Overcoming Fear of Failure

In this episode we talk about overcoming fear of failure with Sarah Amico, Chair of Jack Cooper Holdings, North America’s largest car hauling company and Women-Owned Enterprise. We discuss Sarah’s journey building a company where she employs thousands of hard working union workers, in the midst of the auto workers strike. Her approach to managing setbacks when she was the Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor in Georgia and ran alongside Stacey Abrams, as well as her 2020 senate race, and the bias women face when it comes to risk taking. 

About Sarah

Sarah Riggs Amico is the Chairperson of Jack Coopers Holding Corp., America's largest North America’s largest car hauling company and Women-Owned Enterprise. In this capacity, Sarah oversees the Company’s Board, Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Human Capital Development. Prior to joining Jack Cooper, Sarah was the Head of Strategic Planning at APA Talent and Literary Agency in Beverly Hills. Sarah, began her tenure in media at the William Morris Agency in both Beverly Hills and New York across a variety of departments, including The Mailroom Fund, a seed capital fund raised in partnership with AT&T, Venrock and Accel Partners. During her time in the entertainment industry, she worked on initiatives for some of the world's largest and most recognizable brands, including Time Inc., Reader's Digest, Amtrak, Harry & David, and Virgin America Airlines. Sarah received her B.A. in Politics from Washington & Lee University and M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Aside from her Corporate America career, Sarah was the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia, running alongside Stacey Abrams in 2018. Sarah ran again in 2020 for the U.S. Senate. Click here for Sarah's full bio and show notes. 

If you enjoyed the episode share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. If you are ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Check out our VEST Membership and apply today! www.VESTHer.co

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey everyone, this is Erica Lucas, your host and founding member of Vest, an organization connecting women across industries, regions and career levels so that together we can expedite the pipeline of more women in positions of power and influence. Welcome to another episode of the Vestor podcast, where we explore the investable barriers holding women back in the workplace and share stories of women building power collectively.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Almost every opportunity I've had has started in failure of some sort, whether it was mine or somebody else's right. You're buying a business out of bankruptcy, or you're buying a business upon the verge of collapse, or you're starting something because somebody else couldn't get it done. That really gave me, from a very early age in my career, the perception that not only was failure not fatal, but that sometimes failure was the most fertile ground for opportunity. Blazing a trail is messy. I watched the Cinec campaign and then took my company through a bankruptcy and I did it for all the right reasons and I wouldn't change a damn thing. When we make decisions that align with our values, even when they don't work out down the road, it's going to feel understandable why we made those decisions.

Speaker 1: 1:28

In this episode, we talk about ways to overcome fear of failure with Sarah Emiko, executive chairperson of Jack Cooper's Holdings, north America's largest car-hauling company and women-owned enterprise.

Speaker 1: 1:40

We also discuss Sarah's approach to building a company where she employs thousands of hardworking union workers in the midst of the auto worker strike, her approach to managing setbacks when she was a Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia and ran alongside Stacey Abrams, as well as her 2020 Senate race and the biased women phase when it comes to risk taking. This episode is made possible thanks to our venture arm, vestor Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in women-led companies, building tools, products and services that enable women and working families to try both at work and at home, and by our Vest membership, a community made up of professional women across industries, regions and career levels, working together to create the future of more inclusive workspaces. If you're interested in learning more about Vestor Ventures and Vestpeer Network, go to wwwvestherco. If you enjoy the episode, share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. This episode was part of a more intimate coaching session with Vest members and has been repurposed to accommodate this episode.

Speaker 2: 2:53

I'm in the business of building businesses. So right out of business school I went to a startup that was doing software consulting in New York and New Delhi in India and the revenue had grown from maybe one or two million dollars to ten million dollars really quickly and the founder, who was effectively a programmer, recruited some of us from Harvard Business School to come in and help sort of set up the infrastructure and management systems. So right out of school it was sort of in out of the frying pan into the fire. And my first day of work I still remember the other two people he had hired that started at the same time I did. Both became engagement managers on the consulting teams. And then he sort of looked at me and said you'll have to tell me at the end of the week what you're going to do. And he said I just liked your background and I think you'll add value and I'm not really sure that we want to just put you on client teams. So tell me what you think you could do. And over the next two years I ended up building out their CRM process, interviewing literally every client the company had ever had to sort of get a sense of where the strengths and opportunities were and it was fantastic, but it was building up the infrastructure of a business so that it could scale.

