Transcript: Think Like a Freelancer: Avigail Levin on Building a Brand and Owning Your Career

Eyal David: [00:00] Hey friends, this is Eyal — you've reached Product Builder, and here you can listen to the most interesting product conversations My journey began in 2012 when I learned what product is at my startup; since then I've worked in the industry, and since 2017 my company has been consulting for a range of companies My drive is to help all of us improve as product people — and before we start, if you enjoy listening to Product Builder please rate us five stars on Spotify; it gives me great feedback that the podcast is providing you value and it would make me really happy, so come on, let's begin! Avigail, how's it going? Good — it's really fun to be here, what a beautiful day, right? Yes. Maybe tell us about yourself in a few words?

Abigail Levin: [00:45] Oh, jumping straight into the deep end. So, I started my career as a lawyer — I was a commercial lawyer for four years and I realized I didn't see myself continuing as a lawyer until retirement; I found my way by a roundabout route I found my way to aleph, which is a venture capital fund — that was actually my first exposure to what it means to work in the high-tech industry here in Israel At the fund I essentially managed the fund's entire brand; ultimately, for funds that means bringing in quality deal flow of startups, so that we'd see all the most interesting startups and be the first to see them and have the opportunity to tell them yes or no. From there I actually moved on to a startup in the world of digital health There I did business development and marketing, and from there I actually joined Samsung NEXT in 2019 where I had two hats — one hat of, at the time, managing the fund's ecosystem that is, building and establishing the brand in Israel for the purpose of recruiting employees and recruiting... and exposure to startups on one hand; and on the other hand I was an investment manager and led investments at the fund, in areas relevant to Samsung

Eyal David: [02:02] Tell me, before we go on — how did you actually get from law to aleph? You skipped over that really fast. I was job-hunting for a long time

Abigail Levin: [02:09] and I was really deep inside that job search — classic, and plenty of people will relate soon — all my friends were lawyers or legal advisors at companies, or lawyers at firms, and that was my network; and a few Tel Avivian friends I'd met who were similar to me sent me a link to apply for a position at the aleph fund, which had only just opened — it hadn't even opened yet it was before its launch, to work with Eden Shochat, one of the partners, and immediately — I have to apply and I applied, and like, okay, I moved on; I didn't really expect it to go anywhere and I got to an interview with Eden that was one of the worst interviews — you know, I made every possible mistake there and after the interview I realized that I'm not... probably not... I can keep looking for other things but I didn't feel like it, because it also wasn't that meaningful to me — but he told me he'd get back to me within a week and after a week he hadn't gotten back to me, and I sat with a friend — this is actually a good story for people — I sat with a friend, a lawyer of course who worked at the firm across from me, and I asked, I told him, listen, I interviewed for a venture capital fund and the partner said he'd get back to me within a week and didn't, and it's already been two weeks what do you think, like, should I write him something? He told me, no — if he didn't get back to you, you've got nothing, no reason to write to him. And then I went back to the office and I remember and then I said, you don't — I've got nothing left to lose, so what, worst case, I move on — and I wrote him an email and then he said, oh — and he got back to me in no time; he said, oh, good that you wrote me, I really was abroad, and my partner was abroad and didn't have a free moment on his end I'd be happy for you to meet my partner — and that's how I seized it. Now, this is just, like, really important I think a lot of people who are searching — searching for everything, aiming for their startup, also a job — are really afraid to get that 'no' but if you don't ask, we've got nothing — so if there's one thing people take from here: if you don't ask, you've got nothing, so what do you have? That's very much my approach in life it was also my approach with guys who'd suddenly disappear — I'd always say, well, if you don't ask you've got nothing, worst case something comes of it so yeah, that's how I found my way; it was really by chance — the whole thing could just as easily not have happened it happened, and despite that I found myself inside the fund, and suddenly I was exposed to a whole world of opportunities, a crazy playground and crazy activity and tons and tons of value, and I really connected to it — and that's how I found myself at the fund. And actually, in both jobs both at Samsung and at aleph, your goal was essentially to generate value and bring in

Eyal David: [04:43] leads at the end of the day, right? Yes. Want to talk about that a bit more? That's actually what you do, right? Yes

