November 5, 2020 • 43 mins
What’s Her Story with Sam & Amy sits down with Sallie Krawcheck, Wall Street icon and Founder of Ellevest, a financial company for women. Sallie explains why being fired on the front page of Wall Street Journal was a good thing, reveals the number one investing mistake women make, and tells countless stories of her time at the forefront of the fight for women’s financial equality.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi. I'm Sam Atis and I'm Amy Nelson, and this
is what's her story with Sam and Amy. Today we
will introduce you to Sally Crowcheck. She was the top
woman on Wall Street. She's now an entrepreneur, and she
has done so much for women in general, and she's
just a really inspirational leader who has had an impact
on my life and Amy, I think yours as well.
(00:25):
She definitely has. She's someone I've known of for decades
and Sam, this is actually the first time I've ever
gotten to talk to her, so I feel really lucky.
And the thing I love about this episode is that
we focus on a topic that is near and dear
to our hearts, and that is money. Women and money.
It is I I really hope Amy that eventually people
go out to girls dinners and instead of just talking
about the men in their life, you know, or their romance,
(00:47):
they talk about their relationship with money, because it's the
longest relationship they're going to have in their lives. I agree.
And one thing I really love that we touch on
is that we should celebrate how much money we make
and how much money we want to make. Used to
feel bad talking about it sometimes, but I want to
make a lot of money. Like it's a big motivator
for me. And it's funny because when you say I
want to make a lot of money, you know, as
(01:09):
especially as a woman, you're going to turn off so
many people in the room. And one of the things
I loved about this interview and was kind of surprised by,
was at the end Sally's response to do you care
about being liked? And I think as women, so often
a lot of our motivation for how we behave or
how we manage people is a concern about being liked.
(01:31):
I agree. It's definitely something that's impacted me in my life.
And it's interesting because the further I've gotten into my years,
and actually also the further I've gotten into building my
own company, I realized it's impossible for everyone to like me,
and I've just given up on it. I once heart
of statistic that when you walk into a room, people
will like you and ten percent will hate you no
matter who you are, and there's something heartening about that
(01:52):
and knowing that there's actually no way for everyone to
like you, so it's something you probably shouldn't chase. Let's
hear what Sally has to say. I was sharing with Amy.
The last time I interviewed you was a few years ago.
You had one of the best answers ever on how
to deal with getting fired. So I thought we'd start
(02:14):
at the low points. Let's go up into the right.
I say, well, I just remember you saying that the
feeling of opening the Wall Street Journal and having your
name on the front page. Can you take us back there?
So I can take you back there? And then actually,
Sam had happened twice, so I can take you back
(02:36):
there twice. And you know, my view in life is
you can do one of two things when you're fired
on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. One
is to say this is so humiliating and embarrassing and
awful and poor me. And the other is to say
score front page of the Wall Street Journal, and that
(02:56):
if you had told me when I was a little
girl growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, second to last
one chosen for all the sports teams, that if you
had told me that anything, I would do much less
getting fired would be anywhere on the Wall Street Journal,
much less on the front page. I would have done
backflips down the hallway. I think it's basically means of recognizing,
(03:19):
you know, my privilege, you know, to have had the
opportunity to do something that that would get you that
kind of recognition. That's obviously the perspective of and years later.
But at that time, what did it feel like? It hurt?
It was? It was embarrassing. I drank a lot to
(03:41):
drive coming home from being fired, and um my husband saying,
would you like me to order some dinner? I'm like,
I don't need any solid food. I need liquid sustenance.
But you know, Sam, I just never wallowed in it.
Of course, it hurts, and and even today I can
sort of poke around at it emotionally and it hurts.
(04:04):
Just like when my ex husband had an affair with
my ex friend. I can poke around. That happened in
my twenties, but I can poke at it and it hurts.
But you know, one thing, I recognized that there were
going to be other opportunities to be successful. And there
are many opportunities in any given day. I just don't
see many of them. They just wing, you know, go
(04:26):
right past me and I don't see them and take
advantage of them. But that success might look like something
that was different, But by definition I was not supposed
to be in that job. By definition, if you're being fired,
you're not supposed to be in that job. And maybe
your fault and maybe somebody else's fault, but by definition,
was leaving a bad situation and opening up opportunities to
(04:48):
do other better things. You just mentioned success. You have
done so many different things. What does success mean to you?
