choices that you know we've made together as a family and so No, there was none of those kind of crazy things.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and in many ways our family had a trial run on the pandemic because going through chemo, you have to be super careful. I mean, we had the masks and the sanitizer at the door back in 2018 for anyone that came into the house. I didn't go to the theater. I didn't go out, didn't go and planes, etc. So had to be super, super careful because my immune system was shot to pieces. But actually...”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is. It's a protection. It definitely is a protection thing. Because if I was going in there, going, I hope it's good news. I hope it's good news. And it's not. I'm just going to be flawed, right? And so I already knew what the worst thing could be. I've got an incurable blood cancer. That's not going away. But it would just be, you know, let's see where this next part of this journey takes me.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was good news. You'd sort of get halfway through, they've done a scan to say it was going well. And so they'd sort of drip fed that information. But I didn't allow myself that euphoria of, yay, I didn't do that moment. And that is quite a weird thing if I think back on it now because of the nature of the person that I am, I am quite celebratory. I am kind of that person. But that one was a more muted. certainly was more muted.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do, and honestly, it was a bit of an anti climax. Because it only meant for now. And so I sort of, I'd gone into that meeting going. The way manage your own expectations so you're not disappointed. And so if I didn't build myself up to go, it's going to be good. It's going to be good news. I was like, this is just going to be what it will be and you'll deal with it. And I think that really helped in terms of the management of the expectation. And so when he told me that, I was like, that's good. And he goes, aren't you more happy? I was like, no, that is good news, but there's still a journey ahead. And, you know, I want to find, I want to be part of the team that finds secure for this thing so that other people don't have to go through these meetings like you and I are going to have to have.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I feel pretty blessed with the life that I have. And if I'm well, I want to do the job. And thank God I have been well. And even through the chemotherapy, I was able to work, which can often be a surprise because there's different types of chemotherapy. And thankfully, the one I had didn't react as severely to me as some people have with theirs. I didn't lose my hair, for example, which I know is a hugely traumatic thing, especially for women. And so I was able to work, but to do it in different ways.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It honestly never occurred to me. And I think I'd been very intentional in my life about the things that matter to me and the things that I wanted. And I love what I do. I absolutely love my job. It is a lot of who I am. It is something that gives me huge energy and, you know, helps me on my own journey in learning. So it never occurred to me that if I was well enough, that I would carry on working.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I know how blessed I am. I'm blessed with the job that I have, with my family, with my faith, with my community, all those pillars that support me and make me who I am. And I know how lucky I am to have that. I read every day that so many are not the group acts as a support for them because you don't want to talk to somebody else that's got a different cancer. It's not helpful, you know. I had that in the early days. A lot of people with breast cancer wanted to tell me their story and it's actually thank you, but it's not that helpful. I need to know people that are two years ahead of me on this journey who've got follicular lymphoma that I had the treatments I will have. That's the best help and support possible.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt strong mentally the whole way through this. I got my head around the cards that have been dealt with to me and as I said I was never going to go back to that weekend and so I made sure that I protected myself through the things that I did, through the things that I could take control on in order to get that. But I know that's not true for everyone and I certainly know that through one of the things that we did was to grow this group on Facebook called Living with Follicular Lymphoma. It's almost 10,000 people now which I kind of pinch myself because it's the largest gathering of people that have ever existed with follicular lymphoma and could only have happened because of Facebook. But the mental challenge and the anguish that people in the group talk about every single day, that haunts me and that sort of drives me to do the work that I do in terms of trying to find a cure.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“in the February. I was just inundated with support and love from people I didn't even know. And so many people sharing the story of having a similar disease or incurable disease that they've not gone public on for a variety of reasons, whether it was fear of it was largely to do with work actually, largely to do with they won't get that promotion if people think they're weak physically. And so they live with this extra burden of having a disease and putting on a brave face, hiding doctor's appointments. I never had to do any of that.