David speaks with Arielle Jackson, a marketing expert in residence at First Round and in her own consulting work where she helps hundreds of companies build their positioning and brands from the ground up. Arielle gained product marketing experience at Google, helping grow Gmail in its early days. At Square, she led the launch of hardware products, reaching over 30k retail doors. She later joined Cover, a seed-stage startup that rapidly grew to over 1M users before being acquired by Twitter.
They talked about:
💎 The influence of privilege in our lives
🎯 Why we constantly redefine success
📊 How marketing tricks our minds
💸 The value of convenience over price
🧠 The power of framing in decision-making
🔧 The benefits of hard, low-paid jobs
🎙 Listen to your favourite podcast player
🎧 Listen on Spotify:
📹 Watch on Youtube:
📄 Show notes:
[00:00] Introduction
[02:47] Arielle’s LA childhood experience
[03:58] Luxury vs. values
[05:21] Wealth wasn’t always visible
[07:33] The pressure of constant comparison
[09:45] Why we can't predict the odds
[11:48] The psychology of why we love discounts
[13:39] Why we believe expensive things are worth it
[17:35] The art of selling without selling
[20:05] How Superhuman transformed email experience
[24:14] Slowing down is not the answer all the time
[27:27] The influence of parents on our drive to succeed
[30:14] The real benefits of having a job before college
[33:38] Why working in tough jobs is worth it
🗣 Mentioned in the show:
Starbucks | https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/
The Privilege Paradox | https://theknowledge.io/issue26/
Rory Sutherland | https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/rory-sutherland/
Ogilvy | https://www.ogilvy.com/about
Coca-Cola | https://www.coca-cola.com/us/en
Robert Cialdini | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
Influence, New and Expanded | https://amzn.to/3B2dVkR
Alchemy | https://amzn.to/3B1EMO1
Netflix | https://about.netflix.com/
Disney | https://movies.disney.com/all-movies
Amazon Prime Video | https://www.primevideo.com/
ESPN | https://www.espn.com/watch/
SNOO Smart Sleeper Bassinet | https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/snoo-smart-bassinet
Dr. Harvey Karp | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Karp
The 5 S's for Soothing Babies | https://www.happiestbaby.com/blogs/baby/the-5-s-s-for-soothing-babies
Superhuman | https://superhuman.com/
Mike Maples Jr. | https://www.floodgate.com/team/mike-maples-jr
Volvo | https://www.volvo.com/en/
👤 Connect with Arielle:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hiiamArielle
First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/articles/arielle-jackson/
👨🏾💻 About David Elikwu:
David Elikwu FRSA is a serial entrepreneur, strategist, and writer. David is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping people think deeper and work smarter.
🐣 Twitter: @Delikwu / @itstheknowledge
🌐 Website: https://www.davidelikwu.com
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📖 Free Book: https://pro.theknowledge.io/frames
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📜 Full transcript:
Arielle Jackson: My parents did instill in me like a good sense of, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you want to do. You know, if you work hard enough kind of thing. And I never really like, knew what I wanted to do, but I knew I could work hard. They also didn't give me everything I wanted, but they gave me enough that I felt supported that I could do what I wanted if that makes sense. So there's another thing that's really important to me as a mom. Like I had an allowance as a kid, but it was like pretty small. Maybe like, five bucks, something like that. Like, it wasn't enough to like, do everything I wanted, but it was enough that I could like, go buy a soda with my friend or something. But they were always like, well, if you want more you can get a job. Like we'll help you, we'll take you to the place and get you a work permit.
It was like a good balance of always feeling like they had my back, but also like I could have my own back if I wanted more than what they provided for me.
This week I'm resharing part of my conversation with Arielle Jackson who is a marketing expert in residence at First Round which is a venture capital business. She also helps a lot of startups to build their branding and positioning in the early stages. So Arielle had a really incredible background.
You're going to hear us talking about some of it. She gained some of her early experience working at Google on Gmail then she went over to join Jack Dorsey at Square, as one of the early people there. I think she was actually the first female employee, so she helped to shape some of their maternity policies.
And then after leaving square, she joined Cover, which was a very small startup that she helped to build as a part of the early team and that reached over a million users before being acquired by Twitter. So she went back to join Jack there.
So you're going to hear us talking about a range of things. We talk about raising kids, how to teach your kids about wealth and gratitude. We talk about how social class can impact your sense of self and the challenge of defining what success really means then we start talking about marketing.