Abigail Levin: [04:50] it came to me from a very natural place; I never really sat down and did any analysis analytical analysis of how I actually bring in leads, but I think maybe I also picked up a lot of it from Eden who was a partner — still a partner — at the aleph fund, and who had actually been an entrepreneur and when they founded the fund, lots of 'we want to found a fund that's different' — we're talking about the year 2013 venture capital funds mostly sat in Herzliya, and most of the time the essence was 'come up to our offices on a pilgrimage' and then we'll tell you no — a very, very, in some way somewhat condescending attitude, a lot of the time that's often attributed to venture capital funds; and Eden remembered that from his days as an entrepreneur, that experience of the ordeal and he said, I want to build something different, I want to be an accessible fund that entrepreneurs can knock on the door of and come up and say hello to us — which was very innovative. Now, I didn't know how things were done differently elsewhere as far as I was concerned it was the standard way of operating, and the whole time the mindset was: how do I make people feel comfortable and want to be in touch with us? And my view the whole time was I didn't go and say, okay, here's what we have to offer you, tell me — and you also don't, no, no, no come to us and show us your wares and we'll decide if we want you or not — but rather more of a view of stepping out of the fund for a moment to meet with entrepreneurs, to understand what they need, what they're missing, what their challenges are and out of that, to come and provide some value — where the view was very long-term; that is, the fund's view, because in the end a venture capital fund all it has at the start is its brand, because it doesn't yet have investments where it can say 'look, we invested in good entrepreneurs,' since there are no investments yet. So the view is also that funds are investment bodies set up for 13–15 years, so they have to plan far ahead; and instead of looking narrowly at 'this entrepreneur interests me, that one doesn't,' it's more interesting to look broader — how do I create a long term relationship with many entrepreneurs whom I'll meet at different stages of their venture and I'll need to — it may be that at the initial stage I can't invest in them because they're not relevant, or because they're in a place that's not good enough business-wise but it may be that in three more years I'll meet them and suddenly they will be relevant and interesting to me. And the moment your view is a more long-term view and less transactional, then you also need to build your strategy around the entrepreneur; you need to understand what exactly the value is that you provide, and out of that value go out into the world so at first it's through — when I didn't yet have, and at no stage did I have, any mentorship or guidance; I came from neither the world of marketing nor the world of sales — it was all gut feeling. So what I did back then was really go and talk with entrepreneurs and also with their employees, which was also really innovative, and understand what hurts them, what's hard for them and for that, do all kinds of activities — so it was workshops it was even a movie on the roof, I remember, and lots of pizza, you guys lots of pizza were the basics; it was Thursdays, like beer on the roof on Thursday once every two weeks it was like that, that was a start, but in some way it wasn't enough — I wanted a deeper interaction with people so it progressed to workshops around content areas that were challenging for them a lot of it was the move overseas, recruiting first employees, building a marketing strategy, building a sales strategy around that I also created tons of workshops; there were also the more fun things, where I'd say, like, it doesn't all have to be super serious, everything workshops we're talking about 2013–2014 — the VCs and the ecosystem didn't do events, it wasn't a thing, we were among the few — at the start we were the only ones, and later we were among the few who did it, and there was always tons and tons of demand, and then you had to do some screening and make sure it was relevant, so we also did things that were fun like a geeks' movie on the roof; once we also did something at the cinema, at V-Pick, which was already an upgrade I remember that at some stage, the most different, the most Tel Avivian, the coolest and then I initiated a soccer tournament between angel investors and entrepreneurs and it caught on amazingly and was branded excellently, and years after I'd already left the fund they kept doing it even though I was no longer there so it's really about trying to identify what the need is, but also to identify what you can bring

Eyal David: [09:24] so tell us for a sec — this is actually something that leads you on later as well; so this is actually what you came to talk about and if we take it even further, actually into the world of salaried employees — how do you recommend taking this view

