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"Belonging to the Brand" sets forth Mark Schaefer's thinking about Innovative Marketing and Community Building.
Let me introduce you to Mark Schaefer, who needs no introduction. With a career spanning decades, Mark has been a trailblazer, a thought leader, and a guide through the ever-shifting terrain of marketing and branding. From the dawn of social media to the rise of influencer marketing, Mark has not only witnessed these seismic shifts but has also been at the forefront, deciphering trends, and charting courses for success.
But what sets Mark apart isn't just his keen insight into what's happening now—it's his uncanny ability to anticipate what's coming next. While others may struggle to keep pace with the rapid evolution of our industry, Mark has a knack for spotting emerging trends and technologies before they hit the mainstream. In this podcast, we will tap into that foresight, exploring what's happening today and what lies on the horizon.
Megatrends Shaping the Future of MarketingA core theme we'll explore is bringing people together and building new communities and shared experiences. In an increasingly fragmented and polarized world, Mark understands the power of connection and is passionate about helping brands forge deeper, more meaningful relationships with their audiences.
But this podcast isn't just about theory and speculation—it's about practical insights and actionable advice that you can apply to your own marketing efforts. So, whether you're a seasoned marketer looking to stay ahead of the curve or a newcomer eager to learn from the best, I invite you to join us on this journey through the ever-changing marketing and branding landscape. Together, we'll be navigating tomorrow—and shaping the future of our industry along the way.
The Most Human Company Wins
As we wrapped up our conversation, it became clear that despite the technological advancements, the core of marketing remains unchanged: the most human company wins. In a world where AI is becoming ubiquitous, maintaining a human-centric approach is what will set successful brands apart.
To learn more about Innovative Marketing, we recommend these:Podcast: Are you Ready for the Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer
Podcast: Are You Ready for the Next Data-Driven-Digital Marketing Strategy? by Patrick Van Gorder
Podcast: Fran Biderman-Gross—Feeling Frustrated With Business? Maybe It Is Time For A New Marketing Strategy? -
Hear how Myrna Soto combined her great people skills with IT and business.
Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon, where we delve deep into the minds of industry leaders who are shaping the future. In this episode, I'm thrilled to bring a remarkable individual who has managed to shape businesses blending her people skills with her high-tech wisdom. Please allow me to introduce you to Myrna Soto. Myrna is Founder and CEO of Apogee Executive Advisors, an advisory firm providing strategic consulting the areas of Technology Risk, Cybersecurity, Technology Integrations, Digital Transformation, and Enterprise Risk Management.
Are there lessons you can learn to propel your own success in IT and Business? How can women thrive in the complex world of IT and Business?
Watch our conversation hereMyrna Soto is featured in our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success
How to connect with Myrna
You can reach Myrna on LinkedIn or through her website ForgePointCap.com.
To learn more about this topic, we recommend these podcasts and blog:Eisha Tierney Armstrong—With The Rise Of AI, Professional Services Are Turning Into Products. Are You Ready?
Lorraine Hariton—How Can You Build A Better Workplace For Women?
10 Tips To Empower Women In Male-Dominated IT Industry
Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management ConsultantsWOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Esther Aguilera is one of the 102 amazing women leaders in our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success,
In a world where success is often portrayed as a linear path, Esther Aguilera's journey stands out. Born to Mexican immigrants, she defied the odds and rose to significant positions in Washington, in non-profits, and in business. . Her story is a testament to the power of determination, self-belief, and the unwavering pursuit of one's dreams, inspiring us all to embrace our own unique paths to success. Welcome to "On the Brink with Andi Simon," where we delve deep into the stories of remarkable individuals who have defied odds and shattered barriers to carve their path to success. In this episode, we have the privilege of sitting down with Esther Aguilera, a trailblazer whose journey took her first to numerous positions in Washington, D.C., to the helm of the Latino Corporate Directors Association. Her openness to new ventures and a willingness to try unfamiliar leadership roles have not only transformed her life but have also paved the way for countless others.
Esther's journey is one defined by resilience and tenacity. Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants, she learned early on the value of hard work and perseverance. However, her unwavering confidence and belief in herself truly set her apart. As you listen to our conversation, consider our thoughts about "imposter syndrome." Throughout her career, Esther grappled with feelings of being an imposter - a notion that she was never fully competent, yet always completely confident. However, this blend of humility and self-assurance propelled her forward, allowing her to navigate the corporate landscape with grace and determination.
A profound commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion lies at the heart of Esther's journey. Throughout her career, she has been a tireless advocate for Latino representation, from building diverse teams to expanding the seats held by Latinos in corporate boardrooms, recognizing the immense value that diverse perspectives bring. Under her leadership, the Latino Corporate Directors Association rapidly expanded, becoming the premier resource for Latino talent on corporate boards. Esther's unwavering dedication to championing diversity and inclusion is a powerful reminder of the importance of representation and opportunity for all of us. You will hear a woman who knew that Latinos were not moving into leadership positions, and she would help them open doors and find pathways to change these limitations.
Embark on a transformative journey with Esther Aguilera, a leader whose story resonates with us all. Her journey inspires us to embrace our strengths, confront our doubts, and forge our path with unwavering confidence. Through her reflections, insights, and profound wisdom, Esther invites us to challenge the status quo, embrace our authenticity, and dare to dream boldly. Join us as we learn from her experiences and find inspiration for our own journeys.
Watch and listen to our conversation here How to connect with EstherYou can reach Esther on LinkedIn
Or, email her at [email protected]
Additional resources for you Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD. Read more about it at http://www.womenmeanbusinessbook.com My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Our book website: www.andisimon.com Read the transcript of our podcast here. (Edited for readability)Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I'm Andi Simon, and as you know, my job is to get you off the brink. However, if you're stuck or stalled. Our job is to bring you interesting people. And I have a wonderful woman here today who's going to help you see, feel and think in some new ways because you don't have a story like hers. And she is an extraordinary role model. So how you can overcome life, life's adversities and rise. We're going to talk about a bunch of things that are going to touch you as she has touched me, and I think this is such an exciting time. Esther Aguilera is here with us today, and I am very excited because she is a part of our new book, Women Mean Business. Esther comes to us with the perspective of somebody who has had a journey, and I'm going to have her tell you about it, but let me introduce her.
She is currently a senior advisor at Altura Capital. Previously, she was president and CEO of the Latino Corporate Directors Association, and she built the first national network of Latino CEOs, corporate directors and C-level leaders. She oversaw the organization's rapid expansion to become the premier resource for Latino talent primed for the boardroom to accelerate the conversation of Latino inclusion in America's boardrooms.
She's a thoughtful, transformational leader, and she's known for driving impact and results. She is a two-time chief executive and a two time executive director, and she comes to us with a 32- year track record, executing strategic business plans and leading high performance teams. And she's going to tell you more.
As you know, my desire is for them to tell you about their journey. It gives you a context for understanding the challenges that she's facing and the way she's overcoming them. But she also tells us that she brings a deep experience and understanding of the intersection between the charitable, business and government sectors. And I think this is really exciting. She's worked with members of Congress, cabinet members, corporate CEOs and directors, nonprofits, and associations, and she's just a superb-powerful person. Welcome, Esther. Thank you for being with me today.
Esther Aguilera: It is a great pleasure to be with you, Andy.
Andi Simon: Tell the listeners and the viewers, who is Esther? You tell me your story. And I think it's a very important one to set the context for your own journey, the challenges you've overcome and how you thrive, and the joy you bring to others in the process. Who's Esther?
Esther Aguilera: Thank you for having me. And thank you for the question. So, you know, as you mentioned, I have had the privilege of working for our nation's most powerful leaders from members of Congress, and cabinet members. I've organized meetings with the US President and worked with the top leaders in the nonprofit space, corporate space, and working with corporate directors. But my path was not a typical one. My family moved to the US from Mexico when I was four years old, so I'm an immigrant. We were actually undocumented when we first came. It's a long story, but needless to say, I'm the proud daughter of a landscape laborer and a garment worker. So, we had a very humble upbringing. But we clearly strived to do our best and contribute and get a good education, which is what landed me in college and also, I studied my first public policy. It's not something that growing up, I would have ever seen myself doing. I didn't even know what it was. By the way, when I moved, I moved to Washington, D.C. after college, and my parents didn't really understand what I did, and neither did my family. But here I was in Washington, D.C. We moved here in 1990 right after college. And that's where oh my gosh, so many worlds opened up. So many opportunities and a lot of scary things. I mean, good, scary things, but new things that really opened up all new apertures and experiences and opportunities again, that I enjoy today.
Andi Simon: But, when you shared with me your story, you said public policy wasn't something you're familiar with. How did you get to Washington?
Esther Aguilera: Well, I was very, very lucky. First I was visiting Washington, D.C., and I had a professor who I contacted and I said, hey, I'm in the nation's capital. And he said, well, you need to meet with some of the premier organizations. And he made some connections for me that I was literally just planning to have some informational meetings and then travel back to California to start looking for a job. And I took the plunge. I had some great meetings. The first organization was a National Council of La Raza, which is the premier today known as Latinos, U.S. and it's a public policy organization. I went for the informational interview, and they offered me a job. And I was just one in shock and thinking, oh my gosh, I’m moving to Washington, D.C. Is that something for me? But you know what? I took the plunge. And this was another great theme that I like to talk about is I've had some different pivots and new areas and new places. And what's been wonderful was really embracing new challenges has been how I have been able to broaden my horizons and find new opportunities.
Andi Simon: Yes. Good. But it is interesting because as we think about it, your intention wasn't to come to Washington and get a job. It was to go discover; you were curious. You're an explorer and you really didn't know what the possibilities were. It was an interesting opportunity for you to land something unexpectedly that has turned into a whole career trajectory for you. And I have a hunch several times during your career, things sort of popped in you and you thought that could be interesting. Where did your career go from that first destination?
Esther Aguilera: Well, I was lucky to land a job on Capitol Hill. I worked in the US Congress and became the executive director of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I have had leadership roles since my mid 20s. That's what I love about Capitol Hill is you get great opportunities early and you are contributing a great deal. And so, that came about also with mentors who put my name in the hat and said, hey, I think Esther would be a great candidate for this. When I was already working on the Hill and when they asked me, is this something you're interested in, things went through my mind of doubting. Am I ready for this? That’s such a big challenge, such a big role. But I raised my hand and said, yes, I will take on the challenge and contribute everything I've got.
Andi Simon: It's interesting because that's one of your five wisdoms. Raise your hand. It puts yourself out there for new opportunities. You don't really know what's happening and what is going to happen to you, but you're comfortable enough in yourself to say, of course I can.
I don't know where that is and I don't know how we're going to do it, but somehow I know that I can succeed at some level. What are people expecting? Were they clear about their expectations or they just trusted you to rise to the occasion?
Esther Aguilera: With every role and pivot that I've had, and I will go into some of those as well, there's always been one. I already had some great ground training in policy and writing and research. And then I worked as a legislative assistant. So, I had some of the base groundwork. And then you take that and the important thing what I tell young people is don't go into your next role because you meet 100% of the experience and expectations. You look at a job description and you want to have space to grow, but you've got the foundation and you take that and you build on it and that's okay to ask for help. It's okay to feel vulnerable to say hey, I can do 50, 60% of this, and I'm going to need some guidance. I can do the rest with that guidance. And it's important to feel that you can be both honest with yourself and know that you can do it. Don't let that hold you back.
Andi Simon: Well, I couldn't agree more. We can compare career tracks, but it is interesting listening to people talk today about needing mentors or sponsors. I never had any. Did you have them along your journey?
Esther Aguilera: Well, when we talk about sponsors, these are people who put your name in the hat for you. And so my professor who first said, hey, I'm going to make this introduction. And then, of course, you step right in., I had a member of Congress put my name in the hat. Another mentor of mine, a male mentor who said this is someone who could take on that role. So I think they saw something in me that I probably wouldn't have raised my hand. So those sponsorships are so important. And then, down the line.
Andi Simon: Well, you know, it's interesting because you didn't even go looking for them to sponsor you or mentor you. You just were good at what you were doing and kept showing up, curious, whatever the attributes were that they were looking for. And there you were. And that was really what's exciting about it is that you don't have to be intentionally groveling up that ladder. You can just be really good at what you do. People see it and then offer you something and you say, I can do that. And then you rise. And it's very exciting.
Esther Aguilera: I agree, but I also think it's important. There are so many lessons learned on the journeys that I'm an open book and I love to share. And that while sponsorships are important, let's not rely on them and make sure one keeps your resume circulating and raise your hand. And oftentimes, making a transition is really tough sometimes. But keep your eyes and ears open. Keep opportunities open even when you love what you're doing. It's okay. You're not being disrespectful to your current employer. You are inquisitive and want to grow. I'm in the book Women Mean Business and my wisdoms have been around again and be open to new opportunities, new frontiers because that is how you learn and grow.
Andi Simon: So one of the things that you and I talked about was a theme. There are two themes that I want to make sure that we dig into. One is about where Latinos are today. But the one just prior to that is that we mentioned the fact that you were the child of immigrants, and you have led some of the most consequential organizations in the US. Did you bring a particular perspective that was extremely valuable? Were you just a young person coming out of college? How did you blend all of this so that you were you? Because I have a hunch of those who were sponsoring you, mentoring you, saw something unique in how you saw the world. Something that you can share. Is it something you can reflect on?
Esther Aguilera: Some of my early areas of motivation were really looking at women and how there were two standards for what women can do versus men. And I saw this growing up, and I always kind of fought against it or thought against it and said, why is there that difference? That was one of the things that just kind of kept me going. But, at the end of the day, I was always very impact oriented. I always wanted to leave a mark and a contribution. We all have superpowers. I've had opportunities after working on Capitol Hill. I went to work at the Department of Energy, running the procurement office. And in that role, I came in to lead a team of federal employees and gave them real purpose. We reorganized the office and built a high performing team that was very impactful, and mission driven. It was a little lost, but the Secretary of Energy put me in charge and said, I want you to fix this. And it's where I discovered some of my superpowers. I was given that opportunity, I already knew that I could drive change on the legislative front. And I was thinking, how am I going to drive change here? And it's through people and it's through leadership and promoting people for leadership. And in that role, I later went to run a larger group, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, which is an internship fellowship organization for young people to get experience on Capitol Hill. I had so many doors open to me since with my experience, I wanted to make sure others had that as well. And so this organization, I grew it from $4 million to $10 million. And at every stage just transformed and built an even better, solid foundation for the organization, for the future. There again, it's about building a high performing team and impact. So, I found that my superpower is driving growth and impact. But my secret weapon is building high performing teams where people can contribute. And we find ways of finding where they can excel and contribute and grow to the overall having a clear purpose mission that everyone has a role to play in.
Andi Simon: I have several leadership academies I've been running for many years for clients. And one of the things we talk about is that a leader really needs other followers. A leader can't do anything alone. And so, as I'm listening to you, I'm saying you have some magic to empower and enable and engage others so they can rise higher than where they are growing. They don't have to move up a ladder. They need to grow personally in their skills, their confidence that you said it so well, their purpose, their mission to have strong values and to see how their actions are purpose driven and they can actually become part of a team that's delivering extraordinary results. And I have a hunch you had great pleasure when you were doing that, building those teams, and building those people. Right?
Esther Aguilera: That really was. That's when you find it's your superpower when you really enjoy doing it. And of course, I had another pivot to then start an organization with corporate directors. And we formed the Latino Corporate Directors Association, and that I was able to start from scratch and grow it tenfold to become the premier organization that really elevates because it's so important to have leadership roles and to have decision making roles and have a seat at the table. Because if you don't have a seat at the table, you don't matter, that's the bottom line. And it's part of important work that I'm really proud of now doing even more after having built a really solid foundation, all of the pillars that lead towards the impact and the team there to then take it on.
Andi Simon: Well, all of this then leads to the community. You and I spoke about how the Latino community developed, grown? Where is it going? How do we get access to positions of power and equal pay for Latinas and Latinos? You've had a wonderful solo career and now you're pulling along lots of others to be able to actually optimize their success as well. Share with us a little of your perspective. What do you see happening?
Esther Aguilera: Well, first, this has always been the second largest demographic in the US. For 32 years have been working to advance the Latino community in the US from all angles, from legislative leadership and education across the board. And I have to say that in the 90s, we were called, and even the 80s, The Sleeping Giant because it was a large group, but still was more behind the scenes. And I don't think we have advanced as much as we can, and we need to. That's why I'm such a believer in having Latinas and Latinos in positions of power and authority because you have to have both a bottom up from grassroots kind of building to leadership as well and have those important roles across the board. This has to be in government and whether it's in the private sector, in the largest corporations of the country and so that's an important ingredient. Today, Latinos are 62 million Americans. This is close to 20% of the population and a GDP of nearly 3.5 trillion, which is the same as a fifth largest country. It's massive and yet we're still not in the positions of power, and we're still, especially Latinas, are least paid. In fact, the pay gap is the lowest for Native American women and Latinas. Native American women earn $0.51 to the dollar that men make in the same jobs. And Latinos are $0.54. Other groups come in and that hasn't changed much in the past 20 years. So there's still that huge gap. The boardrooms and corporate boardrooms, Latinos are the single group of any other women's group, any other demographic group with the least amount of board seats and representation in that boardroom, Latinos and Latinos alike. I think that's why my philosophy here is that and this is why we started the Latino Corporate Directors Association that you can't complain about. You can't say, well, it's the search firms is this and we keep hearing we can't find qualified Latinos for the boardroom. You have to point the finger this way and do something about it. So that's why a group of pioneering corporate directors launched it and then brought me on board to build it because we have to be the owners of our destiny.
And we can't wait for others to solve these things.
Andi Simon: It's easy to complain and it's easier to sort of look at history, but I think you're already beginning to see some small steps to move the needle a little bit. Anything that you can share that is exciting to you? Do you want to share your superpowers with others? Do you see opportunities opening up? You said we're still the sleeping giant. You do have a whole lot of people here in this country ready to do some really exciting things. What are you thinking?
Esther Aguilera: Oh my gosh, we have so much talent. In every sector and every industry, it's about really showcasing and lifting up the talent that's there so that we take away the narrative and excuse. We can find them right there. It’s groundbreaking with Latino corporate directors. I'm also advising Alpha, which is the largest Latino professional association in the country. It is the oldest and largest with over 115,000 members around the country. And here is an organization that we already have so much, membership and visibility within the community. But it's about letting others in other communities know, here's where you can find the pipeline and the talent for anything you need, and lifting up and showcasing profiles and taking away again that narrative that there's plenty of talent, there's more to grow. There is potential and talent there. And we're here to help make it easy for you to find it.
Andi Simon: You know, I'm thinking about two situations. When I mentioned to you there was a woman at Washington University, when I spoke there on Women Mean Business, who had gotten a scholarship to a high profile Latino woman who had gone to college, the first from her family. She had gotten a wonderful scholarship to a very high profile private school, and then had gotten into Washington University with a big scholarship and was very lonely. And when we were talking, she said, I'm all alone. And it's very hard to have to be here without a community of others like me who understand the journey I've been on, and I'm not quite sure where I'm going. Am I going back to make money for my family and my community? It was the most profound. And then I gave a talk down in Houston and Arturo Lopez, a Vistage chair that I knew brought in a whole group of Latinos, all of whom are struggling to be heard. And I think that the nature of both media and what we talk about, how we celebrate, where we get the positive superpowers and how we acknowledge it, needs something to boost it. And as you and I were talking about Alpha and others, it's not a bad time to think through how to rally other Latino to help build a network of mentors for others. She said, I don't have a role model. I have no one. I've had no role model through most of my education, and I felt I was amazed at her boldness and her bravery, but I also knew that she was going to have to work hard to find some community to belong to that she could lift herself up. So there's a real need. We're going to rise. We need to have others help us. And I've heard that so often from the folks like yourself in our book, who said, if I rise, I lift others. They basically can't do it without others. That's why I said to who's your sponsor? Who's your mentor? And how do I get help? And they're not even women. They were all guys. And so there's a real need out there. So now with Altura Capital, are you seeing things that are shareable? You're in the private equity world now.
Esther Aguilera: Yes. My latest pivot, what’s exciting about my pivot to private equity was one in every one of these paths, I have honed in more around my brand, and my brand has been to really lift up others. And the firm that I work with is Latina led, Latina founder, CEO, private equity. Her name is Monica Mantilla. And I always say she's probably the pioneer Latina who was founder, CEO and managing partner of a private equity firm for 18 years. The way that she invests in companies and again, private equity, you already have to have a profitable company that's going that we can invest in to grow. But, she also has a social impact mission. She invests in low, moderate-income communities that have great businesses and can invest in them to then also create better jobs, better pay, better benefits, and they track that impact. So here we have a firm that's not only creating value for shareholder, for investors and for the company, but also an impact and community. That is my brand. So I always have to feel really strong and passionate about what I'm pushing, what I'm driving, and who I'm working with and for. And so I found each step of the way has always been that for me. I always tell folks, find what are what drives you, what kind of team and environment do you want to be part of, but also how do you help create that team and environment? Because we're all players in it, developing high performing teams. Meaning means that everyone brings something to the table and you want to harness it, and you want to continue to nurture it, to continue to produce even more, because you feel part of that mission and drive of what we're all achieving together.
Andi Simon: You're a real multiplier, aren't you? It isn't enough for you to have a job and to do things. It's only really good if I have a team, however big that might be, who also are empowered and engaged to multiply and do more together and better. This is really exciting.
Esther Aguilera: But it wasn't always something you and I talked about as well. It wasn't always an easy journey, right? You know, a big part was, I’ve been thinking a lot about the imposter syndrome and early in my career. Oh, my gosh, I was there really. Two big things to overcome. You know, one here is an immigrant working in the US Capitol, what am I doing here? And someone is going to expose me. I found that, in fact, I don't like the term imposter syndrome. There are two sides to it. I think most of it is self-inflicted. Let's say as an immigrant, you come here and you're already feeling like an outsider, and you don't always have the resources to really properly show up and build that confidence that you need to step into some new roles, but you have to find it yourself. And so in terms of the imposter syndrome, as I mentioned, there's kind of two sides to it. I think that other people probably see a lot more. When you're feeling that, people see a lot more value and worth and contributions, and you do it yourself. So I see it as an opportunity to turn it around and say, okay, well, what am I bringing to the table and how do I own my own worth and my own contribution? So, the imposter syndrome, you're only diminishing your self-worth. It's about building that up and then building a network and supporters around you that are also going to lift you up. Because we all need that. It's okay to ask for help. You can say, I don't feel good today, but you're always going to have ups and downs. That's part of life. It's not always going to be rosy.
Andi Simon: But, as you reflect on your movie, we were talking about how life is a movie and you don't want to end up regretting things. You have been able to champion gently yourself, slowly through many pivots, and each one adding richness to your life. And you add richness to that. And it isn't as if there's a straight line. I mean, one of the things that I think is so true is the unknown in front of you can become the best experience. I look to your wisdoms and I go, oh my goodness, Esther is a wise woman because that's exactly what we're saying. It's the unknown. Usually your brain fights it, flees it. Fear fiercely denies it. Appease it.
You have an amygdala that would like to hijack it, but instead you've embraced it and you've written a new story for yourself where it's okay, I cannot fail. I just embrace the new and I am going to succeed. Impostor syndrome could be a whole other podcast. I don't think I truly don't believe in it. I do think that people are always a little uncomfortable and it's okay to be uncomfortable. But in fact, the unknown in front of you can become the best experience. And that's right and once you turn lemons into lemonade, let's do it. What's the worst that can happen? Well, it didn't work. So what? And everything you've touched is turned to good, better and best. And so you've got a wonderful career, Esther. If you want to leave the folks with a couple of really cool, actionable things, one, two or three, other than forget your imposter syndrome, we don't need it. What would you share with them based on a beautiful life story?
Esther Aguilera: Well, certainly one, build that board for yourself around you and that group of friends, both peers and a network that you could be there for them. They're there for you, too. Don't be afraid to ask for help or to say, hey, I'm really happy where I am right now, but maybe I should start putting my resume out and privately talking to people about what I should be doing next. Because unless you put your name out there, whether it's for maybe something new or for a boardroom, people aren't going to have you on the top of their mind always, unless you bring it up or let them know, and that in your own mind kind of helps to put you in a position where you can say, hey, I'm ready for this pivot. And the last is, those pivots could be scary, but at the end of the day, they do open new opportunities.
Andi Simon: Yes. And opportunity is exactly what they are. They're not problems. They're all opportunities. And they are in front of you waiting for you to say, I'm cool, let's try it. And that becomes a great, great journey. This has been such fun. Thank you for joining us, our audiences, and Esther shared with us today some really profound opportunities that she has lived through with her superpowers. Esther, if they'd like to reach out to you for talking, experience, consulting, any kind of work with Altura, how could they reach you? Is there a website or is it through LinkedIn?
Esther Aguilera: I think the best way is LinkedIn. Esther Aguilera, and I look forward to hearing from individuals. It has been my great pleasure and thank you for inviting me. I'm honored and just really admire your work. Thank you for what you do for us all.
Andi Simon: Well, thank you for that kind, kind ending here. Esther and I have truly enjoyed being in Women Mean Business. And I think that the most interesting part of a book is you don't really know where it's going, like life. It takes you along. And that's what's happened here. And every time I open it and I read some things, they're all different. There are 500 of them. They really reflect very different perspectives, but very enriching ones and the energy and the force there. So when you read Esther's, you're going to say, of course the opportunities are here. Who's stopping me except me? And that becomes really important. Let me wrap up for all of you who come to On the Brink with Andi Simon. Thank you. You pushed us into the top 5% of podcasts globally, and I admire that for you because that's your benefit to it. We keep looking for great people that can help us see, feel and think in new ways. Send them along. Your emails are wonderful, and I keep looking for more people like Esther and others who can share with you their life's journey so that you can see how others have tackled the opportunities or the challenges that they faced. Remember, Women Mean Businesses is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local bookseller. So are all my other books there as well. So if we can help you take your observations and turn them into innovations, let us know. It's been a pleasure to share the day with you, Esther. I'll say goodbye and thank you so much. Goodbye, everybody.
Esther Aguilera: Bye bye everyone. Thank you. Andi.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon, the podcast where we delve into the stories, insights and wisdom of remarkable individuals who are trailblazing paths in the corporate world. I’m thrilled to have you join us today as we embark on a transformative journey with none other than Sandra Quince, an exemplary woman executive whose journey is nothing short of inspiring. Sandra Quince’s narrative is a testament to resilience, determination and unwavering commitment to personal and professional growth. With a career spanning decades in the corporate landscape, Sandra has navigated through challenges and shattered glass ceilings and emerged as a beacon of empowerment for women everywhere.
In today's episode, we have the privilege of unraveling the layers of Sandra's remarkable journey. From her humble beginnings to her ascent to executive leadership, Sandra's story is a poignant reminder of the power of perseverance and self-belief in the face of adversity. As we delve deeper into Sandra's narrative, we cannot help but be captivated by her profound insights into leadership and inclusivity. Sandra's wisdom transcends traditional notions of authority and is rooted in empathy, compassion, and a deep-seated commitment to fostering inclusivity and acceptance.
Throughout our conversation, Sandra imparts invaluable lessons on the art of influence and the importance of cultivating diverse and inclusive cultures within organizations. Her belief in the transformative power of diversity is a guiding light for leaders aspiring to create environments where every voice is heard, valued, and respected. Moreover, Sandra's mantra of "owning your career" is a powerful reminder that in a world where opportunities are abundant yet fiercely competitive, it's imperative to take charge of our own destinies. Sandra's journey is a testament to the fact that when we assert ourselves and take ownership of our paths, we pave the way for success on our own terms.
As we navigate the intricacies of Sandra's narrative, it becomes evident that her journey is not merely about personal triumphs but about paving the way for future generations of women leaders. Through her mentorship, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to championing diversity and inclusion, Sandra continues to drive positive change in the corporate landscape. I invite you to join us on this enriching journey as we unravel the tapestry of leadership with Sandra Quince. Her story is a testament to the transformative power of resilience, wisdom, and the unwavering belief in one's ability to shape their destiny.
Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast here (edited for readability and grammatical correctness):Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I am Andi Simon, your podcast host, and your guide. Remember, my job is to help you get off the brink. I find people who are going to do just that to help you. These words are very intentional: See, feel, and think in new ways so that you can change them. And I often tell people the brain hates me. It doesn't want to change. I'd rather stay where you are, even when you know it's better to be different and do something better. It's challenging for you to learn new techniques and begin to thrive with them. So today, I have a wonderful woman, Sandra Quince, with us. You can see her beautiful smile. I will tell you about her briefly, but she's also part of our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. So I will show you her picture here, which is gorgeous, and she has a beautiful quote. Remember, our book has 102 women with 500 wisdoms to help you start and spark your success. It's a beautiful book.
It's selling like crazy, but her wisdom is compelling. "Be a leader who creates an environment where everyone can bring their best selves and thrive."
Sandra." loves the quote by Mahatma Gandhi. "The greatest of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane ."I share that with you because I've been doing a great deal of podcasting lately, and people say we must become more humane. Corporations have to become more concerned about their employees' and communities' well-being. Culture has to begin to focus on "we," not "I," and I can say those words, but we have to do them.
Let me share Sandra Quince's bio, and then she'll tell you about her journey because it's beautiful. Sandra Quince is the business enablement and leader on loan and loan program executive responsible for leading business operations across workforce development and arts and heritage while also serving as program executive for the Leader on Loan Program, which is for Bank of America.
Prior to this, she was the chief executive officer for Paradigm for Parity through Bank of America's Leader on Loan Program, and she was responsible for leading all elements of Paradigm for Parity, strategic plan, financial, programmatic, and operational performance. She'll tell you more about P4P because it is a huge opportunity for you to understand what it can do and what you can do. She worked with the coalition's co-chairs and board of directors to oversee and execute the organization's vision and growth plans. She's been featured in Essence CEO, World Magazine, Fast Company and interviewed on Fintech, Fintech TV, BBC, and Bloomberg Radio. She's just an outstanding leader in her community, through boards, and through her actions. And what I'm so excited about today is that I've developed a program to help companies change their cultures, not by thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion as a program, but instead as a mindset, as a way of seeing the opportunities that come from having lots of different ideas, being more innovative, inclusive. And humans love to belong. They don't want to be outliers. They don't want to be necessarily forgotten. So, how do we build that kind of culture at a time when D and I are under a bit of siege? People are wondering why we're doing it. We're doing it because it is transformative for ourselves and our businesses. Sandra, thank you for joining me today. It's an honor and a pleasure.
Sandra Quince: Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here with you. And thank you so much for having me on today.
Andi Simon: Isn't it fun? I'd love you to tell the listener or the viewer about your journey because it sets the stage for what we'll discuss next. Who is Sandra Quince?
Sandra Quince: Yeah, so thank you for that. My journey really started; I have been talking a lot about and reflecting on what makes Sandra who she is or who has had an influence on her.
And so it brings me back to my childhood. I am a product of a military father. And so we traveled around a lot. And I think that experience in itself, because you meet so many different people and get a chance to interact with different cultures really helps to build who you are and helps you to see the world through a very different lens. I also think about the lessons that my great-grandmother taught me of being just a really kind and strong woman while being kind and being very cognizant of the fact that you're not better than others. It was part of my lessons growing up: how to be resilient and bounce back from things. She was a powerful woman, and while not formally educated, she was extremely intelligent. But then, it also taught me to stand up for myself, advocate for myself, and speak up for myself. And so that's where I draw that inner strength. When I became the CEO of Paradigm for Parity, that didn't happen by happenstance, right? There were a series of things that led up to that. But earlier in my career, Andrea, one of the things that I didn't understand was that when you put your head down and you're working hard, that wasn't enough. And I showed up to laugh.
Andi Simon: I know, I know the feeling well.
Sandra Quince: So you show up. I was a first-generation college student. I was a first-generation corporate. I needed help understanding the rules of the road. And while I had these beautiful life lessons, I wasn't sure how to employ them at that moment. And I came into the workforce thinking, if you just put your head down and do really good work, you will get promoted. And while doing really good work is a part of what we all should do, because that's table stakes, that is not the only path that leads you to promotion. That is just one part of many different things we must consider in the workplace. And so I did learn that I needed to not just do good work, but I also needed to understand what I wanted out of my career. I needed to understand how to advocate for myself, employ the life lessons I learned earlier as a child, and speak up and talk about the good work I was doing. So think about how are you telling your story. How are you telling others about the work you're leading and doing but adding value to your organization and advocating for yourself? And I learned the power of networking and sponsorship. And so all that and part of the wisdom that I shared, and you touched on a little bit as we talked about this session, is really about owning your career. I learned a valuable lesson that I have to focus 100% on my career.
Andi Simon: I do love that. And I've been using it. I've been sharing it. My grandkids, even my daughters, because we are all going through life's journey, and people put you in boxes, and they are pleased putting you in that box and thinking that's who you are. I coached a woman who got stuck and stalled in her career not long ago, and I said, you still need to take ownership of it. She said, what does that mean? I said, well, you assumed, like Sandra did, that if I work hard, I'll be noticed, and therefore, I'll get promoted. And you're upset that others you've trained have gotten promoted without any of your experience. It's a recurring theme, particularly for women, but not only for women. Now the question becomes, as you're thinking about that career, somehow you moved into an area that has become honorable in some ways, perhaps by design or by chance, in helping others understand the power of a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and belonging workplace. And I say those words to make them come alive. It's not denied; it's about a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and belonging place for people. It's not a program. It's a place where we love to come to work. Talk a lot to our audience about how one migrates there and then owns it, and then what do we learn from it? Can you share, please?
Sandra Quince: Yeah, absolutely. So, you're absolutely right. Diversity, equity and inclusion is not about a program. It's about creating the right ecosystem for your company and your employees to thrive. And the reason why companies should be engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion is because, number one, you will be more profitable. There are studies that have been around for 30-plus years that prove this point. Companies that engage in this work put the right resources behind it. It's not just lip service. They're 30% to 40% times more profitable. And why are they more profitable? Well, they're more profitable because they create the right ecosystem for their employees to show up and do their best work. So what does that mean? That means that your employees are in an environment where they can give their best and do their best work, which means that creates profitability for the company because they're interacting with them, with the customers and clients in a way that creates, that sells those products or creates that opportunity to engage more customers and more clients and creates opportunities for companies to have more market share. The other thing is, you have more companies and clients because they see that there are people that reflect who they are that they can do business with, and that promotes trust in a brand. And so the third and fourth thing is you're more innovative because you have different voices, different experiences, and different mindsets sitting at a table, and you create the products and services that help your organization thrive. And so that's the reason why companies should be doing it. Yes, it's the right thing to do. Yes, it creates the right opportunities for your employee base. But at the end of the day, I work for an organization that's there to be profitable, and I want that organization to be profitable because that's how I make money as an employee. So, creating an opportunity and engaging around diversity, equity, and inclusion are things you can't afford not to do. And so in this day and age, where, yes, there is a lot of backlash, yes, there there are those out there that are saying that diversity, equity, and inclusion is not what it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, meaning that they feel like it's reverse discrimination or it, it causes division.
That has never been the intent, nor is it what real diversity, equity, and inclusion do for organizations. There's a study that came out recently, Andi, that asked thousands of employees and this was just released, I think late last month. They asked them, do you still want your organizations to engage in DNI? And so one would think that that answer would have been a resounding no, based on what you hear out and what you hear the rhetoric today. But 90% of employees said no, absolutely. It is critical to my organization's and my success.
Andi Simon: There's additional research that I've been reading like you have, which says that people look for companies that have diversity in leadership. And it's not just that they want to belong. They want to know that it matters to the organization and that they can see pathways to progress and success. And they are consumers. They are no different than your clients or your customers. They're looking for a place where they see curiosity and things where I can belong, and I can share my ideas in a healthy way so that people hear me and I can be strong instead of in a box. I am interested in Paradigm 4 Parity. How did that develop? Because it's a particular approach, and it's amazing. The Bank of America has underwritten it. Please give us some perspective on what it is, how it works, and how people could benefit from it.
Sandra Quince: Absolutely. Paradigm 4 Parity is an organization that was created, seven years ago, will be going into our eighth year this year. And it's an organization that was created by women for women. So, these were women who had achieved great things in their organizations. They were CEOs and they were on the back side of their careers. And what they realized when they turned around to look behind them wasn't no other women were coming behind them. There was one other woman in the pipeline, and more importantly, their daughters were entering into the workforce. They realized we have a problem, and we have got to find a way to solve it. So, unlike some of us who sometimes sit on the sidelines and talk about the issues, these women got together and said, we need to do something about this. And so they created Paradigm 4 Parity. Paradigm 4 Parity is dedicated to achieving gender parity at every level of leadership in corporate America with a lens on racial equity. And so these women said, not only do we need to create this organization and invite companies of various sizes to be a part of this coalition and a part of this change that we want to see, we're going to provide them with a roadmap or a five-point action plan, we like to call it, to help these organizations be able to navigate their way to success, to achieving gender parity. And so they did tons of interviews. They took subject matter experts, interviewed the women who had been successful in their careers, and boiled it down to five key actions that organizations need to take in order to see Parity. And what's beautiful about this is when organizations execute on this, you not only have gender parity, but it creates that ecosystem that I talked about earlier, where you're creating an environment where everyone, men, women of all ethnicities can show up and thrive in an environment that becomes equitable and fair for all. And so, yes, while we're dedicated to achieving gender parity, we've provided the blueprint and all the tools and resources to go along with that. We also understand that it's important that we bring everyone along in this journey. And so it creates an equitable environment for all.
Andi Simon: You know, you're talking about a significant transformation of the corporate and social aspects because this isn't just inside the company. This is the whole mindset about how we see each other. Humans are quite fascinating because we're status creatures. It's me against my brother and my brother against my cousin. A little anthropology always helps us understand the perspective that we've evolved and survived by comparing ourselves. Gregory Batson has some significant research on the differences. The difference is only because we see the outside differently from us. We know who we are. But now, it becomes a much broader perspective beyond the tribe about the fact that I can be much more extensive and broader. With so many people going through college education and traveling and seeing different things, it's a time for personal and professional growth in our companies. Paradigm 4 Parity: is that something a company buys? Is it something they just understand? How do they get involved with it?
Sandra Quince: Absolutely. So, I encourage everyone watching and/or listening to this podcast to go to Paradigm4rparity.org and check out our website. All companies have to decide that this is definitely where we are on this journey, and we want to see Parity within the workplace and workforce. And they can join us. And you will see that we have 150 plus other coalition members that are on this journey with us. Those that are doing great work and have achieved Parity at certain levels in their organizations and those just starting out who are saying, you know, we're new to this. We want to make an impact. And so we have all and everything in between from an organizational perspective. So, join us and take advantage of the five-point action plan, the tools and the resources that we offer, the webinars and seminars that we provide, connecting with others who are like-minded and on this journey with you, and understanding what those leading practices are that are out there that organizations are doing to achieve and sustain parity within their organizations. So it is quite simple, Andi, for people to join us.
Andi Simon: How does it feel? I tell people that people decide with their eyes and their heart. And they need to find out what it is. You know, what is it until they see it and feel it and trust that it is, in fact, it's good? And that's how we'll decide to behave differently and act on it. It takes work to change. You're looking for people to change their mindset, their conversations, their microaggressions, the things they don't even know they're doing. And begin to see each other in a different light. Are there some illustrations you can share that aren't proprietary that will help people see it better than just hearing it from you?
Sandra Quince: Absolutely. And what you're talking about and describing, especially around our human nature, is the nature around being biased. Unconscious bias. And I know people say they hear that all the time and they wonder, I don't have biases. But the truth is because we're human, we're born with biases. Biases are created every single day. It is not curable.
Andi Simon: It's not. I never thought of biases as being not curable. I like that. Go ahead.
Sandra Quince: It's not curable. There's not anything you can take that can cure biases. There are things you can do to mitigate bias and think about when bias becomes dangerous. So think about it. You know, here's a simple illustration. I am a graduate of Florida State University.
Me and my husband, we're staunch Seminole fans. And so if you went to the University of Miami, you are automatically the enemy to us, right? Because there is a bias there because we are rival teams. Automatic. There is a thought that pops in your head when that rival is mentioned. That is a bias. It just so happens, though, that particular bias is not necessarily dangerous, right? Because it is fun. It is a sport. But when bias becomes dangerous, you then take that same thought process and apply it to the workplace and don't hire someone because of the way that they look or where they might come from, or the gender, or who they love, or what ethnicity they are. So again, that's when biases become extremely dangerous. And so what we do at Paradigm 4 Parity is we help organizations understand how to mitigate that bias in those very dangerous moments. And those dangerous moments really show up in the employee lifecycle. And so we talk about mitigating bias in the moments that matter. So, the employee lifecycle starts with hiring. Then it moves to onboarding. Then it moves to developing. Then it moves to promoting. Then it moves to managing talent and then it moves to retention. So, these are all of the inflection points where decisions are made. About whether I'm going to be even hired into an organization. Now, how am I onboarded in that organization? Because that makes a difference. Because that is a jumping point for me in how well I perform. And then do I get opportunities to be developed in that organization, which then leads to promotion? And when we think about how we manage talent, so those talent management processes and thinking about pay, thinking about how you rate talent, all of those things become very subjective and biases creep into those processes. And so how do we mitigate those? And then last is retaining who we retain and why and who aren't we retaining and why? And so again, we talk a lot at Paradigm 4 Parity and help our organizations through some of the tools and resources, leading practices, sessions, programs, as well as our webinars and seminars around how are you mitigating this bias in those moments that matter and help organizations think about creating that or that ecosystem where their talent can thrive?
Andi Simon: You know, some of this is challenging. So, as a listener or the viewer is reflecting on their own decisions and biases and, remember that musicians, they've tried to make gender-neutral, unbiased decisions about whether to put somebody into their orchestra by having them perform behind a screen so they don't know who they are. You just know what they're producing, what their outcomes are. And we've tried this in a program that I had at Washington University, and we try to have venture capitalists or funders understand who is presenting, not by their nature or who they were or their background, but what the value of the program was that they were looking for funding for. Very little money goes from VCs to women-owned businesses for a reason. It's a woman, much less a woman who's a minority or a person of color. And so it becomes essential for us to get neutralized in some fashion, either by creating an illusion or actually thinking about why I'm deciding this, making it intentional, as opposed to simply an old habit where an old bias creeps in and says, well, I saw that before. Or someone I knew way back when, or they didn't produce well. You'll be amazed how much baggage you carry and how noise in your brain influences your decisions. And you're not free-wheeling it here. You're habit-driven and trying to come up with a better solution. One staff person in the staffing industry said it provides a more diverse pool for the HR folks to evaluate. But, when he provides them, those selecting the candidates don't select them in a neutral environment. As he says, I can send them the right mix, but they just go back to finding people who look like them. That is not good for building better organizations. That's not even good for hiring somebody. This business has evolved. Are you seeing one or two trends being done that are helpful and hopeful?
Sandra Quince: You're absolutely right. Let me circle back on the bias piece that you talked about. Because when you think about mitigating those biases in those moments, like you say, creating those illusion of opportunities where you could do blind resumes, you're absolutely right. Because there are things on resumes you don't have to have. What you really need to understand is their credentials. What makes them qualified for it? But then I think also mitigating the bias in those moments that matter can come, like you said, by asking yourself some simple questions. Yes, you think of it like a muscle. You have to constantly work it, or it will revert back to what it was before. So let me say that we're in a very interesting time, Andi, certainly when we think about what's helpful and hopeful. So what's helpful right now? We're in this time where really many companies, especially those that are part of Paradigm for Parity and our coalition, they're doubling down. They're doubling down and they are staying true to who they are as an organization, their mission, their vision and their values. They're doubling down and continuing the good work of creating an equitable, fair workplace for all. And I think what these companies are doing is they're also looking at their language to be sure their language aligns with the outcomes they want to achieve, and making sure that inclusion is at the forefront of everything that they do, which inclusion should be the leading factor. It's inclusion for all. It's also diversity, equity and inclusion for all. And so leading with that is many organizations are taking a step and leading with that inclusion piece and ensuring that if I have programs that are specific for certain people, why do we have these programs? So processes are put in place. And I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning your why. So you can go back and create the right data sets and analytics to help explain why you're on the path you're on, and reconfirming for yourself that this is really the right thing to do. So, for me, that is helpful. And for organizations to go through that exercise and ensure that whatever they're doing, that it matters and that it's creating the right environment that they want to see for their organization. And then putting the data and the analytics behind it. So what's hopeful right? What's hopeful is that 90% that I talked about earlier, Andi, the majority of people want to see a more equitable workplace and they want to see it for everyone. And that is hopeful for me, and especially those that are in the workforce today and those that are entering into the workforce really understanding and working for those organizations. They do their homework and their research, and they will not work for organizations that they can't see themselves there.
Andi Simon: And they know that hope comes from being in a place with a curious, broad perspective because if not, they will be in a box. McKinsey, in February 2023, had their "Women in the Workforce: 2022," in which they spoke about the great breakup. The women were leaving the corporate because they didn't see any hope for advancement. And there was no effort to give them new growth opportunities or even to demonstrate that the work they did mattered. This is a time where women have a choice, and men do as well. I am looking at Gen Zs and wondering and worrying about our guys because women are getting rallied around and the men don't quite know what to rally around. And without belonging to something, they feel a little lost. And it's worrisome. And our kids will look at the adults and wonder about what they will be. So this is a transformative time, Sandra. This has been wonderful. One or two things you want our listeners and viewers to remember, because your conversation has absolutely transfixed me. I'm enjoying every moment. But we do have to end. What would you like them not to forget?
Sandra Quince: I don't want them to forget that biases are not curable. And I think as individuals, we need to ensure that we're mitigating our bias. And always ask yourself and be curious who's missing and why? Think about that on your teams when you show up to work. Are you an upstander? When you see something, do you say something? Do you challenge the status quo when you feel like something isn't right? And what solutions are you bringing to the table, and how are you supporting your organization to be better? And I want organizations to understand that there is a lot of work for you to do to ensure you're creating the right ecosystem. How are you engaging and supporting your managers and your people leaders because they lead the majority of your population and they make or break your culture?
Andi Simon: This has been a marvelous half hour. I can keep going. I'm thinking about ways to bring this out to my clients to help them see, feel, and think better because they're looking for it. They're reaching that point where I have one client who finally made three women partners in their firm, and it was with I mean, I've been working with them for six years. It was with great effort and, and it is an interesting time to watch people go through slow transformation. What is that expression, a little a little and off the cliff they go. And I think we're reaching that end where a little was good, but a lot would be greater.
Sandra Quince: Absolutely.
Andi Simon: For my listeners, I want you to remember one thing, that the words you choose create the world to live in. And Sandra has been saying that in many different ways today. Bias, thinking about whether it's diversity, equity, inclusion, or belonging, those are words, and we live with behaviors. But the words we use create the worlds we live in. So think carefully about what you're thinking and saying what you're hearing because what is said is only sometimes what you hear. And what you hear often is what you think, but not necessarily what was meant. So the complexity of this should not be underestimated. But the opportunity, particularly with Paradigm 4 Parity and its five-step process, is ready for you. So if they want to reach you, Sandra, how can they do that?
Sandra Quince: So they can reach me on LinkedIn at Sandra Quince. They can go on our website paradigmforparity.org. We would love to have you peruse our site. And, of course there are all kinds of ways to reach our organization once you join our site.
Andi Simon: It's been a pleasure, a privilege, and thank you so much for joining us today. For my listeners and my viewers, we had fun. It's so much fun to explore something, listen to see, feel, and think in new ways, and see how you can change. I'll plug in because Women Mean Business is full of beautiful wisdom that will spark your success. As Sandra was sharing those, I've been repeating that as you rise, lift others with you. It's intentional, and I've worked with women who are CEOs, and they don't have any process for moving others up. They have yet to notice they're building the business but haven't noticed what that means for all others inside. So this is a time to get intentional about it. As you rise, lift others, and you'll find Women Mean Business at womenmeanbusinessbook.com. Amazon would love for you to go and buy it there. So thanks, Sandra. I'm going to say goodbye to everybody. Thanks again for joining us. It's been great. Have a wonderful day. Remember to take your observations and turn them into innovations. Be a little anthropologist. You may enjoy it. Bye-bye now.
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Hear how we can all embrace the notion of productization, not fear it
Today I bring to you an exceptional businesswoman and innovator whom I would also call a futurist, Eisha Tierney Armstrong. Eisha specializes in helping B2B companies transform their customized services into more scalable products. In other words, she helps them productize, which is also the title of her best-selling book. She shows businesses how to take a service that is delivered by people and standardize it, usually by automating it with technology. This is not to be feared, she says, but welcomed, because of the many possibilities it enables. Listen and share!
Watch and listen to our conversation here Key takeaways from our discussion: B2B buyers are changing. They’re more comfortable buying products, not talking to people, doing all their research on the internet. The cultural attributes that make you a great professional services firm, like always knowing the answer to a client question, can actually get in the way of productizing. Because if you’re productizing and trying to innovate, you don’t necessarily know what the right answer is. You have to go out and learn and be open to failure and experimentation and not seeing failure as a bad thing. One of the cultural attributes that’s really important to do this successfully is the ability to learn and be open to change. People get afraid and they think, Am I going to lose my job? Am I still going to have value? How am I going to keep up with all the skills required? Those are very valid, important fears. But the most exciting thing about productization is the potential for growth. You can now grow faster than the rate at which you have to add headcount. You can serve new markets. You can impact more people and that can be very rewarding. We are at the precipice of a massive explosion in growth and if we focus on that, people will be more willing to embrace the change. How to connect with EishaYou can find Eisha on LinkedIn and her website Vecteris. You can also email her at [email protected].
Want to learn more about preparing your business for the future, now? Check out these: Unlocking New Opportunities: Exploring Blue Ocean Strategy® To Understand Your Future Customers Navigating The Future: The Vital Need For Leadership Training In The Post-Pandemic Era Jennifer Kluge—Meet The Leader To Build Your Business Into One Of The Best And Brightest Byron Reese—How Humans Learned to See the Future, and You Can Too! Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I’m Andi Simon. I’m your host and your guide. My job is to help you get off the brink. I’ve been doing this for almost 400 podcasts now, and it’s absolutely wonderful that you, our audience, keep enjoying it, sending us ideas about people whom we should interview and really celebrating the fact that you’ve gotten off the brink, picking up ideas from the people we bring to you to help you do something important for you to change. You need to see, feel, and think in new ways.
I always say you take your observations and turn them into innovations, and today is particularly interesting. For that reason, I have Eisha Armstrong here. Jennifer McCollum (who was on this podcast in August of last year) brought her to us and suggested we should have a conversation, particularly about the work she’s doing in the B2B world of professional services. But I think it’s important for you listening to her to see what she sees out in the market and how that could help you do better for yourself and your business.
Now, I must say, I listen to Amy Webb at SXSW and her video is just wonderful, and I watch it as many years as I can. But she is talking about the fourth industrial revolution coming now, and I would tell you that you cannot wait. It’s here. And that question is really important for you and your business.
So we’ll be weaving that in a little bit today as well. Who is Eisha? Eisha Armstrong is a co-founder and executive chairman of Vecteris. She’s dedicated to helping business-to-business companies transform their customized services into more scalable products. Prior to co-founding Vecteris, Eisha held Senior Product Leadership roles at the E.W. Scripps Company and at CEB, now Gartner, the world’s largest membership-based corporate performance research and advisory company. She has a best-selling book, Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services into Scalable Products and her other book is Fearless: How to Transform a Services Culture and Successfully Productize. I think we’ll talk about productize today a bit. I’m delighted to have you here. I should thank you for joining me.
Eisha Armstrong: Well thank you, Andi, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Andi Simon: I am delighted you came back from Costa Rica in time for us to have a great conversation, although I have met with someone in Costa Rica for a podcast, so the world is very flat and small. Tell the audience about your own journey because you are at a point now that’s very timely and important for them to know about you and about what we’re going to talk about and Vecteris today. Who is Eisha Armstrong?
Eisha Armstrong: Well, thank you Andi. So I started my career, as you mentioned, at CEB, which was purchased by Gartner about eight years ago. As a data scientist right out of undergrad, of course we didn’t call them data scientists at the time, so my title was research analyst. But I was doing research on different corporate performance topics that were specifically focused on data analysis to uncover root causes of corporate performance, and I ended up spending a good 15 years of my career there, working my way up.
CEB sponsored me to go to business school, so I was fortunate enough to get my MBA while I was there and that moved me into a very early product management role. And at the time, the company didn’t have product managers. So we had to kind of define what that role meant, what that looked like, and learn from people in the software industry about what product management was. And by the time I left, I was leading a portfolio of products.
Fast forward to 2018, and I co-founded Vecteris with a former colleague of mine, specifically to help B2B professional services firms learn how to, as you mentioned, the title of my book, productize, which means taking a service that is delivered by people and standardizing it, usually automating it, with some form of technology. Perhaps, delivering it in a more scalable fashion, which tends to improve profit margins. If they’re selling, they can usually do that on a more subscription basis, which improves renewable revenue, and makes it easier to run their firms.
