by Gay Gaddis
Be inspiring to your kids by letting them see this side of you. It can make a tremendous difference in their perspective on life and will make them more well-rounded people. You and your kids will be more powerful.
Asking for Help Indicates Real Honesty
For years I prided myself on doing it all. We had kids in grade school, a growing company, and I had a lot of volunteer obligations. I had lunch with a friend one day and confided in her that I was on the edge of burning out. She told me to hire a personal assistant. I resisted because no one else at T3 had a personal assistant. But I listened to her and, again, worked through my guilt.
The job description we wrote was simple—that my assistant’s responsibility was to give me time back. Anything that she could do to give me time back was a win. I only had two priorities—the kids and building the company. She took the dry cleaning, went shopping, took the dogs to the vet, managed the calendar, set up meetings, made travel arrangements, and found gifts for clients. I used to write every check to pay every bill at home and at the office. She found someone to help do all of that. At first, I worried that it might be beneath her to deal with things like dry cleaning. But an interesting thing happened. She won the respect of everyone in the organization because she completely understood her job. Because she did so much, I was able to spend more time in front of clients, which ultimately is always a good financial move for your business. Our staff saw the benefits of that and gave her all the credit. She made me so much more effective by helping me focus on what really mattered, and what only I could do to drive T3 forward.
If you are advancing your career and raising a family, you have to have help. Trying to do it all will simply wear you out. Exhaustion does not produce power. Be strategic, think it through, be creative—ask for help. Don’t let the cost of help be an obstacle. Build the cost of help into your business plan. One or two new business successes or raises can be more than enough to cover the costs.
Be brutally honest about what you need. Think about next month, next year, and the next ten years. Not asking for help is the single most dangerous thing you can do for you, your family, and your career. And it will make people who actually can help you feel good about themselves. We know from history that cowgirls helped each other and took care of each other’s children. What are the possibilities? Think about sharing a nanny. Think about moving willing grandparents closer. Think about working from home part of the time. Or team up with some co-workers to find a great solution. Believe me, I know it is not easy. But do be creative. If you practice reciprocity and help each other out, you will find your power.
Stay in the Game
I have a few female friends who graduated with college degrees, married into money, and then dropped their careers to take care of their kids. These were capable, talented women. A few of them ended up in painful divorces. Today the kids are gone. These women are in their fifties, have no business credentials at all and very little income. It is OK to step back from a promising career for a while, but never get completely out. My friends will tell you, staying in the game in some way will give you lots of options.
I have a talented woman who has worked with me for years. While she was raising young children, her mother’s health took a dramatic turn for the worse. She tried to manage it all, but it got to be too much and she quit. But she maintained her amazing network of people. She made a point of having power lunches several times a month to maintain close personal relationships. She told people the truth about her struggles, but stayed informed about industry changes. She eventually came back with a vengeance and a better understanding of what matters to her, and what could be a win for T3.
Raising a family is a long-term undertaking. Don’t let short-term emotions control your decisions. We all have times in our lives when we need to take a break. It has happened twice to me. First, when I was pregnant with my daughter, Rebecca, and then much later in life, when my mother went through a dramatic bad turn with her health. When I had Rebecca, I was working for someone else. When my mom needed me, I was self-employed. I was thankful both times I was able to do what mattered.
One important point. I discussed earlier the power of doing something you love. Women who are not happy at work tend to think about opting out when they do not believe their circumstances will improve at work. If they are not challenged and empowered to grow themselves or others, they are less likely to put in the effort to make it work. Some of my powerful female friends think that too many women “hide behind” the needs of their children to avoid conflict and pressure in high-pressure jobs. I know women who have gone through medical school, opened successful practices, and bailed out to focus on their kids. I tend to think that many of these women worked in environments that they did not love or had supervisors they did not respect.
Put doing something you love high on your list for a successful life. People who love what they do find ways to make it work. This is why knowing yourself is so important. You can then read the tea leaves and begin to understand what you truly love and what you are truly good at.
Another option that I have seen work is going back to school. No one will fault you for furthering your education. Getting an MBA can be very powerful. Go for certifications. Learn to code. Actively participate in a community of learning. Be curious.
Negotiate Win-Win
I talk about buckets of goodwill. You make deposits into those buckets by the way you treat people. By being responsible, trustworthy, and brave.
One of my most trusted, loyal team members came to me one day with tears in her eyes and told me that her sister had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and she only had a few months to live. She told me that her family had decided to care for her sister themselves and asked if she could take a leave of absence to care for her. No one in my organization owned more goodwill. My response was “You go do what you need to do. Stay in your job at full salary, watch the big stuff from home. Delegate everything else.” Her staff at work pitched in and worked extra hours to help her. It was a terrible thing for her family to go through. But they were there, all in. We never experienced one problem in the months she was gone because even though she was not physically there, she watched everything like a hawk. She is back now, hard at work, and we both grew from this experience because we both did the right thing.