Speaker 2: 4:13

I left because, as much as I loved working with my boss and as much as I love the entrepreneurial environment, I had really no passion for software consulting. And my husband's an engineer who runs a data privacy tech startup, vc backed, and he's like I literally don't understand how you were ever in software anything, because I am the liberal arts person in the family. I've been good at math for a long time, but I don't have multiple masters in engineering like he does, and so I went from there and I think I thought this was a wonderful first experience. But I need to do something I feel more passionately about, and I ended up spending the next eight years really almost a decade in media and starting in the William Morris agency mailroom, so literally pushing a mail card. And you have to remember at this point I'm like a few years out of Harvard business school and I'm pushing and delivering mail on at the bottom of the totem pole with kids that like haven't graduated college yet, who are the assistants, right? So be careful, I think, is the moral of the story. When you pray for humility. Sometimes you will get it and but I loved the experience.

Speaker 2: 5:24

I loved the comradery that formed as we were all starting out as equals and sort of making our way up in this industry and again in the agency world. I was very fortunate because I moved up really quickly and a few years later I was a department head already working with corporate clients In the agency. You're always building a business right, because you have to come in and build your own client list. You have to generate revenues. I can tell you there is very little sympathy when you're unable to perform in that respect. And then when I finally got promoted, it was partially due to the Mailroom Fund. They were raising the seed capital media fund with Ben Rock and Excel and AT&T and they realized they had a Harvard MBA sitting and answering somebody's phones in the corporate consulting department and they were like you can come and be the day to day person on the fund. So you know, it again was startup world. And then when I went and immediately, like within a year of that, was poached to go and start a rival agency's department. It was starting the department from scratch.

Speaker 2: 6:35

And then a funny thing happened my husband's from Italy and so we were very far away in Los Angeles from my family, which was all in Georgia at that time. I grew up in the Midwest but my family's all sort of migrated down to Georgia and his family is still in Italy, so we were just very far. We had our first daughter and I came home on maternity leave right before I was going to go back to work and I don't know if it was the hormones or the family or an elegant cocktail of both, but we bought a house in Georgia and that was very hard to explain going back to work and I loved my boss at APA, where I was their department head for brand integration and marketing. I loved him. Still, talk to him to stay, still consider him a mentor. And we went out to lunch and I said I bought a house and he said, oh, that's great, honey, where did you buy a house? And I'm like good, georgia, sorry, you know. Like you know and, to his credit, like he was like okay, how do we keep you? And so I worked remotely, you know, from from Georgia for the next couple of years.

Speaker 2: 7:43

Eventually I joined the board. I had been an owner as a family member in a logistics business and joined the board in 2011. So I had two jobs on two coasts with two kids under three. That was fun. I didn't sleep a lot.

Speaker 2: 8:00

But over the next few years it became really obvious that there were opportunities to grow our family business in the logistics space through mergers and acquisitions and recapitalization. So my dad's been a turnaround CEO for the better part of four decades. We sort of find all of these businesses that are either on the verge of collapse or maybe are in bankruptcy or maybe need to be restructured, that everybody else has given up on. And I guess we're a sucker for the long shot because we like to go in and try to fix them, but to do it in a way that puts valuing people and the dignity of work and workers and labor rights first and that always throws people off because they're not used to seeing that in the restructuring world. And eventually I came on board full time and within a year our CEO had resigned unexpectedly, retired early, and the board voted to put me in as the executive chairman.

Speaker 2: 9:05

And it was like mid 30s and, you know, had two little kids and all of a sudden was the executive chairman of a $600 million company and it was an incredible opportunity, but it was coming in at a moment where we had had a very large acquisition that didn't go well on the integration the debt was picking, was pickable, so it was ballooning very quickly and where we had reached a size and scale in our market where our customers felt like eliminating risk in their supply chain meant that they had to downsize the amount of business that they had. And so, as much as it was an incredible opportunity, it was also walking into the eye of the storm. You know, my first week as chairman was the one of my first weeks as chairman was the Ebola crisis in West Africa and we had trade lanes and an NBOCC business heading into West Africa and I'm literally trying to get our team out of Legos on like the last flight that's going to leave. And that was the easiest thing I did that year, probably. So it was baptism by fire, but if you look at where we've come, the business that we started with was like $28 million and maybe 100 employees in 2008. So my dad bought the first business in the middle of the Great Recession and then, as a family, about a year later, in 2009, we bought Jack Cooper, which was 10 times our size and on the brink of collapse.