So we’ve been focused on that for the last six years,and as you mentioned, I published two books. I have my third one coming out later this year because my passion is really understanding what are the keys to being successful in this type of transformation. So I’ve focused a lot of my time now on researching that and then publishing those findings.
Andi Simon: So clarify for the audience, what professional services firms are.
Eisha Armstrong: Oh great question. So it could be anything from a law firm, an accounting firm, management consulting firm, training and development, HR services, engineering and architecture, IT services. But usually where you have professionals who are providing you with their expertise and their time in exchange for money, versus a product company, which is providing a kind of a prepackaged set of features and value, in exchange for money.
Andi Simon: And so we’re going to take the people part and somehow turn it into something that you can sell that could be accessed without necessarily as much people interface on it. And this has interesting implications both for the company producing it and selling it and those who are buying it and their expectations.
So I have a hunch that as you’ve gone through your six years into Vecteris now, I’m 23 years in business and I’ve watched many generations of changes come and go. This one is the most exciting for me because I do think it’s transformational.
But for a B2B company, my accounting firm client, for example, I’ve been working with for six years, what could they do to sort of productize something? Is there something you can sort of share with us that you’ve seen work particularly well?
Eisha Armstrong: Yeah. So we talk about productization in terms of different levels. The first level would just be what we call productized services, where they’re still delivering value through people. But perhaps the engagement of this accounting firm, let’s take an audit for example, is more standardized. So there’s a set of templates and tools that their professionals can use to deliver that audit the same way for every client. And perhaps they have different packages.
So rather than selling the audit engagement based on time and materials, we’re going to charge $500 an hour. They say the audit’s going to cost you $50,000 all in. If you want A, B, C type service, if you want to upgrade and get A, B, C plus D, then it’s going to cost you $75,000. So they’re doing kind of the same set of activities, the same way from client to client. They’re able to package it up and price it more on kind of value-based pricing versus time and materials pricing.
And there may also be some technology that their professionals are using in the background to help them deliver those engagements more efficiently. And perhaps generative AI is one of those technologies they’re using. But most of the interface with the client is still human-to-human. So that’s what we call productized services.
Then you have more products which are not services. They’re not delivered by humans. But, perhaps it’s a piece of software that the accounting firm has developed and that they install at their client to help them improve reconciliation between their accounting software and perhaps some type of inventory management system or something like that. And then they’re charging that client a monthly fee to license the software that this accounting firm has developed. And that would be an example of a product.
So software is an obvious example, but data could also be another example of a product. You know, perhaps the accounting firm has developed some proprietary data set and they want to license it to their clients. That could be a product. It could be an off-the-shelf kind of online training program that their clients go in and access and take online training. So there’s no human-to-human involvement in the delivery of it, but you still need humans for relationship development and account management and things like that.
Andi Simon: This is so interesting because when you productize it like other Microsoft products, it comes with annual updates and upgrades. I love your monthly fees for service and a support staff that is located maybe in the Philippines. So there’s all kinds of ways that you can now optimize the talent you have without simply adding more talent. Correct?
And this becomes a mind shift, if I know enough about enough of my professional service firms to know that their minds are about doing what they do now better, maybe cheaper, faster, but not by making it into a product per se, but by simply having more talent.
The pandemic gave them the options of having more attorneys who were remote, or more accountants who were remote. That sounded really unthinkable before the pandemic. And now it’s quite normal. But, now you’re talking about taking what we do and looking at it as a different thing. A product is different from a service. So we can talk about many of these things. One thing that you and I were sharing was that we must change the culture inside the firm and the firms that are using those services.
I don’t want to lose the opportunity in our conversation to talk about what that means as you move from people and services to a product and sales from a cultural point of view, and I have a hunch you’re seeing that. You and I can share some cases, but what are you seeing?
Eisha Armstrong: Yeah. Great question. So I think first of all, you have to take a step back and look at this as a fundamental transformation for most organizations. So if you’re, let’s say a law firm and now you want to also sell software alongside your legal services, this is a significant change because you’re not only having to think differently about how you create value, because it’s a little bit of a business model transformation, but you’re going to need new skills, new technical skills, skills that people are skilled in, lean product development or agile, for example.
It’s just kind of a different way of operating, and so if you think about your business model transformation, digital transformation, trying to become more innovative, fast-paced, that is a very different culture than a traditional law firm.
And some people may find that very threatening, especially if you’re saying, okay, we used to create value based on the expertise in Andi’s head. Well, Andi, now we’re going to create value based on the intellectual property of the entire firm that has been documented. Andi could deliver it or somebody else could deliver it. Or maybe it’s delivered digitally.
So we don’t even need a person like that who can be very threatening to people who’ve defined their entire careers based on my expertise is what creates value. And so that’s a big change. And I think it’s important for organizations to think about that before they embark on a product decision strategy.
Andi Simon: Have you seen any illustrative case studies you can share where they’ve done it well or where it blew up?
Eisha Armstrong: Oh, yes. Countless. So one is a management consulting firm that we’ve worked with now for several years. And they go in and they work with manufacturing companies, industrial companies, and their consultants created an algorithm to help manufacturers batch custom manufacturing jobs and do it in a more productive way. And their senior partners were like, we could turn this algorithm into a piece of software and we could sell it and we could productize it and wow, you know, multiples on software businesses are much larger than multiples on the consulting businesses like this. This is a great idea.
And we’re like, yes, there’s a great need. There was nobody else in the market doing this. They had the skill set. But let’s think about the culture change and what’s going to be required. So what they ultimately decided to do was to set it up as a separate organization and so they kind of insulated it from the primary consulting business. It had its own dedicated team that was fully funded full time working on this, this software product, not off the side of their desk.
They had different performance measures. They had a different name in the marketplace. So they weren’t using the name of the parent company to really distinguish that this is not just kind of a different way of delivering value, but it’s also a different culture. Yeah. And they’ve been quite successful operating this as kind of a separate business that still has the benefit of the strength of the balance sheet of the consulting firm, the client relationships where they’re able to feed them leads. They’re recognizing that it’s a significant difference in cultures and operating them as two separate businesses. So that would be a great success story.
Andi Simon: It is brilliant. But on their part, they understood that an artwork and a draft don’t necessarily come out with something better. This was different and needed a whole different model for it to be successful. That is a brilliant company with amazing leadership to understand that. So often we work a lot on observation to innovation, a lot of innovation that never gets out of the starting gate, mostly because they try to add it on to their current staff whose minds are in a whole different place.
You know, people say, what’s culture? I say, it’s what you do every day and believe it’s the way we should do it. Let’s not get too sophisticated here. But for those who are doing the service part, it is what we do every day. And for those who are developing the product, it has nothing to do with what we do every day. And unless you understand that you cannot succeed in prioritizing your services without a different way of doing that.
Eisha Armstrong: Absolutely. Yes.
Andi Simon: Now, with that in mind, as you’re talking, I’m saying, okay, now how are they creating these products and are they eliminating the service part or are they just rapid fast forward using, I don’t know, generative AI. What do you see happening on the productization part?
Eisha Armstrong: So we see a couple of different what we call archetypes. So the first one is, we are going to develop products that are bundled in with our services. I mentioned perhaps there’s a piece of software that’s installed alongside some consulting work that might be done and that’s sold as a kind of a single solution to a client.
Say, you have this problem. For example, you want to improve your ability to attract highly skilled talent. You need some consultants to come in and understand what type of skills you need. What might be preventing the organization right now from attracting that talent? But you might also need some compensation benchmarking data and you might need that to be updated monthly, and so it’s a mix of the kind of data technology that is delivering value.
And so we call that kind of the bundled solutions approach to productization. And I think it’s actually, Andi, a brilliant move for a lot of professional services firms because it leverages their existing competitive advantage, which is their service professionals and the existing relationships that they have with clients. So they’re bundling those products along with that.
The other option might be like this management consulting firm that decided to kind of run it as a separate business because what they found is that the manufacturers that were interested in the software product were actually different from the manufacturers that they worked with on their consulting engagements. So it was an entirely new market. And that also fed into their decision to run it as a separate business because it really didn’t make sense to bundle the two, given they were separate markets who were interested in the services versus interested in the software product.
And then the third archetype is where you decide you’re going to fully sunset being a services business, and you’re going to transform to be a 100% products business that is less common. And when we do see it, it’s usually with younger professional services firms who start offering professional services. They uncover a great need that they can meet with a product and aren’t yet at the level of maturity where it doesn’t make sense to sunset the services business. They can kind of eat that cost and transform and become a full products business. So those are the three different archetypes that we see.
Andi Simon: So let me repeat them back. The first one bundles it, and the second one is segregated, and the third one is young and can see opportunities and aren’t so wedded to the way we’ve always done it here that they can reinvent themselves.
Eisha Armstrong: Correct. Yes.
Andi Simon: And I love to summarize what you’ve said, because for the listener, Eisha has said some very important things. There isn’t a single way that you can take what you do. So don’t look at it as a thing. Begin to think about it. And I think it’s very important outside in, it isn’t. What you do is what a customer does and which customer wants or needs for this manufacturing service provider. Some of their customers probably are older and are much more set in their ways and are happy to talk to people. And younger may be very unhappy talking to people.
I had one logistics company and their salespeople couldn’t get the people they used to talk to to answer the phone. They were still doing calls. And when I interviewed the folks who they thought would be their buyers, they had retired. And the new folks who had come in were all 30 somethings who said to me very quietly, we don’t use the phone.
And I say that because the point is that times are changing fast, and the people in the times, they are changing fast and so assume nothing. You’re in a startup mode. It’s a whole new time for reinvention. Both of them have an understanding of what the new clients need because they’re younger too, in many cases. You know, let’s stop being angry about the fact that Gen Z is the largest workforce. And let’s figure out how to work with them to change it.
Now, what’s interesting from just the lifespan of some of these products, they’re startups in many ways now. Are they aggressively now elevating them to the next stage, or are they so happy they got a product? I was curious about how people see things. Got it, got the product. Now what? What do you see?
Eisha Armstrong: So let’s say we’re working with a company who’s noticing the same changes that you’re talking about. B2B buyers are changing. You know, they’re more comfortable buying products, not talking to people, doing all their research on the internet. They are more comfortable buying things on a subscription basis. Plus, they also see shifts in the competitive landscape.
You have digital first startups who are saying this, solving the same problem that services companies used to solve. Plus, you have generative AI. Lots of things are changing and your labor force is getting more expensive. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could grow and not have to add headcount at the same rate? So all of these things might lead a business leader to want to productize.
And the first thing we talk about is, okay, this is a different way of thinking. Usually what you want is a portfolio, just like if you were a venture capitalist, because some of your product ideas are going to be home runs and some are going to be stinkers, and you don’t really know right now which idea is going to be which. You may have some assumptions and hypotheses that we can go out and test and validate, but you don’t have a crystal ball that’s going to give you the answer.
So let’s think about this as a portfolio. What are some quick one things that are lower investment? Perhaps you’ve already validated because a couple of clients have asked for this and even helped pay for some of the R&D. They are really easy to bundle with your existing services or serve your existing clients. And then what are some of these moonshot ideas where there’s perhaps more investment required over time, but perhaps much more value and potential. And what are some steps that we can start to take today to test and research and validate some of your hypotheses about those moonshot ideas.
And then let’s come back either monthly or quarterly, and look at the performance of this portfolio of product ideas and see how it’s doing. Are our assumptions correct? If so, add a little bit more investment, just like a venture capitalist would. Or did we invalidate some of our hypotheses and realize that some of these great ideas are actually stinkers and we need to stop investing in them, sunset them, and put our efforts elsewhere.
Andi Simon: I laugh listening to you because that requires a completely different mindset that detaches you from the products themselves. They aren’t about you. I once taught at Washington University a course for entrepreneurs, and I brought in some entrepreneurs and they left some lasting things in my head. And one guy said, Well, I built three businesses. Some worked, some didn’t.
It requires a detached relationship with that product, because it isn’t that you didn’t have a good idea. Some work, some don’t. So what? Move on. Right. But you need to have an open mind about what is working and be wise enough to know how to redirect investment as if you’re your own investor as opposed to the runner of the business. And that changes the whole relationship.
Even with each other and with a client and that’s a maturity that could come in youth, but it requires a different sense of what this product is and how it operates. And what do I mean to it? And how am I almost like a business school case study as opposed to a real life thing? Does that make sense?
Eisha Armstrong: It does. Absolutely. It’s really interesting, Andi, because we talk to professional services firms, leaders, and say, look, the cultural attributes that make you a great professional services firm, like always knowing the answer to a client question, can actually get in the way of productizing. Because if you’re productizing and trying to innovate, you don’t necessarily know what the right answer is. You have to go out and learn and be open to failure and kind of experimentation and not seeing failure as a bad thing. So you’ve got this on the one hand, a cultural attribute of knowing that has made you a great professional services firm is now going to get in the way of learning and experimenting.
Andi Simon: And I’ll put a pitch in for, again, an anthropologist to go out to those clients while you’re introducing these things and observe. You have no idea how many times I work with clients who have launched products and assume they know how their customers are using them, and then I go, and I often love to take them with me, because if I see and they don’t, they won’t believe me. So I take them along and I say, Be an anthropologist, just hang out, watch.
And they get shocked by the fact that this wonderfully complex thing that their engineers over-engineered isn’t being used at all the way they thought, and they usually see one little piece of it so that it serves their purpose as opposed to the overarching complex services that they have productized without calling it that. But this is what they did.
And it is interesting to me how we cannot see the world through our own eyes. You kind of look backwards. You know what’s going on with the customer who think they gave you a good question to answer, and you answer that question, but it was the wrong question. It really had nothing to do with what they really needed.
And I often find that particularly when the question has come down through a company and a more junior person has come to find a solution, only to realize they didn’t really know what the question was that was being asked way up the line. And as a result, they come back with an answer that doesn’t match. It’s the old telephone game. It is so interesting.
So you are in a moment of watching these companies potentially transform themselves, not quite putting the services sector out of business, but transforming the whole business. This is really cool stuff. We have a few more minutes, and I want to just talk briefly about the training and skill development. Are you finding them beginning to understand that they have to rethink the training and skill development of their teams?
Eisha Armstrong: Oh, absolutely. I mentioned, for example, one of the cultural attributes that’s really important to do this successfully is the ability to learn. So one of the skill sets that you could look for are people who have kind of a hypothesis-based research background: could be from hard sciences, social sciences, but people who are used to developing hypotheses, testing them and being somewhat removed in terms of the outcome. So they’re dispassionate about that and try to put on their scientist hat as the great organizational psychologist Adam Grant calls it and be open to changing their mind. So that’s one that’s very important.
Another one is, the ability to do what we call: think from a market segment standpoint. So market-minded, because professional services companies have been thinking very 1:1. What does Andi Simon need? Okay. I’m going to go and deliver exactly what she needs. Now you’re thinking about, what is a market segment that is similar to Andi Simon. What does this entire market segment need and how can we deliver something of value that meets maybe 80% of their needs, but not 100% of their needs? And that’s a very different way of thinking.
Usually people who’ve done market research, you mentioned ethnographic research, people perhaps who have a finance background, can think about market segments, attractive market segments, market needs, things like that. And then the third one, which we can’t forget, is digital literacy. And I say the word literacy very deliberately because often we think, oh, we need to go out and hire software engineers. And I’m like, no, that’s digital fluency.
I just want everyone in the organization to be digitally literate. Knowing kind of what are the tools out there and how could we use these in our day to day work would be digital literacy. And it’s really shocking how many organizations we get brought into, Andi, where the leadership team is saying, we’re going to make these investments in technology, we’re going to productize, and there are people on the leadership team who have very, very low digital literacy. So they’re not modeling that behavior for the rest of the organization.
Andi Simon: The rest of the organization says, okay, you show me first and then I’ll change, because change is literally pain. You know, we specialize in helping organizations and the people inside them change. And one thing the listeners should remember is your brain hates me. It hates to think about something in a new way. It doesn’t like the energy it needs to learn something. The oldest reptilian part of the brain, the amygdala, hijacks it. It says, go away. I’m going to hate you. I’m going to flee you. I’m going to fight you. I’m going to appease you, but I’m not going to change. And that’s just the way your brain works. It’s there to protect you from all this foreign stuff coming at you called digital literacy.
But it is a time where you probably should rethink your thinking and change your mindset. This has been such fun. You should give the audience 1 or 2 or 3 things you don’t want them to forget, because they often remember the ending better than the beginning. And we’ve had a nice beginning and I’ve enjoyed our conversation. A couple of things you want them to remember.
Eisha Armstrong: I think the biggest one, and you just brought it up, is that when we start talking about things like generative AI, the fourth industrial revolution, perhaps reducing the amount of services and delivering products, people get afraid and they think about, Am I going to lose my job? Am I still going to have value? How am I going to keep up with all the skills required? And yes, those are very valid, important fears to talk about.
But the most exciting thing about all of this is the potential for growth. I mean, imagine again, if you’re a B2B professional services firm, you can now grow faster than the rate at which you have to add headcount. You can serve new markets. You can impact more people and that can be very rewarding, not only from a financial standpoint, but also just from the personal reward that you get out of your work every day.
And so the one thing that I try to stress with the executives that I work with is, let’s talk about the opportunity rather than the change required. You know, yes, there is going to be change required, but that makes people afraid. And instead, let’s paint that vision and talk about the growth opportunity.
How can jobs become more rewarding? How can we serve more people? That’s what I truly believe. We are at the precipice of just a massive explosion in growth and if we talk about that, I think people will be more willing to embrace the change.
Andi Simon: I hope so. I know you’re a research person by background. Have you started to collect the number of services firms that have productized? Is there any Gartner research that says, hey, guys, you know, of all of those, I don’t know why percent have already started to productize. You’re running late in the process. Any idea?
Eisha Armstrong: Yeah, it’s nine out of ten, so 90%. And again, that could be very early productized services where they’re standardizing tech-enabled delivery of their services. But it’s still kind of looks and feels the same way to the client all the way up to creating new separate software businesses. But yeah, nine out of ten organizations. And yeah, if you’re not doing it yet, you are massively behind.
Andi Simon: I’m laughing. And that doesn’t matter whether you’re an attorney or management consulting firm, anything that is people-based is ready to be rethought. Not that the people are wrong or bad, but that the solutions to the problems are not going to necessarily be delivered by you and I talking about it. And I’m not going to say maybe I could have done this, but I was kidding around with my physician the other day and I said, your portal is so good. One day I’ll just have it take a picture of my body and I’ll tell me how my vital signs are. And he said, that’s not so far away. And I said, it’s not. Everything’s going to be productized. It’s very exciting. Well, this has been such fun. I should thank you. Where can they reach you? What’s your website?
Eisha Armstrong: It’s Vecteris.com. And I love to connect with people on LinkedIn, so feel free to also connect with me on LinkedIn: Eisha.Armstrong.
Andi Simon: It’s been a pleasure. And thank you. And thank you, Jennifer McCollum, for introducing us. And I think we should do a follow up in six months to see what we have seen and what’s working well, and you’ll have your third book out and I’d love to celebrate with you.
It’s very cool stuff for our listeners and our viewers. Thank you for coming. As you know, we like to take observation and turn it into innovation. And as an anthropologist, my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. If you have not spent a day in the life of your customer, it’s time, because they may be prioritizing already, leaving you behind in the process, but you don’t really know what they’re thinking until you go and just hang out. They say, what does an anthropologist do? We hang out and we listen to the things that you can’t see because they can’t even tell you what they’re doing. So watch them and begin to think about what that means for you.
My books are all on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, the topic for this podcast, has won awards and been a bestseller, and people show it to me on the beach, wherever they’re reading about how anthropology can help their business grow. Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business is about 11 women who did just that. And our newest book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, all of whom have simply said, of course they can and have done extremely well, and their wisdoms are very wise for all of you men and women.
And we’ve developed a program, we’ve productized the book into a program to help corporations and CEOs begin to think about how to harness the wisdom of women to optimize their business. And as an anthropologist, I was reading Gregory Beaton’s work about how everything is the opposite. You know who you are by what you’re not. And so maybe we should start seeing the benefits of difference as opposed to worrying about being identical. And I couldn’t agree more.
It’s time for rethinking what we’re trying to do with the talent that we have. It’s been great fun. Thank you all for coming. I’m going to say goodbye to Eisha Armstrong. Thank you for joining me today. It’s been a pleasure. Goodbye, everybody. Come again. See you now. Bye bye.
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Hear how to answer the question: Why should your customers care?
I always say, in my coaching or our leadership academies or my workshops, the more ideas you have, the more likely you will have big ones. And they come at the intersections. Big ideas are actually already in your head waiting for those a-ha moments where you might say, Wow, I’m onto something. My podcast guest today can help you do just that. Fran Biderman-Gross is going to help you see yourself through a fresh lens, feel differently about what you’re doing and why, and think about how to make some changes. We know that change is painful and we don’t always like it, but often it’s necessary to get where we want to go. Listen, learn, and share.
Watch and listen to our conversation here Key takeaways from today: Buyers are informed. They have access to information in record speed and record time. Informed buyers need a reason to believe. Then you must make the emotional connection to why your product matters to them. Today, purchases have to be meaningful. People crave emotional connection. It is no different with services and products. Consumers are demanding it. They are voting with their dollars and demanding it. Why is the world a better place with what you are offering your customers? You fundamentally must understand who your customers are and what they want, what matters to them. How to connect with FranYou can reach out to Fran on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and her website Advantages.net. You can also email her at [email protected]. and check out her book: How to Lead a Values-Based Professional Services Firm: 3 Keys to Unlock Purpose and Profit
Want a deeper dive into how to market for success? We recommend these as a starting point: Mark Schaefer—Are You Ready For The Marketing Rebellion? Patrick Van Gorder—Ready For The Right Data-Driven Digital Marketing Strategy To Expand Your Business? Melissa Copeland—Want Your Business To Be Successful? Start With A Great Customer Experience Aviva Ajmera—First Get That Great Strategy. Then Tackle How To Get It Done! Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I’m Andi Simon. I’m your podcast host, and as you know, my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. I go looking for interesting people who are going to help me do that. Today is a day when we’re all on the brink. We don’t know if we’re going to soar or fall, but the ladder is there for us to climb. But sometimes we need new ideas. We need to fill our head. Remember, the more ideas you have, the more likely you will have big ones. And they come at the intersections. So as you listen to our podcast, things are going to come your way and you’re going to say, That’s a big idea. It’s actually sitting in your head waiting for it to happen, but I’m happy to share.
So I have a wonderful woman here today to help you do just that. She’s going to help you see yourself through a fresh lens, feel differently about what you’re doing and why, and think about how to make some changes because change is painful and we don’t always like it. Fran Biderman-Gross is our guest today. A little bit about Fran. She is here smiling at you, and she is going to smile through her whole time together because she is just a very happy, wonderful woman with lots to share with you.
Fran Biderman-Gross is the founder and CEO of Advantages, an award winning branding and marketing agency and among The Fortune 500 Best Places for Entrepreneurs. I’m going to let her tell you exactly what that is. The Advantages team leads clients on a journey of brand discovery that reveals personal and organizational purpose, values, and story. And Fran is just full of ideas for us today.
She also is a podcast host for Drive Profit with Purpose, where she speaks with business leaders about the importance of purpose. And, you know, purpose-driven organizations are doing better than those without a purpose. And she’s co-author of How to Lead a Values-Based Professional Services Firm: 3 Keys to Unlock Purpose and Profit, which I have a hunch is hers and could be yours. So this is a book focused on the leverage of three keys of purpose, values, and story so that you can grow and scale profitably and make a difference. Fran, thank you for joining me today.
Fran Biderman-Gross: Thank you for having me today. What a meaningful intro. What a great way to set up somebody’s mindset in how they should receive every single episode. I’m very grateful to be here. Thank you.
Andi Simon: Well, and we are as well because your ideas are fresh. And I haven’t had anyone who’s a marketing maven in a long time and there’s a push now to rethink what we do in the world of communications, storytelling, marketing, whatever those words now mean in a world where it’s not a newspaper ad or even what do you do with a press release? It’s really sort of like, what are we doing? But tell the listener about who is Fran. Let’s really set the stage around your own journey because it sets the context for what you’re doing and how you’re helping your clients and your staff. Please, Fran.
Fran Biderman-Gross: So what can I tell you that’s interesting about Fran? I’m a very curious, purposeful, intentional, resourceful human who really loves people. I say that because it’s true. While I can be labeled an eternal optimist, just ask my team, I’m always looking for the good in everything. Innately, I really appreciate when others are in that spotlight moment and they’re shining, or they set a goal and they accomplish it. I’m really there with them, enjoying not only the journey, but reveling in the success of whatever that is. And while that might seem broad, I’ve definitely chosen my path in helping others really stand out and understand how they build emotional connections with the people who give them the most fulfillment.
So, getting clear on what I call the three keys: your purpose, your values, and your story and the way that you tell it, and there’s just so much that’s so complicated when we talk about branding and marketing that I just wanted to make it simple but not easy. So it’s simple to understand that the concept of a minimum viable brand is very much based on what you believe in, why you exist in the world, and how you bring that to the organization you lead.
And if we could just get clear on that, it’s simple, just not easy to articulate. It sets such a strong foundation for everything that you’re going to do. So in terms of me, I’m just on this journey to help as many people as I can, which is really why the book came about. And, you know, I have a limited, finite amount of time and hours that I could teach a workshop, teach or speak or work with clients. So the book and the podcast are an extension of me having those great conversations so that people can further think about what their purpose, value, and story are, what their three keys are, and how to have tips and tricks to apply it to unravel this mystery of marketing. And what is branding and why is it important? And all of those complicated questions.
Andi Simon: The question: you didn’t just jump in and know those things. Were there some catalytic moments that took what you were doing and gave it in moments? Well, when you go whoosh and you go, that’s what it’s about. Is there something you might be able to share?
Fran Biderman-Gross: I think there’s a couple of light bulb moments, if you will. I think the first time I met Simon Sinek was back in 2004, when he had just discovered the Golden Circle, maybe it was 2003. He had spoken to the entrepreneurs’ organization we were at, a little marketing gathering, talking to strategists, colleagues, if you will. And I was really intrigued. And they had asked us to bring some of our best design work, and I did, and I got there early and I placed it on the corner of the table. I was hoping I would stand out and get his attention.
Everybody always likes to be called out by the teacher and given some accolades. Who would ever not want that? And I placed this incredibly, very proud, designed piece of collateral on the corner of the table. And wouldn’t you know, it caught his eye and he lifted it up in the middle of his chat and he said, This is beautifully designed and it’s great quality, and it looks like everybody else and it sounds like everybody else.
And I’m like, how do I leave? You just embarrassed me in front of about 80 to 100 people. I’m like the Marketing Maven in there. I’m like the printing princess, the girl who gets everybody noticed. And my stuff is like everybody else, does he know me? So at first I was embarrassed and sunk in my chair. I literally sunk in my chair and I wanted to leave, but I resisted that urge. It desperately took every ounce of fight in me to do that. I waited in line to kind of really unpack what he meant, because I really needed to get over myself and try to learn from something.
And then he just set me off on a path of, this is beautifully designed, but how does it speak to me and how does it create a connection versus what you’re selling and what you’re advertising on this piece? And how do I actually use it as a tool to build, to create, to activate curiosity or to spark a connection in that way? And that set off a very deep relationship for a very long time, although I dug my heels in and didn’t want to join.
But I really wanted to further develop the concept of understanding how we start with Why. Hence we got the three keys, which became the technique and the approach that we approach every person, whether you’re a solopreneur, to do personal branding and take that into an organization. And how do I work in an M&A structure and how do I bring people together and how do I help serial entrepreneurs own multiple businesses because they really have one vision in multiple missions. And how does that stack, how do they shift their story point, as I would describe it, to serve them, whether they’re in front of you VC raising money or fundraising in a nonprofit or looking for more customers to get into the funnel or further down the funnel.
And it has really become evident that many may not disagree and many, I hope, don’t. I don’t know what I just said, but I hope they don’t disagree. And I’m happy to welcome the conversations if they do. But people innately develop relationships with people they like, they trust, and have a connection with somewhere, and they feel it. And that’s a biological thing. And how do we resolve that?
And that has really been my quest: to resolve how your brain thinks but can’t speak, and help you give it the word so it validates the feeling. And to me, that’s marketing and branding all in one. And that’s the job I have to do so that we build relationships with different nonprofits, with our donors, with our volunteers, with the people we serve from professional services or products and goods. So the level of the cost of the sale might influence if it’s a bigger ticket.
We have to think more. If it’s a smaller ticket, we think less. But we build relationships with brands who stand for something that somehow are relatable to us. And even if we don’t stop to think about it, when you do, you’ll realize that you’re developing a fan, a brand fan, as I would say, or an advocate for certain brands because of not only the product, but why they exist in the world where it is sometimes a little hard to find that connection.
Andi Simon: It is interesting as I work with organizations, so we’re corporate anthropologists, as I often share a little bit during our podcast, and we specialize in helping organizations change. Sometimes they want to and sometimes they hate to because the brain hates to change. It has an idea and a story in it, and that story is your illusion of everyday life. And you get up every day and you live that story whether it’s true or not. There’s no truth.
What’s interesting in what you’re saying is that you then also surround yourself with things. And those things are a reflection of that illusionary story about who you are. You’re always the hero in your story. You’re always successful in the story. The problem is, there are always others outside of you, and whether it’s you alone, or you as part of a club or a group, humans are herd animals and we like to belong. So with humans, you’ve got this wonderful opportunity to help them feel better, make their story stronger, especially in times that are fast changing.
I don’t know how many people have said, “I’ll never use AI.” I said, “Well, it’s already all over you, you know? You can’t do anything without it.” “Quite frankly, I’ll never use ChatGPT.” I love ChatGPT, but why do you deny the future? Because it is all around you. It’s just not widely distributed yet.
And that’s asking people to help us rethink the work we’re doing with our products and services. And I’m going to let you talk a little bit about how you now help companies and their products and services to rethink their purpose, maybe to retain their values and also to begin to think about that story and storytelling when the world that they’re talking to is so fragmented. There are 250 million people with 250 million stories and channels to articulate on. And I don’t know whether TikTok is good or not, but as my book came out, somebody I knew said, are you going to be on TikTok? There are as many people creating on TikTok as there are watching it.
The world is wild, my friend. How do you help them go through the changes? Maybe there’s a case study you can share, or if not, just help the audience think through the new because it’s ready, willing and able to help you transform what you’re doing for a new world. Your thoughts?
Fran Biderman-Gross: So that is a jam-packed question.
Andi Simon: Deliberately, I know.
Fran Biderman-Gross: And a good one. The way that I’m going to begin to shape that answer is that in 2024, what you knew before doesn’t really apply. But here’s a lesson that I can say. Well, first let me explain what I mean. Buyers are informed. They have access to information in record speed and record time that we cannot argue, arguably the fastest, and will continue to get faster as we choose how we consume our media or our information.
So I’m just going to use information for now, because there’s a lot of things that we want to know on a daily basis, starting with the weather and the top news and what’s going on with our clients. And we want bytes of information. So the buyers are informed. They have access to data and facts with a click of an Enter button.
You ask a question and you will get an answer. Might not be accurate, but that doesn’t matter. We won’t debate that, but they have access to information, so there’s no more dog and pony show. The dog and pony show is, Here I am. I can’t beat my chest and go, “I’m louder and better stand out.” It has to be authentically who you are and why you exist. Why? Because in the last 15 years, I’ve had the honor of working and taking over my co-author’s lifelong work that we had started working on together. I have literally proven that people are the complete reason why businesses who merge succeed.
I digress back to the question. Informed buyers need a reason to believe. They need to make them. When they have that reason to believe, they then must make the emotional connection to why it matters to them. This is a fundamental change in the way that we communicate and are raising our children to communicate. It has to be meaningful.
We used to talk about buying stuff, and I’ll use this as a little bit of a team and family, you know, share. We used to buy things for each other and now we’ve learned, come the holidays and birthdays and celebratory days, it’s not the stuff, it’s the time and experience. They want to share things. They want to create memories to do things.
Matter of fact, just before this, you were talking about the two weeks that you and your family secretly at the end of June get together. People crave emotional connection. It is no different with services and products. That’s right. And they are demanding it. They are voting with their dollars and demanding it.
So who’s telling a better story? But it’s not the better story, it’s the meaningful story. How you uncover why you do what you do, why the world is a better place with your organization, is vital to communicate, to be able to attract the buyer the way the buyers buy. They demand to make an emotional connection even if they don’t say it. They vote with their dollars. And if you really got into a focus group with them and trust me, we have done many, many of these, especially in the last couple of years, you really get the insights of the culmination of data that I’m telling you.
People are buying emotionally, they are emotionally triggered. And the brands who are acting out and taking a stand… You’ve seen them. You’ve seen these examples. You’ve seen it with Nike. You have seen it with Ben and Jerry’s, with our ice cream. And you have seen these organizations take a stand and you’ve seen good PR and bad PR and you’ve seen outrage and you’ve seen validation because there’s something for everyone. There isn’t just one thing for everyone.
So how do you, audience members or listener, differentiate yourself in that way? Simple. Not easy. But here’s the one thing that I can tell. You can’t skip a step. Because when you skip a step, it doesn’t work. We have learned time and time again, with client after client, when we rush through building a foundational brand. I’ll just leave it as, when we skip the foundational steps, we miss something. We miss the opportunity to connect with the buyer. We miss the opportunity to understand the buyer. We miss the opportunity to understand where the buyer is, what the buyer is searching for.
So we talk about marketing and attracting these things. But at the same time, let’s put that all aside. We need to understand who you are and what they want, what matters to them. If you build your journey and you skip a step and you’re missing information, it is just another reason for them to leave the funnel and not to go further.
You know, I personally would rather attract, let’s just say I was looking for an applicant. I had a new job position. I personally would much prefer, matter of fact, this was another moment. It’s funny where my mind went here. I was at a networking event and it was all about recruitment and retention. This was a big hot button.
How do we do that? Well, they opened this roundtable discussion and they’re like, oh, well, our advertisement attracted 85 qualified people. But we got like 300 resumes. And when it got to my turn, I said, Who has time to look at 85 resumes? I’m hoping that only 12 people apply so that I can get further, deeper down into whether you are a good fit. Are you in the right place in your life, career, journey to be in this company, in this position, in this culture? Will you affect positive change?
And that spun the conversation in a completely different way. Wait a minute, how do you just get 12 applicants? Then I went through the, Hey, it’s dating. I’m not trying to sell you who we are, I’m actually trying to figure out who you are. And are you at the right stage with the right skills and the balance to fit this nucleus of an agency, of a family that we are. And are you the right fit? We can always train for skill, but at the same time, they need certain levels of skills, sometimes more advanced skills. And we just got into a whole discussion of, This is broken: writing an advertisement to sell your position is broken.
And you know what? You’re seeing it. Look what’s going on with talent in the last three years. I mean, in my industry, the senior talent is either being laid off or exiting because they choose not to have a life like that anymore. They want remote work. They want freedom and flexibility. They want to affect positive change, not the way we did before. Work has changed, buyers have changed. Recruiting has changed. Is it a good fit? Are you at the right place in your career for this juncture? And it’s just unbelievable.
Andi Simon: I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I want to follow your thoughts. As our listeners are thinking about their own, both their own journeys as well as those of their business and the products they’re selling, I’d like to create a metaphor here, because what you’re saying is that the people who work inside and the people who are our clients and their clients are really in a system, an ecosystem, and your staff can only do good jobs if the folks who you’re working with align with the basic three value, you know, purpose, values, and story approach you have. But their clients have to be in alignment as well. So there’s a long alignment thought, a visual, in my head.
They often say that the words we use create the worlds that we live in. Humans are meaning makers. And so you’re sharing with the audience the meaning that you give to both work and to the work you do in a very interesting and important way. It’s not a job; you’re part of this whole process that’s aligning with the folks who we serve, to align with their folks.
The thing that I’d like you to reflect on a little bit is, how do your clients get to know their clients better, whether it’s a customer, if it’s B2B, how do they serve them better? I’ve done enough focus groups in my life to never really want to do another one, but I’m an anthropologist and I love to observe and hang out and say, what do you do? My job is to listen to the conversations without judging them, and also without asking the people who are conversing, What does this really mean without listening to the stories they tell?
Storytelling is actually the very best way to capture the reality that they’re living. But how do you help your clients and your team better understand this changing world of buyers out there, and the channels with which they find solutions to whatever that problem is? Is that too big a question again, or is that something.
Fran Biderman-Gross: It actually isn’t. I start with, you can’t skip a step. Everybody has the courage to take a step back and look at the journey. It starts with insight because ultimately, what matters to our clients is that we understand their clients. Agreed?
Andi Simon: Agreed.
Fran Biderman-Gross: Great. So I’ve got two sets of clients I’m serving. I can’t serve one without the other. And in almost every case, almost every case, when clients come to us, they think they understand their clients. And we go through a process. To get to the right. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m just saying we don’t have the data to understand whether that is proof positive or reactive.
That points me on the right journey when I think about the age old questions of, how do I hire an agency? Why do I need an agency? I start with helping me understand your business and where is it going? Because you’re clear, your business objective dictates the marketing strategy and then resulting in the tactics we take. So when you think about what that is, I can’t skip the brand component because it starts with who are you? What do you stand for? Why do you exist? How is the world with a better place with you in it? And at the other end of that is, why should my customers care? Give me a reason to believe or I go somewhere else.
And there’s a lot of space between my hands right now. And if I had a bigger screen, I would give you more space. But you have to really not skip a step. So you have to get clear here. First, phase one: discovery, understanding your position and all the things I just listed. We could talk about the three keys. That is what I call the minimum viable brand. I like MVP things. Products and brands.
So I’ve taken that and said, how can we make this affordable because everybody listening is going oh, redoing a brand. It takes six months and tons of money and six figures and I’m like, no it doesn’t. No it doesn’t. It doesn’t.
We’ve created a process inside of about 10 to 12 weeks, maybe slightly longer depending on scheduling. We can rectify this. We don’t necessarily have to just create a gap analysis. We can actually create the analysis and fix things. So we actually have an actionable place to start. So in that discovery, of course, we’re going to do all the things that you think about, right?
The competitive analysis is aspirational, actually. What do my customers really want? What do I stand for? That gives me insights into what I call a brand foundation with your MVP. And the way I describe it is, like your brand is built on two layers. First the verbal, we get the verbal right? We can go to the visual and we can create translation so that the brain understands that there is a connection between them, the visual and the verbal.
And then we put a good layer in there called a brand idea. What’s the big idea or the zip code as we call it? What does that mean? That’s how I begin to make a connection and start to put that in the world. And we go to unlock the second phase, usually three, sometimes four months, could be six if we need more data. It’s always about data. Take about a couple of weeks to get whatever the campaign is up and running in real time. I don’t have to do massive, big focus groups that take a long time anymore. I can just literally go into the market and start to see how people react to messaging.
Andi Simon: That’s true.
Fran Biderman-Gross: In fact, I can even add a step. And do you know, I could probably spend three weeks doing message testing, literally message testing. If you are this type of demographic, how do you react to these things? And we can learn before we actually go to market.
So three months is not a long time when you think of the longevity of your organization. Don’t you want to get an audience message, audience message fit? Then you’ve got a strong brand that people are reacting to that have the criteria of your clients or like your clients. So then when you go into the market, you can begin to go, oh, can I talk to you, to my funnel? Can I direct you to my funnel? How do we nurture you? Where do sales come in?
Everybody gets on the phone and goes, could you take over my LinkedIn? I need to get sales there. Could you help me explore TikTok because that’s where I could sell direct now. And that’s not the answer. The answer is, let’s help me understand your business. The tactical solution has to be a result of a strategic decision that will then add value to the business.
Andi Simon: You know, I always watch our time because a half hour or so is good for our listeners, but I don’t want to cut us off yet. I have a couple of things to add to your wonderful understanding of how to build a business in this modern world that we’re in. We were HubSpot partners for a number of years, and we really do love inbound marketing, and inbound marketing makes the assumption that it is less about what you’re pushing out and a lot about what people are searching for.
Google has created a whole new marketplace, and it isn’t putting it on a shelf in a store. It’s more, what are the words you’re using to find a solution to something, to a problem. We come up on the first page of Google, thank you very much, because of the content marketing of a corporate anthropologist, a Blue Ocean Strategy expert. I can’t compete with the book, but I can be an expert. I can do culture change in New York. I can do all kinds of words that get people to come and hire us, or at least find us and want to know more about us.
That is a very neat way of understanding that. But it’s going to go even faster and farther because the content is going to have to be relevant and change. And it isn’t the channel of LinkedIn or Facebook or the website. I still like the website, I like the others, but I really love what search can do for you., but it means that we have to go backwards, outside in, instead of just inside out. Your thoughts, Fran.
Fran Biderman-Gross: You need data to do that, right? The proof is in the data because design is always subjective. And what has happened today, again my opinion, people can disagree.
Andi Simon: I agree, but they can disagree.
Fran Biderman-Gross: Yeah, agencies are so fragmented and specialized that if you know you are searching for just a Google AdWords specialist, you should hire them. But what are you giving them to work on? Is that proven in a data point? Otherwise you are chasing an unproven theory.
Andi Simon: Yeah.
Fran Biderman-Gross: And yes, I caution the audience, listeners out there who have several different agencies who are employed right now and probably doing great work.
The question is, is it the best work? Is it the work that actually is strategically tied to adding value to the company? I feel like I spend a lot of time talking about this because many don’t realize how much is buried in a marketing budget that’s actually allocated across a channel. That shouldn’t necessarily be. And some things should be.
So like, right-sizing all of that and then trying to understand the return on investment. I think this is really the bug for me. When you look at very large agencies and very large companies, they have spreadsheet after spreadsheet and depth and depth and depth. They understand their acquisition costs, their lead generation costs. They understand all of these things. And it’s a behemoth of effort to put together, to be able to actually get that.
But I really believe that small- to medium-sized companies deserve to do marketing right. And that’s the agency model that I have brought to this market for those who understand and want to do strategic marketing. I have an all-in-one solution. So there’s no finger pointing. We didn’t get the return. Why? Oh, the odd word guy. Oh the content person. Oh, this. Oh, that. It’s not that.
We have to put it all together under the umbrella and under that you start with the business objective, the marketing strategic plan with the tactical execution. If that execution on that budget doesn’t add value, you shouldn’t do it, myself included. You shouldn’t do it. Hope I answered the question. I got off on a tangent, but there’s so much wrong with things today. And we think, as business owners, myself included, we think we’re experts at everything and we’re not. Everything is so much more confusing these days.
Andi Simon: But let’s pause because I would rather us pause here, perhaps have you come back in a short time and take the conversation to the next stage, because I think that the times are fast changing. I was reading about Lenovo putting AI into their PCs to better know you, so that they can manage your virtual assistant and know when your calendar is. It would say, “Good morning, it’s time for you to get up, and these are the three things you’re going to do today.”
Oh my goodness. I do think, though, that the listeners as well as us who are in the industry of helping, you’re helping companies develop their business, build them, build your staff, so they have purpose. It is not inconsequential. It is very meaningful. And humans are meaning makers. We decide with our eyes and our heart, not our head. The head sort of justifies it.
When you understand the human being, then all of what Fran has been saying today takes on a, What do you do with it? You know, I get it. I understand humans. Now, what do I do to build a business that will thrive in fast changing times? And I’ll tell you, it’s a good time to pause, step back and think about that question.
What is it you are doing? Is it more of the same? Maybe cheaper? Are you beginning to really understand the data about your clients and your customers and where they’re going? I find this all the time that my first book, On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, about which this podcast was named, was about seven of our clients who had gotten stuck or stalled, and they didn’t see what was right in front of them. And I must tell you, whether it’s a focus group or it’s an anthropologist, it’s a mindset on the client side to say, oh, that’s what you’re seeing. Because if they don’t see it, it has no meaning at all.
I can’t tell you how many times I bring back what I saw. And they say, well, that’s not true. I said, okay, come look with me. And then they go and they hang out and they listen and they say, oh, that’s what you heard. I said, yes, but that’s what they’re saying. And so it’s a time to rethink how you think about your business and how you’re running it.
And Fran is giving you some really good insights today. Why don’t you tell a little bit more about the Advantages company so that we don’t leave the audience thinking, oh, how do I find her? And what do I do if I need her? Tell me about your company.
Fran Biderman-Gross: Absolutely. I’d be happy to: Advantages.net is how you can find us. I’ll throw that into the chat. And we are a purpose-driven agency that does marketing so that you can focus on the things that you are meant to focus on. What does that mean? It means that we’re an agency, a strategic-driven agency that has all the capability or a hybrid of capability to work with the vendors.
You have to ensure that we bring value to the budget that is spent, so that is meaningful to the business. Now, technically we’re strategists. We’re designers or writers. We’re directors. And everything in between. So that what you see on the inside matches what you see on the outside.
Andi Simon: But your purpose is how to assemble those tactical and practical things into a strategy to help our clients. These are the same words that we use: see, feel and think in new ways so they can grow. And I think it is very exciting to share what you do and how you do it, because it is a way of lifting us up off the brink. If you want to soar, then maybe you need to rethink the way you’re telling your story, even what it is, and how you’re beginning to push it out.
So let’s wrap up. Fran’s information will be, of course, on the podcast blog that we put on SimonAssociates.net. You can find it there and we push it out when it comes out. But it’s been an absolute pleasure to have an opportunity to share with you what Fran Biderman-Gross does and what advantages her company can offer if you’re thinking about how to rethink your own company and where it’s going and how to get there.
I’m going to wrap with a little push on my new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. It’s a great book. It’s got 500+ wisdoms of 102 women, each of whom wants to elevate and celebrate women in business. And what’s so exciting about it is that people turn a page and change their lives. And I know that sounds interesting, but we actually had a woman write about it on LinkedIn: “I was starting 2024 and I was reading the book, and it inspired me to rethink my year.” And I had a client who was a wonderful client, and she had yellow marked the whole book, and she said, “Wow, I’m going to change the way I’m running my business.”
How can a book do that? Simple and easy. It’s a wonderful way to do it. You can find Women Mean Business on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or your local bookseller. And don’t forget to look at the website WomenMeanBusinessBook.Com to tell you more about the authors, the origin of the book, the 500 wisdoms, and the 102 wonderful people inside.
So thank you, Fran, for being with us today. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, all of you who come and send us great ideas and bring us wonderful people to share and share the website and the podcast so we can all share our wisdom. We love to help others grow. Bye bye now. Have a wonderful day. Remember my wisdom: Take your observations, turn them into innovations, and boy what you can see. Bye bye now.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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She was absolutely determined to succeed. Hear how you can be too!
I always want to bring interesting people to On the Brink with Andi Simon. You will love this interview with Maryles Casto. Her journey has been extraordinary, largely because of her ability to listen carefully, understand people’s needs, and create solutions that are part of her personal style and amazing business savvy. Thanks to an unquenchable can-do attitude and sheer hard work, Maryles made her travel agency the go-to travel company in Silicon Valley, serving the biggest names in tech and beyond. Listen to her story, get inspired, and please share.
Watch and listen to our conversation here About Maryles: “Asian hospitality with Yankee business sense”Born in the Philippines, Maryles Casto is a pioneering travel industry executive and entrepreneur with 47 years of experience founding and leading companies to profitability. A former Philippine Airlines flight attendant, Casto created and helmed Silicon Valley-based Casto Travel, the West Coast’s largest privately owned travel management agency. (Casto Travel was frequently ranked among the Top 100 Fastest Growing Businesses in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and ranked second in revenues among Silicon Valley women-owned businesses by Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2006.) In 2019, she sold the company to Flight Centre Travel Group of Australia. She is also the founder and owner of Casto Travel Philippines, Inc., as well as chairwoman and CEO of MVC Solutions, which provides travel industry businesses with back-office support, accounting and other services.
Maryles has served on many business, civic and philanthropic boards, including the Commonwealth Club of California. She has been International Chair of the Committee of 200, an invitation-only group for the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, and she is a founding member of the Northern California branch of the International Women’s Forum.
You can connect with Maryles on LinkedIn and her website, or email her at [email protected].
Key takeaways from our interview: Business is all about anticipating the client’s needs. If you can’t believe in what you or your company is, how can you go out and sell? It’s not what you do. It’s what the clients are asking for. “There is a hole in the cloud, and whatever I do, I always have a hole in the cloud to get out.” It’s time for us to be kind to each other. More stories of women who dreamed big and achieved success in business: Debra Clary—Yes, You Can Become The Curious Leader You Were Meant To Be! Roseann and Clara Sunwoo—How Did Roseann And Clara Sunwoo Build A Successful Women’s Fashion Brand? Gemma Toner—An Exciting Woman Took A Moment Of Inspiration To Transform Other Women Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: We’re giggling. But welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m here to help you see, feel and think in new ways. My job is to get you off the brink, and our podcasts are here to bring people to you whom you might not know or meet people who have stories to share that are going to help you change your story. Now remember, every time you hear someone’s story, your own brain begins to shift things around until you go, oh, I can do that! Or wow, what a great idea.
And so the whole idea of a podcast, whether you visualize it and see it or you listen to it, is to help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can soar. And that’s why I bring wonderful people here, and people bring wonderful people to me. To be here today is just going to start out a little bit different. The co-author of our book, Edie Frazier, who is on the bottom of our screen here, she and I wrote Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And it’s been quite a journey. And as Maryles Casto, who’s come to us through Edie has said, is that turning a page and changing your life is really amazing. But that’s what we wanted to do. And I wanted Edie to introduce Maryles to you, because she’s very important in her own life.
And then Maryles will talk about her own journey so that you can learn from it, because there’s wisdom here that is going to be difficult to get from reading her bio or looking at her great website. So this is an opportunity for us to share. And in sharing, we can all grow together. Edie, thank you for joining us. Please, I can introduce Maryles Casto when you’re done more formally, but this is so special for you. Please tell us about your experiences with Maryles Casto and why it makes you smile so.
Edie Frazier: A joy to say thank you to a dear friend, Maryles Casto, because we go years without talking to each other. But when we get together and reminisce, we think of the qualities of a leader, a true trailblazer, and the best of friends. You know, Maryles wrote her book A Hole In The Clouds: From Flight Attendant to Silicon Valley CEO. And she did it. And she built this major travel business where she was the icon, and she knew all the founders in Silicon Valley who trusted her, respected her, and built with her.
And she built that business across the US and world and runs the business now in the Philippines from her home there. But she gives joy and support, and she’s the best you can find and firm of that word trust and respect and caring and she lives a legacy. So Maryles, I just want to say thank you for the friendship and know your spirit is in each of us who have gotten to know you, adore you, and we’ve got years ahead to salute one another. But I just say to Maryles Casto, you are the true blue of the hole in the sky.
Andi Simon: Oh.
Maryles Casto: I love you, too.
Andi Simon: Edie, that’s beautiful. Maryles, do you want to respond to Edie before she takes off?
Maryles Casto: That’s what friends are for is our song. Keep smiling and that’s what friends are for. And, Edie, I just want you to know, can I plug this? This is my book.
Andi Simon: Yes, of course.
Maryles Casto: That’s for you. And I want to talk about why this cover. We can talk about it later because it’s natural. It happened. And the world needs to read that book on the sky and the hole in the sky. We love you, buddy.
Andi Simon: This is such a wonderful way to introduce you. And maybe we will start almost with the book for a moment. But for my listeners, you know, before we jump in, I just want to give you a little context. Maryles Casto was born in the Philippines and lives in the United States and has for most of her life. She’s a successful leader. But when you hear her story, she really is an explorer. And there’s something about the way she has tackled her life and built something really special that’s so important to share.
But here’s a quote that I think captures it. And remember, I’m an explorer. Sometimes I’m a philosopher or a futurist. But Maryles, listen, I care a great deal because we’ve been to 37 countries, not to the Philippines yet, but this is the way we discover. I’ve yet to see a problem where the best solution is to hide or be ignorant. It’s only through contact with other cultures and peoples, and in their contact with us, that we can hope to bridge the divide between people of the world.
As an anthropologist, my job is to help people see and feel and think in new ways through a fresh lens. And today, that’s just what we’re going to do. So I’m not going to read your bio, but I’m going to ask you to talk to our audience about your own journey. You started in the Philippines. You came here. You capture it much better than I could ever.
And then what we’ll do is, we’ll sort of migrate into the lessons learned, the things that you, the wisdoms, you want others to understand. The kind of sharing person that you are and the kind of glorious life that you’ve lived. Maryles, please. Who’s Maryles and how is this book been sort of this triumph of what’s happened? Because we’ll come back to your book.
Maryles Casto: Okay. So let me tell you a story. I was born in the Philippines, and I was raised on a sugar plantation. So that was my background with my family and I think my inspiration really comes from my mother because she was always so kind and because we were privileged. My friends were all the workers, the children of the workers. So I developed a kind of relationship where there was no class basis for me. I mean, everybody is the same. And so I really valued that.
