December 13, 2023 • 19 mins
This week, we're listening back to our episodes with Paula Madison. Join us for an insightful conversation with media executive and entrepreneur Paula Madison. In this episode, Madison reflects on her childhood and the lessons she learned from her mother, who immigrated to the US with a fierce determination to achieve success. Madison shares how her mother's values of hard work and self-reliance influenced her own path in life, and how she was raised to reject traditional gender roles and pursue her own dreams. Don't miss this engaging episode!Host IG:@itstanyatime
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks to MasterCard for sponsoring this episode. Head to MasterCard
dot com backslash small Biz to learn how they're amplifying
and supporting black women entrepreneurs. You're listening to Money News
powered by Green, a finance podcast dedicated to dropping all
the knowledge and gems from the world's leading celebrities, entrepreneurs,
and experts in tech, business, and more. I'm your host,
(00:22):
angel investor, technology enthusiasts, and media personality Tanya Sam. Each week,
we talk with guests who are making significant strides in
their fields and learn how they are making their money move.
If you're someone who's looking to make your money, you
you're in the right place, So open up your notes
app and lock us in, because this podcast will give
you the keys to the kingdom of financial stability, wealth,
(00:45):
and abundance you so rightly deserve. Our executive producer had
an opportunity to interview trailblazing journalists and media pioneer Paula Madison.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We Got It One commends you.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
A lot of people get you know lessons, and parents
say things and teach some things, but they don't.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Always follow through.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I didn't do everything they told me.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
All we all have things, but it sounds like their
message from your from a young age resonated with you.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And also you and your siblings work together like you know.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
I mean, that's a it's impressive to say the least,
But I think that the thing that's landing.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Would be the most is what do you think it was?
And what would you tell someone right who's like, I
know what I'm supposed to do, I know what I've.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Been told to do, but but then actually putting it
into practice and manifesting, you know, because I think that's
where people, you know, lose the theory versus practice.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
I suspect that the regular drum beat of the messaging
over and over and over and watching my parents.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Live what they believed. Here is a.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Here is an anecdote that is totally unrelated, but it
gives you some insight into who my parents were. They
didn't get along. My father stowed away chasing my mother
to the United States. She got here on a Chinese
immigration quota. Her father was Chinese. He was not letting
her go, so he stowed away, got off on the
(02:35):
Manhattan docks. He knew that she was uptown in Harlem,
where her cousins owned some brownstones and he followed her.
What I would say to you is there was a
day when I was a child, maybe double digits, maybe
I was ten or eleven, and the Surgeon General announced
that cigarette smoking could be hazardous to your health. My
(02:55):
mother was a packa day person. My father was a
two packa day person. They had been split at this
point for more than half my life. On that day,
both of my parents stopped smoking. I don't need this
hazards to my health. No, not smoke it anymore. Even
at that age, I thought to myself, who are these people?
(03:19):
I just know that for some people it's a struggle.
But my parents had such strong commitments and determination, so
that when I was probably nine eight nine years old,
my mom called me and my older brother Howard into
the living room and she had a cigarette and she said,
(03:39):
you want to try it? And I was like, I
didn't know how to answer. Whose mother gives them a
lit cigarette? Howard was like and he and started smoking.
She let him take a puff or two, she took
it out of his hand and beat the.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Crap out of him.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
She said, nobody knows how to smoke the first time
you've been smoking, right, And she was right.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I was coughing and gagging.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
And in my whole life, I never smoked. Did Howard smoke? Yes,
eventually he gave it up many years later. But what
I'm saying to you is my mother had a strategy.
What are my children doing? Here's a strategy. Early on,
when we were little kids, some salesman came by and
(04:25):
tried to get my dad to buy this TV, little
TV in the early days of television. The dude said,
try it. He didn't come back my father. We had
the TV in our apartment. My mother had every kid
in the neighborhood sitting in our living room watching TV.
