"the good work talk show" with mallory contois

Toni spent two decades in tech and politics, then turned a 74-page Formula 1 guide for a friend into an entirely new career.

Why I wanted Toni on the show:
Toni is what happens when two decades in tech and politics collide with a lifelong Formula 1 obsession. I brought her on Good Work because she's proof that the most interesting careers don't fit in one box, and because few people understand how to build a fandom from scratch better than she does.

About Toni:
She's an F1 commentator and creator with 100K+ followers on TikTok, a recurring ESPN guest, and co-host of The Red Bulletin's F1 podcast. Before F1, she worked on presidential campaigns across Europe and led the European expansion of an American tech company as a VP.

She's also the founder of Sunday Fangirls, a platform built to have the hard conversations about who gets to belong in motorsport. While the sport was still figuring out what to do with its flood of new fans, Toni was already building a home for them.

In this episode, you'll hear:

- 12 years of circus school (yes, trapeze and tightrope), and how a childhood of hard years made everything since feel a little easier

- the question that reshaped her career during a break from corporate: without your title, why would anyone be lucky to sit next to you at dinner?

- how a 74-page F1 explainer became a newsletter, then TikTok, and the two accidental rage-bait videos that took her from 12 followers to thousands overnight

- why the ROI on trying to fit in is terrible, and why she'll always ask the questions people think are too basic (like where F1 drivers keep their car keys)

- "I monetize my brain, not my lifestyle," and her three-bucket test for which brand deals she says yes to

- why female fans are the relevancy every brand and series is chasing, and how she built Sunday Fangirls with help from her community

Follow Toni on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@tonicowanbrown
Learn more about Sunday Fangirls here: https://sundayfangirls.store

Read the Granola notes from this episode and chat with them here.

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About the good work talk show
"the good work talk show" is a deeply honest exploration of work and how it can be a tool for discovering and becoming your best self. hosted by mallory contois, each episode is a conversation with someone whose career you may have admired from afar, without knowing the full picture.

Get every episode in your inbox with mallory's notes and takeaways: watchgoodwork.com

Find audio-only versions of every episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe to "good work" on Substack: readgoodwork.com
Follow the good work talk show on instagram: @watchgoodwork
Follow mallory on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mallorycontois

Season 01 is presented by Granola. Get 3 months free at Granola.ai/goodwork

Produced by Joseph M. Olender
Directed by Adam Chavez
Edited by Aaron Bratcher
Graphics by Saltwater Agency

Theme music: "The Other Side" by The Deep West. used with permission. © ℗ 2021 The Deep West.  Listen on Spotify.

Marcus has spent decades studying what makes people exceptional at work, and his answer starts somewhere most of us never look: what we love.

Why I wanted Marcus on the show:
Marcus has helped change how millions of people understand what they're good at and what they should do about it. I wanted him on the show to explore a question at the heart of this show: how do you build a career around the things that make you feel most like yourself? His perspective will make you reconsider what you call a strength, what you expect from a manager, and how much of your working life you spend trying to fix yourself.

About Marcus:
He's a researcher, author, and entrepreneur who has spent his career studying people at their best. A co-creator of StrengthsFinder and a New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold more than five million copies, he spent 17 years at Gallup before building his own company.

He's now the founder of LoveThat, where he's focused on helping people get better at designing experiences that others love, and his new book, Design Love In, is available now wherever books are sold.

In this episode, you'll hear:

- the conversation at his family's dining table at 16 that set the course of his life, and why he sees a career as a scavenger hunt for love, not a climb

- how Gallup figured out what the best nurses, salespeople, and managers have in common, including the one interview answer every great nurse gives

- the story behind StrengthsFinder, and why a strength is an activity that strengthens you, not just something you're good at

- "red threads," and why you only need about 20% of your work to be things you love

- why most HR tools work against good work, and what Lionel Messi's left foot teaches us about building great teams

- a simple exercise for finding your own strengths: spend a week in love with your job

- the one ingredient every business needs, and his research-backed definition of good work

Learn more about LoveThat here: http://www.lovethat.com
Learn more about Marcus' work at: http://www.buckinghaminstitute.com

Read the Granola notes from this episode and chat with them here.

✦✦✦

About the good work talk show
"the good work talk show" is a deeply honest exploration of work and how it can be a tool for discovering and becoming your best self. hosted by mallory contois, each episode is a conversation with someone whose career you may have admired from afar, without knowing the full picture.

Get every episode in your inbox with mallory's notes and takeaways: watchgoodwork.com

Find audio-only versions of every episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe to "good work" on Substack: readgoodwork.com
Follow the good work talk show on instagram: @watchgoodwork
Follow mallory on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mallorycontois

Season 01 is presented by Granola. Get 3 months free at Granola.ai/goodwork

Produced by Joseph M. Olender
Directed by Adam Chavez
Edited by Aaron Bratcher
Graphics by Saltwater Agency

Theme music: "The Other Side" by The Deep West. used with permission. © ℗ 2021 The Deep West.  Listen on Spotify.