But also, my father was my closest friend. And I learned a lot from my father as well. And my father was very competitive. I remember one time, and this was when I was growing up in the Philippines, we have a fair every year, and so I was entered as one of the contestants. I wanted to be the queen. I wanted to win. It really started about wanting to win. We arranged it. There were three candidates. And the big dinner that night, it was a gala dinner, and they were contributing money in the ballot box.
And I was watching my father, and I was competing with the Chinese woman. The father was very wealthy, and the father kept putting some money into the ballot box and my father was doing nothing and I thought, doesn’t he realize I need to win. But what I did not realize, and this is my father’s competition. You never let the competition know what you’re doing. But he had already positioned somebody who was standing very close to the ballot box. And at the very last minute, maybe a minute before it closed, he drops this whole bundle of money. That’s when I became the queen.
Andi Simon: Uh, that was not deception, but that was smart.
Maryles Casto: Smart because he knew that he had to do it this way. And so I learned that, and that I was one of my first lessons in my business. I can be very open, but also never give, you know, everything that you can in the competition. I never liked schooI because I always wanted to be outside. I get very bored, especially when they tell you to do number one, number two, number three. And all I could think about is, why not do number ten? What do we have to go through this whole process of developing?
And I also couldn’t pay attention. I didn’t realize at that time that my world was outside and I was very mischievous. And I remembered one time when they were trying, it was a Catholic school run by the nuns who were very strict. Of course, the rebel in me already said, I don’t like to lose. I don’t like this, and I don’t like you in a way. I was in class and I was doing something mischievous. And anyway, I was reported. And so they punished me. They punished me by walking around with this garbage can on my head.
And so what did I do? I went into the classrooms and then I started dancing. So they didn’t know what to do with me. But I created the whole fiesta. So I was already learning through all these things that I was doing, and I think I applied a lot of that in my business world because I never saw the challenges. I always just went. And I thought that, you know, I’m going to try it.
So I was in the Philippines. I ended up being a flight stewardess, and at the time, being a flight stewardess was the top of the field because when you were traveling, you were entertaining. And I learned so much when you were a flight attendant at that time. It took two months to train. You had to learn about the client’s needs. It was very much anticipating the client’s needs. A passenger came on board. That was your responsibility to make sure that they remembered what the flight was about. And you remembered everything about the passenger.
So I was very focused on the passenger’s relationship and how they felt. I was in the Philippines a long time, and I had never dated an American, and I was introduced to this American. And needless to say, after two days, I decided I was going to marry him. Of course, he didn’t know anything about it. But when we have a mindset, he couldn’t say no because I was determined. So needless to say, after that he fell in love with me, of course.
And so we got married and I had to break this news to my father. Ah. My father. My father’s Spanish, my mother’s half Swiss. And he thought that this was just going to be one of those little romances. He had no idea that I was going to get married and move to this country. And it just broke his heart. But I was determined to come to this country, and I did. But my husband did not have any money. We had money, but my husband did not. And so it came to fruition when we were on our honeymoon, when all of a sudden we had to go on that $5 a day. Remember that book?
And I thought, this is not going to work, because if I was hungry, I wanted to have this restaurant here. Now, we had to walk for 20 minutes to find a restaurant that was in that book. I hated that book. And then I realized that this was changing my life. And when we arrived in the United States, I had nothing. You couldn’t fly as an airline stewardess if you were married. So I knew I had to do something.
I remember one time we were going into this grocery store, and my husband was showing me comparison shopping, and I thought, why? And even now, I’m sorry to laugh. No, but, honey, I’m reading my book, and I’m laughing because I remember all this. I remember looking at this mayonnaise and he would say, well, what mayonnaise should you buy because of the ounces? And I thought, I have no idea. All I know is, it’s my level.
But I think my message is, I was having so much fun. Everything I did, I enjoyed. I was too passionate and so finally he said, you have to find a job. And so I thought, well, I don’t have any experience. So he said, well what about Avon. And then I read something about Avon. So I thought, I can do that.
So first I had to learn about cold calling because I’d never done anything cold calling. So we would practice. And this is so much fun, I mean, reliving what we had to go through. So I went on a cold call and I was petrified, I wouldn’t get out of the car. I would knock on the door. Finally, I ended up buying all my things. And so I did not make any money and that was not my job. So I quit that and then ended up working for Macy’s in the gift department, wrapped all the gifts, and I was so bad they fired me.
So I thought, I’ve got to do something. And then a girlfriend said, why don’t you become a travel agent? And that is how my world opened up. And when I started working for agencies, my first client in one agency that I worked with was Intel, and they were just a hundred people. And then I had GE. And so I started working in the corporate market. But I didn’t last long because the owner was horrible. One thing I learned is, he did not take care of the employees. It was all about him and his family. But none of us were able to participate on trips.
So I learned a lot about what not to do from him. And so, my girlfriend and I were running the corporate department. She was running the vacations, and I was getting so frustrated. And my husband said, why don’t you start your own. I was petrified, I’d never done anything like this. But, you know, you try it. And with $1500 each, we partnered together and we opened this agency.
But I did not tell anybody where we were going. I did not tell our clients. And so we opened this little agency in Los Altos. We had no money. We had Repo Depot, I mean, you know, name it. It’s the same Silicon Valley how it started up, holding the hole in the ceiling. And I waited and waited and there was no clients because I had not told anybody. So I decided I was going to go cold calling, things that I hated the most.
But I was dressed to the hilt, I had on my high heels, and I started walking around in the Silicon Valley park, and I was walking. And then I saw this gentleman that was standing, uh, it was a company called Rome Rollin. And of course they were bought by IBM. Very, very big now. And there was the owner, I think was in there in one of the corner suites with a glass window. And he was looking at me because I was pacing back and forth and he thought I was a street walker. You can not say the first street walker. And all of a sudden my heel broke.
And so I’m limping towards this receptionist and I said, I need to see that man in the corner. And at that time, in the valley, you don’t need reservations, you don’t need appointments. Everybody could just walk in. So I walked in and he came out and then we became friends. And that was really the start of the whole Silicon Valley movement, because he was one of the founders. And through him, I started getting more and more business and then I got Steve Jobs and I got Apple. So it went crazy. And then again, I could talk about my story, but I know that there might be questions you might probably want to ask me.
Andi Simon: Well, but you see, in some ways you’ve given us a nice foundation for how to begin the challenges of, I don’t know how to do that, and I really don’t like to do this, but I tried that. And next thing you know, you and your friend and you still have to find some customers. And this isn’t sort of it. They don’t drop into your lap. Although I must confess that if you hang out, all of a sudden things begin to happen. You were talking to them and learning from them.
You began to craft something other than booking a ticket on a plane to go somewhere. And what I loved about what you did was that you created something far bigger. And I have a hunch you began to see things that they would ask for and you’d figure out how to do. But I’m putting words into your mouth. So how did you grow? Because you didn’t grow a little. You grow with a whole different mindset completely.
Maryles Casto: It was so fast. And I think there were so many. We were growing so fast. We couldn’t control our growth. And, you know, since I was, and we talk about how you felt as being the first woman because there really was no one, there was no other woman. There were men in my industry, but I never even thought about it. All I knew was that I was not going to fail. I was going to do whatever it took to be successful, and I was damn good. I was very, very good. And I believed in that. Yes, because if you can’t believe in what you or your company is, how can you even go out and sell?
So I knew I would be pitching. I’d go in and before, I would pitch directly to the vice president or the presidents. But as it changed, you have to go through purchasing, you have to go through all this. So the dynamics change. But on a 1:1, give me the CEO. And I was a CEO and I would always say, I’m in the same seat as you are. If I founded this company with $1,500, and I would have this argument with Steve because I said, if you weren’t given the $200 million, where would you be? So I was very respectful of them.
But I also thought, you know, tell me when you have started your company on your own with the seat of your pants, and then I’ll respect you more. So don’t get any baloney about all this, you know, because anyway, I just went ahead. I just focused and I thought, I will make this happen. And again the growth.
But then we also suffered because we couldn’t perform as much as we wanted to because we were making mistakes. And finally I said, stop it. We’re not accepting any clients. We have to figure out what is wrong with our company, because there definitely was something wrong. We were not delivering the product we talked about. We were not paying attention to the customer.
So I decided we would clean house and we were hiring people we shouldn’t have hired, I learned. And so gradually when we started saying, we can’t accept the account, we can’t accept. And then they respected me for that. And then gradually we started fixing. We did our own training. I’m very focused on customer service. For me it is my religion. And you have to pay attention.
And it’s not what you do. It’s what the clients are asking for. And even long before that, I started doing profiles. Each of my clients that had this black book, I would write everything. Who wanted coffee, what kind of newspaper they had, every single detail. This was before anybody thought about putting it all down, but I did.
And then I also came up with a new service. I decided I was going to do my own Visa passport. I did not want anything touching my client except me. So anything they needed, not just the travel part of it, it’s how you get to the airport. So I had airport service, people with uniforms. They’re all in the yellow necktie. I had a limo service that would pick up all my VIP clients. They didn’t have to ask me. I anticipated every move they made because my responsibility is, one, they call Casto.
I was responsible for them from when they left for the airport or when they left their home until I brought them home. I was sitting on that flight with them. I was getting in the car with them. I was in the hotel with them. I thought about only the clients, so. And I made sure everyone in our company understood that we don’t survive without our clients, but we have to think ahead and anticipate whatever they need.
Andi Simon: Let’s think about it, though, because nobody came and said to you, you’re missing a major part of the business. You’re selling. You weren’t selling anything, really. What you had done is become a colleague of your clients, right? An extraordinarily important part of their experiences. You were and it’s really a beautiful story about, it’s not a travel ticket. It’s not a limousine. It’s this whole experience where I don’t want you to have to worry about a thing. And I understand the whole. So you didn’t even have to tell them, do you want this or do you want that? You said, I got it all mapped out for you. You don’t have to worry.
Maryles Casto: One call.
Andi Simon: One call. Now, how did you begin to scale? Because often I have entrepreneurs who arrive at 10 million or 20 million and want to scale to 100 million, and they’re not sure how to do that. You scaled and you started to talk about training. I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about here, is scaling. How did you do it?
Maryles Casto: Well, I started buying agencies again. Recession, remember when we had this major recession. And I thought, this is an opportunity, I can buy now. And I decided I was buying agencies, but strategically, I had 15 offices all over the United States because it had to be a very strategic move. And by the time, we had offices everywhere, but we were also very strategic. I did not want to just be Silicon Valley. I would be putting all my eggs in one basket. So my offices were in San Jose, in Palo Alto.
I decided I needed a different kind of a base. I needed the banks. I needed a government contract. So I went to San Francisco and expanded my business there. And then I decided I needed 24 hour service because a client doesn’t end at 5:30. When they travel, what happens? You know, they have to have a way of calling us. I didn’t want them to call the airlines. They were my clients. They were my responsibility.
I couldn’t grow in Silicon Valley anymore because we were all looking for the same, we needed people. So I was having lunch with one of the senators who had come to the Valley for a business opportunity, and he was the senator from South Dakota. And he said to me, you know, South Dakota, we could use some business. So I had never been to South Dakota, Rapid City. So I flew there with him. He said, let’s just check it out. So we put a blind ad to just say that we were coming for interviews. We got 500. Work for you.
Andi Simon: Wow.
Maryles Casto: There is a market here. But what I wanted to do was put my training there. But I also wanted my 24 hour service. No one was offering 24 hour service at that time. The airlines were, but not any travel agency. So these were all the things.
I shouldn’t say I, because there were a lot of people involved. But I would say I had the vision that you have to look at and say, what now? What else can you do? How can you enhance your service? But what is it that the clients need? And so as we were developing the corporate market, there was no one who could touch us in the corporate market because we had every account there was. And I also worked very closely with a lot of the venture people. So when they were funding companies, of course, for travel, I owned it.
Andi Simon: Branded you, right? They endorsed you and you just came along.
Maryles Casto: Yeah. I would say, you know, you’re funding this company. How do you know they’re protecting you? You know, travel is the second largest expense. Working with me, I will guarantee you, because I also bought stock for all these companies because I thought we have to be investors as well. So even if it’s small. But I felt that every flight I was looking at that as a shareholder.
Andi Simon: You are so wise. And so it’s fascinating listening to you because once you got going, nothing stopped. You just keep figuring out pieces. You said something important, though, and it’s not a bad time to sort of migrate into the team. How did you support yourself around you with smart people? And what were you looking for in that team? They gave you the ability to multiply. They were your multipliers. What kinds of folks came in and how? One of the things that I read was that you treated this like a family.
Maryles Casto: I wanted them to feel proud. I bought my partner out after two years, I felt like she was so worried about expanding. She was so worried about losing money. And I thought, you know what, we’re still very small. If we lost money, if we went belly up, I want to build it up myself. I don’t want to drag her down. So I bought her out.
And then we had to come up with a name because at that time, I think we had nine employees. When I bought her out, she wanted to do the vacation side only. She was not interested in the rest of it. So I had to come up with them and I said, okay, what is our name going to be? Because our original name was Travel Experience.
And so we had this powwow and they said, well, why don’t we call it Casto, it’s your name. And I thought, no, I have to be very careful because if I give you my name, you have to guarantee you’re going to back it up. It’s not just about me, it’s about all of us. So I then created this where they had to belong to this elite group, which happened to be customer travel. So I had all of us in uniform. They helped design this uniform, and we would go to all the functions in our uniform.
Andi Simon: But you know the symbolic meaning of that. You know, you’re a meaning maker and the symbolism is not inconsequential. They belonged. People wanted to belong. And therefore they knew how to behave, how to think. And they took it home to their families, and they were part of something much bigger than just having a job. Correct?
Maryles Casto: Yeah. I made them very proud of being part of us. I said, it’s not me, it’s us. The Casto is you together. Of course, everybody thought it was Castro. And they look at me and say, oh, Castro. No. There’s no answer. But you know what it was. I mean, we had so much fun. We really did. We put events together and the company would come in with different hats. We come in with different costumes. And, I couldn’t wait to get into the office. And they felt the same way. There was so much joy. Lots of sorrow, too. I mean, we cry. I mean, we all shared a divorce. But we were together.
Andi Simon: Yes.
Maryles Casto: And that is very important.
Andi Simon: Amazing, amazing, amazing because you did it and it worked. And it became something well beyond itself. I want to get to your book, but also you grew it and then you added new services and then you began to see it grow, and then you finally sold it. What was the impetus?
Maryles Casto: Well, you know, when we started the business, about five years later, we got a big offer. This company, and in fact, this is a funny story because this company was a very large company, and they were interested in buying us because they wanted to get into the Silicon Valley when it was just starting. It was getting a lot of attention. And so, they made an offer and I said, no, I didn’t want to, but anyway. And he and I had a good relationship because when Intel became such a big company, purchasing people came in, and then they decided I was too small now. And they were concerned about my capacity to service them.
So he was very, very large, one of the largest agency in the United States. So they gave him the business. So we partnered together. And so that’s when he really wanted to take my business. And me, I said, no, it wasn’t going to work. So that was the first venture. And the second one was a company that was from Omaha, Nebraska, another very large company. And at that time we had Andy Grove, who became chairman of Intel. And Andy became a very good friend because, again, he was a client and he became a friend because I knew everything about his travel. And he was so paranoid that if I wasn’t going to take care of him, something would happen to his travel.
So the second offer came in and we said, okay, we’ll take it seriously. The gentleman flew in from Omaha and somewhere, somehow, I just did not feel that they were the right partners. They didn’t understand Silicon Valley. And I just felt that it’s not going to grow. It didn’t have the same spirit, they weren’t willing to be, it takes a different personality. So we thought the deal was done. And at the last minute I had to call them to say, okay, you know, we’ve arranged it. I picked up the phone and I couldn’t say yes. I said no, and oh my God, both my son and Andy were furious with me because I said no.
And I said, it just can’t work. So I knew that we had to do something. And because of my son, the offer came in and it was a really good offer, and we knew that the time would come that we would have to exit. And so we sold it two years ago. We sold it a month before the pandemic.
Andi Simon: Oh, my, timing is everything.
Maryles Casto: And now I’m a rich woman.
Andi Simon: But, you know, I have a hunch you’ve been rich through this whole journey, haven’t you?
Maryles Casto: Yeah, I have, I have, yeah.
Andi Simon: You know, the financial richness is nice, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure you worked for work’s sake. I think you worked for the absolute...
Maryles Casto: Love of it.
Andi Simon: For the love, you know, for the joy that you gave others, for the way in which you helped their lives do better. Am I misreading that? And this was spiritual and almost religious on your part, right? Correct.
Maryles Casto: Yes. It was, it is, and it still is. I still communicate with the people that, when we sold the company, we always kept the Philippines. The Philippines when we were growing so fast and we knew that we had to expand. I wanted to expand internationally, and I knew it was either India or the Philippines, and I knew the Philippines because I was from the Philippines and I knew the customer service, all the technology driven, because our business was very technology driven. I knew it was about personal travel and I knew that hospitality. It’s like somebody said, it’s Asian hospitality with Yankee business sense. That’s how somebody describes me.
Andi Simon: Well, that’s terrific, but that’s a great image of it, right? I mean, because you blended all of these together in such a way that you created a whole new way of doing things. But, my goodness, it worked, and it’s really brilliant listening to you talk about it. Talk about the book. Was this a way of capturing this and having a legacy as a book about this journey that you just shared or something different?
Maryles Casto: You know, it was something that I knew that I felt like there was a book in the making. I just never got the chance to sit down. And this was after we sold the company, and I was in the house and I was meeting with some friends, and just all of a sudden it just came to me. I had to write my book. I said, I’m ready for that. And I thought the story had to be told.
I wanted other people to read what I went through and how much I have enjoyed my life. And I wondered, my grandchildren, maybe not now, but later on when they’re older. Of course I dedicated the book for them, but I don’t think they fully understood the challenges. But when they’re grown. And maybe one day when they have a business, they can look at my book and say, you know what, Grandma did something. And I have to share the coverage. And remember, I was covered.
Andi Simon: Yeah. Tell us about the cover.
Maryles Casto: This cover was an actual one. And when I decided when we were doing so well and I thought, we needed exposure now. We wanted people to know more about Casto Travel, not just in the Valley, but other areas as well. And so I had this girlfriend who started her own business, a PR business. And so I called her as a brand and said, listen, I’m ready to do something. I want the exposure of Casto more globally or more internationally or more regionally. And so she said, okay.
So San Jose Mercury News was going to do an article and the photographer said, I can do your shot, but I don’t want to do it here. I have an idea. Meet me at the airport at 6:00 in the morning and we’ll do a shoot. And I said, oh my God, what is this about? So I met him at the airport and he had this truck, and in this truck was this desk. And he told me, bring the thing that you really want to put on the table. And I said, okay. But I thought, well, maybe it’s just at the airport.
So I brought these two doves or two birds, because Casto Travel is all about birds because that was my logo. I want to fly. I want to spread my wings. So I brought these two birds and then I thought, where are we going? He said, just follow me. And at that time, nobody can tell you, there’s no security, no nothing. So he drove this guy and his truck to the runway, and he put the desk in. He said, no, we’ll stay here. Let’s get this all organized and let’s wait for the plane. I said, wait for the plane. It took three hours to get just the angle.
Andi Simon: Oh, God.
Maryles Casto: I’ll put it up. I thought I had to use this book.
Andi Simon: Just come in so we can see it, put it up again and hold it there for a second. Ah, so that’s you. And that’s the plane over you and this story is as beautiful as the cover of the book. We would not know why that book cover is so important, but that is cool. That captures you, doesn’t it?
Maryles Casto: And, you know, the flying was because my father, when we were little, when I was little, and I was growing up, my father had an airplane. He had a small airplane, and he would be traveling from different farms. I always loved to fly. And so my father and I would go up flying. And he would say, okay, Maryles, watch. Look for the hole in the clouds so that we could get in and we could fly higher, and then we would do our maneuvers. And that was in tribute to my father. There is a hole in the cloud, and whatever I do, I always have a hole in the cloud to get out.
Andi Simon: Yeah, but your whole life has been finding that hole in the clouds and soaring up through this to get on top. This is something. Sometimes I ask the people I’m interviewing about some lessons that you wish someone had told you then. But I think that your story isn’t easy to capture in a lesson or two. Unless there’s something you think your younger self wishes somebody had told you. Is there something that you can share?
Maryles Casto: Oh gosh, somebody told me and so many people told me things. I don’t know. For me, it’s maybe kindness. For me, it’s not a word we use a lot, and it’s time for us to be kind to each other. And you don’t have to be a jerk. No, really, and I, this was my actual experience. I was invited by United Airlines to go to the Academy Awards. At the time, we were big producers of United. And so I went.
And then that night, this was Pretty Woman. Remember that, Julia Roberts? Anyway, we were staying at this beautiful hotel, and when we were being picked up in the limo, they were invited too, Larry Allison was invited with his girlfriend, and she was just fantastic looking. And then John Chambers from Cisco, so we were all going together. And when we got down, the limo was there, the door opened, and Larry Allison came in and he closed the door. He says, I don’t share my limo. This is an actual story. I don’t share my room.
And so we just looked at him because at that time, you can’t find any limo, especially Academy Awards night. So he drove off and we had to find another limo. And that’s when it’s the yin and yang. And I said, you know, you really are a jerk. And here’s John Chambers. He was so sweet. I mean, the difference between the personalities. And again, I just feel like, if you could just show a little bit more kindness and don’t get into your ego. The ego is nothing. What does it really mean?
Andi Simon: Yeah. That’s beautiful. The joy that you can give, the kindness that you can show elevates you and someone else. And then an act of kindness that stayed in your mind as a moment that you never want to do again. How can I be kind? Correct.
Maryles Casto: Okay. And that’s why I think I’m doing what I’m doing now. I suppose I mentioned to you that I’m starting my foundation because that is what it is really about. I’ve been so fortunate. And look at me. I’m now into my old age and I love it. I love what I’ve lived, and I mean that I love it. For me, aging is not a disease. It’s something to celebrate. How many of us can say, I’ve lived it.
Andi Simon: I know, but that’s so important because it’s true. We’re at a point now where we can be. We don’t have to become. We can just enjoy the moment.
Maryles Casto: Exactly. I love the whole process of aging. My body is what it is now, and I celebrate everything I have. I celebrate my hair. I no longer am going to dye my hair because I just love being white. I’m doing it. And I think that probably my message is just as we all go through our lives, enjoy the moments you have and don’t worry about the rest of the nonsense. There’s so much of that.
Andi Simon: I’m going to I wish I didn’t have to, but we’re going to say goodbye and I’m going to thank you. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Edie, for introducing you. But I can understand why her friendship and yours transformed both of you over time. Because Edie is quite remarkable. This has been a gift to me and to our listeners. So thank you.
So I’m going to say to our listeners, thank you for coming to On the Brink. I know that today has taken you off the brink. And then we’re going to all soar. But the message is kindness and acts of kindness bring joy. So let’s not just be nice, help each other also. In our book Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success that Edie Frazier and myself have written with 102 women about their wisdoms. And like what you heard today from Maryles Casto, the wisdoms help change your own lives.
And I will tell you that every event that we’re running, people share their wisdom a little like this podcast. And when they do, they are changing. And I’ve had people who keep coming back and saying, let me tell you what I heard and what I want to share again, and what I care about and what I’m now becoming. I had one woman who had yellow marks on the whole book, and I went, oh my goodness, and couldn’t wait to show me her yellow marks. She says, I’m a better leader today. And I went, man, can a book do that? It can. And Maryles Casto, thank you for joining us. So I’m going to thank you so much. Remember everybody to take your ideas, your observations, turn them into innovations. And you too can soar, like Maryles says.
Maryles Casto: Bye bye.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Curiosity is contagious. Curiosity can be learned. So be curious!
Sometimes, we meet people who make us pause for a moment and ask how we are building the life that we want to live. It is not about mimicking their lives. It is about understanding how they have stopped what they’re doing and begun reflecting on whether this was a life they wanted. That’s what happened when I met Dr. Deborah Clary. We met through the Women Business Collaborative (WBC). Deb and I were involved in WBC and found ourselves sharing our life journeys in different discussions. She was the right person to bring onto our podcast to share her career and how she has taken a turn in new directions. As you listen in, think about your own life.
Watch and listen to our conversation here An accomplished woman leader not afraid to learn new thingsDr. Debra Clary is the Founder and CEO of Elevascent, a personal growth and performance development company focused on helping individuals and teams accelerate growth through curiosity. This experience comes from three decades of executive leadership roles at Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniel’s and Humana. In addition, Dr. Clary is also an author, global speaker, playwright, off-Broadway performer and an award-winning film producer. She holds a doctorate in leadership and organizational development from George Washington University, and received the Ralph Stone Leadership Award for exemplary leadership. She is also a board director for Health E-Commerce.
In our podcast, we talk about women discovering their purpose and not letting others define them. And we share Debra’s life story as a model for you, our audience, to think about as you step along on your pathway. Own your career, and enjoy it.
Contact DebraYou can connect with Debra on LinkedIn, Facebook, and her website, or email her at [email protected].
Want more inspiring stories of women owning their careers and taking charge of their lives? Here are some of our favorites: Shellye Archambeau Is Unapologetically Ambitious And Shows Us How We Can Be Too Kerry Flynn Barrett—Learn Why So Many Brilliant Women Have Ditched The Corporate Ladder To Start Their Own Business Sarah Soule—Busting Those Stereotypes of Women Lisa Caputo—Smashing The Myths Of What Women Can Accomplish Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon. I’m your host and your guide. As you know, I’m a corporate anthropologist, and I specialize in helping organizations change and particularly the people inside them. And I really like to go looking for people to interview. And many of you send me people to interview. So it’s so much fun to share. I look for people who can help you see, feel and think in new ways.
And I use those words intentionally because you decide with the eyes and the heart. So how something feels is going to help you decide how to think about it. But what matters to me is that unless I can open your mind to see opportunities, possibilities, and be curious, you are going to see what’s all around you and opportunities are all there. So today I have a wonderful, wonderful woman to come and share with you her wisdom around curiosities.
Debra Clary is a Doctor of Organizational Design, but she’s also someone who has culled her skills inside corporate and has now launched herself outside corporate as an entrepreneur to help many companies begin to see themselves through a fresh lens. Very anthropological. Let me tell you a little bit more about her, and then I’ll ask her to talk about her own journey, because she’s had a really important juncture point.
Right now, Dr. Clay is a purpose-driven leader with a compelling message to share. Her enthusiasm lies in inspiring leaders and organizations in achieving business success through their enhancement of strategic alignment, team dynamics, and fostering a culture of curiosity. Now, that is a really big idea, bringing a wealth of experience from her roles and operations, strategy, marketing and people development at prominent companies such as Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniel’s and Humana.
Debra brings incredible business insights and her dedication is evident in her commitment to working with leaders who aspire to elevate their impact and contribution to their organizations. So she’s now writing a book, and she also is performing her own one-person play called A Curious Woman. And she did it Off Broadway, and I watched it streaming, and you can watch it coming up, too. And she’s doing it again in Louisville, and she is having a wonderful time celebrating her own success as a curious woman. Debra, thank you for joining me today.
Debra Clary: My pleasure.
Andi Simon: You know, it’s always fun when we share our stories. We’re storytellers. We’re also storymakers. And when you and I did our fireside chat at the Louisville Leadership Center, we really had a good time getting to know how we each have grown and how our own experiences have opened up opportunities for us. But for our listeners and our viewers who aren’t familiar with you, talk about your own journey and why this is such an important point for you. It’s a tipping point, opening up a whole new world of opportunity. Who is Debra?
Debra Clary: Oh, well, that’s a big question, Andi, but let me let me take a shot at this is. I was the first person in my family to go to college, graduate from college, and went on to get a Masters in Business. And my first job was driving a route truck for Frito-Lay.
Andi Simon: I always laugh when you tell me that. You say it so much better than I could.
Debra Clary: And my parents were like, Did you really need six years of higher education to do this? But I also recognized that it was an opportunity to start with a great company and they started everybody on a route truck. And the one question I asked was, Are there other women doing this? And they said, Yes. And I said, May I ride with that individual one day to see if I think I can do this? And then I did.
And so I spent nearly a decade at Frito-Lay, not on the route truck. I spent about nine months on the route truck in the city of Detroit and then evolved into sales management and then marketing and actually was one that was on the team that launched Flamin Hot, which is now a $1 billion brand for Frito-Lay. It’s where I really learned how to market to consumers. How do you understand what consumers need?
And from there, I was recruited away by Coca-Cola. I spent almost a decade at Coca-Cola in marketing roles where I got my experience of global marketing and how to really manage a global account. From there I went to Brown-Forman, where I was the VP of Strategy. I worked in the wine division, which was a really tough job, Andi. I mean, I had to spend all this time in Napa Valley tasting wines, trying to understand positioning. It was really tough, but I got through it and then I went to Jack Daniel’s.
I got really intrigued with culture because I had worked for Fortune 40 companies, and then I went to work for a publicly traded company, but it was still managed by the family, the Brown family. And there were just different dynamics, different cultures that I didn’t quite recognize because of my background. And so I said, I’m curious. I want to understand people and culture. I want to understand how I can adapt to different cultures and how I can become a better leader.
So I was reading the Wall Street Journal in which George Washington University had an ad in there that they had this cohort program for people that wanted to better understand leadership and culture. Exactly what I was looking for at the doctoral level. And so I went to my boss and said, I’m really passionate about this. And he said, Then go do it. And they completely supported me and funded that.
So while sipping wine in Napa Valley, I was also going to school full time. So full time mother, full time employee and then a full time student. And how I did that is, once a month I flew to Washington, DC. I went to school 12 hours Friday, 12 hours Saturday and then I flew home Sunday morning, so that I could be with my children. And I did that for three years. Wrote my dissertation on women in leadership. I just had this real passion on what are the differences in women leadership and how we can continuously support women to step into these really big roles.
And then I was recruited away by Humana, a healthcare company. And at first I said, There is no way I’m going into healthcare. I mean soda and snacks and now alcohol. Healthcare just did not seem to fit me. But, they said, You have an opportunity that we are starting a Leadership Institute. With your marketing, your business, your experience, and now with this academic degree, you’re the perfect person to help us change our culture. And I was really drawn to those words of changing culture because I had experienced different cultures, but I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. I had the academic side of it. I had some opinions, but now I was going to take this step and really put it into play.
And so for my first nine years at Humana, I ran the Leadership Institute, and we did everything from assessments to development of our top executives. And then we got really brave and we took our learning outside of the company. And we spent time in Europe and in the US and offered how to understand the healthcare system because we really recognize that if the healthcare system is going to get better and have better outcomes, everyone in the community needs to be connected to it.
And we started that with a simulation and we had much success. And then what happened is, we at Humana, we got a new CEO and he called me one day and said, Can you come talk? He said, I’m going to be doing some significant changes on my team. They’re going to be off boarding and onboarding, and I need you embedded in the team. You know, 24-7. Your role is to be with us all the time.
And so for the last eight years I did that: helping them understand team dynamics, leading their strategy sessions, all their off sites and really about team dynamics and how you get better as a team. And then that drives the business results. And then about a year ago, I said, Wow, I’m still curious on how I can scale my thought leadership outside of the corporate world. And so I made this transition about a year ago.
The number one thing I did, as you mentioned: I wrote and performed a one-woman show. I never did that in my life. Had never performed in that way. I’d done keynotes, but never an actual play. And I surrounded myself with people that knew how to do that. And did a sold out show in New York. And now we have one coming up here next month in Louisville, Kentucky. So that is a little bit about my four decades in corporate America. And now my launch to scale my knowledge and my curiosity to other organizations.
Andi Simon: I bet. I mean, there are many things that we can talk about today, but I bet that the audience, our listeners, are curious about a couple of things. One of which is, how do you grow like you have grown? Because the changes in places have not simply been taking what you were and applying them. It’s changing who you were when you’re applying them. This is an ongoing theme.
I’m finding the people who are in my new book within Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success are all talking about owning yourself and owning your career. Can you talk a little bit about it and then we’ll talk about your curiosity, but I’m also anxious to share with people what you discovered as you moved from being a Frito-Lay route driver all the way up to where you are at Humana, embedded in the organization to help build better what goes on. How does that happen?
Debra Clary: That’s another big question, Andi. It’s not a simple question. I think the things that helped me was that my parents taught me the value of hard work and an education, and that’s what I did. I was not afraid to work hard. I wasn’t afraid to do the assignments that were given to me. And then couple that with, I am a learner and I’m curious, and I certainly recognized that there was a lot I didn’t know, but I was bold enough to ask other people, people that I was admiring or people that had an expertise in that.
I love inquiry, I love to have dialogue and discussion around that. And I’ll give you an example. When I was with Frito-Lay and I was a regional manager. And I had two babies. And I was just trying to figure out how to manage this new world of motherhood, but wanting to climb the corporate ladder. This woman from headquarters at Frito-Lay flew into Detroit, and my job was to take her around and show her the market and have a conversation about that. And she was just, like, beautiful. Her hair was in place, there was no spit up on her. You know, her suit. I mean, she was just like, she seemed like she had it all together. And I also knew she had children.
And on the way to the airport, I got up enough nerve to say, How do you do it? Well, how do you guide me to do this? It’s a struggle for me. I’m trying to figure out how to be a good mom and how to be a good executive. And she said, Oh, it’s really simple. It’s two words. Get help! What do you mean, get help? She says, Have someone that you trust to watch your children. Have someone clean your home. Have someone mow your lawn.
I mean, she was just going on and on, and I’m like, But I don’t have that kind of discretionary income. I’m making it. But, I’m also trying to save money. And she said, If you don’t invest in this, you’re never going to get to the next rung because you’re always going to be stressed and worrying. And from that point forward, I have said, Get help when I don’t know how to do something or I need support, get help. And I recently read this book called, Who Not How. Are you familiar with this?
Andi Simon: I’m not. It sounds good.
Debra Clary: Extraordinary book about when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re starting an organization, or even if you have an organization, it’s not about you doing the work, it’s about you getting people that can help you do the work that you don’t have an expertise in that. So building a website, doing software development. Why are you investing your time in that? You need to hire the right people to do that. And in the last three weeks, it’s made a significant change in my outlook and my vision for, I can do this. I can actually do this.
Andi Simon: I love it, I love your story. You said that’s a big, big question, but in some ways you answered it with two words. It is not you alone. It’s a team. You said that you took a dysfunctional team and you helped to build a team. And if the team does better, you all do better. So there are two wisdoms already that have popped out, one of which is that it’s not a solo job. Even orchestras need to back up the soloist. I mean, there’s a whole lot of orchestra going on and sometimes a conductor.
But the other part is that it’s okay to learn along the way what can be done to help you get somewhere, as long as you have a sense that you’re on a journey to go somewhere, and that’s what’s really interesting and makes me curious about why you didn’t stay inside corporate. You might have felt a little stuck or stalled. You ventured out into, I’ll call it, a foreign territory.
Having been in my own business for 22 years and dealing with entrepreneurs all the time, I taught entrepreneurship at Washington University. It is a foreign country for people who have been inside a corporation. So as you’re entering this, it needs a new language. It needs new habits. It needs a new mindset.
You know, share with the audience about what you’re trying to develop, because you’re clearly curious about trying to help people who need to be more curious, become more curious. Right?7 So let’s talk about this whole vision of where you’re going. Would that be okay?
Debra Clary: Yeah. So let me start with how I got on this path. I was sitting next to our CEO in a meeting, and he leaned over and whispered to me, Do you think curiosity can be learned or is it innate? And I said, I don’t know, but I’m curious. So that next week just happened to be the 4th of July, and I was going to be on holiday that whole week. I just dug into research on curiosity so that following Monday I go back to work. I lean over to him and I say, It can be learned. And that was that, right?
I know all this about curiosity, but that was that. And about a week later, I’m talking about serendipity. Somebody that ran a very large division for our company called and said, We’d love for you to come do a keynote in Austin. Can you do it? And I go, Absolutely. What do you want me to talk about? And they go, You can talk about whatever you want to talk about…curiosity.
And so I’d already done all I had prepared myself for something to come. And so I developed the information in terms of what happens to your brain when you’re curious. You know, I want people to understand that this is a neuroscience perspective on that. Demonstrating that curiosity is good for the brain. And then I shared about the difference between children and adults. These are studies: why children ask questions and why adults don’t ask questions.
And then I said to him: And here’s what the benefit of it is. And then I taught them some practical things that they can do to be curious. And that was that. I thought, Okay, this will probably never happen again. And then it snowballed. And I think I spoke to over 10,000 people at Humana and then started speaking externally. And I thought, Wow, people are curious. They want to learn about curiosity. But more importantly, they want to be curious. And the thing that I found, Andi, is that curiosity is contagious.
Andi Simon: Yes.
Debra Clary: So if you are around curious people, you’re going to be curious.
Andi Simon: Debra, let’s talk some more. This is so much fun because what happens if you have this contagion called curiosity? Are good things happening?
Debra Clary: Absolutely. And, you know, being a scientist, I wanted to know how to be able to measure it. What are the levels of curiosity? So I partnered with a group out of MIT to say, I want a valid assessment that can demonstrate the level of curiosity at an individual level and a curiosity in an org. level, because if we have data, then we can make change.
So I mean, the data suggests that when you’re curious, people begin to feel seen, valued and heard. And isn’t that a lovely thing if people feel that. What does that do for engagement? What does it do for problem solving? What does it do for innovation? Well, all of that increases.
People want to work in a curious environment. They want to work for a leader that is open to your ideas, that your ideas matter. That’s what employees want. That’s what associates want. And so not only now can we talk about it from other studies and why it’s important, and here are the benefits from it. We can actually measure your current state of curiosity. And then we help you to figure out what are areas that you can get better in to help you drive this within your organization.
Andi Simon: It’s such an interesting word because by and large, I doubt there’s an MBA program with a course on curiosity, is there? I’m not aware of it. So it isn’t as if we are thinking about this in the training that we’re giving aspiring next generation business people. And I doubt when they walk into HR, people ask them, Are you a curious person? They’ll ask about their skills and how they like to get along. And are they collaborative, perhaps. And are they, you know, take charge and directing?
But curiosity opens up a very different view of the world. It sort of challenges the imposter syndrome. It’s okay not to know, and it’s okay that we can figure out what is important by simply figuring out what’s important. And that becomes very important. I often work with organizations going through fast change, either machine learning or changes to their clients or robots or hybrids. Humans hate change, their brains fight it. The amygdala says, Go away. You know I’m going to fear you, I fear you. I don’t want any of this cortisol flying around in your brain saying, Get away. This is bad news stuff. And you’re saying, Can turn this all into beautiful oxytocin, where I’m having such fun learning new stuff and growing, which is really important. Am I right?
Debra Clary: Yeah. It’s like, bring on the dopamine. You know that you get that when you feel like somebody cares about you because they’re asking questions and they’re suspending judgment. You know, that dopamine is hitting.
Andi Simon: And bring on the dopamine. Love it.
Debra Clary: I’ve never said it like that before, but that’s what occurs to me. So what we also know from a neuroscience perspective is, the brain is a machine and it is designed to keep you safe. And so there’s this thing called fast pass matching, meaning that when something comes up, your brain wants to go to a solution as quick as possible because our ancestors were in danger. So you need to take action. And what we today have to guard against is not fast past matching. If it sounds like it goes really quick, I have someone step back and say, Wait, maybe there’s another choice, maybe there’s another option.
Going back to your question around an interview: you don’t ask people if they’re curious. However, you could ask them questions like, What is the last thing you learned? What is something that you’re working on that you don’t know right now? And you can begin to get an idea if that’s something that they’re interested in learning.
You can also figure out what is their tenacity to stay with the project because, you know, things don’t go smoothly all the time, especially when you’re being really innovative. And what is your ability to be determined and to stay with it? That’s also something that you can measure.
Andi Simon: Now, I bet you that it doesn’t matter if you’re an engineer who likes to put things into boxes, or you’re a marketing person who likes to be creative. That curiosity can be for both of them. It doesn’t matter much what the nature of your mind is. If you open it up to see new things and unexpected things, you can expand the way an engineer can see the data boxes and creativity is already looking there.
And sometimes my creatives have trouble settling down on something. They see too many things, too many ideas. Entrepreneurs have a terrible way of having more ideas than they have the possibility of actually implementing. But that’s okay. And part of the learning process. One entrepreneur said, I needed a Type A to organize me, or if not, I never got any ideas done. And so you need to know yourself, but you also need to let the ideas flow so that you can grow. And this is a growth strategy.
Debra Clary: Absolutely. I was recently working with a client who is an engineer, and I was asking a series of questions, and I could tell he was getting really frustrated because he wanted the pattern. He wanted to get to the solution. And when I realized that, I had to share with him: We are going to get to an answer and we are going to make a decision. But this very period of time right now is about exploring what’s possible so we get to the best solution. But when we decide on that, it is go and we’re going to get it done.
And it was just like this huge relief on his face. And my point is, is that you have to kind of understand who you’re working with as you’re pacing and leading them. I mean, ultimately, you want people to be able to take action. You want them to feel good about the solution. And of course, that translates into two business outcomes.
Andi Simon: Yes, I know, but for humans, ambiguity is the most dangerous place to be. You can be black or white, but they don’t like gray. It can be red or blue, but not purple. And when we are adverse to the ambiguity, we miss all the opportunities because they usually pop up betwixt and between, don’t they?
Debra Clary: And when that occurs to me, which has been happening a lot lately as I’m starting up this company, I’ll remind myself: You don’t know the answer. But Deb, you’re going to figure it out and you’re going to have people that are going to help you figure it out. And that just takes my heart rate all the way down and says, well, that’s right, this is a mess. And we’re going to get to it.
Andi Simon: Yes. And there it is. Kay Unger from Kay Unger Fashion Designs, who’s done wonderful creative things in the design and fashion industry for many years, said something to me the other day that she sees things in pictures, and of course the brain actually sees everything in pictures.
And so what she finds is that once she has a problem to solve, she puts all the pictures out and watches how they come together, almost like solving a puzzle. And I share that metaphor for you and the audience, because it’s a very interesting way to realize that is, in fact, how the brain likes to work. It likes pictures, it likes to see and visualize.
And I actually gave my leadership academy pads of paper and colored pencils and said, Now you’re going to draw yourself a year from now so you can visualize where you’re going, because if you can’t see it, you’re never going to get there. But if you can, even if it’s not right, you’ll begin to take the small, curious steps to see how to move along. And you can redraw the picture. But without one, not much can happen because you get stuff stalled.
Debra Clary: Absolutely. I think that is so powerful. What Kate said around that our brains do think in pictures. And if you think about it, I was in France this year and I spent time in the caves where the artists were. It’s just so extraordinary what these men and women did during the Ice Age and how they communicated was through these pictures and that has been passed down to each of us in terms of first pictures and then the spoken word and the written word came so, so much later.
Andi Simon: Of course, but Gutenberg came much later. But that was 35,000 years ago. And they were pretty sophisticated because they brought their pigments from long distances away. And their sophistication in the pictures were amazing stories to be told and shared. But, you know, before that the cave paintings weren’t and then all of a sudden they were. And I often wonder, how much was that we haven’t really been able to find because we haven’t found the artifacts with them and where they were located. But it’s an interesting story, and we can’t quite decide if the humans did it or the Neanderthals did it because they were sharing the same territories together.
Debra Clary: Yes, absolutely. And you probably have seen this recent finding in, I think it was Germany. As an anthropologist, I mean, you and I are of the same minds. We come from a different way, but it’s like getting curious enough to understand and go deeper and say, well, what about this? Well, this doesn’t match. How could this particularly match? I mean, every day to me is fascinating. It’s just when I keep my mind open, it’s just fascinating.
Andi Simon: You’re having fun, aren’t you?
Debra Clary: I am having fun.
Andi Simon: Good. Let’s talk a little bit about if people want to learn more about you, where would the website be so that they could find you?
Debra Clary: Yes. So it’s DebraClary.com so just my name and they’ll see the services and the consulting that I offer. But they also have a free curiosity assessment. So they click on that link. They’re going to get their score on their current level of curiosity.
Andi Simon: Oh let’s say that again. So if you’re curious about your curiosity go to DebraClary.com and download the survey there. And it’s a short version. It’s not the long one she might give you in your organization, but enough to give you an assessment of your curiosity. And I bet you’re curious about your curiosity. Once you find it then the question is, what do I do with it? And then you can get back to DebraClary.com. And she would be delighted to talk to you about how you take and convert curiosity into opportunity, because that’s what it’s really opening for you.
So on that note, I’m going to wrap us up for today because I’ve had such a good time. Last note, one or two thoughts, Debra, that you want to make sure they don’t forget.
Debra Clary: That curiosity is contagious. Curiosity can be learned.
Andi Simon: Good. That is wonderful. So for those of you who came, whether you’re watching or you’re listening, it’s always a pleasure. Send along those who you would like me to interview on our podcast. We have over 380 done and there are many more in the queue coming, and they’re all really, like Debra Clary, extraordinarily helpful to help you get off the brink.
And if you’re on the brink, my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways, which is what we’re going to do. Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. But I will tell you, I’m learning that a book has an energy, a force, and it’s when the reader opens that book. Debra and I did a program at Louisville Leadership, and we had a ball with 50 women who couldn’t get enough wisdom out of our wisdoms and who wanted to share wisdoms. That was really cool, wasn’t it?
Debra Clary: Yes.
Andi Simon: So on that note, my friends, let us know how you are doing. Send us emails at [email protected] and we look forward to hearing from you. Have a wonderful day. Goodbye and thank you so much Deb. It was a pleasure and I’m sure everyone else has enjoyed it as much as I have.
Debra Clary: Thank you Andi.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Hear how when you allow life to unfold, you find that miracles happen
I first interviewed Dr. Srikumar Rao in July 2023 and was so deeply inspired by the wisdoms he shared with us that I wanted to have him back so he could teach us more. And he does. The title of his new book is Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots, in which he offers solid tools we can use to let go of the mental chatter that gets in the way of seeing what’s possible. The universe is benevolent, Dr. Rao says, it’s your friend, and when we understand this, that’s when we can change our story and thus, the direction of our lives. Are you ready to make a change, today?
Watch and listen to our conversation here Some of Dr. Rao’s wisdoms which you can apply to your own life The most important thing is not what you’re doing but who you are being as you do it. Too often we get hung up on the doing, and we completely miss the fact that being is much more important than the doing. Allow life to unfold. And as you do, you find that miracles happen, and they happen on a regular basis. We never experience life the way it is. We always experience life according to the story we tell ourselves about it. When you change your thinking from the universe is indifferent to the universe is friendly, your experience of life has such a tremendous transformation. Open yourself up to possibilities. The universe is benevolent. The universe is your friend. Recognize that it’s your friend. And the more you do this, the more signs you will get that it in fact is your friend. Your job in this life is to recognize who you really are and cast yourself free from this cage in which you have ensnared yourself. Trust yourself and recognize that the door to your prison is always open and unlocked. All you have to do is open the door and step out of it. Why does the universe give you stuff you don’t want? Well, the universe doesn’t give you what you want, but gives you exactly what you need for your learning and growth. We all have mental chatter. And the problem is not that you have mental chatter, the problem is you identify with your mental chatter. So sit back and observe your mental chatter. Observe yourself feeling worried. Observe yourself feeling anxious. And as you create that distance, you no longer have your mental chatter. You’re the observer of the mental chatter. Then it loses its ability to take you to places you don’t want to go. To contact Dr. Srikumar RaoYou can reach out to Dr. Rao on LinkedIn, Twitter or his website, The Rao Institute. Watch his TED Talk here and email him at [email protected].
More inspiration for finding joy and purpsoe on your life journey: Blog: Time to Add Gratitude to Your Life—And Your Company’s Culture! Blog: You Can Find Joy And Happiness In Turbulent Times! Podcast: Richard Sheridan—How To Lead With Joy And Purpose! Podcast: Meg Nocero—Can You Feel Joy As You Rethink Your Life? Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon. I’m your host and your guide. And as you know, this podcast is designed to help you get off the brink. The one thing we don’t want you to do is get stuck or stalled. But you can begin to understand how you can change. And that’s what we like to help people and their organizations do.
So today, I have a wonderful gentleman here, and Doctor Rao did a podcast with us earlier, last July in fact, that was just a hit, but he’s got a new book coming out. Actually, it’s out and I have been reading it and you will love it. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Srikumar Rao.
He is a creator of creativity and personal mastery. His bio doesn’t fit a bio. It’s a wonderful story about a life well-lived. He’s a speaker, a former business school professor and head of The Rao Institute, and I urge you to take a look at that online because it’s full of rich opportunities for you to begin to see, feel and think in new ways. And I use those words, but they mimic the words he uses.
He is an executive coach to senior business executives, and he helps them find deeper meaning and engagement in their work. He also talks about the fact that work isn’t work. And I love the idea because I love to work, and people say, when are you going to retire? I say, I’m never going to retire. Why is work bad? Because we define it as something that is not fun, but work isn’t work. Work is something that gives us all kinds of things, purpose, meaning, joy. What could it do for you?
My last thought today is to make sure that you understand Dr. Rao has programs and coaching that you can enjoy because they are joyful to help you begin to become the kind of person that you’d like to be. I’m going to call you Srikumar.
Srikumar Rao: Works just fine.
Andi Simon: Thank you for joining me again. It’s really a pleasure.
Srikumar Rao: It’s my pleasure, Andi. I had such a blast the last time you interviewed me that I was positively looking forward to this session.
Andi Simon: For our audience, watch out, here comes some really wonderful, wonderful stuff. Give the audience some context, though. Who are you? A man of your journey and why was this book? The book is called Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots. Now when you buy an ebook, that’s how I can show you the book. And I did buy a hard copy, but it isn’t a hard copy. And as I’m reading it, I think you’re going to find it wonderful. What is the context for this book and who are you? Why should they listen?
Srikumar Rao: Who am I? As you mentioned, I’m an executive coach, and I have a very well defined niche. I work with successful people, mostly entrepreneurs, who have already done very well for themselves. But they’re driven. They want to have an outsized impact on the world.
But at the same time, they have an explicitly spiritual bent that they would like to infuse into every area of their life. They know that life is about more than getting the biggest toys, or the most expensive toys. And there’s something deeper, and they want to bring that into all parts of their life. So that’s the sandbox in which I play, and to the best of my knowledge, I’m the only person who’s playing in that particular sandbox. I may be wrong, but I’m not aware of any others.
Andi Simon: Well, clearly it’s not a red ocean of lots of competition pushing you away, is it?
Srikumar Rao: No there isn’t. By the time people come to me, they’ve already done their homework. They’ve listened to my TED Talk. They watched many of my videos on YouTube, and they know they want to work with me.
Andi Simon: And when they do the kind of work you like to do with them, can you give us some ideas?
Srikumar Rao: We have conversations. We have deep conversations, and I have an unusual take on coaching. So let me explain that. In my view, the only thing you ever do in life, Andi, is you work on yourself. A benevolent universe has given you many tools. Your husband is a tool. Your daughters and granddaughters are tools. The business you run, the clients you have, they’re all tools.
You want to do the very best you can for your clients. You want them to feel: Gee, hiring Andi was the best thing that I ever did. But in the process of doing that, what you’re really doing is you’re working on yourself. You want to be a great wife. You want to be a great mother. In the process of doing that, what you really do is you work on yourself.
The only thing you ever do in life is work on yourself. Now the universe has given you wonderful tools and running a business is a Swiss army knife of tools. You use that skillfully, but you never lose sight of the fact that in using these tools skillfully, what you’re really doing is you’re working on yourself. Does that make sense to you, Andi?
Andi Simon: Yes. Maybe because it requires you to be reflective of what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and what the impact or the outcome is.
Srikumar Rao: Exactly correct. Because the most important thing, Andi, is not what you’re doing. but who you’re being as you do it. And too often we get hung up on the doing, and we completely miss the fact that being is much more important than the doing.
Andi Simon: I’ll stay on that for a moment. I don’t want to lose track of why this new book and how it fits. But as I hear you, you work with successful people who may or may not realize how they have become who they are. They may not be happy with where they are, but they don’t seem to have a toolkit to begin to take them to the next place. And that is a big theme that I’m finding that people find themselves either in retirement or transition or job change or career growth, and it’s being done to them instead of them owning their life and who they are, something that you have found as well.
Srikumar Rao: Absolutely, yes. Because too many people, Andi, go around trying to make life happen.
Andi Simon: Forgive me for laughing.
Srikumar Rao: I love life to unroll, unfold. And as you allow life to unfold, you find that miracles happen and they happen on a regular basis.
Andi Simon: Well, you and I were talking about serendipity, but miracles are a different word. Similar? Your early conversation about a path through life, I think, is so valuable to think about for our audience, who’s either watching you or listening that the steps aren’t necessarily, you can’t necessarily see them, but you can begin to live them.
Srikumar Rao: Exactly correct. You know, let me share something with you, Andi. If you ask people: Are you happy? Most of them will say, Yes, I’m happy. Remember, these are successful people already, but we define happiness too narrowly. We define happiness as there’s nothing really bothering me right now, and there are actually some things that I like, or I’m looking forward to watching a new Netflix series or having dinner with a friend or something like that.