Our house was the hangout. Why because, as she explained,
(04:46):
if I can watch these children, then I know who
I will allow you to be friends with and who
I will discourage. So it was never get out of
the house, go away. It's like no, no, because the
strategy of she came here, no family to speak of, right,
(05:09):
and yet what she wanted to make sure was that
her children did not fall victim to some of the
behaviors that were going on in Harlem. So, and not
just Harlem, but another place is too. But this is
the point at Harlem where Heroin was pretty rampant, and
what we were seeing was, you know, the way my
mother grew up. She believed that children should be protected,
(05:31):
loved and taught. But that didn't mean she said I
love you. My mother didn't say I love you to
me un till I was about thirty four years old,
and only in retaliation because her sister, who did not
have a Chinese father. Her sister came from Jamaica, and
as I was leaving the apartment in my aunt hias
and said Paula, I love you, and I watched my
(05:52):
mother glare at her like and then the next time
I went back, my mother said Paula, I love you,
and I almost passed out. The culture, the Asian culture
is such that that's not expressed. You know, I love you,
I feed you, I clothe you, I send you to school.
Get away from me, Go do your homework, right. That
(06:14):
is actually the attitudes, and that was my mother's attitude.
So from early early on, there was an almost I
don't want to make it sound like it was a
monastery because it wasn't, but there was an expectation that
you can do things outside.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
For sure.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
We ran the streets till all hours of the night,
but when we came home, we were expected to have
completed our homework.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Right, we didn't have any chores.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
My mother gave us no chores because she said, your
job is to be excellent. I will clean this house,
I will cook. And then when I was about nine
years old, my mother said, here's some rubber gloves. We're
going to clean, and I was like clean. So we
clean our apartment and at the conclusion of that, my
(07:03):
mother said to me, the reason why we did this
is because I want you to understand the definition of
a clean house. You, when you grow up, are never
going to have to clean your own house. You will
hire somebody to do it. It's a decent job. You
will make enough money to pay someone. So I've actually
had a housekeeper at least weekly, from a time I
(07:26):
was twenty three years old, because my mother taught me
to spend my time. Not that it's a demeaning role,
but you can pay somebody to do that, Right, that's
a good job. Your job is not that. That's like saying, well,
I could try to be an engineer, but I'm not
(07:46):
an engineer, and why am I spending time trying to
learn it when that's not really my calling right. So
it sounds somewhat elitist, but it really isn't It is
that truly, this is going to be a bit controversial.
But my mother raised me like she raised her boys.
I was not a girl girl. I was a boy
(08:07):
girl in that context, in that kind of Did I
play with dolls? No? I played with Lionel trains. I
helped my brother's made planes out of balsa wood. We
had microscope. We were looking at dirty water and finding paramesia.
And I was expected to transcend. I was expected to
(08:28):
not be in the next generation. When my nieces and
my daughter was born, my mother did not want them
to wear pink. Why because that whole concept, she felt
would teach you to be subservient and that you have
to be as educated, as capable, as smart as Because
(08:50):
in my mother's world, being a wife and a mother
actually could end up being a disadvantage.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
My mother was.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
My mother was focused, and as she said, she didn't
come to the United States to marry. She came to
the United States in order to become wealthy. My father
followed her here and short changed her plans. Now I
don't know how she was going to become wealthy I
(09:21):
don't know, but her admonition to us was if these
people who hail from Scottish in English and whatever, right,
these are the same people who are running things in Jamaica.
If they can do it, then you can do it too.