Abigail Levin: [09:37] and now projecting it onto our own career? So at aleph it worked amazingly, and really our goal was to see all the leads happening in the ecosystem and in reality this brand building, where I wouldn't rake it all to myself, because I was the owner — I was responsible for it, and responsible for there being some kind of plan here that it wouldn't be random, that there'd be some kind of annual plan I managed to establish that, but later when I got to Samsung I'd already built some kind of brand I said, what do I have — like, what else do I have to innovate, what else do I have to do; I built an excellent brand — not alone, of course but I did a good job, and I really reached the goal we'd set out for, and now it's actually a much harder mission because in 2019 the market is saturated, right? On one hand; on the other hand, I said okay, what do I have to innovate? And Samsung is also a big brand — what do they need me for? like, great, they've already figured it out — they know Samsung, everyone wants money from Samsung. And then I actually discovered, once I did decide to join, I discovered there are challenges of a different kind that can also create for you a brand that's not necessarily positive — a brand of 'we don't necessarily want to work with a corporate'; on the contrary, sometimes the corporate works against us if we work with a corporate, it may hurt us from working with other corporates; it may be that the corporate wastes a lot of our time — there's tons and tons of discourse around working with a corporate or taking money from a corporate that I wasn't aware of at all. And for companies coming to raise money and also for employees who say 'I don't want to work at a corporate' — like, great, I've got a cool startup here, there are tons of options, so what do I need that hassle of working at a corporate for all the organizational politics and so on. And then on two fronts I was actually in this kind of struggle: what brand already exists here that is, what brand is perceived among potential employees, among potential startup companies, among suppliers as well — what they think of us, and what brand I want to build and what value I can bring that at aleph, say, I couldn't. And I really set out on a kind of 360 study of the organization; I remember there was someone who recruited me so I told him, listen, this month I'm going to do research here, don't talk to me for a month, cool? At the end of the month I'll come to you with a detailed report on what people say about us, what they think of us and where I think we need to and can be, and what our relative advantages are — and I really proposed to investigate the whole market like this and when I came back to him at the end of that month, I really tried to boil everything down to all kinds of conclusions that nobody even thinks about he doesn't think about it at all in this direction, because he never thought about it and did this work — and let's say things that I did identify that maybe, it may be that until now he thinks that, say, Samsung is something that's a disadvantage — corporate and big and cumbersome — whereas from the market I actually heard that it's an advantage, that people actually come to us because we're Samsung, but we just need to word it differently and set expectations with the entrepreneurs: okay, here we are, we're Samsung, so you have crazy expectations but actually here's what we can really deliver to you as Samsung, and see what the advantage of this is — but also know what the disadvantage is. That is, this transparency, and to talk about what we bring to the table, and here's the advantage of this and here's the disadvantage of that, and we're not hiding the disadvantage here, but so you know that this is the disadvantage and you can hedge your risks. Suddenly it became the relative advantage — because, say, when I was at aleph there were ten other venture capital funds on the stage competing with me for the same spot, and when I was at Samsung there's no other Samsung, right? if someone else wants to work with Samsung they have to work through us, they can't do otherwise, we have no alternative — so this understanding that this is your advantage and this is what you bring to the market, and then wording it outward, is very very important. And that way you actually do one more thing — you also

Eyal David: [13:17] defined what the market is, because apparently there's a part of the market that's not relevant, right — that's also very important. For example, when I joined Samsung

Abigail Levin: [13:25] one of the things that very much characterized Eyal was that he was always a person who gives and gives without accounting, and gives all the facilities and invites communities to use them, and really everyone loved him in the ecosystem, and it really was a lot of fun to work with him; but when I arrived I said, we can't have a different community event here every evening, ones that aren't connected to us in any shape or form we don't know who's there, we have no data on the community and what value it returns to us, and in the end it comes out of the marketing budget I was responsible for — I want to know what's happening with this money. One of the things I told him, like, for sure we're going to cut this down completely and focus on communities and audiences that are relevant to us — investments we want to make or employees we want to recruit — otherwise it's just dispersion. And really this focus was very very important, and you can immediately see the ROI of it. That's it, that's what I meant to ask, really

Eyal David: [14:16] how fast did you manage to see it? And the plan itself — for how long was it, what were its goals, what does a brand plan look like? I'm really curious