We talk about the psychology behind our buying choices. We talk about the power of framing and decision making and this ability that great founders have to see the future. And then we talk about career building and when to follow your gut and how to plan effectively to build a career. We talk about the power that early jobs have to be able to shape your career and give you an edge that can compound through the rest of your life.
So I think you're going to love this conversation. You can get the full show notes, the transcript and read my newsletter at theknowledge.Io. And you can find Arielle on Twitter @HiIAmArielle. I'll have all the links in the description below. You can also check out Arielle's awesome articles in the first round review. And we'll have the links to that also.
Now, if you love this episode. Please do share it with a friend and don't forget to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, but particularly Spotify and Apple podcasts because it helps us tremendously to find other listeners just like you.
David Elikwu: And I wanted to know where you grew up and then we can talk a bit more about your background.
Arielle Jackson: So I grew up in LA, which is actually where I live now. I came home after, a while away. But I grew up in LA in this kind of weird neighborhood in west LA that's like between a lot of things. But it's probably closest to this neighborhood called Palms. It's like a kind of normal neighborhood right in west LA.
David Elikwu: What was it like growing up there?
Arielle Jackson: It was nice. I went to a private school that actually my son now goes to, which is one of the reasons we moved back to LA in Santa Monica. And so it was interesting being the child of, you know, I was definitely like upper middle class family, but I went to school with a lot of people who were very, very upper-class. And so it was interesting being in a world where I didn't have what all those kids had, but I had a lot compared to like most of LA. So that was kind of interesting experience. I think you know, being a parent at that school now is the whole, whole another level of interesting, but yeah, it was, it wasn't, we would like, drive to lake Arrowhead for our vacations And my friends would like fly to Hawaii first class and stuff. So it was an interesting time, but I actually am still best friends with the girl I went to, I met her in kindergarten we're still like best friends.
David Elikwu: Do you feel like your kids fit in now more with that cohort than you did when you were growing up?
Arielle Jackson: It's interesting. I mean, I definitely have more as an adult than I did as a child, so I worry a lot about it spoiling my children. And it's really important to me to raise them in a way that they understand the privilege that they have. That's like really important to me. In fact, my older son he's in second grade and he has a lot of friends, same kind of thing I grew up with, you know, like we're going on a road trip for our summer break and his friends are like, flying private to Aspen and stuff. We went over to one of his friend's house, really nice family, but they live in like a giant house with a trampoline and a zip line in the backyard. And it's super fun to go over there But, you know, we, we have a nice house. We live in LA. It's like, you know, we're quite fortunate. But when you have friends like that and you're eight and you don't really know the difference and you ask your mom and dad, like, why don't we have a house like that and a zip line in our backyard and it's interesting to navigate those conversations.
I think it's really important for my older son to know, you know, everyone lives differently and what's important in your house is that, you know, you have parents who love you, you have food, you have clothes, you can make yourself entertained, you have a brother, like all this stuff that matters and not like how many Beyblades you have in your collection or whatever. It's interesting as a parent to try to navigate that, even from a place of privilege.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I think that's so interesting. What you were saying just reminded me of a memory that I have from when I was a bit younger. So I think probably when I was maybe 13 or 14, so we had these just some family friends that I think my dad had gone to school with years and years ago, but we're definitely now not in the same or at the time anyway, not in the same kind of like social class. And I had gone to their house to go and play essentially. So we were just like having to get together, but also with a few other friends. And so there was a time we were supposed to get there and we were running late. So I remember we drove up so we're pulling up to their house. Their house is not even necessarily close to the road, you have to go on this winding path full of like trees and foliage off the main road, and so you pull up to the house. And I just saw like a bunch of cars and I was like, oh my gosh, we're so late. And I hadn't met. I don't think I'd even, No, I think I had met him, but I hadn't met anyone else so I didn't know who else was going to be there. And like, you know, it was a bit anxious and I was like, oh my gosh, all these cars are here, we must be so late. And then we get there and we were the first ones there. And all of cars, all of the cars were his dad's cars.
It's funny when you get to see, I guess, I don't know, like the breadth of experiences that different people have. And in some ways it doesn't necessarily make people any different, because I think if I hadn't seen that in terms of my relationship with my friend like, well, first of all, I don't think it necessarily changed, but also I wouldn't necessarily have seen him any differently or, but I think when you have that wider context it maybe changes how you see yourself within that broader spectrum.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah. I mean, kids are kids. They just want to play with their friends, right? Like in the end, you just wanna play with your friend. You don't really care how many cars his dad has. But it creates a interesting conversation about your place in the world and what you know and what is normal. And you see all these like polls, even that say like, you know, have you seen these questions where they're like, what percent of your country do you think makes more money than you? What percent of your country has this degree? What percent? And people are really bad at actually like predicting the truth.