That’s a very low part. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, do you feel radiantly alive? Do you feel so full of gratitude that you feel as if you’re bursting? Are you not walking, but joyously floating through the air, hitting ground every 100ft or so. Is that your experience of life? And if that’s not your experience of life, why not? Because that is your nature.
So how do you reclaim the joy you felt as a child, when you could spend an hour watching a dog chase its tail? Why have you lost that? And how can you bring it back to your life today? That’s what my coaching is about. And the wonderful thing is that when you’re in that space, your business and whatever else you know just floats effortlessly and you accomplish more than you could ever have dreamed possible. It just happens because you’re not trying to force things. You’re allowing the universe to unfold.
Andi Simon: Let’s dig deeper into that. Marissa Peer is really a renowned hypnotherapist who often talks about the fact that we live the story in our mind. And our mind also loves to go to pleasure, not pain. Even if the pain causes pleasure, like narcotics might. And the habits take over and you don’t even know that you’re habit driven. You think you have free will.
And so this complicated human where we want to take and know our own selves and take ownership of it, determine our careers, determine our life, give it more intentionality, a purpose, isn’t that easy. And so the question becomes, how do you change the story, modify the habits, begin to not simply just wish, but to begin to actually feel that gratitude, that happiness.
I don’t want to add my ideas, I want to hear yours because our listeners do. But there’s a way of taking where you are. You may have your house, you may have your car, you may have your club. You may think you’re happy, but take it to a whole next level where you are. Every day is a gift, and you wake up happy to be there.
Srikumar Rao: And the short answer to that, Andi, is, you have to work at it. Because we have been programmed, we have been conditioned, and we are so programmed and conditioned that we don’t even recognize that we have been programmed and conditioned. It’s true. And what we have is, we’ve got a lot of extraneous thoughts going on. I call it mental chatter, and mental chatter is always with you. It’s so much a part of your life that you don’t even recognize you have it.
You know, the kind of thing that goes: Oh, drat my secretary screwed up again, and should I keep her or should I fire her? And I’m sick and tired of having to go through these small snafus that keep coming up, which she should have handled. All of that is mental chatter. We live our life defined by our mental chatter, and we never recognize that we’re living a life which is defined by our mental chatter and not by what is really happening internally to us.
But one of the first things that I do with my client is, I get them to understand that this mental chatter, which you ignore, is actually creating the life that you live in. So the first step is to be aware that there is this stuff that is happening. The first step is to recognize that this is happening and this is really running your life. And when you do that and you become aware of your mental chatter as opposed to being carried away by your mental chatter, you start to say, hey, you know, the world isn’t what I thought it was. It’s something that’s different. Yeah, that is the starting point.
Andi Simon: With that in mind, I don’t like to tease my audience, give us something a little bit more illustrative, concrete to take from it. Stop the mental chatter because when you stop it, then you’re going to fill yourself with an opportunity.
Srikumar Rao: Absolutely. Let me share something which I’m sure some of your clients and many of the people listening to this podcast can relate with. I was teaching in London Business School and I had a student who was an investment banker and a very successful investment banker. There were many problems in his marriage. Because he was an investment banker, he was working long hours. And because he worked long hours, he missed many family occasions, dinners. You know, his son’s first piano recital and stuff like that. And his wife would get very upset at him. “You said you’d be back and you weren’t.” And she accused him of not caring.
From his perspective, the very fact that he was working long hours at a job that he didn’t particularly like was evidence of his caring. And obviously they were able to maintain the lifestyle that they did because of the income he pulled in from his job. So the very fact that he was working long hours was, in his mind, an expression of caring.
When she laced into him, he would get defensive, they’d have massive fights. And yet it was just a very uncomfortable, uncomfortable situation. And they were rapidly heading towards divorce. And then in my course, somebody suggested to him that, look, when your wife is lashing it to you for not caring, what she’s really saying is, honey, I miss you. And I wish that I was with you or you were with me.
Totally not convinced but he agreed to try it. And the next time he was late and his wife started getting mad at him and accusing him of not caring, instead of reacting the way he normally did, he said, Honey, it must have been really tough on you. I’m so sorry. Which is so different from what he usually said that she was taken aback. And what would have been an entire evening quarrel petered out in 30 minutes. And as he continued doing that, and each time that she got angry at him or started to get sarcastic, he would simply say, I love you. And I realize it’s very tough on you, I will try to make it up.
And gradually their bitter quarrels faded away. They didn’t entirely resolve the situation, but it became something to be handled as opposed to: this is going to lead to the end of our marriage. I was about to say that’s the way in which we’re always telling stories to ourselves. And we don’t recognize that we’re telling stories to ourselves. We believe this is the reality.
Andi Simon: Let’s stay there. I’m making some notes. In the stories, we’re always a hero. Stories that we’re telling ourselves, we’re always the hero.
Srikumar Rao: Yes.
Andi Simon: Right. And so the story you just shared is a beautiful one. Where he was right. She was wrong. She was right. He was wrong until they stopped being heroes to themselves. But literally, he just became, in the words he said to her, caring about how she was. It deflated all of the competition, the animosity. What a beautiful story to share and think about. Yeah, because it’s not complicated. It’s just, you know, change the story and change your life.
Srikumar Rao: Exactly correct. What we don’t recognize is that we never experience life the way it is. We always experience life according to the story we tell ourselves about it. And most of us never understand that this is what is happening, that it isn’t reality. It’s the story we have told ourselves and which we believe without ever recognizing that it is a story, and we have the opportunity to change the narrative. And what I’m very good at, is helping people understand that and to change the narrative.
Andi Simon: That leads very nicely, though, into your new book. Tell us about the timing, the pacing. What was a catalytic moment for another book. Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots has a purpose, and there’s something at the end of it for you to use to self-assess. But the context is important here because as the listener thinks about their story that’s guiding their life either toward happiness or toward less than, it’s an opportunity to begin to rethink who am I and the story I’m living and what am I thinking. Please, what was the motivation for this book and tell us about it.
Srikumar Rao: A book, Andi, and you can understand this, being a multiple times author yourself, is like a baby. You know, it comes to a point at which it has to be born. Yes, that’s what happened with this. I wanted to, as you know, I’m an executive coach and people ask me questions. And I noticed that there was a great deal of similarity in the questions. And this cuts across countries, cuts across culture, cuts across ethnic and other backgrounds.
They’re human problems, not problems related to any particular occupation, country, or religious or ethnic background. So I figured that if I put this down, it would be a help to people to understand that. And some of them, of course, might want to go deeper. And if so, they reach out to me and we discuss what I can do for them.
But the idea is to give them solid tools, and the heart of it is to understand that the world we’re living in is not a real world. It’s a construct. We build that construct with our mental chatter and our mental models. Now, this is hugely liberating because if the world we’re living in is not real and you don’t like it, then you can deconstruct the parts of it you don’t like and build it again.
But what do you do if the world you live in is real, and you don’t like it, you’re screwed. But if it’s not real, you can change it. So how do you go about doing that? That’s what my coaching is all about. And some of the tools that I use are given in that book Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots. And I’ve tried to illustrate it by means of stories, because I find that stories bring it home very, very powerfully. This is a story I shared with you about the investment banker and his wife. And, you know, they were able to make almost a U-turn.
Andi Simon: Now stay on that. I want to talk a little bit more about some of the chapters in there but we often say that we live an illusion. The story creates an illusion that guides our day but isn’t real. And the only truth is there’s no truth. It’s very hard for people not to say, this isn’t real. Well, sort of, but the pen is only real enough when you write with it, and something happens but it’s hard to understand that some of them, the stories that you have in there, though, are really very important for thinking about who am I and what am I doing and why am I doing this. Can you share a few of them? I’ll say the short chapters, but there are a couple of major points.
Srikumar Rao: Here’s one. Now, how do you think about the universe? Einstein said that the most important question you will ever ask yourself is, is the universe friendly? Now we respect Einstein because he was a great scientist, but he was also a philosopher who had a very intimate understanding of how the universe worked. And Einstein said, the most important question you will ever ask yourself is, is the universe friendly?
Now, there are some people who believe that the universe is distinctly unfriendly, and the sole purpose of the universe is to frustrate. The vast, overwhelming majority of us believe the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly. It’s indifferent. The universe doesn’t know you exist and couldn’t care less. So here you are going around doing your thing. There’s a universe going around doing its thing. Sometimes it seems to work with you, sometimes it seems to work against you. But essentially it’s a random process.
What if that wasn’t true? What if the universe was aware of your existence and the universe was well-disposed towards you? Why does the universe give you stuff you don’t want? You want to go on vacation and the universe gives you pandemics and lockdowns. Why does the universe give you stuff you don’t want? Well, the universe didn’t give you what you wanted, but gave you exactly what you needed for your learning and growth.
Like you’re a small child and you want a tub of ice cream, and the universe gives you fruits and vegetables, and you don’t want fruits and vegetables, you want a tub of ice cream. But the universe through your parents gives you fruits and vegetables. It isn’t until you reach a much higher level of maturity that you can say, thank God I got fruits and vegetables rather than a tub of ice cream. What if the universe was exactly like that?
That is a mental model, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it’s a superior mental model. And regardless of whether the universe was friendly or not, if you believed the universe was friendly, your experience of life would be a whole lot better.
How do you adopt this mental model? And the idea is recognize that it’s a superior mental model and look for signs that this is operating in your life. And I advocate people having a notebook where they write down the signs that the universe is friendly, and when you do that, you’ll see them everywhere.
I’ll give you an example. This happened to me yesterday. So I had a plumbing issue in one of my toilets, and I called the plumber and he came and fixed it. And after he did that, he had come to my house earlier, and he was missing a drill, and he thought he might have left it downstairs. So I went to the basement to check, and he noticed that there was a pinhole leak in one of my pipes, and discovered it purely by accident. But he looked at that and pointed to my attention and said, I’m here and I’ll fix it. It could have been quite major, and he fixed it. Completely serendipitous. That’s a miracle. It’s a sign the universe is friendly.
Most of the time when something like that happens, we dismiss it as a coincidence. So coincidence is a miracle killer. But when you start noting the ways in which the universe seems to be working with you and has your back, you notice so many of them that you’ll reach an internal tipping point. And in that tipping point, you will tip over from “the universe is indifferent” to “the universe is friendly.” And when you do that, your experience of life has such a tremendous transformation.
Andi Simon: And I think that the timing of your conversation today is so interesting because I too, I believe in, in those kinds of chance moments which aren’t clearly by chance. And there was nothing that made him go down there, except perhaps he left his drill down there and nothing that said, please take a look at a pinhole in the pipe or anything for you. I started a conversation today talking about where we’re going and the kinds of things we’re in. But, it is an interesting lesson for our listeners, a wisdom to begin to open up your mind to possibilities.
Srikumar Rao: That is the key point. You’ve hit the nail right on the head. Open yourself up to possibilities.
Andi Simon: Because that’s the only way you’re going to grow. As we know that the brain hates change, unfamiliarly. It fights everything that comes in and threatens what’s current. You have to overcome that cortisol that’s produced until it, nope, I want some oxytocin, because I think this is the greatest idea that I could begin to think about. But the only one who can manage that is you.
Srikumar Rao: Absolutely. And when you start living in a friendly universe, then you say something happens to you and you say, okay, you know, there’s a lesson in there for me. And what is the lesson and how soon can I learn it? And you’ll invariably find that the unfortunate situation resolves itself.
Andi Simon: So when you’re up at two in the morning thinking about something that’s really bugging you, let it go. Meditate, quiet the mind.
So I’m watching our time and it’s almost ready to wrap up, but I want to talk about one thing more and that is meditation, mindfulness, managing your mind. Because unless you understand there are things you can do, in fact, I’m not going to say take charge of your mind, but quiet it, you’re going to think, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to let go of those negatives to absorb the positive. Any things that you particularly like to do? I’ve learned mindfulness myself, but please.
Srikumar Rao: What happens? Andi we have this mental chatter going on, and you can’t stop it. It’s pointless saying, you know something is happening, don’t worry about it. If you could not worry about it, you’d not worry about it. But you’re incapable of not worrying about it. That’s okay. You cannot stop worrying about it, but you can observe and be aware of the fact that you’re worrying about it.
So one of the cornerstone exercises of mine is, look, you have this mental chatter that’s going on. And the problem is not that you have mental chatter. The problem is you identify with your mental chatter. And when you identify with the mental chatter, it can grab you by the neck and take you to all kinds of dark places. So sit back and observe your mental chatter. Observe yourself feeling worried. Observe yourself feeling anxious.
And as you create that distance, you no longer have your mental chatter. You’re the observer of the mental chatter. The velocity and the power of that chatter, it diminishes and it loses the ability to take you to places you don’t want to go. It’s very easy to describe and it’s very easy to start off on that. It’s very difficult to keep it there because you start observing your mental chatter and in seconds you’ve lost it and you become your mental chatter. When that happens, go back to being the observer. This is one of the cornerstone exercises of my programs and my coaching. But as you become better and better at that, you can be an observer for a longer and longer period, and you’ll find that the things that used to bother you no longer bother you because you let them go.
Andi Simon: And that letting go is a lot like what you have to do to grow up. Yeah. Let it go. And at any age, you can be, you know, still a child, let it go to get to the next stage in your own personal growth. I’ve enjoyed this so much. I do want to say one thing for our listeners and our viewers, that when you’re working, when you’re in an organization that may have gotten toxic or may seem to be unpleasant to get to work every day, or your folks are beginning to struggle, time to sit down with them and think about that mental chatter that’s going on. It may come from outside of the workplace or inside. Or maybe somebody said something to someone.
Think about the investment banker and the different ways he can deal with his wife, one of which is caring about the fact she’s been alone, or the other is angry that she cares so much about herself that she’s not thinking about him and the work he’s doing. Same situation, two different stories.
But, if you have an organization that seems to be fragile and it’s not a bad methodology to begin to sit down and listen to the conversation, observe, be an anthropologist, hang out, listen to the conversations at lunchtime. Begin to pull out of the stories people are telling that mental chatter that’s creating noise instead of joy. Because so much joy is there waiting to happen. The universe is joyful. Let it happen.
Srikumar Rao: Absolutely. The universe is benevolent. The universe is your friend. Recognize that it’s your friend. And the more you recognize it as your friend, the more signs you will get that it in fact is your friend.
Andi Simon: And then every day, coming to work isn’t work. It’s about growing and learning and teaching and gratitude and just having joy.
Srikumar Rao: Exactly, exactly, exactly right, Andi.
Andi Simon: Last thoughts? Dr. Srikumar Rao has been with us today, talking about his new book, Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots. But it’s about you and about how you can turn work into growth. Begin to think about that, that chatter in your mind as something to let go. Some last thoughts.
Srikumar Rao: Your nature is happiness. You’re not this shell of skin and bones and blood that you think you are, who you really are is pure awareness. Your job in this life is to recognize who you really are and cast yourself free from this cage in which you have ensnared yourself. Trust yourself and recognize that the door to your prison is always open and unlocked. All you have to do is open the door and step out of it.
Andi Simon: This has been a pleasure. I could keep talking. I’ve enjoyed our conversation and I know our listeners and viewers will as well. Let me wrap up. It’s such fun to share people like Dr. Rao with you because it takes us to the next stage in our own growth. And I don’t care where you are, that noise in your brain is going to get in the way of seeing what’s possible. And in fact, the little challenge here or a little opportunity there if you let it turn into an opportunity. Next thing you know, you’re rising with it. And he’s smiling and so am I. So thank you for coming today.
Srikumar Rao: It’s been my pleasure. And I look forward to a wonderful association. And I don’t know which way it’s going to go, but I know it’s going to go exactly the way it’s supposed to. Thank you.
Andi Simon: Thank you. But the joyful universe is going to take us on its own way, and we’re going to have some fun. The timing couldn’t be better. Now, for those of you who come, remember, I love to help you see, feel and think in new ways. I can’t thank you enough for coming. Refer to us anybody you’d like to hear on our podcast. We are getting booked up for the rest of the year and so sooner is better.
My new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success is doing extremely well. It’s full of wisdoms and people are learning. We often say, turn a page and change your life. Who knew? The book has an energy and a force well beyond being a book. There’s more. You’re smiling. The books aren’t books, are they?
Srikumar Rao: Books are in books. Books have a life force in them, and they reach out and grab the persons who are right for them. I could not agree with you more.
Andi Simon: Couldn’t say it better than you have. So I’m going to say goodbye. Let’s say have a great day. Please turn your observations into innovations. Don’t wait around. The world is waiting for your new ideas. Bye bye now.
Srikumar Rao: Let’s go further than that, Andi. Have a wonderful rest of your life.
Andi Simon: I love it. Everyone’s cup should be overflowing like yours and mine. Thank you.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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The more diverse your organization, the more successful it will be
Today I bring to you a most fascinating and consequential woman leader, Melissa Andrieux. Born and bred in Queens, New York, Melissa became a prosecutor, then Queens District Attorney, then civil litigator. She is now Chief Diversity Officer at the law firm Dorf Nelson & Zauderer. She is also Chief Client Relations Officer, and is tapping into her extensive experience in marketing, business development and recruitment to drive business growth within the firm by establishing a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. What’s more, she helps other firms bring DEI&B into their own cultures. Melissa is not only a trailblazer but a beacon for others to emulate. Do enjoy.
Watch and listen to our conversation here Key takeaways from our podcast It’s never too late. Don’t let people tell you that you’re only good at one thing. Just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean you should keep doing it. Yes you should have a plan, but don’t get so fixed on it that you miss the opportunities that come. You need diverse perspectives within your organization, because the clients out there are so diverse. They can pick and choose who they want to work with, who they want to give their money to, and if they’re not seeing representation at your organization or at your business, they’re going to go elsewhere. Diversity is a reference, a representation of different cultures, different backgrounds, different races, sexual orientations. Diversity can also be the differences in education, socioeconomic background, marital status. People often think that it’s just racial or gender, but that’s not it. There are so many different aspects to diversity. It’s what makes us different and unique. Equity at its basic level is about fairness and leveling the playing field. Contrary to what some people think, it’s not about taking from one group to give to another group. It’s about making adjustments to imbalances. It’s really about fairness. Inclusion is related to belonging. Inclusion is, you’re being invited to the party to play, you’re being given a seat at the table, you’re being considered. And as a decision maker, as a colleague, your voice is being heard. If we do not start with the basics, the foundations, and understand why people feel a certain way, why people think that they need to gravitate towards their own groups, their own culture, then we’re never going to get to where we need to be. It’s all about knowledge, education and understanding. When it comes to DEI, the leader is instrumental because nothing can be done without the leader’s buy-in.You can connect with Melissa by LinkedIn or email: [email protected].
More stories of women making DEI a reality, not just an idea Maureen Berkner Boyt—Diversity and Inclusion: Let’s Go Beyond Hoping and Make Inclusion Really Happen Rohini Anand—Can Businesses Create Cultures Based On True Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Andie Kramer—Can “Beyond Bias” Take Your Organization To Great Heights? Maria Colacurcio—Stop The Revolving Door. Help Your Employees Embrace A Diverse And Equitable Workplace. Businesses Must Sustain Diversity And Inclusion For Women Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi I’m Andi Simon and as you know, as my frequent followers who come to watch our podcast, I’m here to be the guide and the host to take you off the brink. Our job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. And in order to do that, you have to listen to people who have changed. Change is painful. Your brain hates me. But don’t run away. Today we’re going to have a great, great time. I have with us today Melissa Andrieux who’s an attorney whom I met at a wonderful party. And she has really given me some perspective on something that I think is important for us to share.
She’s smiling at me. Here’s a little bit about her background and then she’s going to tell you about her own journey. Melissa is an experienced litigator. She leveraged her background in law to lead Dorf Nelson & Zauderer, the law firm, in their initiatives as chief diversity officer. She’s also the firm’s chief client relations officer, and she’s tapping into her extensive experience in marketing, business development and recruitment to drive business growth within the firm.
But what’s really important is, she’s gone from being a litigator to being an expert in the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging professional space. So she’s helping the firm help other firms begin. And this is my world: see, feel and think in new ways so they can begin to understand why having a lot of diversity of all kinds, including cognitive diversity and listening to each other is important, and understand how to include people in things that you might have not thought they were part of. Melissa, thank you for joining me today.
Melissa Andrieux: Well, thank you for having me, Andi. It’s a real pleasure to be on your show.
Andi Simon: Well, it was a real pleasure to meet you when we did the book launch at Josie’s. I asked people if they wanted to share their wisdoms and Melissa had a story she wanted to tell. She’s going to tell it again today. But first, who is Melissa? Tell us about your journey, please.
Melissa Andrieux: Well, when you called me up to tell my story, I was a little shocked. I hadn’t planned on being called upon. But I love sharing my story. I was born and bred in Queens. I am a lawyer, as you said. And I came to that profession kind of, I didn’t have mentors in my life who were lawyers or judges. I learned by watching TV what was interesting. That’s why I chose my profession and what was on TV? You’re a prosecutor. You are a criminal defense lawyer. So I chose the prosecution route.
I always wanted to be a Queens District Attorney, and I became one. I loved that job. I represented the people of the State of New York, the county of Queens, and as most people in government, we move on into civil practice. And then I moved into civil litigation. I did that for a very long time. You may find that shocking, but I did it for 12 years at a firm and then I moved to Dorf Nelson & Zauderer, which was then Dorf Nelson. Now it’s Dorf Nelson & Zauderer.
And I did that for a while, and it’s kind of sad looking back on it, but I did it for such a long time when I didn’t really enjoy it, but I didn’t know what else was out there. I had no clue what to do with this law degree. So I just kept on doing litigation, and it got to the point where I started speaking with people at the firm, and I was told that this opening for marketing and business development was available. And I said, well, I’ve never done either. I’m a litigator, I’m a lawyer.
But then it got to the point where I was just candidly miserable. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to go to work. So I said, you know, let me try the position, and I’m not a failer. I don’t like to fail. So I said, I’m going to put my heart and soul into it. And I started learning about the business side of law, which I had no idea that law was a business. I thought you just went to court, the depositions, blah blah blah, but I found it very interesting. I was meeting clients, I was meeting prospective clients, I was learning about the business.
And then that developed into marketing, which opened a whole new world for me. And with the marketing, I was looking at other law firms, I was looking at businesses, and the DEI aspect clicked. I mean, as you can see, I’m a woman of color in the legal profession, which another story is really not as diverse as should be, but we’ll leave that for another time. So I started looking internally at what we could do to make the law firm better, more inclusive, more attractive to candidates. We wanted to hire people. So what do you do? So I spoke with leadership. I had to get their buy-in or else this would never work.
And the first thing that we did is, we started a Diversity and Inclusion Council. And I hand-picked the members, and we just had candid conversations about what was going on at the firm, what they wanted to see change, and I studied. It was not easy. I spoke with people in the DEI space. I found the experts, I read, and it got to the point where I was being called upon to do panels and advise people on their own DEI journeys. I mean, it wasn’t a quick thing, unfortunately. It took a lot of hard work. I had a lot of mentors and sponsors in my corner.
Luckily, I’m one of those individuals who actually found people who wanted to invest in me, and that’s kind of how I ended up here. I know that a lot of people, and I’ve heard this, think that the law firm hand-picked the Black attorney to be the DEI officer, but I assure you that it’s not the case. I wanted this role. I advocated for this role, and I believe that I’m doing a very good job with the role. It’s not done. It’s hard work. And we continue every day to do the important work.
Andi Simon: Let’s reflect for a moment, which is how I think our listeners or our viewers want to pick your brain, because there have been a number of articles that have come out about how companies, large and small, are de-emphasizing the work of DEI or the Department of DEI. I’m not quite sure, being an anthropologist, why you need a department of it and who they put there. But, it’s a very important part of transforming the way we live together. And it’s both inside and outside. It changes how people come to work, what they expect of each other, how we listen to each other.
And here, give them some of your own, both learning and experiences, because while they didn’t pick you, they were wise enough to select you and to open up a space to let you go. I’m curious about that first group that you pulled together and how you managed to get them thinking. So give us a little of how did Melissa do it and how others might as well.
Melissa Andrieux: So the how-to is: I decided to leave leadership out of these council meetings because I felt that in order for me to get a true sense of how people were feeling, I couldn’t have the partners in these meetings because then people would feel like they cannot be honest. And that was the first thing that we did.
And then I took the feedback. I took the information, and I looked at our policies. I looked at the procedures, the internal information that the firm has. And then I went to leadership and I said, this is what we can do. Let’s do X, Y, and Z. Let’s look at our policies. Are they gender neutral? Do they apply to everyone across the board?
And we started slowly but surely. And as I say to everybody, DEI is in the long run. You cannot expect to finish DEI in a week, a month or even a year. It’s an ongoing process. So that’s how I started my DEI initiatives at the firm.
Andi Simon: You spoke about having mentors and sponsors. Clearly you had teammates because as you think about it, this requires people to stop and rethink their story. And the story of the firm they’re in. Their livelihood is dependent upon it, but also their personal experiences and what’s happening. So as they were working with you, were there some key issues? I can hear your policy changes, but policies don’t do much if people don’t do much. So what kinds of things were you beginning to implement?
Melissa Andrieux: So candidly, of course, as with any new initiatives, there is a little bit of pushback. So we had to get the team members at the firm on board and explain to them why this was important, why the time was now. And, it’s not perfect. Nothing is ever perfect. But people do understand why diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging is important.
I mean, the thing is, you want to attract talent. You want the firm to continue to grow. And the way that we do that is bringing diverse perspectives into the law firm, bringing different people into the law firm, because neurodiversity, everybody comes from a different place in their lives. Their thinking is not the same as, let’s say, somebody who’s been here forever. You want to bring in fresh blood. And so when they started to understand the business reason behind this, they started to really buy into what we were doing. And they embrace it and they welcome it at this point.
Andi Simon: One of the women I met recently is a Vassar professor who had a bunch of faculty go to court about equal pay for equal jobs. And of course, being a former academic, I remember well how they hired men at different salaries than the women and they came in with less experience. And that’s at a female college. Come on.
So give us a little bit of a breakdown because there’s diversity, equity, equal pay for equal work, equal position, equal opportunity, inclusion. And inclusion and belonging are a little bit different. Give us a little bit more detail. I think it would be helpful.
Melissa Andrieux: Sure. So diversity is a reference, a representation of different cultures, different backgrounds, different races, sexual orientations. Diversity can also be the differences in education, socioeconomic background, marital status is diversity. People often think that it’s just racial or gender, but that’s not it. There are so many different aspects to diversity. It’s what makes us different and unique.
Andi Simon: Somebody once said to me, we’re all diverse. And I said, that’s great. We’re all unique. Go ahead.
Melissa Andrieux: And that’s what makes the world a great place to live. Imagine living with everybody who’s like you. I mean, I think that would be pretty boring. So that’s diversity.
Equity at its basic level, equity is about fairness and leveling the playing field. Contrary to what some people think, it’s not about taking from one group to give to another group. It’s about making adjustments to imbalances. It’s really about fairness.
Inclusion is kind of related to belonging. But I look at them as two different concepts. So to me, inclusion is, you’re being invited to the party to play, you’re being given a seat at the table, you’re being considered. And as a decision maker, as a colleague, your voice is being heard.
Andi Simon: You mean you can say something in a meeting and people can hear you?
Melissa Andrieux: Exactly, exactly. They listen to you. They might not buy what you say, but they give you the opportunity to be seen and to be heard. And to me, belonging is an individual’s feeling that you feel that you are connected to the community that you belong to, that you can be yourself with the people that you’re around you.
Andi Simon: You find that you know humans. I’m an anthropologist. Humans are very tribal. Yes, they look at the world that they’re moving into, such as a workplace. Do I belong here? And it is everything from the tangible: Am I dressed right? Do I look right? Will people look me in the eye and trust that I make good decisions? Plus all of the intangibles that are there that often I don’t hear people talking about, which disturbs me because inclusion without belonging isn’t cool.
I did work for a university once and all the students at a conference we were holding sat at tables with others where they belonged, but none of them were diverse. And then they literally stood up and said to the administration, you think you’ve built diversity, but we are really in enclaves with our tribes. And yes, the whole place may have diversity, but we don’t feel like we’re diverse. We feel like we have a tribe to belong to, and that’s comfortable for us. But it may be uncomfortable for you. It was a very profound conversation about what these words mean.
Melissa Andrieux: It is. So I do some consulting, DEI consulting as part of my duties. And one of the things that I always start my programs with is defining what diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and accessibility mean. Because if we don’t understand these core concepts, we’re not going to understand anything.
So I truly think that if people do not start with the basics, the foundations, and understand why people feel a certain way, why people think that they need to gravitate towards their own, their own groups, their own culture, then we’re never going to get to where we need to be. It’s all about knowledge, education and understanding.
Andi Simon: And an openness to want to know more about the other.
Melissa Andrieux: Seriously.
Andi Simon: Ask questions and be happy when you can sit together at lunch and share. How’s life? Humans are human and nobody likes to be the whistleblower or the soloist. They want an orchestra where they can all play their instruments, but play them together with a good conductor. How important is the conductor? The leader?
Melissa Andrieux: Oh, wow. When it comes to DEI, the leader is instrumental because nothing can be done without the leader’s buy-in. And I truly believe that. If so, Jon Dorf, Jonathan Nelson, and Mark Zauderer, they are the leaders of the firm, if they did not embrace the concepts of DEI, what I am doing at the firm would never succeed. It would just be some box that you’re checking. You know, your documents. But because it’s something that they truly believe in, it’s in the fabric of the firm. Long before I got here, it just wasn’t apparent until I got here, I suppose. If you don’t have the leaders who have your back, we’re going to fail.
Andi Simon: Well, do they do intentional things in order to broaden their own comfort with a diverse workforce and with diverse clients? I mean, do they live the promise?
Melissa Andrieux: Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that we do is: we started a scholarship at Pace University. It’s called the Beth S. Nelson Memorial Scholarship, and we wanted it to go to a woman embarking on a second career in law. And it’s in honor of Jonathan Nelson’s mom, who was a teacher and then she went into law. So that is something that the firm does in order to show its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We want to bring up the next generation. We want to give these women who are embarking on these second careers the opportunity to get in the law and graduate on time, and that’s one of the ways that we do it.
Another way that we show our commitment, that the partners show their commitment, is: they embrace every single client, regardless if you’re black, white, LGBTQ. You know you deserve equal treatment when you come into Dorf Nelson & Zauderer LLP and you need representation, never turned away.
Andi Simon: I think that it’s really a model for others to both hear about and to learn about. You also work with clients and how do you bring the purpose and mission out to them as a consultant or as an attorney or a little of both?
Melissa Andrieux: I wear many hats, Andi, I gotta tell you. So, being that I am a lawyer and working at a law firm doing business development, that has helped me tremendously when I go out there and I network because I understand the language. I know what clients want from their attorneys and what they don’t want. So I’m able to talk to them as they need to be spoken to.
And I also do consulting, which kind of develops organically as well. I go out and I do these panels. I go to these networking events and people ask me what I do. Somebody said, Will you do consulting for us? And obviously I said yes, because I love to do that. I love to teach and help other organizations grow and start their DEI journeys with the foundations, and then we move on from there as their needs become apparent, as whatever they need.
Andi Simon: So as you’re looking out there, you’re seeing some trends that are both interesting or disturbing to you.
Melissa Andrieux: Some interesting trends are that a lot of the firms that have started their DEI, they’re continuing it, which I’m so happy about, even post- the Supreme Court decision. They are doubling down on their DEI initiatives, which I’m so happy to see because we cannot go backwards. We absolutely cannot go backwards. It takes the courage of these leaders to say we are going to forge forward. We’re not going to let anything stop us, because it’s also good business. Having a diverse workforce is good business.
I always say, if you want to attract more clients, you need to have your organization reflect those clients that are coming to you for help. And one of the disturbing trends is, people who are using the Supreme Court decision as an excuse to not continue their DEIB initiatives, or those that say, we’ve reached the endgame, we can stop now. Unfortunately, that is not how you look at the DEI. I wish that were the case where we no longer needed these initiatives, but unfortunately they must continue and we are not done. We are never done. So to those organizations that think that it’s okay to stop, I caution you.
Andi Simon: But, you know, it’s an interesting philosophical question because it’s a gig to them. It isn’t fundamental. It isn’t transformative. It is a way of thinking about people or business. It’s something that seemed to be cool to do, like ESG [environmental, social and governance], you know, pay a little attention to the environment.
We’re social creatures. We live in a very complex society and don’t shortchange yourself by letting others put you into some box. Take the initiative and see why it’s so important. I mean, women who lead lead companies in very good ROI, their returns are there and the people stay and they become places one wants to work. And that’s not inconsequential, is it?
Melissa Andrieux: It’s not. People gravitate to people who are like them. So I always use this as an example. I will attract a different type of client than, let’s say, a John Dorf or a Jonathan Nelson. I will attract the women. I will attract the people of color. I mean, not to say that they won’t, but we’re just going about business development and recruitment differently. That’s why you need diverse perspectives within your organization, because the clients out there are so diverse. They can pick and choose who they want to work with, who they want to give their money to, and if they’re not seeing representation at your organization or at your business, they’re going to go elsewhere. So I think it’s a really good practice to have so many different perspectives within your firm going out there representing your organization.
Andi Simon: Often when I do workshops, I remind the CEOs in the group that 13 million companies are owned by women. And there’s a tremendous amount of effort to get women, women of color or people with diverse backgrounds into the supply chain, right into businesses so they can be in the supply chain. They’re looking for gender and gender fair. Johanna Zeilstra‘s company Gender Fair is trying to establish it as a standard, not as an afterthought, and this is sort of a very important time for us not to let us go backwards. And not make it hard. I mean, I don’t think this is hard work. It’s important work.
But I am just thrilled that you’re on this podcast because I think that many people aren’t really aware of the challenge and the opportunities that are before them. Is it easy? No. Should you do it? Absolutely. And will it help you and your purpose, your meaning, your business, your happiness grow. Aha! Oh, God. Melissa, it should be easier. Tell the listener as we’re just about ready to wrap up, give them 1 or 2 things that they should focus on.
I always like Oprah’s small wins. If you’re going to get somewhere and don’t try to move the battleship a little at a time, but know where you’re going. And let’s assume that what you want to build is a really exciting organization that embraces diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging intentionally and intelligently. And that’s going to help your business grow. Now, if they’re going to start and they can see that 1 or 2 things you think should be important for them to do in a small win style.
Melissa Andrieux: So before I answer that question, Andi, you reminded me the firm, the law firm, is Gender Fair certified, and we’re actually one of the first law firms to be gender fair certified. So that’s another way that we show to the world that the partners are putting their money where their mouth is. So I wanted to put that out there before I forget.
Andi Simon: Little push for Gender Fair, because it’s a great way for you to demonstrate that you care about the right things in the right way. So that’s one of the 2 or 3 things you want them to small win by. But learn more. And we can certainly introduce you to Gender Fair and its leadership. That’s terrific Melissa. Please, some other things.
Melissa Andrieux: So from my personal journey, I want to share with your audience that it’s never too late, as I know it’s a little cliché, but for me, I always thought that I could never leave. I thought it was too late for me to unlearn being an attorney. Unlearn being a litigator. But then when I opened up my mind and decided finally that I was ready to make the move, I said, you’re going to do it. You’re going to be great at it. And it was a long process, but I did it.
So one of my things, one of the things that I always say to myself and to the young attorneys or folks that I meet in the world, is that it’s never too late. Don’t ever be pigeonholed. Don’t let people tell you that you’re only good at one thing. And I had a lot of naysayers in my life, not to be a Debbie Downer, but a lot of people thought that I had lost it when I made the career change, and because I was so good at what I was doing. Well, just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean you should keep doing it. So never too late. Ever.
Andi Simon: You know, it’s so interesting. I met you at a book event for our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And I’ve been doing podcasts with a number of the women who are in the book. There are 102 women, 500 wisdoms, and they all are sharing a good deal about their own life’s journey. Now, Lorraine Hariton we did the other day and she said no, there was no straight line. I was dyslexic, and I managed to realize I was really good at math. And from there I got into computers early, and then I was in Silicon Valley, and then I went to raise money for Hillary and I said, um, no straight line, is there, no straight line, no straight line.
And in some ways, that’s the exciting part about being a smart person, I’ll say a smart woman, but a smart person, right?, where you can see the opportunities. One of the wisdoms I love there is: sure you should have a plan, but don’t get so fixed on it that you miss the opportunities that come.
I’m a big serendipity person, so it’s just listen. And here Melissa stood up at an event and said something and I introduced her and I said, please come and speak on our podcast. And I’m just thrilled that you were here today. If people want to reach you and talk to you more, put you on a panel or help you help them, where’s the best place? We will have it on the blog, of course, but sometimes they hear you and it sticks. Where should they reach you?
Melissa Andrieux: Well, I’m at Dorf, Nelson and Zauderer. My email is [email protected] and the website is DorfLaw.com. You’ll find me there.
Andi Simon: Good. This has been a great, great conversation. Every time I do these, I learn more and more about wonderful women who are really transforming our society and themselves. You, the company you work for, the people you work with, and I’m happy too. So let me wrap up for those of you who come and send me your emails and push out all of our podcasts. Last I looked, we’re in the top 5% of global podcasts, and in some places like South Africa, we’re really high. And it’s sort of like, really? So you never know where you are.
So the message today is: take your heart and follow it a bit. You never know what’s in it for you. My books, of course, are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local bookseller. Women Mean Business is a fascinating book. I’ll turn around and I will bring it over here because as you look at a book, you begin to realize, it’s my third book, and the other two were all Amazon best sellers and award winners, but each book has a different insight. And so as you open it, I mean, I love Kay Koplovitz, not by chance, I opened it by chance. They teach you something, and I often say that a book has a fingerprint, and the fingerprint gives it a uniqueness, but its power is inside. And so as the book is opened at all of our events, and if you’d like an event, please let me know. What happens is something magical.
Kay Koplovitz said at one event, think fast and act fast. And she said: if I had time to analyze all the things I had to make decisions about, I’d never make a decision. And I said to myself, you know, as an entrepreneur, I thought fast and acted fast and that’s how we learn from others. We get inspired by them. And it does spark our success with new ideas that we know aren’t so crazy. It’s fun. So thank you again for coming. It’s been a pleasure. And we’ll see you next week as we post all of our great podcasts. Enjoy the journey. Thanks, Melissa. I’ll say goodbye now.
Melissa Andrieux: Thank you, Andi, for having me.
Andi Simon: It’s a pleasure.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Learn how to escape or even avoid crushing student debt
I am beyond thrilled to bring to you a remarkable young women, Bri Franklin, who co-founded the non-profit The Prosp(a)rity Project to help others avoid the massive amount of debt she incurred by attending an expensive college and being ignorant of the student loan consequences. She could have let the financial burden she experienced after graduation defeat her, but she decided to defeat it. Over many years she has worked tirelessly to pay off almost all of her debt. Now her mission is to help others in the same boat. Listen in, be inspired, and please share far and wide.
Watch and listen to our conversation here Key takeaways from our conversation: Young people: think very carefully about who you want your future self to be, and make sure that the you of 10 or 20 years from now thanks you and is appreciative for the actions that you take today. Taking out loans have the potential to either upgrade your life or set you far behind the eight ball. Bri: If I could do it all over again, I absolutely would have heeded the advice of being very careful before just blindly signing any paperwork. College used to close the gap between socioeconomic groups, but now unfortunately, because of some bad acting, it has become the opposite and is now growing the wealth gap between socioeconomic classes and race communities. Predatory lending is subprime lending, taking advantage of a customer for the sake of financial gain. It’s basically taking advantage of customer and consumer ignorance, which tends to adversely impact people in black and brown communities. Bri’s hope is to educate young people and their parents through the educational system long before they make college loan decisions.Want to connect with Bri? You can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and her website The Prosp(a)rity Project.
More stories of courageous entrepreneurs making a real difference in people’s lives: Hamilton Perkins—An Inspiring Entrepreneurial Success Story Theresa Carrington—Transforming Impoverished Artisans Into Entrepreneurs Lynette Guastaferro—Transforming How Teachers Teach In Over 700 Urban Schools Ivy Gordon—Providing A Powerful Voice To The Sexually Abused Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi I’m Andi Simon. Remember, my job is to get you off the brink. And the way I like to do that is to help you listen to people, or see them if you’re watching the video, who can help you really understand the challenges in front of us in these fast changing times, and how you can see, feel and think about them with a fresh perspective. I like that fresh lens because unless you see somebody who’s addressing a problem, you really don’t understand the words, even if you read about it or maybe watched a video. There’s something very personal about some of the challenges that we’re facing that you might be as well. And so how do you address them?
So I met Bri Franklin, and Bri came to one of our book launch events for Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And I must tell you that the book tour has been extraordinary as well. I’m enjoying the people we meet there. So she and I spoke afterwards. Let me give you a bit of a biography of her bio, and then she’ll tell you much more about her own journey. And I think it’s an important one that you understand.
Bri Franklin is a businesswoman, philanthropist and student debt expert and thought leader with a passion for the socioeconomic and holistic empowerment of Black girls and women. And I think you’re going to think about this for all girls and women, but particularly women of color who are dealing with things in a particular fashion. Having taken on a financial burden that eventually ballooned to nearly $120,000 in student debt through her undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College, Bri developed an acute appreciation for the challenges many student debt holders experience, including their diminished ability to establish financial independence, take advantage of personal freedoms, or launch a business venture.
There was an article I was reading today about how the student debt for the generation who’s coming into the markets today is limiting their ability to buy a car. Today, a car is so expensive, it’s often as expensive as buying someplace to live. And 52% of the young people are living at home, not necessarily because they want to, because it’s impossible to find a place they can afford even if they share it. So our economy and our society is very challenging for young people because of the student debt and the inability to get past it.
In recognizing the extent to which other Black women in particular experience adversity at the hands of the $2 trillion student debt crisis and the lack of financial literacy, particularly not knowing what it means, not knowing what to do about it, Bri formed The Prosp(a)rity Project as a solution for eradicating the systemic barriers. Her work has been profiled in outlets such as Forbes, BuzzFeed, Authority Magazine, and Thrive Global, and she’s attracted support from audiences worldwide, generating nearly $400,000 in revenue.
But I think this is a more complicated and serious opportunity for you to understand what’s happening, how it’s impacting lots and lots and lots of young people, particularly Black women, and what we need to do to teach them how to be literate, but also how to use it wisely. Even businesswomen tell me that they don’t understand the finances and they don’t go after capital. So this is a big long term opportunity for us to educate them. Thank you for joining me today.
Bri Franklin: Oh my gosh. Well, your intro was incredibly flattering. Thank you so much for making space and the opportunity for me to be a guest today.
Andi Simon: You are a beautiful and brilliant woman. I’d like you to share with the audiences your own journey because as you shared it with me, I went, oh my gosh, we have to have you on our podcast so people can appreciate that, that nothing is a straight line from here to there. And your journey is not unique. There are many others just like you, but yours is the one we’re going to focus on. Who is Bri Franklin and what has been your journey so far? You’re a young person, but it’s been a complicated one.
Bri Franklin: It certainly has. I like to say that I had a very atypical post-graduation trajectory, and it was very much a jungle gym and not a straight line or ladder. So I came out of Dartmouth. I was the first in my family not to go to college but to go Ivy League. So I grew up in the Deep South, from Atlanta, Georgia, and always performed at the top of my class, student honor roll, principal’s list. You get the idea. And everyone just always told me, you’ve got to go to the Ivy League. You know, that’s where it’s at for you and that’s where you’re going to thrive and excel.
And so I really internalized that and thought, this is the only way to really honor my academic inclinations to the best of my ability. I started with one of the schools in my top choices and I ended up getting accepted, and it was between Dartmouth and Emory University. So, again, as an Atlanta native, it was a very close call because Emory was offering quite a bit of financial aid to the tune of all but $5,000 in grants, and that would have applied across all four years. So if I had chosen there, I would have walked away with no more than $20,000 in debt. That’s if I hadn’t done work-study or anything to offset my obligation versus the $100,000 that I came out of Dartmouth with.
And the deciding factor was, I was looking at the opportunity of going to an Ivy League and being in those circles, and the 18-year-old version of myself was also very much motivated by getting away from my parents and being able to break camp and go do my own thing. Not the best decision or reason for accruing so much debt, but that is how my story goes. So I came out of Dartmouth in 2017, as I mentioned, with $100,000 in debt principal, and then it quietly ballooned to about $116,000 within two years because of both interest and ignorance, on my part, and because of that ignorance, I also aimlessly wandered into other kinds of debt, and that included credit cards, and a car that was way outside my budget.
It impacted every level of my life, socioeconomically and mental health, and put me behind the eight ball in terms of achieving the typical milestones that young twenty-somethings often have made in the past, with little to no friction. So, and having dealt with that personally, I just became incredibly empathetic to others in that situation because it showed me that this was not the result of anything that I had done as far as breaking rules. In fact, I was trying to follow the rules, but unfortunately it worked against me because of what I now discovered is called predatory and subprime lending. So that’s exactly what my work focuses on resolving at a systemic level.
Andi Simon: When you went off, I’m curious, we all have kids and grandkids who are looking at college. And were you knowledgeable about student loans when you made the decision to go to Dartmouth without the grants as opposed to Emory with the grants? And was the reputation that much more powerful, did the colleges help you at all?
Bri Franklin: I get asked this a lot because people really were stuck trying to figure out why would I take the route that I did when Emory was literally making it so much more financially feasible? And that was because at 18, I call it the Know-It-All factor. A lot of teenagers are guilty. I think that’s almost the rule of thumb is that being adolescent and teenage, you just get in your own way sometimes and you think you know everything and that you’ve got all the answers. And that was really how I functioned, because no one had explicitly taught me what all was at stake.
You know, people just said things that were very nebulous, like, that’s a lot of debt. But I also would hear things like, oh, but you’re going to Dartmouth and you’re going to get hired immediately, and you’ll be able to write your own ticket. That was everyone’s favorite phrase: guidance counselors, teachers, relatives. A lot of people were just so convinced that by virtue of attending a school of that pedigree, that was automatically going to translate into an optimized advantage in the job market and increase my earning potential.
And so I just absorbed those promises and I didn’t really think to probe beneath the surface and take a step back and consider. Based on having majored in English literature, not having done a traditional internship, I didn’t know the first thing about networking. I didn’t know how to play those Ivy League cards. So I really came out almost with no measured advantage right away.
And, you know, for all intents and purposes, I think in those initial years, I could have been off to a stronger start coming out of Emory, but it was definitely a delayed gratification thing. And at these stages of my career, in my life, the Dartmouth Circle has come back full circle, and it’s now paid off in dividends in terms of the opportunities and the rooms that it puts me in. But I had to actively work for that, it was very much something I had to go out of my way to make up for lost time on, and it cost me quite a bit in the interim.
Andi Simon: What’s so interesting is that you’re a smart woman, and yet understanding the culture that you’re going into, there was no way to imagine it. You were imparting upon it your own sense of how it was going to benefit you. Even being an English major without having an internship, you were having a great time being you, and it wasn’t necessarily a good set up for the future, even if you didn’t have the debt. You’re missing something.
We talk in business about mentors or sponsors. Well, here’s an 18 year old who needed somebody who could guide you through your labyrinth and the jigsaw that you were going to be going through so you came out wiser, not poorer. So it’s interesting, as the listener is listening or viewing, how did you get yourself past the $116,000 in debt? Were you able to figure out a way out of it? Because I have a hunch that’s part of Prosp(a)rity Project‘s foundation.
Bri Franklin: So the short answer is, I’m still working through it. Unfortunately, I have not completely cleared it. However, I have made progress. I paid off about $40,000 of those various debts. So the total number, including the car, the credit cards, at the time was about $123,609. And I say, zero common sense. So I was able to shave off about $40,000, and I rolled up my sleeves and I threw pride completely out of the window.
And in 2019, I say that was my aha! I had a moment. I’d gotten so far behind on my loans, which for my private lenders alone were about $750 a month, irrespective of income. So because I came out and I was working temp jobs and contracts, I mean, I was making $15 an hour on a good day. And so I say my income was inconsistent at best, nonexistent at worst.
And the fact that my debt was constant regardless of what I was earning, that was, of course, very challenging to overcome. And just even at a practical level, having conversations with the lenders on the phone, the representatives, trying to appeal to them, get them to cut me a break, get them to give me some extra flexibility, it didn’t always go over well.
And so it all blew up in the summer of 2019, where my credit had taken a hit by about 150 points overnight because I fell more than two months late on my loans. And that also spilled over to my co-signers, my dad and step mom at the time; both of them had signed on to those initial private loans, and that had consequences for their credit. And it put us at odds interpersonally. And those relationships were always very valuable to me growing up over the years.
So it was just a cobweb of dysfunctionality and heartache, really. And so that was helpful, though, because it was able to just reroute me and caused me to take stock of my situation and just decide, as I said at the event, it may have started with these external factors. “This situation is terrible and I am irritated by it.” But even though it didn’t start with me, it ends with me. And so that’s why I rolled up my sleeves. I got two part-time jobs. I worked retail, which as an Ivy League graduate, takes a lot of humility to suck up the courage in your hometown, of all places, where you’re running into classmates and teachers and all kinds of people who are like, wow, that’s where Dartmouth landed you.
It was very much a pride component to it. But I was so motivated to get out of debt, I really didn’t care. I was like, if people are going to judge me for this, that’s their problem. I’m getting money by ethical means, and it’s building character, which it really did. So that was the foundation. I did what Dave Ramsey calls the debt snowball, and I started with the smallest balance listed out regardless of interest. And then I began chipping away. And because it does work as a psychological boost, when you can see the numbers go away, you feel like I can do this.
And it doesn’t feel like I’m draining the ocean with a teaspoon. This money does count for something. It is making a difference. It sets you up for progressive wins. And so I continued to keep those jobs through the end of that year, and I kept Orangetheory when I moved to the Bay area in 2020. I stayed and I enjoyed the increased pay difference because of the California minimum wage being twice of Georgia’s. But I was able to stay with family friends and not have to pay rent.
So I got all the upside and none of the financial downside, and I just aggressively knocked those loans down. And then once Covid hit, then it was starting from scratch all over again. And then once I started up The Prosp(a)rity Project, that summer was when I finally felt like my purpose was walking into place and I could see myself continuing down this route. And if all went well, being able to eventually climb out of debt along with the people that we helped.
Andi Simon: You know, I’m a visual person, and your story almost looks like a movie. Hopefully one day it’s real on the one hand, but I’m listening to you share with us the agony, the catalytic moment, the moment at which you realize that I can’t keep going like this. The impact you had on your family. None of this should be missed by the listener or the viewer because this is a very smart woman who found herself in a difficult situation that she’s working out of.
It’s not like she won the lottery but it is without a whole lot of help. It’s not as if everybody’s walking around on those, either the credit card or the car, but it is. And she’s also a representative of the generation that is finding themselves very much like herself in difficulty. You know, I’m a smart person. How did this happen? And once you got past that, how this happened, did it? Then how do I do something about it? Well, I can work hard. But now you’ve got Prosp(a)rity Project. Are you working on anything else? Or is this your business that you’re going to turn into a solution?
Bri Franklin: Yes! So Prosp(a)rity Project, this was my 24/7 life commitment for the last three and a half years. So we started up in the summer of 2020, and that took us all the way through this past December. And so we’re now at an exciting point of pivot where we’re using the last three and a half years of expertise, leadership, partnerships, just all of the gains and the wins that we’ve been able to accomplish collectively and through our work and turning that into an even more forward thinking solution.
So for context, Prosp(a)rity Project‘ is a 501 C3 nonprofit. The mission is leveling the socioeconomic playing field for communities most susceptible to and impacted by predatory lending. And in our first iteration of work, that was exclusively serving debt constrained, college educated Black women. We launched what’s called the 35*2 Free initiative, which draws its name from those two guiding statistics: $35 billion of student loan debt, as well as a 35% rate of financial literacy that Black women in the US hold collectively.
And so through that program, it’s a multi-pronged approach of not just helping that group pay down student loan debt, which we did up to $10,000 per person, but also training them on finance through what we call FinTech. So it’s six months of personalized financial guidance to give them a better roadmap for how to manage and steward their money and eventually build wealth, coupled with eight weeks of career development training, where they can put that into practice and then use that to go out for higher paying jobs and pivot into more lucrative industries, etc.
And so in doing those pilot runs, we did one virtual in 2022 with 12 women, we did a hybrid in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area last year with eight program members. We now have almost two dozen basically MVP’s, that we’ve been able to coach and get to know personally and turn that into the basis for an app that does the same thing, but to another degree by helping prevent it altogether with teenagers.
So we’re calling it Cadet Prosperity. And this is taking that IP and all of the user experiences and live journeys of these women, turning it into gamified avatars that can then coach and pay that information forward to middle and high schoolers who are sitting ducks, basically, for more predatory lending and usury. So it’s very exciting to bring it full circle and be able to help at critical scale.
Andi Simon: Let me see if I can take what you said and play it back so that I fully understand it. First of all, what’s predatory lending? You know, let’s clarify the words.