Molly has never had a plan, and that's exactly how she ended up helping build Google, Facebook, and Quip.

Why I wanted Molly on the show:
Molly's "Give Away Your Legos" essay is one of the most referenced pieces of writing on what it feels like to grow with a company, and Glue Club is a home for all the gluey people keeping everything together at work. I wanted to hear the story behind the frameworks, how someone who followed curiosity instead of a plan kept getting tapped for bigger and bigger jobs, and how she knew when the job she'd be great at was no longer what she was supposed to be doing.

About Molly:
Molly Graham is a company builder, leadership expert, and founder of Glue Club whose career spans Google, Facebook, Quip, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. She helped shape Facebook's early culture and mobile strategy and later served as COO of Quip, which Salesforce acquired for $750 million.

Known for her influential "Give Away Your Legos" essay, Molly has since turned her experience scaling companies into a mission to help people build more meaningful careers through Glue Club, her Lessons newsletter, and her role as host of TED's WorkLife podcast, succeeding Adam Grant.

In this episode, you'll hear:
- how being the 4th of 4 siblings made her the stage manager in her family and in her career

- 75 days in Alaska, a think tank job she got partly because she knew CPR, and the question that got her to Google

- the real story behind her decision to follow Sheryl Sandberg to Facebook

- why people kept handing her opportunities, and the question she thinks everyone should ask: what do you want people to think of you for?

- the COO job she'd have been great at and miserable in, and why what matters is the days

- why she thinks the Legos framework matters more than ever in the age of AI, and why the answer is curiosity and play, not fear

read "Give Away Your Legos": https://review.firstround.com/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups/

Learn more about Glue Club: https://www.glueclub.com

Read the Granola notes from this episode and chat with them here. 

✦✦✦

About the good work talk show
"the good work talk show" is a deeply honest exploration of work and how it can be a tool for discovering and becoming your best self. hosted by mallory contois, each episode is a conversation with someone whose career you may have admired from afar, without knowing the full picture.

Get every episode in your inbox with mallory's notes and takeaways: watchgoodwork.com

Find audio-only versions of every episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe to "good work" on Substack: readgoodwork.com
Follow the good work talk show on instagram: @watchgoodwork
Follow mallory on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mallorycontois

Season 01 is presented by Granola. Get 3 months free at Granola.ai/goodwork

Produced by Joseph M. Olender
Directed by Adam Chavez
Edited by Aaron Bratcher
Graphics by Saltwater Agency

Theme music: "The Other Side" by The Deep West. used with permission. © ℗ 2021 The Deep West.  Listen on Spotify.

Jean spent 15 years building the kind of career most people would never walk away from, then walked away from it anyway.

Why I wanted Jean on the show:
as much as I love her sister Cherie, I wanted to get Jean on her own. she's one of the clearest examples I know of someone who made a big, scary bet on herself, and I wanted to hear what that pivot actually looked and felt like from the inside. I was curious what she had to unlearn, how she defines wealth now, and how she thinks about work in a world that's changing this fast.

About Jean:
she’s a tech executive turned entrepreneur, investor, and co-host of the Tiger Sisters podcast with her sister, Cherie. a Harvard Business School graduate and former Goldman Sachs investor, she helped build Snapchat's augmented reality shopping and advertising products and holds more than 50 AI patents.
 
after 15 years in tech and finance, she left her corporate career to bet on herself as a creator. Tiger Sisters has since surpassed 1 million listens and ranks among the top business podcasts in the US.

In this episode, you'll hear:
- how Jean got hired at Goldman without knowing how to use Excel, and why being the non-obvious candidate became her edge

- what it cost her to fully dive in at every company, and the link between how work was going and how she was doing

- the sabbatical that gave her the confidence to leave, including an unpaid fashion internship and a short-lived beading career

- why Tiger Sisters started as a reality TV pitch and why they bought one camera and started at the kitchen table instead

- the decision to take zero brand deals in year one, and the (very unserious) thumbnail experiment that flopped

- her take on what you need before you leave to build your own thing

Listen to Tiger Sisters on Spotify. 

Read the Granola notes from this episode and chat with them here. 

✦✦✦

About the good work talk show
"the good work talk show" is a deeply honest exploration of work and how it can be a tool for discovering and becoming your best self. hosted by mallory contois, each episode is a conversation with someone whose career you may have admired from afar, without knowing the full picture.

Get every episode in your inbox with mallory's notes and takeaways: watchgoodwork.com

Find audio-only versions of every episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe to "good work" on Substack: readgoodwork.com
Follow the good work talk show on instagram: @watchgoodwork
Follow mallory on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mallorycontois

Season 01 is presented by Granola. Get 3 months free at Granola.ai/goodwork

Produced by Joseph M. Olender
Directed by Adam Chavez
Edited by Aaron Bratcher
Graphics by Saltwater Agency

Theme music: "The Other Side" by The Deep West. used with permission. © ℗ 2021 The Deep West.  Listen on Spotify.