And I think that's the kind of warped sense that it gives kids. You know, what percent of the country has five cars? And maybe you would think higher after you went to your friend's house. And really he was such an outlier, right?
David Elikwu: Yeah, that's a really interesting point that you bring up as well. I think particularly in this age of social media now, it's interesting how widely our baseline gets skewed. And actually, I was just thinking about this earlier. I think because I'm in this weird startup world now, which is very different from the world that I grew up in and I listened to loads of podcasts and I seen loads of people when everyone has these big exits and makes millions and millions. And then I think I saw a story of someone else that had you know, start a business and raised a few million and it was on Twitter and someone was commenting about whoa, how much this is. Oh my gosh. It's like generational wealth. And I felt bad, but my first reaction was like, oh, that's not huge compared to some of the rounds that you see. Like that's just a evaluation of, I think it was maybe like 15, 17 million.
And that was not necessarily the main point. The point was someone commenting about how huge a number that was. And of course that is so true, like 17 million pounds actually, which is. over $20 million
Arielle Jackson: $20 million. Yeah.
David Elikwu: Huge amount. Yeah. for anyone that's a, that's a colossal amount and that is generational wealth.
But in my mind, the first reaction that came to, my head is like oh, you're not overreacting. This is not huge. Compared to working in tech, seeing tech multiples all the time, where every day, if your seed round doesn't start with more than 2 million, then it's almost like you're a failure.
And I think, at the company that I work at, we just did a series C, it was about 128 million. So again, you very quickly just have this skewed perception of what success looks like and what wealth or money or privilege or any of these things can look like.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah. I mean, that happens with everything, right? Like even, I was thinking about like a kind of dumb example, but like with coffee, right? Like if you are into coffee and, you know, I used to in high school, I would like get a Starbucks latte once in a while. I thought it was amazing. And now it's like, oh, Starbucks, I got that. It's not that great. You know, and like you, you go after, like, if you're going to spend money on coffee, you go for like a really good coffee. And so like kind of what the bar for what good is shifts. And then the more you drink, good coffee, the more you're like, oh, I can't, you know that Starbucks latte, I'll have it in the airport if I have to, but it's not special to me anymore as it once was.
David Elikwu: Yeah, No you're completely right. And I think even more, we were just saying, reminds me of just in general, how bad we are at baselining things.
So in my newsletter, I was writing about how bad we are at calculating odds. for example, like, the odds of flipping a coin and getting consecutive heads. Most people would think like, if you were betting on whether it would be heads or tails, if you had to flip a coin five times people's automatic assumption is that coincidences are rare, and it's not going to be head several times in a row. If it's been heads twice, it's probably going to be tails next time. So if you've seen two heads, you're going to switch. But actually it's actually almost technically more likely that it will be another heads. And so it's almost better if, if you had to pick 10 coin flips, you just pick one thing and stick with it the entire time, because the odds of each successive coin flip is equally likely.
So anyway, I know I just went on off on a rant, but the point is just in general, how bad we are at baselines. And it makes me think about, I don't know psychologically, it's really interesting. And I'm interested in your perspective because I was just listening to Rory Sutherland on a podcast. And I think actually you just tweeted something from Oglivy recently and Rory Sutherland
Arielle Jackson: Yeah, I love he's amazing. I'm excited to hear what you heard him talking about It's amazing.
David Elikwu: No, so many things. So I I couldn't even summarize everything, but I just learned from listening to him. But I think the main thing is just how easily, first of all, the massive connection between marketing and psychology in the brain, and also just how easily we can be skewed by certain things.
So I think the first thing that comes to mind is Coke. Coke got in a lot of trouble quite a few years ago now, they wanted to have these vending machines where during the summer the cost of a Coke would increase when it was hot. So based on the temperature the cost of a Coke would start rising, whereas if they had done it the other way and said, when it's cold, a Coke will be cheaper and just had a higher baseline price, no one would have a problem with it. And so it's interesting how, again, this idea of having baselines, And I know that a big idea in marketing it skews our perspective of what value is.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah, for sure. I mean, framing is sort of the psychological, I guess, terminology for that. So if you think that the Coke costs a dollar and in the summer, it's going to be a dollar 50, you think like, oh, they're ripping me off. But if the Coke always cost a dollar 50 and you're primed and frame to think a dollar 50, and now in the winter, It's a dollar. you feel like you're getting a deal. It's the same exact economic situation.