Pretty much all of the women who work at T3 are cowgirls. If they are not when they arrive, they learn the values pretty quickly. When they need some time off, or a raise or a promotion or all of the above, I watch closely because I remember doing the same thing years ago. The first thing they do is to ask for advice. They check in with our Internal Development department, with a few peers and a few of our long-time employees. Then they begin to build a case to justify it. Once they have thought it through, they go out and build support among their teammates. If it is a maternity leave request, they already have their support network built to help cover their time off. I have had many of them come tell me they were pregnant and then pull out their computer and walk me through a presentation about how they were going to manage it. I have rarely, if ever, seen them come in with unreasonable demands. They tend to be very thoughtful and do an admirable balancing act between their self-interest and the company’s best interest. They usually get what they want. When dealing with work and family issues, be expansive in your ideation. Don’t go with the most obvious, easy ask. Think it through. Be strategic. Go stand on both sides of the issue.
Another tamale story on tough negotiations: When I served on the board of directors for the Lower Colorado River Authority, the directors got to know each other pretty well, and would exchange personal and humorous stories during the breaks in our meetings. One story was told by a prestigious Texas businessman who, among other things, owned a popular Mexican restaurant in South Texas. He recalled that many years ago an elderly lady in a buttoned-up powder-blue wool suit, simple white cotton gloves, matching blue rhinestone earrings, and a pillbox hat walked into his restaurant late
in the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The restaurant was crowded because they made the best tamales in town, and tamales are the traditional Christmas Eve meal. She waited in line and finally got to the counter. (My board friend happened to be working in his restaurant that afternoon because they needed the help and he enjoyed greeting so many of his loyal customers.) She looked him in the eye and said, “I’ll have three tamales—one beef and two pork, and I’ll have them wrapped up in a paper bag with three napkins.” My friend responded, “I’m so sorry, but we are sold out of tamales; these people put their orders in days ago.” She didn’t budge and looked directly at him and said, “I told you, I want three tamales—one beef and two pork, and I’ll have them wrapped up in a paper bag with three napkins.” Once again, he said they were sold out. Suddenly, she reached over the counter and grabbed him by the collar and shook her finger in his face and said, “Look, you little son of a bitch, I’ll have three tamales—one beef and two pork, and I want them wrapped up in a paper bag with three napkins and I want them right now!”
She walked out with three tamales—one beef and two pork in a paper bag with three napkins. I am not suggesting you negotiate like this lady, but I am suggesting you have some of her strength, tenacity, and conviction. After all, she was a widow who lived all alone, and the tamales meant a lot to her and her family in the past as a Christmas tradition. So sometimes you just cannot take no for an answer. Even in that pillbox hat, that lady was a cowgirl.
Children Benefit from Working Parents
I have always been a working mom, so that is the only perspective I have. It has often been tough, but as I look back on it, there have been many benefits, just as I’m sure there are for moms who have chosen to stay at home. My mother was a big believer in exposing children to the arts, galleries and museums, and interesting experiences early and throughout their childhood. As a first-grade teacher, she taught thousands of children to read through the years. She knew that reading to children from infancy could be terribly important to their development and later success in school.
When I first started my business, we were strapped for cash. Many times I had to tell the kids that they couldn’t have something they wanted, because we just could not afford it. Early on, instead of lavish vacations and indulging them with material things, we would create fun out in the country at my godfather’s farm or at the South Texas ranch. Lee’s mother had an area in her yard that was designated as the children’s mudhole. She let them turn on the garden hose and gave them tin cups and cupcake pans and just let them play. They entertained themselves for hours, delighted with the unique experience of being covered in mud. On rainy days, we would go to a grocery store, pick up some discarded cardboard boxes, and make spaceships or castles out of them in our living room. The kids still talk about all the wonderful things we built together.
Powerful, successful parents provide huge opportunities to their children—don’t underestimate the upside. Harvard Business School professor Kathleen McGinn co-authored a new study of fifty thousand adults in twenty-five countries. The study concluded that daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, were more likely to be employed and in supervisory roles, and earned higher incomes. Professor McGinn said, “Part of this working mothers’ guilt has been, ‘Oh, my kids are going to be so much better off if I stay home,’ but what we’re finding in adult outcomes is kids will be so much better off if women spend some time at work.”13
I had lunch recently with a very senior woman in a leading technology company. I asked her about her career and how it had impacted her children. She said she would not do anything different because, as her children started their own careers, she became their coach and valued advisor. They respected her knowledge of the business world because she had proven herself there for so many years. She told me that the bonds between herself and her children had become stronger as they matured.
