One of my all-time favorite cowgirls is Prairie Rose Henderson. Her talent and fortitude earned her a place in the rodeos of the late 1800s when young horsewomen began competing against cowboys in a yearly gathering of cattle herds.
This progressed into the more organized rodeos. Prairie Rose was the exuberant daughter of a Wyoming rancher and decided one day she would ride to Cheyenne to enter a bronc busting contest. To her dismay, she was told she could not ride in the contest because she was a woman. She demanded to see the rules and found there was nothing stating that women could not participate. The officials had to let her compete.
I can only imagine what a stir this created when Prairie Rose came crashing out of the chute. Women and men alike were shocked and amazed. She didn’t win that day, but I guess she really did. By not taking no for an answer, she won the right for women to compete in rodeos.
Eventually she did have many wins at the rodeos. She was known as the most flamboyant and creative cowgirl of her time. Wearing bloomers that she designed, sometimes hemmed in ostrich feathers, and vests covered with bright sequins, she stole the show.
In 1932, Prairie Rose was on her way to a competition and got caught in a blizzard. Nine years later her body was discovered, and the only way they identified her was by her champion belt buckle. Even in death, she was a winner and triumphed by living her life her way. After all, cowgirls design their own lives.
Designing your life is about deciding who you want to be. Today, in five years, in twenty years. In my view, a well-lived life means becoming a powerful woman to enable you to do the things you both need and want to do for yourself, your family, and others. Find that personal power and you can, to a large extent, design your own life—a life that will be very different as you move through the natural cycles we all face. If you don’t do it, someone else will.
Cowgirls grow up with a realistic view of life. They see beloved old dogs die. They see the miracle of baby goats. They experience both wonder and tragedy and meet both head-on. Cowgirls understand that there are some things they can control and other things they cannot. They put all their energy on the things they can control.
I have always been a driven person and I instinctively forge ahead on multiple fronts. I am often unsure of exactly where I am going, but I feel I am following a path, moving in a good direction, and am excited about what might reveal itself around the next curve. Embrace the world. You can have a new style of living and working that is fluid. You can work anywhere. Shop online. Work at home. Stay connected to work, kids, husband, and family. Focus on what matters right now. Is it finishing your white paper? Or looking over your son’s book report?
The work–life question implies that one is bad and one is good. That is not true. If you think of it that way, you are going to mess it up. It is all the same thing. It is all important. That is, if you love what you do. If you don’t love what you do, you will never find any balance. Walk away. Your glass will always be half-empty. But, as a Facebook friend once posted, “If you think your glass is half-empty, quit bitching and pour it in a smaller glass.”
When I told my co-workers in 1983 that I was pregnant with my daughter, Rebecca, they were happy for me, but the inevitable question quickly came up: Would I come back to work after she was born? Looking back at this point in my life, I never let myself think about not coming back to work. I knew that I had to have my own independent source of income to help support my mother financially. I put my head down and decided to build the very best team, who could cover for me during my maternity leave. As the months progressed, my client portfolio grew substantially. I had one of the biggest, most profitable group of accounts at the company.
I scheduled a meeting with our president and presented him with my baby plan. I showed him how my accounts had grown over the past year. I explained what I had done to build up my team both at the office and at home. I told him that I planned to take two months off and then come back to work, but just working a half day for nine months. Before he could react, I said, “But even if I am in the delivery room having the baby, I will take care of things and we won’t miss a beat.” It was a powerful performance! He said OK. He knew I had him over a barrel.
I had a college student help me with Rebecca. My mother decided to move to Austin from Liberty to help me. Mother took a job teaching at a preschool and took care of Rebecca most afternoons.
Running my own business gave me a lot of flexibility around attending the children’s school and extracurricular events. I was pretty good about showing up and would move mountains to do so. However, I will never forget one time that I couldn’t show up. It was when Rebecca was in the third grade, and she was one of the stars of the Japanese play her teacher produced. I had an out-of-town meeting that was critical to the success and future budget of one of my hospital accounts. There was just no way I could get back in time for the play.
My mother stepped in. And, I mean really stepped in! She took Rebecca to her hairdresser and had Rebecca’s long hair put up in a lovely twist with flowers worked in. She made sure Rebecca’s costume was perfect, and that her makeup looked authentic and spot-on. She also photographed the event. All of this sounds great, right? It would have been, but I never heard the end of it.
My mother threw it up to me over and over through the years, of how I missed an important event in the young life of my precious daughter. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt heaped on. I always got a pang in my stomach when the topic of “The” Japanese play came up. Oh, and to top it off, my mother framed one of the beautiful photos of Rebecca in a lovely, ornate sterling silver frame. It is still on my dresser at the ranch as an ongoing reminder of my guilt.