So I studied psychology. I studied human biology in school, and then I did a master's in psychology, almost became a clinical psychologist. And when I was doing that I took this class on social psychology. Robert Cialdini was a visiting professor that year. Just happened to be. And so I heard, he wrote that book Influence, which is like one of the things that's like his number one bestseller. And he, I think he was teaching in Arizona at the time, but he became like a visiting professor and I got to hear like, one lecture from him about social psychology and influence.
I remember being like, this is so awesome. I want to do this. Like, this is what I want to do. And it was that intersection of how the brain works and how humans work in group. Mixed with persuasiveness and business that I thought was like, so cool. And I remember just like, you know, it was one of those like eyes light up moment as a student. And I think it's pretty cool, like roundabout way but I kind of in some ways, get to do some of that now. And you know, psychology is really, really connected to marketing and a lot of ways.
And I think you know, Rory Sutherland, he and his book Alchemy was one of my, probably my favourite books I read last year. But he is like the godfather of this too. It's like, another one of these guys who just really applies things from behavioral economics and psychology and applies it to great examples in branding and in policy. And really shows you how things like, you know, the Coke example, it's the same economic output, but people feel so differently about it. So it changes their behavior. I'm like fascinating. I nerd out on all that stuff all the time. It's so fun.
David Elikwu: Yeah, same. I think another great example was, and again, it's, it's just so incredible how, like you say, changing the framing completely changes how you think about something. So right now I don't pay for TV at all, just because I pay for all these streaming services. And I think what's the point of paying extra for TV on top of that, just because. By the time you pay for Netflix And Disney and Amazon prime video and all of those things there's enough to watch. I'm fine. But he was talking about how he convinced his dad to get sky sports, like the equivalent of ESPN here.
And essentially it was quite expensive, but then he was like, oh but how much do you spend on a newspaper? You spend 20p on a newspaper, actually sky sports, even though it's however much for the month, it's actually 67p a day. And you know, the equivalent value that you get from being able to watch this compared to how much you spend on newspapers, it's actually very economical, and so It's a really weird framing thing because in my mind, if you told me the top level price, I'd be like, whoa, that's way too expensive. I don't need to spend that. But actually when you break it down like that, and even when I think about all the other things, I probably spend 67p a day on, but just in my day-to-day life is less than a coffee, it's less than almost anything else you can buy. If the marginal value you get from it is more than that, then suddenly it's a great idea.
Arielle Jackson: It's a great way to take things that seem expensive and make a reference point to something you already do. And there's some nice examples in marketing too. Like that example that Rory Sutherland, I think he, that was in his book too. And he was trying to get his dad was in a retirement home or something, right. And he was like trying to get him stuff to do.
Another example just as like a high price point item that does that framing to like, a daily cost is this Snoo, do you know about this Snoo? It's like this it's basically like a tech enabled cradle for babies. So, it's a smart cradle, think about it like that, like a bassinet. And you put your newborn in it and it rocks and it shushes the baby and it's based on this pediatrician, his name's Dr. Harvey Karp. And he came up with this book, The Happiest Baby on the Block and there's these five S's. and it's like, what you do when you have a newborn who's like inconsolable, it's shushing, sucking, sideline, whatever. There's like five of them, okay. And he invented this cradle that does this for you and it's like connected to an app it's very expensive. It's like, $1,500 or something for this cradle. And usually you can buy a little bassinet for, I don't know, a hundred bucks, something like that. Like it's like, 10 X or more than a regular cradle. But they've done a lot of analysis on it and like actually published in scientific pediatric journals and showed that it actually increases, his goal has like purpose for the company is to increase baby's health through better sleep. And then to also increase family's health because there'll be less, his theory is like less postpartum depression and all of that if mom's actually slept more too.
When the cradle first came out, they were talking about it as $5 a day because you could rent it. So I rented one for my second kid. I never bought it wasn't around for my first kid. And he said for less than the price of a latte per day you can get, I think it was like two hours more of sleep. I was like, oh, okay, well now it's worth it. But like at $1,500 compared to the bassinet, that's a hundred, $150. That seemed nuts to me. Like I would never spend 10x for a cradle, but I spend $5 on a latte and yes, I would pay that for two hours more sleep per day.