Speaker 2: 10:48

After almost 90 years in existence. And right about the time we were all high fiving each other for helping save jobs, gm and Chrysler, who were our two biggest customers at the time, filed for bankruptcy and we found ourselves on the front line of the auto bailout and the Great Recession kicking and scrapping just to make payroll sometimes. And from there we're now at like 26, 2700 employees. I think that's actually light because the supply chain disruption is still pretty severe in auto and of course now we have a strike. So I'm sure you're all aware but and we're tracking at about 680 million in revenue. So from that like very relatively small initial business, we've come a long way and and that's amazing and it's a pleasure to be a part of it.

Speaker 2: 11:49

But again, the theme Erica was kind of growing businesses and I don't think the growth per se is what I'm most proud of. It's amazing. But I think the thing that I'm proud of is that our drivers, our union, our pension they will take my call. I know them, I know their leadership. I think there's mutual respect. I'm proud that we've given our people fully funded catalog health care, whether they're union or not, and that we pay 100 percent of the premiums, not just for our employees but for their families too. I'm proud that when we went through our own really painful restructuring in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019, so not that long ago Nobody lost their job, nobody lost their health care, no union members lost their seniority or their union retirement or their pension, and the something had to give and our family sort of decided that that would be us.

Speaker 2: 12:53

We forfeited our equity to restructure the business and and, as a result, everybody kept their jobs and their health care, and that was really hard to do.

Speaker 2: 13:03

I launched a Senate campaign in the middle of that that 10 out of 10 do not recommend.

Speaker 2: 13:08

Very hard to translate that kind of nuance into the political universe, but I wanted people to know what it looks like for working families and for businesses that try to do the right thing by their employees, how hard it is to compete and how much the market penalizes us sometimes for that. And so you know I don't regret it for a minute, and in the end, we were able to buy the business back. Later, of course, as we bought it back, the pandemic took off, so we have interesting timing on all fronts. But on the other side of that, I think the business is stronger, leaner, more efficient, and I feel a sense of purpose that really exceeds anything I've ever felt about making sure there is some example out there for people to point to where the good guys can still win and where the business owners don't have to be the bad guys in the narrative where you can do the right thing and still do well and still generate a return for your investors.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Sorry for the long answer, Erica.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Don't apologize. I think you should be going to every university to talk to, especially our younger generations that are coming in, because I think you're the perfect representation of like listen, we get a. Capitalism has been broken and it has been providing the same access to opportunities to everyone, but there is hope and there are leaders like Sarah building great companies with employees at mind, so I love that and thank you for sharing. You lead one of the largest car hauling enterprises in North America, not just the US. You employ thousands of hardworking union workers. In light of the strike and the labor disputes in the industry, how do you see the role of building collaborative relationships to address the challenges by both the company and the workers and like how you, you know, optimize profit still while providing all of those benefits? What strategies have you used and how do you continue to find common ground? What can you share?

Speaker 2: 15:18

Yeah, I mean, look, my view is this is the process, right? It's unfortunate that sometimes that process leads to a work stoppage or a strike, but it is the process. This is the collective bargaining that ultimately protects everyone in the ecosystem, right? I'm not sure that my first priority is always optimizing profit for just shareholder value. I think sometimes it's optimizing profit and prosperity for the stakeholders, and that's a very different thing. Right, that includes your customers, it includes your workers, it includes, of course, your investors, right, but it also includes the communities where we live and work.

Speaker 2: 16:00

We try to have a real, physical and visible presence in the dozens of places across the continent where we have work locations. So it's painful. As somebody who loves the auto industry, my granddad was a custodial worker on a assembly plant line in St Louis for General Motors. My dad went to college on a scholarship from General Motors, where he would work six weeks in a factory and then go to college for six weeks. So every six weeks he was moving back and forth from Michigan to St Louis, flint to St Louis, and that's how we paid for college. And it was really the only chance unless you had an athletic scholarship for someone to go to college that had no family support really.

