Say Goodbye To Career Stagnation! 

Our guest is is the co-host of the acclaimed “She Said Privacy/He Said Security” podcast, she is a National Keynote Speaker and a best-selling author!

Unleash your potential as we dive into topics that will revolutionise your approach to networking, time management, and career advancement!

Hi, my name is Jamal Ahmed and I'd like to invite you to listen to this special episode of the #1 ranked Data Privacy podcast.

In this episode, you'll uncover:

• Powerful networking tactics to expand your influence and connections!
• How to dodge burnout and manage your time like a pro!
• Best practices for every Privacy Pro to foster trust between companies and consumers
• Insider secrets to breaking into the industry, even if you’re starting from a completely different field! 

Jodi Daniels is Founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, a privacy consultancy, that simplifies data privacy compliance, helps companies build trust with customers, and serves as the outsourced privacy officer for organisations.

Jodi is a national keynote speaker, co-host of the top ranked She Said Privacy / He Said Security Podcast, co-author of Wall Street Journal & USA Today best selling book Data Reimagined: Building Trust One Byte at a Time.

Jodi Daniels is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP-US), National Keynote Speaker, and author, who has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., The Economist, Thrive Global, Authority Magazine, Medium and also a member of the Forbes Business Council.

She also serves as a Fractional Chief Privacy Officer to small and medium companies.

In 2017 she founded Red Clover Advisors which is now one of the few certified Women’s Business Enterprises, (WBENC), focused solely focused on privacy. Red Clover Advisors are on a mission to simplify the complexity of data privacy. 

Jodi is also a co-host of the weekly She Said Privacy / He Said Security podcast with her husband, Justin Daniels, a cybersecurity subject matter expert and also corporate attorney specializing in M&A and other business transactions, where they talk about all things privacy & security. 

Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/

Follow Jodi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodihoffmandaniels/

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When I first got into privacy, which was over a decade ago, I knew no one and didn't know very much. Find your voice that works for you. We all can look to how other people are doing things, but the reality is it doesn't work if it's not your style, because it's not going to be authentic. Networking has that terrible connotation of one for one, and I do for you right this immediate moment, it's not about, can you get me a job? Which I've seen those requests before. Instead, it's about.

Are you ready to know what you don't know about Privacy Pros? Then you're in the right place.

Welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast by Kazient Privacy Experts. The podcast to launch progress and excel your career as a privacy pro.

Hear about the latest news and developments in the world of privacy. Discover fascinating insights from leading global privacy professionals, and hear real stories and top tips from the people who've been where you want to get to.

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So whether you're thinking about starting a career in data privacy or you're an experienced professional, this is the podcast for you.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast. My name is Jamilla, and I am your host. With me today is my co-host is Jamal Ahmed, Fellow of Information Privacy and CEO at Kazient Privacy Experts. Jamal is an astute and influential privacy consultant, strategist, board advisor, and Fellow of Information Privacy. He's a charismatic leader, progressive thinker and innovator in the privacy sector who directs complex global privacy programs. He's a sought-after commentator, contributing to the BBC, ITV News, Euro News, Talk Radio, the Independent and The Guardian, amongst others. Hi, Jamal.

Hi, Jamilla. How's it going?

I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Fantastic. We missed you on the last podcast. Jacob was looking forward to your icebreaker. I had to break it to him instead.

Well, I'm back for this one.

All right, who's our guest today?

Our guest today very excited is Jodi Daniels, who's the founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, a privacy consultancy that simplifies data privacy compliance, helps companies build trust with customers, and serves as the outsourced privacy officer for organizations. Jodi is a national keynote speaker, co-host of the top ranked She Said Privacy He Said Security podcast co-author of Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Bestselling Book Data Reimagined Building Trust One Byte at a time. She's also a Certified Information Privacy Professional, National Keynote Speaker and author who's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, Thrive Global Authority Magazine Medium, and is also a member of the Forbes Business Council. She also serves as a fractional Chief Privacy Officer to small and medium companies. Hi Jodi.

Hi, how are you? I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for doing this what a bio.

What a bio.

You all are very kind. Thank you.

Is Justin upset we didn't get to invite him on the same time as you.

He might be, it's quite possible, but this is my time. He can have his time.

Yeah, we definitely need speak to him, too. Jodi, what's it like being married to someone who does data security while you're doing privacy? What do you guys talk about at dinner time?