David Elikwu: That's incredible framing. And it's so right. Not too long ago, a friend of mine had twins and I am a godfather to them. And I remember the early months when you're spending time with them and trying to help. It's a lot of work. And just thinking about what you just said, suddenly that sounds like crazy value, even though like you say.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah, my sister-in-law had a baby, Yeah. literally a few less than a month ago. And she's calling saying maybe he's not sleeping. What am I doing wrong? I'm like, well, it's really normal, but you could consider this Snoo and she's like, but it's so expensive. Well, you can rent it. And she gets the $5 lattes too. And when kind of, I I'm using that line now, you know, it's good marketing. When you kind of the people who endorse the product are actually saying that, that's really well-framed. So when I explained it to her like that, she's like okay, I'll try it. I'll try it. I can always return it if it doesn't work,
But yeah, in those early days you'll spend whatever you want, whatever. You could get someone to spend whatever, especially with twins, right.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. I was going to say it's incredible how certain brands managed to integrate themselves into our lives. So I know that one, in some ways am deeply ashamed of, and in some ways I don't care and I'm also very proud is Superhuman. And I think this a great example because I think they did some work with you. I am just so unapologetically, I love Superhuman and I will convince people to get it. And I, I get nothing out of it. I'll talk about it all the time, just because it's so good and it works and the best and worst thing about it is it's so hard to explain to someone, I sound like I'm convincing people to join a cult, but to the uninitiated, it's so hard to explain and to quantify the value that you get. All I can say is that it's fast. And I know that's what they want me to say cause that's all they message, but it's true, it's really fundamentally true.
And I don't have metrics to back it up. I don't have anything else, but the product experience that you have, that this is just faster and easier and better, and everyone should be doing it that way.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah, Superhuman's an interesting one. Actually at, at first round recently, I don't even know if I think we can probably say this. First round, led their seed round. And I worked with Rahul really early on, on some of that messaging. Anyway, I'm not a convert yet, but recently first round sent an email that's like, we're rolling out Superhuman for all of our employees. And like, we encourage you to get it but I'm still so loyal to Gmail for having worked on Gmail many, many, many years ago.
So it's funny like, I know people love Superhuman and I totally see the value in it. And I guess maybe someday I'll make the switch, but I'm going to be one of those late adopters, cause I'm still like into Gmail. It's just like, seems second nature to me at this point.
David Elikwu: I mean, I guess if you've worked on it and spend so long, you probably know a bunch of the G-mail secrets that the rest of us don't. But I genuinely think that part of it was the, it's a paradigm shift of how I had previously thought about email. So I still remember I had over 19,000 emails at the time that I signed up for Superhuman and I wasn't necessarily looking for a new email. A friend of mine had just got it and she referred me and she was like, oh, we'll try it if you want. And what they do as you will know is that they book you in for a live session and someone is going to walk through the whole white glove experience of showing you the product.
And even during it, I was like, yeah, you know, not necessarily buying it. I think it was just the paradigm shift of a bit like Apple in a way, forcing you to make decisions and forcing you to think of your thing the way they think of your thing, because so I used to use Android, now I use an Apple but I used to hate the constraints that Apple has where they tell you, you can only do things one way. This is the only way to do it. This is the best way to do it. We don't care if you want to do something else, once you do it our way, you will understand it's the best way. And I hated it at first and now I get it. And now, I trust that the fact that they say there's only one way they want to do it is because they have a high bar of quality for doing it that way, rather than giving you loads of choices and with varying levels of quality. And I think with Superhuman compared to using a bunch of other emails, stuff that I've tried, they do one way really right and if you do it that way, then it works. Don't try and do any other thing. It's, it's not for that. It's for doing things in this way. You triage your email like this.
I just remember the feeling of, in my head, I was saving email because what if I need it one day? And I wasn't thinking of the fact that. there was over 19,000 of them. I was just thinking of hoarding and you know, what if I need this, what if I need to refer to this? And I do something like just the other day, I had to refer to an email from 2015, sometimes it's useful. But I think just sweeping everything under the carpet, I think going through that onboarding experience, but I think it goes to marketing in general and the way that you can frame a certain view of the world and get customers to buy into it.
I wrote about this as well, but I was thinking about Mike Maples Jr. Who is a VC and he's really awesome and he has a podcast. And what he was talking about is the way that great founders are like time travelers and they bring people into the future and they are able to position this framing of a future world and bring you into it. They're not building something for right now and trying to iteratively convince you to change from what you're doing to something else.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah. It's interesting, cause when, Gmail first launched, one of the ideas was like everyone who worked at Google got a ton of email. We sent a lot of email, we got a lot of email, both in our personal lives and our work lives and the belief of what the future would be like is in the future. Everyone's going to be like this, we're just on the bleeding edge of it. And so the AOL or Hotmail or Yahoo account you have where you get like, two or four, six megabytes, and you have to delete your messages in order to get more, wasn't going to work. That's just not the way the world was going.