Speaker 2: 16:50

And so it's painful. I love the products that we move, I love our customers and what they mean, not just to the economy and to the jobs they create, but to what it says about American ingenuity and our ability to build great things that transform lives. And at the same time, there has to be a resolution that is good for all sides, and that's really hard. And look, we live in a world right now where this is hard on a lot of fronts. We have a Congress that can't pick a speaker. Right now, we have two wars where we can't seem to get a lot of consensus on acceptable outcomes for both sides. So does it surprise me that we're seeing this moment where, across the labor landscape whether that's Hollywood right, my old stomping grounds, or whether it's the auto workers or nurses who walked out at Kaiser Permanente no, it doesn't surprise me at all. This is a moment of reckoning about what capitalism looks like today and how we make it work for everyone, because it can. It's a total myth that you can't do good and do well. It's a total myth that management and labor have to be on separate sides and at loggerheads. And it's a total myth that the prosperity we create for our investors can't be shared across the people that make the business possible. And I think if I were going to those colleges, erica, what I would say is it's not really about me or the Jack Cooper story, although I'm very proud to be a part of it. Every single one of those kids sitting in a freshman seminar this year can do that, all of them.

Speaker 2: 18:48

You know, the inequity exists because we permit it to exist, because we don't ask for and demand better, and that doesn't mean that you can't produce a return. I'm in a capital intensive business, right Like I have these massive trucks and they're like $250 to $300,000 apiece that we have to invest and they only last for a certain number of years and we have thousands of them. So we have to generate a return. We're in a capital intensive business where we have to go out and raise money in the markets, particularly in debt capital markets. But we have to accept the fact that when we have these seasons of sort of prosperity, there's a lot at stake in letting everybody participate. That and it doesn't take anything away from the investors. It doesn't take anything away from the management teams. I think it shows that we're all rowing in the same direction.

Speaker 1: 19:44

One of the reasons why we started StitchGrew, our nonprofit arm for supporting entrepreneurs, and our slogan is literally building a more inclusive economy through entrepreneurship, is because we 100% agree with you. If we work with entrepreneurs you know, obviously I'm biased, but particularly women and people of color who have been divested for decades I truly believe that if we get in early and we start talking about building equitable systems and equitable companies, I do believe that we can demand and expect better and do better ourselves.

Speaker 2: 20:18

I was just gonna say I think your point. I just wanna click on this because obviously you know, as a family business, even though our family didn't come from any money, right, I still remember my dad losing his job when I was 11, and that being one of my most formative memories and actually a colleague of mine who still works with us to this day bought our groceries that week and I didn't learn that until I was, you know, an adult. So I understand that piece. But I also understand I sit at a point of a lot of privilege, right. Whether that is because I'm in a family business, because I had access to great education, even though I grew up in like a one high school town in the Ozarks, and my kids get the biggest kick out of it. They're like what public school did you go to? I'm like the only public school there was kiddos. Like you know, this was the high school, that's it. You know, I've had a lot of advantages. I had access to great teachers and mentors and job opportunities and parents who, at different times in my life, could actually help support that along the way, right, I also lived in New York as a kid working in the mailroom, but my parents couldn't help me at all and that was really hard. But there's a lot of privilege in, I think, many parts of my story and so I wanna make sure we double click on what you said about women and people of color and particularly women of color not always getting that same access, and it's something we've taken really seriously at Jack Cooper, you know, not just on diversity and equity and inclusion work and really creating a workplace where people feel seen and heard and valued and where that's intentional, it doesn't happen by accident, but we've done it in a way where now over 30% of our management team is women at all levels across the company, but if you look at women and people of color and management as one group, we're at 42%, like in a 100 year old trucking company.

Speaker 2: 22:22

I can't tell you what a journey that's been, but it's not a box checking exercise, as that's happened. Our decisions have gotten better, our performance has improved, our customer service has gone up, our ability to attract capital has gone up. Our ability to think critically through complex problems and eat the elephant one bite at a time as you solve them has gone up, and sometimes I worry that that doesn't happen more because the fear of failure, sort of where we started this conversation, which is if we are held to a standard, whether it's because of race or gender or socioeconomic status or, by the way, immigration status let's not leave that out here either right, there is. If there's a stigma, then when you fail it's like you've met expectations and everybody feels like they can move along. But in reality, there are groups of people who enjoy privilege where that isn't the case, and I think if we don't flag that, it's gonna be harder to get to parity for women in the workforce. It's gonna be harder to have boardrooms or halls of Congress and state legislatures that are representative of what the population in a given place look like in terms of diversity.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Right, and for me, I think I got very lucky because I do restructuring and turnaround work for the most part right. So we were talking earlier about this but almost every opportunity I've had has started in failure of some sort, whether it was mine or somebody else's right. You're buying a business out of bankruptcy, or you're buying a business that's on the verge of collapse, or you're starting something because somebody else couldn't get it done, and that really gave me, from a very early age in my career, the perception that not only was failure not fatal, but that sometimes failure was the most fertile ground for opportunity, right? This ability that you can feel like you've been buried but you've been planted, right that that was fundamental to how I thought about my career from the very beginning and I wish that we framed that more, I guess prominently for women in particular, because who cares, like, if you fail?