We kept that hospital account for many years, and the budget grew and grew each year! I am also quite sure that account helped to pay for Rebecca’s most expensive pastime—riding and showing her Arabian horse, Shesa. I drove her out to her riding lessons as much as I could, and I was always amazed at how strict and demanding her trainer, Martha, was with her. Rebecca never complained, not once. By the way, Rebecca is a cowgirl.
Oh, and cowgirls don’t let guilt get in the way of long-term success. Cowgirls say bullshit to someone heaping on guilt, and move on—unless it’s your mother!
As if things were not complicated enough, I was always rescuing dogs. Some from the grip of death. We usually had four or five large dogs running through the house, riding in the back of the Suburban on trips to the ranch. One even became a medical miracle, our beloved Joe David. I found him abandoned on the side of the road to our Double Heart Ranch. I loaded him in the truck, and my mind started racing about how I would convince Lee to let me keep him. I already had a herd of dogs that were pretty annoying. When I drove up to the ranch house, Lee was standing with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. I swear I don’t know where this came from, but I jumped out and said, “Look, Lee, it’s little Joe David!” Joe David was the name of our small-town local banker. Lee laughed at the name, and I knew I had saved another dog. The name was actually appropriate because we soon learned that the dog had the same view on life that our banker friend did—affable, friendly, trusting, and laid-back.
Running your own business is full of risk and challenges. But it also gives you an awesome ability to design your own life. I have the flexibility to walk away from a piece of business that is not a good fit for us—either for cultural, strategic, or financial reasons. Each time I make one of those calls I gain a little more respect from my staff because they know I have our collective best interest at heart.
A few years after I got my company up and running, four of my twenty-four employees got pregnant. How they all got pregnant at close to the same time, I’ll never know. We must have had an ice storm that year. Of course, I was thrilled for them but then started lying awake at night worrying about how we were going to manage through their maternity leave and whether they would want to return to work. We had some very candid conversations about it. The moms-to-be assured me they wanted to continue to work if they could find good childcare for their babies, although I knew two of them came from well-to-do families and did not have to work.
After thinking about it for a few days, I realized that we did not have to play by anyone else’s rules—we were in control of our own destiny. So I proposed that after their maternity leave they bring the babies to the office to hang out with us until they started to crawl and/or walk. None of us was sure this would work, but we all agreed to try it. We also agreed that this was not my company providing day care. The babies were the responsibility of their moms. We never drew up any contracts, waivers, or anything like that. We just did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
One of the moms backed out at the last minute, gave back her maternity leave check, and said she could not do it. We convinced her to give it a try and it worked out beautifully. In fact, she and one of the other first moms ended up starting their own company together. Their children are the closest of friends today.
We started with two little ones, then within weeks two more. It was a bit daunting at first, but we all quickly got into a groove. If a baby cried, whoever was not on the phone grabbed it and waltzed it around the office. When they were asleep, we worked like fiends. We all laughed and said this is what growing up on a family farm must have been like, and it was. Everyone pitched in. The babies thrived and loved the experience. They were outgoing and fun. Our clients loved to stop in and say hi, so did our mailman and all our suppliers who were in and out of the office daily. The babies made everyone smile every day. (Paul, the mailman that we had for twenty-something years, sent me flowers when he retired. He loved being greeted so warmly each day at T3.)
People were amazed that we could actually work with babies around the office. But we did, the babies were fine, the moms were fine, and the business grew because of the quality of the work we were doing. A lot of that quality came from the emotional bonds we built among each other. This was where I learned about the power of trust between team members. We formed bonds that are still there, almost thirty years later.
We named the program T3 & Under, and it has been in place since 1995. It is the single most powerful thing I have done in my life. What we have done for the families of our employees is nothing short of remarkable. And, when I say “we,” I mean everyone at T3. There is not one employee in the company who has not smiled at a baby, opened the door for a mom, or carried a car seat to a car. It is a very tight team that absolutely loves and trusts each other.
I have been honored for T3 & Under at the White House. I’ve been on the Today Show twice and ABC’s Nightline, featured in USA Today and Bloomberg TV, visited by the US Department of Labor, and have had hundreds of other articles published about the success of the program. Our case has been cited in several books. The impact on the company has been transformative and sustainable. And, by the way, we do have a formal policy in place these days.