Yes, well, I was literally about to say it makes dinner conversations very interesting. In some regards, it's really fun because let's take new and interesting topics like AI and Chat GPT, which everyone's talking about. We can literally have a very good, hearty conversation, and it'll say, well, what about blah, blah, blah? And he'll say, well, blank, blank, blank. And we actually have this very interesting dialogue. And then other times it's Saturday and I really don't want to talk about work. We're still talking about work. So that's the good news. When you have someone who understands your industry and we're both really passionate. We're a little bit of workaholic, so we really do actually talk and work about this stuff all the time. And then our kids could tell you all the risks, too. Yay for them. The little one, she can tell you what a data breach is, and she does not like giving her information, even when it’s required. That's too much information, mom. You don't need to give them all of that.

Also, the point of being workaholics and really passionate. I've got two questions. Number one is, how do you make time to achieve all the awesome things you're achieving? You've published a book, you're always speaking, you've got the podcast, you're serving clients. And then that's the first question. And the second part of that question is, how do you switch off? Because a lot of people are privacy pros. We speak to a lot of people. They're always going they're so passionate. Even when they're not working. They're either listening to a podcast or watching a video or joining a course or going to a conference. How do you manage to say, okay, now I'm going to switch off? And what tips do you have for that? So those two questions for you, really?

Sure. I think it's all about how you manage your time. I've been one of those people who has done way too many things. Honestly, if I go all the way back to high school, I was a really good student. I worked 15 to 20 hours a week and was in a gazillion clubs, and I performed, and it was just, I have 24 hours in a day, and I'm going to figure out how I use all of it. And even then, I didn't watch a whole lot of TV. I really will fail at pop culture. You don't want me on your trivia team. And so the same was true how I went to grad school. I worked full time and did a full time MBA. So then fast forward was mom and working full time and now it's kind of business and still a mom. The kids are still here. Thank you. It's all about using all those different nooks and crannies to divide the time the way you best need it. As an example, Justin, who we were just talking about, my husband, he'll listen to podcasts on our drive from home to school. We have about a 30 to 45 minutes drive each direction. I don't, I use that time to listen blindly to the coffee house music that is playing on Spotify sometimes or I'm still singing along to the Broadway show tunes that are there and that's just kind of my decompressed moment. I'm thinking about what the day is. I'm thinking about something else from yesterday. That's kind of just my chill time on that drive. I enjoy baking. It is not surprising at nine at night for me to bake something and then while it's baking I go and I'm kind of off to finish off some client thing that I needed to do. It's a little bit of both. I had the fun. What is exciting to me at the end, I get a delicious treat. I'm excited when people like what it is and then I'm still working. I just find it's the balance. The other piece that I would offer people and I think this is more true now that we have many organizations with a flexible work arrangement of some variety. They just seem to be more flexible is maybe in the middle of the week or in the middle of the day. I need to go because being a mom is incredibly important. I do not miss my kids activities. Maybe I go and do that. And so for me I will work later at night or I might pick it up on the weekend. I worked almost all of last Sunday, but that's because I was doing a variety of other things during the week and that was my choice and it was okay for me to do that. My summary is I think people need to decide how their time is best suited for them and realize when you have to do certain things you find where you are inefficient. If you want to learn something new, you realize, well, maybe I don't need to watch 3 hours of that show or gosh the five minutes all day long of social media added up to 45 minutes. That's a whole 45 minutes. You can do a lot in 45 minutes, but you have to know what's important for you first to do that and everyone's is a little bit different.

Awesome. I love that. So that's great tips, Jodi. Thank you. I guess we can see all the way from the beginning you've found a way to really make the most out of your day and make the most out of each day. And I really admire that. That's super powerful.

Thank you. We all have the same amount of time and some days are way more efficient than other days. Took me a lot longer this morning to get moving, but other days I'm able to get started right away. And the same is true for just all the time that we have. Even the ability to just have the downtime is really important. And so for me, that drive is the time where I can think. For other people it might be in the evening. They really want to have that break in separation. My daughter would say, you do you whatever works.

I agree with your daughter there. Interestingly, and this is not on the question list, it's mainly because it just popped into my head with the US. Because I know you're from the US, you work in the US with what was on all of my TikTok feed last week, which was the possible banning of TikTok and its privacy implications. What way do you see that going, if you can predict?