(09:42):
So the if she saw that we were veering in
a direction that might take us away from that path
of becoming wealthy, she would check us.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Well, and I think that just kind of childhood too,
when you like started on spessional what it sounds like
to me.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And I wanted to kind of.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Frame this in the context of advice for people that
you know, one maybe you know, didn't have a mom
like yours, maybe didn't have siblings to like, you know,
work with, but they do have this desire in them
and they want that they haven't figured out their own
strategy right. And one of the one of the things
(10:34):
that I'm hearing is that your goals reach beyond just.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Becoming journalists, for example, or just showing manager. You know
that you always had these huge, you know, goals of ranger.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
But it seems like you did something, whether it was
research or talking to the right people to understand how
to get there right. And I'm sure I'm just curious,
like if you can dig back to like the first
time you started think of like, oh, I really want
this big goal, I don't know how to get there,
but then you figured it out, you know.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
So what I have to process first is the concept
that I said I want to achieve this big goal.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
That's not really.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's not how you describe it, No, tell you right.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
So what I would describe is that understanding that I
am in pursuit of power.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
That can be used for the greater good. Right.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
I studied in the work environment the people who were
the ones running things, and what I wanted to find
out was what were the strategies, what were the tactics,
What were the elements that needed to be in place
to get there? If I'm here, I'm going to study
(11:56):
the two or three or nine to see how they
got there, and then I figure out how, based on
my own principles, beliefs, skill sets, what I will employ
to get there. So here's an example. People have performance evaluations.
When you work in an environment, you get a performance
(12:17):
evaluation every year eighteen months or so. I always thought
that was interesting, but I thought the system should be changed.
And this is while I was an employee. My strategy
was I would quarterly at least go to my immediate
supervisor and ask how am I doing right? I'd say,
(12:38):
you know, Bill, you got two minutes, sure you know,
so how am I doing? And let's say Bill is
a little thrown because whoever asks how am I doing right?
But I'm truly wanting to hear through your lens, how
you see my abilities? How you see my performance? Bill
(12:59):
might say, oh, well, you know, well, you're doing pretty well,
but you know you could have some improvement in xyz.
Oh okay, so let me just see if I can,
if I can explain what I think you just told
me I need to improve on.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah, so I would do that. Okay, great.
Speaker 5 (13:15):
Can I check back in with you in a few months,
say I'm doing sure? Of course, because it hasn't been
scary to Bill. I did not put Bill on the
spot and go yeah, but that's not my fault. I
didn't do any of that. I listened to what Bill
said I needed. Bill, let me work on that the
next quarter. Bill, you got five minutes, show us up.
(13:35):
I just want to know, are you seeing any improvement?
Can you tell me how you think I'm doing? Now?
What That meant is that every quarter I am checking
in with Bill. Bill is telling me performance okay, you know,
improvements needed, and I'm acting on those. My annual performance
(13:56):
evaluation was never spent on looking back the past year.
Your performance evaluation may have been with how you've done
in the past year. I've been getting feedback all year.
My performance evaluation is spent on, so what do you
see as the next step for me? Oh? Now, Bill
(14:17):
may not have given a lot of thought to that,
but I've given a lot of thought to it, so
that my thirty forty minutes spent where what I'm supposed
to be hearing. If I'm like everybody else, is the good,
the bad, the ugly. We've already done that. We are
not talking about that anymore. What we're talking about is now,
(14:37):
tell me what you see as my future. Bill says,
whatever it is, and then I ask, oh, so how
would you get there? And Bill begins to share his thoughts.
I don't necessarily have to go along with those, but
I'm at least hearing. And then what I ask is,
so in the world of you know, hierarchy, like what
(15:01):
comes along with whatever that next job is? You know, like,
what's the compensation range. You know, do you get stock options,
do you get blah blah blah, And then Bill begins
to tell me whatever, what I've just learned is how
you get into the club. I've done that for damn
near my entire career. Right, So what happens is Bill
(15:23):
becomes the person who doesn't think of Paula as the scary,
angry black woman. Bill's even given me critique, and I've
accepted it.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
I might push.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Back, Well, Bill, how about if I tell you that
I did it da da da da da. Well, you
know that's a way of doing it. Okay, So maybe
my way was different, but it could have worked.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
The other strategy I had was you can't make a
decision if you're not present. I never lived more than
thirty minutes away from where I worked ever living in
New York. I'm not going to live in New Jersey.
I'm not living out on Long Island. I lived in Harlem,
(16:05):
and if I needed to get to work quickly, I
could hail a gypsy cab and I'd be at thirty
Rock in fifteen minutes in the middle of the night,
which is what happened, right, So there wasn't an experience,
for example, where I was actually having a free JB party.
James Brown had beens. I love James Brown, right, I
love so we had our brown Son in Harlem. I
had about one hundred fifty people at my house for
(16:27):
a free JB party and we're, you know, rocking in
gym and my pager goes.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Off and I'm like, it's two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Why is my pager going off? The pager went off
because the managing editor paged me. Why because I was
a fifteen minute ride away from thirty Rock. Paula, there's
a fire in the Bronx. They said more than fifty
people were trapped and they're dead.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Who is this? This is Mike. What did you just say?
Speaker 5 (16:57):
Now, I've been dancing and drinking all night. Paula, there's
a fire in the Bronx at a place called Happy Land.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Got it.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
I'll be right there. He wasn't there, He'd gotten from
the police scanner. I'm the closest manager who lives to
thirty Rock in I live in Harlem. I stand up
and say, the crowd y'all keep partying. I gotta go
to work, and they're like, what I gotta go to work.
I got to work, and within side of an hour,
(17:26):
I had like five crews in the Bronx. Right we
went on the air at like five AM. I called
anchors in, we're cutting into programming. It turned out that
eighty eight people died in that fire. So from the
early days of the history of New York when the
shirtwaist factory fire, this was the largest number of people
(17:47):
who had ever died in a fire. And this was
in modern day times. So what did that mean? I
set up the coverage that was not my job, but
the person whose job it was lived farther or away.
Right when I worked here at NBC four, I lived
within walking distance of the studios in Burbank. I strategically
(18:10):
make it so that, oh there's something going on, I'm
gonna get there and I'm gonna be in charge. I'm
gonna set it up, even though it's not my job,
and even though it's the boss's job to do XYZ.
That's a strategy because my strategy is become necessary. So
how did I become known inside of the company? Oh, All,
Hell's break and loose.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Call Paula.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If we helped you
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Follow us on social media at Greenwood and visit us
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So take the lessons you've learned from this episode and
(18:56):
apply it to your life until next time. Money Moves
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Make sure to tune in Monday, Wednesday and Friday and
subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood, so
(19:17):
that you too can have the keys to financial freedom
you so rightly deserve
Thanks to MasterCard for sponsoring this episode. Head to MasterCard
dot com backslash small Biz to learn how they're amplifying
and supporting black women entrepreneurs. You're listening to Money News
powered by Green, a finance podcast dedicated to dropping all
the knowledge and gems from the world's leading celebrities, entrepreneurs,
and experts in tech, business, and more. I'm your host,
(00:22):
angel investor, technology enthusiasts, and media personality Tanya Sam. Each week,
we talk with guests who are making significant strides in
their fields and learn how they are making their money move.
If you're someone who's looking to make your money, you
you're in the right place, So open up your notes
app and lock us in, because this podcast will give
you the keys to the kingdom of financial stability, wealth,
(00:45):
and abundance you so rightly deserve. Our executive producer had
an opportunity to interview trailblazing journalists and media pioneer Paula Madison.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We Got It One commends you.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
A lot of people get you know lessons, and parents
say things and teach some things, but they don't.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Always follow through.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I didn't do everything they told me.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
All we all have things, but it sounds like their
message from your from a young age resonated with you.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And also you and your siblings work together like you know.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
I mean, that's a it's impressive to say the least,
But I think that the thing that's landing.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Would be the most is what do you think it was?
And what would you tell someone right who's like, I
know what I'm supposed to do, I know what I've.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Been told to do, but but then actually putting it
into practice and manifesting, you know, because I think that's
where people, you know, lose the theory versus practice.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
I suspect that the regular drum beat of the messaging
over and over and over and watching my parents.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Live what they believed. Here is a.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Here is an anecdote that is totally unrelated, but it
gives you some insight into who my parents were. They
didn't get along. My father stowed away chasing my mother
to the United States. She got here on a Chinese
immigration quota. Her father was Chinese. He was not letting
her go, so he stowed away, got off on the
(02:35):
Manhattan docks. He knew that she was uptown in Harlem,
where her cousins owned some brownstones and he followed her.
What I would say to you is there was a
day when I was a child, maybe double digits, maybe
I was ten or eleven, and the Surgeon General announced
that cigarette smoking could be hazardous to your health. My
(02:55):
mother was a packa day person. My father was a
two packa day person. They had been split at this
point for more than half my life. On that day,
both of my parents stopped smoking. I don't need this
hazards to my health. No, not smoke it anymore. Even
at that age, I thought to myself, who are these people?
(03:19):
I just know that for some people it's a struggle.
But my parents had such strong commitments and determination, so
that when I was probably nine eight nine years old,
my mom called me and my older brother Howard into
the living room and she had a cigarette and she said,
(03:39):
you want to try it? And I was like, I
didn't know how to answer. Whose mother gives them a
lit cigarette? Howard was like and he and started smoking.
She let him take a puff or two, she took
it out of his hand and beat the.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Crap out of him.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
She said, nobody knows how to smoke the first time
you've been smoking, right, And she was right.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I was coughing and gagging.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
And in my whole life, I never smoked. Did Howard smoke? Yes,
eventually he gave it up many years later. But what
I'm saying to you is my mother had a strategy.
What are my children doing? Here's a strategy. Early on,
when we were little kids, some salesman came by and
(04:25):
tried to get my dad to buy this TV, little
TV in the early days of television. The dude said,
try it. He didn't come back my father. We had
the TV in our apartment. My mother had every kid
in the neighborhood sitting in our living room watching TV.
Our house was the hangout. Why because, as she explained,
(04:46):
if I can watch these children, then I know who
I will allow you to be friends with and who
I will discourage. So it was never get out of
the house, go away. It's like no, no, because the
strategy of she came here, no family to speak of, right,
(05:09):
and yet what she wanted to make sure was that
her children did not fall victim to some of the
behaviors that were going on in Harlem. So, and not
just Harlem, but another place is too. But this is
the point at Harlem where Heroin was pretty rampant, and
what we were seeing was, you know, the way my
mother grew up. She believed that children should be protected,
(05:31):
loved and taught. But that didn't mean she said I
love you. My mother didn't say I love you to
me un till I was about thirty four years old,
and only in retaliation because her sister, who did not
have a Chinese father. Her sister came from Jamaica, and
as I was leaving the apartment in my aunt hias
and said Paula, I love you, and I watched my
(05:52):
mother glare at her like and then the next time
I went back, my mother said Paula, I love you,
and I almost passed out. The culture, the Asian culture
is such that that's not expressed. You know, I love you,
I feed you, I clothe you, I send you to school.
Get away from me, Go do your homework, right. That
(06:14):
is actually the attitudes, and that was my mother's attitude.
So from early early on, there was an almost I
don't want to make it sound like it was a
monastery because it wasn't, but there was an expectation that
you can do things outside.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
For sure.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
We ran the streets till all hours of the night,
but when we came home, we were expected to have
completed our homework.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Right, we didn't have any chores.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
My mother gave us no chores because she said, your
job is to be excellent. I will clean this house,
I will cook. And then when I was about nine
years old, my mother said, here's some rubber gloves. We're
going to clean, and I was like clean. So we
clean our apartment and at the conclusion of that, my
(07:03):
mother said to me, the reason why we did this
is because I want you to understand the definition of
a clean house. You, when you grow up, are never
going to have to clean your own house. You will
hire somebody to do it. It's a decent job. You
will make enough money to pay someone. So I've actually
had a housekeeper at least weekly, from a time I
(07:26):
was twenty three years old, because my mother taught me
to spend my time. Not that it's a demeaning role,
but you can pay somebody to do that, Right, that's
a good job. Your job is not that. That's like saying, well,
I could try to be an engineer, but I'm not
(07:46):
an engineer, and why am I spending time trying to
learn it when that's not really my calling right. So
it sounds somewhat elitist, but it really isn't It is
that truly, this is going to be a bit controversial.
But my mother raised me like she raised her boys.
I was not a girl girl. I was a boy
(08:07):
girl in that context, in that kind of Did I
play with dolls? No? I played with Lionel trains. I
helped my brother's made planes out of balsa wood. We
had microscope. We were looking at dirty water and finding paramesia.
And I was expected to transcend. I was expected to
(08:28):
not be in the next generation. When my nieces and
my daughter was born, my mother did not want them
to wear pink. Why because that whole concept, she felt
would teach you to be subservient and that you have
to be as educated, as capable, as smart as Because
(08:50):
in my mother's world, being a wife and a mother
actually could end up being a disadvantage.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
My mother was.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
My mother was focused, and as she said, she didn't
come to the United States to marry. She came to
the United States in order to become wealthy. My father
followed her here and short changed her plans. Now I
don't know how she was going to become wealthy I
(09:21):
don't know, but her admonition to us was if these
people who hail from Scottish in English and whatever, right,
these are the same people who are running things in Jamaica.
If they can do it, then you can do it too.
(09:42):
So the if she saw that we were veering in
a direction that might take us away from that path
of becoming wealthy, she would check us.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Well, and I think that just kind of childhood too,
when you like started on spessional what it sounds like
to me.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And I wanted to kind of.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Frame this in the context of advice for people that
you know, one maybe you know, didn't have a mom
like yours, maybe didn't have siblings to like, you know,
work with, but they do have this desire in them
and they want that they haven't figured out their own
strategy right. And one of the one of the things
(10:34):
that I'm hearing is that your goals reach beyond just.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Becoming journalists, for example, or just showing manager. You know
that you always had these huge, you know, goals of ranger.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
But it seems like you did something, whether it was
research or talking to the right people to understand how
to get there right. And I'm sure I'm just curious,
like if you can dig back to like the first
time you started think of like, oh, I really want
this big goal, I don't know how to get there,
but then you figured it out, you know.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
So what I have to process first is the concept
that I said I want to achieve this big goal.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
That's not really.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's not how you describe it, No, tell you right.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
So what I would describe is that understanding that I
am in pursuit of power.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
That can be used for the greater good. Right.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
I studied in the work environment the people who were
the ones running things, and what I wanted to find
out was what were the strategies, what were the tactics,
What were the elements that needed to be in place
to get there? If I'm here, I'm going to study
(11:56):
the two or three or nine to see how they
got there, and then I figure out how, based on
my own principles, beliefs, skill sets, what I will employ
to get there. So here's an example. People have performance evaluations.
When you work in an environment, you get a performance
(12:17):
evaluation every year eighteen months or so. I always thought
that was interesting, but I thought the system should be changed.
And this is while I was an employee. My strategy
was I would quarterly at least go to my immediate
supervisor and ask how am I doing right? I'd say,
(12:38):
you know, Bill, you got two minutes, sure you know,
so how am I doing? And let's say Bill is
a little thrown because whoever asks how am I doing right?
But I'm truly wanting to hear through your lens, how
you see my abilities? How you see my performance? Bill
(12:59):
might say, oh, well, you know, well, you're doing pretty well,
but you know you could have some improvement in xyz.
Oh okay, so let me just see if I can,
if I can explain what I think you just told
me I need to improve on.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah, so I would do that. Okay, great.
Speaker 5 (13:15):
Can I check back in with you in a few months,
say I'm doing sure? Of course, because it hasn't been
scary to Bill. I did not put Bill on the
spot and go yeah, but that's not my fault. I
didn't do any of that. I listened to what Bill
said I needed. Bill, let me work on that the
next quarter. Bill, you got five minutes, show us up.
(13:35):
I just want to know, are you seeing any improvement?
Can you tell me how you think I'm doing? Now?
What That meant is that every quarter I am checking
in with Bill. Bill is telling me performance okay, you know,
improvements needed, and I'm acting on those. My annual performance
(13:56):
evaluation was never spent on looking back the past year.
Your performance evaluation may have been with how you've done
in the past year. I've been getting feedback all year.
My performance evaluation is spent on, so what do you
see as the next step for me? Oh? Now, Bill
(14:17):
may not have given a lot of thought to that,
but I've given a lot of thought to it, so
that my thirty forty minutes spent where what I'm supposed
to be hearing. If I'm like everybody else, is the good,
the bad, the ugly. We've already done that. We are
not talking about that anymore. What we're talking about is now,
(14:37):
tell me what you see as my future. Bill says,
whatever it is, and then I ask, oh, so how
would you get there? And Bill begins to share his thoughts.
I don't necessarily have to go along with those, but
I'm at least hearing. And then what I ask is,
so in the world of you know, hierarchy, like what
(15:01):
comes along with whatever that next job is? You know, like,
what's the compensation range. You know, do you get stock options,
do you get blah blah blah, And then Bill begins
to tell me whatever, what I've just learned is how
you get into the club. I've done that for damn
near my entire career. Right, So what happens is Bill
(15:23):
becomes the person who doesn't think of Paula as the scary,
angry black woman. Bill's even given me critique, and I've
accepted it.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
I might push.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Back, Well, Bill, how about if I tell you that
I did it da da da da da. Well, you
know that's a way of doing it. Okay, So maybe
my way was different, but it could have worked.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
The other strategy I had was you can't make a
decision if you're not present. I never lived more than
thirty minutes away from where I worked ever living in
New York. I'm not going to live in New Jersey.
I'm not living out on Long Island. I lived in Harlem,
(16:05):
and if I needed to get to work quickly, I
could hail a gypsy cab and I'd be at thirty
Rock in fifteen minutes in the middle of the night,
which is what happened, right, So there wasn't an experience,
for example, where I was actually having a free JB party.
James Brown had beens. I love James Brown, right, I
love so we had our brown Son in Harlem. I
had about one hundred fifty people at my house for
(16:27):
a free JB party and we're, you know, rocking in
gym and my pager goes.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Off and I'm like, it's two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Why is my pager going off? The pager went off
because the managing editor paged me. Why because I was
a fifteen minute ride away from thirty Rock. Paula, there's
a fire in the Bronx. They said more than fifty
people were trapped and they're dead.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Who is this? This is Mike. What did you just say?
Speaker 5 (16:57):
Now, I've been dancing and drinking all night. Paula, there's
a fire in the Bronx at a place called Happy Land.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Got it.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
I'll be right there. He wasn't there, He'd gotten from
the police scanner. I'm the closest manager who lives to
thirty Rock in I live in Harlem. I stand up
and say, the crowd y'all keep partying. I gotta go
to work, and they're like, what I gotta go to work.
I got to work, and within side of an hour,
(17:26):
I had like five crews in the Bronx. Right we
went on the air at like five AM. I called
anchors in, we're cutting into programming. It turned out that
eighty eight people died in that fire. So from the
early days of the history of New York when the
shirtwaist factory fire, this was the largest number of people
(17:47):
who had ever died in a fire. And this was
in modern day times. So what did that mean? I
set up the coverage that was not my job, but
the person whose job it was lived farther or away.
Right when I worked here at NBC four, I lived
within walking distance of the studios in Burbank. I strategically
(18:10):
make it so that, oh there's something going on, I'm
gonna get there and I'm gonna be in charge. I'm
gonna set it up, even though it's not my job,
and even though it's the boss's job to do XYZ.
That's a strategy because my strategy is become necessary. So
how did I become known inside of the company? Oh, All,
Hell's break and loose.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Call Paula.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If we helped you
make your money move. Please share it with your community,
Subscribe and leave us a review on iHeartRadio and Apple podcasts.
Follow us on social media at Greenwood and visit us
at Gogreenwood dot com for more financial tips and remember,
money Movers. If this were easy, everyone would do it.
So take the lessons you've learned from this episode and
(18:56):
apply it to your life until next time. Money Moves
is an iHeart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced
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Make sure to tune in Monday, Wednesday and Friday and
subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood, so
(19:17):
that you too can have the keys to financial freedom
you so rightly deserve
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