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, there wasn't, but I also think it was because I was so open. You know, you talked about, did I put on a brave face? I think the hardest thing I did was when I told my story more publicly. And I did it in two parts. The first part was when I stood up, we used to do an end-of-year conference in Emir where everybody flew in. And I stood and told my story to everybody. And that was one of the hardest things I've done, the story of the diagnosis. And I wept on the stage. I mean, I literally had tears coming down my eyes as I did it in front of everybody that worked with me. And people just inundated with me with hugs, and you know that thing of don't hug me when I'm crying. cry more that happened but people were so so supportive and then again when I told my story on on World Cancer Day”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would give me kidney failure, and so they deemed that I should get the treatment there. That was a blow. And the only reason that was a blow that moment was because I thought I was going to get two years. That's a kind of the average after if you get an early diagnosis and I got 18 months. So that was a blow. And then I had six months of chemotherapy and 18 months of immunotherapy treatment as well. And it was, you know, I did well. Not everyone does as well as me. It put the cancer into a form of remission. They call it no evidence of disease. But, you know, no chemo is fun, that's for sure.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes and no I was very Look, I never made this a secret. And in many ways, I couldn't have suddenly disappear from work because people knew I was having tests. And so I told my team straight away. People are wonderful, you know, people like we're here for you. What can we do? What do you need? I was like, I don't know at the moment. And this cancer, as I said, is quite different in as much as I didn't even have treatment for 18 months because what is understood is the fact that because we can't cure it and because there could be new treatments, then the doctors do this thing called watch and wait, where literally they watch and they wait and they see what's happening or as patients call it watch and worry and you have scans and you have blood tests and then they'll come a point maybe that you'll need treatment and my point came eighteen months after that first diagnosis where I was just unlucky that it grew around my kidney area. Some people can go several years without needing treatment but they said I could have it would”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“incurable is that it's always with you and there's not a day that I goes by where I don't think about the fact that I do have a blood cancer and that the risks especially through the last two years that we've had with COVID have been very challenging for me in the family up until the point where better treatments were available for people like me.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was. I mean, that was part of that weekend where I was just trying to find a surgeon. I kind of felt if I found that surgeon and they cut it out, then that would be on the path to curing it. Because in that moment they didn't know if it was, they thought it might have been a breast cancer that had spread. So they were going at it that way. But actually it turned out it was a lymphoma that happened to be around the lymph nodes in the underarm. It was a whole new language and vocab is to try and understand what it means to have an incurable cancer. And then to start to understand that this one didn't have much research. And so all the questions you want to ask is, okay, so if I have treatment, how long is that going to last for and how long will I be clear for and you go into a remission and then it comes back and there's just no knowledge and no information in the way that you want to have that knowledge? And so I think one of the challenges of that word in...”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was no right and wrong is there on these things what I said to him was I hope not gonna try my best. And what I promised them that day was that they could always ask me anything. Was never a question that they couldn't ask and that we would fight it as a family together and we would learn about it together. It wasn't a secret, and there was no shame. Sometimes there's a shame with these things. Especially, it was particularly difficult because nobody had ever heard of this cancer. And the fact that it was incurable. So all that language with cancer that we knew of we're going to beat it and cut it out and do those things. Couldn't say those things. This was going to be a journey and this was now going to be a part of our lives. Yeah, I think Probably changes at all a little bit that day.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Worse conversation of our lives. We gathered think it was about it was a week later and it was deliberately a week later because Danny, our number two was just 18 that weekend and he'd had a big party on the Saturday night. So we didn't want it to spoil it for him. So we gathered the kids on the Sunday morning, all sat round the table. try and tell them, and I actually, I couldn't, I just couldn't get the words out. It was horrific. In a moment, you change your kids. They've got this life. And in that moment, you bring a different dimension into their lives. John had to, he had to tell them I couldn't get the words out. That was eleven at the time he's our youngest and He asked me if I was going to die, finish me off.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Understood what I had and then had to start to process that and then start to tell people because you're right, on that Monday I was supposed to be flying to China. And so I couldn't do that. And so I had to tell my bosses that I wasn't going to be able to, I had to tell them, you know, the reason why or what I knew at that point. And I will always be unbelievably grateful to Cheryl Sandberg for literally just saying we're here for you, whatever you need. We've got your back. And that was, you know, for your boss to tell you that is the most important thing in the world. I'll never forget that.