One of my serial entrepreneur friends also enjoys investing in promising new companies that are using technology to solve real-life problems. I found out he has an interesting technique for evaluating whether or not he wants to invest. First of all, you have to prepare your presentation for him. It has to be succinct, polished, and reveal a business plan where the numbers work. However, here is the deal: If you ask him to listen to your pitch, you must not only present to him, but also to his wife and their nine-year-old daughter. One entrepreneur told me that he went through this process and the kid was the one who scared him the most! What a wise and interesting approach. It is truly a family investment, and how wonderful it is for a young girl to be asked her opinion and listen to individuals pitching their ideas and dreams. Powerful stuff.
Parents with interesting careers can create amazing opportunities for their kids. My daughter-in-law, Morgan, grew up in a family business that customized specialty trucks and manufactured heavy equipment trailers. She started attending trade shows as a little girl. When she learned to drive, she started delivering dump trucks and water trucks to clients all over Texas because her parents knew she was responsible and they trusted her implicitly. Plus, having a bright, knowledgeable teenage girl drive up in their new water truck made a big impression on the buyers. A cowgirl for sure.
I have a friend who invites me to have coffee with his junior-high-aged daughter about twice a year. He goes out of his way to give her several opportunities a month to have adult conversations with interesting people. There is no agenda, and the conversation goes where the conversation goes. But I promise you it works. She is one of the most self-confident, interesting young women I have met in a long time and she is already a cowgirl.
One day, I was leaving for the office for an early meeting. As I got in my car and backed out of the driveway, I saw my two-year-old, Rebecca, standing in the bay window screaming and crying as I drove off. I thought I was going to die. As soon as I got to the office (this was before the days of cell phones), I called the babysitter and hoped she was consoling Rebecca. She laughed and said, “As soon as you were out of sight, Rebecca ran in the kitchen, munched on Cheerios, and started laughing and playing with her toys.” Out of sight. Out of mind.
Make Your Own Luck
There are things that you can control in designing your own life. There are things you cannot control, and then there are serendipitous things that lie somewhere in the middle. These are the things that you do that radically increase your odds of having good luck.
In 2004, one of my major clients invited me to join her on a business outreach trip to Latvia. It was an opportunity for businesswomen in the United States to meet and share some of our experiences with businesswomen in the Baltic states. I agreed to go because I was flattered to be invited and excited to spend some quality time with a client I admired for her success and magnetic good nature. I really had no expectations for the trip other than that.
Once there I engaged to the best of my ability. I reached out to everyone I met and tried to meet them where they were. And many of them were in amazing, powerful positions. I met Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the former ambassador to Finland, who was running the Red Cross at the time. I also met Denise Morrison, Nancy Peterson Hearn, Lynn Utter, Cordia Harrington, and Carolee Friedlander, who were active in C200. A few weeks after I got back, I got a letter asking me if I would like to apply for membership in C200. I did and it changed my life.
We each make our own luck by doing things that open us up for the potential to have good luck. If I had not taken that one trip, my life would have turned out very different. Success is not a straight line from point A to point B to point C. Think of it more like a pinball machine. You play hard and fast—you bounce around a lot. You are open and competent. You meet a lot of people, build a powerful network. You recognize both risk and opportunity. Sometimes it is as simple as saying yes. I call making luck “connecting the dots.” It means approaching the world as if all things were possible—looking at potential connections between things familiar and things unfamiliar. It is more than being open
to ideas. It is about smashing ideas together in new ways. It is about being interested in everything and being open to seeing opportunity everywhere.
But just seeing it is not enough. You have to wrestle it to the ground like it’s a wild-eyed longhorn steer.
Another tamale story: In San Antonio, the Perez family has been making their own luck since 1952 at Ruben’s Drugstore, where they serve the best homemade, slow-cooked pork shoulder tamales you’ve ever tasted. The Christmas push requires fifteen to eighteen cooks a day working from late November until New Year’s Eve. The doors open at 7 a.m., and when it gets close to Christmas the waiting line stretches around two city blocks. The tamales sell for nine dollars a dozen, and you can buy as many as you want. Many customers come from out of town with big ice chests to pack the warm tamales in for the ride home. In one hour on December 23, 2015, they sold a thousand dozen. “People think of our tamales as Christmas,” Anita Perez said.14
They shut down on New Year’s Day and take a well-deserved two-week break. Then they are back at work making luck or tamales or something in between.
Lessons Learned: Cowgirls Design Their Own Lives
Build your own life timeline. Write it down now! Pay attention to what is important at this very moment, but then think about the rest of your life. Your timeline will be laced with reality and what is known. Look for the inflection points that can open massive opportunity. Then create what I call a “treasure map.” This is where dreams and hopes come into play. Layer this into your life timeline. Share it with the important people in your life. Seek their guidance and support.