It's so hard to predict because it's such a political issue. You have some people who view it truly as politics and a way for US government to intervene and control media and technology even further for a political agenda. Then you have people who say, no, the national security threats are real and they want to address those. And unfortunately, here in the US, the way I always describe anything political, especially how many state laws or federal law are we going to have is I call it a crystal dart. It's like, I don't know, because it's sort of the crystal ball and it's throwing a dart and who knows where it's going to lead because you could have one side really pushed to help their agenda. They're able to get everyone together and it was a bit surprising. And then other times it's really methodical approach on a variety of different topics. So sadly, I have no good answer on that one.

I've been dipping in and out where I've had a chance. The biggest concern I have is some of the judges don't really seem to understand what an algorithm is or even how it works. So if they can't understand something as fundamental as that, how can we or how can they be trusted to make decisions based on the outcome of information they don't understand?

Well, that is the argument for all of the privacy laws and not even just privacy laws. Anytime some of the large big tech giants have been questioned on a variety of their practices. Even from an antitrust perspective, you often have people who are not as familiar with technology asking all kinds of really interesting questions about the technology. It's a very good point you bring up. Welcome to the US.

If TikTok was to be banned. Do you think that would then set a precedent for other social media apps to be banned? Do you think there would be then more focus on privacy?

I don't necessarily think it will change the privacy landscape. I think it will have a significant impact on innovation and other large technology companies. If you look at all the different sides of the argument, which I think is important to do, you have the national security side, but you also have some people who view this as a way for government to be able to control the data and being able to see what data is there. The irony is that's what happens in other countries too.

It's really interesting. It just was popping up all over my feed last week and I thought the podcast would be the perfect time to see opinions about it. But more on to you now.

That’s okay.

Your consultancy, Red Clover Advisors, is one of the few certified women's business enterprises focused solely on privacy. What was the driving force behind creating your own consultancy?

Like many people who have been working for some time, you were trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up. And it took a little while, but I decided I wanted to not work at a large corporation anymore. I wanted to try something on my own. I honestly came from a family of entrepreneurs who had been doing a variety of different things, and I thought it was my turn. And that's what I set out to do five and a half years ago. As a woman owned business, there are benefits of being able to do that, and there are many organizations who find supplier diversity really important. And as a result, I wanted to go and do what I needed to, to be a certified women's business. And I'm glad I've gone through that process. There's a shortage of women in the privacy space, a shortage of women owned businesses, and certainly when I'm able to put those two together, we have a really strong women workforce that is here in our company, and we're excited to be able to help support organizations privacy goals and while we're at it, their supplier goals.

Have you faced any challenges being a woman owned business? I mean, relating to being a woman owned business or a woman in privacy?

I haven't experienced some of the challenges that I think you typically might read about. At the same time, I'm self funded, I'm bootstrapped, so I'm not trying to go and get funding. That is often where many people run into some of the challenges. What I would say, though, is oftentimes as a professional services organization and you'll talk to people. I've talked to my fair share of both men and women, and I will say that it seems like more of the men have not all of them, I have some absolutely wonderful people I've talked to, but a lot of them who've kind of been around a while and helping companies grow will often say, well, professional services is limited. A women owned business. I just feel like they kind of don't appreciate that massive opportunity that exists in both privacy and in being a women owned business and how important it is for some organizations to make sure that they diversify their supplier base, not just for women, but of all varieties, veterans, and a long list of things. So I feel it there in just kind of the casual conversations, but we've been really fortunate not to have any particular in my career. I haven't experienced that. And so we're very grateful to be able to work with wonderful companies and advisors who appreciate what we can offer. I do really think that there's a shortage in the industry of women in privacy, and we continue to try and help change that. I do a lot of speaking to law schools, to MBA schools to help educate different students and sort of the next generation on what privacy is and why it matters to them.

Why do you think that there is a shortage of women? Is it because privacy, the idea may fall under kind of Stem categories, and there's a shortage of women that pursue technology and those kind of fields? Or why do you think there is a shortage of women, and how can we encourage more women into privacy?