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually did my hair, did my makeup, and said, I'm going to face this in the way that I face everything. I'm going to take it one day at a time. And, you know, whatever the cards I'm dealt with, I'm going to make sure I live the most with what I have. And I'm never, ever going to allow myself to go back to that weekend that I just had, which was just horrific. And it didn't. And so I took it on.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of crying. I cried so much. I mean, it was a physical thing. I just remember it being very physical, the feeling I couldn't sleep. I actually lost half a stone in one weekend because And then I just remember thinking on that Monday morning that that's not me. I mean, I catastrophized everything because, of course, when you hear the word cancer or tumour's cancer, we knew it was bad before we knew what it actually was. I went to all the worst places in my mind as to what was going to happen. Fast forward, I was going to have chemo, then it wasn't going to work, then I was going to die, then the children would be left alone. It was just horrific, absolutely horrific. The games your mind can play on you or that you allow to play on yourself. And I remember thinking on that Monday morning.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But within a few days, I got the diagnosis that I had something called follicular lymphoma, which is an incurable blood cancer. Most people that have this, it can take two to three years to get diagnosed. I got diagnosed in five days. And it was a shock. I'm thinking about it now and I still can't believe what I'm telling you, that this is something that happened to me and is happening to me. Yeah.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Googling everything, trying to work it out because you can't see doctors at the weekend, nobody's around, had to wait till Monday morning, had a whole fiasco of going to meet a surgeon, trying to take one of the tumors out, but they wouldn't take it out because they didn't know which was the one to take out and it was just very frustrating. And being a person that's very used to like you, like knowing what you want to do, getting in control, making things happen, like you just couldn't do anything. We had to wait till Monday morning to go for a pet scan. Understand it, and then over it was just all just so much information and also we don't want the children to know because we didn't know what it was. And so it was just John and I sort of isolated working through all of this.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I remember I picked up my phone and there were so many missed calls from my friend the doctor and also from this 0207 number which I didn't recognize. And I can still remember the feeling of just feeling physically sick. And I went up to see John and I said to John, I think this is going to be very bad news. I'm going to phone Lisa while she's my GP friend while you're with me. And she just said, have you spoken to the doctor? I said, no. I'm coming over Honestly, she lives around the corner. It was the longest five minutes of anyone getting to me. And she told me that the scan had shown that I had tumours everywhere, all over my chest, all under arms everywhere They didn't know what it was, and that began the process over the worst weekend of our lives.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she put her hands on me and I saw in her eyes that she wasn't happy about it. And I said, what is it? She goes, I don't know, but you need to see someone. I don't know what it is. And she sent me, sent me to a doctor who turned out to be the wrong doctor. But he was a kind of cocologist. And he said, he said, you're fine. You examined him. He goes, but I literally had my coat on. He goes, but you know what? While you're here, he said, we should just do a CT scan. Okay, I was by myself because I really didn't think it was anything, so I went and had a CT scan, which is quite an intrusive thing if you're not kind of expecting it, invasive. And then I went home, didn't think anything of it. It was a Friday and got home and put my phone away because I was busy doing other things.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I am 45 then in November 2016. Living this amazing life, right? I'm flying around, the kids are thriving, family's great, and I'm busy and feeling great. And I had this little lump in my groin tiny, like the size of a pea. And honestly, wouldn't have thought anything of it, but I have a really good girlfriend who's a doctor. And I just mentioned it to her literally in passing. Like I wouldn't have gone and seen a doctor for it. And she goes, Probably nothing if it's still there. Let me know in a few weeks. And it was. So I went to see her.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yet I agree with that and actually it's something we've already gone deep in at meta because what that often means is you take somebody from doing a job they're brilliant at and they love and you put them into a role often as a people manager because people manager means success, right, where they're not as good and so it doesn't work for anybody then. And so we actually have something which is an individual contributor where you can rise up as an individual contributor, be very, very senior, but not have to manage loads of people because that's a totally different and I'd never heard of that before. I thought it's really a fantastic concept for keeping and motivating great talent.