At one stage, it meant money. You know, I grew
up in a pretty modest, middle class household in which
six of us shared a bathroom without a lock, and
so there was a period of time when I wanted
(05:08):
to earn money so that I could have my own
apartment and frankly, my own bathroom. And then there have
been times, frankly when it was about being sort of
famous where you know, I grew up I wanted to
be an actress. And I know we're not supposed to
admit that. I know that in our society, the drive
for fame is like the shameful thing. But there was
a period of time when I was a research annelist,
(05:29):
when I wanted everybody to know I was the best
research annelist in my industry. At this point, Amy, it's
it's about mission, it's about impact, It's about purpose. It's
about taking the decades of experience that only I have
and is a woman only I have, and using that
to found Lavest with a mission to get more money
(05:50):
in the hands of women. That's how we measure our success.
So let's talk about that mission. That's a mission that
my company is also focused on, Amy and I are
so passionate about it. How do you think about women
and money today? Yeah, differently from most. Um. So today,
if you say the word money to a man, the
(06:13):
words that come into his head he said, quick money
and use all power, strength and dependence. To a woman,
you say money and she said, oh yeah yeah. Loneliness isolation, uncertainty.
And we have received messages since childhood that have told
us money is not for you. Money is tacky. Money
(06:34):
is You're not good at it. You're not that good
at math, you're not that good at coding for example,
you're not that good at investing. Um, you're frivolous when
it comes to money, so you're not very good at it.
You spend it on silly, silly, silly things like fashion
and Latte's and shoes and whatever. Um. And as a result,
(06:56):
you know, we have internalized these messages and think, you know,
we don't talk about our salaries. There's no amount of
money we make that we don't feel ashamed of. It's
either too much and my friends they work hard too.
I feel so embarrassed for, you know, so weird, or
I don't make enough. My parents spent so much money
on college, so we have this shame around money. It's
(07:16):
sort of you know, say, it's a little bit like
when I was in middle school and being sporty, being
athletic was sort of yuck. You know, you want to
be a cheerleader. You didn't want to be athletic. That
didn't get you a date. We've still got that for money,
even amongst young women, that it's still acceptable and sort
of cute for a woman to be bad with money.
(07:37):
I'd love to say if the men got together two
years ago and said how do we keep women from
having full power, this is what they would have done.
They would have made being bad with money cute, and
they would have made looking for money and trying to
make more money an unattractive, feminine, you know feminine thing. Now,
I mean, you've talked about your first marriage and how
(07:57):
one of the reasons that broke up. Was money that
you're your first husband's career was plateauing, yours was exceeding
and you were making more money. Did you talk about
money with your first husband. No, that would have been
so tacky. And by the way, I grew up in
the South as well, we did what so many couples
at the time, and I feared too many couples today do,
which is he took care of the money, the investing,
the saving, the big expenses. The money that I took
(08:21):
care of was more the budgeting and then the social life.
I was in charge of getting us together with our
couple of friends. So he was sort of the CFO,
chief financial officer of the household, and I was sort of,
you know, the treasurer, sort of the in and out
of money. So when you know, I discovered that he
was having an affair at a point when I was gosh,
I don't know how to trust you, and he was
(08:42):
telling me there's just not that much money, I'm like,
how do I even trust that? And then what's really
interesting about this is it, first of all of women
manage their money on their own at some point in
their lives. Eight percent of us die single when we
outsource that money to our partner, our spouse, and important
person or life. When it comes back to us, typically
when we're experiencing grief, grief from a divorce or grief
(09:06):
from a death. When it comes back to us, of
us have a negative surprise. And so that for me
it was a moment of I can't let this happen
to me again, and I wanted to not happen to
as many other women as I possibly can help. What
is elves exactly? Of our people who are listening and
don't know and tell us what kind of dent you're
(09:26):
making in the women in money space. So it's interesting.
I'm still trying to figure out how to describe Elves.
So if we've been here a few months ago, I
would have said it's a digital first investing platform for women.
But during the pandemic, we got so much demand for
women for all things money saving spending. They want to
(09:46):
make more money at work, they're looking for coaching, they're
looking for opportunities to learn. So we added a whole
bunch of new capabilities and let me try this on you.