Speaker 2: 24:53

I had a woman in the middle of you know, working on a potentially really big acquisition right now and I kept hearing from our CEO well, we don't wanna do this or that because we don't wanna be embarrassed if it doesn't work out.

Speaker 2: 25:07

And I'm like I don't know who the we is here, because I literally don't care if I'm embarrassed. I want a chance to save these jobs because it's a lot of jobs at stake. And it was funny after we talked through it he was like I sort of get that now right, like it's okay if we go out on a limb and swing or swing the bat or whatever analogy you wanna take. If you're doing it for the right reasons, even if it doesn't work out, you can walk away with your head held real high and you can walk away with the knowledge that people you probably didn't even know were paying attention, watched that and will behave differently in their own lives and take risks differently in their own careers because of it. Right Like you're slowly peeling away that stigma where it had no right to exist in the first place 100%, and it's actually a beautiful segue into our topic of the month.

Speaker 1: 26:04

It's easy to say yes, take risks, do things that scare you, but for decades, due to societal norms and biases that we see in the workplace, despite the performance level that you talked about I mean, I talk about that consistently right it is the profitable thing to do all of those things. I mean, you can see it and data proves it in terms of outcomes when you invest in women and invest in DEI efforts intentionally, like you said. But despite all of that, survey after survey on HR, both men and women continue to evaluate men and women by a completely different set of criteria. One, two both men and women continue to see women as having less leadership potential or being less competent both men and women. As a result, I feel like women.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Then we try to then shoot for perfection, because we feel like we have to be almost perfect in order just to have a seat at the table, and so this then leads to hypervillagens, and then it leads to over self-criticism. And, by the way, this is even double for women of color, who we've been told and internalized that we have to be not two times but three times as good just to have a seat at the table. So I often tell people, when they say, well, women don't take risk as much as men or at the same rate as men, I always say, well, it's not that we don't take risks, that we're forced to take a lot more mitigated risks because we're evaluated on a completely different set of criteria and we don't have the same latitude to fail as some of our male peers. It's always good to talk about, like how do we do this? How do we overcome fear, but also understanding the biases that we also have to overcome. Have you ever experienced being judged by a different set of criteria and how did you deal with it?

Speaker 2: 28:12

Yeah, the way I look at it is that failure isn't a mark that you're incapable. It's a mark that you believe in the extent of your capabilities, right. If you go through your entire career devoid of failure, I think you left a lot of gas in the tank. I think you could have done a lot more for a lot more people. For me, that would be not only unsatisfactory at a deeply visceral personal level, but it would mean I didn't live up to my potential. The question for me is not really about whether or not we're going to fail. Guys. We're going to fail.

Speaker 2: 29:02

By the way, I don't know how many of you all are married. We're occasionally going to feel like I'm failing at wifeing or parenting, and sometimes all at the same time. Right when I'm like Jesus, I just want to hide in a movie theater and watch something like a rom-com, because it feels like you're failing equally in all directions. That's okay. That's human. But it also means that you're living. It means you are out there, putting vulnerability up front, where you can build meaningful relationships and have meaningful impact. That grace needs to extend to our businesses and our careers too. You have to be a responsible, fiduciary right. I certainly understand that. But there are many, many instances in the business world where rapid iteration which is another way to say frequent failure right has been the foundation of enormous success.

Speaker 2: 30:06

Probably Ed Katmell's book Creativity Inc about the rise of Pixar is one of the best examples of this. If you haven't read it, by the way, it's completely worthwhile. But a lot of people don't realize Pixar. For the first 10 or 15 years it was in existence, they opened every single movie at number one Probably all of them for some ridiculous stretch of years. Right In the book he talks about how they used rapid iteration to get to that point where they would bring in not just insiders and people who worked on those films but peers in the industry directors, producers, other studios to take a look and tell them honestly what's working and what wasn't, and that they didn't take that as like water on a flame, but it was fuel for the fire, right. That drove their success.

