The Best Advice from Tyler Perry, Indra Nooyi, and Gwen Stefani. Y mi Mamá Tambien.

One of the reasons I miss pre-pandemic days is that now I don’t get to see my coworkers every day. I enjoy the flexible schedule, working from home with my rescue dog Tango and being barefoot all day. But when I brave the world with proper shoes and clean hair I end up having the most energizing time, surrounded by my team in our state-of-the-art LinkedIn studio at the Empire State Building.?

I experienced a similar withdrawal when I finished high school. I had a tough time adjusting to not seeing my friends every day, my routine was shaken and I missed the school Drama Club where I felt a real sense of community that I was not finding in college. My mom noticed so she kept asking if I was sure about my career choice. Those were my late teens and I was not sure about anything. But I was already a few months into Communications and Social Studies in my hometown of Buenos Aires, and I was determined to go through those 4 years, get my diploma and move on with my life. A pragmatic approach that was really desensitizing me from experiencing a new phase.?

When Mamá reads about a new Musical Theatre program designed by Argentinian ballet dancer Julio Bocca, she’s the first one to say, “Why don’t you give this a try?” But I reject her idea. “Nah. It’s too time-consuming, too expensive, too professional.” What I really mean is, I don’t want to feel that spark again, and then have to deal with the disillusion when it ends. Quite dramatic.

I end up not signing up. The day the conservatory is starting, I'm having tostadas con dulce de leche in my room at home (my very Argentinian coping mechanism for avoiding unwanted feelings), my mom knocks on my door and says, “Flopi, (her nickname for me) get dressed and meet me in the car. I’ll take you to that class.” “No, Ma. It’s ok.” I know where I get my stubborn decisiveness from because she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She said, “Don’t overthink it. Just show up and see what happens. You can then decide how you feel about it.”

Hearing that all I have to do is “show up” helps me replace the fear of the unknown with the excitement of what could be. It allows me to focus on the experience at hand instead of the void I could feel when it ends.

Mamá drives me to the class and I feel so alive. A 3-hour ballet class is followed by an hour of singing exercises and a 2-hour Stanivslasky acting class. I then go to the administrative office and ask about scholarships and put myself up to work at the front desk to reduce the tuition fee. I return home and by midnight I have designed a whole new year for myself. I’ll go to college in the mornings and musical theatre conservatory in the evenings. I’m busy, I’m motivated, I’m happy.

For the next two decades, as I leave Buenos Aires to travel the world working and living in New Zealand, Ireland, and eventually New York, I balanced a life in TV & digital production on one side, and theater and music on the other one.??

Nowadays, when I find myself dissociating with tostadas con dulce de leche, I imagine my mom knocking on my door saying “Flopi, no lo pienses. Solo andá y fijate qué pasa.”?

Best Advice: Episode 2

For episode 2 of Best Advice, I'm highlighting clips from three trailblazers who visited LinkedIn Studios over the years. Media mogul Tyler Perry joined us in January 2020. Perry shares his inspiring journey of dropping out of school and learning on the go. He’s someone who has touched almost every aspect of the entertainment industry from acting, writing, directing, producing, and eventually building the largest film production studio in the United States.?

On the opposite side of the pendulum is Indra Nooyi, the longtime CEO of PepsiCo, who holds two master's degrees, including one from Yale. Nooyi spoke with us a few times, in this clip from 2016 she describes owing her movement up the corporate ladder to having, what she calls, a pocket skill.

Then there’s music star Gwen Stefani who went from leading small, local band No Doubt in 1986 to going solo in 2004 and topping the charts decade after decade. I spoke with her twice in 2016 as she was getting ready to release her album “This is What the Truth Feels Like.” Here she opens up about listening to her intuition.

Tyler Perry

“I think that that college is so necessary and important for so many people. I could've paid for Harvard for about 500 graduates in the mistakes that I've made over the years in taxes and things I didn't know. There's a part of me that wished I had that kind of learning, but there's also a part of me that resisted because I wouldn't have the freedom to think outside of it. I never felt invited and I never felt welcomed. I always felt like the outcast. So, no, I never had that sense of, I want to go and learn, which I'm grateful for because the way I learned was so outside of it. Most shows, television shows in Hollywood shoot four pages a day. Four pages is a lot. I'm shooting 100 pages in one day on my shows. And I have lots of friends who are really famous and do really, really well, who are inside of the system who can't even understand this level of the studio, or the production, or the output of what I'm doing. They can't wrap their brain around it because they were so ingrained inside of the system.

“So I think that if you go to college and you learn as much as you can, but if you can maintain the freedom of thought outside of it... I've never taken a creative writing class. I've never taken a class on writing a script. I've never taken any of that. Had I done any of that, I think it would've changed every bit inside of me, and I wouldn't have been able to connect to this audience in particular.”

Indra Nooyi

“Have a pocket skill. People should look at you and say, "On this particular issue, the only person who can answer it or can contribute it is you because if they know that you have a competence that nobody else has, you become more valuable." Interestingly, over my entire career, what I've been known for is making simple the complex, whatever the issue is. And "if you gave it to Indra, it will get addressed."?

When somebody gives me a complex problem, I become a student. I don't care that I'm CEO, president, or CFO, I become a student. Don't get fixated on your CEO aspiration. Focus on doing the current job you have so damn well that people say, "Nobody else can do that job as well as Indra has done it." So I think it's critically important to focus on the current job.”

Gwen Stefani

“People should always do things from what's genuine to them and their heart, and try to be true to themselves because people, especially in music, see right through that stuff. And I think that, for me, I never, in my wildest dreams, ever thought that I would be anywhere outside of my dad's garage, not even just to listen to music, but to be able to write my story, and then share that, and have it affect people, and help people, and bring joy, or whatever it does, mark a time period for them. It's just such an honor.

"And I think that I've only ever just followed my heart. That's what I've done. I'm not saying it's going to work for everyone, but for me, that's worked. It always feels like I need to keep kicking my feet. I need to keep swimming because, if you don't, you sink. And there's always that, I feel like I've been running this for a long time to keep it going."

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The series is produced by Stephen F. Valdivia Duarte for LinkedIn News .

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