I'm starting to describe elves as the first real fin
actual wellness company built by women for women, where we've
got the products that can be the solution, starting with
(10:07):
the only gender where investing algorithm and you know, investment
approach that exist with the savings as well, but also
with the education and spanning career, making more money, earning
more money into how to save more and grow more.
You know, I think we're unique in this that for
so many it's either products or education. You know, it's
(10:28):
either what to do at work or what to do
with the money when you have it. I think we're
really the first that really surrounds a woman or one
of our allies when it comes to money in an
ideal world. How does someone use LMS? So they go
onto the platform and what are all of the things
(10:48):
they're using, Well, they can invest with us, you know. Again,
the only gender aware retirement offering. Why does that matter? Well,
doesn't matter that much if you're a man, because you
typically you know, the algorithm will say you earn more
and you die sooner. Matters tremendously if you're a woman,
because unfortunately you earn less, your salary peaks sooner and
(11:10):
you die later. So if you're not gender aware, then
you could run out of money, so you can use it,
you know, to invest with us for retirement or to
buy a home, or for a trip around the world
when we're all allowed to do that again, you know,
or save with us, spend with us. It really works
to take care of the range of money issues. And look,
you know, Sam, I get it. I get it. While
(11:32):
we were being taught as young girls that we're not
really good with money, we were taught that for women
was inferior and junior varsity. I get that. Some of
the listeners like, oh, I don't need something for women
money gender neutral. I want the varsity version. I want
the version for men. But just as Bumble, you know,
Whitney Wolf at Bumble discovered that women want dating sites
(11:55):
where they can make the first move, or Jen Hyman
discovered that women actually want to rent clothes as opposed
to buy all of them. There are problems that women
have that existing solutions, existing men were not solving. We
think all of s Two is the first that said
you know what you know on investing, that trading bitcoin,
(12:15):
frantic bylow, try to sell high watch the NBC. It's
just women are staying away in droves and it's costing
us hundreds of thousands, for some women millions of dollars
over the course of their lives. What is one piece
of investment advice you would give someone, So, first of all,
I would say, the investing mistakes that you read about
investing mistakes people make are investing mistakes men make. The
(12:39):
overwhelming mistake women make and investing is not doing it.
That is the overwhelming mistake that we keep our money
in the bank and that we therefore lose the power
of compounding. Compounding is when you invest your money and
you're on a return, and then you are in a
return on the return plus the money. Then you're in
a return on the return on the return on the return.
But etcetera. And we tend to wait to invest until
(13:01):
we feel like we can get an A plus in
our PhD in advanced investing, whereas the guys were like,
let's go and they get the benefit of investing. And
so some percent out of every paycheck, one percent, ten percent,
whatever you can afford to do, and it will, you know, historically,
will grow over time. One of the things that I've
always admired about you through the years is that you
(13:23):
have almost a tireless strength and optimism for a space
that can be very defeating. I know even this morning,
I was at a board meeting where I was the
only woman using my voice about the fact that they're
all white men on the stage and some days I'm
just exhausted by it. How do you not get down?
(13:44):
How do you just keep on going? Well? I do
get down, um, And I'm gonna be honest with you.
I've walked around. I was talking to my daughter last night,
who's you know, in her early twenties and her first job,
and we're both talking about how we're walking around with
in my case of pit in my stomach and in
her case of pit in her chest, and how do
we work around the pit? How do we breathe into
(14:07):
the pit? What are we doing to get rid of
the pit? The pit always comes back, So for both
of us, it's exercise. For both of us. I'm not
very good at meditating, so it's not I'm doing it
and there is no pain. We're doing it despite the pain.
And it's a recognition that every day above ground is
a gift. You know, it's not guaranteed, it's not promised,
(14:28):
and I believe you make as much impact as you
can in this time on earth, and then I think
it's dark for a really long time, and so how
do you make that impact and find that joy? We
sort of have fun with the fight, and I think
for me to the pit sort of goes away when
I'm active and moving. And it's further a recognition of
the privilege. I've been given a lot of gifts. I
(14:50):
got to use them, and particularly me Sam, because there's
so very few women who made it to senior levels
on Wall Street, so very few, and many of you
have have gone to do I had gone to do board,
and that's amazing. But when I saw that women don't
have nearly as much money as men do, that this
gender investing gap can cost women more than the pay gap.