Speaker 2: 31:02

I think my favorite quote in the whole book was he says look, at some point every one of our movies sucked. When you think about all the great you know Toy Story and all this great product that they put out, that was revolutionary at the time. For him to say that should give all of us like a sigh of relief and inordinate inspiration for an iterative process that makes us better. We do have to take calculated risks and we do have to understand that there's not parity in the workplace by gender or by race. Right now, although we're trying and we're making a lot of progress, we're just not there yet.

Speaker 2: 31:42

I would say use iteration, use what we learn from failure to sort of fuel your success. Don't let it be a brake pedal. It's got to go that direction. So I'm not sure that that addresses the gender and race gap, erica, as much, but I would say you set your own standards right. You're not building your career for anyone except yourself and the people who depend on you to get your job done, and if you're meeting the standards for those two groups, you're acing the test.

Speaker 1: 32:23

You did answer it, I think, in a way that I often also do. Whether we're talking about fear of failure or the biases that exist with how we evaluate men and women, same as imposter syndrome Just know that some of it is real, some of it is like you know, what do we need to do to either overcome that fear of failure or take risks, and some of it is just situational. Just be aware that there are biases that exist and that it's not always you and that, to your point, focus internally. What do you want to do? How are you going to do it and how are you going to push yourself forward, to do the things to spite off and in a way that doesn't lead to extreme self-criticism?

Speaker 2: 33:02

Well, I'm not saying wrong with naming it too, and maybe that's my particular way of fighting back, but I don't think we do enough to call it out in real time when we see that different yardstick for measuring different groups of people. When I ran for office in 2018, so I'd never run before and I live in like a ruby red, Uber gerrymandered area, so like it was statewide or bust right, and I had no intention of running for office at that time but in 2017, when I made the decision, it really felt like the beginning of you know, honestly, what would become years of democracy, feeling really at risk in this country to me and, I think, to a lot of people and so I wanted to do more than write a check to a candidate. I wanted to put my hat in the ring and I'm proud that I did, but for me it was the, I think, a real wake-up call. Also, I spent my time in media and trucking, so I really thought you couldn't get more dude dominated than those two universes and it turns out you can, and it's called politics and we should have all known that after Hillary Clinton, like no matter if you voted for or not, like this was Voldemort and Hermione right and like Voldemort, it's awful. But the way she was treated in the media was markedly different. Right, and we've seen that across a number, a number of people, but it was a real wake-up call for me.

Speaker 2: 34:41

My very first meeting with press as a candidate was a publisher I won't say which one, but a relatively large newspaper and it was a woman. So I thought, well, this is great. And it wasn't. I had to drive to meet her like a couple hours round trip while I was on vacation with my kids. I threw on like a sundress and a blazer because again, I'm on vacation with my kids no power suits packed. I definitely did not have makeup on I don't really wear makeup. This is like the first time this I don't know the last couple months and probably the last time you'll see it this month and my hair was like all beachy and air dried. And when I showed up we had a 40 minute meeting.

Speaker 2: 35:24

Again, you know, driving two and a half hours round trip for this 40 minute meeting and she spent 25 of the 40 minutes lecturing me on appropriate hair makeup and accessories for female candidates in the South and it took every fiber of my being not to explain to her how I thought that was perhaps unhealthy for her and for society and I tried to politely listen. I tried to stare it back to issues or resume or anything. And she really wanted me to know about pearls. I got all the damn pearls but let's be honest, if pearls were the issue, Jim Jordan would be up there in you know Congress right now wearing strings of them and that's not going to get it done because he's not the right guy.

Speaker 2: 36:15

And it was really an eye-opener for me that women do have a different standard, right, Like there's no expectation of your makeup. You know you wear the same suit every day on the campaign trail. If you're a guy and if you swap shirts out every now and then, more or less people will like never notice. It is so different.

Speaker 2: 36:36

And it really made me stop and think about all the places we see that and people don't call it out and to this day I regret not saying I'm not sure if you're aware you're doing this, but this is pretty inappropriate and also it really furthers a lot of stereotypes that I find unproductive for myself and fellow women and for my daughters, and I would appreciate it if you could divert the conversation to something of substance and I didn't, because I was new and because I didn't want her to hate me and write about what an idiot I was in her paper.