Bri Franklin: So predatory lending, as I’ve been explaining it in conversations and defining it through our work portfolio, is basically subprime lending or taking advantage of a customer for the sake of financial gain. So a lot of times that looks like very cryptic and underhanded paperwork or not being completely forthright in the terms, not going to great lengths to really make sure that the user understands what it is they’re signing up for.
So it’s basically taking advantage of customer and consumer ignorance. And that typically tends to adversely impact people in black and brown communities, whose parents or grandparents also were susceptible and didn’t know how to train them and break that cycle themselves. So it’s basically exploitation in the lending industry.
Andi Simon: Um, okay. Good. So understanding that, the other side of it is the ignorance of people to what that means and how to do it. And what you have had is now a dozen approximately folks who have gone through your program, which does two things, one of which is, begins to develop their career skills and the other helps them work off their debt, which if you combine the two, should get them a pathway to, I’ll say, prosperity at least, so that they can see the end of the tunnel and celebrate where they’re actually going to arrive. And if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s difficult to get there. And now we’ve turned the nonprofit into a for-profit application for gamification, for younger borrowers. Is that what I hear?
Bri Franklin: You summed it up beautifully.
Andi Simon: Well, I heard what you said, but I also know sometimes, as the listener is paying attention to it, they don’t quite necessarily put all the parts together. And I know that you’ve gotten on the one hand a training and development program nonprofit is that going to stay around, or are you going to move everything into a for-profit mode?
Bri Franklin: In all transparency, that’s a decision that we’re going to be huddling on in a couple of weeks just to weigh the pros and cons either way. I want it to be completely certain, whichever direction we move it in, so that it wasn’t a start-stop, because there’s still a lot of merit to keeping the nonprofit intact. But at the same time, in just taking stock of the current fundraising climate, I think, user listeners and audience members who are also in the philanthropic space, we can all collectively agree that 2023 was not a great year. And especially in our case, being a social justice-founded organization that was unapologetically Black, serving for so long, it was a moment in time and certainly not a forever movement.
And so we’ve seen a lot of appetites go back to pre-George Floyd pre-COVID business as usual. There’s a diminished sense of urgency around closing the gap for the black and brown community. So, my inclination is that we will at least just focus our efforts on the for-profit, even if we don’t legally retire the nonprofit, just perhaps having it on freeze for the time being until we can reintroduce these initiatives, perhaps through a foundation at some point down the line, once the for-profit is revenue-generating and off the ground.
Andi Simon: This is very important to hear, because your business challenge isn’t like other business challenges. The not-for-profit side needs funding through different sources than a for-profit side does. Right. And the application is now up and ready to go. And in schools themselves, if I remember you were telling me, not yet.
Bri Franklin: The FinTech app, we are in the very early stages, looking to raise pre-seed funding and just building out our initial team. And we do have a target go to market by next January when we would be ready to roll it out, ideally as a first version into schools. But, we definitely got our work cut out for us before then.
Andi Simon: I think you’ve opened up a very different opportunity where individuals, schools, training centers…my head’s already thinking about folks who I need to introduce you to, who you get into the high school training milieu and are really concerned about developing those young folks with the right skills and tools to do it. It’s very interesting and just curious, strategically, are you thinking of this being something bought by schools or by individuals or by parents? I mean, who’s the market?
Bri Franklin: So my co-founder and I, we just ironed this out over the last 48 hours. So we’re looking at B2B to see, the sell would potentially be to perhaps like a large banking institution, perhaps a tech developer itself like Apple and have it pre-installed on devices that are going to schools from the distribution standpoint and honoring the fact that a lot of school budgets tend to be very shoestring and don’t have a ton of money set aside for major app rollouts. It’s subsidized largely from school partnerships. We’re thinking that it would be one of those two routes as we see it right now.
Andi Simon: That’s exciting, because if you get the endorsement of a distribution channel like an Apple or something, or even the banks who could really see this as part of their community development initiatives, you get legitimacy and co-branding on it. And that takes it from a startup to something that could have great legs and go further. When you have tested it, have you tested it? I mean, I’m sort of trying to remember what we talked about, but have you tested it among youngsters and do they find it a wonderful game?
Bri Franklin: So the game itself is still being developed behind the scenes. However, we have been in touch with their would-be gamers’ parents, so we do have some focus groups that we’ve built out with mothers, fathers, of middle and high schoolers. And again, going back to drawing from my own experience, that know it all factor, we’re trying to get the best of both worlds, where we are that conduit for mom and dad, because we realize that a lot of this information is as simple as table talk, dinner table conversation. But there’s the lalala, I can’t hear you because you raised me sort of thing going on.
And so we’re trying to solve for that, but also not have it backfire to where it interferes with screentime parameters and household rules, parents keeping kids off of devices past certain hours or things like that. Certainly not letting it slide into an addictive user experience or anything. So we are trying to have those conversations now. So that informs the build out and saves us having to go back and rewrite or take out things once we’ve already done the heavy lifting.
Andi Simon: It’s so interesting because everything has its challenges. We have a society where the youngsters are quite not savvy on how to use applications like these. Can we use them to really educate them so that they can be wiser and make better decisions as they’re approaching their adulthood? At the same time, that it could interfere with their focus on other studies and other pieces.
Bri, this is so profound because the problem isn’t a little one. It’s a big one. I’m glad you’re sharing it with us because I’m not sure how I would learn more about it. It’s sort of like, where does this fit into the whole context of what’s going on out there? You can hear about, a president wanting to eliminate student debt and then people objecting to it, and it just breaks your heart. To some degree, it is a reflection of our society.
Bri Franklin: It is. And that’s where we also see the opportunities because it’s a knowledge gap on so many levels. And I’ve done personal crusading, you know, through going in and speaking to companies and trying to build the empathy because so many people put blinders on because they remember how it used to function when they were in college, which is how it was supposed to work. Higher education used to be a gap-closing convention. That was how people were achieving upward mobility in the 40s when the GI Bill was first introduced, that paved the way for the current student debt crisis. It looked nothing like it does now.
Student loans were capped at 1,000 USD per year, and it was directly tied to a boost and a measurable advantage in the job market post-graduation that you then use to repay the loans in full, get your mortgage, marry, start a family, and live your most prosperous life. And then, around in the 70s, people started to catch on just how lucrative it really was and how much demand there was. That’s when it privatized and opened the floodgates for the hell that we know today.
And, you know, the Student Loan Marketing Association became what we know as Sallie Mae. And then there was the lobbying in 2004 that prevented people from being able to discharge their loans through bankruptcy. So there’s just been so many factors that are greed and profit driven, as opposed to opportunity and people driven. And so that’s where we’re coming in to reset the clock and the board and just say, time out, things like this cannot go on.
My motto was that every bubble bursts, just like the housing bubble burst. And so many others. We’ve seen an economic collapse before. I don’t think this will be any different. And so that’s why we are positioning this as something that is not only innovative, but critically necessary. I’ve gone so far as to compare it to a vaccine against the virus of predatory lending, or the equivalent of equipping teenagers with a driver’s license so that they can legally operate a car.
We’re saying debt doesn’t have to be the enemy. It’s the ignorance that creates the problem and has potential to turn it from a tool to a trap. So we’re solving for a lot, and it’s educational at every turn, which is why we want parents to be on board with us and to not look at this as a tool to create controversy or to challenge their beliefs in a way that undermines their parenting, but rather to bring them up to speed and help them understand what’s at stake for their child.
Andi Simon: You are a very articulate young woman. Thank you. I loved listening to what you just said because you really understand the complexity of this. There’s no simple answer. And you have a passion and a purpose. You understand it and you want to stop it. And I am just honored that you are on our podcast today to share it. Thank you for joining us. It’s just so much fun. I think we’re about ready to wrap up.
A couple of things you want our listeners to remember or our viewers to hear you say: one, two or three things that are really important for youngsters to know and parents to be aware of, and the universities that won’t pay attention to right now.
Bri Franklin: Yes, because I do have advice for all three groups, but I’ll stick to those first two. So for young people, if you’re listening, if you hear this in Mom and Dad’s car ride or come into it on your own, I would say think so carefully about who you want your future self to be, and you want to make sure that the you of 10 or 20 years from now thanks you and is appreciative for the actions that you take today. Because things as serious as taking out loans have potential to really either upgrade your life or set you far behind the eight ball, and take it from someone who has spent all of her 20s trying to catch up and get back on track to achieve the things that used to be so typical for my age group.
If I could do it all over again, I absolutely would have heeded the advice of being very careful before just blindly signing any paperwork. For parents on the other side of that coin, I know that there’s a tendency to just say college or bust and to insist that our children, our nieces, our nephews are keeping the family legacy alive by going to our alma maters or just going to college. It’s become more of a tradition.
But we’ve got to remember the why again. College used to be unanimously gap closing, and now, unfortunately, because of some bad acting, it’s become the opposite and is growing the wealth gap between socioeconomic classes and race communities and everything. And so we want to just make sure we’re setting our kids up for success no matter what that educational means looks like.
Andi Simon: All right, now I’ll let you talk to those colleges. So the warning for them is…?
Bri Franklin: Do better. I think that there certainly is a place for academia, and I have great respect for what’s come out of colleges: vaccines, academic research, forward-thinking initiatives. And I remember the upsides of my own college experience, but it’s just unacceptable to keep driving tuition rates up with no correlation to how that’s going to better the student’s job experience post-graduation. So I would say that the short of it is that we have to remember that it’s about serving people and not gaining profit.
Andi Simon: Yes, I agree. What a wonderful podcast to share with our audiences today. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed meeting Bri Franklin, and I think you should take a look at the Prosp(a)rity Project and see how you, too, can be of help to her and to those who are trying. Now, they’re just the two of you, or is it a bigger organization than that?
Bri Franklin: So on the 24/7 main buildout it is myself and my co-founder, but we are basically migrating our existing task force from Prosperity Project over to Cadet Prosperity. We’ve begun to start getting feelers out there for advisors and potential board members. So we’re growing quickly. But in terms of the day to day diligence, it is myself and Kaylee for right now.
Andi Simon: You’re great. Great. Well, I’m honored to have you here today. It’s been a pleasure. Let me say goodbye to our audience. Thank you for coming. Remember our newest book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success has just become a really cool book. And I can only tell you that I’ve written three but this one touches my heart because as I open it, people in the audience say, ah. I actually had a client who yellow marked it all and when I met with her, she went, oh, you’ve changed my life. It’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble in your local booksellers.
I can only tell you that I met Bri through a book tour event at Eileen Rosenthal’s in Washington, DC, and every time I do one, I meet some others who say, oh, this is a great book. It’s the wisdom of 102 women, and they can’t wait to share with you what they’ve learned and how you can succeed as well. Thanks for joining me today.
Bri Franklin: Thank you again for having me. The conversation just went by in a flash, and I look forward to this being the first of many dialogues that we have.
Andi Simon: I’m looking forward to it as well. I’m going to stop and say goodbye to all of you who come. You remember you’ve taken us to the top 5% of global podcasts. I’m honored. Thank you so much. Keep sharing and sharing Bri’s so that her message can get out there to parents, kids and everyone else. Bye bye now.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Hear this incredible story of steadfast bravery and human kindness
I am truly honored to bring to you today a very special guest, Panos Manias. A self-made entrepreneur who started his own industrial company in aluminium packaging materials, Panos is an inspirational and visionary businessman. But what we focus on in our interview is his personal story of how kindness and moral obligation saved lives during The Holocaust, and possibly can change the world today. You will feel uplifted and deeply moved, I know I was.
Watch and listen to our conversation here More stories of courage and human kindness: Blog: You Can Find Joy And Happiness In Turbulent Times! Podcast: Rebecca Morrison—Women, Are You Ready To Find Your Happiness? Is It All Around You? Podcast: Patrik Birkhane—Helping Us Live Healthier, Happier And More Peaceful Lives Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, and as you know, I’m your host and your guide. And my job is to help you get off the brink, to understand things and see them through a fresh lens. I’m a corporate anthropologist, and I’d love to share with you information from different cultures and times that will help you put into perspective your own situation today, and how to make sense out of it and understand it better.
So I’m really honored today to have Mr. Panos Manias with me. Panos is in Greece. He’s in Athens. He was introduced to me by a wonderful woman here in New York who wanted me to share his story. Now, Panos’s story is set back in the period when the Germans came into Thessalonica and really took over the city. And so I’d like him to begin to understand how to share that with you so that it is held in posterity so we don’t lose the story, and that the wonderful actions that he and his family took then are preserved.
So let me tell you about Panos. Panos Manias was born in 1934. He was one of five children. He’s married now and has two wonderful children and four grandchildren. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business, economics and international commerce from the Athens University of Economics and Business. He’s a self-made entrepreneur who started his own industrial company in aluminum packaging material in 1965. It’s now managed by his two children.
Panos, in his professional career, has spanned more than a half a century, and he’s proved to be an inspirational and visionary entrepreneur. His personal and business integrity, together with his determination on focusing on personal relationships, has been passed to the next generation of aluminum and continue to be the key drivers of the company’s success. Now, Panos is an amazing man, and I know he wants to tell you about the situations when the Germans came into Thessalonica, but what I’d like him to do is begin with his own journey. Tell us about yourself. How did you develop as an entrepreneur? Panos, give us some context to understand your own personal journey here. Can you do that, sir, please?
Panos Manias: Yeah. All right. Well, after finishing the American Veterans College, which is an American school and one of the best in the country in Greece, in Athens. I started working for a big company specializing in aluminum. And slowly they appreciated the job I was doing. And they offered me to go into a joint venture with this big company, whom I will never forget, because they really gave me a very good chance in my life. So I started working for them and they appreciated what I was doing, and they offered me to go into a joint venture in aluminum products.
And slowly but surely, it was expanding and expanding and expanding. And to make a long story short, after so many years, we are proud to say that we are a company which is 100% export oriented. We export everything all over the world and, thank God, both of my children, when they finished their studies in Greece and the United States, were both Brown University alumni. When they came back, I told them very openly and very clearly, now you are here, what do you want to do? It’s up to you. You decide, and I will respect your decision.
So they both said they want to continue working for me, I mean, for the company. And they said something which I will never forget. Listen, it’s your decision. You are never going to tell me you are not happy. If you are not happy, tell me now. They both agreed. They followed my steps and I must say that they did much, much better than I did. And I’m very proud of it.
The story we’re talking about starts in and stays where we were living. Before the war, we had the building, we had the big three stories building on our own, and we were living there. And the time was during the German occupation. It was a very difficult life, was very, very difficult, because people were asking questions and this and that and my aunt and my uncle who were living in the cellar, they were partners with my father, who was in Athens. They had both a joint venture in the food industry.
So one day he calls my father and he says in Salonika, there is a very good friend of the family, a Jewish family called Caruso. They were both living next to each other in a street in Salonika and were excellent friends together. They were not friends. They were brothers, although one was Jewish, neither was Christian. Every day they were going to meet together to discuss their problems, this and that. Before the war, everything was okay. And then when the German occupation started, everybody froze because they didn’t know what would happen. And unluckily the Germans were trying to find out if there were Jewish people in every neighborhood.
So one day they go to my father’s, to my uncle’s house, and they say that they would like to take it, not rent it. They wanted to have an officer living there, a German officer. They were frozen. So this is okay. And they didn’t know what to do. So they decided to take the Jewish family in their own home, hide them in an attic, but nobody would see them in the morning. And that’s okay. You can now have the home, the home which they knew was Jewish, but they left there. They’re not here. I don’t know where they are because they disappeared. And the Germans were living next to them. And it was very difficult. Very difficult thing to do.
And my uncle wanted to take them out of Salonika again, because in Salonika it was terrible. The Germans were killing Jews by the thousands. It was a genocide. It was incredible. I have to say something. My uncle, my parents and my father, they were very good businessmen, but they were not, as today, educated and things like that. But they had a good straight mind. So he called my father from Thessaloniki, and he said to him, Listen, there is a family here, that we are brothers with them, father and mother and four siblings.
So they said they made the plan. First of all, my uncle had very good connections with them. Then probably what they laughed at is the guerrillas who were fighting against the Germans, they issued for them fraud identity cards with the name Angelides. For Angelides, that was the name. And then he said he discussed it with the father and the family left and went to a fishing village very close to this island to hide themselves, waiting for a boat to take them to Athens. The boat was not arriving and not arriving, and the mayor of this small fishing town started asking questions. Who are they? What are they doing? Why are they here?
Somebody told them that he was going to call the Germans, that there is a Jewish family living on this island. They were frozen to death. And then they left because the Germans said, if you don’t give them up to us, we’re going to burn the whole island. They were doing it. Burn the whole island. I’m sorry, village. So the mayor told them, Listen, the whole village is in your hands. So the fact that they said, no, forget it. We are leaving right away. And they left and went back to Thessaloniki. They decided to return to Athens for sure.
Then you know, at that time there were no trains, there were just big old buses that were going from Salonika to Athens, which would take ten hours. And he decided after having the fake identity cards to put them on a bus and take them to Athens, where my father was living, my family, so that they would hide in Athens and nobody would know anything about it. My uncle insisted that he send them to go all together. Listen, he said it is a massacre. They killed Jews by the thousands. You must all go together. No, Mr. Carlson said, No, Mr. Manius. No. I’m going to stay here with my wife and the two children.
And he sent the other two with a bus. He didn’t take no for the reply. So my uncle said, okay, you want to do that? Do that. So with the fake IDs, they went to the bus station. They stayed in the third row and the fifth row, but far apart from each other, so that they wouldn’t know that their brother and sister and they were going in Larissa, which is half way from Athens to Thessaloniki, the bus stop for the rest. And the driver, who was not a good man, understood that something was wrong with these children. I don’t know how. He went and looked at them and said nothing, and he was going down to report it to the Germans.
All of a sudden, and this is something which is unbelievable, one sturdy man, very big, with not a knife but with a stick, stood up and went to the driver and told him something in his ear. And the driver froze to death. And he didn’t report to the Germans. He was going to tell the Germans they were Jewish and he would get money for it. So this was a big obstacle. Thank God they continued to Athens, where my family was living, and they were accepted by my family. And they stayed in our house. But, people there started talking. Who are they? What are they doing here and all that?
And my father thought of something very smart. In order to have them do something, he said, Listen, I will give you money. You will buy olive oil, which was during the German occupation, it was more than gold. I will give you bottles of oil. You will stay and you will sell them for peanuts and get some money. Not only this, they will say he’s a Greek doing some business to make some pocket money. And every day there was a Greek officer of the police passing by, and the guy in the garage gave him one bottle of oil free every day. Every day, every day, every day.
After maybe one month, the other policeman got a little bit suspicious. And what is this? So they go and ask him, who are you? What’s your name? His name was Angelita. They didn’t believe him. Where are you coming from? Listen, I’ll take you to the Gestapo and they will take care of you. He took them. He took the boy. And he was going to the Gestapo. And then he asked a policeman to take them to the Gestapo. And I don’t know how this happened. The policeman was the same who was getting the oil for free. So he gave back the little boy and he let him free. And the boy asked him, what are you going to say? I said, I slipped and you ran away. So he was saved.
He went back to our house where they were living. And then after that, I guess after that they started discussing who these are? Who is that? And my father went a little bit far away and rented a small apartment for them, and they were safe there because nobody knew them. And then they gave them the food and clothes and everything. And then the lady who owned the apartment started getting a little bit curious. Who are they?
By that time, the German occupation was finished. The Germans left the country and they were freed.They came back home and they said, we want to go now to the Serengeti to find our parents because the parents were there. So they went to Salonika again and my uncle told them they had to tell them where their parents were. The parents with three other children were caught by the Germans, and they were put on the last train from Thessaloniki.
Some years ago, we had a wonderful, very emotional meeting with the descendants of the Carrasco family in their house. That was maybe ten years ago. Maybe 15 years ago. They invited the whole Carrasco family and the whole Martinez family for dinner at their home, and we were about 35, 40 people. And I will never forget something that the old lady said. She said, of course she raised her glass to say hello to everybody and say, listen, Everybody listen. If there were not the Manias family, nobody would be here. Nobody. Both the Manias and the Carrasco, they would all be dead. This I will never forget.
So you know, we tell you all that because I think I have a moral obligation. I think because I’m an old man now. I am 90 years old. And I think I have an obligation to the coming generations to hear this story, to have the same feelings. No matter if he’s Jewish or Armenian or Hebrew, I don’t care. Human beings. Human beings must behave like human beings. And I hope this is going to be a good heritage to the coming generations. That’s why we tell you this story.
Andi Simon: The reason this is so beautiful is because at times you worry that humans have forgotten how to be human, and the Manias and Carrasco families are a tribute to what the good in us can do, isn’t it? If we can be kind, we can care, we can love each other, and we can help each other thrive. And it’s a beautiful story. And Panos, your tribute to your family and to theirs and to everyone is absolutely exquisite. It’s beautiful. Your English is very good too, sir.
Panos Manias: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Andi Simon: Would you like to say anything at the end here to your sons and daughters and their grandchildren and anything special you would like to end with? Because you’ve told a beautiful story. But I have a hunch in your heart you just want to hug everybody.
Panos Manias: You mean to say something too.
Andi Simon: Did you want to say something in the ending to your story.
Panos Manias: Yes, yes. I just want to repeat that as human beings, we have the moral obligation to behave like human beings. And look at the people who are around us not according to the religion or the city, I don’t care what they are. They are human beings. And we must behave like human beings. We must have the moral that God, Almighty God, whether it’s God or I don’t know what the name Almighty gave it to us and we have to respect what we get.
And I believe very strongly that really in life you get what you give. You give love, you get love, you give hate, you get hate. So simple. But simple things are difficult to understand sometimes. So I’m very proud that I leave this heritage to my family, and I hope they will have the same mentality to behave like human beings. Human beings.
Andi Simon: This is a beautiful story. I’m honored that you gave us the opportunity to share it. I’ve been to Greece several times, and I did my research in Greece, and I was in love with Greek people because they embraced the work I was doing to better understand how people embrace change. And this is just a wonderful compliment.
So I’m going to pause for a moment and say goodbye to my audience, and then I will come off the tape and we can talk for a moment further. So bear with me for a second, because I want to thank everyone who listened today or watched. And I know Panos is going to be sharing this. So for those of you who are not familiar with our podcast, what we try to do is help you see things through a fresh lens. I will tell you that we live the story that’s in our mind. So think about Panos’s story and his desire to tell it. It’s one thing to have it, it’s another thing to want to share it. And by sharing it, hoping to spread his own big heart with others.
You’re smiling at me, Panos, because this is a gift that you’re giving to others, and there’s nothing better for their well-being and your own than to share this gift. So I want to thank you all for coming today. If you’re watching or listening, and remember that our job is to help you get off the brink and soar. So thank you again. And thank you, Panos and your family for joining us
Panos Manias: And do me a favor when you come to Athens, you are going to visit us.
Andi Simon: Oh, absolutely. Let’s do it quickly. Is it sunny there? Because I need some sun.
Panos Manias: Oh, it’s beautiful today.
Andi Simon: I know, hold on while I say goodbye to everybody.
P.S. You can read a more in-depth version of Panos’s story here.
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Hear how to open yourself up to a world of infinite possibilities
As you know, I like a fresh lens. That’s what we do as anthropologists. We go out and help you see what’s all around you, and sometimes you can’t see what’s right here. Today, I have a wonderful woman, Roberta Fernandez, who’s going to help you do the same thing. Together, we’re going to help you realize that change is painful in some ways, but an opportunity for you to transform who you are in a great way. A personal and professional development consultant, Roberta takes your full self and helps you look at it a little bit differently. I love the word development. It isn’t a coach. It’s how do I help you grow? And how do we take a challenge and address it? Listen in to find out.
Watch and listen to our conversation here Key takeaways from our conversation: You cannot change a culture until the people in it change. Emotion drives all behavior. We all at some point in our lives should “clean out our closet” — get rid of those limiting beliefs and the stuff that really isn’t a part of you, and open the door for that higher self. If we’re only focused on the problem, that’s all we’re going to be able to see. We have to focus on the solution, what we want. The story we tell is the life that we create for ourselves. And it’s the life that we get stuck in. We stand in our own way, and what we want to do is to be able to open ourselves to this world of infinite possibilities. Most of our thinking is habitual, just automated. When we become aware of how we think and what we feel as an individual, then we can recognize those things in other people. The reason why we want anything is because we think we’re going to feel better when we can have it. So even though we don’t know the answer to something, we know how we want to feel when we’ve accomplished it. If you look at any great artist or scientist or inventor or highly successful person in general, they’re going to tell you that changing how they think, how they process, and how they see things differently than anybody else is what has contributed the most to their success.You can connect with Roberta on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and her three websites: Roberta Fernandez/AHARA, Conscious Napping and Conscious Napping For Business. You can also email her at [email protected].
Want more on how to actually bring about real change? Here’s a start: Blog: Okay, Okay, I’m Ready To Change. How Do I Do It? Blog: Three Ways Corporate Anthropology Can Help Your Company Change Podcast: Valerio Pascotto and Amit Raikar—Yes Change Is Painful But It’s Necessary! Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And if you come to my podcast, like so many of you do, you know my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. And remember, I tell you that because until you see something, it doesn’t exist. And if you don’t feel it, you don’t know how to respond to it. And so my job is to bring you people who, through their stories, will help you think about yourself through a fresh perspective.
It’s not exactly the right metaphor, but I like a fresh lens. And that’s what we do as anthropologists. We go out and help you see what’s all around you, and sometimes you can’t see what’s right here. But today, I have a wonderful woman, and she’s going to help you do the same thing. So together, we’re going to lift you up and help you realize that change is painful in some ways, but an opportunity for you to transform who you are in a great way. She’s smiling.
We are very aligned and it’s so exciting to meet Roberta Fernandez. I’m going to read her bio a bit as a personal and professional development consultant. It’s interesting, when I launched my business, it was as an anthropologist that helps companies and the people inside them change. Not that different, but to be a personal and professional development consultant takes your full self and helps you look at it a little bit differently. She offers programs for individuals and organizations that develop emotional intelligence, EQ, and guides them through a change process to awaken their full potential and realize their higher abilities.
She’s perfected individual personal development, and that’s different from coaching. And I love the word development. It isn’t a coach. It’s how do I help you grow? And how do we take a challenge and begin to address it? And wellness. And I love self-care and well-being, executive managerial and team corporate training programs, particularly in the area of sustainability, culture change and emotional intelligence. She’ll get you more familiar with the sustainability part of her career, but there’s a whole package here that comes together with Roberta that you’re going to enjoy.
She’s conducted thousands of individual client sessions, more than 85 noteworthy presentations and trainings over the past 15 years. She’s going to talk to you about her new program called AHARA. I’m going to let her tell you about it in just a little bit. It’s a sacred term that refers to the support of consciousness, eliminating everything which is not the intrinsic or higher nature of yourself. It’s interesting, I was supposed to do a podcast with somebody earlier who was going to talk about something similar in her own discovery. When we got together, she wasn’t quite ready to talk about it, but in some ways, we must be facing an interesting moment where we are looking for our higher nature and the world is a very fragile place. And she’ll also talk about cleaning your own closet and conscious napping. She’s very clever lady. Roberta, thank you for joining me today.
Roberta Fernandez: Thanks for having me, Andi. I’m really excited to be here. And I’m excited too, because I think we are such a good fit for each other with how we think.
Andi Simon: I think it is, and it’s always interesting how we came to think the way we think.
Roberta Fernandez: Right it is. It’s been a journey. It is.
Andi Simon: So let’s talk about your journey. This didn’t all just drop into the bucket right here. You’ve had a wonderful life professionally and personally. Share it with us. And that’ll set the stage for what the programs are that you’re offering today. Please. Who is Roberta?
Roberta Fernandez: Well, I think I am a culmination of many, many years, getting into that last third of my life now, which is a pretty exciting time. I’ve been a serial entrepreneur since my 20s. I’ve done a lot of different things, but I think the thing that really changed my life, I had founded a Montessori school for 3- to 12-year-olds. So talk about anthropology. Montessori. She was an anthropologist, too, as well as a doctor way ahead of her time.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. And I was sitting in a theater one day and I saw this movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and it just rocked my world, I have to tell you. And so I went home on the website and buried deep with this link, “Apply to be a presenter.” And I thought, okay, I can talk, I know how to talk, right? So I did. I forgot all about it. Probably 5 or 6 weeks later I get a call, it’s Al Gore’s office, and he invited me to be one of the first 50 people that they were going to train to give this climate talk.
Andi Simon: It was, see, I believe in serendipity. Absolutely.
Roberta Fernandez: And I was looking for my next stage and I had no idea what it was going to be. And so I went to Nashville. Long story. Mr. Gore trained a thousand people to give that climate talk over probably a six month period. And it was a wonderful grassroots, nonpartisan movement. I learned a lot from it. It opened my world, my look at my world, to a whole new area of sustainability, which was at that time not a very common term.
And I ended up working with a company out of Sweden on sustainability, and became a consultant in that field. But what I learned really quickly is there was such resistance to that term, and you can’t imagine why. Oh my gosh, you cannot change a culture until the people in it change. I mean, you can fire them, you can get rid of them, which sometimes is the right thing to do. But really you can’t delegate the way people think. You can’t do that top-down.
So I did that for quite a few years, and I did a lot of corporate training for really big companies and universities and even cities. And then I found hypnosis, which really is a whole different way to take my career. But in actuality, it’s the same thing. It’s just a different tool. With hypnosis, we’re looking at changing people’s perspectives with the way they think and the way they behave, because emotion drives all behavior. And so the last 12 years of my life, I’ve been working with individuals, helping them to change.
And a few years ago during Covid, Covid changed everything for everybody in some way, I decided I’m in the last third of my life. What’s my legacy really going to be? And I decided to take the last 20 years of my experience and roll them into a process that I call AHARA. So there’s several things that I do: cleaning out your closet is really getting rid of those limiting beliefs and kind of getting rid of the stuff that really isn’t a part of you, and opening the door for that higher self.
And then we start the Aha process, which is a year-long program where people learn to change how they think. I was really inspired by Einstein’s quote: “I look at the world and all the problems that we have that seem insurmountable and we’re not making very good progress with changing some of them.” And he said, “the problems that we have can’t be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
And as a hypnotist, I know that what we focus on expands. And if we’re only focused on the problem, that’s all we’re going to be able to see. We have to focus on the solution, what we want. So if we look at that, that is the basis of an aha, and that is exactly what you described: changing how people think, how they feel and then how they behave in the world.
Andi Simon: You know, Roberta, I’m an anthropologist. I’m a reader in neurosciences and the cognitive sciences. And, you know, we’re remarkable critters. We’re meaning-makers. I love the work that begins to show us that we have a story in our mind. And where it comes from is complicated. I’ve actually done hypnosis, so I’m sort of fascinated with our talk today. But once you have that story in your mind, it becomes your reality.
Roberta Fernandez: It does.
Andi Simon: And I tell folks, it really is an illusion. There is no reality. The only truth is there’s no truth. That’s right. And once you have it, though, you look for other people who are part of your tribe, the place you belong with your story that fits their story, and you all reinforce each other’s common reality. There’s nothing but one story.
And so when I get into a corporation or community group that’s stuck or stalled and you try to pull them away from that story, the first thing they say is, oh, no, we don’t do that. And I laugh and I said, well, that’s the problem because you don’t see it. You don’t see what’s right in front of you. And so you’re onto something for our conversation today that’s extremely important, a little different perspective. But this mind is really powerful at creating something that may or may not be good anymore.
So as if you’re thinking about the next phase in your own career, I want to hear more about what you’re creating and how you’re applying it, and why it’s working.
Roberta Fernandez: Yeah. Thank you for that. And you’re absolutely right. The story we tell is, it is the life that we create for ourselves. And it’s the life that we get stuck in. And the problem is, that’s just me and you. When you’re in an organization, you’re in a sea of those different perspectives and learning how to navigate all of those perspectives without losing your own identity, without losing your own opinion. And yet respecting and honoring those other perspectives allows us to do something amazing. And that is to create a new story and create a new reality.
I think when we look at how stuck people get in their own way of thinking, we stand in our way, and what we want to do is to be able to open ourselves to this world of infinite possibilities. And when we really look at how our mind works and how we function in a traditional environment, we’re only really looking at about 25% of what our opportunities are.
And so AHARA, at its core, is really teaching people to become aware of their own thinking because, as you know, most of our thinking is habitual. It is just totally not responsive, it’s just automated. And so when we become aware of how we think and what we feel as an individual, then you can recognize those things in other people. And the Aha process is designed to teach you how to navigate that sea of perspectives.
Andi Simon: Well, you said something very powerful there. The thinking is habitual and what AHARA allows you to do is, I’m not going to say break the habit, but maybe it’s part of that. Habits are very powerful and very important. I mean, they make you very efficient. And the problem with breaking them is the brain doesn’t really want to work hard on learning something new, even when you’re getting educated.
You can feel your brain working really hard, trying to figure out what they are saying and how they are telling me to do this. And until you actually do it, it really doesn’t exist. And then all of a sudden, you practice and you practice, and you get it. It’s a little like learning golf. I was thinking of which metaphor I could use. I’m a 12-year golfer, and I remember having a club and a ball and a book, and I don’t know why someone gave me a book to learn to play golf. It was irrelevant because I could read about it. But until I hit the ball, I went, oh, is that what they meant? And then I hit it twice. That was bad because now I could play this game. I can’t play the game. It takes a long time to finally get it so that it works.
So this is important now when you’re helping people through the process. There are multiple levels at which you’re working. You want to talk about the differences between the elite and the club and all of this because I think it’s important for people to hear that.
Roberta Fernandez: Yeah. Thank you. So really, it is one-on-one. So that is a very intensive way to look and learn the AHARA tenets. When I started three years ago, that’s the only way I offered it. I would work with a client over six months and we’d meet twice a week. So it was pretty intense. There’s some advantage to working one on one in that. It’s like immersion and that’s always a good thing. And you’re focused and you’re really into it. So you become acclimated to it pretty quickly, that’s not reasonable for a lot of people. And it’s also very expensive to do that.
So AHARA Club and AHARA Team are the same program. It’s just in the delivery that’s different. So both programs last a year. We have a couple of group sessions a month, a one-on-one session a month, and a whole slew of other things that go into the program. Team is just within one company. And the advantage there, and this is what I found in my sustainability work, especially the larger companies, they’re so siloed.
I remember in Target, for example, they had two sustainability divisions. One was architectural and one was in-store and processes. They never talked to each other. And so this idea of having a common language and a common approach and common goals that you set with each other. So a team is just within a company, it might be the leadership team, it might be the advertising team, the sales team, but they’re focused on their company’s issues.
AHARA Club involves people from lots of different backgrounds. So entrepreneurs, leaders, individuals who want to better themselves. And I love that too because you get such a different perspective on how people are applying what they’re actually learning. The key to AHARA, I believe, is that everything that we talk about, all these things you and I are talking about, are some of the basic tenets of AHARA. But it’s one thing to know them, it’s another thing to integrate them as a permanent part of your being, of how you function in life.
And so over the course of the year, as the members of the cohorts participate, they have activities that take these tenants and encourage them to use them in real life scenarios. So it really is an integration process. It’s not like a coaching program where I’m holding people accountable and coaching them. It really is about changing the way you think, the way you problem solve and and the way you live your life. And that starts individually. So there’s a big focus on the self. But once that awareness of how you’re thinking of how you’re interacting with the world, then how do we incorporate that on a personal and professional level? And that’s what it is.
Andi Simon: Possible to share an illustrative case with the listener or the viewer to concretize what you’re saying because I’m trying to imagine what you’re saying, and I am not getting a good imagination on it, and I don’t want it to be external from us. This is something that goes inside us and is extremely transformative, if I hear you correctly. Can you give an example?
Roberta Fernandez: Yes. So an example would be one of the women that went through AHARA, she was very successful in what she did, but she was bored to tears and she was thinking she needed to change careers, but had no idea what that was. And even though she was very successful in what she did, we found in working together that imposter syndrome was a big part of her life, and even thinking about doing something totally different was just beyond her capability because of a lack of confidence.
So first we had to work on those issues. We had to clean out the closet, so to speak, of those limiting beliefs and really look at what was driving those things to begin with so that she could better understand who she was. And once we accomplished that, then it became looking at the specific tenets of AHARA. For example, you mentioned how reality, how your thoughts create your reality, how that reality shapes your life because there is no reality, there’s a map, but we all use that map in different ways. We all experience that territory differently.
And so looking at where her focus was was really challenging for her because she didn’t know what she wanted to do. So we started with having her vision, the solution. And when I talk about problem solving from the solution, what I really mean is the first thing, because she didn’t know what the solution was. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she knew one thing, and that was how she wanted to feel when she was there.
Andi Simon: Love it, love it, love it.
Roberta Fernandez: Because here’s the thing: the reason why we want anything is because we think we’re going to feel better when we can have it. So even though we don’t know the answer to something, we know how we want to feel when we’ve accomplished it. So we started visioning, doing some visioning work with her on how she wanted to feel. And it was really interesting to see how that vision started to work its way backwards. And bottom line, what she found was she didn’t want to do anything different. She wanted to do what she was doing differently. It’s a huge idea and it made all the difference in the world.
And it’s so interesting because she’s a mortgage broker and that industry has taken a beating lately, and a lot of mortgage brokers don’t exist anymore. When I look at her website, when I look at her posts on Facebook and Instagram and social media, I see AHARA all over it and she’s still actually attracting people that think like she does because her whole thing was in her company, she built a company, but she had not built a family, and that was super important for her. When she first started implementing AHARA, it was very much in her family, juggling her kids and her husband and all their responsibilities. And then that started integrating very much with her as a person, as a business person, and gave her a gift.
Andi Simon: You gave her a gift, didn’t you?
Roberta Fernandez: Well, she gave it to herself. I have a process that helps you discover your own answers. And I think that is really essential for all of us.
Andi Simon: I have a leadership academy, I have several, and I’ve been doing them for several years. And I love taking emerging leaders, once a month, beginning to get them to see themselves as no longer those managers, but as leaders. What do those words mean? I often say that the words create the worlds we live in, and if you’re going to go from manager to leader, something has to stop and something has to start. You can’t just add more on.
Yeah, well, the first session and it’s coming up, I asked them to draw pictures and tell us stories about themselves today. And then I asked them to visualize what it is they would like to see themselves become. Tell us a story about that, because I got to start them to see, feel and think about themselves through the story in their mind. And what you’re telling us, it’s a different approach, but very much the same. If I can’t see it, I can’t ever become it. And then we try to backward plan, small wins to begin to move ourselves closer to that. The vision changes, you know, as life gets in the way of where I want to be. It actually takes you in better places, because you can begin to see it as part of this complex thing that you’re crafting.
Roberta Fernandez: Absolutely. And I think when you look at, and this is the value that I have gotten from being a hypnotist for 12 years, the imagination, the subconscious mind, which is home to the imagination, home to your emotions, home to your rules about life and how you think. What created you as a person when you can tap into that? I always tell people, everybody came to me as a hypnotist for one reason and one reason only, and they would be dumbfounded by that. They would say, well, how will you deal with all these people with all these different problems? And I would say that’s only the symptom.
The reason why people would come to see me is that there was a disconnect between what they consciously wanted and what their subconscious mind believed was possible. And inside of you, the one thing that I am absolutely sure inside of each one of us are the answers. We just can’t connect to them. And that’s the bridge that I played as a hypnotist. And I learned so much about human behavior and how the mind works and how really simple those answers are. Once you can get clear.
Andi Simon: Pretty, pretty cool stuff, huh?
Roberta Fernandez: It is. Yeah.
Andi Simon: So now, how are you building? This is a new line of business for you. As if it’s not quite a startup, but it is the next step in it.
Roberta Fernandez: You know, it’s new and it’s old because this is really the same work that I did in the corporate sector. I just did it on larger scales, right? I would have large training sessions and that kind of thing. So AHARA, any of the group ones are 12, we limit it to 12, 8-12 people at the most, but still more than one-on-one, because I also realize when we’re looking at it professionally, having a variety of opinions and ways of applying what you’re learning is so very important because people ask questions that I never would have thought of. And that’s a learning experience for me. So I love the idea of working in small groups, but it really is the same thing I was doing before. I’m just packaging what I’ve learned from several careers, actually, and putting it all into one tool, if that makes sense.
Andi Simon: I think that’s wonderful. So it’s not a startup, it’s a restart instead of branding. It’s a rebranding. But it is your skills, well-honed in your expertise and experience. This is not an imposter syndrome stuff. This is a woman who has had a great experience listeners might benefit by and do it in a very different way.
I can’t tell you how many times I became an executive coach. I don’t sell it, but often my clients need it. And so I go from consulting into coaching, mostly to become a listener and to help them get some perspective, but it’s amazing to me how without that, people have a hard time thinking. They have a hard time doing and they need to somehow, I won’t say the word vent, but to express the dilemmas that they’re facing.
And often it’s well beyond what you ever could have imagined and sort of like, I’ve had some clients and they’ve had family issues, and we get on a phone call or a Zoom for a business conversation. We never get to the business, the whole people and the combination of home and work sometimes just need a hand, you know? Let’s see if we can help you rethink what you’re doing and move forward some way, right?
Roberta Fernandez: Yeah. You know, I remember when I was young, there was the attitude of, you have to leave your problems at the door when you get to work. And no, that was a thing, right? You’re right.
Andi Simon: I am the same age. It was exactly. Absolutely.
Roberta Fernandez: And it’s impossible. It’s like saying you can separate the body from the mind and the spirit. You can’t. We are a whole package deal. And how we are personally definitely impacts who we are professionally. And we tend to think of ourselves as a different person when we walk in that door. And that is not the truth. It is not the truth.
And what is really cool is when we realize that and we can learn how to integrate these processes as part of who we are, we become more efficient in both our personal and professional life. And so when I was rebranding myself as not just a consultant, I really was specific and intentional in saying a personal and professional development consultant because they’re inextricably connected.
Andi Simon: And if you can structure a process for yourself of moving between roles, I often tell my clients that life is like theater. You don’t see it that way, but it’s just another metaphor. And in each place you are, you’re playing a role, sometimes well-honed, in others not. But I used to find that when I came home from business and my two kids were there waiting for time, I’d say to them, mom has to take a shower first. And I took the shower, I sat on the floor outside the shower, and I took the shower as a quiet downtime to move from business to mom.
And then I came out as a mom, and I vividly remember saying to myself, this is very healthy for them and for you because as you walk through the door, you’re still there and now you have to come here. The mom and I never quite tried to master that, but I remember having to because it was intense, both the business side and the mom side and being a professional person, you know, it was always managing a blended life. You had to figure out how one person could keep shifting rolls. And I remember we had one party for one client and it was on my birthday. My daughter came with me, and it was with great pride that I showed her off and brought her in. It was okay. So I think that these were complicated critters, and I do think it’s time that more people need them.
Roberta Fernandez: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. So I think I agree with everything that you’re saying, Andi. And I think if the audience can really take something away from this is that, really exploring, you mentioned that you’re a neuroscientist. My daughter is a neuroscientist as well. And we have very interesting discussions as a hypnotist and a neuroscientist together about how the brain works. It’s really important to understand that; you mentioned earlier the brain has to be efficient.
And so the majority of things that we do day in and day out are just habits. It’s something, and our thoughts too, just thoughts. We keep thinking over and over again but change is possible because it just is. And the way it’s possible is by becoming aware of how we think.
And when I look at the acronym of AHARA, A Higher Awareness leads us to Realize our Abilities, because we cannot fully realize our potential and reach that potential until we are aware of who we are, how we think, and how we navigate this world. And once we can tap into that, then the sky is absolutely the limit.
Andi Simon: You almost answered my question, which was, Roberta, tell the listener one or 2 or 3 things you don’t want them to forget. That sounded like the one.
Roberta Fernandez: Oh, it’s one.
Andi Simon: Yes it is. You know, because we’re about ready to wrap up. Is there a 2 or 3 you can add to that, or shall we just end on that note?
Roberta Fernandez: I think here’s how I’d like to end it. If you look at any great artist or scientist or inventor or just a highly successful person in general, they’re going to tell you that changing how they think, how they process, and how they see things differently than anybody else is what has contributed the most to their success.
Andi Simon: Good. So now we have a great podcast to share that you can change. It is painful. The amygdala really hijacks most new ideas. The habits make you efficient, but not necessarily productive. I love the story of the woman who wanted to stay and do what she did, but do it differently to add real value to herself and others.
And change is painful. But it happens. And I also love the fact that when you’re understanding that the words we use create the worlds we live in, sometimes we have to shed some ideas deliberately. And I like the idea of doing it in groups of 8 or 10, so you can help each other stay on course and not fall back. Because sometimes we fall back, even though we really don’t want to.
We don’t even see ourselves. It’s just the old habits rising to the surface. Oh, we’re complicated humans. God, if only it were easy but there’s progress. Now, remember, Judith Glaser does great work with conversational intelligence, and her stuff about the brain literally changes when you hear stories like we’re telling. So just so you know, listeners, you listen and your brain is adapting to what you’re hearing. Your story is changing, and there’s actually DNA that’s gone through a transformation there. Maybe.
But I love the idea that this is casual and outside of us, but comes inside of us and begins to be transformative, like your work. So absolutely, I’m going to say it’s time to wrap. I always love our podcasts. This is a great one. I’m so glad you came to me. I don’t know where, serendipity and there you are, but it’s been a great conversation about things that I sort of knew, but I didn’t know a lot about for our audience. Thank you for coming. It’s always a pleasure to help you see, feel and think in new ways.
Remember my new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and elsewhere, and I think that it’s a time for us to begin to understand how change is possible, and we should be changing. The joy of writing this book is that 102 women want to share their wisdom with others so you can thrive in business as well. And that is a very big change. When you read those stories and look at their wisdoms, you go, oh my gosh, that’s a great point. I can do that. Not the least of which is serendipity is a great way to start the day, and we have been serendipitously happy today.
Goodbye my friends. Thanks. Send us your emails at [email protected] and we will bring more great people onto the show. Goodbye again. Bye bye. Have a great day. Thanks, Roberta.
Roberta Fernandez: Thank you.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Roseann and Clara Sunwoo—How Did Roseann And Clara Sunwoo Build A Successful Women’s Fashion Brand? POSTED ON JANUARY 20, 2024 Hear how a great idea and hard work made this dynamic duo succeed
This is one of those amazing stories that you’ve heard 100 times but it never ceases to make me smile. Clara Sunwoo and her husband came to the United States from Seoul, Korea in 1975 with two suitcases and $1,000. Now, 49 years later, Clara and her daughter Roseann are riding the wave of the very successful fashion business they built together, ClaraSunwoo. I have one of their jackets and I love it. I am honored that they are part of our book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and myself, and even more honored to bring them to you today. Enjoy.
Watch and listen to our conversation here Wisdoms for entrepreneurs from Roseann and Clara Sunwoo: You need to be fearless. All the women out there, if you are having second thoughts or you have a great idea, don’t wait on it. Give it a try. Learn as you go. We saw a need and we filled it (very Blue Ocean Strategy!). Just take that leap of faith. A lot of women in business, or women who want to go into business or become entrepreneurs, have fabulous ideas, but think they have to have all the certificates or degrees. You don’t. Sometimes I would be the youngest female or the only female in a meeting. We as women really need to empower ourselves and get to another place here. The way you get through the tough times is with the people that surround you. Go with your gut in the beginning and take those risks. Data is so important. Pay attention to what it is telling you. Really love yourself. Never say you’ll never do something or never say no to something, because you might find you’ll be surprised.To connect with Roseann and Clara, you can find them on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo and their company website Clara Sunwoo.
Want more on how to succeed as an entrepreneur, especially as a woman? Start with these: Marsha Friedman—How A Woman Entrepreneur Took A Little Idea And Turned It Into A Big Business Amanda Zuckerman—How To Turn A Big Idea Into A Huge Blue Ocean Success! Finding The “Holes in the Cheese” To Build A Successful Business! Meet Kim Shepherd Stephanie Breedlove: How Women Entrepreneurs Can Think Bigger, Build Sustainable Businesses, and Change the World Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And as you know, my job is to get you off the brink. We want to bring you people who are going to help you see, feel and think in new ways. Because it’s only when you see something and you feel it that your brain can start to think about, how can I apply this? And how can I do it in a way that’s going to help me soar? And that’s what we love to do.
I have today two marvelous women who are going to help share with you their own journey. And when you listen to their journey, you’re going to go, oh my, if they can, I can. And what kind of wisdom have they brought to their whole industry of women’s fashion? I met Roseann and Clara Sunwoo as I was doing our book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And their pages in here are just gorgeous.
What we did was, we collected the wisdoms of 102 women, and Roseann and Clara came to us, I think, from Robin Spizman, one of our co-authors, and we were so excited to share. So first, I want to tell you a little bit about them. I want to thank them for joining us. It’s going to be fun to really dig into two creative women who have built something unusual. I’m wearing their jacket today and their blouse and their pants and I wear it all the time. It’s so comfortable and it looks good and it’s really designed for me without them knowing me.
So who are they? Clara Sunwoo, the name of the company that they founded. They make clothing that’s strong and feminine and every day ready. It’s true. Since 1997, Clara Sunwoo and her daughter Roseann have worked together to create timeless designs that fuse classic styles with modern edge. And this fabric is really fascinating. You’re going to really understand it as they talk about it. Their goal is to have women not just look, but experience and feel edgy, empowered and beautiful. Yes I do, it’s so much fun. We’re a cross-generation ageless lifestyle brand. Every design they create must be wrinkle free, travel friendly and effortless.
They know me. I’ve already got 3 million miles on American, over 100,000 this year alone. Every week on a plane. You need clothes that move with you. So today we’re going to hear about their journey, because I do think it’s a journey that is going to inspire you. It’s going to absolutely celebrate what they’ve done, but elevate what you can do and educate you about how to think about what’s happening and what change can bring to you and your brand or your business. Roseann and Clara, thank you for being here today.
Clara and Roseann Sunwoo: Oh, thank you so much for having us. We’re really happy to be here.
Andi Simon: I can’t tell you how, and it’s really fun to share them. Everytime I see them, I go, oh, this is so much fun. Please share your story because it’s a very touching story. It touches my heart and I don’t want to share it for you. Please.
Roseann Sunwoo: So one of the things I really want to let everyone know that is listening is we did not go to fashion design school. We’re not from that background. My mother and father came to the United States from Seoul, Korea back in 1975 with two suitcases and $1,000. $1,000. So you can imagine with $1,000, you’re not buying much. Then I was born and I remember I became an unknowing apprentice in the family. So I know, mom, we have a lot of photos in the family. We’re wearing the same watermelon prints as children. We would make everything. We made curtains, pillowcases. We were hands on, and it really came from necessity, the talent to make things, to use your hands. We were not going in a direction, going into fashion in any sense. However, we were making clothing for friends, family or for ourselves. And a lot of people would ask you all the time to make clothing for them.
Andi Simon: My mother’s mother came here from Russia through England to here, and she was a seamstress, not an uncommon job or career. I’m not sure she thought of it as a career. It was what made enough money for her to raise six children. So I fully appreciate this. As you were making clothes for others, what did you discover?
Roseann Sunwoo: They were gorgeous, like all shapes and body types. What we noticed is, the fashion industry, and we were feeling the same thing, they put us in categories. I felt like women had to, if you’re this type of person or this age bracket, you must look like this. And it was really tiring and it was really just in our minds, we’re very modern and we’re very forward thinking. And it seemed backwards to us, and it was really frustrating to try things on where things were ill-fitting.
I think what we’re known for as designers is the perfect fit. We’re both perfectionists, we’re very detail oriented. And it’s the subtle, the subtle work that we do that really just, things drape well and we understand the body, the form, really well because we work with so many different body shapes, so many different women. And it really allowed us to understand how to design better. And also we knew who our audience was. We realized there were so many women out there that were feeling the same things we were.
When we talk about an Ageless Lifestyle Brand, we have so many different types of women wear our collection, and it’s really about how you put it together. And I want to go back to the way you feel. Looking good is wonderful because it’s going to make you feel good when you look good. But it’s really the feeling, the empowered on the inside. And when you wear fabrics that let you move and breathe and you feel really comfortable in it, but it’s high fashion because we’re not cutting corners, I think that’s going to empower women, and it’s going to make them really elevate in so many ways. I think that’s important. And that’s our main reason for creating the line. We did it in 1997.
We started with a capsule collection. There was a lot of risk because we used our life savings. I think we said, I had approached my mother and I said, why don’t we create a very tight collection, debut it at a tradeshow and just see what happens. And I was actually possibly heading towards law school, being the good immigrant child, everyone expects you to go to law school or med school, that’s what happenss. That was my parent’s dream back then. But I made a U-turn, and I’m so glad we did make that U-turn.
It was very, very nerve wracking because trade shows are expensive to do. But in the beginning, you learn as you go. We did not come from the business background, the fashion background. It was winging it a little bit. And I want to talk about this too. I think a lot of women in business, or women who want to go into business or become entrepreneurs, have fabulous ideas, but I think they never get to the other side until they feel like, I need to learn everything. I need to make sure that I have this degree, this certificate, and then once I get there, I’m going to jump to that other side.