I think privacy falls in a couple of camps. You're going to have the legal camp, a security camp, and then the everybody else camp. On the legal side, if you were to look at law schools, we'll be honest, I don't know the exact percentage of where we are. I know over the last years, we've made significant strides of more women in law school classes. But oftentimes privacy is not taught in law schools. It's still really new, which means then you have to go to a firm where there is a privacy practice, and then if you don't have that and you've been working in it for a while, you want to switch gears. Now you are kind of mid career, and it's a little bit harder potentially to switch gears. You have to find someone who's open to that idea. And at the same time, you have people moving up the pyramid. And just in general, many women tend to leave, they drop off. This is true not just in privacy, but across the board. However, in kind of a hierarchical type field like law, you're losing women as they keep climbing. So when they're going to transition over, you're going to have less of them. And if you don't have privacy classes, there's just less people available to make that work. On the security side, I think absolutely from a STEM perspective, or privacy technology, privacy engineers, everything technical, there's just less women in the tech fields overall, and then we have the everybody else, and you have the same situation. Privacy is not being taught in marketing classes. It's not being taught in regular collegiate environments, which means people aren't introduced to it. And you then have to have them either just kind of luck into it in their role and they find it interesting, or again, you have the same thing as they're moving up the career, people trying to shift you sort of run into the same problem. People are often leaving as they move up in their career for a variety of reasons, most often a work life balance challenge. So my point of view, those are the reasons why we end up having a smaller pool of them to address very similar to other industries. You have to start at the collegiate level or the master's level as they're entering new fields, is where we really have to continue to train and then be able to train. And I think larger organizations often are able to do this because you can bring someone who might have business experience, but not the privacy experience. And if you put them in that environment with other people, they'll be able to learn a lot faster, which we have so many companies who need more privacy, technologists, engineers, security and privacy members on their team. I feel like you'd be able to train them a little bit faster if they're surrounded by other people who are knowledgeable in that privacy field. They'll be able to have very on the job mentoring in a nice pool of people.

So you spoke about like encouraging at the collegiate level, at the MBA level, when it gets to women who maybe are dropping out when they're reaching higher levels within privacy. What do you think organizations can do then to help retention?

I think one of them is what I just shared, which is why I think some of the larger organizations are best suited to help do some of that training. They have a number of roles where you're going to have some people who have the experience, who can help really on the job training. We all can take certifications. Those are really important. And once you have that certification, you also need on the job training. And I think we can kind of help speed along, much like they do in a variety of other industries. Many of the large technology organizations have, here's my certification, and then we're going to kind of pull you into our organization, train you in that particular field. I feel like the same is true in a privacy environment. And what I tell people anytime that they're looking to shift in privacy is either one volunteer in your organization, especially if it's a smaller organization, volunteer to participate on committees, learn more, educate, find what the risks are, how does it apply to you? And then depending on what field you're doing, how can that translate to what they're doing in their day to day job? Maybe you're doing data governance work or maybe you're doing eDiscovery work or maybe you're not doing any of that. You're doing data classification work. Could that translate over into something in a privacy field. Maybe you're doing something that identifies risk or you're evaluating third party vendors. Someone in a procurement organization would be great at helping on vendor questionnaires. Someone in an HR organization might be great to help with all things employee privacy. There's a variety of opportunities for someone who's interested in the field to raise their hand and learn more and be that educator, be that champion in their organization, and then, obviously, just network and get to know other people in the industry. Because you're going to learn more, you're going to network more, and you'll be either more valuable to your organization or to somebody else's.

Definitely. I found networking is kind of one of the key things that I found in my industry that is helpful and it provides you with so many opportunities that you might not otherwise get.

When I first got into privacy, which was over a decade ago, I knew no one and didn't know very much. I went to IAPP, I marched forward with my certification, I got every resource that they possibly had, and then I reached out to strange privacy people that I had never heard of before and said, hi, I'm new, I'm in Atlanta, and here's what I'm doing. Would you talk to me? And they said yes. And then they introduced me to other people who were very lovely and being willing to spend a little time with me. Some of those same people. In fact, the very first one who is very gracious with her time. I spoke as a guest at her privacy law class last night.

Oh, amazing.

And so it's all about building those relationships. Not all relationships are always going to turn out with that happy story like I just described, but they're always stepping stones. And it's all about, networking has that terrible connotation of one for one. And I do for you right this immediate moment, it's really about I'm networking so I can meet people in my workspace, so that I can then build a relationship. And who knows when that relationship is going to have its little tentacles, but you just never know. And for anyone new to the space, you have to have your friends and buddies because we're all navigating this together. If I take the United States, we have a number of new laws here, they're all brand new. We're all learning together what the specifics of the laws are. Sure, there's principles that have been around for a while, but we're all learning together and you need to have people who you can count on, and then those are the same people who are going to help you in your career in a variety of different ways.