(15:11):
That the pay gap is moving in the right direction.
The wealth gap, how much money we keep is moving
in the wrong direction. The pay gaps eighty two cents
to a man's dollar. The freaking wealth gap how much
we keep is thirty two cents to a man's dollar.
I see my background, and I see the ability to
do something about it. I don't do something about it.
How could I live with myself? I couldn't. What is
(15:31):
that pit? I just identify what is causing the pit
for you and for your daughter. We were talking about it.
We don't know because I was talking. We were I
was talking. I went to see someone years ago about
it and I was like, I have this pit and
she's like, well, what do you What do you think
it is? And I'm like, I don't know. It's just
this pit of anxiety. And she's like, well, no, what
do you really think it is. I'm like, I don't know,
(15:52):
and she and the woman and my daughter were laughing
so hard. The woman said, you're you're scared of death
and I was like, I know, I'm pretty sure that's
not it. She's like, you're scared to death. And I'm like, no,
I'm pretty sure I'm not scared of death. So I
don't know. You know, I think it's just a long
line of anxious people. My mother's anxious. I think it's
just something we have and we live with. How do
(16:12):
you operate with it? Bravery is not the absence of fear.
It's moving forward when you have fear. And for me,
it's not I don't have the pit. I've got the
pit I go anyway. Speaking about Wall Street and your
work on Wall Street, Sally, I was a financial services
litigator before I started my company, and so I worked
on Wall Street for k Hill Gordon and during the
(16:32):
financial crisis, which was a fascinating experience, like drinking from
a fire hose, and I was, I think, almost always
the only woman in the room. And I imagined that
was your experience. You were in Wall Street for years,
long before I was, and just breaking new ground. I
read in an interview where you said there was nothing
they could do to me at Solomon Brothers in the
nineteen eighties. That was worse than the seventh grade. So
I think there's more there to talk about your childhood
(16:54):
in South Carolina. But what did they do to you
in the nineties and Solomon Brothers, I mean, what was
it like being the only woman? It was warfare and
it wasn't even hidden at the time. It wasn't even hidden.
It was xerox copies of male genitalia left on my
desk every day, just like whoa, and just we're gonna
(17:15):
throw so much at you. We're gonna make you work
until three o'clock in the morning. Right, We're gonna work
till three and then we're gonna go to a new
you know, to a titty bar and leave you out,
and then we're gonna play golf. And I just remember,
like I just they're not going to get rid of me.
That is not going to happen. But I've got to
find a way to something somewhat because I can't. I
(17:35):
don't know how to play this game right. I don't
know how to take credit when I should take credit.
I don't how to take credit for other people's work.
And so was throw it at me. And I'm going
to find a way on Wall Street, not with you people,
to make it work. And I found my way to research,
which at least you could sort of take a breath.
And I found my way to a company's hand for
(17:56):
Bernstein that celebrated diversity. I used to all off saland
of of misfit toys. But ayman, I'll tell you something
else I learned there that has really stayed with me,
which is you hear so much about the impostor syndrome
and then people say to me, do you have the
impostor cinema? Like, no, I don't. I do not. I
do not have the impostor SYNDROMEA. And it's because I
(18:17):
think I was there with those those guys who were
so aggressive, so hard charging, running so many major companies today,
and I'm like, you're you. You might be smarter than me,
but you're not that much smarter than me. And you're
not going to outwork me either, And so early on
I said, I deserve as much of a seat at
the table as anybody does. I'll flip it a little bit.
(18:40):
The rawness of it. You know, you've got a little
bit more mature. The rawness of it was gone. I
gotta be honest. There was many times that being the
only woman in the room or one of few, was
as much of a benefit as a detriment, because you
couldn't forget me. You might not like me, but you
couldn't forget me. And the combination of okay, everybody's to
remember who I am, and secondly, where's the power? And
(19:04):
on Wall Street, the power was having the numbers and
Corporate America's having a pen l But it was I've
got the numbers, and if you want to know the numbers,
you've got to come to me. So I became a
chief financial officer. So the center, you know, the center
of the numbers, at the center of the number industry
was my means of sort of growing my my power.