Speaker 2: 37:14

But to this day I regret it and I think from that point on I've made a point of, as politely and professionally as I can, pointing it out in real time when I see a lens that's being used that's different by race or gender or background, union, non-union, and I can't say it's garnered me the most friends in the workplace. Sometimes, but I can say occasionally I noticed people's light bulbs come on and they're just not aware they're doing it and when you say it and you do it with grace and with kindness, they actually respond and change. We have an infinite ability to change for the better. As humans we don't give ourselves that credit a lot of times, but people more often than not will live up to your expectations. So we should set those expectations appropriately.

Speaker 1: 38:07

I love that. I love that I see that Sophia has the question. Sophia, what are you doing, you yourself, and ask it.

Speaker 3: 38:14

I love everything that you're saying. It's very impactful and empowering and I'm very much on that journey right now. So I wanted to ask you, as someone that has already gone through that journey and like knows her worth, what advice would you give to someone that is still going through that and still learning the difference between the pressures of society and what it means to be a woman in business? And just like sometimes I realize I put these pressures on myself and I don't realize it. So I was wondering if you had any advice on how to overcome that or how you realized that and who are doing these things.

Speaker 2: 39:00

So, sophia, thanks for the question Number one. I have good news and bad news, and the good news is, I think, the advice is to trust your instincts right. The totality of your experience, from the time you're born till right now, gives you a lot of data. You're like a supercomputer and if you process that in a way that lets you build an intuition and women, I think, are particularly attuned to this sometimes trust it. I don't know a lot of people who have ever told me about the examples of when they hated that they had trusted their gut, but every friend I have can tick off a number of places where they didn't and they came to regret it. So trust who you are and what you know about yourself and, I think, also trust and have confidence in what you bring to the table. Know your value and know that other people will see that too, not because you tell them, but because you're showing them in how you work and what you can deliver. The bad news is it never stops right.

Speaker 2: 40:14

I think my mom was a neonatal nurse, loved her job, gave up her career when my dad got to go to graduate school, which, again, it was a big deal in our family because he was the first to go to college. She then became a mom, stay at home mom, which was her joyful sort of preferred profession for a number of years, and then now she's a romance writer. You know, like could not have had a more 180 kind of transition, and she didn't start her first novel until she was in her 50s and I think she's published 13 now. So you know, it's okay to have that be a journey of discovery that doesn't end and to learn what it is to be a woman in a career or a workplace, or to be a working woman or a working parent, working mother, or to be a woman who has a good career but also has passions and hobbies and interests that lie outside of your home, in your office. That's a lifelong journey and I think it's healthy.

Speaker 2: 41:23

I am, I'm already excited down the road to figure out what my next career will be. Right Like, I assume there'll be something else, because up until this point it's it's been an interesting turn of events. But just trust who you are. You know and and and again. That doesn't mean that everybody else will know it from day one. But if the standards we're meeting are our own and achieving the goals we set for ourselves. That should be enough.

Speaker 1: 41:51

And Michelle on the chat says what are some of your best tips for change management?

Speaker 2: 41:58

Rapid iteration, embracing what you can learn from everything that doesn't break your way, and listening proportionate to the problem you're solving, versus talking, which is ironic, I realized, because I'm sitting here talking a lot, but Anna Torres is on with me now. She and I have had an incredible journey with an organization that we built over the last few years, where we interviewed hundreds of people around the country about what they thought the American dream was and whether they felt like they had access to it, how it's changed, what that's meant to them and how we can make it more real for everyone and more accessible for everyone. And the thing that I learned over the course of like what and I think we're at like three or 400 interviews is shut up and listen every time you have a chance. And if you're going to take the time to put people in a meeting or to set up an interview, take the time to hear what they have to say.

Speaker 2: 43:10

I think one of the hardest things to understand as a female executive and I do think it is a little bit different for women than for men. Sometimes it's hard for me to understand when somebody puts together a big meeting with a lot of attendees to work on a problem or an acquisition or a task force or a financing deal, and then the conversation is dominated by one or two or three people Like what the hell does everybody else need to be there? For? Then, like, presumably they're good at what they do and they have something to contribute, or you would not have included them, so let them speak and listen. That would be probably my biggest on change management. A lot of times also, the people at the front of the operation, the front line of your workers. They know a lot more than some of the office folks do, and valuing their input appropriately, I think is really important. And then the last thing I'll say it was not my idea so I'll give her credit, but Frances Fry, who is an author and professor. She and her wife, anne Morris, write these incredible books and you should buy and read them all and they do a podcast. It's fabulous, but they work specifically on change management.