Abigail Levin: [14:22] I had to — the whole organization worked this way anyway, but there are our goals as an organization how many investments we want to make this year, aspirationally, in which sectors, how many employees we need to recruit in which roles — again, I had two layers here, so there are the goals there are the global goals, since we were actually a global body, and then there are the local goals for the Israeli branch — what we want to see here and then out of that, what the activities are that we do to establish those goals. It was really like, here are the big goals and how we break it down. In the end, yes, I said, okay, this year we want to participate in two big conferences in Israel, in content areas; we want to invest, for the sake of argument, in robotics, so okay, we want to connect with robotics communities we want to do an entrepreneurs' event — you're really breaking it down. Of course, at the beginning, when you're at the start of the year, you don't know what materialized and what didn't, and ever since, like, each time I had a crazy plan a crazy one, and then suddenly another lockdown arrives, Corona, another war, more here, more there — so there were tons of surprises, but yes, there was the plan at a high level, with targets too; I already knew which communities I want to be engaged with, I knew where the interesting leads come from — which was also an interesting part, understanding where the relevant people or relevant companies come to you from — and then you put focus and then you go out with content during the year, so yes, there's some kind of plan, things change too, but yes there is one. So actually what you're saying — because I'm about to make a plan for my own brand

Eyal David: [15:48] for my brand — first of all I need to see, to do market research, but I need to understand what the current state is, and then define the desired state, and understand in the current state where I'm lacking, and that's where to actually build a plan around it. And what else I noticed is that you didn't talk — I first of all, you talked about ROI very very fast, which is intriguing, but you actually talked about the annual goals being that they went to a place of conferences, or of certain milestones, not actually saying 'okay, I'll get such-and-such leads'

Abigail Levin: [16:18] in the end, because you're not doing marketing — you're actually building a brand. That is, okay, say I had another question, for example, if I — this is one of the things that came up the question was, okay, if we build a community, do I build a community around Samsung NEXT, around a specific content world that interests us and my insight, after the research I did, was no — I won't build a community myself; the level of investment I'd need in order to build a community is so high — I'll connect to communities where the audience that interests me already is, I'll give value to those communities in all kinds of ways, it could be as a sponsor in the form of lifting them up, in the form of bringing speakers, in the form of hosting an office — but really a thousand and one ways. I'll build a relationship with the communities where the audience relevant to me already is, and that way I'll bring in the leads that interest me in the form of brand building; that is, they know I'm their go-to, because they met me at an event, because I lifted them up, because we sat with them for a lunch — that is, a thousand and one ways, which is very — oof — not transactional, but really building a brand which — I know you're trying to formalize things and ask what the recipe is for building a brand — it's tons and tons of things. I'd say the first thing is to really understand where you want to be, who the people are that you want to bring in, and what you bring to the table that will interest them enough that they'll want to be in some kind of relationship with you. And it can be — no, I can tell you also, say there were startups we saw I talked earlier in the context of aleph — there were startups I saw at a certain stage, they weren't baked enough, I had to decline them or the team before me, before I joined the fund, declined them, and then I nurtured them in quotation marks, at a stage when they were much more baked and much sharper on strategy, and we really made an investment in them. And the reason this was possible is because there was a relationship a respectful one, and even when they received the decline they knew it was a decline, like, it may be that we'll meet later on — and we kept that relationship and stayed in interaction with them, so that when we did want to invest, they did want to receive the investment from us when, again, we're talking about the 2021 period — putting money into startups was very very hard, there was tons of competition over every startup really. And okay, so we tried to formalize this, but we did get a picture. Now, how exactly

Eyal David: [18:23] in my eyes this is very formalized — it's not — I went into tons of details, but right, because I'm now actually taking this let's talk about salaried employees, let's talk about salaried employees, because in the end I'm the brand of myself, right. Right