One of the conversations in my life that I'm sure
(19:26):
you don't remember, but it's had a big impact on me.
As I was sitting in your office years ago and
you looked at me, and I had just come out
with my last book, and I was so excited about it.
And he said, that's great that you have a new
but but how are you making money? You just raised
a ton of money. Talk about the experience of raising
that money. What was that like for you? Yeah, you know,
(19:48):
it was the best of times. It was the worst
of times. I've raised a few different rounds of venture
capital money for Labast and look, I'd say the first
round was actually sort of easy. It was, you know,
people who I had worked I didn't focus on sand
Hill Road, Silicon Valley. It was, hey, I need X
millions of dollars to really start to tackle the issue
(20:10):
of why women aren't investing as much, aren't as you know,
don't have their finances and as good order as men do.
And so I went to people I've worked with in
the past and pretty easily raise the money. See the friends,
the colleagues and so on, and that's you know. I
was thrilled to be able to do it, and they
said to me, I don't know if you can solve
this problem, but we know you're going after a big problem,
(20:33):
and we know you know you won't give up. It
was the other rounds that got more challenging. When it
did get a little bit more, let me get you know,
now we're raising enough money that we need to get
to some more traditional venture capitalist it was no fun.
You could just sort of feel that you don't look
like what I'm used to thinking about for an entrepreneur.
One you're a different gender. Second, you're not twenty six,
(20:57):
and nobody says it, but you can, you know, you
can sort of feel it. And then you could feel
the different ways that the these I don't want to
say sexism, but sexism, the inherent biases would come out.
For example, almost to every meeting, you'd be sitting there
and someone would say, oh, lavast working with women, engaging
women with their money, and blah blah blah blah blah.
(21:19):
What if a competitor gets in and you're like, okay,
so let's be clear that there are dozens and dozens
and dozens and dozens of multibillion dollar investing firms, wealth
management firms, asset management firms are serving mostly men, where
I've just shown you that the percent of men users
is like seventy five, but half the population. With ten
(21:42):
trillion dollars in festival assets, there can only be one
of us. Nobody meant it, but just that question, you're right, okay,
all right, you can only have one for women. And
it got to the point where with the venture capitalist,
I said, I've recognized I would go in. I'd say,
how do you make your invest steam decisions? And if
they said, oh, well, one of us champions it or
(22:04):
two of us champions, I'm like, all right, let's meet.
But if it was we have to have consensus, I'm like,
I'm not gonna waste your time. I can convince you
in a meeting. I can get through your inherent biases
and say, hey, it's half the population blah blah da
da da da da. But if you get into that meeting,
and it's probably if complexion is that of the traditional
venture capital industry, it's all guys or one woman in
(22:26):
a more typically in a more junior role at most
of these firms, I can't equip you enough to go
in and convince your entire set of partners. So let
me just not waste your time or mine. That is
incredible advice. By the way, I've never heard anyone say that.
Isn't that amazing? I would say, Sally, I've raised thirty million,
and I would say I wish I had heard that
advice three years ago, because it is spot on and
(22:48):
exactly right. Yeah, you can. I can convince anybody in
a meeting because the business case is so strong. I
can't equip you to convince everybody else. But the problem
is it's hard to say no to a meeting. Takes
intestinal fortitude to be like, my time is valuable. I'm
not going to waste your time or mine on this.
This is something Sam and I talked about a lot,
and I think it's important to talk about with you.
(23:08):
Since you've raised so much money, how many pitches will
you do to close? Say, like if you were raising
a ten million dollar rounds, how many pitches do you
think you'll do? I can't even I think most people
have no idea. It's it's tens and tens and tens,
and it is you know, it is so many nose
along the way for so many different reasons where they're
(23:29):
not telling you the real reason. Do you remember where
you were the first time you got a term sheet? Yeah,
in the mouse infested will we work or what we work?
Want to be that we're in sure, I'll never forget it.
The other thing that I don't love is how we
then portray it, because it's sort of a game you
(23:51):
have to play. Oh my gosh, we were oversubscribed and
oh my gosh, and I managed to do this and
heals dancing backwards and whatever. And I think one of
the things that hit MO when we raised our last
round is that we had an annotated press release and
it was like, we're announcing we're raising this much money,
and we had little pop ups, and the pops ups
were I think, I feel like I ran a marathon.