Speaker 2: 44:24

So Frances was the board member that they brought in at Uber, for example, when Uber had its sort of cultural Armageddon and she was brought in to help write the ship and she said something that has stuck with me ever since and I think about it every day that judgment and curiosity can't exist in the same space. So, as long as you're curious, you can work with people you had no idea you could work with. You can solve problems that other people assume are intractable, but judgment and curiosity can't exist and I like this Erica put in. Neither can perfection and growth, amen, yeah, so be curious. And if somebody says something or behaves in a certain way, like before we jump down them, you know, with our mama bear claws like ask questions, like it's okay to put people on the spot too and say I'm not sure I understand what you're driving at here. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you would ask that? And then just shut up and let the awkward silence speak for itself until better words exit the outboard.

Speaker 1: 45:41

What would be your biggest takeaways for best members and for listeners when it comes to overcoming fear of failure?

Speaker 2: 45:49

I would say, to embrace everything life has to offer. The days that are hard make us really appreciate the days that are amazing, and the challenges that we conquer will give us some of our proudest moments, and we see that. But sometimes in the middle of it, day to day, it's really hard to stop and take stock of what the totality of our experience is. But embrace it for what it is. It's an opportunity to grow and unfortunately, part of the time, struggle is a part of that. Sometimes it's unavoidable and I think that that's sort of classic story that we tell kids when they're little. Right, you can't break the butterfly out of the chrysalis because it won't survive. It needs to fight and kind of break out of that and that's part of how it learns to spread its wings and take flight and that's the same for us. I mean it may sound a little bit cheeky but it's 100% accurate. You're going to need to build those resilience muscles the same way we build everything else, and embracing that can be really hard, like I again watched a Cinnit campaign and then took my company through a bankruptcy, and I did it for all the right reasons and I wouldn't change a damn thing. But you have to be comfortable when we make decisions that align with our values, even when they don't work out down the road. It's going to feel understandable why we made those decisions. We're going to feel better about it. We're going to have the absence of regret, that kind of visceral regret that I think sometimes, as women, we can kind of carry with us for a long time. And let that be your guide. I think that's the most important thing, and I would also say a sense of humor comes in real handy.

Speaker 2: 47:54

I love the Ted Lasso attribution in the chat. That's surrounding yourself with people who see you for all that you are and not just a moment where it looks like things didn't break your way. Blazing a trail is messy. You're going to have to hack at the foliage in front of you. You're going to get some scratches. You're going to be tired. You're probably going to be sweaty and stinky. That's okay. It also means that the people behind you are going to enjoy a clear trail that takes them to places they didn't have access to before.

Speaker 1: 48:33

I want to close out with this. You mentioned the need for a support system and just having people around you who is in your support system.

Speaker 2: 48:42

Oh, I think you need both. You need a support system, but you also need a challenge network. I think is what Adam Grant calls it. So the people who don't mind calling BS from time to time and don't mind telling you when you're out over your skis a bit. Sometimes that one's even more useful For me.

Speaker 2: 48:57

I have my parents. My grandmother is a real straight talk in old school, Didn't grow up with much and really gives me the perspective of appreciating everything that I have, even when in the moment it feels like it's all kind of in chaos and my kids right Understanding what we're working for. For me, I don't want my kids to ever encounter the publisher story Like that stuff's for the birds, and I don't want the next generation of women to have that same challenge. And I have a few good friends that I can say exactly what I think, and I would put Anna among them, by the way. I can tell her I'm sorry I can't talk today because my kids are self-destructing and my deal has gone sideways and I'm going to be in banker and lawyer town until the end of time. So I'm sorry, I'm not available. And she just kind of smiles and says I hope it works out.

Speaker 2: 50:03

So I think having friends that you can sort of put your ugly on the table and they just kind of say, yeah, I got that too, or oh, I'm so sorry and don't sweat it, that's critical and having something that's screen free has been a revelation for me too. So my grandmother is teaching me how to quilt and that is like the most stereotypical American art form in a certain way. Right In the sense that it's this very traditional, but it is old school. You cannot cut corners in quilting and if you don't measure precisely and take your time and your seams are not the quarter-inch that they're meant to be, nothing fits. And so it really teaches me to be present and focused and to delight in the details, even when they're driving units, and I think I take some of that back into, like parenting. I take it back into, you know, being a working woman, but I definitely take it back into the chaos that is sort of like turnaround and restructuring management that we do.

Speaker 1: 51:20

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Go to wwwvestherco and apply today.