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's true for a lot of people. And I think we often don't put the discipline into our personal lives that we do in our work lives. And often our work lives are dictated by others. Here's the path that you'll climb up off you go. And actually just stopping and going, what matters to me in my whole life? And I was always really clear. My north-style was always my family. John and I always wanted to have a big family, four kids. That was really important to be around for them as well. I love the fact that our kids are older now and they choose to hang with us is a real source of pride and joy for us both. So being as intentional on the personal side as on the work side, these things aren't mutually exclusive. You might have to trade things at different times. But if ultimately the person feels more fulfilled and happy, then surely that's a good thing, right?”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Job when I was in agency life because I felt that I probably needed to be there five days in order to do that. But I have no regrets about that because the experiences that I did as a result of having that time, I think, you know, fulfilled me and also made me who I am.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt that I wasn't being a good wife. I didn't feel I was being a good mom, a good kind of family member, good friend. Just work was all consuming and I needed just a bit more time to be able to do the things that I also that were also important in my life. You get one go at this thing. And so I worked out that actually I probably just needed the Friday. If I had a Friday that I could do the things that I wanted to do and remember, this is pre-tech, all this stuff. We didn't have tech at all our fingertips and everything. And so I went to talk to my bosses and they're actually incredibly open about it. They cut my salary by 20%, of course, but they got me for, I did the same job in essence, but did it in four days through the discipline that I applied. And so that's where it came from. And honestly, it was one of the very best things that I ever did. It did mean that I took some changes in my career, though. I think back now, and I didn't push myself to do a CEO.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And how did I feel? I'd also been working four days a week up until this point. And because that was something I had done when Gabby, my eldest, was one. I just didn't feel that I was getting being good at anything. And so that was something that I've taken on. So it was going to be a really big change. And John and I really sat and talked about it. And he went, just go for it. He said, he said, I'll root myself more at home so that you can go and do those things. And we made a kind of thing between ourselves that I'd always make sure wherever I was in the world, I'd come home for the weekend and that we'd always have the Sabbath together. We'd always be there as a family together. But in the week I would travel. So yeah, it wasn't just my decision. It was a joint decision. I couldn't have done it unless I'd have had his full support.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was huge. I mean, up until this point, I'd largely been UK-based. I did Europe as well, but I'd largely been UK-based. I didn't travel a lot. John traveled more. You know, we've got four kids. And so it was very clear to me.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I definitely always research the business, which is obviously what you would do. But then I'm very into also understanding it better by having lots of cups of coffee with people that are in and around the business. And it's a two-way thing, especially at a senior level where they're interviewing me, but I'm also interviewing them. And I've got my list of questions. And, you know, really wanting to understand what's motivating what they're looking for. Is it what I'm looking for as well and squaring that? And then writing lists, you know, the pros and the cons of why this may or may not be a good thing. And picking up also the challenges that people have as well, so that you're very clear going in, what are the things that need to be fixed? What are the things that shouldn't be fixed that are working really well? And where some of the other opportunities are. And then I often go back after a few months into them and just reflect on what I've written and see what I've done as a result.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course, completely. And, you know, joining, you know, I thought I knew digital before I started. And then I really got to understand. And those first few months, and I think this is true for anybody that comes and joins Meta, you literally feel like you're drinking from the fire hose. You have got information coming at you left, right and center. You've got to make decisions quick, quick, quick on the decisions. I find that quite exhilarating. And I'm a great writer. I write things down. I'm learning. I'm processing in terms of that's how I retain knowledge. And just about energizing, I hadn't felt like that since some of the very early days in my career.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not how I saw it. I just saw it as a huge opportunity. I loved the products. I mean, so it started with something that I absolutely passionately believed in. I was a huge fan of Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg before I had the job. And so to have the privilege of to work for two of the finest leaders that have ever worked in business ever and to work so closely was just an extraordinary opportunity. You know, it was so early on. I mean, I remember, you know, we hadn't opened a lot of the offices back then. London only had a couple of hundred people working there. And so it was really early. It was really scrappy. And I'm good in that. I'm good in kind of bringing people together, setting out what the objectives are, working towards what the vision should be. And I knew the industry. Okay. This was my industry. These were all the things that I loved working with some of the best and the most...”