Success from Anywhere with Karen Mangia, Ep #110

If your world was turned upside down last year when you started having to work from home during the pandemic, this conversation will change your entire mind about work. I got to talk to one of the top leaders and writers on work styles and what success looks like in this new era of working remotely. 

Karen Mangia is an internationally-recognized thought leader whose TEDx appearance, keynotes, blogs and books reach hundreds of thousands of business leaders each year.  She is the author of Working from Home: Making the New Normal Work for You (Wiley), Listen UP! How to Tune Into Customers and Turn Down the Noise (Wiley) and also Success With Less  (Marie Street Press). A prolific blogger and sought-after media interview, she has been featured in Forbes and regularly contributes to Thrive Global and ZDNet.

As Vice President of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, she engages current and future customers around the world to discover new ways of creating success and growth together. She serves on the company’s Work from Home Taskforce, where she is helping the company’s 50,000+ worldwide employees to better adapt to a work-from-home environment.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

  • How the pandemic has changed the view of success in the working world (1:52)

  • How her relationship with her grandparents defined who Karen is today (5:25)

  • How success is defined today (8:49)

  • How the future of work is tied to its relationship with our lives (12:28)

  • How writing a book helps to process its purpose (15:11)

  • How pandemic work taught her about work limits (23:26)

  • The rituals that get her going everyday to get in a good mental state (28:21)

  • The importance of a work mindset (32:17)

  • How the future will be for the work space (36:15)

What defined Karen’s incredible career success

When I asked Karen what specific influences have made her career so successful, she immediately credited her grandparents. She learned so much from their work ethic, their ability to adapt and evolve, and how their entrepreneurial spirit never took away from their focus on family. Her grandpa even day trades from his laptop in his 90s! Her other major influence towards success was when she had a scary wake up call of picking up the phone to call her only brother and realizing she couldn’t remember his name. That led to a 3.5 year journey of trying to get a diagnosis of a chronic disease that nearly took her out. During those years, she never took a day off of work, despite incredible fatigue. That experience led her to realize it was time to re-think work from the ground up.

What toxic beliefs will give you

Karen realized she was not only carrying a toxic disease in her body, but a toxic set of beliefs around her value, what success looked like, and what it required. She realized she needed to step into a new identity, which was terrifying. Now her definition of success is completely different. It’s having what you want and wanting what you have.

What it takes to access success

First of all, you must pause long enough to define what success means to you. If you are chronically unwell, success will look like getting healthy. If you’ve gotten healthy, your definition of success will evolve. During the pandemic, many people have realized that success doesn’t mean more money, but more of what serves them. The Great Resignation signals that more of what matters isn’t a long commute, more work hours, or being required at an office. Karen’s idea of “success from anywhere” redefines success and suggests that it is available to anyone, anywhere at any time.

How to bring a new success to your life

The second part of accessing success requires us to consider the stories and beliefs and circumstances that you might have been tolerating that no longer serve you. The toxic boss, the negative friends, etc. We’re great at tolerating these issues, but until we challenge them, we are chained by them. Ultimately, this process guides you towards defining, designing, and delivering a better future for yourself and your organization.

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Karen

Connect With Peter O. Estévez

Subscribe to the Peter O. Estévez Show on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts

Peter EstévezComment