Abigail Levin: [18:37] really, we live in a world of tons of noise and the competition is very tough today; the competition in 2021 was startups then; today it's salaried employees over every workplace, the competition is very very tough. And I manage a community of lots of people who, among other things, are looking for a job, and many consult me on how to find that job and first of all I'll say: it's hard, it's something hard. And first of all, what's beautiful about this community and the goal I founded it for, is this understanding that it's so hard and you're so alone inside that search and it's so nice that there are more people who speak your pain and your difficulties and you can feel that it gives it a kind of legitimacy, that it's okay — that is, you're not messed up. That was the hardest thing when you set out to search for a job, no matter whether you're the most senior manager or the junior who just came out of university too, you feel messed up, you feel that you — you also get, or you — I, first thing, let me — [to the male listener]... you get a decline, you did the processes, you got to be the second best — that's the worst — you were really really good, but in the end there was someone who ticked all the boxes of what we needed, and that creates a feeling of real lack of confidence a very very big one, and among other things that's why we founded the community — to give people the place to vent, to share, and to find others who can help them and be with them in that search. A job search is what you do every two years, it keeps coming back to this cycle of lack of confidence — that is, it's worth building a brand. So that's it, so you're leading me there, so really I think one of the ways to deal with this is to understand — just like what I do, Samsung Tip 1 — to understand what your relative value is, what you're better at than others what you bring to the world that others don't, or bring to the world, period — that is, not 'others,' not everything is in competition with others which I think also really helps: if you're not competing against other people but only against yourself, it's much easier, and then with that to go out into the world and today there are so many opportunities to tell and share your abilities and also to build self-confidence, for example so, say, I can tell you from my personal experience, for example, I had free time so around the war a lot of funds arose that invested in ventures in order to save them and help them survive this hard period, so I, for example, volunteered with one of the funds to help them with due diligence on companies and it also kept me in the loop, and kept me responsive on investments, and feeling that I'm giving value both to the fund and to the entrepreneurs, and also learning new areas. So that way, try to see both what you're good at and what you love and try to word it outward — it can be on LinkedIn, it can be in volunteering, it can be in a community, it can be founding something new doing a podcast — really there's no end of opportunities today to build some kind of brand around the content world in which you want to be. But you do need to know what that content world is. That is, if every day you publish a post about something else, about another topic about something very very messy, then people don't actually know what the value is that you bring to the world. I can say, on a personal level, that after I left the — after I finished my role at Samsung, a few clients approached me inbound, who had simply seen my work within Samsung, and they knew what I'm good at. It was a lot of fun for me, because it means my work was reflected very well on LinkedIn, or on social networks — the social networks are a really crazy gift that we got — and they approached me on exactly all the things I'm best at, so that I'd help them with them, and I did it, and I did those projects and it was a lot of fun for me, because it spoke to me exactly, spot-on, who I am and what I am, and I had the opportunity to actually continue relatively easily, maybe as a freelancer and not as a salaried employee but to continue the work and things keep coming to me inbound, in the coolest way; I simply express on social networks what I do — recently I actually lowered the volume on sharing, but things still come. One day I'll also need to start selling myself, and not only building a brand, but... so let's put

Eyal David: [22:40] a pin in that for a sec, and we'll come back there. A few things I took away: one, the matter of understanding what you're good at it's not easy for a lot of people, it's very hard, especially if you're good at tons of things — if you're a slasher and you're good at tons of things, then it really scatters so maybe it's actually right to send a WhatsApp message — I'll send it to a few past clients, to people you worked with — and get that feedback

Abigail Levin: [23:02] and you also know what you actually want to do, maybe, so you can connect the two. So I have one more tip for a sec, if you want it so say I'm in some group of freelancers who've known me for many years, and we just had a meetup last week, and then we started around the meetup — what others think we do well, what we can do — that is, from the outside — what they think, because there are a lot of freelancers there who are new to their freelancing so like, here are the things I see you being most outstanding at, and I think you're the best at this — and suddenly it gives you a perspective on what other people see, without you... or maybe what you're not communicating well enough. What you're not communicating — even what you don't know — suddenly they told me things, and I'm like, really? What? I'm good at that? I didn't think about it at all, because it wasn't even a direction I'd thought of taking, and suddenly you learn about yourself from the view of other people who've seen you for a long time, say on the networks

Eyal David: [23:54] or in communities you're part of. No, and I think — I'll take it even further — you actually said the same thing both at NEXT and with yourself. First, it's to build a plan, and to set yourself some kind of goal that, no matter what, I keep publishing — that's probably my value to the world; I don't know whether I'll go, like, in this direction of networks — and you're saying also very focused, actually, on the things that you...

Abigail Levin: [24:14] so I think when it's you and not a brand, then it's really hard to separate yourself from the brand, it's really hard to do it on your own and also, you're in a very uncomfortable place — say you need to write a paragraph about yourself, it's very hard; sometimes you simply need to ask someone else to do it for you that's easy, right? What, to ask people or ChatGPT? Yes, ChatGPT — but sometimes it doesn't know you well enough, like... yes, it's good that you get help from third parties, but in some way I always say that, just like — I don't know — just like celebrities have this kind of person who's... an agent, who kind of sells them to plays and movies so like, we too, as employees, need some kind of agent who sells us to employers or to potential projects — and maybe there's a business opportunity here.