Yeah, definitely.

I completely agree with that approach that you take to learning and having surrounding yourself with a powerful community of privacy professionals who also want to help and who also want to learn. And that's what really led me to create the Privacy Pros network that we have at the Privacy Pros academy, where everyone that joins our academy, they all have one community and there everyone is helping each other. If you're one step ahead of somebody else, you're helping the person that behind you, two steps behind you. And those people we find are then pushing you on. And it's very important to have that support, have that environment, sometimes just bouncing ideas. Not everyone is fortunate to work for a large company. Some people are still pivoting. So when they're learning things, when they're learning concepts, when they've heard something on a webinar or on a podcast or even watching what's going on with TikTok and they have questions, it's great to have this global community of people from all different skill levels, all different backgrounds, all different approaches and cultures in there really supporting them. And what I found actually people value the most is when they have taken a test or when something hasn't gone their way and they come and share it. And straight away you have 5, 10, 15 people supporting you, giving you encouragement, giving you ideas on how you become those challenges. It makes people feel awesome. It makes them feel they can conquer anything. And that's why I think having that powerful community, as you've identified, is super important to growing and developing in any career, especially as a privacy program. We've got so much change going on.

Absolutely. The privacy profession has always been opening and welcome. It's new and one of the things that people always find is everyone's so nice. It's true from the community aspect, maybe people don't realize this, but large companies especially, they have Roundtables with other large companies in every field, in every slice of an organization because they all want to know, well, what are you doing? How are you handling these people issues? What are the cool new things that you're doing? Or how are you handling this really big challenge? Financial institutions are banding together to try and protect information from a cybersecurity perspective. They're all sharing what are some of the latest threats so that everyone can be protected. So Best Practices and Roundtables have been around forever in all different industries. If you're not in a large organization, you need your own little Roundtable, you need your own little Best Practices universe. And that's what building the network is about. That's really what the concept of a network is. If we relay that to technology, it's different parts that are able to talk to one another. It's not always a one for one kind of exercise. And that's where I feel like it gets that bad reputation and anyone listening. I would offer you to really have thoughtful conversations and be valuable, be meaningful to somebody else. And it's not about can you get me a job? Which I've seen those requests before. Instead it's about who are you? And tell me more about what you're doing and what would be helpful? How could I help you? That help might come today, in six months, a year, you just never know where it's going to be. And Jamal, like you were just saying, when you have an issue, now you have someone else. Hey, how are you doing this over here? Or did you see this? What do you think about that? Does that make any sense to you? You want people, we're social. We want to socialize and privacy people want to socialize on privacy.

That's really good advice. And also about networking in general. A lot of my friends have asked me, well, how do you just go up to a complete stranger and start talking to them? And I always say, well, we're British, we like talking about the weather, but also people like talking about themselves as well. So asking people, what do they do? And I think that's a great advice for networking generally and in the privacy space. Yeah.

A lot of times people will also say a great question is, tell me what kind of project you're working on right now, or, what is a big challenge that you're having? Something where it's not a yes, no, but they have to share a little bit more detail. And you're absolutely right. People do want to talk about themselves, so it works out.

Yeah. And anyone that's listening who's connected with me or sent me a connection on LinkedIn in the past will know that I normally like to ask, what's the number one challenge you have right now? The reason for that is because what networking is, or when networking is done properly, it's about identifying how you can add value to someone. So if I know what kind of challenge someone's having, if I know what they're working towards, if I know what they're trying to get away from, and I can add value, or I can guide them to the right resource or the right person that can overcome and add value, then I've added value. That means I'm powerful, I've contributed to their network. And when the time comes, there might be an opportunity where they can do something back for me. And it doesn't matter if they can or not. It's not like Jodi said, it's not about one for one. It's about knowing that, hey, I'm here and I want to add value to my network. I want to add value to the people who I'm connected with. And if I can find a way of doing that, I'll do that. Because I know if I put enough stuff out there, then the universe is only going to find its own way of repaying that back one way or the other. That's all it's about. It's about go and do as much as you can. And here's the other thing. When someone gives you a birthday gift, what's the first thing you think?