And so at Google, Gmail was built as an email product for people who got a ton of mail. And Superhuman was built for power G-mail users, right? Who were the people who got all the extensions and Rahul had built some of those extensions in the past. And I am, I'm one of those like power G-mail users, you know, keyboard shortcuts, and the undo send extensions and all of that stuff schedule emails for the future, all these bells and whistles that like, if you're a power G-mail user, you can kind of make Gmail work for you. But he said, what if we just rebuilt email for just the super-duper power users? And what would that look like?
And so the idea that a lot of great founders do that you either take something that exists and there's a very top percent of the market like that, you're building for power users and you build a better product that meets their needs. And sometimes you have to force them into doing things one way. Or you take something in that, it's hard that very few people are doing and you make it much more accessible and everyone can do it. So super humans, definitely an example of that like, let's serve the power user, let's build something even better for them. We can charge for it. We can create this beautiful onboarding. We can make it super fast, but really build a product for power users again, like the power users had shifted, you know, the power users in 2006, 2007 looked really different than the power users in 2022.
David Elikwu: Yeah, you're completely right. And I think the other part of the reason that I brought it up is because the pricing is ridiculous and somehow they make me do it anyway, because there's no other world in which I could imagine paying
Arielle Jackson: What is it? $30 a month or something?
David Elikwu: Yeah. $30 a month, which sounds crazy.
Arielle Jackson: But then if you frame it as like, if you had to hire a virtual assistant or an actual assistant $30 a month is actually like Super cheap.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly So I know we skipped a few steps. I'd love to let's go back.
You were mentioning with your career, for example, coming out of university, you had the guest lecture with Robert Cialdini. Was that the first time you'd considered doing marketing or was that something that was already maybe a twinkle in your eye before then?
Arielle Jackson: I think I didn't really know that it existed to be honest. I was always kind of somebody who was interested in business as a kid. Like I was the kid with the lemonade stand and the garage sale. My parents had this giant box of change that I think they had inherited from one of their parents. Like it, was a huge cardboard box. Tons and tons and tons of coins. And they used to tell me that if I rolled the coins, I was like, you know, six years old. If I rolled the coins and took them to the bank, I could keep half the money. And I would, I would do that. You know, I was always babysitting. I had a job, I got a work permit when I was 15. I worked at a clothing store on the weekends. Like I was always kind of industrious and I always like to work. I like to work and I like to make money. Like that was always something that I like to do.
But I never really thought of like, well, what does that mean for a career? So I think, I always thought like, well, I'm interested in science, I'm interested in psychology. Maybe I'll go be a clinical psychologist. I taught preschool for a little bit while I was in grad school. Kind of just like, dabbled in a lot of things, but I never really thought of marketing as a career. I guess when I was deciding if I wanted to do a PhD or not, I realized like that's seven years of research. Seven years of research on a really esoteric topic that like three people in the world care about.
When I was doing my masters and I was researching, it was researching The understanding and display of emotion and preschool children and cultural differences in it. It was an interesting topic, but like five people in the world cared and it took me a year to publish like one thing, you know, and I didn't like how slow it was. That was sort of the it was like seven more years of this. I don't know, like fewer and fewer people are going to care. And I wanted something that was moved faster.
And so I got, I got two jobs, basically. This was 2002, I guess that would have been applying to jobs. It was, it was not a good time to be looking for jobs. I guess I was deciding between doing that PhD or working. And the two jobs I had was one was in a Psych lab at Stanford, like as a research coordinator type person kind of continuing on what I was doing, but as a job rather than as a student. And the other one was like, an entry-level thing at Google. I literally couldn't decide what to do. It was a really hard choice. And ended up taking the job at Google, just because of that, that slow pace of research. And I was like, well, Google will move faster.
So that's kind of, I just started in like a really entry level job there and kind of fell into marketing. And I guess didn't look back or did look back it kind of all worked out in the end.
