A message of love: my beginnings at Shazam 💌

Hello beautiful human

My heart is with you and all of humanity right now.

It aches for peace and for all humans to be safe. There is little that many of us have the power to do right now, but we can always choose to love.

It was hard to decide what to share with you all this week on that basis, so I decided to share hope in the form of a story of the gift of love.

When I landed my role at Shazam, I couldn’t believe my luck. At that time, I didn’t believe in myself at all, so to me, I just felt immense gratitude for the opportunity.

I can’t tell you in any scientific way what was driving me before that, I can only say it was instinct or intuition. It was like a divine intelligence telling me that the life and career that I’d chosen wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t conscious, it was from deep within.

Within my personal world, that voice told me to leave my ex-husband. I had no idea what to do really or how to get there, I just started.

As the dust started to settle and I found myself in new spaces, I didn't really have a sense of what I wanted to do professionally. I just kept showing up for my job at the time.

In recruitment, as many of you will know, you get pretty used to making connections. At this time, I wasn't actively recruiting, but something just told me to keep reaching out to people and to keep putting myself out there. I reached out to folks without any agenda beyond making a new connection.

It was someone that I had met during that burst networking that tapped me up for the role at Shazam. A chap called Ryan Broad. Ryan was a huge part of me changing my life.

Ryan landed at Shazam and straight away called me for a role in his team. It was just for 6 weeks, but something told me to go for it.

I left a 12 month fixed term contract that was about to offer me a permanent role to grab it. This was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.

In the first week at Shazam, Ryan and I were in a meeting with other members of the Shazam team. They asked for our opinions on something, I gave mine and Ryan just agreed with me.

Then something magical happened.

At the end of the meeting Ryan and I hung back, he had a lot to show me to get me up to speed in the job.

Ryan turned to me and said: ‘I’m not sure you really see how amazing you are. You have the potential to me an incredible leader, much better than I am. You are brilliant.’

My jaw hit the floor.

Neither of us realised what a pivotal moment this might be for me.

But it was. Hearing those words from someone I truly respected was like a seed of self belief being planted. It was literally the beginning of me believing in me.

When Ryan left for a new role 6 weeks later, based on this new fledgling belief I had in myself, I threw my hat in the ring. My new potential boss didn’t say yes right away but she didn’t say no either. I worked my ass off and I got it.

And wow, the power of words. 'I think you are brilliant' was the sentence that put my career on a new course. I felt a new sense of propose, a new sense of pride.

It was at Shazam that I gave myself permission to be who I really was at work.

I’ve never forgotten the power of words. We all have the power to sprinkle magic dust over one another’s lives. I heard this described recently as 'speaking life over someone' and I just think that is the most beautiful concept. My goodness right now do we need it.

I do it as often as I am able.

So to you, beautiful reader, I will simply say… ‘I’m not sure you really see how amazing you are. You have the potential to me an incredible leader, much better than I am. You are brilliant.’

And I mean every single word. With so much love from my heart to yours.

I see you.

Big love