When someone gives you a present?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

What am I going to get them back?

Yeah. The law of the rule of reciprocation, when you do something for someone, the first thing they want to do is do something back for you. So being the first person to go and give and be generous and add value is never going to be detrimental. It's only going to create opportunities where people are on the lookout for how we can come back and help and add value to. So as you're networking, don't go and message people and say, hey, can you get me a job? I mean, if I got a pound for every person that messaged me on LinkedIn on a daily basis saying, I'm looking for a privacy role, can you help me? Or do you have a privacy role? I would never need to work another day ever again. But I ignore those messages. It's because that's not how you approach somebody. You don't go and say, hey, I'm Jamal. What can you do for me? What do you got for me? What do you mean, what can I do for you? I don't know who you are. I don't know anything about you. You know nothing about me. Why would I even think about you? So it's understanding first like Jamilla said, you ask questions about them. People are always interested in sharing what they're working on, what they're talking about, stuff about their kids. And I've learned that just because your favourite topic is talking about your kids, it's not other people's. So when you're at networking events, avoid talking about your children because they're not as interesting to other people as they are to you. But it's all about focusing on where can I add value, how can I create more value? And that's what's going to build those relationships. And Jodi, you reached out to somebody early on, they added value. Now you've got an added value back to their class by sharing all of the awesome insights that you've developed over your career. And on that note, that brings me to this topic. So you wrote you and Justin both wrote this book here. Data Reimagined, building trust one byte at a time. And in here you talk about building trust between companies and consumers. And one of the things I talk about a lot is privacy or our role as privacy consultants is going beyond compliance and helping companies to build that trust. What are some key principles or best practices privacy pros should follow to build trust between companies and their customers?

Well, thank you first for reading the book and I'm excited that you highlighted this trust piece because as privacy professionals, we have obligations to help companies comply with laws. That's the floor. In my opinion, that's the baseline that we have to do. Because just because I can use data, maybe you go through an analysis trying to decide, can I use this data? And the answer is yes. That doesn't mean you actually should. You need to figure out what is the end customer or the end user going to think about that? Will they be surprised in a not good way? Will they question what's actually been happening? One of my favourite statistics is from the Pew Research Institute, and it's that 52% of individuals won't buy a product or service over privacy and security concerns. That is a significant number of people. There's no other shortage of statistics. Between 60 and 80% of people believe that there should be more privacy. They don't trust companies. Everyone listening here has likely not answered a question that a company has asked them truthfully, meaning, how much do you make? How many kids do you have? What's your real problem? People have not put in accurate information because they don't trust them. For companies to earn back that trust to earn the sale, which is what every company is in business for. Every company is here to sell something, a product or service that someone needs or wants to get to the trust piece. I have to also allay any concerns on the data side, depending on the use case. There's different ways of how to do that. If I'm asking you for information, I'm trying to convince you to buy a mattress, and here's my mattress quiz so I can help you. Well, then I need to make sure that when you tell me that you snore or you have some health condition, that I'm not going to do anything with that data other than make sure I get you the right mattress. The language I use on the landing page is going to be a way that I can help build trust. A privacy professional needs to help the organization realize I'm here not just for the law part, but also to help translate that into common everyday use cases. If you're a technology company, you likely have a huge list of features on your site that say, here's all the wonderful reasons why our technology is great. You should buy it. Well, one of those features better be the privacy and security side. And please work with the sales or the pricing team so that privacy and security is not only in the higher tiers, it should be in the base level tiers. That is a differentiator that or actually, it shouldn't be a differentiator, but right now it can be because so many other companies aren't doing it that way. That's where you can work with the organization's, other cross functional areas to get them to realize how privacy plays into the sale. Who doesn't want to make more sales in their company? No one. Everyone wants to make more sales in their company. These are the little places where it's about building trust on that feature page, when the product team or the marketing team has cool, new, great ideas, is there a privacy person there to help think about, okay, so is that person going to be okay with that plan? Is there going to be any element of surprise? Does that match what we said in our privacy notice? That's where the trust piece comes into play and where companies get more than just I've complied with the law. They actually can either earn more sales, more operational efficiency, and ultimately happy customers.

Yeah, it really winds me up when I'm going to a website and they're like, oh, to find this information, put in your email address and your age. And then I'm like, no, just tell me what I need to buy and then I'll give you the information if I think it's worth it, not put your email address in, in order to see everything. Oh, it really winds me up.