David Elikwu: That's really interesting. I'm interested to know what your parents did for work and maybe where your early sense of industriousness came from.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah. So my, my dad's a pediatrician, he sees babies and kids and he's one of those people who like, loves his job. He's been doing the same, he's in private practice. So, I mean, he runs a small business. He has maybe like, 15 people work there, something like that. But he's not very like business minded. He's kind of like, I like seeing my patients and he gets the joy out of it. He was made a good living, but he didn't like, you know, he wasn't really motivated by that. My mom is a therapist. She was the director of a preschool for kids with autism high functioning autism, for the most part. So she specialized in family therapy for kids who were intellectually normal or even gifted, but socially having issues, that was kind of her thing. So our, a lot of our dinner table conversations were about like kids and health and families and all of that. Now I joke my parents are like professional grandparents.
So we moved back to LA when I was pregnant with my second son and when my husband and I go out, we leave my two little boys with a child therapist and a pediatrician. And we know we're, they're in good hands. They're really good grandparents. My mom is also not very like business savvy or interested in, business. I mean, she now runs a little private practice. She does mostly zoom therapy. She retired from the job at the school.
I honestly don't know where it came from. I think maybe it was that my parents did instill in me like a good sense of, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you want to do. You know, if you work hard enough kind of thing. And I never really like, knew what I wanted to do, but I knew I could work hard. They also didn't like, give me everything I wanted, but they gave me enough that I felt supported that I could do what I wanted if that makes sense. So there's another thing that's really important to me as a mom. Like I had an allowance as a kid, but it was like pretty small. I don't remember what it was. Maybe like, five bucks, something like that. Like, it wasn't enough to like, do everything I wanted, but it was enough that I could like, go buy a soda with my friend or something. But they were always like, well, if you want more you can get a job. Like we'll help you, we'll take you to the place and get you a work permit, you know, that kind of stuff.
So, it was like a good balance of always feeling like they had my back, but also like I could have my own back if I wanted more than what they provided for me.
David Elikwu: I think that's so important to have. And funnily enough, I think even for me, it's something that I probably underestimated that I got from, from my dad, which is probably ended up being one of the most valuable things is because I genuinely think, like you say that births a sense of industriousness where you are willing to go out and create things for yourself.
And I think even just believing that things are possible and believing that you can work hard and achieve things, and you can go out and do things whatever it is, is such a critical thing that a lot of people just unfortunately don't have.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah. That's one of the things that going back to what we were first talking about about like entitlement and private school and going to an environment where kids are given everything by their parents.
I remember like when I was 16, I wanted a car and a lot of my friend's parents were, you know, giving them a hand-me-down car or buying them, you know, a little car. And my parents were like, we're not doing. We're not going to buy you a car. Part of it was like, they probably couldn't and part of it was they wanted me to work for my own car And I ended up saving, I think it was $1,500. And I ended up buying like a 1983 Volvo, 240 DL that was belonged to my photography teacher in high school. Um, She was getting a new car and like mentioned she had this old beater that she would sell to me for $1,500. So I saved up the money and bought it And I was so proud of that car. Like, it was such a big achievement to have buy your own car at 16. And it was, it was a solid car. I've pretty much had a Volvo ever since.
David Elikwu: No, but that's a massive achievement, particularly if you're not getting like a, a massive allowance, you actually have to work for it. And from 15 as well, what were you doing for work at the time?
Arielle Jackson: My friend's mom owned a little clothing store and I worked sundays at the clothing store. It was mostly like a kid's clothing store, just it a little like boutique and I babysat mostly, I think that was mostly it at that point. Yeah. 15, 16.
David Elikwu: Yeah. But again, I think some of those early working experiences. Again, I think it's one of those things we probably underestimate. They have such a massive impact on just your ability to fit in with people, work with people. I think when you start working and I'm going to ask you in a second about your early days of Google, but I was just thinking about my early days in corporate law.
So I'd already been working for a little bit at this point, but now I'm in my quote unquote dream job working at one of the biggest law firms in the world. And it's all great. And then I remember like joining and I have been working for so many years to get to this point, even though age wise, we're probably similar with some other people, but I've just been working since I was like, yeah, like 15, 16. And there was another person in my cohort that actually, I think they joined six months after me, but technically it's the same cohort, but this was their first job. They'd just never worked before. And I just can't imagine never having to work, never having to do anything. You don't know how to interact with people in the workplace. You're figuring out everything for the first time. On this kind of stage. I don't know if I could have coped with that, but I think having all of that experience just in being industrious in trying things and learning things, getting some things wrong just helps in whatever context it is, even if you're just putting mail through people's letterboxes. I think it's all useful.