I think in reality, it doesn’t work like that. I think there are certain things that you need. You need to get those licenses and certificates. But for many to jump, to start your business, it’s a little bit of just taking that leap of faith and the hope, and it does go back to hope, where obviously our back was against the wall and we were hoping that this would work. And it did.
Andi Simon: You know, I often talk about…I’m an anthropologist and I love to talk about taking observations and turning them into innovation. At the time, were you already seeing what you know now about the clothing industry? I can fully appreciate how the clothing industry categorized women and made clothes for particular clients without any larger philosophy, because what you’re talking about is a very different philosophy than something for a 50 year old or for a 30 year old. I mean, you were talking about being able to travel with it, feeling flexible, letting them feel good…was that early in your observations about this or did it come with time and maybe both?
Roseann Sunwoo: I think it was actually early on because it started with just ill-fitting things. And you know, if we give it more shape. It made us happy to give shape. We noticed a lot of women were wearing, if they felt uncomfortable with themselves, they would wear larger, looser pieces. And we saw that that wasn’t helping them. And they could have fun with fashion.
And I feel like fashion is, there’s a sense of joy when someone feels, there’s joy in that. And we really felt some of our best moments where women would come out of the dressing room and they’re almost in tears. And when you feel and experience that, we realized we had something to share. And it made us feel really good.
So I think it started off with fit and seeing that joy and then really understanding that…I think also women and business at that point, I remember being in a lot of meetings as I was working with different companies, sometimes I would be the youngest female or the only female in that meeting. I noticed that. I started to realize, we really need to empower ourselves and get to another place here. This is not, especially in the fashion industry. That’s what I saw.
Andi Simon: I was that woman. I left academics and went into banking as a consultant, and I was always the only, the first, whether it was a boardroom or it was the C-suite and I didn’t really know how to dress, I felt like it was theater. What is the part I’m supposed to play and how do I dress the right way to fit that? What do I say?
People talk about imposter syndrome, and I said, I’ve always been an imposter. I was going into venues with folks who didn’t look like me, and they didn’t say anything, but you try to figure out, how do I belong, what do I do to fit in? And the clothing. Brooks Brothers was for men. And you bought their clothes for women. But you look like a man. And it wasn’t me, but I wasn’t quite sure what was me. And so, you know, you’re raising some important questions for women and for you who are watching or listening. Think carefully. Who are you? How do you dress so that you thrive and you feel exhilarated about putting it on? This is a great jacket. I put it on, I go, oh. Please continue. As your journey went, how did it become 3000 boutiques? Because this didn’t happen overnight.
Roseann Sunwoo: No, it didn’t happen overnight. But, I think we like doing things locally, being hands on. We noticed that we like to know who our buyers were. They gave us feedback. It was almost like a patchwork of boutiques where, and that wasn’t something that we originally said, okay, this is our business plan and this is what we’re going to do. But we realized that the whole department store model was just not quite….
I felt like as designers, we were going to work for them. And they were going to box us in in a way where we have to design for what they were looking for during that season. And I don’t think, we would not be able to shine in that realm. So once we started working with all these local boutiques, a lot of it was word of mouth. We also had a lot of celebrities find our collection. A friend, they were shopping at a boutique, they would get gifts that led to a lot of big surprises. And I’m going to mention, we were on Oprah’s favorite list not that long ago. And actually they did a commercial on us, which was amazing. We had a Today Show segment. We’re in this book, Women Mean Business.
We are so lucky. We work hard and we’re always, I think we don’t know how not to work because that’s who we are, we love what we do. However, the consumer out there reached out to us. We didn’t use PR companies. It was a very organic way of growing. And then we just grew into 3000 boutiques with boutiques in every state. And we realized that that was where we belong.
Andi Simon: Now, how do you manufacture to support 3000 boutiques? I mean, are you like Zara that makes it just in time or do you have a lot of inventory? I think it’s interesting to think about, you made a good point before. People want to be really competent before they go into something. And you illustrate that we learn on the job and we grow and prosper. You can too. But how do you do that part?
Roseann Sunwoo: So sometimes we wish there was a crystal ball. We do. And I have to say the business has changed a lot. The fashion industry has changed a lot in terms of the calendar, after the pandemic. Even department store buyers, corporate buyers, down to boutique buyers, they are buying a little bit closer to season. So the calendar has changed.
Knock on wood, we’re confident enough to have built a loyal clientele that we do tend to create our collection and maintain inventory up to a certain point so that we can be ready when the stores are buying later than the season, because you can’t just turn things around overnight. We’re always living a year ahead or a whole season ahead.
I think it’s definitely, my heart goes out to a lot of newcomers in the fashion industry, because I don’t think it’s fair to expect everyone to have the merchandise. But we are very fairly lucky where we’re able to have that loyal clientele that we know that they’re going to support us.
Andi Simon: Because to your point, it’s a challenging time, both in terms of cash flow, inventory, financing and the complexity. You didn’t go to law school, but in some ways you are very analytical and lawyer-like. Are you a data person?
Roseann Sunwoo: Yes. So I believe In the very beginning when we started our company, there wasn’t much data to go with so you go with your gut, you’re creating relationships, which, by the way, I think are so important because the mills and the relationships that I have made 25 years ago are the same mills I work with now.
Andi Simon: That’s wonderful.
Roseann Sunwoo: And it’s just so much better when you have that trust and the relationship and that history. I think that’s how you get through the tough times with the people that surround you. Going with your gut in the beginning and taking those risks, data is so important. And now with the computers and all of the information that you’re getting, whether it be on the wholesale end or the retail end, we really need to know what the consumer is thinking. We need to know how she’s changing, where she’s going, what she’s looking for.
And our data is really showing that women are starting to break away from this traditional sense of, I need to look like this because this is my age. Even 20 or, 30 year old women, they’re starting to break away from, I don’t need to wear these things, I can wear what I want, I love vintage clothes. I see a lot of mother-daughter teams just exchanging clothing. I think it’s a beautiful thing because I think women need to support each other more, through generations. Bring them up. And it should not be separated because there’s so much to learn from each other. And I think fashion too, we shouldn’t separate.
Andi Simon: And you’ve also given them a way not to separate. And I think that’s the beauty of what you’ve created, because you could preach that. But if you can’t find clothes that allow you to feel and look good at any age, it’s difficult to believe that you can do that. And the magic in what you have is that, I don’t care whether you’re 25 or 75, this jacket will fit you and look gorgeous on you. And when you see it on stars, I go, oh, they were in the same jacket I am. So, you’ve brought a life, a philosophy, that is just extraordinary because you’re living it, but you’re letting others do the same. Clara, You’re smiling. You are a happy woman, aren’t you?
Clara Sunwoo: I try.
Andi Simon: If you are, it’s really wonderful to watch you smile. I’m curious, you have the 3000 boutiques, but I bought online. How big is your online business?
Roseann Sunwoo: So our online business started ramping up more, so I think during the pandemic. So we were focused more on a wholesale buyer. I think the world changed real fast. I mean, we had an online presence before the pandemic, but we weren’t focused on it as much. However, I think with the pandemic everyone sped up with online shopping, even customers that would normally not shop online and say, I have to feel the fabrics, I have to try it on. They had to shop online at that point too.
And now what we’re seeing is the growth on the e-commerce side, on the online shops. However, our boutiques are wonderful with carrying the line and keeping in touch with their loyal customers. So at the end of the day, it’s a patchwork. And so it just keeps feeding the whole ecosystem of both the wholesale, the brick and mortar, the online, the e-com.
So we’re in a very good position right now, but again, going back to data, and I think going into e-comm, data is so important because now you’re not face to face with the customer but they can also share a lot. We get a lot of exchange and information and also just through social media. I mean, what I love about our social media, you see women of different ages, different body shapes, maybe not so much online. You could see our models.
We’re still a small company, so we don’t have the budget to have 20 different models. We’re not there yet. But what I love to show in social media are the real women because then you can really see what we’re doing.
Andi Simon: And I think that reality takes the abstraction. Remember, we live this kind of illusion and we imagine and then when you see it and you go, oh, that’s what that is. Because if I hadn’t met you and Robin hadn’t told me how great you guys were, I’m not sure I would have been that curious about what it was. It didn’t seem to fit me. And then I saw it, and I went, oh, my goodness, that not only fits me, so, now I have two jackets, two pairs of pants, two blouses, and I’m not quite sure I’m ready for the next one yet, but I don’t have enough time to wear them all.
But it is exciting to be part of something, and I share that with you, because now I don’t feel like I’m buying a thing, I’m buying part of us, and that collaboration, that sense of celebration is really so very exciting. I am curious and I’ll be satisfied with my curiosity. How did you come up with this fabric? It’s not leather.
Roseann Sunwoo: No, it’s not leather. And a lot of women don’t like leather. I personally don’t either. It’s very restrictive, it’s stiff. So what you are wearing is a special fabric we had invented, and we call it liquid leather. And liquid leather really feels like, it’s a knit. It’s very soft. It’s butter soft. It’s stretchy. It’s so lightweight and thin that you can actually roll up your jacket and put it in your purse. I know that it almost looks like a leather blazer on you right now, but it’s very lightweight.
We spent a lot of time trying to invent this fabric because we felt like leather, or blazers and jackets, it’s a sign of a woman that’s empowered, at least to us. It’s a very powerful jacket but we don’t like that stiff feel. And again, that’s very masculine. And I felt like we could take that idea, invent something that was so just feminine and comfortable and travel friendly and let women feel empowered because when you put a leather jacket on or a blazer, there’s this, at least I feel something, I stand differently. I think it’s a sign of empowerment. And I love the fact that, it’s made for everyone.
Andi Simon: And it travels. I swear it travels amazingly.
Roseann Sunwoo: You could put 50 of those jackets in a carry on.
Andi Simon: Yeah. And, it comes out looking perfect. And I went, this is really amazing, amazing, amazing. So thank you for satisfying my curiosity because I did have to figure out how you do this. It’s not leather, it looks like leather. It feels like that blazer. I love to wear it. Do you know many blazers I’ve worn over my lifetime? It truly is part of my style. Pair of gray pants and a blue blazer and you’re ready to go.
Roaseann Sunwoo: We call it the new modern cardigan. And that’s how women should think about it. It’s like, do you grab a cardigan when you’re chilly at the office? Or if you’re out to dinner or you’re at the movie theater? I’m always kind of cold with the AC. This is something that you could just pull out of your bag. It’s very light.
Andi Simon: So I want to wrap us up because I’m about ready, but before we’re gone, you wrote something really wonderful here. I don’t want to lose it. In our book Women Mean Business, you write: “The modern woman is ageless and fearless.” What a great view. “And the fashion industry must not categorize her. We are obsessed with changing the way women think about style and comfort. Our mantra: to make women feel good and spread joy, one woman at a time.”
It captures the power and essence of who you are, how you’ve come from an immigrant with $1,000 in your bag and turned it into an amazing experience. And I don’t think you’re done. Do you see much in the future that’s going to be coming soon that we should pay attention to. And then we can wrap us up.
Roseann Sunwoo: I don’t think we’re done either. I think the creativity that we have, I think we just got started because we feel the energy. The women now, I feel like they’re finally understanding what we’re doing. And I think we’re on the same page now, and there’s a lot of women, like, it’s not just a brand to shop, but it’s like, join the club. It’s a mentality.
Andi Simon: Don’t lose that thought because you pull us into belonging, to the next stage in our personal lives and your design. So I think you’re absolutely right. It isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of the next phase. And this is a collaboration that’s going to be very exciting. Okay, my dear friends, one or two things you don’t want our listener or viewer to forget because they always remember the end better than the beginning.
Roseann Sunwoo: Well, we both think that you need to be fearless. All the women out there, if you are having second thoughts or you have a great idea, don’t wait on it. Think about what you can you lose? If it’s not grave, try, because you don’t need to know everything to start.
The other thing is, really love yourself, find joy in fashion and don’t let people categorize you because every day could be something different. I’m a big believer of, never say you’ll never do something or never say no to something, because you might find you’ll be surprised. And I do want to say, if you do want to look for our brand online, please head to clarasunwoo.com. And we are so happy that you have invited us for this podcast and this is a great time. Thank you.
Andi Simon: It’s a great time and I’m happy to be part of your club. And so send me a little membership card because I think that the clothes are transformative. The book that we wrote was to celebrate and elevate women. I am so delighted that I had the opportunity to meet you and to share you. You really are taking women off the brink and helping them see, feel and think in new ways so they can soar. It is fun and you’re also smiling a lot, which I think is great.
I’m going to thank you and everyone for coming today. I do want to recognize the fact that Women Mean Business, the title of our book, is a trademark owned by the National Association of Women Business Owners, who have really done an amazing job helping women business owners grow, thrive, and build their businesses together. So I thank them for the opportunity to use the title for our book, Women Mean Business. It has been a pleasure.
For those of you who come, send me new people to bring on. I have no shortage of a line out the door, but I always love my listeners to come and send along people they met who they thought are worth listening to. As you heard today, the journeys are all very important because they open your mind to what you can be. All my books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and I would love you to give me a review on Amazon if you really love it, because it’s great fun to share it and I’m a sharer. Been a pleasure. Thank you for coming to On the Brink. I’m going to say goodbye now and have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Hear about perseverance, pivoting, and putting yourself out there
In today’s podcast I bring you Gemma Toner, former media and telecommunications innovator and one of the 102 amazing women leaders featured in our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and myself. Gemma and I talk about not being afraid to take a job or head up a project even if you think you’re not 100% quailified. Believe in yourself and offer yourself as a smart person who can grow—that’s when amazing things can happen. Listen in!
Watch and listen to our conversation here 8 takeaways from Gemma for your own journey Just start. And then keep going. This the best advice Gemma received from one of her mentors. Everybody makes mistakes. Learn and start again. Find people that are like you that can support you, in good times and bad. We all need a support team. Don’t forget where you came from. Remember your roots. Be open to lateral moves. There are many ways to build your career. Even roles you don’t like can lead to great opportunities. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Be open and curious. Share your wisdom and experiences with other women. As you rise, lift others. Don’t let setbacks limit you. Handle the disappointment, learn as much as you can from it, then let it go and move on.To connect with Gemma, you can find her on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and her company website Tone Networks. You can also email her at [email protected].
For more on becoming the best you can be, here are some of our favorite podcasts: Elizabeth Rosenberg—Can An Extraordinary Coach Bring Out The Unseen Beauty In Your Strengths? Jodi Flynn Takes You From Dreaming To Doing Shayna Bergman—How To Identify Your Values And Live Them Every Day Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon and as you know, I’m your host and your guide, and I love doing podcasts so that you can see, feel and think in new ways. Why is that important? Well, these are very fast changing times, and regardless of who you are or where you are, something is pushing against you a little bit and you’re not quite sure. Do I like it? Don’t I like it? Most humans hate change. It creates pain in the brain. But it’s time to change. And the sooner you make change your friend, the more happy you’re going to be.
My job is to get you off the brink. So today I have an amazing woman here. Gemma Toner is a fabulous woman. She’s part of our book Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. You can see behind us, and I’m going to show you her picture. And each of them provide five wisdoms. And what I love doing is sharing their wisdom on the podcast because sometimes it comes alive even better. Gemma, thank you for being with me today. You’re smiling, I love you.
Gemma Toner: I am so grateful to be here. Thank you.
Andi Simon: Gemma and I are going to have a great lunch after our podcast. But first we have to get through our podcast. Let me tell you about her so that you, our viewers and our listeners, know why you should listen up because it’s important.
Gemma is a media and telecommunications leader known for driving innovation. In 2017, she created Tone Networks. And we’re going to talk about Tone today as a SAS microlearning platform designed for early- to mid-career women. Although as I looked at them, I think it’s for all women to stay in advance in the workplace. She’s been a board member of publicly traded companies including Sandvine, and is currently Co-Chair of the Women Business Collaborative.
Before founding Tone Networks, Gemma held executive positions in media and technology for AMC and Cablevision Media, running the fastest ISP in the country. We’re going to hear more about that in a moment. She’s been granted patents for data analytics, and she proudly serves on the board of the global humanitarian organization Concern Worldwide. Don’t you love that bio, audience? I think this is a wonderful time because you had that great article in February of 2023 about The Great Breakup. So here you’re going to hear about Gemma in the corporate world and then founding a new company to help women do even better. And this is something that is extremely important to me and to her. Tell us about your journey. How did you get into corporate? What was it like?
Gemma Toner: All right. Let me tell you about my journey, because it is not one that people immediately think of or hear. And that is that. I think of myself as a mother and a wife and a business person, a technologist, and I’m a data geek, but I’m also an immigrant. And that’s important because it’s such a strong part of my identity. And it’s also kind of driven me throughout my whole life. And so you ask how I got into corporate? Well, I’ll tell you.
My parents immigrated from Northern Ireland when I was about 4 or 6 months old. When you’re an immigrant, and this was back in the 60s, your family actually became your friends. And at least for our family, we were packed up every summer and spent time with all our family that my parents had left back in Ireland. So I have this kind of bifurcated life which sometimes I didn’t always appreciate.
You ask me again how I got into corporate. Well, I kind of looked at my dad and saw what he accomplished, and I was the oldest in a family of three girls. I thought, well, I’ve got to do better because he came here literally with nothing. He had very little money, very little education, but he had the dream that the American dream was possible. And you know what? It really was for him. And he became wildly successful here in the United States. So I had some big shoes to fill. And my dad didn’t go to college.
So the first step for me to get to corporate America was actually to get to college. And so I did. I got into Villanova and had a great experience there and ended up studying accounting. That wasn’t necessarily the most strategic. I happen to be really good at it. I happen to also be one of the few women in the room, and I didn’t mind that. So it was a great school, great experience. And I popped into corporate America and my first job was at a great company now called Ernst and Young. And I got to spend a lot of time at Time Inc. and again, this was again for this immigrant girl, this was corporate.
America was not something I grew up with. I did not know about mentors or sponsors. I didn’t even know that those names or terms existed. I certainly didn’t know anything about networking. But what I did know was that, keep your head down and work really hard. So I got to see corporate America kind of in its heyday. When you’re working for those types of firms, you actually get to see the world at a pretty high level, even though you might be doing pretty mundane things as an entry level employee.
But what it turned me on to and what I’m very grateful for was I got to really learn about the media business. And I realized pretty quickly that, Hey, this is actually where I want to be. And so I came home to my father, who had worked so hard and given us so much opportunity and said, Dad, I really don’t like this accounting thing very much. I think I want to try something else. And he said, Gemma, you can do anything. And he didn’t make me feel bad that I had just spent four years studying accounting, which is a great degree. I highly recommend it. Working at Ernst and Young was a great experience. But, it was time for me to make the jump.
You’ll hear often in my career, I kind of jump off cliffs and eventually fly. It doesn’t always go seamlessly, but it happens. And so I jumped. And so it wasn’t easy to have someone to have a media company hire an accountant, because certainly they didn’t think I had a marketing background and I didn’t, but I was entry level. And so it was a great time to kind of jump in and make a career switch. So I was fortunate enough. I actually started out at a company called Rainbow Advertising. So I got to see the world of advertising. And then I landed this fantastic job working for a woman. Her name is Katie McEnroe at AMC Networks. And that was where I had that first moment of: I see her, I want to be her.
Andi Simon: Ah.
Gemma Toner: And she was president of this network. We were in heavy distribution and marketing mode. And it was run by Josh Sapan at the time, another fantastic human being to work for. And it was probably one of the best experiences I could ever have. I got to see so much. I got to do so much. We were all so supportive of each other. We were very aggressive, but in an okay way, at a time in the telecommunications industry where it was really a bonanza of creativity and technology and distribution, it was just all these new things that were coming out.
And so from there, that was sort of how I landed in corporate, and then towards the end of my time at AMC Networks, I got really fascinated with this thing, I’m going to date myself a bit, called New Media. And I was always a bit of a geek. And, you know, I love computers and machines and things like that. And so I was able to persuade my boss at the time to create a new job, which was, how do we create content for this new medium, the internet. And more importantly, it wasn’t just about the internet because this was, again, where you had to dial up. It was really about this next thing that was coming, which was high speed data, which most people didn’t even know the name of.
So I got to create content. We learned, we made a lot of mistakes. I learned very early on that the programming and the content had to be really short. And this was way back, like in 2000. We knew it needed to be short. So we made a lot of mistakes along the way. But it was a great ride, and I share that because that transitioned me to yet my next gig, which was, I got asked to interview for this job working at a company here in New York called Cablevision to run this fledgling product called Optimum Online. And at the time it had a lot of optimism. And the CEO of Cablevision and President wanted someone that had a really good branding background. And if there’s anything AMC Networks can do, it really teaches you how to brand and how important it is and to understand your audience. And all of that will follow through as we talk about Tone Networks.
So anyway, I was fortunate enough to land the job, and at the time, I’ll just say, so for anyone that ever has had this experience, I landed the job, I got married and then ended up becoming pregnant all within like three months. So I thought to myself, what in the world have I just done to myself? But I did it. So I jumped again, jumping into a big cliff or off a big cliff. And it was probably the hardest job I’ve ever had. You know, it was, now I was working at a cable company. It was heavy in the technology space. We were also in a place where people didn’t know what high speed access was and they kind of liked that old dial up sound. So it was quite a challenge.
But it was really the beginning of a fantastic career journey at this cable company because not only did I get to be a part of launching and building that, but I also got to be a part of launching other new technologies at the company, namely Optimum Voice. I got to be a part of that team, as well as Optimum WiFi and then again at Cablevision. It was very entrepreneurial, even though we were a publicly traded company. It had great visionaries at the top and mentors.
Quite honestly, I got picked to solve a problem. And the problem was, Here we were, this company that had all of this data, and this was again early, before it was even called big data. And what could we do with it? How could we monetize it? How can we make products? And so I got to do something that I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would do, which was to run this data analytics team. And they were brilliant. And, again, it really speaks to you may not have to know how to do it. You just need to know how to lead and have some vision.
Because truly, Andi, you and I were talking about one of my main criteria was, I needed a social anthropologist. We needed to understand what all this data and behavioral data meant. But we had data scientists. I mean, it was just an extraordinary time and we ended up creating new products. We ended up getting some patents. And so that was really my life in corporate America. And it was a wild ride. It was not easy, I want to be really clear. I think so many people come on podcasts or do media and interviews and they don’t share that. It was hard. It was really hard. I cried a lot, I want to be honest. I cried myself to work some days with the pressure and everything that was coming at me.
But, you know, I think one of my mentors always said, keep going. And I think that is something that I want everyone to remember. Just keep going. Keep going through it. You’ll get through it. And so I stuck with it. I had this great opportunity, and then I had something very personal happen. And that was, a very good friend of mine who I had watched struggle with colon cancer for five years, passed away. And I went into the office after she had died. I watched her fight day in and day out for another day with her boys. I had this great gig. I got picked for the really cool stuff. It was the hard stuff. But I loved the hard stuff. I had an executive coach. I got to go to Stanford. I lived 20 minutes from my job. You couldn’t have asked for a better dream job. But I walked in and I was like, I’m done. And I didn’t know it was very emotional. So I wouldn’t say, go do this, but I did. So I’m just being honest and vulnerable. But, I came home that day and I spoke to my husband and I said, I don’t know what it is, but it’s just not this anymore. And so I retired.
When you retire, when you’re kind of at the top of your game and you have a really great gig, people look at you funny. So again, I will let you know that people are like, Why are you leaving right now? You know, here you are a woman, you’re at the top of it, it didn’t make a lot of sense. But what I knew inside was that I needed something different. And that’s all I knew. I did not have a strategic plan, so I recommend others have a strategic plan. Mine was a very emotional decision, but I also needed to take a break.
And so what I did was having had an executive coach, which is truly life-changing and transformative, I knew enough about myself and my own neuroses and my A-type that I am, that I might squander this gift that I had given myself, which I thought was retirement. And I thought, I need to have my executive coach help me through this because the last thing I want to do was to lose this time worrying about what’s next and not use it. I’ve worked for as long as I can remember. Well, we had monthly meetings, and she really helped me keep on that path of taking this time for yourself, rediscover yourself. I also had a girlfriend who gave me a book, which I highly recommend. And Brené Brown, if you’re listening, I want to be your best friend, which is daring greatly. And it was really about vulnerability. And that really resonated with me because I did not grow up in an environment where I felt I could be vulnerable. Making vulnerability equate with courage really spoke to me. It really sung to me.
And so during my retirement, I got asked to be on those boards, which was fantastic. And I have another story which will take way too long, but it is about saying no. So we’ll save that for the next podcast. But that was about how I ended up getting on those boards and how that snowballed, which was fantastic. And then during my, I guess you would call it a sabbatical, I got asked to serve on the Board of Concern Worldwide, and I hadn’t heard of it. They were happening. They were looking for someone with a data analytics and marketing background. So I just happened to get lucky and interview for that position, and I thought this was for me, Andi. I thought, this is it. I want to give back. I need something more. I’ve done the corporate America thing and I thought, okay, thank you, thank you God, here it is. And so that’s how I proceeded.
Now, as being a board member, I was supposed to go to Haiti and go on a trip. And at the time, Haiti became too unstable for us to go. And so that trip was canceled, and I got to speak at a women’s leadership conference because I was able to say yes to that. And I was very vulnerable. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was for women in cable and telecommunications. And Maria Brennan, who was the CEO, called me and said, You need to talk about career pivots at the senior leadership conference. I was like, Marie, Maria, I’m in a personal pivot. Why would anyone want to hear from me? It’s like, that’s exactly why you have to. So I think Brené Brown is playing in my head and I think, I have to go and be brave, got to be courageous. And so I go and that blows my mind.
This is a senior leadership conference in an industry where there’s a lot of access to learning and great organizations that deliver education. And I was like, why are these women, some of them I know, why are they who are here to talk, going to listen to what I have to say? So I said, here’s how I did it. And I was retired. So I had some headspace and I’m walking back to get the train home. And I thought, I’m no different than all those women that were in that room. So what was it that made me able to make the jumps that I did? And all these super talented women are struggling, and I thought I had access. And what does that mean, access? That means, for better or worse, somehow, because I didn’t know what a mentor sponsor was, I got access to a mentor, I got access to role models, I got access to sponsors, I got that executive coach.
And all of those things are scarce resources. Right at the end of the day, there’s not enough of them. Not everybody gets that. I understand the economics of executive coaching. It’s really expensive. And so I started to think about, what can I do about this? And I was like, Hang on, I know how to build software, I know content, I know data analytics. Wait a second. And so then I just started rocking on what could this be? And there you have it. So that was a very long-winded story of my drift from getting into being an immigrant, getting into corporate America, and then actually starting to create the idea of what a company could be.
Andi Simon: But, I mean, remember, our job is to help people get off the brink. And you are an extraordinary role model, because in many ways, it wasn’t as if you had a destination. You were curious and that curiosity and trust in yourself, and you can call it vulnerability. But that’s a word that often doesn’t mean anything. So just a cool word. Just supposed to be vulnerable. Well, what does that really mean? But what you found was that if you trusted your own feelings, calm instincts, you made some good decisions. Doesn’t sound like you had many detours along the way, but you might have.
Gemma Toner: Oh, I did.
Andi Simon: Yeah, I know we won’t talk about it again. I want to be honest.
Gemma Toner: I made lots of mistakes. You know, those were the highlights. You know, everybody makes mistakes. And so, again, I just like to be practical and honest. If you’re not out there swinging and you’re going to miss a lot, you’re not going to get some of those peaks, right? I think that’s really important for us to communicate because none of this is all hard.
Andi Simon: Well, you’re talking about chance. You know, it could have been luck, yes, but life is a series of showing up. People say, How did you grow your business? I say, I showed up because who knows what’s going to happen in the elevator when you meet Renée Mauborgne and she becomes a blue ocean strategist? I mean, the conversations are trusting that there’s some magic here that’s going to be, I don’t know, magical. And so you have moved along without saying, I need to go help women, but you had an experience.
And I want to emphasize that to our listeners. There was something experiential that said, Ooh, what is it? I could help those women because they need to see things through a fresh lens, and have the trust that this is why they feel the way they do?
Why don’t you begin your next story? Talk to us about Tone Networks because I am intrigued by how we can help women become the best they can be. I like men too, but it doesn’t matter whether you’re a guy or gal. I’ve coached both. I have many of them as clients but they all come and the brain hates change. It creates cortisol that says, This hurts. Help me do it. How am I going to help you do this? Because you need to do it. We need to figure out a way for you to see yourself in a new fashion, try some new things.
So Tone Networks. And I’m not even sure how to understand the name of it because it’s not physical. It’s not toning you up, but it is toning you up. Um, so I’m curious. I’m curious. Out of it came this platform that is helping people, women in particular, become the best they can be. You share with us. How do you see it? How did you create it?
Gemma Toner: You know, it’s so funny yourself. It really is. Everything that I learned throughout that long-winded story I just shared with you really is used in the creation of this business. And so the data geek in me, how do you start a company? You know, again, I came from corporate, where I had started lots of new products. And so I knew my process which isn’t necessarily what most startups do. So I was starting up as someone with corporate experience, so I don’t know that I did it the right way, but I did it my way and my way was to start to really understand what the challenges women had. I didn’t want to just trust my own self.
And so we went out and did research and we did primary research. We did a national study, and we asked questions like, What stands in the way of your personal and professional development? Because long before the pandemic shone a light on the challenges that women have, I was a firm believer in my personal life did not get left at the threshold of my office door, that my personal and professional life were deeply intertwined, and the technology was going to make it even deeper.
And so if we were going to solve and try to help women, I think we had to acknowledge that you didn’t have clear boundaries. An example would be, I’m just about to go into a meeting and my daughter would text me. You know, Mom, I need you. But I mean, it happens to everyone. And whether it’s a child or a parent or whatever, the gift of technology is we’re more connected. It also interrupts us in some ways. So that’s what we really looked to solve and what we did tons of research on, and I love research. So again, this is the geeky part of me.
And what it bubbled up to were a couple of things. And it was when you asked women, all different ages, quite honestly, not just early- to mid-, all different types of women in different types of business categories. And it was this time factor. I don’t have time to do sort of traditional learning. Access was made for me. I don’t have time to go searching for everything and I just make it what I can. It’s just for me, make it feel like it’s just for me. And then the last, which is sort of the saddest, but it’s a reality. It was confidence. And tucked under confidence was permission. And that whether we like it or not, the majority of women that were part of this study, and it was a statistically significant study, we’re like, I need permission to take care of me. And I’m like, okay, so if that’s what we need to do, then let’s figure out how we can do this.
And so that was really the beginning. And that became the pillars of Tone Networks. And so what Tone sets out to do is use microlearning. I am not a learning and development specialist. I know what it is to build products and content that engage audiences. And so that’s really how we’ve created this learning tool. We’ve created it more like you would create a media experience than an education experience. We have no textbooks because what we’re really looking to be is your TikTok for your personal professional development.
So instead of going into that death scroll of Instagram or Snapchat or whatever, you can just jump on Tone and do something good for yourself and really enrich yourself. And so that’s really our goal. That’s how we make an impact. And what’s really cool is we use technology to make it very personalized. So we ask you what you’re interested in. The last thing I want to do is waste your time because I know how precious it is, because I’ve been there and I do not want to serve you things that you’re not interested in. So if you are not a working parent, a working mom, we’re not going to send you progressive parenting videos because that’s not respectful. We need to be respectful of your time so that if you only have 3 or 5 minutes today because honestly, you just can’t breathe, you can’t catch a break, it’s okay. We’ve got you.
And so that’s really how we developed the product. But we also developed it knowing, and again I know you’re expert in this, behavioral change. And how do you know the nudge theory of behavioral change? So we’ve listened to women and they say, Make it for me. Make it easy. Give me a one, two, three because the last thing I want to do is write an essay or get homework, I have a long enough to-do list. And so what we did was, we made these really short-form videos, and at the end of every video we have your Tone Takeaways, which is kind of your one, two, three. The system actually sends you positive reinforcement the next morning and says, thank you for watching. Here are your Tone Takeaways. Why not? Because I’m being polite, but I am a very polite person. But because I want to remind you, you did something good for yourself and here you go.
You can tell we worked with neuroscientists as well. We can pull that information out and recall it. And you know what, maybe you can take that first step or maybe you’ll just watch it again. That’s okay. Change is hard. I’m so with you when you say that, right? It is so hard. So that’s part of the way the product works for the end user because we were designed to be both a consumer platform and a B2B platform. Right now we’re working on the B2B front, but trust me, I want all women to get access to this, whether you’re in corporate America or not. But today, that’s where we are.
And so what we can also do is help inform our business partners, the companies we work with, with a new data set. But this comes back to, my data geek days are anonymized. Why is it anonymized? Because if you won’t watch, my boss is a narcissist. If you know that your company is tracking you. And you know what, if you have a boss that’s a narcissist, you should know how to handle that. And I’m okay with that. If you don’t have a boss, you have someone in your life. Everyone’s got a narcissist somewhere. I mean, it’s just an upward trend in our society.
But the game plan here is to add value and new insights and to really be a contender. We are not looking to be your typical learning and development platform. There’s plenty of companies out there doing that. We’re really looking to deliver the knowledge that you get from having access to executive coaches and experts. The really good stuff that you get deeper in your career. Why shouldn’t women have that earlier? Because my goodness, it really is life changing.
And so that’s really how we set out to do it. It was really listening to the audience talk about mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. It took us a long time to get the format right, to get the tone right. We’re in a good place now. I have to brag a little. We do have an NPS of 66, which is pretty darn amazing for such a young company.
Andi Simon: So just saying, are you better with an NPS?
Gemma Toner: Net promoter score? And so that’s when you just have a simple question. You know, Would you refer a friend or family member to this? And the good news is, a majority, and that’s a really hard number to get, of people are saying, Yeah, I would. So we have 95% of our business clients renewing. We know we’re hitting it. And I think we’re hitting it because, again, women don’t have much time. And we have to really redesign and re-engineer how we run our lives, and you know how we are.
Andi Simon: You know, Gemma, I’m listening and smiling because I share many of the same purposes and passions of wanting to take what we know and multiply it so others can rise with it. Sandra Quince says, As I climb the ladder, I lift other women with me. And I said, What a beautiful way of talking about what all of us are really interested in doing, not simply being acknowledged for accomplishments as you were and staying there, but thinking, I mean, your sabbatical was a growth period for you, but it didn’t stay there. It wasn’t just me on board. It was what I learned that I can now share and multiply joyfully so that I can lift others. And that is not inconsequential. And yeah, you can go speak, but when I walk out of the room at the end of a gig, as I know I want them to do one small win, you know, do an Oprah, one small win to lead you forward. But when will that be? How will I change? And it is purposeful and passionate. But you’re also having a good time, aren’t you?
Gemma Toner: I am, and I have to also credit my mom and dad for, again, you know, being immigrants and coming here with not much in their pockets. I think what they instilled in us was, and I saw it, there were so many people that helped them along the way and I recognized that but I didn’t know the terms. But the people that I would say helped me along the way, those mentors and sponsors, I don’t forget them. And what I recognized when I had a moment to like, think and take a beat, was that not everybody gets that. And so that’s where I think my father would always say, Never forget where you came from, always put out a helping hand. And that’s the truth.
And so I think, it does for me, it matters about my humble beginnings and being able to help more because we live in this country and we’ve been really fortunate. That means you give back. Let me clarify, I’m a capitalist. So this is not a nonprofit business. I believe in capitalism. And I also believe capitalism is probably the most effective way to create social change and upward mobility for women. But that’s why I’m doing this.
Andi Simon: You don’t have to justify yourself.
Gemma Toner: It’s just, I think it’s really important because someone says, Oh, is this a non-profit? I’m like, no, no, we’re not.
Andi Simon: You know, I met someone who’s trying to change the way kids understand debt and it’s not a not-for-profit. She’s finally made herself a for-profit. And I said, That’s good. It’s okay to make money and to spread it. It’s okay to remove the guilt factor because I’m in here for some profit. I don’t quite know why we’ve given that such a bad name, but I do think there’s something else about you as a woman leading others.
People ask me, Do women lead differently? And I say, Well, I’ve had dozens of clients. And I was in corporate life for a long time. And are women different from men? Yes. But leaders need followers, and they don’t follow people casually. They follow people they trust who can get them someplace together and who they believe are authentic and want to be accountable to. Do you find, you’ve had some good women bosses and men bosses, and do you think that women are leading differently or are we just women?
Gemma Toner: I think it depends, and I think it’s, men, women, it really depends on the individuals. There’s some great male leaders. There’s some great women leaders. There’s also both not so great, so do I think I led differently? Probably not early in my career. I would say I, probably just like the female role models that I was emulating, they were leading like men. And so I would say as I became more comfortable as a leader, I definitely had a different approach. I actually sometimes, early in my career, when I was running a region, when I saw my old team, I apologized to them. And I’m like, Thank you for still being my friend because I was really rough around the edges as a young leader. And you kind of grow into, at least I did, grow into the way you want to lead.
Andi Simon: Well, I do think that the value you brought to everyone along the entire way was your curiosity, this kind of openness to see things through. You wanted to bring a social anthropologist on because we know that out of context, data do not exist. What does all this data mean? Well, it can mean anything. I want it for myself. So which data do I have to do? And then how do I interpret it so that it makes the most sense. So it’s really interesting.
I think you and I could talk a great deal for a lot of reasons, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Thank you for sharing with us today. For our audience, one or two or three things you don’t want them to forget? What would be some real good takeaways?
Gemma Toner: You know, I have to say, the takeaway, as much as I was long-winded is, You don’t forget where you came from. You know, always look back. I also think some of the takeaways that I had in the book really are important to me. And that is, Get out there and just start, raise your hand. Even though I can tell you, most of the big opportunities I had, I was not the first choice. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be the consolation prize because it’s what you make of it. And they were great opportunities. Two of my big opportunities, I was not the first choice, but I hung in there and I didn’t have all the skills they wanted. But, last man standing, I got it, you know? So I think that’s really important because so many of us are just like, Oh no, that’s over my head. No it’s not, give it a go.
I think the other is, Just keep going. It’s hard. Let’s not kid ourselves and let’s not mislead each other with, sort of saying, it’s all perfect. It’s not, but you will get through it. And I think what’s really important about that is, and it does take a little time, and I didn’t always do this myself, so I want to be really honest about finding people that are like you that can support you. So it’s having that personal board of directors. It’s also having a few friends and friendly faces that can help you when you’re just having a really tough day and can also celebrate with you as well.
Andi Simon: Well, we’re people and we need others, and they need to be trusting and trustworthy. And trusting is important, that we have folks we can turn to and can I just vent? You know, it’s not an uncommon call I make to my favorite friend, can I just vent? Then by the time I’m done, she says, You feel better? I said, Oh, that was perfect. I just needed a safe and an executive coach. But even there, sometimes you just go talk to your friend, let it come out.
You know, we had an ERG presentation the other day, for Eightfold, a company out on the West Coast, a software designing company. Really cool folks. One of the women said, you know, do women really have to check off all the boxes before they can move up? And all of us, there were three of us, said, That’s not how you’re going to move up. The move up really comes when you really don’t know what you don’t know, because you can’t possibly ever have all the boxes checked. Believe in yourself and offer yourself as a smart person who can grow. And those are better words than, Am I ready? You’re never ready then. You know, I never became ready.
Gemma Toner: And I like to remind my team, We’ll figure it out.
Andi Simon: Yes, we’ll figure it out. It’s a complex problem to solve. That’s exactly right.
Gemma Toner: Figure it out and just know you don’t have to figure it out by yourself. You can ask a lot of people to help you.
Andi Simon: Yes, and you won’t ever be exactly right. Perfection isn’t really necessary. And so all kinds of wisdoms. This is such fun. So let me wrap up. I do want to thank you, and the National Association of Women Business Owners, who owns the trademark on our book Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And we always like to recognize them and thank them for the use of their title for our book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success.
And as you can hear, Gemma Toner is one of those extraordinary leaders. And our conversation today was to help you spark your success. Get off the brink. Keep going. Be perfect. The books are all on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. My three books are there, with the third one, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman. I hope you have fun with them. I actually had somebody shoot a picture of one of my books on the beach where he was reading it and I went, Oh my gosh, a beach read. I didn’t know I had a beach read!
Gemma Toner: Andi, can I plug one event that we have coming up? It’s going to be in March. It’s a pay equity event that’s free for all women. So all of your listeners and men are welcome. LinkedIn will be promoting it everywhere. It’s really about getting women particularly equitable pay. And this will not be about talking about the stats. This will actually be practical tips as to how you make sure you are getting paid fairly. So mark your calendar in March.
Andi Simon: Sometime in March though, we have to come back to Tone sometime in March.
Gemma Toner: It’ll be on the day. Yeah, it’s actually, we’re just waiting to get the actual date. March 15th, something like that. It’s on Pay Equity Day. It’s something, again, you talk about purpose. It’s very important to us.
Andi Simon: Despite the fact that Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Law in January of 2009. It’s not always true that women get paid what they should get paid for the same job that the guy is, much less at the same time. It’s really tough. Oh, boy, we can keep going, but we’re not. We’re going to sign off, say goodbye. Come again. Send me your favorites so I can bring them on. And I have a lot of great women and men to share with you coming up. It’s been wonderful. Goodbye now, and thanks again. Bye bye.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Learn how to nurture your unique gifts for a career you really love.
I bring to you today Lorraine Hariton, a brilliant women with a brilliant career who shows us that success doesn’t have to come in a straight line, it can have many twists and turns. As one of the 102 women featured in our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and myself, Lorraine is President and CEO of Catalyst, a powerhouse non-profit dedicated to helping women thrive, from the shop floor to the C-suite, so that everyone can be successful by their own definition. What I love is that Catalyst not only focuses on how women can be effective and improve their capabilities and skills, but on changing the work environment by creating workplaces that work for women. Want to learn about the future of work? Listen in.
Watch and listen to our conversation here Key takeaways from my conversation with Lorraine Life is a journey. And that journey is to understand what your passions are, what gets you excited, what gets you up every day enjoying it. In terms of your skills, what do you have with which you can contribute the most to this world? There are lots of chapters in life. Make sure that you have the resiliency and the learning mindset to go from one chapter to the next. Life can take you in different directions, but you’ve got to be a lifelong learner. You’ve got to lean into your strengths. Periods of transition can be real opportunities. Align your strengths and what you really love to do behind your passions.To connect with Lorraine, you can find her on LinkedIn.
Want to know more about women breaking barriers in the workforce? Start with these: Blog: How Can Women Overcome The Roadblocks To Building Their Businesses? Blog: Best Tips And Tricks For Women To Work In Male-Dominated Industries Podcast: Kerry Flynn Barrett—Learn Why So Many Brilliant Women Have Ditched The Corporate Ladder To Start Their Own Business Pocast: Jennifer McCollum—How Will You Change The Face Of Women’s Leadership In Your Organization? Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And as you know, because so many of you come to listen to our podcast, my job is to get you off the brink. I want you to see, feel and think in new ways so you can change, and the times are changing quickly now. I look for guests who are going to help you understand things from a fresh perspective.
Today I have Lorraine Hariton here with me. She is a marvelous person who is in our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And when you hear what she’s going to tell you today, you’ll know why Women Mean Business has been such an absolutely amazing experience. Every time I open the book, it sheds new light on what women are doing in business. Lorraine’s bio: She’s president and CEO of Catalyst. Now, if you’re not familiar with Catalyst, it’s a global nonprofit working with the world’s most powerful CEOs and leading companies to build workplaces that work for women.
Catalyst’s vision and mission are to accelerate progress for women through workplace inclusion. This lifelong passion for Lorraine has helped her build a career with senior level positions in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and executive, and beginning at IBM, Lorraine then served in the administration in the Department of State and developed the global STEM Alliance at the New York Academy of Sciences. She has also served on the UN Women Global Innovation Coalition For Change, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives, but it is as president of Catalyst that I met Lorraine. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today: about what organizations can do to really build workplaces that work for women. Lorraine, thank you so much for coming today.
Lorraine Hariton: Andrea, thank you so much. It’s my pleasure to be here.
Andi Simon: It’s so much fun. Tell the audience more about your journey because I can read the bio. But you’ve had a wonderful career with a passion and purpose, and I’d like you to share that if you could.
Lorraine Hariton: So first of all, I want to say that the career that you just talked about is very different from the career I might have imagined when I was young. It’s gone in a lot of different directions. And I look forward to sort of talking about that. So when I was a child, my biggest influence was really my mother, specifically when she came into the workplace, which was in the 50s. She was originally a teacher. And like many of her generation, she went back. She left the workplace when she had her three children. But then she went back and got a master’s degree and eventually a PhD in psychology, actually around women’s sexual fantasies during intercourse. It was very controversial. She ended up on the front cover of Psychology Today, and then she had the next phase, a career as a psychologist and a lecturer out on Long Island. So she really gave me a sense that you can have different phases in your life, you can accomplish different things, and women should have independent, strong careers.
So she was a big influence. Then the other big influence on me was, I had dyslexia, I still have dyslexia. And because of that, I had certain real strengths and certain things that were limitations. I wasn’t very popular. I wasn’t a great athlete, but I was good in math. I ended up using that math ability to have a career in technology very early on. In fact, when I was in college — I originally went to college in upstate New York, at Hamilton College — my calculus professor suggested that I take an independent study computer science course at Hamilton College before there were even computers on campus. We just had a teletype terminal into the Air Force base in Rome, New York. But I wrote my own computer program. I fell in love with it, and it caused me to transfer to Stanford, where even at Stanford, they didn’t actually have a computer science degree. Undergraduate is math sciences, math, computer science, statistics, and operations research. But it really gave me this great foundation into something that my first passion was really around: computers and the application of computers into solving problems.
So I transferred to Stanford. I got a sense of that environment. I ended up taking a job, actually, back in New York for American Airlines, doing a big linear programming model for ferrying fuel around the American Airline system. But, I decided I didn’t really like just programming. I wanted to do something that was more people oriented within the computer industry. So at that time, IBM was a big place to work. It was like the Google or the Apple of the time.
So I got a job actually in sales working for IBM, and I worked in the apparel industry in New York, knocking on doors, selling mid-sized computers to the apparel industry, which was really fun. I really enjoyed it and I excelled at it. So I decided I wanted to be on the business side of the technology industry. I went back to Harvard Business School, got my MBA, and decided to go back to California working for IBM, the next level in the sales track at IBM. And there was the other reason I went back to IBM: to look into all the jobs at Harvard Business School that IBM had for women in leadership roles. It had the ability to balance career and family and a proven track record of enabling women to do that. I was really looking for a workplace where I could be successful balancing career and family, which is still the number one challenge for women in business.
And, through my work at Catalyst, I see that every day. So I went back to IBM, but eventually I went into Silicon Valley. IBM actually acquired a company in Silicon Valley. I went to work for them. And then I ended up having a career at IBM. So I started in Silicon Valley, started at IBM, and then I left them to go to become an executive at a mid-sized company. And eventually I actually did two startups in Silicon Valley. So I had a career at all these different levels.
But in my early 50s, I wanted to really do something that was more impactful. I had had a successful career there and I became involved in women’s leadership issues because really that was a defining thing around my success and my lived experience. I initially got involved in the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives that became WaterMark. That was a women’s leadership network in Silicon Valley. I really benefited from my relationships that I had with women in Silicon Valley. We all bonded together. We even did great trips, like we went to India and Vietnam together. I went to the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. I then decided to, after I left my second startup, to get involved in helping Hillary Clinton run for President of the United States in the 2008 cycle.
So I took all my sales skills and my business skills that I had learned, and I focused on fundraising for her. And as a result of that, I became one of her top fundraisers in the Bay area and really expanded my network. I got to know a lot of people and that enabled me to go to work for her, even though she didn’t win the the nomination, of course, we all know, but to work for her at the State Department as a special representative for commercial and business affairs. And, by the way, through all of this, I had my two children. I raised my two children in Palo Alto, California. And of course, that was the other part of my life that was, is, and continues to be very important. I now have three grandchildren as well as part of that.
So that balance of career and family has always been important to me. I also will mention that being in Silicon Valley in tech in those days had a lot of challenges. And I think that is why that’s been so important to me as the second major passion that has driven my life. This focus on women in the workplace, and understanding that I was part of the first generation of women who really came of age after the very substantial change in the women’s movement that happened in the late 60s and early 70s, that opened up the doors for women to have real careers.
Like my mother, in her generation, you didn’t have young children and work. You couldn’t go into the workplace and have a career. We read about Sandra Day O’Connor recently. We know that she wasn’t able to do that. Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t able to do that. I was part of that generation that went into the workplace that was able to look ahead and develop a career, and was thinking about balancing career and family. But we had a very, very rigid environment.
You know, when I had my first child in 1985, we had to order business maternity suits from a catalog. I could only take six weeks off because they didn’t have maternity leaves. They just had disability, and when I’ve met with some of my friends and we talked about this, we all had the same circumstances, didn’t have the type of environment that you have right now. So I have that perspective of wanting to change that workplace. And we still have work to do on that.
So my reason for wanting to help Hillary at the time when I had the luxury to be able to do that, was because I really wanted to see the world change in the first woman president. But not only did I pursue that passion and use the skills that I had learned through my business and for my sales career to help her, it opened up a whole new avenue for me that became the next chapter in my life for ten years, really focused on that.
So I went to the State Department, and in the State Department, it was great. I was able to travel all around the world representing the United States, help businesses overseas, do diplomatic agenda around economic and business issues. And I also launched a big program called the Global Entrepreneurship Program, which is still at the State Department, where we worked on capacity-building in countries to take our innovation agenda and bring it overseas as part of our diplomatic agenda. So that was a very fulfilling experience.
I left in 2014 because it was a political appointment. It ended and then I thought, well, I think there’s a very good chance she would run again. So I did a portfolio career of doing consulting. I worked at the New York Academy of Science, as you mentioned, doing business development for them, and launched this Global STEM Alliance program. I launched a great program called 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures, which was a virtual mentoring program for girls in STEM.
I helped Hillary but of course, we know the end of that story and that didn’t happen. And by then I was lucky enough to be recruited to Catalyst, which has been just a wonderful opportunity for me. So I joined them in 2018. I am going to be retiring from Catalyst when we find a replacement. So it’s been about a five and a half years’ journey at this point that’s been really fulfilling for me because it really has aligned this great passion I have with all the things I’ve learned over my career to really make change for that organization and to really impact women in the workplace.
Andi Simon: You know, as I listen to you, and I want to stay focused on your career, but for the listener or the viewer, there wasn’t a straight line. This was a journey with detours and serendipity and moments and all kinds of things that you capitalized on. Were you particularly risk averse or were you particularly adventuresome? I mean, when I take my archetype, I’m an explorer or a philosopher, and I’ve been to 37 countries and I worked abroad many times. I, like you, don’t need a structure, I need opportunity. I need an adventure. Sounds like you have had adventure through life without care about whether or not it was the end, it was onto something new. Tell the listener a little bit about how you do that? Do you do that with that particular mindset that simply says, go for it, what the heck? Or do you have to plan it out?
Lorraine Hariton: Well, you know, I’ve evolved over time. I am very planful. And in the beginning of my career, I was focused. When I joined IBM, they had a clear path for you. You didn’t have to think about it. “This is what you needed to do.” And I bought into that path. Over time, sometimes when I had my biggest bumps in my life because I’ve been fired, I’ve been put someplace else, maybe not fired, but it was a detour. Those things have happened. But, you know, out of those things, in those moments of reflection, is when I think I was able to grow the most, to really learn and reflect on my strengths and weaknesses and what motivates me and to reorient myself. These periods of transition can be real opportunities.
And in my late 40s and early 50s is when I really started to understand that what I needed to do is to align my strengths and what I really love to do behind my passions, and to let the universe help me understand what those passions are. And in fact, that’s what I’m doing right now, as I look to my next chapter after Catalyst. I’m trying to open up the aperture and give myself time to evolve and think and let the universe take me in the direction, but with an understanding of what I really enjoy, where I have passion, what I’m really good at, where I give, and even in this moment, I try this out, I’m not that excited. Try this out, yes, I’m really excited about it.
And yes, I find that I can do the things that I really am in the zone on, that I naturally do well and then I focus on those things. So that evolution, it’s not really a risk thing. I’m a pragmatist. I’m very practical, focused, like a doer, but this understanding that life can take you in different directions, but you’ve got to be a lifelong learner. You’ve got to lean into your strengths. You got to evolve those is the way I found the most meaning and purpose and fulfillment.
Andi Simon: And to your point, when people say to me, how did you get to be a corporate anthropologist? I say, I made it up. And they say, you know, the imposter syndrome. I say, I’ve lived my whole life doing imposter stuff. I’ve never been fully skilled at whatever I’ve been. I spent 20 years in industry as an executive, in banks and in health care. I was a tenured professor, and I’ve been in business for 21 years now, making it up as we go along because each client’s different, each opportunity is different. But the joy is the joy of creating.