Eyal David: [25:01] but then I really wanted to take it to the next level, to something additional we talked about

Abigail Levin: [25:07] so yes, there's the element that I really think there's room for this thing, because we feel very uncomfortable selling ourselves, and we're also not necessarily good salespeople — that is it may be that we're really really good as product people, or as marketing people, but we're really bad as salespeople, especially of ourselves the problem is that often salaried employees — and I really see it in the community too unlike freelancers — and that's why I'm glad I also work a bit as a freelancer — we don't have that muscle, neither for selling ourselves, nor for investing in ourselves, because as salaried employees we're used to being taken care of, being paid for conferences, being paid for trainings being paid for lunch — we don't think about it at all, we're not owners of ourselves and among other things that's also the difficulty in the job search, because suddenly you kind of need to be an owner of yourself. But I also think, on the level of investment, if you're a freelancer then you'll also invest in the business, you'll pay for the trainings, you'll spend the money. I really also see this very prominently in the community — a salaried-employee mindset, both in the job search and in investing in yourself. And I think you need to change the mindset you need to be a salaried employee who thinks like a freelancer, who steps out of your small network and goes to other networks, invests money in yourself in another course and another training invest in yourself — you're the product, and you need to do it. I'm curious — I'm building a brand for myself

Eyal David: [26:31] I start publishing, so what do I look at, impressions? That's not right. Look, it's always a question when you build a brand, how do you measure the outcome — do you measure it as an outcome, or measure it as tasks you need to do? That is, how many posts do I need to put up a week — that is, there's measuring the result and there's measuring the activity, which are two different things

Abigail Levin: [26:51] so first of all, I start with measuring the activity; I set myself goals of writing a post a week, of volunteering once a month of registering for a hackathon once a year — that is, each person in the content world and wherever they want and need to be so start with, first of all, what my activity is, what my actions are; afterward measure my output — that's always very hard in brand building, and I think part of it is yes, it's how many new followers were added, and how many inbound leads I get. No — I can give you an example, can I give an example? I did a workshop as a volunteer within the framework of the Startup WhatsApp community — bro, I said, come on, good karma to the world — and I put up a post a story, not even a permanent post, a story that lasted 24 hours and disappeared, about that workshop. Following that workshop someone from another organization approached me and asked that I do a bigger workshop, more in-depth, really a workshop of several hours at her organization. It's the most, like, random thing — and it happens a lot in branding, that you don't know, you don't know how to measure the ROI exactly, but you see that good things do happen from this activity. So yes, you need to keep the measurement, you do need to set yourself goals I want to grow my followers by 20% this year, what needs to happen for that — but you also need to leave a bit of room for serendipity and the good things that happen and also, if you see that you're investing tons and tons in the brand and the wrong leads are coming to you, for the sake of argument say I deal a lot with the worlds of career, but I have no aspiration to be an HR person, so if I were getting all day leads of 'come join us, be the HR of the organization,' it probably wouldn't serve me as it should. Yes, there needs to be some kind of

Eyal David: [28:28] connection between the actions you take and where you want to get to — so that too is the plan you defined at the start

Abigail Levin: [28:35] yes, yes, yes, really. We'll also put a link — yes, if you want to talk with me, I want to talk with you really, we have a variety of content I touch on, and it seems to me that this — uh, also talking about productivity and who you are — so acknowledging this took me tons of time to admit that I'm very much a generalist, and it's hard, because you say the disadvantage of generalists is that they're kind of in some way relatively shallow, not very deep, but good at tons of things — and it's hard for me to accept that on one hand, and on the other hand I learn and clarify and say no, I'm really good at being a generalist, I'm good at talking about many things in different content worlds that aren't necessarily connected to each other, and in all of them everything works well — so yes, that too

Eyal David: [29:18] and uh, if we're talking about what your brand is — when you're a generalist it's much harder to sharpen what your brand is, what am I running on investments, or marketing and brand, or community — so that's why asking your environment is apparently very focusing. I — a minute, I must — I really loved it earlier when we sat downstairs and you were in the middle of something else and we talked about several, several topics I felt very at home, I appreciate it a lot. I'll ask you a question I asked here a moment ago if we now need to come out with the most meaningful thing you can give here — yes — what would that thing be?