Arielle Jackson: Yeah, it's totally useful. And even to know, I mean, part of it was dealing with hard situations. Like I had a few hard situations even as a 15 year old in that clothing store. But like hard situations, how to navigate things independently. Even customer service, like facing different people who have different needs, who are mean to you sometimes I don't know, like I've worked as a hostess in a restaurant. That was another thing I did in high school. I worked as a barista in college. Getting those kinds of jobs early on, I asked my son, you know, what do you want to be when you grew up? And now just like every other eight year old, he wants to be a YouTuber, is what he calls it, like a YouTube content creator.
I'm like, oh gosh. Like he starts that at, you know, 15, 16, and doesn't ever have the like barista job or the, you know, restaurant job, I think they're going to miss some interpersonal world skills. But yeah, I think it's way easier to go into your first post university job having had five other jobs first, as opposed to just like going in cold.
David Elikwu: Yeah. Those are genuinely the best jobs. I can't imagine. Yeah. If when I have kids. They have to do this jobs, just even if you do it for a summer, like any kind of serving job or a sales job. I remember doing so many of these random sales jobs where either you're like, whether it's for a charity or for a company like doing door door stuff. Just raising money for charities in the streets, doing things indoors, all of that, like sales, and then this actually led to when I was working in advertising as well.
I think all of that is working with people and dealing with the different facets of human personalities. And Like you say, sometimes people will be mean, sometimes they will act like they hate you for no reason. They've just met you. but then on the other hand, so I can give you an example of when I was in this really bad sales job, probably one of the worst jobs I've had. It was like really this slightly shady sales company where pretty much every day. So a working day was like seven to seven. You start at seven and you're doing door to door sales, but you're selling a different thing every day and you don't even know what you're going to be selling until you get to the office and then they tell you, okay, this is the thing for today.
I don't know if it's, if it's shady or anything, but I think the company was just very not always forthcoming with the details and stuff, but it's fine. like sometimes you're raising money for a charity, sometimes you're selling something to people, and they will also send you to a different area of the city every day. So you just have to, you know, so that's the reason you start at seven, so that by the time you get to where you're going, it's nine. So, yeah, they just send you off to some part of the city. They give you the details about what you're raising money for today or what you're trying to sell today. And then you just have to go, you just have to go knock on people's doors. You have to find a way to sell as much as possible and it's all commission-based.
I also remember at the time I didn't have much money, I think I was at university at this time, so I didn't have a lot of money, so I didn't want to be spending money on lunch. So my trick was to find someone that would invite me in to eat. And so that was, so that was like my north star metric, that was the ultimate goal. And so I was, you know, obviously you're being nice to people you're, but you're also trying to like, oh, do you wanna come in for some tea? Oh, of course. Why not? And then while you're there, then you also make the sale. That's the double whammy.
Arielle Jackson: That's like improv sales improv, right?
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. But I think it just teaches you great interpersonal skills it's the same with with serving or doing any, any service job.
Arielle Jackson: Well, some of it also is learning what you don't want to do. Like my son's doing this project, at school right now and he's learning about what it takes to open a restaurant. And one of the things they're teaching them is you have to write like a little paragraph about like, should you pay minimum wage or should you pay a fair wage?
And what is the difference? And what if you're, you know, they're teaching them about like margin on there. He's opening a dessert restaurant. One of the dads in the class owns a restaurant and comes in and talk to them about stuff. And anyway, they're learning all the homework. Last night, he got sent home with a stack of papers to fill out, and the teacher had sent an email about this already. And she said today we're sending them home with their government paperwork. We're trying to teach them that some work is not fun and that work can be tedious sometimes, but you have to do it anyway. And the work was like, they had made up government paperwork where you literally just had to fill in like your home address, your phone number, your school, address your school phone number on like 10 different forms. Like manually by hand, just to show them like, on one said like, permit for work permit. One was like, restaurant permit, you know, they hadn't named all of it, but it was literally just copying and pasting your address. And the last page was like, did you enjoy the work? Did you find it challenging like, reflecting on the experience.
And it was funny cause like the lesson was supposed to be some work is tedious and you have to do it anyway, it's not fun. But it's a cost of doing business and getting to do what you really want, which is to open this restaurant. And the question said like, did you enjoy the work? And he was like, yes. And I was like, oh gosh, well, I kind of lost the point of this, but I like that they're teaching them that even at a young age.
David Elikwu: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please do stay tuned for more. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. It really helps the podcast and follow me on Twitter feel free to shoot me any thoughts. See you next time
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