I don't like those sites who have literally gated the entire site. A lot of the retailers have done that. Or my other favourite is, I know it's totally marketing language and it came to privacy for marketing. But the big pop up that says, give us your email to save 25%, and you say no, and it's, no, I don't want to save 25%. I do want to save 25%, but I'm not ready yet. I don't know who you are and I don't trust what you're going to do, and I don't need to give you my data until I'm sold that you have just the right thing, and I've decided that my email is worth the percentage. Yes, you're going to have my email anyways when I buy the thing, but I haven't decided to buy it, so, no, you don't get it yet.

Exactly. And if it's 10%, I think, well, that's not enough for me to give up my privacy. Maybe 25%.

That's a very interesting observation. So in your mind, you have a trade off of what that financial discount is worth of the email and what that data is. That's actually what the CCPA is trying to get at, is so many companies are asking for that data. They are looking for companies to try and help quantify and help get people to realize that there's the trade-off.

Jodi I'm curious, who's been your favourite guest on the podcast and why?

Oh, I can't pick favourites. They're like kids. They all have their own specialness that are there. But I will say that I like that we've covered so many different topics before, and I think I'm always partial a little bit to the ad tech and the marketing topics. I think that's such a core foundation to privacy, and honestly, it's the piece of privacy I just love. But at the same time, I've learned a tremendous amount from our guests talking about drones, and those were really interesting and fascinating. The guests we just had on last week on Pixel litigation, right. Who might have thought litigation? Well, maybe all the people who are litigating might have really liked all the litigation. I am not a litigator, so that is not my favourite topic. But gosh, it was such a fascinating discussion to see how these older privacy laws are intertwining with modern day technology and where some of the challenges are. So I like them all. But actually, if I had to pick a favourite topic and I'm always looking for good guests, anyone listening or if you all ever have is I have a very strong passion on protecting kids online and as a parent to kids with technology, we're always trying to find guests who can help in that regard. So those are probably some of my favourite ones, but I like them all.

And the ad tech, is that by any way biased or influenced by your time Auto Trader when you was dealing with all of the ad tech?

I might be slightly biased there because I had a very varied career. I started it in accounting and then did finance and strategy, and it was the strategy role that led me to ad tech. Then from Ad Tech it led me to privacy. I can still remember the news article that my manager at the time emailed me asking, what is this digital ad choices thing? It was two paragraphs from Media Post and that was my entry into privacy. I thought, I don't know, this is interesting, and I spent a long time researching it and decided I wanted to pivot into that space.

All right, awesome. And for anyone else who is looking to become recognized as a leader in the privacy space, what kind of tips and advice do you have on how they can go and create their personal brand just as well as you have done?

Well, first, thank you for the very kind compliment. I really appreciate that. I think it's to find your voice that works for you. We all can look to how other people are doing things and maybe you like how one person's done a lot of visuals, maybe you like how someone does lots of video. But the reality is it kind of goes back to the you do you. It doesn't work if it's not your style because it's not going to be authentic. I genuinely love talking and trying to simplify privacy topics and I enjoy doing that and I hope that that comes out. People have told me you're super energized and I can see your passion. That's because it comes out there. Writing a whole bunch of really long 20 page white papers is not my favourite pastime, but there's other people who do a great job at writing really long white papers and that's going to be awesome for them. I think the other piece is you have to find the part you want to talk about. I really like talking and trying to make it simple because that's in line with how we deliver our services at Red Clover, we're all about trying to make it simple for clients and as a result, I want everything else to all interconnect some people might want to talk about privacy enhancing technologies. Someone else might want to talk about a marketing piece. Someone else might really want to talk about contracts, and you want to be the contract guru and talk about everything you ever wanted to know about that. Some people want to talk about the regulations, and they're sort of the go to. Every time there's a new regulation, that's what they're going to talk about. I think it's important to find something that's your thing and then stick with it and find the medium, find the way that it comes out that's most authentic to you. Because if you just copy a style and it's not authentic and it doesn't match with what you're actually interested in, it's not going to work.