And I think that what you’ve done at Catalyst, and I want to go back to Catalyst for a moment, because I do think it’s been joyful for you, but it’s been a creative process. My hunch is, you’ve brought it along in a way that has been quite meaningful for you in the organization. Can you share with us a little bit about your own thoughts about Catalyst, about what’s happened in women in the workplace? Because this is not inconsequential. When I was an executive, I went to board meetings. There were 49 men and no other women than me. We didn’t say much. We sat there hoping we could finish the meeting without getting in trouble. It’s a different world today. What do you see happening and how is Catalyst doing stuff?
Lorraine Hariton: Well, when I came to Catalyst in 2018, Catalyst had been around almost 60 years, and it’s an iconic organization. For those of you who are not familiar, we have around 500 major corporations. We have a board of directors made up of CEOs of major organizations. I mean, it’s really a who’s who and has a tremendous brand, but the organization itself had lost some momentum. So I was brought as a change agent. I sometimes say, it was this beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that the old lady had not been renovating as much as they should have.
So I had to do a lot of infrastructure and internal changes as well as set the strategy and the plan. It’s really been a transformation. And we’re still transforming. The rate of change, the rate of technological change, is so great that every organization needs to move forward. And what Catalyst needed to do as an organization has changed over time. We celebrated our 60th anniversary a couple of years ago, so I really had a lot of opportunities to reflect on what Catalyst was.
Catalyst started with a woman who had been a Smith College graduate who wanted to go into business, and after her children got into school, she saw the doors were closed for her because in many cases, classified as gendered. You know, you could be a secretary, but you couldn’t be a salesperson. You couldn’t be an executive. Very limited choice. So her objective was to provide part time work for educated women after their kids were in school. That’s what she was trying to do.
Today we’re trying to help women thrive, from the shop floor to the C-suite, so that everyone can be successful by their own definition. Now, along the way, there’s been a lot of changes in what Catalyst focused on. And of course, what happened for women in the workplace. One of the key things that changes Catalyst is a focus not only on how women can be effective and improve their capabilities and skills, but how we change the work environment. That’s why we now talk about our mission of creating workplaces that work for women.
So a lot of Catalyst’s work is helping these companies create the environment where women can be successful. Catalyst does research and it provides a whole range of tools and capabilities to help these companies be successful, and then a lot of community and convenings to bring them together to share best practices, the need for tools and capabilities, in addition to research, has accelerated over the last ten years or so as companies really dig in to make those changes to create that environment that works for women.
So we think about things like: now we call them paternity leaves, not just maternity leaves. And in many cases in the large companies, they’re as much as four months and they’re trying to get men to do them as well as women. That’s a sea change, more flexibility. The whole pandemic accelerated this move to more flexible working, but that’s something Catalyst has been talking about for a long time. Measuring change is really important and that’s evolved.
Our most recent report that we’re going to be putting out shows that 93% of companies, large companies in the Catalyst portfolio, do pay equity studies. Now, even five years ago, they were not doing that. So that’s changed. The environment has changed radically and Catalyst has evolved with it. Also the infrastructure to support the types of skills we need, the type of technology we need, has evolved with it. But you know, just to think about this, today there are over 10% women CEOs in the Fortune 500. In my early career in the 80s and the 90s, every year that they would come out with the Fortune 500, I would look and the only person who was the CEO was Katharine Graham, who took over The Washington Post when her husband committed suicide. Now she did a great job, but she was not doing it all on her own merit.
What we see is the women who came into the workplace, like I did in the early 70s, early to mid-70s, all but in the 1950s, all entered the workplace in the 70s. Those are the ones who became CEOs around the turn of the 21st century, starting with Jill Barad at Mattel, Andrea Jung at Avon, Anne Mulcahy at Xerox, followed by Ursula Burns, Ginni Rometty at IBM, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo…a diverse group of really talented, amazing women were the first group who really were able to do that.
Over the last five years, we’ve doubled. We now have over 30% women on boards. And in the Catalyst community, we have over 30% in senior leadership, in our membership. So what that means is there’s a new norm that’s a critical mass, 30% is critical mass. So we are critical mass on a lot of these measures. That is why Catalyst now is not focusing on women on boards. We’re focusing on how all women can thrive from the shopfloor to the sweep and every level.
So that’s an evolution of who Catalyst is. I’ve been driving that broader definition of success as we’ve evolved to what really needs to be done, and also in response to companies who understand that women have 60% of the undergraduate degrees now. They’re graduating more law degrees and more medical degrees. We have a much more diverse population. We’re focused on diversity. And that is why there’s a lot of things, a lot of political issues around DEI as a word. But the fact of the matter is, companies are very committed, so they know they have to have a diverse workforce. They’ve all got to work together. They’ve all got to feel like they belong. And in the United States and around the world, we have to be able to work together to have a really impactful, innovative workforce. So that’s what we’re working on.
Andi Simon: I am having such fun listening to you. And I don’t know if you and I have had enough time for me to hear, or my audience to hear, how the world has changed. Remember, I’m a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change. What I love to do is change, and what you are articulating is your own career evolved. Catalyst’s whole mission and purpose have evolved, and the workplace that you are focused on is evolving into a whole new and much better, inclusive, exciting place for women to thrive. And isn’t this exciting to watch and see?
I’m not quite sure it’s going to go backwards, because I think that the pressure from talented women for new ways of doing things is going to transform the workplace. You know, how do you have a blended life, if not a balanced life. I met one person who was building childcare at the office because he knew that was the only way he was going to keep his workforce. What’s so hard? Why are we not paying attention to our children? You know, bring them to work and make them part of the whole culture that we have here.
And I don’t think the pandemic has been all that bad. My clients that I coached during that time, we’re actually having a wonderful experience of being home and working and doing it with a different use of time and space. But it’s a really interesting opportunity for you to see that and now to think through what’s next, a radical next. Because I have a hunch you’d love to radically change the next phase in some fashion. It’s technology, it’s transformation, it’s new openness to it. What do you see coming next?
Lorraine Hariton: Well, you mentioned technology and I mentioned I am a technologist by training. Technology drives change now. The changes that allowed women to become part of the workforce were driven by the birth control field, the vacuum cleaner, electrification, the reduction of the need for women to stay home and do all these tasks. The knowledge worker being the key person in the workplace. And that’s only accelerating. So we should understand we are the result of the worlds we live in.
My mother was a result of that. RBG was a result of that. My daughter is going to be a result of the environment that she’s a part of, as well as my grandchildren. So technology is the biggest driver of those changes. We are going to be living in a world where I hope we have more flexibility to integrate career and family, and to really be able to have women really have equal ability to make their own decisions on how they want to balance their life. I mean, that’s what we’re trying to do so that every woman thrives by their own definition of success. So that’s what we’re working towards.
Andi Simon: You know, I’m sitting and listening and I’m hopeful. I have a woman I know who’s president of a large insurance company. And we were sitting and talking not too long ago. She said, Well, let me tell you, I was a coat girl. She said, I’d walk into Lloyd’s of London with a deal, and they’d hand me their coats as the men walked in, one after another, they thought I was a coat girl. And finally after they all had sat down, and I turned around and sat at the head of the table and saidy, Now let me tell you about the deal I brought you. And the guys all went, Oh! And she said, Do you think that will ever stop? And I said, Yes. I’m not sure when but I guess you could have stopped it if you wanted to at that moment. But somehow the woman has to be able to comfortably say, I’m sorry, but the coat rack is over there, or No, I’m not taking notes today. Who shall we have as our note-taker today? How do we assert ourselves in a way that establishes a more balanced role? Now you’re smiling at me. You’re thinking about something. What are you thinking of?
Lorraine Hariton: I think there’s a two way street here. Catalyst has done a lot of work on this. Not only do the women need to do that, but the men need to become advocates and allies for women in the workplace. In fact, Catalyst has a whole initiative called MARC: Men Advocating Real Change. We’re helping the men understand how they can be part of that change because I think the clearest example is, they say that women don’t negotiate for salary increases as well as men. There’s a big pay gap, and it’s a result of this. It’s not just the women not negotiating. It’s the culture that doesn’t enable them to negotiate.
So a woman in general is much better off with someone else asking. Because it’s like this poster that I have in the back here from an unconscious bias campaign we did which says: She’s not aggressive, she’s assertive. Well, if a man goes and asks for a raise, he’s assertive and he should get a raise. A woman goes in, she’s aggressive, you know. So, we’ve got to do both of those things.
Andi Simon: I often preach that the words we use create the worlds we live in. And you just made an important point there, because the word that you use takes the same behavior and makes it good or bad. And it is very interesting because the definers of those meanings…humans are meaning makers. And if the guys are the definers of the meaning, one thing happens. But somehow we’ve got to get a balance in how we think about the behavior as being. Is it assertive or is it aggressive? Well, it’s the same behavior. Who’s defining it? And how do we then create a mirror back so the women know that that’s the right behavior and the guys understand that that’s not acceptable from them.
I work with some companies where I watch the guys’ backlash and I say, Why don’t we collaborate on the transformation instead of becoming adversarial or resisters to it? Change is humanly painful. The brain hates it. So let’s create a new story because we’re story-makers. And if I can create a new story, then we can live that new story. But if we’re going to fight the story out, it’s going to be quite interesting.
I know too many women who have left corporate because they were tired of the story that put them in the wrong role, and they went out to launch their own business or find some other place. And so it’s an interesting time for women to see what can be done and for men to help create a new environment. Are there some illustrative cases that you can share, or are they all proprietary and it’s not possible to share them? Any kind of story that might illustrate how it’s actually happening?
Lorraine Hariton: Well, I will say there are many, many stories of success. If you go to the Catalyst website, we have tons of success stories, the stories of companies that transformed themselves. We have The Catalyst Award that we give out every year at our big annual conference in Denver. People nominate themselves. They go through an application process. It was very rigorous last year. The Hartford is one of the winners of it. They have transformed the company at every level with all the things we’re talking about, measurements. They were able to get affecting bias sponsorship programs, really changing the fundamental culture of the organization. You can listen to what they do, but there’s hundreds of examples of companies that have done great jobs around it.
And of course, we have lots of examples. I mentioned some of the trailblazers, the Fortune 500, you read interviews, and books. And so there are many, many examples of successes, people who’ve affected the odds. People, companies who’ve done a great job of changing the culture. It’s all over the place. So rather than name a specific one, I think that’s good.
Andi Simon: And if people are looking for companies to work for, they probably can find illustrations at Catalyst and your website to begin to go through. And that is a real resource to be available. You know, this has been such fun. I think that we’re probably ready to share with our listeners or our viewers 1 or 2 things you want them to remember and then how to reach you if they’d like more information about you or about Catalyst. What do you think?
Lorraine Hariton: That sounds great. I think the overriding thing to say is that life is a journey. And that journey is to understand what your passions are, what gets you excited, what gets you up every day enjoying it, and then what do you really enjoy? In terms of your skills, what do you have the most to contribute to this world? And if you can align those, that’s what I try to do.
The other thing is to realize that there are lots of chapters in life, and you would need to make sure that you have the resiliency and the learning mindset to go from one chapter to the next and open the aperture around it. I’m happy to talk to anyone on this call. You can go to the Catalyst website at catalyst.org if you want to learn more about the work that we’re doing. You can get ahold of me that way as well. I’m going to be going on to my next chapter as well. So I’m opening the aperture up.
Andi Simon: Well, I can’t wait to hear about your next chapter. I have a hunch it’s going to be full of adventure and joy and beauty. And you leave behind you better places and with great purpose. Move forward. So it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for joining us today.
Lorraine Hariton: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.
Andi Simon: I just think it’s a special moment to be able to go both into your life and all the work that you’re doing in the wonderful way it’s making a difference for my listeners and my viewers. Thank you for always coming. Remember, our job is to help you see, feel and think of new ways. And I think that a visit to Catalyst might help you see organizations that are already doing this and want to keep it going, and you can as well.
My books Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, and our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman are all available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble for you. It gives you a perspective both of how anthropology sees the world and helps you change, and what we see happening, particularly for women. 102 women in Women Mean Business are all here to help you change your life.
We often say turn a page and change your life. Lorraine’s chapter is wonderful. I love her little thing. Here she talks about how she navigated with her dyslexia and her principal is major. Your major is to nurture your unique gifts. And that’s what we heard about today. Thanks again. Thanks, Lorraine. It’s been a pleasure. Bye bye.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Hear how a family firm can remember its roots while focusing on the future
As they say, family is family and business is business. But in many cases, the two can coexist, often quite profitably. Did you know that almost 80% of the businesses in the U.S. are owned and run by families? As a corporate anthropologist, a culture change expert and a daughter raised in a family business, I have a particularly strong interest in family firms, which is why I’m so excited to bring to you Dylan Rexling, the fifth generation to work in his family’s farm operations in southwestern Indiana. He read my book On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights and was inspired to incorporate many of its teachings into the way he runs his company. Whether or not you have a family firm, listen in to learn about running a successful business.
Dylan is that rare business owner who values every employee and actually listens to his customers.Key takeaways from our conversation:
Get to know your employees. He has a monthly Friday breakfast where everyone talks about who they are, why they’re at the company, and what their goals are. Admit you’re not perfect. Dylan’s message to his workers: “My door’s open. Come see me. If we do something that we shouldn’t have done, or we said it in a way that we shouldn’t have, come talk to us because we don’t know if you don’t tell us.” Culture is very important in a business. He specifically hired culture experts who brought in the concept of culture to the organization. Always be willing to learn and get better. There’s always room to go a step higher. Do everything you can to service your customer. If they need something, do everything in your power to say yes, even if it’s not easy. The old saying is still true: the customer is first. Treat your employees well. And your customers. Dylan writes an anniversary card to every one of his employees every time they hit an anniversary date. “I just write a little thank you that says, ‘I really appreciate your contributions to our team and look forward to working with you in the future.'” He also sends handwritten notes to customers thanking them for their business. “I think those little things are what matter.” Take a step back and look at your business from a high level. “And I think you’ll be very happy that you did so well,” he notes.To connect with Dylan, you can find him on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or his website PFL Logistics.
Want to learn more about the importance of culture, especially in family firms?
Podcast: Jake Manthei—A Family Firm That Lives Blue Ocean Strategy® Podcast: Amy Bruske—A Guide for Sustaining Great Family Businesses Podcast: Marcella Bremer—Build a Better Business With an Amazing, Positive Culture Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights My third book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And as you know, what I love to do is find people that are going to help you see, feel and think in new ways because that’s how you open your mind and begin to see opportunities. We often say, the future is all around us, it’s just not widely distributed yet. But what if what’s happening is something you could see so that you can understand it? Maybe I can as well, because in some ways, the story that you’re going to hear today is going to help you rethink what you’re doing and begin to open that door so that you can get off the brink.
I have with me today, Dylan Rexing. I’m honored to share him with you. I met him out in Indianapolis at a Vistage group, and I think what they’re doing is transformational to an industry that’s sluggish. I’m going to let him tell you more about it, but let me tell you about his bio. Dylan Rexing is president and CEO of Rexing Companies, an Evansville-based network of family-owned and operated companies. So if you have a family firm or are thinking of building one, this is really good insights to share.
Dylan is fifth generation in his family’s farm operations, where he grew up learning the value of hard work and financial responsibility. But under his leadership, the Logistics Division of PFL Logistics has earned recognition as one of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies for the past four years. I’m going to let him tell you his story, but I think you’re going to enjoy his journey because it’ll change your own story about what’s possible. If only you can open your mind to see and then do some observation into innovation. Dylan, thank you for joining me today. I’m so excited to have you.
Dylan Rexing: Yeah, thanks for having me. Good seeing you again.
Andi Simon: It’s good to see you again. Dylan said he was away and read my book and I went, Oh, isn’t that good reading on the beach? And I appreciate it. Dylan, please, let’s hear your story. Your journey as you were sharing it with me is really a perfect setup for today’s talk.
Dylan Rexing: So, as you had mentioned, I’m generation five in our family business. When I took over the family operation, we were really just an agricultural-based company. We farm about 3000 acres. We had 120,000 chickens. And I took over out of college. I have a bachelors in accounting. And I determined that I didn’t want everything that we did to be out of our control. So as a farming operation, we’re not in control of the weather. So when we plant our crops is not determined by us, the yields that we get are also determined by Mother Nature. Then when we take it to market, it’s really what the market bears.
And so I sort of took over our organization. We still farm. It’s still part of our legacy. Farmers are a backbone of the American economy. I don’t want to necessarily downplay that by any means. It’s still an important part of our business. But I sort of took our business and made a full 360. We have about 90 employees today in the supply chain space. And so we have three companies: cold storage, warehouse trucks and a trucking company where we have trucks and drivers, and then a freight company where we sort of work with our customers and partner with our customers to move freight all over the country.
And so, for me, as you mentioned, I was on vacation last week and you were nice enough to give me a copy of your book On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, and I read it and talked about how you sort of put on a different lens and look at the world in a different way. It resonated with me. If you get an email from me, at the very bottom underneath my signature it says: “The most dangerous phrase in the English language is ‘as we’ve always done it.'”
Andi Simon: Dylan, you have no idea how many clients hire me to help them change that. The first thing they say is, No, we don’t do it that way. And I say, Then you don’t need me. If that’s the way you’re going to do it, the habits will drive you. But the times are changing, and maybe those habits are no longer viable or valuable or reliable for you.
But, you know, you have a curious mind. And as you and I were talking, that curiosity factor is not to be underestimated. How did you begin to figure out the logistics part? Or, you could have abandoned where you were, but you didn’t. You could have sold it, which you haven’t. But now you’ve taken a bigger picture and have begun to develop a new set of solutions for the whole supply chain of. And I have a hunch there’s some interesting new things coming as well. How did you begin? Where did it start?
Dylan Rexing: Well, believe it or not, you might wonder, how does agriculture and supply chain tie together? And the fact of the matter is, it’s very common for farmers to own supply chain-driven businesses. For example, farmers have to have semis and trailers to take product out of the fields and take them to market. But they only do that for several weeks or a month or so, two months a year. So you buy this equipment and it just sort of collects dust per se.
So the way it started was, we had all this equipment lying around that we were trying to figure out, What do we do with it? And then the cold storage business is kind of the diamond in the middle that sort of connects it all. Our cold storage business: we have customers, big and small, from large poultry companies to bakeries to anything in the middle. And so those all tie in because of the stuff that we store in our warehouse. Our cold storage food product that we store, it has to get to market. It has to get to the grocery store, or it has to get to a plant to be further processed. And so it was all sort of tied together through a supply chain lens.
Andi Simon: Now your clients come to you for any particular reason? Have you differentiated your cold storage in some fashion? Is it fully integrated? You make it simple and easy for them. What are the kind of core attributes of it?
Dylan Rexing: So we like to tell folks, we’re a one-stop shop. So you can call us and we can store your products, you can call us and we can haul your products. We don’t necessarily have to, but we just try to make it easy and convenient for our customers. The cold storage business is pretty niche. There aren’t a ton of companies in the US that are in the cold storage warehouse space and buy cold storage warehouses. For your listeners that maybe don’t understand that, it’s basically a building where we store products that are frozen, refrigerated, fresh, so that they’re nice and healthy for folks in the supply chain, but just a high level of how that works.
Andi Simon: Okay. But you bring them into the cold storage. You said that there aren’t many cold storage businesses, and I am always curious whether you’re doing it like everyone else. And, you and I were together when we talked about being another “red ocean,” or someone who is creating a market. And I hear you because you make it simpler and easier for your clients to get what they need done without having to work as hard, making it simple instead of complex, and beginning to see ways to add value innovatively so that maybe it’s not a Blue Ocean®, but it has all the attributes of a good market creator, not simply “we are another.” Am I saying that correctly?
Dylan Rexing: So I would say, there’s only two large players in the cold storage business that own over 60% of the market. And so one of the ways we differentiate ourselves is by answering the phone when the customer calls. No offense to large companies, but when they get big, there’s several layers of folks in the middle.
And so one of the ways we differentiate ourselves is, we personalize our approach to the customer. If they need something, we do everything in our power to say yes, even if it’s not easy. And so I think ultimately the farming background that I have is sort of driven by the fact that, it sounds a little cheesy, but the customer is first. And we do everything that we can to service that customer.
And interestingly enough, most of our customer base does business with all three of our companies. So we try to anchor them in from one or the other and then convert them from being just a single customer to three of our operating entities. But our secret sauce really is just doing what we say we’re going to do, answering phones, answering emails, and just providing a good service.
Andi Simon: How interesting, simple and yet very profound and very much appreciated and needed by your community, by your markets. Are you located just in Indiana or are you across the country or where are you located?
Dylan Rexing: So our warehouses, we have four locations in Indiana, all in southwest or southeastern Indiana. Our trucking division, we have a location in Owensboro, Kentucky, about 45 minutes from us here. And we also have an operation in the Carolinas. We have several employees out there in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, a little city called Troy. So we aren’t all over the country, but we have trucks that travel in all contiguous 48 states. But our headquarters is mainly here in southwestern Indiana.
Andi Simon: It sounded when you and I were talking, though, that so many companies today have people problems. But I have a hunch you don’t. And I have a hunch there’s some core values that are working well for you. Can you share with our listeners about how you attract and retain? Is it the metaphor of family? What do you find works particularly well? Because I do think that’s a much needed wisdom to share with folks who aren’t quite sure how to do that anymore.
Dylan Rexing: You know, I would say that we’re not perfect, and I don’t think really anyone is. We’ve grown over the years. I mean, if you look back in the history books of our business in 2010, we had zero employees and 13 years later we have 90. And so we’ve obviously had some struggles along the way. We’re still learning. I tell folks, when we onboard, we’ve hired so many people as of late that I don’t know their faces. I don’t know their names, I don’t know what their hobbies are or what makes them tick. And so we started having a Friday, a monthly breakfast where we bring in bagels and sit down and just talk about who they are and why they’re here and what their goals are and those kinds of things.
And I just found it important to sort of personalize each person; it’s kind of embarrassing when someone works for us and I don’t know who they are. And so I made it a purpose to sit down with them and just take an hour out of the month and just get to know them. But when I end those meetings, I tell folks all the time that, you know, we’re not perfect. My door’s open. Come see me. If we do something that we shouldn’t have done, or we said it in a way that we shouldn’t have, come talk to us because we don’t know if you don’t tell us.
And so I would say that culture is very important in a business. I didn’t even know what the word culture meant probably 4 or 5 years ago. I didn’t really understand it. I thought you just went to work and you busted your butt until you got the job done. And again, I didn’t really understand it. And we hired a couple of people that really brought culture to our organization.
And so I would say, you know, as far as attracting and retaining talent, we’re better than the average company. We still have room to go. One of the things Vistage will teach you, and I’ve only been in Vistage a little over almost two years, is if you’re not willing to always learn and get better, you’re just going to get passed by. And so when people say, Well, how do you know how you are doing? And in the employee area, I always tell folks, I think we do a fabulous job. But, you know, there’s always that room to go a step higher.
Andi Simon: Particularly since the folks you’re hiring are all coming from an age at a different time. They’ve had different experiences, you know, and the Google search for culture and culture change is has been going up like this for a couple of years now, something we specialize in because people don’t know, as you’re saying, what is it? And if you have a toxic one, you don’t even know why. And if you have a good one, you can’t figure out how to keep it going. And it’s the thing that makes humans so special.
We must have meaning, and as you’re talking, it’s important to get your folks to understand that they matter in the larger scheme of your business, that they aren’t just a cog in the wheel, that their feelings matter and and they’re changing and you want them to help build a better business. And it’s interesting because I have a hunch your clients look upon them as assets, as real value providers, not just tactical and practical people. I mean, is there kind of a blend of your culture into your clients?
Dylan Rexing: Yeah. I mean, I would say we have customers, we have employees on site at customers’ facilities. We have some that work on their site. Not only are they there occasionally to do a pick up or a drop, but we have sites where our employees sit at a desk next to our customer, which is a little odd at times. And so we have to sort of manage that.
Our culture and their culture have to kind of mix and we have to make sure that our employees are in a good space. But, I would say it’s important to have employees that want to work for you. And that you treat your employees well. One of the small little tricks that I’ve taken from my time and in some books I’ve read, is that I write an anniversary card for every one of our employees every time they hit an anniversary date. I just write a little thank you that says, I really appreciate your contributions to our team and look forward to working with you in the future.
It’s really short and sweet, but I think we’ve sort of lost touch as a country or a globe, that everything is social media driven and everything’s on our phone. And so our folks appreciate me taking the time to just literally get out a pen and write down a nice little note. And we also do that for customers. So we’ll send handwritten notes to customers thanking them for their time listening to us about X, Y or Z. Maybe it’s the curious mind in me, but I just sometimes think those little things are what matter.
Andi Simon: Oh, I want to say, sometimes I think it is. I was on a plane coming back from Houston, Houston or Lexington. Unfortunately, I’m on a plane every week, and this flight attendant wrote me a personal note thanking me for being Executive Platinum on American Airlines, and how much she appreciated my loyalty and service. You know, often I get things from American to thank me but this is the second time I’ve gotten a handwritten note and I took a picture of it. And I just think it’s a nice touch that makes it seem like you’re not just a cog in this thing, that maybe it matters. And it mattered to this particular flight attendant. And she was very gracious about it. She said, I just want you to know how important this is. And I went, Well, I don’t know who trained you, but you got a heart that’s bigger and sometimes the flights are good and they work, and sometimes they don’t. And after a while you just take whatever you get, right? But it was very touching.
So yours has a ripple effect because I have a hunch your folks then say thank you to their folks and their clients say, Isn’t this a nice thing? And all of a sudden the community has an appreciation for each other, bigger than the task at hand, am I right?
Dylan Rexing: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I think what we try to do is, and it’s changed over time, but we want to make our community and our world a better place than when we took it over. Right? And so the little things about saying thank you and writing little notes to your employees and customers, I hope that puts a smile on our people’s faces. And I hope when we send it to vendors and customers that it makes them feel better. And it’s just trying to make the place we live in a little better. Ultimately, I don’t know the exact statistics, but we spend more time with our colleagues at work than we spend at home with our family. If you don’t love or enjoy where you work, you need to make a change, right?
Andi Simon: Well, you can tell the folks how to reach you if they’re curious and how to join you. I am curious, though, when we were talking about the future and the things that you’re already seeing as ways to improve, even a very good model that you’ve got. And I do think that the times are changing fast, and sometimes there’s a little idea that comes and adds great value. Can you share something about the work that you’re doing now?
Dylan Rexing: So we’ve got a new program with one of our companies, PFLAG, that we’ve been working on bringing to light. It started in July. Let me take a step back. The biggest fear I have as a business owner is that I’m the taxi cab that gets replaced by Uber, a great metaphor, or I’m a Blockbuster that gets replaced by Netflix. That’s my biggest fear is that we started and we put all this tremendous effort and thought into our industry or in our several businesses, and that’s just my biggest fear that someone comes in and just replaces us like that.
And so I’m always trying to think of different ways to differentiate ourselves. And so we’ve got a new program for our logistics business that’s really unique. It’s probably the only one in the country. And we ultimately give our customers more control and transparency over their supply chain and where their product is and how much it costs and those kinds of things. So it’s kind of cheesy to say, but we’ve become a partner of our customer, not really just a vendor. We’ve become partners. So we’re integrated into their system. And like I said, we have employees that sit next to their employees in their building. And so we’ve just become an important piece of their business. And just the reason it came up is, again, I just was extremely concerned that we were going to be the taxicab. And I just don’t want to do that.
Andi Simon: But your metaphor, your aha, is that it’s happened, to Airbnb and Blockbuster could have bought Netflix, but didn’t think that was anything. Let’s not forget, there was a Sears catalog before an Amazon ever existed. And now no more Sears and lots of Amazon. And you wonder who’s going to tackle that one.
But to your point, unless you try and you don’t really know what’s of value to your partners, I love the idea they’re collaborators with you. Together you both rise, and without those customers partnering, you can’t grow either. I mean, you can’t have empty cold storage. It doesn’t do much good. And we can’t because you’re delivering the food to us in a way that’s fast and easy and really affordable.
More often than not, we believe it’s getting to be challenging. You know, I’m enjoying our conversation. The thing that I really do think is that there are some lessons that you’ve learned that you want our listeners to hear: one, two or three of them that really impacted you because you are different than when you started to do this transformation and things are working, I have a hunch, better than you might have anticipated, but we can’t necessarily know the future. We just can plan for it. Some lessons you’ve learned that you want to share.
Dylan Rexing: You know, I’m going to hit the same topic again. But I think it’s extremely important. I think for someone that’s trying to start a business, or maybe they’ve already started one and they’re kind of in a growth phase or anything in between, I think you need to walk in every day and think about how you’re going to replace yourself. Because if you don’t walk in your office every day or your building or wherever you work every day and think about how am I going to get replaced, someone’s going to replace you. Maybe it’s not tomorrow. Maybe it’s five years from now. But ultimately that’s the world that we live in. It’s moving much faster today than it ever has. So I think that’s one important piece that I’d like to share.
The other piece I like to share is to listen to all the stakeholders in your area. So listen to your employees, listen to your vendors, listen to your customers. You learn more from that than you’re going to learn anywhere else. There’s my neighbor who ran a $1 billion manufacturing plant down the street from us. And he said, What I would do is, I’d have this scheduled time every Wednesday, I think it was where I’d walk the plant floor. It was a manufacturing business, a big one in our area. And every week he made a point, for a couple hours, to walk around and just walk the plant floor and talk to his people.
A lot of folks in today’s world, especially in my age group, I like to pick on my age group, I’m a little younger and we do some things better, but we also struggle in some areas, and people in my age group want to manage behind a desk or behind a spreadsheet or something of that nature. And I think it’s just important to kind of get out there and get in front of the stakeholders of your business.
Andi Simon: Well, you know, as an anthropologist, I can tell you that you really don’t know what you don’t know. And you can ask people and they’ll tell you a story about what they think it is you want to hear. But that gentleman who went out to look and see is how we actually learn. And unless you’re in the trucks or in the cold storage route with your own customers, you’re imagining what it is they’re struggling with and where you could add value innovatively.
My husband was a serial entrepreneur in his last business. He spent a whole lot of time just listening, trying to hear what people were challenged by and not assuming we knew because we really don’t know. We think we know, but we are imagining what it is like there. And so that point is a really powerful one.
You know, this has been fun. Do you have your folks also coming back with things they’ve heard from customers that feed into an innovation, you know, culture in some fashion? My last question and then we’ll do a wrap up because I do think they hear more than we will ever hear.
Dylan Rexing: So when we were at Vistage in Indy together, you had spoken about going to your customer service team to listen. Our business isn’t necessarily set up that way. And so it’s still in the back of my brain as to how to get ideas from not just myself talking to folks, but to get ideas from other folks in our organization. So stay tuned on that. It’s one piece that I sort of wrote down as a takeaway, and an important one for sure. I think what Vistage says is, It’s a day to work on your business, not in your business. That’s kind of their metaphor.
I think my last piece of advice would be: sometimes we get really busy in the day to day of whatever fire is out there. Take a step back and sort of look at your business from a high level. And I think you’ll be very happy that you did so well.
Andi Simon: And I love the idea of taking a Wednesday and being an observer, and give it enough frequency so that you can really begin to see. And offline, you and I can talk about some ideas about how to get your talent out there to begin to feed things back in because there’s always gaps for pain points that they hear.
My favorite story is someone who said to a Vistage member, what “What if’s” could you have benefited from? And he said, We ignored all those. That wasn’t what we sold him, and then we asked where all the opportunities were. So he created the “what if” sales process. Don’t sell what we sell, listen to what they need. And I went, Oh, that’s not hard. And he said, But I didn’t hear a word that customer was saying, and that’s where all my opportunities were. So it’s pretty cool stuff. Where can they reach you if they’d like to get ahold of you?
Dylan Rexing: The best way is the Contact Us page on our website. My office number’s on there. My email address is on there. I’m happy to talk to anybody at any time and see if there’s a way I can improve your business.
Andi Simon: Good. I am reluctant to share on the recordings because they’re there for a long time and sometimes we don’t want them there for a long time. But I thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure today. So this is fun. I have to tell Steve McFarland this was just a treat and he should send me some more of his folks. They’re really remarkable people. It was wonderful.
For those of you who don’t know about Vistage, I’ll put a plug in. I think I’ve done 503 or 504 Vistage talks, mostly on: change matters, how to find new markets Blue Ocean Strategy-style or culture change or innovation. But Vistage is an organization of CEOs and key leaders from companies across the world now, and it brings them together for them to listen and grow and learn.
In my book, On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, six of the eight stories in there are Vistage members. And it’s a great way to understand how Vistage folks begin to open their minds to possibilities, and it gives us great opportunities to help them see things through a fresh lens, which is my job.
For those of you who came today, as always, thank you for joining us. It’s so much fun to do podcasting. It’s a way of sharing people and ideas and you don’t need to listen to me alone. This was a marvelous time to share and I’m just glad we’re growing together. I feel like a partner. Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman, is behind me here, and for those of you who may have bought it, I’m getting great reviews on Amazon. If you haven’t bought it yet, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and local booksellers have it, and we are on the book tour. If you want to hear us speak about how Women Mean Business, I’d be delighted to share with you. There are 102 women in it. They’re all leaders in their field who share their five wisdoms, and help others do better together. And that’s what we’re all about.
So it’s been fun. Thank you for coming to On the Brink. My job is to help you get off the brink. And, so thank you Dylan, it’s been a pleasure. Have a great day. Bye bye now.
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Learn how to be your own boss and the power of saying no
Those of you who are wondering whether it’s time for you to leave that corporate life and start your own business, you’re going to love my guests today, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau. They’re freelance writers and translators and the authors of the new book Going Solo: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss. Many aspiring entrepreneurs have plenty of skill and passion but don’t have a sense of how to run a business, which makes their advice so valuable. Are you an entrepreneur or solopreneur? You really should listen in.
Watch and listen to our conversation here According to Julie and Jean-Benoit, a good business plan is basically six questions:1. What do you want to do?
2. Why do you want to do it?
3. What’s the market?
4. What price do you want to offer?
5. What will you bring to people?
6. What’s the purpose, the “what for”?To connect with them, visit their LinkedIn page or their website.
Want to learn more about what makes successful entrepreneurs successful? Here’s a start:
Blog: 10 Qualities To Drive Your Success As A Female Entrepreneur Blog: The 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business Podcast: Marsha Friedman—How A Woman Entrepreneur Took A Little Idea And Turned It Into A Big Business Podcast: Sharon Cully—Great Ideas to Help Entrepreneurs Gain Time and Success Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights My third book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And remember, my job is to get you off the brink. So I want to bring to you people who are going to help you see, feel and think in new ways. You know, and this is always my starting speech, because what I want my audience, whether you’re watching or you’re listening, is to learn something new. And the best way to do that is to see it and feel it and begin to get the stories from someone else who has done it and say, Oh, I can do that too.
So today I have a wonderful couple here to share with you their story and a new book. Let me tell you about them. Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau are the authors of Going Solo: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss. So those of you who are out there wondering whether or not it’s time for you to leave that corporate life and start your own business, or you’re already starting the business and want to know how to succeed at business, or you’re really thinking about, I don’t know, going back into business, it’s a good time to listen in and think about your own purpose and passion and where you could really have a great trip.
They are prize-winning authors and journalists. The husband and wife pair have been running a freelance writing business for over three decades. Look at the books behind them. I just love books and so many folks have no books. And I’m a book author and I love books. They’ve spoken across Canada, the US, Europe and Japan. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, France’s L’Express, and more.
They’ve published 15 books, written over a thousand articles, won more than 30 journalism and literary awards. They’re avid travelers, they’ve lived in Paris, which I love, where John Boehner was a fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Current World Affairs. They’ve been to Toronto and Phoenix, where Julie was a Fulbright Scholar at Arizona State University. They’re trilingual in English, French and Spanish, and they are based in Montreal, where they live with their twin daughters. I’ve told you enough. It’s enough for you to see that I got somebody really cool here for you today, and they’re going to help you. Just like I want to see things through a fresh lens. Thank you, Jean-Benoit and Julie, thanks for joining me.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: Thank you. Thank you very much for having us.
Andi Simon: Now Jean-Benoit has told me I can call him JB. Tell us about your own journey. It’s one thing to read a bio, it’s another thing to begin to think through, How did they get here? Why this book at this time? You certainly have written lots. Jean-Benoit, would you like to start about your journey?
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: Okay. I began as a writer in 1987. As a journalist. I’d done some theater before that. I’d studied engineering, decided in the end that I wanted to earn a living writing, and began as a writer. And since I was not that employable because I had no experience, I started freelancing, which was my destiny as a creator. Anyway, I realized later that a couple of things went well. I got my degree in political science, and was freelancing, meanwhile, and in 1993 things were going well and a magazine in Montreal offered me a job. I took the job and I was employed 29 days and I quit. That’s when I became self-employed by choice. My father is an engineer. He had his own consultancy, which became quite large eventually, but he was an entrepreneur, and he’s the first person who told me, because I was telling him, I have no job, What am I? Oh, he said, you’re self-employed. Oh really? He said, Yes. I know what it was.
Andi Simon: Bravo to your father.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: And then we discussed frequently until he became sick at the beginning of the middle of the year 2005. He was a good mentor. He mentored us a lot. And we realized quite early that a lot of the problems we were going through were the same that he was going through as an engineer. Aside from writing, you know, how do you negotiate? How do you manage without losing time? How do you finance your business and all these things?
And I gave seminars first for journalists because I had a certain amount of success as a writer. So I was giving seminars to journalists. And then in 1997, I published a book which is the original version of the book in French for the Quebec market. And I started giving speeches in Chambers of Commerce and associate trade associations and realized that I was right on the advice that we had developed, because I was already partnered with Julie. So the advice that we were developing applied to everybody who wants to be creative in their work, really. And then we never had good success. We sold like 30,000 copies of the book in the tiny Quebec market and in French. And Julie said at one point, That book is absolutely translatable. So we got the rights back from my publisher and she translated it, and here we are.
Julie Barlow: So I had been thinking for years and years of translating it, but just got buried under other projects. My writing career began much like jazz. I stumbled into it, began writing music, music reviews when I was in university. And I lost my confidence. I didn’t come from a background with a father who was an entrepreneur. I didn’t come from a business background at all. I didn’t even know you could really make a living as a writer.
Andi Simon: Aha.
Julie Barlow: And that’s not unusual in our field, you know, for people to have a skill and develop it but not have any sense of how to run a business. So I finished my education, finished my master’s degree, and then just started out. And, nevertheless, even with that help that we had, there’s a number of skills you have to really develop in order to make your passion into a business. Basically, I felt very fortunate to have your dad. And of course, we developed our own, our own by trial and error.
And over the decades we developed our skills and our tips, and I was very happy to translate the book. We have two editions of it: one for the United States and one for Canada. And it’s just great to share with others, not just creative people, but people who want to live their passion. They want to do what they want to do. They want to leave a job, start out fresh, out of school or whatever. There’s just some basic things that you need to understand to make it work so that you don’t get drowned in frustrations.
Andi Simon: You know, it’s interesting while I’m listening to you. So I’m in business 22 years now, and I launched my business after being in corporate as an executive in two banks and as an executive in two hospitals. And prior to that, I was an anthropology professor. I got my tenure and I was a visiting professor teaching entrepreneurship. And I was on a journey because I knew I was an anthropologist. I like to apply it among businesses that are going through change because people hate change. And I sort of helped them see, feel and think in new ways.
But when I launched it after 911, my PR firm said to me, Oh, Andi, you’re a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change. And I went, Bingo. And so in a sense, he defined my passion, my purpose, the why. Then the question was, how? And I did what I used to do anyway, which was start to have lunch with people, you know, never eat alone. We started to network and network and network. And next thing you know, I had a half a dozen clients and I went, Oh, this is fun. This is free. And I’m having a great time being me.
And I do think that part of the passion and purpose is knowing who you are, not just what you do, but it’s sort of my story. I want to go back to yours. When you began to help people through the book, let’s talk about a process, a way of thinking. Because remember, we live the story in our mind. And so now the question is, typically the people who are going to read this book, what kind of story, what are they trying to do? Give them the wisdom and the lessons learned that you have. So the book complements it in some fashion. Who would like to start it?
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: I think that a very important moment in the process of thinking of ourselves as entrepreneurial was the realization that it’s so hard to change. And as an anthropologist, you’ll understand. Historically, people used to be all self-employed. And the people who were employed were at the bottom of the scale. They didn’t own their means of production, and they were at the bottom of the scale. And around the 19th century, that scale shifted. The people who were employed moved up socially, and it became a goal of education to have a job.
We all went to study in order to have a job. We don’t say to people, Study well, you’re going to have your own enterprise. We never say that to kids. We tell them to study well, you’ll have a job. So then I realized I will never have a job. What am I going to do? Well, I’m going to have work. Yep. So that’s what self-employed is. You don’t have a job, but you have work and you don’t have a boss. You have a client who is your equal because you are your own boss and you don’t have a salary. You have income which you build.
But you see, it took me about 4 or 5 years even to send a bill to my clients because I thought it was pretentious. I’m sorry, I was an artist. I was a writer. I came from the theater. So at one point they would look at their books and say, Oh, we haven’t paid this guy, so let’s send him a check. That’s how I was paid. So of course, that was the big moment of understanding that that’s too much work. I don’t have a job.
Andi Simon: So, you know, Julie, I’m going to let you pop in, but I want to just set the context because I’ve been coaching some young women in their 20s, some are graduating from college, some have graduated and have had a couple of jobs. But I’m not sure that they know who they are, what they’re doing, or why they’re doing it. But I will tell you that the education in college makes them seem as if they’re fully competent at something. They just don’t know what that something is or where to find a company that wants their something. And I’m disturbed at the disconnect between their job, work, passion, purpose. Julie, your turn please. I didn’t want to cut you off, but I wanted to set the stage.
Julie Barlow: One of the big places where you see this problem of flipping from feeling like somebody’s in control of what you produce and what you do, comes in negotiating, which is something we talk a lot about with writers who tend to think there’s a system that they fit into and there’s a certain amount that they will get paid. And they tend not to think that they’re in the driver’s seat. And so they get exploited. And one of the big problems is that people who, and you see this sometimes when people who leave a job to start working freelance, they just think of their clients as their bosses. And they even use that term. They say well, the boss says, the bosses, and they don’t start from a position of power, which is that they can sell or not sell, and sometimes it’s just worth walking away.
I mean, I have this discussion with fellow writers a lot. There are clients who are just not good clients, and they’re hurting you and they’re not paying you fairly and they’re wasting your time. You could be using your means and whatever it is you sell or produce to make money from somebody who appreciates it, you know? So one of the big things is avoiding bad clients and learning to say no. So we have a little section in the book of 16 Ways to Say No. It’s very popular with people. You have to learn when to say no and how to walk away from things. And sometimes saying no is what really radically, suddenly improves your condition. I mean, you need to be able to do that. It’s tough for people.
Andi Simon: Well, it’s interesting because I remember my first client who I said, “I’m really not good for you and you’re not good for me. So I think you should find somebody else for your sake.” And I remember that feeling of freeing myself, but allowing them to be free of me as well, because we were simply not going to make it. And it was for your sake. And I’m sure that because it was a perspective that it wasn’t my problem but for your benefit, it’s time to go. But I’ve learned that no is a good word.
Julie Barlow: Yes, it is a good word. And it can even bring a bigger yes at the end of the day from somebody else. I recently, last year, said no to a really, really what could have been a very lucrative writing contract with somebody that I just knew we were not a good fit. You know, you have to, and we talk about this as well in the book, you have to explore fairly carefully with your client. Make sure they understand what they’re getting, make sure they understand what you’re giving them. Yes, you’re on the same terms.
Things have to be clear from the beginning or you have problems down the line. And I just could not get through to them. We just could not see eye to eye on the thing. But, we left on good terms and I said, I’m sorry, I’m just not going to do this anymore. The word about what I had done with them traveled back to his literary agent which came back to me in the form of another book contract. So I absolutely understood what I did. But, you know, these are the lessons that you learn as a business person, clients’ expectations. And again, it’s the boss-client mentality. You have to take the time to make sure that you understand their expectations and that they understand what they’re getting or you just end up with problems with them.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: People make a lot of fuss about the business plan. We’ve got questions about that. And I say, yeah, I know, but we say, the business plan is basically five questions. What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? What’s the market? What price do you want to offer? What will you bring to people? That’s just the basics. If you need financing or an associate, you may need to write almost a book business plan, a book-size business plan. But a good business plan can fit on 2 or 3 pages. But there’s a sixth question, which I forgot, that I didn’t mention, which I think is the most important: What for, the purpose?
But your goal, your personal goal, where do you want to go with that? Do you want to teach social dancing? A lot of people want to turn their passion into a business, and that’s good. That’s often why people go with you. Self-Employment. Well, you’re not going to once things start running and that can come pretty quickly. You’ll go somewhere if you know where you want to go, and you will not even decide who your clients are. And if you want to start teaching for the purpose of creating a franchise of social dancing, or create a shoe for social dancing, you are not going to choose your clients in the same way. Your venues, the place where you’re going to showcase them, etcetera. And it’s the same with a writer. You are not going to do all the thousands of choices you have to do in your daily business. If you want to be a publisher or have an agency, or want to be an editor in chief, or move into book writing or film, these are all personal choices. There’s nobody who’s going to tell you which is right, but it’s very important, it orients you.
Andi Simon: But I also think, I can’t tell you how many folks come in by referral. Sometimes they find us on the internet and they are trying to do what they did in the corporate world in an independent freelance business fashion, but they don’t really understand that things are different. You know, they did this there and therefore I’m going to do this now. I said, But there you had the brand of the big company and you had a network and so forth. Why should somebody hire you now? And how are you going to actually build a revenue stream, a client base, have a business with it, as opposed to being an employed person who used to do something.
This means the story changes, but they aren’t thinking about how to do it actually and they have no idea. Very often your book is very valuable about how I think about myself now? Because when I said I’m a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change, to be honest with you, I knew people had to change, they didn’t care how I did it, and I admitted I picked that one up. I knew that the whole sales process was about, you know, where are your gaps? Where’s your pain point? How can I help? How I did it, they didn’t care. But it’s a very important piece. They really didn’t know what an anthropologist would do, but it was interesting to watch the transformation.
But many times they come and don’t know how to turn an idea, an observation, into a business innovation. So your book comes at a very timely moment. When they get going, do you help them create scalability? A word I use often because, you know, there are 13 million women-owned businesses in the US. 10 million of them don’t make solopreneurs. 5 million of those don’t make more than $10,000 a year. And they’re more like side hustles, which is fine.
But there are a whole lot of solopreneurs, and I worry about the lack of scalability. Not being able to underwrite it with the right capital. Don’t know how to use a bank to finance it. Don’t use their credit cards with family and friends. I mean, there’s a whole huge market of folks who need to make an income in a better way, but need to think differently about what they’re doing and not simply celebrate the fact that they’re not inside a company, which is often what they say. “I didn’t like being there, so I’m doing this.” I say, “But you’re not in business. You’re just trying.” So, thoughts?
Julie Barlow: So one of the ideas that we speak of is that between somebody making $25,000 a year as a solopreneur and somebody making $250,000 a year, the thing you have to understand is that you don’t have to work ten times more. You make your choices in the function of things. In our case, writing that feeds other ways of making money. So for instance, we wrote a book about the French language and we turned that into speaking gigs on the French language, articles on the French language, a film script on the French language, a radio show on the French language. I mean, the book just keeps on giving us content that we use for other things. And we’re not being paid to sit and produce new content every day. That’s what we would do if we had a job, perhaps as a script writer at a company.
But we are using our content to make money for us. The best way to be a writer is to sit and wait for the royalty checks to come to the door. You know, of course we have to write, but all of the choices that we make, we make sure that they are not dead end choices because they are choices that are going to feed that or feed other books or enable us to produce books using a gig, doing something that will feed us with content for something else. I mean, that’s how we go from thinking like an employee to thinking like a business person.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: I recently read a biography of Charles Dickens and was fascinated that he was one of the first authors in history to do what he called “work the copyright,” which meant that earning a living was not just about writing, it was to use his intellectual property to work for him, and for a lot less work. And as writers, we have the benefit of having intellectual property created the minute we finish something. The costly part of the intellectual property is developing it into research. But if you choose your ideas very well for the purpose of reusing them, then things become a lot easier. That’s just in the production side of it.
But if you negotiate well, you can actually improve your productivity without raising your rate just because you understand better what the client wants or because you negotiate better the ownership of what you produce for them, because you keep that ownership for yourself or because you get better terms. That’s just at the negotiating level. You can keep collecting. If you bill quickly, you collect quickly, and then you have less money on your credit card. There’s all sorts of things like this at all levels of what it is to run a business that are productive.
Andi Simon: And what you’re saying though, is a mindset. And I do think that mindset isn’t the narrow: I’m a freelance writer. It’s the broad: I’m in business to take ideas and in multiple channels begin to bring them to market because my purpose is to share French and I need to do it on all the different channels. And I need to do that in multiple different ways. And the content keeps repurposing itself.
I mean, people say to me, Did you sell a lot of books? I said, I brought in a lot of clients. I mean, you can bring in good clients. I was in Mexico three times off a book that someone found in a Hudson News in an airport, and got to give programs to CEOs down there three years in a row. Before the pandemic, I just loved the multiplier of the book.
And I just had a podcast earlier today of a guy who I gave the On the Brink book to. He took it on his vacation, came back and was quoting it for me. I mean, you can’t ask for much more than that. I love how what we do is designed not to be an end, but a beginning. And I do think it opens the door. And the idea is, how many different doors can it open and how do we get to where we’re really taking the message and helping spread it.
Julie Barlow: To do that you kind of have to be agile. I mean, the word is a little overused, but you do. You need to be watching what’s going on. You know, in the book, we encourage people who are starting out to be curious to contact their competitors, to sit down with people in their business and ask questions and figure things out. People can be very shy and a little bit locked into their own little universe. You can stay in front of your screen all the time, but it’s important to get out and understand what’s going on. And people are helpful. And they’re happy to have somebody, I’m happy for young writers to approach me and to ask for me to sit down and explain things to them.
When I don’t have time to do a contract. I’d love to be able to keep my client happy by sending them somebody else who can. And you know, that happens fairly frequently. And it’s sort of a win-win for everybody. But, you know, communication and being open to that and watching the industry change is really important.
One of our early methods was to resell articles because we write in both languages and we would resell them in different markets. And that changed when the internet came. And we started writing before the internet when that all changed. And then it was very hard to keep our copyright over certain things and resell things. But we found new ways to do that.
And one of them is translating and we don’t necessarily get paid for our copyright, but we need to translate it. So we get paid for that. We’re always looking to see where the soft spots are and how things are changing. And you always have to kind of be aware of what’s going on and not get stuck in a way of doing things. And that, again, is something very particular to being sort of an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial state of mind, as opposed to thinking like an employee and doing what you’re asked to do.
Andi Simon: You’re segueing into a topic that I always like to include, though, and you’ve been through many years of watching many different transitions and transformations, and often you pick up. I often talk about the future is here, we just haven’t quite distributed it widely. But you pick up little signs, and the little signs are the tip of the iceberg of where things are going. Are there some signs that you’re already beginning to watch happen and you’re saying, there’s something coming? I’m not quite sure what, but I’m really interested to see where and who, and I’m going to poke further, and anything you can share, because I do think the times are changing.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: Well, in Canada we have this problem right now. The Canadian government wants to control better. Well, wants to ensure that big companies like Facebook and Google share their publicity market with traditional media, and they created a law, a Facebook Australia-style law. And Facebook reacted by blocking all Canadian content on Facebook. And Google is threatening that. So that is raising a lot of questions on the future of writing as a writer in Canada. It’s going to be a rocky year next year, I would say.
Julie Barlow: So artificial intelligence is a big one. Yeah, AI is affecting us. Again, maybe back to what Jean-Benoit said about purpose. We as sort of high-end writers are right now kind of safe from AI. It can’t really do what we’re doing. So we’re enjoying the benefits of it right now, which is transcribing automatic tools for transcribing interviews and translation tools that give us decent first drafts of translations and various different things, but all the writing community is a little on edge about what is going to do, because it’s getting better at generative artificial intelligence. We can’t afford to have our head in the sand.
Andi Simon: I fell in love with AI. I say that gently because I use it in different kinds of ways. It writes great poems for me. And if I want to give a granddaughter a poem about a situation, I give it three facts and outcomes a great poem. And I went, I can’t write that, but boy, that is a great poem, and I don’t even know who I would ask to write it.
But it is interesting to watch what we begin to use it for. I had a great big project and I said, Tell me, what are your thoughts, AI, about this project I’m working on? And it freshened up my thinking, not that I was necessarily going to use it, but as a solopreneur, it’s often difficult to find open colleagues with conversations that can make intelligent insights into things you’re thinking about. And so I’m finding all kinds of ways to make it my friend. And I say that because it’s how you feel about it as opposed to being angry at it.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: You know, we use artificial intelligence a fair amount. We have an excellent character here called Antidote. It’s pure artificial intelligence. And all the intelligence software that is there doesn’t make a very good translation, but makes a good first draft. In fact, in Canada, where we translate a fair amount because we have two official languages, the number of people who are employed as translators has increased by 18% in the last seven years, when the labor force has increased by six. So it reduced the cost of entry to a lot of people who would not translate. And then they give it to a machine. They come out and they say, someone says, that’s not very good, but let’s hire someone who finishes the translation.