Not long after we began hosting babies at work, one of our developers came up to me and said that he did not have a baby, but he did have a dog and asked if he could bring his dog to work from time to time. I said OK, we would try it. We have had hundreds of dogs in the office over the years with virtually no problems. They all have to be on flea control, be perfectly housebroken, and cannot be aggressive. A few times we had a code yellow or code brown alert, but this usually was for puppies who had to go home until they could learn to contain themselves. The dogs love coming to work and playing with each other every day. Patting a friendly dog on the head can take such pressure off of a stressful deadline.
I had a production artist whose daughter was raising a little goat for a 4-H project. The goat was on medication and needed pills several times a day, so she brought it to work for a few days to take care of it. She kept it in a little box under her desk. I thought, no big deal, that’s fine. But the next week we had a major infestation of fleas. Fleas were everywhere. It was gross. So, making another power play, I announced a firm NO GOAT policy that stands today.
As of September 2017, we have had over one hundred babies. We will have had several more by the time this book is published. Most of the babies come with their moms, but several fathers have brought their children because their wives worked in situations where a baby at work was not possible. One wife was an expert Mercedes-Benz mechanic, so the dad brought their baby to T3 & Under.
One dad who brought two little girls over the years to T3 & Under told me recently what an impact those months of caring for his children had made in his relationship with them as they grew up. He recently left T3 to accept a huge, career-making opportunity, and we were all thrilled for him. His departure was one of the most emotional ones in the history of the company, not least because he had earned the love and respect of every employee at T3 for the way he manned up and took care of those little girls.
Over the years, T3 & Under has created this amazing network of parents and children. If you help care for someone’s baby, guess who gets invited to a birthday party or to join a little league team? We have events throughout the year, like Halloween, where we invite the kids who have been through the program to come back. It is so fun to see them grow up and have this special relationship with each other. Parents exchange information on everything from pediatricians to remodeling contractors on a daily basis.
Today, “Moms of T3” is one of the most popular channels on our Slack messaging application. It links moms in four cities across the country. A quick question about a day care facility or a good family doctor gets almost immediate responses. One of our working moms did a post about a company named Milk Stork. They provide special packaging for moms traveling for business to safely ship breast milk home via overnight delivery. I approved this service as a reimbursable expense within a day of learning about it.
By the way, our staff decided to change the name of the Slack channel from “Moms of T3” to “Parents of T3.” Now we have dads right in the middle of the dialogue, and that makes it an even more powerful tool for our families.
In the summer of 2016, both of those first two T3 & Under babies were back at work at T3 as college interns. Both will have a leg up once they enter the job market by having the T3 internship experience on their résumé. Life comes full circle. By the way, our internship program has grown into a highly coveted experience. This year, on the first day we posted openings for our 2017 summer program we received over five hundred applications. Before it was over, we had two thousand applications.
When I am asked about the rewards of owning your own business, I always say that nothing makes me prouder than the quality of our people and the quality of the work they do. I am so proud of the jobs we have created and the families we have supported. A good job is a path to dignity, self-satisfaction, and an interesting life. We have helped people connect, helped build their networks and thrive. We have supported our clients and helped them succeed. I have called my own shots for a long time. No matter what happens in the future, no one can take those successes away from me.
I get questions about how two hard-charging, career-focused people can manage the work–life balance thing every time I speak. I have seen all kinds of creative solutions and some pretty dramatic failures. The best way to deal with this is to get the ego and emotion out of the conversation and to make a good business decision for the good of the family. Do you have the resources and support to enable you both to actively pursue a rewarding career? If you are both high-income people, the answer is probably yes. Even though childcare is expensive, it is probably a great investment when you calculate the value of two long-term salaries if you both stay in the workforce.
If one of you has significantly higher earning potential in a gratifying career than the other, then that one should probably pursue a career and the other should focus on the kids, regardless of who is male or female. I have seen many successful women with husbands who have taken the lead raising the children and made their own careers a second priority. Based on my personal experience, this is especially true of women who make it into the C-suite and take high-paid, powerful, high-pressure positions. I admire these men immensely—just as I admire women who have put their husband’s career ahead of their own for the benefit of the entire family. Most of these men are in careers such as teaching that they can do on a part-time basis and come back to when the kids are older. Make a good business decision that is in everyone’s best interest. Times like these separate the men from the boys. Or the cowgirls from the girls.
Remember Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Frank was the star of the show until one day Annie stepped on the stage. Suddenly, Annie became the show and, ultimately, a superstar. The two of them worked it out and made a good business decision. Annie performed and Frank became her manager. Together, they were a huge success because each was focused on what they did best, and they totally trusted each other. They were married for fifty-plus years. After she died, he was devastated and stopped eating. He died eighteen days later.
Most of our team members at T3 are fairly young and either single or married and just starting their families. Almost all of those families have two working professionals who share responsibilities for the kids. Things go back and forth, and yes, moms probably do more. But the good news is that the dads are certainly in the game and very involved in their families. I see this new generation of men taking a much more active role in raising their kids, which I think is a great thing.
It is so important for working married couples to take a real interest in each other’s careers. If you do not understand what is going on with your spouse’s career, it is hard to understand when to give and not give. Don’t leave work at work. Bring it home, talk about it, and build mutual empathy. Understand the challenges and opportunities. If you take the time and show a genuine interest, when a big decision about careers comes your way you will not be blindsided. You will be prepared and your gut instinct will be good. My experience is that if you aren’t taking an interest in each other’s careers, someone else at work will fill that role and be a confidant.
I strongly recommend that families, but especially women, sit down and do a lifetime timeline. Here’s why. Most women I know are pretty selfless when they have kids. They are in the moment with their families and rarely think about their careers after the kids grow up. I have seen it over and over again, with young mothers making decisions about their careers and childcare with little, if any, real consideration of the long-term consequences to their family finances, their lifelong careers, and the overall opportunities for the collective family.
So stop and take the time to think about how old your kids will be in five years. How old you and your partner will be. How about in ten? Or fifteen? Of course, we cannot be certain of the future, but we can anticipate the big, likely events such as high school, college, first jobs, empty nests, and aging parents. Those big buckets are pretty easy to figure out. Then think about your goals and your dreams and see where they fit on your timeline. It gets pretty interesting pretty quick.
We all get swept up in the moment, and it’s hard to stop and take stock. Ask yourself: Where is my life right now, and where do I want it to go? Sure, the kids are a priority right now. But what can I do right now to improve my chances of hitting a career home run when the kids are gone? Little steps here and there can add up to huge advantages later in life.
Go back through your timeline and think about money. What will childcare cost? College? What are the family’s priorities? Sketch it out. Look for options. Have those important, fierce conversations. Deal with the short term. Think about long-term earning potential. Share it with your spouse. Have a healthy debate. Explore ideas. Get on the same page.
Then share it with your kids. Explain that the timeline is not about certainty, but is about defining directions you would like to explore. Put some of their ideas into the timeline and give them the gift of having a sense of the family’s goals, values, and dreams. Believe me, it will be a true gift. And, as opportunities come up along the way, you all will be much quicker to connect the dots on which ones are most important.
I know a powerful woman who was chief operating officer of a major public company. She had been incredibly successful, but had a desire to move into a chief executive officer role, and that passion would just not go away. When she got a chance, she took it. It required a move across the country and a change in her husband’s job. I sat with her in her office one afternoon and heard her dealing with her junior-high-aged daughter, who was traumatized about being taken away from her friends because of the move. Her son also went through lots of turmoil and short-term anxiety.
I was so proud of her because she owned all of those issues. She took responsibility for it all and believed with her whole heart that even though it meant a big change for them, it was the right thing to do for everyone. Had she not taken the position, it would have been a lifelong regret. She did her timeline, understood the issues and, happily, it has worked out. Her family has thrived and she has grown as an executive. Her husband has successfully restarted his career. She earned her family’s respect for making what they now understand was the right call. She’s one brave cowgirl.
Life comes at you in terrible ways sometimes. The husband of one of my best friends was killed in an aviation accident. He was young, vibrant, funny. He was there one day, and then he wasn’t. I was having lunch with her when we got the call.
I dropped everything, canceled every meeting, and moved into her house and appointed myself interim COO. The house was full of mourners and people who loved them both. They told stories about him and wished her well and shared her sadness. I sat in his empty office, worked the phones, and ran the household for a week. No one asked me to do it. No one questioned my authority to do it. It mattered to me very much to take the lead for a few days and let her grieve. And it was the best way for me to grieve as well.
In January 2009, when we came back from the Christmas holidays, the country was in real financial trouble. Major institutions were on edge, the markets went south, and everyone was in near panic. I started to get bad phone calls. Our clients started cutting their budgets. They were very apologetic and assured us it was no reflection on our work. They were being forced to make cuts across the board. Some of our vendors were not able to fulfill contracts because of lack of inventory. We went into emergency mode with twice-daily briefings. We focused on keeping our very best people. We focused on doing more with less, everywhere. It was one of the most brutal experiences I have ever had because it was totally out of our control. I was always used to being able to pull a few levers here and there to make things better. This time, there were not any levers that made things better. Sometimes none of your choices are good ones. Sometimes it doesn’t rain and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
This is where reality kicks in. We did not hide or bury our heads in the sand. We owned the problem and worked it every day. We were forced to make tough decisions about who should stay and who should go, and what things we could cut that were nice but not necessary. People got their feelings hurt, and some got mad and said unkind things about me, but I never let it bother me because there were so many who hugged me and thanked me for the opportunity to work at T3. I understand the emotions and the fear. We all face challenges. Your character is defined by how you handle them. Both in this moment and in thinking back, I see that my grit was reflected in my staff. I wasn’t in it alone: They were in it with me. Many took salary cuts. All applied extra effort, time, and creativity to see us all through. I won’t take credit for their positivity and perseverance as they powered through. But damn, I was proud!
It took us two years to recover, and we were one of the lucky ones because our digital roots saved us. We were doing programs that had tangible, proven results. In a sea of uncertainty, our clients started shifting budgets to programs that could prove success. As those budgets began to move from traditional advertising toward digital, we caught an uplift that turned the business in a better direction. Many were less fortunate than we were.
My daughter, Rebecca, went with me on a Committee of 200 trip to China. When I was speaking to the young women students in Beijing, they had lots of questions for me. One of them asked Rebecca, who was sitting in the audience, about what it was like growing up with a working mother. I took a deep breath, because I had never talked to Rebecca about this. I had no idea what she would say. Rebecca did not hesitate. She said, “There were a lot of times when my mom was not there and I missed her, but I remember that when she was there, she was all there. I knew she loved me and I was fine. And how many daughters get to go to China with their moms? We would not be here with you today if she did not have her career.”
With all the distractions that come at us today it is important to be mindful of being present in the moment—both for parents and children. If you learn to manage the flow between work and family life, you can absolutely deal with work and family needs at the same time. Just understand that often, priorities can change multiple times within the course of one day. Of course it can be stressful, but don’t let it be surprising. Build a support system.
Start with your boss, then your team, then friends and family—oh, and then your partner or husband! Prepare them, build contingencies, run it like a military operation. Always have an emergency bag handy filled with snacks, wipes, towels, toys, books, Band-Aids and more. Practice reciprocity among friends, co-workers, and neighbors. We always took care of each other’s kids as neighbors in Austin, Texas. One of Rebecca’s little three-year-old girlfriends took a bath with her almost every night, and Lee carried her home in her pj’s. She was hiding out from her two rowdy older brothers.
Our son Ben was recently holding his one-year-old daughter, standing in line waiting for a taco he ordered. Suddenly, she threw up all over him and the floor of the restaurant. The restaurant people ran to help clean things up; Ben wiped his shirt off as best he could. He stood there smelling of baby spit-up but still focused on getting his taco. Manage the priorities, choose the more important focus, and clean up the resulting mess as soon as you can. He got his taco.
Cowgirls were traditionally raised on the family farm or ranch, where everyone pitched in with everything from daily chores to rounding up cattle to baling hay. Everyone, except the smallest children, was expected to help. And, in that process, everyone understood the realities of running the family business. The kids saw the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I know a woman who is an amazing lawyer, and she started taking her kids to the law firm on Sunday afternoons so she could catch up on work. No one could be offended by them being there on a Sunday. She took great care to give them things to do, show them where the bathrooms were, areas where they could quietly hang out. Her kids were so well behaved that she started bringing them on school holidays or bad weather days. No one could object because the kids were not a problem. She made partner. The kids did great, and all of them won the respect of everyone at the law firm.
Even though you may work in an office tower, miles away from your home, it is important to let your children know about what is going on at work. Of course, their ability to understand will depend on their age. But if you had a hard day at work, you need to be honest with them. If you are not candid with them, they will still pick up your emotional stress but not know what to do about it. Or whether they caused it. If it is clear your stress comes from outside the home and family, then their energy can be channeled into helping with dinner or finding a way to be silly and make you laugh.
One of our kids liked to put on my high school clown costume and run around the neighborhood. One thought she was a cheetah and ran up and down the hall on all fours. And one did the herky-jerky dance on cue. If that doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will!
And don’t forget to share the good with the kids. One of our team leaders makes a point to share big successes at work with her kids. They don’t really need to completely understand everything. Simply knowing that something good happened to Mommy is powerful. Especially if it means ice cream for them. Share your experiences at work to show them how you help people. Show them how ideas come together. Show them your creativity and curiosity. Teach them to argue from two sides of an issue. Show them your innovation. Take them to work, invite their friends, book a conference room, and let them have a meeting. Teach them PowerPoint. Teach them to work together using sticky notes and voting on the best ideas. Take your talent to their school. Show your leadership. Invite your clients to a birthday party. Teaching your kids about your work and sharing some fun, new things creates buckets of goodwill that go miles and miles when things get challenging.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.