Great advice. Essentially, we're going back to what we started off with. Figure out what you love most, figure out what you're most passionate about what you enjoy most and where people see that value from the things that you love most. And then just go and connect with that and engage and be authentic. Be you and just be authentic. Show up and give everything you want, and people will start recognizing you for that. But if you try and do a little bit of this, little bit of that, little bit of that, then you just become essentially like a jack of all trades, and you don't actually have a niche or have any specialization. And Jodi, what I love there, what you were saying is essentially what we try and do here at Kazient, what we're doing is making things easy peasy for the clients. We like to go and meet the clients where they are and make sure that we speak to them in a language they understand. And one of the things I love about your podcast, one of the things I love about having read this book and the stuff that you put out is you also try to make things simple and easy so people can actually understand what it means. And it was an Albert Einstein quote that really resonated with me a few years ago that said, if you can't explain it simply enough, you haven't understood it well enough. And I've kind of taken that and made that the basis for everything that we do with the Privacy Pros Academy, with the podcast, with the Easy Peasy Guide. And I can take lots of great examples of inspiration from the content that you're putting out there on just how possible it is. A lot of people think, oh, data privacy is so complicated. It's all legalese. We can't make it easy peasy. And we're like, no we can. And look, there's Jodi doing it up there in the States, and here we are doing it in Europe. So it can be done. It just requires a little bit more effort. And as long as we put that effort in, then anything is possible.

I completely agree.

So we've got a few minutes left of the podcast and what we like to do is ask our podcast guests for them to ask Jamal a question as our last item, I guess. So you can ask him anything about privacy.

In the spirit of talking about challenges, what are the biggest challenges that you are finding people who are interested in privacy facing?

The biggest challenge people who are looking to pivot their career, who are interested in privacy, are facing is not understanding where to go to get that practical experience or how to overcome that practical experience that stops them or becomes like a barrier to entry. And what a lot of people think is, oh, you know what? Someone said I have to get this certification. So they go and find a book to read, they find some exam answers to read, or they go and get some online videos. But that's just their theory and they don't know what it is they don't even know. And they don't know how that actually applies into theory. So I find the biggest challenge a lot of people have is they think they're smart by getting some letters after the name. But once they've got that certificate that says they've passed, that's all it is. It's an empty certification that says they pass. And they struggle because they can't demonstrate to recruiters, to hiring managers, to businesses that they understand how to apply this. And that's the biggest challenge. People don't take the time to value investing in learning with an expert, in learning, with a mentor, in spending time with the people, the communities that you spoke about. That really helps them to understand that. So I think that's the biggest challenge people come across is not knowing there's actually solutions out there that you should be taking rather than just trying to self study, especially when this is something completely new to you. If you've already worked, got some experience, and you're looking to get your next certification, that's okay because you now understand how to apply this, you understand the thing that it's talking about and you can imagine how it would apply. But when you have no idea when it's very new to you, that is probably the worst thing you can do. Because now you just dropped yourself on the opportunities to be able to learn this and it's going to take you a lot longer to then go and get that role, to really give you that hands on experience. And that's one of the things that I'm really a big advocate of, is saying, hey, don't go and waste your time and your money trying to do this stuff and this stuff and waste all of your energy doing all the cheapest courses you can find. Take some time, do your research and go and learn with somebody who is really going to be able to help you to get to that next stage of your career. And if that's pivoting, then you're going to need some hands on practical experience. And that's where our accelerator program comes in, is we actually take people through the whole process and give them hands on experience of doing data protection, impact assessments, writing privacy notices that are easy to understand, that are clear and concise, handling subject access requests, how do you deal with those? When do you have to check for ID? When does the clock start ticking? What are the kind of responses you need to do? What should you be kind of making sure you're not disclosing? And also records of processing activities? Like, for me, that's where everything starts, is understanding where the data flows. But you can read about this. The GDPR tells you what you need to do, but unless you've gone and spoken to stakeholders, managers, department heads, to understand how that data comes together, you're not going to be able to do anything. And so for me, that's what I find the biggest challenges is, is them not understanding the depth that they need to go to be able to apply this. Anyone can regurgitate the GDP, anyone can memorize it, but that doesn't add any value to businesses.

Well said. Well said.

Jodi it's been an absolute pleasure. You cover some amazing things all the way from being yourself, how to switch off, how to actually get the most out of your day through to how to make things easy for you, for the business, and whether adds so much value. And we also learned a lot more about how you and Justin get on with security and privacy. So thank you for all of those valuable tips that you've been sharing and I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Absolutely and likewise, thank you again.

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