Abigail Levin: [29:52] so I'll tell you the answer I gave earlier, it's two things — first of all, for salaried employees, and for company owners or freelancers I'll say — so in some way, for salaried employees I'd say this matter of ownership, ownership over yourselves and over your career path and not waiting for things to happen to you. I feel it a lot in the community — people enter the community and they're very very passive they're very quiet, sitting on the fence, wanting to see what will happen, what other people talk about; when I initiate some discussion, suddenly people respond, but people don't initiate a discussion themselves, and in my eyes that represents the community members. That is, I see it in several communities I manage, that they wait for something to happen to them, waiting — 'I'll enter the community, in a role, and I'll find the next role' — no, it won't happen that way, you need to be active you're offering here now a coffee month where people meet — so meet with people, step out of yourselves. And I really see it I see how, for the people who are active, the opportunities come to them. Just today, a community member told me he's starting to work at another community member's place as a result of the small community we really manage, and through which they met and sat for coffee and slowly connected and actually wanted to work together — so it's really really cool and gladdening so this activeness is very meaningful, and unfortunately most of the people I know aren't very active about their career, or in general that is, about stepping out of the comfort zone. And as for the freelancers or the company owners or the recruiting managers, the message I'd want to come out with is a lot of compassion — because everything can flip and one day you reject 300 applications you received, and tomorrow your company closes and you yourself need to submit an application and be in a very uncomfortable and unpleasant place — so a lot of compassion toward the people you're in interaction with, and to respect them even if you have to tell them no — to respect them in a way that's a bit from my days, and from the days at Samsung when I had to tell entrepreneurs no, I'd always come back to them with a no, and here's why no — not vague, not 'because you're not in our strategy today,' not 'because your numbers aren't good enough yet' no, because of such-and-such reasons. It's harder when it's personal — not 'because you're a bad manager' or not 'because whatever' — it's a bit more complex, I admit, but always leave the door open. That is, no, but here, nevertheless I would be happy to keep in touch, and here, yes, I can help you with x, y and z — like, that's also something very very important

Eyal David: [32:20] and the decline — mostly it's the email of 'you weren't accepted for the role, but we'll add you to our database and reach out to you' — that doesn't work on anyone. What do you think, tell me — and did you always give feedback? So, like, what do you think about this?

Abigail Levin: [32:34] I can't — I can't speak for everyone, I can speak about the companies I saw and gave a decline and almost always — that is, if we got to a conversation; if they'd only sent an email only, [then less so], but if they're companies I'd meet more than once, or once for a meaningful conversation, then yes, I'd come back to them with feedback — less so if it isn't meaningful in terms of revolving doors, yes, in my opinion it's very meaningful, because it really can meet you again in the future — it really does. I see, I see now many times recently I've had occasion to come back to people on WhatsApp, and suddenly I see my last correspondence with them on WhatsApp, and I'm always so happy that the interaction was the most positive — that is, that they wrote me some message, needed help, and I came back to them, I didn't ghost them, no. This — people don't think about it, but suddenly you come back, wow, the last interaction was two years ago and he'd just asked me for some introduction for someone, and I didn't ignore him — suddenly now he'll ask me for something, so always make sure your interaction is really — I very much believe, I very much believe in karma, and I really try, and even when it's negative, even when I say you're not — I do try for it to be in a pleasant and positive and constructive way, and not only putting down. So yes, take this yes, salaried employees as well as freelancers, take this wherever you want — it's very much something important to me. Lovely, optimistic — so I think

Eyal David: [33:51] that we'll wrap on that, it was very nice. How does one best get in touch with you? On LinkedIn — I also don't understand

Abigail Levin: [33:59] I'm, because of — on all the networks, like Facebook, except TikTok I'm really on all the networks, so we'll put a link; so it's Avigail that's the easiest, and I always answer too. Wonderful — how great that you came to us, Avigail, thanks for having me host you, how great, come on

Eyal David: [34:13] bye bye. Hey friends, thanks for listening — if you found this podcast valuable you can subscribe, follow us, of course, for more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other app; and of course, if you didn't find us on some app, I'd be happy for you to write to us. We'd be very happy for five stars on any platform, and for you to follow us so that more listeners can be exposed to us and find the podcast. You can also find the previous episodes on any app or on the YouTube channel — we have links in the description. Until next time, come on, be efficient, and bye bye