Andi Simon: What is Grammarly? I mean, this whole book, I put every one of them through it. We have 102 women and I gave everyone to Grammarly and they made the corrections and I sent it back and they approved it. And man, it was efficient. And there were limits to how much creativity was going to go into it. But it got me comfortable that they would sound professional and it was even far better than the proofreader of the publisher. And so it was fun to test. I just needed a third third party.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: But one of the things about artificial intelligence is that it’s a misnomer. It’s an algorithm that processes a lot of information. And one of the problems for journalists, anyway, one of the issues with our AI is that, for example, ChatGPT is essentially a sociopath. It doesn’t tell you it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. It makes up things and it doesn’t give you the source, which is contrary to any kind of ethics in journalism. And, I don’t think it threatens journalism. It will be a tool like glasses or even the word processor.
Andi Simon: You know, I’m in the schools, my daughter is a teacher. And she said back to me, I had to do a lesson plan for a student in special ed. So I went into ChatGPT and it came back and it was almost as good as I would have done. And in a minute I went, yeah, now use your time to teach the child and not write the lesson plan. You know, it’s a perfectly good way to get going. Nothing is perfect, and even our own lesson plans may not be perfect. We think they’re better than AI.
But I’m enjoying the transition to the next stage of data and insights coming from intelligent stuff in different ways. So it’ll be fun if we stay and make it happy, and then be wise and go back and check and make sure it’s correct. But even this stuff on Google, I’m never quite sure it’s correct either. You have to be knowledgeable enough to know. This has been such fun. I’m so glad that you’re on our podcast today, and if folks would like to buy the book, where could they buy it?
Julie Barlow: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca in Canada, Barnes and Noble. It should be available in any bookstore.
Jean-Benoit Nadeau: It’s widely distributed. Just make sure if you ever go, it probably won’t happen, but the Canadian edition has a little maple leaf at the top. If it doesn’t have that little maple leaf, it’s an American edition.
Andi Simon: The things that look great. Thank you so much. So it’s going solo and if you want to go solo, you’ve been with us today listening to Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau. I do, as we are trying to really help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can decide, how am I going to spend the next stage of my career doing a job, or do I want really interesting work? Am I going to be a creator of a whole new market space, or am I going to copy someone else and be another? And I do think it’s a time for really rethinking who you are and where you’re going and how to do it. So I want to thank you for coming. Thank you for coming today and speaking to our audience.
As you know, our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, just came out and it is doing gangbusters. And it too is on all the booksellers, Barnes and Noble and Amazon. It’s the stories of 102 women, and they are really interesting stories because the women have five wisdoms they want to share with you, and each of them has a different background, history, and their own journey. And it’s really quite fascinating.
The reviews are: "I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but I went through the whole book and each of the women inspired me. So when you gave the book to me, man, this is a great book!" Who knew? And I said, I know. The whole idea is to share their wisdom with you so you can be inspired, you can aspire to greatness. You can begin to think about how other women have done it. One of my favorite quotes in there is, “Don’t believe everything you’re thinking.” And I said, I like that.
We preach, turn a page and change your life. I really think women in business are here to help you do just that. So on that note, I want to thank everyone for coming. Keep sending me your ideas on who we should have on, share the podcast and I wish you well. Bye bye now.
WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)
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Hear how to create a workplace where people love to work
I first had the pleasure of interviewing Konstantinos (Kon) Apostolopoulos for this podcast in July 2020 as the pandemic was raging around the world. He and Dr. Elia Gourgouris had just co-authored the book, 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics & Other Disasters. Now Kon has written another book due out next year, called Engagement Blueprint: Building a Culture of Commitment and Performance. And what is so fascinating about his new book is that it focuses on business culture change and employee engagement as the keys to business success. Kon and I are both culture change experts and so as you can imagine, I’m excited to learn what he has to tell us today, as I think you will be too.
Watch and listen to our conversation here People seek out environments where they feel valued and their needs are being met.Some keypoints from today’s discussion:
An engaged workforce looks for things that need to get done because they feel appreciated and value helping the company move forward. They’re connected and understand clearly what the goals are, and they’re looking for opportunities to support their teammates in meaningful ways and make contributions that will make a difference for the organization and for themselves. They look at their daily activities as opportunities to learn, to grow, to capitalize on that, to invest in themselves. When that happens, work becomes learning, work becomes play, work becomes exciting. That’s the kind of place where engagement really thrives. People want something more than just financial success. They want, and need, to be valued and appreciated in what they do. We all do. How to reach KonYou can connect with Kon on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and his website Fresh Biz Solutions, or email him at [email protected]. Also, take the online version of Kon’s self-assessment questionnaire to learn what your organization can do differently to really soar.
Want to learn more about Podcast: Richard Sheridan—Joy in the Workplace Podcast: Maria Colacurcio—Stop The Revolving Door. Help Your Employees Embrace A Diverse And Equitable Workplace. Blog: Change Is All Around Us But It’s Terrifying. So How Do I Make Change My Friend? Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights My third book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Hi and welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi I’m Andi Simon. And as you know, my job is to get you off the brink. And I love to do it by bringing you interesting people who are going to help you do something important. You’re going to see things through a fresh lens. You’re going to feel things differently. And remember, we decide with how we feel and then you’re going to think about it. Because if you can see it and feel it, then your brain says, Oh, that’s what we’re talking about. And today, this is really a great opportunity, particularly coming out of the pandemic, still not being sure or certain about work and life and hybrid and all kinds of things. It’s time for us to think about that organization we want to build.
So today, somebody whom I interviewed earlier for this podcast, in July 2020, is coming back because he’s writing a new book, a solo book: Kon Apostolopoulos, who is a really wonderful gentleman who works with organizations to help them, like I do, change. Let me read you a little bit about his background. He’s founder and CEO of Fresh Biz Solutions, Fresh Like That, and Human Capital Management Consultancy, which provides performance improvement and training solutions to help organizations develop their people, improve business results, and reap the benefits of a comprehensive talent management strategy.
During the pandemic, he and Dr. Elia Gourgouris published a book called 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics & Other Disasters. That was terrific and very timely. He’s a regular contributor to Thrive Global and Achievers Engagement. I think what you’re going to love today is that he has had time to develop a new book on employee engagement. He calls it Engagement Blueprint: Building a Culture of Contribution and Performance. Is that the title? Did I get it almost right?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Almost right. Almost right. Commitment and Performance. Both of those are things we’re going to talk about today. And hopefully I put down a half a word and then I had a figure. The other half was on. So good thing we can laugh together.
Andi Simon: What I think for our listeners and our viewers is so important is that Kon brings both research and experience and expertise to this engagement question. And I love when he talks about it because you’re going to begin to think about that blueprint that you need, which lays out a pathway to change what’s maybe a little chaotic today into something where employees believe in the place and really want to participate and belong. Kon, thank you so much for joining us.
Kon Apostolopoulos: It’s such a pleasure to be with you again, Andi. Thank you for having me.
Andi Simon: Our problem is going to be to only stay within a half hour or so because we love to talk. There’s nothing better than getting together with people who share your passion and your purpose. I want you to talk a little bit about your background so they understand who’s Kon. And then we’ll talk about the origin myth of this new book, which is so important. Please share with them. Who is Kon?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Thank you. It’s a pleasure. Kon is right now a 30 year veteran of the Adult Learning Performance Improvement Change Leadership space. I essentially work with people. The company I founded about a dozen years ago, Fresh Biz Solutions, is focused on helping organizations, the kind of organizations that you and I know, Andi, that spend a lot of time and money building, developing very intricate business plans. Where I come in and help is that I ensure that they have the right people in the right place, ready and willing to execute those plans because without them, the organization really has a plan that’s not worth the paper it’s written on because it needs its people at their best to be able to execute those plans.
And a lot of times that comes through workshops and development. A lot of times that comes through one-on-one or group coaching efforts to enhance the commitment that people have as well as their competence. Sometimes it comes with tailored events that need to be facilitated to bring people together and aligned with the goals that we’re striving for, and ultimately working with my clients on their systems to make sure that every dollar that they invest in their people is a dollar well spent and it aligns to something that they target that is very purposeful rather than a “nice to have.”
So I’ve been doing that for a long time now and I’ve had the pleasure of working in a number of industries across the spectrum with a number of different types of organizations: public, private, smaller and now much more of that mid- to large-space organizations that have enough people where we can make a difference and truly create the kind of workplace that people can find themselves, they can really align themselves, see themselves achieving their goals, and, oh, by the way, helping the organization be successful as well, because we all deserve that kind of a workplace.
Andi Simon: Engagement, though, is always a strange word. People talk about it wishfully. I’m not quite sure they would know it if they saw it. And then I couldn’t be sure how they would feel it if it was there. So let’s start off with, you know, you’ve moved through the 30 years into working with organizations large and small, and now you’re beginning to really find ways to make a difference. Why? Why should we even think about this thing called employee engagement? Why does it matter?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Well, let’s approach that from a number of different angles. Let’s look at our protagonists in the story. Let’s talk about, first and foremost, the employees themselves. People seek out environments where they can feel like their needs are being met. And when we talk about engagement needs, we talk about the need all of us have, first and foremost, to be valued and appreciated in what we do.
Second of all, to feel like they belong in that environment, that they’re part of a team, part of a tribe. These are basic needs, fundamental needs that we all have. In addition to that, in our workplaces, in our careers, we all seek to feel like we are making a meaningful contribution, that we are able to be productive in what we’re doing. So at the end of the day, we feel like we’ve accomplished something.
And ultimately most of us want to know that we are operating in an environment that invests in us, supports us so we can continue to learn and grow so we’re not remaining stagnant. So from that perspective, from an employee standpoint, these are basic needs that employees are looking for in their organizations. Now, the book that I’m writing is actually written from the perspective of the employer, the leader, the leader in all of us that now has to try to win the hearts and minds of their people and try to address those needs that people have.
And from that perspective, employers are looking at it and saying, “You know what, I put out a lot of things. I spend a lot of my money, my resources, my capital towards my employees. I want to know that that investment is being reciprocated and that there is value for me investing in that.” Otherwise, most employers will just settle for what they can get. They’ll settle for a situation where they’ll think, okay, I’ll just pay the basic minimum because I’m not going to get much more than that.
Whereas the companies that are truly performing at the highest levels, the brands that we have come to know and appreciate, they do things a little bit differently. They truly capture that engaged spirit of their people. They capture that discretionary effort, that commitment that people can bring to their work that want to see the organization succeed. That’s the magic that we’re trying to capture and that’s the environment that we all deserve to operate in.
Andi Simon: Assuming that one who’s listening or viewing is beginning to visualize an engaged organization with high levels of employee engagement. And I do this with my own clients, visualize. You can see it. You can become it. So what will a highly engaged workforce feel like or look like? Because while we say the words that they want value and they really want to be connected and productive, how will I see that? Will I know it? What will it feel like? And, what are the actions of the behaviors, not just the spirit that’s going to be demonstrated here for an organization to know I’m moving them into an engagement. Tell me, how do I see it? What will it feel like?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Well, first and foremost, the feeling is a different level of energy. There’s a certain heightened level of energy. There is an excitement, an urgency about the place. There is an environment where you notice that there are leaders at all levels of the organization, people taking personal accountability and ownership of activities. They’re not sitting around waiting for people to tell them what to do or not. They aren’t just taking advantage of the fact that, Well, guess what, my boss hasn’t really contacted me, I’m just going to sit here and play solitaire.
Engaged workforce looks for things that need to get done. Why? Because they feel appreciated and value moving forward. They’re connected and understand clearly what the goals are, and they’re looking for opportunities to support their teammates in meaningful ways and make contributions that they understand and know will make a difference for the organization and for themselves. And ultimately, they look at each one of their daily activities as opportunities to learn to grow, to capitalize on that, to invest in themselves. Because truly, work becomes learning, work becomes play, work becomes exciting. That’s the kind of place where engagement really thrives.
So as I work with one of my clients and we talk about how to build engagement, I’d probably say something like, Today, people wait to be told what to do. And in an engaged organization, they individually take the autonomy and accountability to try and solve a problem before they have to be told what to do rather than wait to have an idea come from someplace else. They bring the ideas elsewhere so they can see it manifesting into new ways of doing things rather than coming in and punching a clock. They want to see what else. They wake up in the morning, put their feet on the ground and say, How can I do something better today? Is that the kind of thing you’re looking at?
Andi Simon: Yes, absolutely. Because what you’re describing manifests itself with a very different attitude towards work. People are excited to be there. People are looking forward to the opportunity to engage, to see their partners out there because they truly see them as partners. There is a level of ownership, again, that thrives in this environment where people will step forward and say, How can I support you? It’s very easy to put your ego aside because you don’t feel threatened when you feel like part of the team, like you belong, like you are allowed to be there when you are valued for what you bring, small or large to this to the table.
Kon Apostolopoulos: Different people will contribute in different ways. But if you can see that connection between your job, your work, your output and how this moves the organization forward, that’s an important part. I mean, we all want to know where we belong and how we fit into this. It’s no different than I explain it to a lot of the leaders that I work with. I say, If you have a group photo, Andi, what’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get it in your hands? You’re going to look for…where am I in this picture and how do I fit in. That’s right. That’s exactly the picture that we need to paint for every single one of our people. So they know clearly in no uncertain terms what they do, where they belong and how they contribute to this and that. That contribution is truly valued and appreciated.
Andi Simon: You said something very important because there are times when that picture is of a toxic team and the need to belong overwhelms the need to do well. And consequently, we’ve all had clients where every department is toxic to the others. You know, finance won’t talk to marketing and marketing can’t talk to sales. And they all are on a different agenda. And somehow the organization’s supposed to thrive. They’re all engaged, but not in what you should be.
So is there some wisdom you can bring to us today about how you take apart that kind of silos? I’m thinking of a client I had in Mexico where everything was so siloed that nobody wanted to work there.
Kon Apostolopoulos: Right. Well, think about what drives a lot of that when we have a scarcity mentality, when the people that are incentivizing the work, that are driving the work, that are directing the work, say, Okay, there’s only so much accolades, so much reward to go around for what I’m looking for. You guys fight amongst yourselves who’s going to get it. But if I come at it from the perspective of abundance and I say, There’s enough gratitude and appreciation, there’s enough acknowledgement for all of us to be successful, that takes away the need for us to fight over scraps. And that’s a big part. That’s a fundamental, visceral reaction we have when we are in an environment where our very safety is threatened because that’s what a toxic environment does. Different levels of our physical, mental, emotional well-being are threatened by that. There is a scarcity out there. There’s not enough of that.
That’s why we strive to kind of rise to the top. But it’s the collusion of mass mediocrity. It’s the crabs in the bucket. Every time you try to rise above the rest in an environment like that, the rest of them are going to pull you down because it’s not even about them getting out there desperate enough that they will pull you down to climb all over you to get away. And that’s not a healthy environment, that kind of workplaces are condemned. It’s just a matter of time. They’re dead and they don’t even know it.
Andi Simon: It was interesting in that particular client, they were struggling to expand and become more innovative with a workforce that believed that the old ways were the way we do things, we can’t change. And I’m listening to you. They were each engaged in a different story. And we’re storytellers. And I always tell my clients, you live the story that’s in your mind. So what’s your story? And as I’m listening to it, it’s that they see the world around them in this company for their benefit, not for them serving a larger purpose. And I think that higher level purpose is what will create engaged employees, or is that not what you see also.
Kon Apostolopoulos: Well, I totally agree with you, but in order to get to that higher purpose, those fundamental needs will need to be met. There needs to be a “we need to create the kind of environment where people don’t have to worry about those things, where if you’re talking about a company that’s trying to innovate, you know it better than I do.”
Innovation demands risk. We cannot hope to innovate, to change, without risk. Well, in an environment that you’re describing that’s that toxic, where people are holding on to the norms and to the old ways, the legacy ways of doing things. Why are they doing that? Because they know it’s safe, because stepping outside of those boundaries has always perhaps been chastised, perhaps has been penalized, perhaps it’s been seen as evil. So they want one thing, but they’re rewarding or creating consequences for that thing. They’re rewarding the opposite behavior and thus creating those consequences for that. You can’t ask me to take risks if you’re not allowing me to make mistakes.
Andi Simon: Well, and it is particularly difficult. I sometimes have been working with companies, going through transitions with new leadership, and while they can say the words, I want you to be a more self-empowered entrepreneur, and the old person was directing and controlling the people who are there who don’t know what the words mean and they don’t know how to be self empowered. It’s so interesting. Let’s go back to your book, though. You’ve structured this book in a way to create a blueprint, and that becomes an interesting metaphor for what you’re trying to set up. I want to give you enough time to talk about the blueprint and how somebody might enable it or execute on it, because you clearly have a methodology here you want to share.
Kon Apostolopoulos: Thank you. And yes, indeed, what I found is that I started this project about 18 months ago. It was, as you mentioned, Dr. Elia and I had the opportunity to write a book together right at the dawn of the pandemic. And we got it out early on because we knew that people needed help. And that book was the 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis. And it was a roadmap on how people can emotionally deal with change, drastic change in their lives.
What evolved from that, Andi, was an opportunity to take that same roadmap to my clients and to large organizations and really show them how what applies to the individual can apply, expanded out, and scaled out to large organizations as well. Well, once we got past that point now into 2022 and my clients are looking at what’s next, how do I get my people back in here and on board to work? So we started the discussion about how we win back that commitment from our people so they want to come back to the workplace, either physically or even through this hybrid or virtual model that we exist, but still truly gaining that commitment.
And that started the discussion based on that need. And I started researching. I started looking at the data that was coming out of very reputable sources, whether that be Harvard and their Business Review documents, through Gallup, through the Pew Research Center, through Deloitte, through all of them, various big names. And looking at the data and the trends that I was seeing, what I discovered are essentially that there are those four key elements, those four key drivers that we need to satisfy: the need that people have to feel valued, the need that people have to feel like they’re connected, the need that people have to be productive, and ultimately the need to feel supported to learn and grow.
And then in looking at my history, I realized, Andi, that that’s the work that I’ve been doing with my clients the last 30 years. And so the realization just hit me that the very framework that I’ve used over the years to support my clients is the same framework that answers those questions of how we create that environment. So essentially four drivers, and I have four pillars of the work that I do, that essentially each one of those pairings of my pillars addresses one of those needs.
So it’s almost like an overlap, if you will, and it fits so well in the sense of when I talk about how do we show people that we value them well beyond an equitable and honest paycheck, where people can feel like they are being rewarded equitably for the work that they do. Well, if you invest in people and you build their competence and their abilities and their commitment, they can and want to do the job. When you start connecting that commitment through coaching and the team building pieces, the elements now, people can feel like they are connected.
When I work with people on the competence and the systems that will support that, that allows them to be productive. And then when I take the systems that I built, the people systems and the team building, the teamwork part, we balanced both the output of task and the relationship pieces to now show people in a transparent way how they can build their careers and how they can achieve their goals through the organization, and grow and learn and expand their career so they no longer seek other places, other avenues outside the organization. They can reach all their goals within the organization.
And that whole packaging allowed me to really bring the data and the information, the science on one side and my 30 years of experience on the other, and put them together in such a way that now I have a very clear framework that is proven to be successful. And now I’ve got the stories behind it to show and illustrate in the book along the way, the case studies that will allow us to really illustrate each one of these points.
Andi Simon: Is there a case study or two that you can share? Because it’s always the stories that people remember. And as you and I were talking in preparation, I thought there were a couple of great ones.
Kon Apostolopoulos: Yeah. And there’s one particularly that I think illustrates the complete package that I’m describing right now. And I have that, I’ve published that as a case study for the industry itself, and it involves one of my main clients, one of my nearest and dearest clients that I’ve worked with almost from the beginning when I started my venture. They are a construction company and basically I work with one of four regions of this large billion dollar construction company.
But when I started working with them almost a decade ago, they weren’t a $1 billion company at the time. The region that I was working with was about pushing close to 200 million in revenues for this area. Over the years, as we’ve partnered, their goal for their strategic priorities for the five year plan was to double their revenue to reach 400 million in the time that we worked together and reaching up to last year. And this is basically, 2022 was their end of their fiscal year, they achieved 600 million in revenue.
So when I was sitting down with the president, the regional president and his team, he acknowledged that this would not have been possible without the work that we have done together, developing the systems and the people and creating a talent management plan that really supported their business strategy. Now, that’s not in itself the most extraordinary thing, because we can say that, you know what, we contributed. But I will bring a little bit more evidence to the story here. I mentioned to you that this is one of four regions. The other three regions are equal opportunity, equal size with this region. They in themselves only did 400 million collectively.
So not only are we showing the proof of what works for this particular region against their competitors here in this market, but we’re also showing it against the other control groups within the same organization, same structure, same hierarchy, same policies in other areas. We do things a little bit differently here. We modified some things and we’re able to really showcase that difference profitability wise, far exceeding the collective of the other three regions. Satisfaction, employee engagement numbers, retention, promoting ability, all of the key performance indicators that show that you are operating in a way that you have a healthy workplace where people can thrive and they want to stay and they can grow their careers. All of that was evident and present in this case, Andrea, so that’s the point that I point to, that is the example that I point to where everything has come together and all of this suite of offerings has been presented to them and utilized.
Andi Simon: Don’t forget to send me the link to that and we’ll include it on the blog where we put the podcast because it becomes concrete as opposed to abstract, but it’s also data demonstrated and evidence based and it says, Oh, this could really help my business turn from good to great, huh?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Correct. It’s the difference maker because at the time when all the companies were hemorrhaging and bleeding people, they couldn’t keep their people there with the Great Resignation and people were abandoning their jobs in droves and millions in the millions. This company, we not only did not lose any of our top people, we actually became a destination for people leaving their other organizations. So when you can become that employment brand that others seek out, when you become that employer of choice, how much easier is your job? How much does it save your bottom line, knowing that you can attract the best and brightest and retain them within your environment? That is a competitive advantage that will help you truly differentiate yourself from the competitors.
Andi Simon: Well, and it’s not just salary, is it? It’s all the other, I’ll call them, I don’t want to call them soft. They are the kind of human stuff that people are looking for. It’s true. They work for a paycheck, but they really do want to belong to an organization that values them and helps them get valued. It allows them to be productive and creative and really connected to others in a way that leads to better results.
And so we’re coming back to describing that kind of an engaged environment that we’re talking about. I mean, that’s truly what we were trying to picture for our audience here. And to understand when you are confident that your top performers, even if they pick up the phone and somebody says, Come work for me, I’m going to give you X amount more, and they say, Thank you, but I’m very happy where I am. Yeah, I can see myself here. This is my home. This is my workplace. This is where I find I’m at my best.
That’s a tremendous, tremendous asset to an organization that you can’t put a price on that. No, there is no price because it is the differentiator for life, not just for a company. As for an individual’s life where it has meaning and purpose, it’s pretty cool. So let’s go back to your engagement blueprint. When you have a client map out where they are and where they’re going and how they’re going to get there, can they do it on their own? Do they need your support? Are there steps that are simple to follow?
Kon Apostolopoulos: There are. And that’s what I’m trying to capture with the book. I’m trying to show people an easy way for them to first and foremost, assess which one of these drivers are strengths for them in their current environment, which areas they need to pay special attention to. And I outline each one of these areas, certain elements that should be present and available for them to consider. But I still don’t dictate which way they want to go. I make the recommendations of these areas that they should focus on, provide some examples of my own, but also case studies, many case studies in there.
And oh, by the way, we are also interviewing industry leaders across the spectrum, people that have been there, done that, and can speak to each one of these elements from their own organizations, people like Jamie Simpson, that is the hotel director I lead for a Jumeirah property that just had their 20 year anniversary, the first one of Jumeirah property meeting on Salam in Dubai. And they won the most prestigious team award in their area from Hotelier magazine. And she and her team showed what it looks like to be able to operate.
Now, think about that. We’re talking about a wonderful, talented leader operating in what many would consider a culture that is very male dominated in an industry that is full of male executives. Yet this powerful individual, this talented woman, has brought together in her own way, using her own talents and skills, brought together and created an engaged workplace where people can thrive. And her team can vary, can succeed with proof because that is not a small thing to achieve that award.
Andi Simon: No, And it is an acknowledgement of something more than just financial success. It’s about something much bigger than this. This is really an interesting time. You know, Kon, you’re a giver and you are a person who wants to help others grow. I know as we were talking about this book, what you have a whole lot of things that you’d like to share with our listeners and viewers and maybe their organizations to help them get going before the book comes out. You want to share? Would you share some of those things?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Absolutely. And thank you, Andrea. First and foremost, we’ve developed with my team an online version of our simple questionnaire that will allow anyone to kind of answer some basic questions and get a feel for where are we strong, where do we need to focus on, which one of these drivers do we find present in our environments, which one we might want to pay some attention to, with some very simple guidelines and simple examples of what they can do differently.
So I’d like as a first gift to offer that to you or to our audience here today, Andrea. And we can add that in. We can provide a link for them. They can simply go online, complete their questionnaire and have the opportunity to get some quick answers on the spot. Beyond that, if people are interested in finding out more, I’d love to welcome them into our growing community. And in this community we talk often about tips, ideas, examples of how to really engage our workforce, how to really create that environment for our people. It’s also the place where I’ll be sharing a lot of excerpts from the book, early previews of some of the interviews that I’ve been doing. Wonderful, valuable information that people can immediately turn around and apply, and if they so choose, to be part of this community, this growing community, and have first access to the insights and the information that we’re sharing. Even before the book is published.
Andi Simon: This is so exciting. So we can start with the self-assessment, and begin to become familiar through this group of the kinds of things you’re doing. And then the book is expected to come out by when?
Kon Apostolopoulos: 2024. We’re putting the final touches on it. We’re wrapping up some of our interviews and we’ll have some what I hope people will find as wonderful little surprises and nuggets in there for them.
Andi Simon: I can’t wait. There’s my crackerjack box in my little nugget in there. This has been such fun. Now, if they want to reach you, where’s a good place to get a hold of you?
Kon Apostolopoulos: Well, the easiest place for those people that embrace the LinkedIn platform is to look me up under Koach Kon. I spelled with a K on purpose. Andrea, I don’t want to mislead people. I want to make sure that they know. So Koach Kon on LinkedIn and they can also visit my website freshbizsolutions.com where they can find additional information about perhaps how we can help them or how they can readily find resources to help themselves really create the kind of environment where people can thrive.
Andi Simon: I love it. Do you have a team of people who work with you, or is this mostly stuff you’re doing as a solopreneur?
Kon Apostolopoulos: A lot of it is myself. I do reach out to trusted partners at times. I have a team that helps me with my marketing, with some of my strategic planning, perhaps with creating and building a lot of the assets that are of high quality that I can offer to my clients and to those listeners that we have here today. But periodically it’s always a pleasure to be able to partner with people that I respect in the industry like yourself, Andrea, and people like we can work together. We offer each other our insights and our support, but for the most part, yes, there would be me.
Andi Simon: I think that’s pretty good because if you’ve just been hearing Kon talk, he knows what he’s talking about and he and I share a whole lot of the same challenges as people who work with organizations that need to change or want to. And I can’t say it often enough, but change is pain and your brain hates us. And how many times have companies said to me, Well, that’s not the way we do it. I said, Well, that’s the problem. It’s the way you do it. Yeah, but that’s the way it’s done and I say, But it doesn’t have to be. Behaviors can change and if you change the behaviors, then your mind comes along and makes it sensible as well. So it’s not simple, but it is doable and it is doable with, I think, this engagement blueprint on how to build a more inclusive company that can really, really produce at a level that you’re looking for.
So I’ve had a great time here today and this has been absolutely a wonderful conversation. I will make sure it’s up on our blog and we push it out when it’s time. And I know my listeners and my viewers are going to say, Can I learn more? And I have a hunch you want to learn more. So I’m going to say goodbye to everybody. Thank you for coming. And so it’s a pleasure to help you get off the brink. And the only way you can do that is to see things through a fresh lens and feel them in new ways like we’ve done today. And then give some thought to, Do I need a blueprint? Do I need to begin to put together a process for change? And then we can together or alone begin to help you do just that.
I will tell you that changing behavior is very doable. You just need new habits. And if you think of that that way, you need to stop doing what you’ve done and start new habits and practice and practice and practice until they become the way we do things. And it’s not hard. It just needs to be done. And so these are changing times that require new things to happen. So with great pleasure, thank you for coming. Please keep sending me your friends and people you want me to talk to and people to listen to the podcast and share it. It’s always a pleasure. Have a great day.Take care now. Bye bye.
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Learn how to let go of worry and fear by learning new habits
Today I bring you Joanna Hardis, a beautiful woman whom you’re going to love listening to. Joanna is focused on helping people with anxiety-related issues and obsessive compulsive disorders, so this is a person you really might like to know more about if that’s something that is in your life. She can give you strategies to help you break through the barriers that are holding you back and learn to let feelings be, which is what she talks about in her new book, Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way. Like me, Joanna preaches that change is hard but we can do it, we really can change and have a happier, more fulfilling life. Listen in and enjoy.
Watch and listen to our conversation hereChange your thinking, change your behavior
Joanna teaches us that when your brain wants to go to the “worry story,” that state of mind that’s causing you to be anxious, that is when you can learn specific skills to say, “Nope, I’m going to let that story be.” It’s really about doing nothing with those thoughts, letting the thoughts be, letting the feelings be there. She says that you may feel worried, but you’re not going to engage in those feelings, you’re going to let them be, instead of trying to get rid of them which actually makes the worry and the fear stronger. This really is quite fascinating and as she says, paradoxical.
How to reach JoannaYou can connect with Joanna on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and her website. Her email is [email protected].
Want to learn more about how to find more joy? Try these: Podcast: Paula Guilfoyle—How Do You Manage Your Emotions To Build Better Conversations For Exceptional Results? Podcast: Meg Nocero—Can You Feel Joy As You Rethink Your Life? Blog: You Can Find Joy And Happiness In Turbulent Times! Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast hereAndi Simon: Hi and welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, and as you know, I’m your host and your guide. And I love to find people to bring to you who can help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can get off the brink. I want you to soar. But sometimes we don’t really know how to do that. We want to. We may even visualize what life could be like if it wasn’t so…and fill in that blank. But how do I do that?
So today, Sarah Wilson, who I love, brought me Joanna Hardis, who is a beautiful woman who you’re going to love listening to. Let me tell you about her and then she’ll tell you about her own journey because she has a new book. And we’ll talk a little bit about the book today. It’s called Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way.
So here’s Joanna’s background. She’s a licensed independent social worker, a therapist and an executive coach in Ohio, and that’s her main business. She’s committed to helping people overcome complex challenges. And I know some people who watching this podcast are going to say, That’s me, I got it and it’s okay. So they can lead high quality lives. Her expertise lies in cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which you may know about, an exposure and response prevention for adults, children and adolescents. You can find her on LinkedIn and learn a lot more about her.
A couple of things I just want to highlight. She really is focused on helping people in the face of anxiety-related issues and obsessive compulsive disorders. So this is a person you really might like to know more about if that’s something that is disturbing you and she can identify what’s holding you back and give you strategies to help move you forward. And today, the things that I think we’re going to talk about as we talk about doing nothing, it’s called empower you to understand, break through the barriers that are holding you back, create your own sliding scale of distress, and learn to let feelings be instead of letting them go. We’ll come back to these, and I’m sure Joanna is going to tell you a whole lot more about them. Please, thank you for joining us.
Joanna Hardis: Thank you for that lovely introduction, Andi. Appreciate that.
Andi Simon: Well, I appreciate having you. Our audience will as well. I’m curious about both your background, your journey, the origin of this great book, and then what our listeners will learn from our podcast today about this complex world that we’re in and the anxiety that often arises. And life is too short. We have to find better ways to live it. Your story.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. So how I got here. I imagine, well, I never intended to be a therapist. I sort of just happened to get here. I went to college, pre-med, not really even wanting to be pre-med. I wanted a fellowship in high school to do independent study and had a real interest in working with people with HIV. So I was in high school in the 80s when HIV was really emerging on the scene. I don’t know how it emerged, but I had an interest in working with people with HIV and AIDS.
So a friend and I got a fellowship to do independent study and worked with physicians at a local hospital working with people with HIV and AIDS. So I went to college, went to Cornell and had this real interest in having a career in HIV and AIDS, and was told at Cornell like, Oh, then you’re pre-med. And I was not a very savvy student, despite being at Cornell. So I was in a pre-med track and realized quickly that it was not for me. And went to my advisor who said, What do you like? And I said, I really like people. And so the advisor said, Okay, well, maybe you’re a social worker and not someone who at that time was very savvy.
Again, I said, Okay, well let me give this a shot. Let me give this social work thing a shot. And I got to do an internship. So I went to Costa Rica and lived and worked. And I thought that was incredibly cool. So I kind of found my way into social work, never thinking about other career paths like psychology or counseling, but really found my way into social work by happenstance. I started my career in HIV. I spent about a decade in HIV, still hold it very near and dear to my heart, but really fell in love with working with people and have a real interest in what makes people click and the brain and helping people move forward.
So my career started in HIV and AIDS and I got trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and have really always had this interest in helping people who are in very complicated situations, working collaboratively to move them forward. And so I have been able to partner with people throughout my career, and I’m in my 27th year as a cognitive behavioral therapist. I do that and really work with people in different areas of life.
So I’ve been with people with HIV and AIDS. I’ve worked in an eating disorder treatment center, which is unbelievably challenging. I’ve worked with young entrepreneurs. I have volunteered during the pandemic with therapy aides, just giving, volunteering with frontline workers to now having my own private practice where I have really committed to working with people with anxiety disorders because it just makes so much sense to me. Anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Andi Simon: And there is an abundance. There’s an epidemic of this.
Joanna Hardis: Yes.
Andi Simon: And so it’s not as if you’re looking at a needle in a haystack. It is the haystack.
Joanna Hardis: It is. It is. And, you know, we know from data that parents who struggle, it has an impact on children. So I find it incredibly rewarding. I stopped seeing kids and adolescents during Covid because I had to move virtually. And so now my practice is adult. But I do work a lot with parents to change their behavior because we know that that can help children. We need a different way in which to help people that are struggling.
Andi Simon: And before we get into the book, which I’d like to know more about as to why you wrote it and what the listener can benefit from. But give us some context here for the audience, around where does anxiety come from? And the context, because what you’re talking about is that it becomes contagious. What’s going on with the parents? It gets picked up as normal by the children, who then spread it among other children who think we should all be anxious instead of we should all be happy. But I’m making that up. You help me help you, What is it like and how can we better identify it?
Joanna Hardis: Sure. And there is a difference between an anxiety disorder and anxiety, which is just a normal state and a normal reaction, for instance, to fear. So it exists on a continuum. So let’s walk it back a little bit to the difference between fear and worry, because oftentimes we confuse fear and worry. Fear is a response to a threat. So someone cuts you off on the highway and you get that fear. You get that flood of adrenaline in your whole body, you get the whoosh, the flood of adrenaline. That’s fear. It is a response to a biological threat, an external threat. Well, what if that happens again? What if someone cuts me off again? And what if that car is too close and oh my gosh, what if I need to go really slowly? That cognitive process to fear is what we call worry.
Andi Simon: Good. Great distinction.
Joanna Hardis: Right. And if you’re still feeling the physical sensations, we would say, I am feeling anxious.
Andi Simon: Gotcha. This is perfect, I know exactly who’s listening today. And that is exactly what they have gone through. And an initial fear of something that is now turned into anticipatory worry about it. Right. And it makes them anxious and unable to make good decisions.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. Now, and we may say that anxiety, perhaps that ride, you may feel anxious. But if that worry or that anxiety persists and the person every single time they get in the car or they think about getting in the car, they are worrying and they’re feeling anxious and it is starting to impair and it could impair their life because every time they’re thinking about it, they are worrying. Then we are starting to cross the line. And we may say that it could be crossing over if it happens for long enough. Yeah, it could cross over into an anxiety disorder. Or we may say it’s excessive worrying.
Andi Simon: Yeah. Those are great words because it’s difficult to know whether the situation requires a suitable amount of fear reaction or anticipating it. You’re worrying about something that may never, ever happen again and impairs your life. You’re smiling at me, but I really understand that for some situations, people are so anxious that they can’t take a step forward, they get locked in their own fear.
Joanna Hardis: Exactly. And then you know what? You have nailed it, Andi. And what people don’t recognize, they wouldn’t because they don’t know this stuff, is that the more time someone spends worrying about it, it is training their brain that this is important and that this is dangerous and that this fear that they have is actually relevant in the absence of any data that says it’s relevant. So the brain gets trained and then the brain is going to say, oh my gosh, we need to be extra vigilant.
Andi Simon: Yep. And they can’t articulate what the crisis will be because it has nothing to do with the facts of what’s going on. It has to do with their worry factor.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so learning how to stay out of the story, the worry story, because there’s nothing in their direct experience that speaks to that. This is what is happening right now.
Andi Simon: It is. But it’s also very interesting about the connection between something that might have happened as opposed to not knowing why I’m here. And I have a hunch that sort of leads to our discussion about what you do and what this book is intended to do. Because once you see that progress and the dead end and the only way you can revert people back to seeing the world in a positive way is to back it up somehow and rethink it somehow or restructure it somehow. Help me help them.
Joanna Hardis: Unfortunately, the brain can’t unlearn.
Andi Simon: Yes.
Joanna Hardis: So the brain cannot unlearn that. You had that frightening experience. But what we can do is we can create new learning.
Andi Simon: Yes.
Joanna Hardis: And so that’s what the person needs to focus on, is that in this direct moment, in this present moment when their brain wants to go to the worry story, that is when they need to learn the skills to say, Nope, whatever it is that I want to go into the worry story, I need to learn how to let that story be. It’s really doing nothing with those thoughts, letting the thoughts be, letting my feelings be there. I may feel worried, but I’m not going to engage in them, letting that stuff be. And the focus is on the action that’s important. So getting in the car and driving and not paying attention to, oh my gosh, well, what if this happens? What if I get cut off? What if someone drives too close? It’s doing what we know in the moment is in the behavior. And letting the other stuff be.
Andi Simon: So I am curious about the book because I love this idea of when these things arrive, you’ve got to learn new thinking processes and new behaviors, so you become consciously competent about how to change what I’m thinking and feeling. So I begin to do it and practice it so I can become good at it. Right? It’s like a game. We don’t think of it as a game, but it is, to learn new habits.
Joanna Hardis: Correct. And it’s paradoxical. So the title, you know, the catchy title is Just Do Nothing. But then the subtitle, which is The Paradoxical Guide for Getting Out of Your Way. The paradox is that, and I suspect people that listen to you can relate. People are used to doing more. Yeah. And when people are feeling a lot and feeling more, they’re used to doing more to get rid of it. So they think more. They ruminate more, they worry more.
Andi Simon: And they write long, long, long, long, long things about it that you can’t figure out what it’s all about. Right?
Joanna Hardis: Yes. Well, exactly. And so it’s doing more to try to get rid of it that makes the worry and the fear stronger. So what we want to do is to learn how to get the skills, to do less with how we’re feeling and the thoughts that are so troublesome. And so that’s what the book helps people learn: the skills to practice in very small ways that build on each other to do that. And then they do it in gradually more stressful situations.
Andi Simon: So Joanna, talk to us about where this book came from, this is your first book.
Joanna Hardis: This is my first.
Andi Simon: My first book took me four years, my second book, only two, my last one, a year. I mean, we begin to figure out how to write a book and why it’s important, but this is an important book. Where did the idea come from and how did it develop?
Joanna Hardis: It was interesting. People have always suggested I write a book and I always said I’d never had anything to write a book about. So I didn’t really have an intention. And then I had been doing workshops with a colleague that I met who also is interested in anxiety work, and we had been doing them on helping people change their relationship with distress and discomfort. So I had been working professionally in this space in addition to my practice.
And then a year ago I had a curveball in my own life. I was dating, someone got ghosted, and it was my own personal explosion of distress. And it was someone I’ve been divorced from for ten years, but it was someone that I really thought that I could go someplace and was ghosted out of nowhere. And I had to really work on what I had been talking about in a way that I hadn’t in a long time.
And so it was a confluence of professional interest and then personal experience. And from that, I and the ghosting story, is literally the first page of the book. The book came out of that intersection and I had a fire in my belly and it took me less than a year to write the book.
Andi Simon: Yes. Exciting. Well, but it was there to cleanse yourself. Writing is a great way to take the mind and what it’s thinking about and push it out. All the things that you’re talking about, to learn new ways to build a new story.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. And what’s interesting is my work is focused on anxiety in my professional life. But what I talk about is distress, because what is under the umbrella of distress is anxiety, is stress, is shame, is embarrassment, is boredom. All these feelings that people really don’t like to feel. And so it broadens the umbrella for people because what trips people up, whether it’s what gets in people’s way, whether it’s not going to the gym, overeating, not asking for a raise. It may not always be anxiety. It may be shame, it may be embarrassment, it may be boredom. And so people need a process for all of those feelings.
Andi Simon: And you just said the word so well, because we decide with the heart and how things feel, then the brain gets engaged. And I also always preach that we live the story in our mind. And that story is an illusion of what your reality is, and you live it. And then something like your situation arises and now you have to rewrite that story to give it a positive experience for you so you can wake up every morning and say, Hey, this is a good day, as opposed to, Oh crud, do I have to get out of bed? But that’s really important. So talk to us about the book itself and then the kinds of things about the solution: just do nothing.
Joanna Hardis: Okay, so the book is structured in two parts. The first part is really frontloaded with education to help people understand why change is hard. Because I wrote the book for people, because I’m assuming that people who pick this up have tried to change their feelings. Stuck. They may have tried lots of things before and for many people, they’re coming in with a perception that there may be skepticism. They may think that their perception may be that they can’t change. So I want people to understand and this is all evidence-based work. So it is not just Joanna’s thoughts about life. It’s all evidence-based.
Why change is hard. Why? You know how we need to think about the thoughts in our head? You know, facts about feelings that are helpful for people, why we shouldn’t take them so seriously, that they only last 90 seconds. And in the first part, everything has exercises. So at the end of every chapter, there are exercises to practice. So you can read the book any number of ways. You can do each chapter and then do the exercises. You can read the whole book through and then go back through and do the exercises.
The second part of the book is Everything that Could Go Wrong. As you set about to make a change in your life, what could go wrong and how to course correct? So the first part is really to help people change their relationship with distress and discomfort. So it is really explaining why we need a new way, why things that you have may have tried don’t necessarily work. And then I lay out how we’re going to do it differently.
So instead of trying to get rid of feelings that we don’t like, we’re going to allow them and then we’re going to learn to do nothing with them and we’re going to focus on behavior that is meaningful to us and how we’re going to create a scale breakdown. What you want to change into little baby parts, and how when you start to feel the discomfort, you know how to move through it and you’ll have exercises to practice going from something with very low discomfort, with a process to move through higher discomfort. And then in the second half, as I said, it’s everything that could go wrong, including that when something gets hard and you feel like you failed, how to reframe your relationship with setbacks.
Andi Simon: Love this. You have no idea how timely this is for different people in my life who have gone through something traumatic or that they think is traumatic or are anticipating something traumatic. It’s so interesting to listen to the categories in my mind of the folks who you are describing without describing them as types.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. Interesting.
Andi Simon: It is. One is a young woman at a university that had somebody come in and shoot a professor.
Joanna Hardis: Oh, gosh, yes.
Andi Simon: And when you talk about the distress, the fear, the worry, and how do parents manage that in a way which doesn’t deny that there’s anxiety or anxiousness or concern to the point where the young woman said, I can’t even take a walk without feeling unsafe. And that is that car story where I’m not going to get in the car to drive because somebody almost hit me. And that becomes one kind of situation and another situation, that I know of where the act of doing something is going to be potentially dangerous, and so I’m not going to.
Well, but maybe you’ll miss a whole opportunity because it could be dangerous. And so there’s the disappointing one. But I think that what you’re describing is exactly what we know when we work. I mean, I have positioned myself as a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change. And for my listeners, I always preach that change is pain. Because once you got a story in your mind, that’s the way you live and you don’t realize that these other things could change that story. Or if you want to change what you’re doing, you’re going to have to change the story. There is no reality. There’s only this mythical story in your mind. And it’s not doing good things for you. Your book sets out a path to change it. Am I correct?
Joanna Hardis: Yes.
Andi Simon: Oh, my gosh. You and I have a lot in common.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. Because in my field, we talk about what distress intolerance is, and distress intolerance is someone’s perception that they can’t handle. We call it negative internal states. So I can’t handle feeling anxious about taking a walk. So I’m going to stay home. So it’s getting locked into the story and then avoiding it.
Andi Simon: Yes. And that becomes my view of the world as if it’s real, not imagined, but everything is imagined. And so if I’m going to get past that and trust, I’m going to have to figure out how to take a step outside and begin to break the resistance to my fear and worry.
Joanna Hardis: Yes, exactly. And that’s what I’m talking about. Exactly. And we go about it because we have to get the behavior. We change thinking by changing behavior.
Andi Simon: I love it because that’s just what I preach. Because to change, you can’t do your strategy and be abstract. You have to change the behaviors, the habits so that things are actionable and then the brain comes and justifies. It doesn’t get better.
Joanna Hardis: We’re saying the same thing, but different.
Andi Simon: But it is so exciting. It is. Now, this has come out of your work, but it isn’t your work. So in some ways, you want to reach beyond the folks in Ohio that are in therapy with you.
Joanna Hardis: So, yes.
Andi Simon: How do you do some online seminars, workshops, or things that people could come to you for?
Joanna Hardis: So my colleague and I are doing online seminars, workshops, and we’re retooling it now. We are retooling it. And we’re going to be doing a course, interestingly, for anxious parents.
Andi Simon: Oh, great.
Joanna Hardis: Yes.
Andi Simon: And do they have to be just in Ohio or could they be anywhere?
Joanna Hardis: It can be anybody. It can. When we do these, it can be for anybody. But we are focusing on parents because right now there is so much nationally about parents that are anxious and are having a really hard time tolerating not only their children’s distress.
And so that makes it really hard for parents to parent the way they know they want to be parenting or need to be parenting. And parents have a really hard time tolerating their own distress. So they give in to their kids or they’re constantly nagging or they’re doing the work for their kids and they’re not allowing their kids the independence and the autonomy that we know kids need.
Andi Simon: This is so powerful because it is going to create a different world for the generation that’s coming. And I’ll blame it on the pandemic for the moment. But it is a time of transformation without clarity about how do I, on the one hand, cope with my anxiousness or my distress, my fear, and then also make sure that the next generation grows up strong, happy and able to solve complex problems with creative thinking, all the things that kids learn by playing outside on the street together and making a game together. Right?
Joanna Hardis: Yes. Yes. So that’s in the works. We’re in the final stages of putting the course together. And, you know, who knows? I mean, I may develop a course from the book. I have to see. It’s only been out a month. So I think if there’s interest, I may put something together.
Andi Simon: I think that you have a mission that I think is transformational for our culture and society that’s far bigger than that. If I hear you right, you mean you want to take the next generation of parents and kids and make them happy because it isn’t that the world is bad, it’s that they see it that way. You know, that letting a child walk to school, it’s not going to be they’re not going to get kidnapped. They might, but they’re not.
I rode my bike to school growing up and I went outside and we played kickball or stickball or whatever, on the street. We didn’t have organized stuff to the degree they have now. And so we were free to be kids. And I and some of my neighbors, we still stay in touch when we remember the joy of pulling the sled. I mean, it was freedom.
So now it’s become very constrained. And I’m not going to blame and complain. But I do think that if we don’t transform, the next generation is going to see the world through a very different lens and they’re not going to want to do anything.
Joanna Hardis: Yes. No, I agree with you. And I saw recently in The Wall Street Journal that parents, when kids are at summer camp, which used to be a time away from parents, parents are now obsessively looking over kids’ photos. So I guess camps are now posting photos of their kids at camp and parents are obsessively looking over the camp photos to make sure that the kids look happy, and they’re contacting the camps. And parents are really invested in the photos and taking action.
Andi Simon: And the photos have no reality. They’re just photos you’re imposing on them. Meaning…? But that photo may be at a moment where they were dealing with something or struggling with something or happily doing it. You have no idea what the meaning was at that moment. But you are certain that that photo says my son or daughter isn’t happy.
Joanna Hardis: And has no friends. Right. And then intervening in a child’s experience and parents are getting…I mean, there is so much wrong with that.
Andi Simon: So much wrong with it.
Joanna Hardis: We could do a whole podcast on what’s wrong with that, that I think that there is a need to really intervene. And I don’t blame parents. I think it’s the culture. The pendulum has swung in the other direction.
Andi Simon: You might almost team up with all those camp owners and say, You might want to educate your parents before they start their kids in camp. That’s a whole audience who, I mean, when I went off to camp, my husband and I started at young ages and it was our free time. The last thing I ever wanted my parents to do is show up. Right?
Joanna Hardis: Right.
Andi Simon: They don’t have to know anything about my sneaking out the back door of the bunk in the middle of the night to meet a guy down by the basketball. That was not what they were supposed to know.
Joanna Hardis: Right, Exactly. Can you imagine?
Andi Simon: Right. And the camp directors have gotten caught into this because now the world is all social. And so there’s a reality there. That’s one last thought. And then we will wrap up because I’m having too much fun. But there’s been a whole lot of discussion about the merger of virtual and reality.
And I have some friends who are teachers in elementary schools, and the kids are coming in unable to separate out social real from virtual real. And they can’t have conversations with other kids. They don’t know how to socialize with them. I’ll blame the pandemic for that. But also what we’ve done is replaced people with virtual and now they think that they’re almost the same and they like being the avatar in a virtual game rather than having a game with real kids. They don’t even know how to play in the schoolyard. Your thoughts?
Joanna Hardis: Well, I mean, I can only speak to what it does when I see it, when it turns into an anxiety disorder. I work so hard with people to use real data. It is so easy for people to get lost in possibility. And the more that someone is living online, living virtually, they are living in the ‘what if’ and living in possibilities and living in this comparison mode. They are comparing and it is just so hard for them to use their real sense data and it makes it much harder to treat.
Andi Simon: Especially real life experience vs. iimagined. Oh my goodness, welcome to the world that we’re moving into, that we haven’t even talked about.
Joanna Hardis: I was just thinking that.
Andi Simon: Because then I don’t know what’s real. This has truly been a pleasure. I usually like to ask my speakers 2 or 3 things you want the listeners to remember and then where they can get your book. But first, what should we let them remember the most?
Joanna Hardis: A feeling only lasts 90 seconds. That is so important. From the moment it is released in the brain to when it is out of the body. So people will always say, my feelings last hours and hours. That is because we are re-triggering the circuit by our behavior. That is essential to remember. Another thing to remember is that just because we think it or feel it doesn’t mean that it’s true.
Andi Simon: Just because we think it doesn’t mean it’s true.
Joanna Hardis: It doesn’t mean it’s true. And we always want to go with behavior, behavior that moves us toward what’s important to us or what we need to be doing.
Andi Simon: This has been truly wonderful.
Joanna Hardis: It has been. I’ve enjoyed it so much.
Andi Simon: I have enjoyed it as well. And that’s why I do podcasts, because I get pleasure at meeting new people and sharing ideas in ways that are difficult otherwise.
And for my listener, it is a time of change, and change is painful, and we are trying to figure out as we are coming out of the pandemic period what is “normal or certain.” And there is no normal and there is no certain. So now you need new skills, the correct skills that Joanna’s been talking about, is to begin to think about behavioral change. And because if you begin to do it differently, then you’ll think it differently. I‘ve learned a lot about what I needed to know today, which was a perfect day for this. So I want to thank you and the name of the book and where they can get it, please.
Joanna Hardis: The book is Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way. They can get it anywhere they want: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org or go to my website: Joannahardis.com.
Andi Simon: It is a lovely website and you’ll learn more about her. So thank you. And so for all of you who come and are my fans and you keep bringing me more fans, which I love, and more people to speak on the show. Thank you. Our new book, Women Mean Business is now available. Yesterday was our launch day, September 26th, and today is a wonderful day for you to buy it. Just like Joanna, any place that sells great books and enjoy it, it is 500+ wisdoms coming from 102 amazing women who are successful entrepreneurs and philanthropists in finance, in all kinds of ways, including in the C-suite and in senior positions in major firms. But they are leaders and thought leaders. And these women want to inspire you.
One of the things we keep saying is, As we rise, we lift others. And that’s our hope, because as you read it, you’re going to say, Oh, I can do that. Lilly Ledbetter is quoted. She says, believe it, do it, and believe in yourself and it will happen. But she has some marvelous quotes. I think that everyone in the book is there to help us do better. So thank you for coming today. And Joanna, thank you for being here.
Joanna Hardis: Thank you so much for allowing me to be here. It was so fun. Wonderful.
Andi Simon: Bye bye now. Everybody have a great day. Bye.
- Visa fler
