Serra Hetzel

I definitely attribute my success to my attitude. Everyone is smart enough - you just have to want to do it and try to do it. For that to be sustainable to the point where you're actually doing a good job and sticking with it, it comes down to how you view yourself, your life, your world, and why you're doing this. That ends up being a source of fuel for me. It helps me mentally reframe tough days when I'm working on a really hard problem. I kind of shift that mindset to see my job as a fun team game I get to play during the day and weeks that pays me. Having that positive mindset and just knowing that you can do it, you can figure stuff out, you can get through it - even if you don't know how you're going to yet - that's what makes the difference.

Be honest with yourself earlier on about what you really like and want. Don't just pursue something because you feel like that's what's expected of you by society, or that's what you need to look good, or to be legit. Follow those little whispers from your heart telling you what you're interested in, even if it seems like it's gonna take you so long to get there. You're gonna end up 10 years in the future anyway - do yourself the favor of looking back and saying, thank God I started then, because look how far I've come. It's gonna be way more painful to change if you build something that you don't really love or believe in. And here's another thing I wish I knew way earlier on - you don't have to love your job. You just have to be decently good at it, and enjoy the people you're around, and not be miserable.

One of the big challenges, which is also an opportunity, is that enablement right now has such a broad definition - it can cover so many things. There's an opportunity and a challenge to better define the subcategories and swim lanes, and the roles and responsibilities of each of those. One of the biggest pitfalls in enablement is being seen as this catch-all - even the word enablement implies I'm just here to help. So anything that doesn't fall on a clear responsibility can get pushed onto enablement. We naturally like to help, so we say yes to so many things. But without that more clear definition of who we are, what's our function, and what do we do, it's easy to commit to way too much and then not execute super well on any of it, which is the biggest pitfall. The opportunity, I think, is to be seen as more of an advisor for sales strategy and process. A lot of that comes from the top line, like sales and operations people, which is valid, but being part of that upstream decision and planning can help everything work better together and flow more smoothly and quickly.

Experience is really important to me - the kind of experience you're having matters. Respect and kindness are two huge values. Respect means being considerate of what other people's experience is, what they want, and what they're trying to do, and seeing yourself as someone who should collaborate and even lift them up. I see myself as more about how do we work together, not how am I going to be better than you - more collaboration than competitive. And kindness, because all these feed into experience - we're all just humans having an experience. There's no need to be nasty and cause negativity unnecessarily. Just be kind and have a good time.