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I'd always love tech. I'd always been interested in it. And this would give me a ringside view. So I said, all right, I'm interested. And then fast when we had a whole recruitment process and ultimately got the job.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nikola, I'm here to see if you're interested in heading up Amir for Facebook. And I literally splurted ward for her. And I said Oh no, no, I don't think so. Why? What are you talking about? And she goes, oh, and she said, oh, well, people have suggested your name and I've been looking for a while. And I said, well, I've got karma and it's going great. And I said, I'll tell you what, let me think about it. So I went home that night and I spoke to my husband, John. He goes, you nuts. He says, and put it in context. It was just after Facebook had floated, hadn't been going so well. I was a huge fan of Facebook, though, but I felt a deep connection to all the people that we'd hired at Karmarama, you know, 250 people that relied on us for their mortgages and were part of the vision and the dream there. But I gave it the overnight and I woke up in the morning and I thought, actually, this one's now got my, you know, I'm excited about this. I can start to imagine what that could do.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Facebook Yeah, at the time Facebook. So it's 2013. And, you know, the agency is going brilliantly. And I am also the president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. It's the trade body for the ad industry. And I'm the first woman in its almost 100 year history to take on that role. And my whole mission was about making the UK the most digital-minded digital first country because I could see that the opportunities there for the industry were going to be huge if we could capitalize on what was happening in Silicon Valley. And so, yes, I did get a call. Carolyn Everson came and it was another couple of coffee. She actually said, would you like breakfast? So I go for breakfast and we'd met through an awards thing a year or so earlier. And it's very American. I'll never forget we're in the ivy. I'm surrounded by literally everybody I know. And she literally comes straight out. I've got my water. I'm drinking my water and she goes.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People often don't think that, but you learn new things about yourself. And so I came back each time refreshed and excited. But as I said, by the end after the 12th year, it was like, no, this was time, time to do something new.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there was a lot going on in my life in that 12 years. So I got married. I had three of our four children while I was there. And also I absolutely loved the agency and the job that I did. So I started off as an account, as an accountman, but actually I moved into new business and new business, it just gives me a thrill. It always has because you're meeting new businesses, you're learning about those businesses, you're meeting new people. There's the pitch, I love the thrill of the pitch, the chase, and all of that. And so it constantly felt like it was a new job. And especially because I had three maternity leaves during that period as well, I grew as a person each.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't see that one And that had very much been a boutique business, a lifestyle business. They wanted to significantly grow it. And so I joined that agency. And the day I joined, there were 12 people sat around the table. And the day I left, there were 250 in five years.”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I went and did that. And honestly, that was one of my steepest learning curves from a leadership perspective and from a business perspective, how we changed that agency around in the five years that I was there. And then it was another kind of moment of serendipity where I'd been at Gray for five years. It had been independent and then it sold to WPP. So the change was kind of coming. And I got a call from a guy called Ben Bilbull, who was one of the founders of Karmarama. And said, could I have a cup of coffee? And I said, yeah, definitely. And I always, whenever people ask me that, I would always say yes. I was like, you never know. Interesting things always happen when you meet interesting people. Ben's interesting. So I go and meet Ben and I was totally hoodwinked because the other founders of the agency were there, Sid and Dave. I was like, okay, what's this? And they said, oh, we're here to see if you want to be our fourth partner. I was like,”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first time I moved was because I'd been there 12 years. I looked up above me and all the people that had been my bosses 12 years earlier were still all my bosses and were always going to be my bosses. So I kind of reached a point where I really didn't think I was learning as much as I could and should. And actually started to think about maybe there's a life outside advertising. And then actually it was somebody else that came to me, a guy called Gary Lace came and said, look, you're at the coolest agency on the planet. just come into gray as a change management kind of mission. I want you to be on that mission with me. And he goes, I know people will sort of laugh because you're at the coolest and this one isn't, but wouldn't it be amazing if we could do that? And I love that vision because I thought, yeah, why would I swap one great agency for another great agency? Where's the learning, that curiosity thing, again, right?”
2022-08-15 · The Diary of a CEO · VP Of Meta: Running A Trillion Dollar Business With An Incurable Illness: Nicola Mendelsohn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT