In Search Of Excellence - Sallie Krawcheck: Yes, Women Make Better Investors Than Men. How Diversity Outperforms Meritocracy in Finance | E37

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Sallie Krawcheck holds the world record for being fired the most times on the Wall Street Journal. She is also one of the most powerful and influential people on Wall Street, currently serving as CEO of an investment platform that manages over $1.5 billion in assets. By viewing success and failure as two sides of the same coin, she has overcome what few of us are capable of.Sallie is a Wall Street legend, an author, and the co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a digital investment platform built for women. Over the last 30 years, she has continuously broken barriers on Wall Street, navigating high-profile leadership positions at companies like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and Smith Barney (now Morgan Stanley).In this episode, Sallie talks about how she went from a rocky and emotionally-scarring start on Wall Street to the “Eureka!” moments that defined her career. She dissects what to do when facing constant rejection, the significance of outworking others, and how to rank learning, money, and passion when it comes to work. She also discusses the importance of proactively supporting and advising others, navigating office politics as a woman, and why success and failure are two sides of the same coin.Topics Include:- The most important relationship a professional woman can have- How one person led Sallie to realize her potential- Working for money vs. passion- Biases against women and minorities in the workplace- Sallie’s world record- Why you shouldn’t be the smartest person in the room- How job candidates can separate themselves from the competition- The #1 unwritten rule of success in business- And more… Sallie Krawcheck is known as one of the most influential women on Wall Street, but the title hasn’t come without its challenges. From navigating constant workplace discrimination to being fired for maintaining her honesty, Sallie has jumped continuous hurdles, moving from investment banking to becoming one of the top business research analysts in the game.Her Wall Street career includes being named CFO of Citigroup and CEO of Merrill Lynch, the Citi Private Bank, Smith Barney, US Trust, and Sanford C. Bernstein. She is the co-founder and current CEO of Ellevest, whose mission is to put more money in the hands of women. Her recent book, Own It: The Power of Women at Work, talks about the power of resilience, risk-taking, and hard work to reach the top. Resources Mentioned:Own It: The Power of Women at WorkEllevestSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

You're listening to part two of my amazing conversation with Sally Krawcheck, one of the most influential women in finance during the last 30 years. If you haven't listened to part one of my podcast with Sally, please be sure to check that one out first. Without further ado, here's part two with the amazing Sally Krawcheck. Boom. You joined Bernstein in 1995. You built an amazing reputation there and became famous in the finance world for being a straight shooter. And in 2001, you're there for six

years. You become CEO. Three years later, you get a call from Sandy Weil, who's the CEO of Citibank, which was then the third largest bank in the United States. And he recruits you to be the company's chief financial officer. It's a huge job. You're in that role for three years. And on January 22nd, 2007, you get named chairman and CEO of the company's wealth management division, which includes its global wealth management, its private bank, and Smith Barney. You manage 13,000 brokers and is the head of that group. But you was perceived as a demotion of some sorts. A year later, on September 23rd, 2008, you get fired for having a different business perspective about the bank's losses than the bank's new CEO,

Vikram Pandit. And this is crazy. Even though you were told you would get it, you didn't receive any severance payment when you left. So fast forward to August 3rd, 2009, and Bank of America hires you to turn around Merrill Lynch's Global Wealth Management Group. It was another huge job, and you were in charge of its entire wealth management unit again, which included 15,008 brokers at Merrill Lynch and another 2,200 brokers at U.S. Trust, and which had $700 billion in assets under management. Under your leadership, you grew assets to $2.2 trillion, and the division made a $3.1 billion profit. Apparently, that wasn't enough because two years later, you were fired again. And once again, it was on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. That could not have been fun. At this point, you had two back-to-back,

incredibly high-profile jobs, tremendous responsibilities, and had great success at each of them by having a true focus on clients and not letting conflicts of interest get in the way of that. And ironically, these were the same things that got you fired. Can you tell us how success and failure are two sides of the same coin and the role of risk in our success? And in search of excellence, what's your advice on how to navigate around office politics in a situation where we're getting a lot of attention in newspaper and magazine profiles, and our bosses and peers of the company are not, and they're envious and jealous of us? Okay, so thank you for that intro. You know, the only thing that irked me about what you just said,

of all of it, was when you said that I had gone from being CFO to running Smith Barney and the private bank and that it was viewed as a demotion. All the rest of it, I just listened to. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That just pissed me off. The reason it pissed me off is because when the exact same thing happened to the man who went before me, he was CFO, and then they were grooming him by running businesses. That exact move was viewed as a promotion, but for me, it was a demotion. And I think it says

something about how in our society, if you are in a minority and you are successful, that sometimes people look for you to fail. And I've talked to journalists who say, oh, it's the sport. Folks who are in the minority stand out and we look for you to fail. And I've talked to journalists who say, oh, it's the sport. You know, folks who are in the minority stand out and we look for them to fail. So I had a little bit of a reaction to that. As for the rest of it, to your point, you know, you say, oh, it's ironic that you did all these successful things and then you got fired twice. No, that's all part of the same thing. We go back to Randall standing out, having a different strategy. So when I was director of research at Bernstein, I got us out of the conflicted investment banking business. It was something that only

we got out of. All the other companies stayed in. We saw this as a conflict. We're not going to do this to our clients. Elliot Spitzer came in and discovered that all of the conflicts were happening and people were publishing research that was bullish when they didn't mean it just to get the corporate business. They all ended up paying fines. I ended up on the cover of Fortune magazine as the last honest analyst. That's sort of the same as running Smith Barney, working to get money in that,

you know, when we had missold products to clients and I'm saying, hey, CEO, we got to partially reimburse them. He's like, no, we don't. I'm like, yes, we do. No, we don't. I got it to the board. Successfully, we partially reimbursed them, but he fired me. Those are the same things. It's a client-focused, different strategy. You either have a board who approves it or you don't. You have a boss who approves it or you don't. The same thing at Bank of America, the feedback I got in being exited from Merrill, having someone come in to run the job, to take the job, even though we were growing, we were gaining share, we were beating plan. The business was completely turned around. The feedback I got is you're not a culture fit. It's sort of like you're too much. You're just

too much, Sally. And let's bring in someone who is a culture fit, who's never run a private wealth business before, mind you, in his whole life, but we think you'll do a better job. Those are two sides of the same coin. If you stand out, and particularly if you're from an underrepresented group and you stand out, you get your head chopped off. But to my mind, why the hell not? It's only fun to have a career that is different and exciting and draws outside the lines for me.

And I think it's the only way when I remember being 26 years old in investment banking, looking up and realizing I was a senior woman in the department. In order for me to have a successful career, I had to step outside the lines and do something different. So it's all, to me, part of a piece. What's your advice on how to navigate the office politics? You were on the cover of all these magazines, glowing articles. Your bosses were not happy. Your peers were jealous.

This happened in my career a couple of times as well. And you really walk on eggshells and just kind of put your head down. But what's your advice to people when they're getting a lot of attention for great things that they're doing? Well, sometimes it's walk on eggshells and put your head down. I remember a big article that was done on Merrill in one of the magazines about how well the turnaround was going and just knowing. And I only was interviewed for it with the agreement of the head of PR at the whole company, but you could just sort of feel it came out a certain way and you could just sort of feel nobody said anything. And you're like, I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble. And in fact, I went to dinner with the CEO and he gave me two pieces of feedback

in my review. You're just not going to believe this. The first was lower your profile, to which I said, but I'm only giving interviews that your PR team tells me to give and we're getting written about because the business is turning around. He's like, I don't care. Lower your profile. This is not, I mean, to be fair to him, the conversation I want to be having about to the outside world, lower your profile. I'm like, I don't know if I can do that without being not successful. Number two, which you're going to crack up on was your work ethic is to your work ethic is intimidating the other members of the leadership team. And so Tony, I thought we were coming out of a financial crisis. Randall, to be honest, something like that, you just can't win.

You can't, you got to get out of there or they'll get rid of you. But most of it isn't that extreme. Most of it is more subtle, work hard, deliver the results, and then work to be humble about it. You know, you don't have to throw yourself a party because you're on the cover of a magazine. Just keep your head down, you know, get your work done and be humble. And I'd say nine times out of 10, that works out. My introduction to this world was I was 24 years old. I graduated from Northwestern Law School. I came out to LA. I work in this big firm. My thought was, hated law school, hated.

I knew I was going to hate being a lawyer, just going to learn business and corporate law and then go do my own thing, maybe work for a client. But I always wanted my own company. And a week into the job, business was very slow. So it was 1993, firms finally began laying people off. But I was in the job a week and a half. And the managing partner of the office calls me into the office. It's a big office and I was new. The office then was only around 30 people, big Chicago-based firm, Los Angeles, the outpost there. And he says, hey, I have four tickets to the Raiders game on the 50-yard line. Would you like them? I said, yeah,

God, that's great. Thank you so much. I walk out. My boss saw me coming out of his office and said, what's that about? And I said, oh, Howard just gave me Raiders tickets, four tickets on the 50-yard line. He said, what? I said, yeah. And he was pissed, jealous, envious. From that point on, our relationship changed. I ended up getting laid off five and a half weeks into the job because of the terrible legal market. But it really... I had $3,000 in the bank when I came to Los Angeles. I got laid off. But that was a very tough time for me. But I saw the office politics thing work right out of the gate. When I came to Los Angeles, I got laid off. That was a very tough time for me. But I saw the office politics thing work right out of the gate. Later on at Sun America, I was 27 years old, a managing director there. Eli Broad was my boss. There were people who

had worked at the company for 25 years, never shook his hand. I wasn't a lawyer either. All the eight people in the law group didn't want to be there and think, who's this guy? He wrote a letter and I was the assistant to the chairman. It was put your head down. And navigating those times is something that I think all young people and people in the workforce just have to do. It can be very tricky when you're successful. Well, look, there's more information these days. When we were younger, you really didn't know what a company would be like until you walked in the door. These job sites you can look at, obviously, they're going to be biased and skewed to the negative. But there are places you can go and look. And then look at the, you know, my advice to young women always is look at who's in the C-suite.

And if in the C-suite, you do not see yourself reflected in this, you know, the year 2022, 2023, just if you have choices and not everybody does, but if you have choices, it's going to be harder for you to get to the C-suite if no one who reflects you is there. If you see a diverse team, a team, and I mean, I don't mean diversity just of gender or of skin color. I'm talking about, do you have the loud person in the C-suite? And do you have the introvert in the C-suite, right? Do you have all kinds of people?

If you do, then that tells you all kinds of people can be successful. But if it's all salespeople, you better be in sales. If it's all white women, you better be a white woman. But there's information now, and I think you can make a more intelligent choice. Of course, not everybody has all the choices. Sometimes you got to take a job because you got to take a job. Fair enough. All right. Let's talk about women in finance. Let's start with some stats. In 2021, there were 7,481 mutual funds in the US that managed a total of $27 trillion. And of these 7,481 mutual funds, 98% were managed by men. In 2017, venture capital firms invested $85 billion, and only 2% of that went to women. In 2019, the number was 2.8%. In 2020,

the number fell back down to 2.3%. Women also raised smaller amounts of financings than men. Women averaged $5 million per round, while men averaged $12 million per round. And here are some stats for women working at venture capital firms. Only about 12% of decision makers of VC firms are women, and most firms still don't have a female single partner, a single female partner. Of all partners at these firms, only 2.4% are female founding partners. When women venture capitalists do make funding decisions, they're twice as likely to invest in female founding teams. And here's another interesting stat. When women-led startups get funded, they're more likely to be successful. We have a lot of companies

in our portfolio with women founders, and they're killing it. As you know, I'm also an investor in Jesse Draper's fund, Halogen Ventures, which invests in companies only with women founders like you and Elle Vest. She's now on her third fund and she's killing it. There are a lot of reasons for these pathetically low numbers, way too many to go in today. But can you tell us about the role of pattern recognition in these numbers? And what's your advice to us to help us fix this? And specifically, your advice to men in senior positions in finance? The numbers just haven't been enough. Women are better investors than men. The research tells us whether that's hedge funds, mutual funds, individual investors. But to your point,

98% of the dollars are managed by men, overwhelmingly white. Women run startups, deliver, according to First Run Capital, something like 60% better returns. And yet, these numbers for the funding for women startup CEOs are stubbornly in the single-digit percent. And you hit the nail on the head. What you hear again and again is that venture investing is pattern recognition. And since it's been mostly young white guys in hoodies who went to Stanford who got funded historically, then that's who get funded today. And the theoretical earning of greater returns has not been enough to keep people from investing where they're most comfortable. And I sort of get it.

You know, gee, every fiber of my being tells me to invest in this 24-year-old Stanford graduate versus a 50-odd-year-old woman because I've done it before. I see what happens. That is my intuition. Some might say bias, but others would say intuition. In theory, I could make more investing in an older, more mature entrepreneur who's a woman, but I've never done it before. That feels weird. I'm going to stick with what I've got. Or in the investing industry, in theory, she might be a better investor. But boy, this young guy and I, we just have so much in common.

I mean, we both went to the same school and we played the same sport and I know his dad. And, you know, this just feels so comfortable to me. And so we mistake, we conflate intuition with bias. And we still, as a meritocracy, you know, still have this point of view, let your managers manage. You gotta let your managers manage. You got to let your managers manage.

Let them do what they're going to do, make the decisions, we'll judge them later. I would go so far to say that diversity outperforms meritocracy. And I'm using the little hand quotes on meritocracy because it's not meritocracy, it's underlying expectations and biases. So what do you do?

You promote people who make you uncomfortable. That's what you do. You promote people who make you uncomfortable. That's what you do. You promote people who have different worldviews and challenge you and see that when you are going into the office every day, if you are feeling some degree of discomfort, that is good. It's when you get comfortable and you've all got the same ideas. That's when you're operating in your comfort zone and nothing good happens. But I would say you've got to, as a leader and a manager,

embrace discomfort and try different things and bet on different people and trust that you can find that bridge and that way to communicate in order to have a healthy partnership and relationship. But it's not going to happen by itself. You've got to push yourself out of your intuition. Let's talk about your awesome company, LVEST, which you started in 2014 and which is one of my portfolio companies.

And if our viewers and listeners want to know the biggest reason I invested in LVEST, it's because of you. I've been following your career on Wall Street as I was making the way up in my career. I've read your research, a lot of it while I was at Sun America. I've been following your career on Wall Street as I was making the way up in my career. I've read your research, a lot of it, while I was at Sun America. I've been a huge fan of what you've done. And when Jesse Draper showed me your business plan, it took me less than two minutes to read it and say, I'm in. Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

So before we get into Ellevest, I want to start again with a few stats. Women today control $5 trillion of investable assets. And with spouses and partners, women jointly control $5 trillion of investable assets. And with spouses and partners, women jointly control $6 trillion of investable assets. Women are on target to inherit 70% of the $40 trillion of wealth transfer that will occur over the next few decades. Women control 80% to 85% of consumer spending in the United States. Women make up more than half of the workforce. Women live six to eight years longer than men and retire with two-thirds of the money that men have. 80% of women die single, and 90% of them manage their own money at some point in their lives. All of this occurs in a

world where more than 90% of all managers are men, and 86% of all financial advisors are men. So you have all these crazy stats against all this crazy backdrop. Money is a woman's number one source of stress. Can you tell us about your mission for LVEST and tell us about the hate mail you received when you started the company and some of the resumes you receive now? And tell us how keeping your money in cash can cost women and men millions of dollars. So look, the data that you've just shared and the fact that women keep the majority of their money in cash and men invest the majority of their money

and that that cost women relative to men hundreds of thousands for some millions of dollars over the course of their lives. The industry has looked at that data historically and said, we see the data, women are risk averse. Women need more financial education. Women need more handholding. Ellevest, we look at the data and say, you know what? We see something different. We see an industry that has not been serving women. We see that nobody has built a wealth tech or investing company centered on women. Let's do that. That really is the difference. We have, since the beginning,

been unapologetically by women for women. 80 plus percent of our employee base are women, 50 percent people of color. We've unapologetically built Ellevest around women's needs. And we're really, I know we're the only company that has broken through on this. Big banks have tried. Startups have tried. I think because we brought together the strong investing chops, strong tech, we realized the importance of building a brand. We realized the importance of building a community. We're able to raise the venture money. We still could have failed, right? Then you have the wrong CTO and you fail. But we've managed to make our sort of reach escape velocity. Now, it was not without hate mail or hate email. And we sort of weren't surprised when we launched. We're like, oh, invest like a woman. We're by women for women

that we would get it from some of the existing industry. And we got quite a bit of the, but we serve women too. And I'm like, yeah, I used to run the business there. And in the year after the husband's death, you lose 80 to 90% of your women clients. I get it. But, and some advisors do serve women very well, but as an industry, we did not. So we expected that from the traditional industry.

What was a shocker is when we got it from women. And I pause for effect. When we went out with our first Facebook ads and said, we're by women for women, we had a double-digit percent of folks who commented saying, screw you. How dare you? This is, I don't need your dumbed down solution. I don't need you to patronize me. I don't need your newsletter that says you go girl. And the moment for me that was just such a, just a moment is we have been socialized as women to believe that for women is junior varsity. And in many products, it has been Randall, not one single solitary woman said, hey, it's for women, it must be better.

Not one, not one. Now, what happened is they went in, they looked at the product and said, whoa, wait a second, I live longer, earn less, my salary peaks sooner and I take more career breaks. And Ellevest is the only one that takes that into account. This is more sophisticated. This is goals-based. This is highly personalized, But it took a while. And so today, we still have those naysayers.

What I do have to laugh about or smile about a little bit, you alluded to it, is that men in the industry, naysayer, naysayer, naysayer. And then I'll get an email from them when their daughter gets to be about 24 and has had her first job on Wall Street. And they write to me and say, Sally, would you hire my daughter? It was rough at XYZ Investment Bank. Could she come work with you? And I always have to give a smile because that's when they change their minds is when they start to see it through the eyes of their daughters. Are you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend, colleague, or loved one? Bliss Beaches makes the perfect gift. This best-selling bright and beautiful coffee table book by Randall Kaplan features stunning drone

photography from exotic beach locations around the world. It's the perfect housewarming gift, a great addition to any home or office, and a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner. Bliss Beaches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a five-star rating. Get your next amazing gift and order a copy of Bliss Beaches by clicking the link in our show notes. You know, it's interesting. In our summer program, I try to recruit minorities and women as well. Our goal has always been 50% women, 50% men. And this is long before this became a popular topic. I think the highest we've ever had is 37%. I was talking to Tim Draper program that we had tried to get 50-50 because I don't want them looking around the room thinking, okay, well, why aren't there 50% women here? And at some point, I told the lead interns, I said, let's stop talking to the male interns,

and I want to talk and I want to try to get 50%. Well, I told this to the female interns thinking I was doing a good thing. And as you said, some of them didn't like it. They said, so the only reason we're here is because we were women and not because of our credentials. And I said, no, that is not it at all. It was only good intentions whatsoever. It blew me off my chair. I was stunned at that reaction. Yeah. But look, what I would say to him is a lot, you know, historically, some number of white men have been in the room because they were white men. I mean, white men have had that leg up. Why every once in a while can we not take that leg up? I remember talking to a young woman who had the opportunity to be featured someplace. And she

was like, it's only because I'm a woman. And I'm like, you think when I was in the cover of Fortune magazine as the last honest analyst, it wasn't in part because I was a woman. It was because I was smart, hardworking, had a different strategy. The strategy was successful, but you don't think by being a woman and so therefore being sort of a curiosity helped. And so in all the ways it hurt me to be a woman, if there are points in time when it can help me, you damn straight I'm taking them. You damn straight. Just to be clear, by the way, the qualifications had to be the exact same. We get about a thousand applications. We have about a thousand applications, right? They come in, we review them one by one when they come in.

So if a hundred men are the first people and then the first woman to send in her resume is 101, we're reviewing the first 100 first. We're not saying, all right, we're going to lower the qualifications for women. That never happened. I think people took it that way. And I believe in the promotion of women in finance. About 30% of our portfolio companies, not including venture funds, are founded by women founders, and they're all killing it. Well, and if we could, mostly the research shows the bar is typically higher. So if you've got the bar at the same place, you are so far ahead of everyone else because typically, again,

not because anybody meant to, but just because of embedded expectations, the bar has been higher for underrepresented groups. There are a lot of reasons you became an entrepreneur, but there was one that really put you over the edge and convinced you to do it. Can you tell us about the research you saw about what people on their deathbeds regret and how this influenced your future? And in search of excellence, how important should this reason be, not only to inspire those thinking about starting a business but are coming up with reasons not to do it? And how important is this reason for all of us to live our life today in the moment and do things we want to do in all aspects of our lives? So let's start off and be clear that being an entrepreneur is really hard, sometimes truly awful.

And to also be clear, you know it's going to be awful when times are bad. What nobody warns you, Randall, is it's awful when times are good. Nobody told me, ah, things are going to be going really great and you're going to be growing really quickly. And that means it's time to exit XYZ member of founding team who cannot scale with the business, who it's just not naturally what they do. And so I don't think there's a day that's been easy, but we've had days of like, wow, this is amazing, but there haven't been any days that are easy. And so I always tell people, if you don't have to start a business, if it isn't burning within you some idea, some problem that you have to solve, then don't. Because it is hard. Finding the tech team is hard.

Raising the money is hard. Getting the right people. And you are in those early days, one or two mistakes away. And I make one or two mistakes in an hour days, one or two mistakes away. And I make one or two mistakes in an hour, but one or two mistakes away from the company being over. So that's my sort of caveat. What I would say, the reason I started Ellevest is because I saw this issue of women not living their fullest lives because they didn't have enough money. Women stuck in abusive marriages. Randall, there is no domestic abuse without financial abuse. Okay. So stuck in bad marriages, stuck in terrible jobs, not able to start the business they want and not able to do for their children what they want. I mean, we see this every day. And that if they, the two means of building

wealth in this country historically have been real estate and investing. And if I could help them invest, I can change women's lives on an all kinds of great scale. And when I looked around and said, who can do this? I'm the only one who was dumb enough to do it, who was both able to do it and dumb enough to do it. So I had to do it. But even as I was like, should I, should I not? I don't know. I did remember the research that you pointed to, which is that what we regret on our deathbed is not what we did, but what we didn't do.

And even if we fail at what we did, we still regret that less than watching the parade go by. I've never been a watch the parade go by kind of gal. And when I saw that, and then I'm like, all right, it's going to be hard and it's going to take long and it's going to be awful, but that's better than not doing it. And given my privilege and given all the experiences I've had, I don't really know that I could have lived with myself if I had seen the problem and had at least a chance of solving it and changing the lives of women and their families, and then I didn't do it. I just couldn't live with myself.

I want to switch gears and talk about one of my favorite topics, which has been one of the ingredients of my success, preparation, but not the kind of preparation most people think about. It's what I call extreme preparation. 99.99% of the time, I'm always the most prepared person in the room. That means when someone prepares one hour for a meeting, I'm usually preparing at least five or sometimes 40 hours for a meeting. Can you tell us how important preparation has been to your success to give us a few specific examples? And going a step further, how important is extreme preparation going way and beyond what would be considered normally good preparation or even great preparation? I'm talking about the kind of preparation that you spend 30 or 40 hours on, even 100 hours for a

single event. For sure. It gets to, we touched on it earlier, working harder than others. I know I'm not smarter than other folks, but I also know I'm not not smart. I never had the imposter syndrome of, gee, I don't belong at the table because I've been in senior Wall Street roles before. I've seen senior Wall Street people before. And I know the difference. You know, I can't. Fine. I don't have this skill set or I don't have that skill set.

But I'm all of us are smart enough. And so it really has come down to the preparation. It's when I was a research analyst, putting in the time until I found the differentiated, defendable, notable difference in the research that had a really good chance of being right. And so I never judged myself as a research analyst by my stock picks. What I judged by Randall, my level of success was, did I get aha from a portfolio manager? Did I get, I never thought of that before. And so I would work one thing to your research analyst, you're right at the quarter that takes 30 minutes, you know, to find that deep

insight is days. And you have to throw away a lot of research as a result of it. And you have to be okay with, I've done a hundred pages of work and only half of one of them is any good, or maybe zero of them are any good. It's the way you can stand out. So you talk about it in preparation, like preparing more. I talk about it more as working until you get to the differentiated point of view or insight that is defensible and has a good chance of being right. Let's switch gears and talk about work-life balance. Let's start by going back to six months after you were named the CEO of Smith Barney. You were then still relatively new to the company and you organized a conference call with 600

managers from every Smith Barney office, which was an unusual event because that means 600 managers aren't working at the same time. You started talking when the call began and then you suddenly interrupted yourself and said, everyone, please bear with me. I have to put the call on hold. So now everybody's thinking there's something urgent like the head of the Fed calling and that something major has happened in the world of finance. He came back 90 seconds later and said, sorry, you guys, that was my daughter calling. And I promised her that she could always reach me and that I had made her deal with her if I took this big job, no matter where I was or what I was doing or who I was with, that I would always take her call. So you pick up and she tells you that she can't find her pink nail polish.

She was calling you because you were the only one who knew it was in the upstairs bathroom. That's pretty incredible, being upfront like that and giving that reason. It dared you to everyone. One of the most senior managers on that call, who was a male, couldn't believe you were so honest about that and said that never in a million years would he have told a male workforce that his daughter couldn't find the pink nail polish. But while you were running Smith Barney, you were traveling like crazy to the point where you weren't home that much. Your then seven-year-old son came into your bedroom one night and told you that he wasn't seeing enough of you. You felt a lot of personal guilt, but you just threw it away. You'd go on trips and your kids would say, don't go and would cry. And you would close the door and cry, but you

would never let them see that there was a conflict there. But then as your kids got older, they knew that being a full-time mom wasn't for you. And it turned out that your kids really didn't prefer that either. And there's even a running joke in your family that you're a surprisingly mediocre mother and that your mediocrity has been an upside surprise. So let's talk about the most commonly asked question for working mothers. Can working mothers have it all? And as part of this,

why has your mediocrity been an upside surprise? I gotta tell you, so I love the anecdotes. I hate the question because it is a question that you probably have asked of none of the men on your podcast ever. And it is, I think of this as we women reach a level of success and then it's not enough. We also have to have work life balance. And so I always like, I refuse. I'm going to be great at work. I'm going to be mediocre as a mother. I'm never going to hit my kids. I'm always going to love my kids. I ain't making any homemade, I sometimes made homemade cookies,

but I'm not going to hold myself to that standard. I'm going to choose where I want to be great. And there'll be other places I'll be mediocre. And so that's what I did. I have to correct you because you're not right about something. I ask every single one of my guests about work-life balance. Do you? There isn't a single guest I haven't asked ever. Good, good, good. And I'm always going to ask it. I have five kids. I struggle with it myself. Once I had the money and I didn't have a boss anymore, I made a point to be home every night for dinner. And it was a rarity when I was divorced for

eight years and I'm remarried now. I was home for my kids every night. I picked them up from school. I drove them to school. It's a challenge for everyone, men and women. And so I do ask it. I think it's something that everybody struggles with, men and women. And the reason I asked it on this podcast the way that I did about the most commonly asked question for working women is because you've discussed that topic and you've identified it as the most important question that you get as a successful working woman. Just to clarify that, by the way. Yeah.

Love it. I want to talk about another element of success of what you and many others believe is the number one unwritten rule of success in business. What is it and how should people go about it if they have no clue or confidence to get started or even afraid or embarrassed to reach out to others? It's networking. It is who you know. It is playing in traffic. It is being visible. We find that young women tend to not recognize its importance until later after young men do, and it hurts them. It hurts them in getting that first or second promotion. I was fortunate because, again, back when I was a research analyst, I remember one of the senior folks saying to me, as a research analyst, your research can be great if nobody knows about it, it doesn't count.

And that's sort of a rule in business as well. You can be great at your job if nobody knows, it doesn't matter. And so how do you, not in a schmoozy weird way, but how do you have connections, foster really authentic connections where you are giving. And then over time, it comes back to you. You are sharing industry knowledge or research, etc. So that you are providing that value so that then people want to be helpful to you as well. In search of excellence, how important is it to give back to our community? It's part of a well-lived life, honestly. And it gets back to sort of the work-life balance.

How important is it to have that time with the family? How important is it to be a contributor to your community in a time when we're all increasingly behind screens and alone during the course of the day? How do you form those sort of authentic human connections and make your community, just as you try to make the business world a better place because you've been there, make the community a better place because you've been there. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play?

Sure, let's go. When I started my career, I wish I had known... Not to marry my first husband. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is. The days are long and the years are short. My number one professional goal is. Get more money in the hands of women. My number one personal goal is. To get through this winter by being physically active enough that I don't get my seasonal affective disorder. My biggest regret is? Maybe it's taking the job at Merrill. Having done the job at Smith Barney, it was like doing the same job again. And so it was a handful of years when I wasn't learning. The one thing I've dreamed of doing for a long time but haven't done is?

Go on safari with my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband in Africa. It's incredible. And you already know that. And I hope you get to do it. If you could fix one thing in the world, what would it be? Inequality. The one person in the world that I admire the most is? My grandmother. Mine too. And my grandmother turns 104 next week in Detroit. And I will be there to see her and spend the day with her. I can't wait.

Amazing. My grandmother was a career badass when that was not the thing to do for a woman. If you could be one person in the world, who would it be? I've met her before, but I would love to spend more time with her, Gloria Steinem. The one question you wish I had asked you is? When you mentioned Stephen Colbert, I wanted to tell you that he dated my cousin for four years. I think she broke up with him. Maybe I should... Maybe don't repeat that. There's a lot of questions I want to ask about that, but I'm not going to. My last question is, if you could go back in time, what's the most valuable piece of advice you'd give your 25-year-old self and 10 years later to your 35-year-old self?

And what are you giving to yourself now that you're 57 years old? I think for my 25-year-old self, it would be take a breath. Take a breath. It's a marathon. You don't have the right job. You're not on the right path. You'll get there. My 35-year-old self, I was pretty successful at that point. So I think it would just pat me on the back and say, keep going. And I think all along the way, you know, would be to enjoy it more. It just goes by quickly. And even the bad stuff. I mean, Randall, you talked earlier, I was fired on the front page of the Wall Street Journal twice. How cool is that?

Honest to goodness. That is so cool. It's pretty cool. You're very important or noteworthy or interesting if you're on the front page of the Wall Street Journal at all. Hopefully, it's good. Hopefully, it's not bad. It's bad, but it's also that you got to have a job that was so interesting and powerful. When you lost it, it was news. I mean, it's sort of cool for a whole bunch of reasons, isn't it? Sal, you've been somebody I've admired for a very long time. You've been a phenomenal role model, not only to millions of women, but to millions of men as well. You've inspired thousands of people with your success, your humility, and you've made an immeasurable contribution to changing the culture and the way we live our lives. I'm very grateful for your time today. Thank you very much for sharing your story with us.

Randall, I got to tell you, I have done more podcasts, more magazine and newspaper interviews, more newsletter interviews than I can begin to count. No one has prepared as you have prepared. No one has taken me down memory lane the way you just took me down memory lane. I am gobsmacked. Thank you. I'm flattered as well. Thank you for paying me the respect of the preparation that you did. Thanks for having me.