I vomited and I broke my leg in the last mile.
(24:12):
Like none of this was cute and fun. This was
horrible and no fun at all, and we we got
it past the finish line. I would describe it as
like the hardest, longest sales process you would ever go through,
because it is a sales process in a way. It's
like spreadsheets and calls and meetings, and we had one
where one of the investors who was going to invest
(24:32):
a sizeable portion last rount the last minute, literally the
last minute, like literally the docs were due at four
and at three forty seven they called and said, we're
not going to invest because we see this risk here.
And I'm like, oh, that risk that you know, that's
we let me tell you how Wed mitigated. Let me like,
we're not investing. And I ended up Amy sending his boss,
who I had met with, an email over the weekend saying, look,
(24:56):
I'm just going to call it. This is gendered that
you have spent all this time on these risks that
are infinitesimal. Let me tell you about the upside. And
by the way, here's a piece of research I'm linking
to that says that when venture capital investors invest in men,
two thirds of their questions are about the upside, for
women two thirds about the downside. And when you focus
(25:17):
on the downside, you don't make the investment. And so
here's this risk you've zeroed in on. We've mitigated it.
The senior guy came back and he's like, you're right,
and they invested in us, Well, you are right. Like
the science shows that you are right. It's very clear,
and so that's amazing that you did that. I think
it takes it takes a lot of curs. My co
founder was like, you don't do that, you know, Like
(25:38):
I'm like, what's my down side? They're going to invest zero.
What are they gonna do, like make me give them money?
Like I have no, that's right, But I think that
fear of speaking up happens all the time. I'm in
the middle of finishing my seed ground right now, so
this conversation is actually giving me hives. It's like kind
of having triggers everywhere. But with my Angel round, I
had sent out all the ducks. I was done. I
(25:59):
was like celebrating basically, and then this one guy called
me who was kind of the lead, and he's like,
you know, I'm thinking about it, and you have a
lot of people in your life counting on you, which
was code for you have three children, and how are
you going to handle this? And he ended up you know,
I sent him all these extra things he wanted, and
(26:20):
I thought if I was a guy with three kids,
he'd say, oh good, she has so much response. He's
so much responsibly. He's going to make this kind of
motiv I had to replace him, and I replaced him
with all women, people of color. But like it was
so in the end it ended up being great. But
these things scarre you. I mean, it's definitely it's rough.
Nobody tells you right, Nobody tells you. And you also
(26:47):
do have to come up with a plan of how
to respond. Like I remember in a pitch once, I
had just had my third daughter, she was like three
months old, and great pitch was our second meeting and
the investor said, I love your business. You've got a
strong model, you have amazing attraction. But I just have
one more question. Do you think that you're capable of
doing this? You've got three kids once a baby. Are
you up for this? And at that moment in time,
(27:09):
I was like, you know what, Sally, I mean to
your point, I was like, what do I have to lose?
And I said, the fact that I built this company
with three babies while pregnant means I can do anything.
And I just left it there. You didn't invest, But
I'm glad I said it, and I will always say that. Sally.
Let's talk about your life as a working mom. You
were obviously an incredible success while you were raising kids
(27:29):
at home. What was that like? So how did you
divide and conquer with your husband? Well, yeah, I mean
you have to have a great partner. I think or
makes it a lot easier if you have a great partner.
And I didn't in my first marriage, and I do
in what I hope is my last marriage. And there
was I mean, look, we we had all the I'm
going I'm going to be in l A on these dates.
(27:50):
You can't travel right, and happily we were. We both
had the flexibility or we can say, okay, well then
I'm got to go to Hong Kong. And so our
rule was we had a couple of rules. One was,
but there'd be a parent eage event. We just wouldn't
guarantee which parent. We took turns waking up in the
middle of the night when they screamed mommy, that meant
parent of any gender. And we just tried to be
kind to each other. And you know my other rule.
(28:12):
And people don't like it when I say this. I
don't know why this triggers people. But my role was
that I was trying to be excellent at work. Um,
not every day, in every single thing. But I really
wanted to have a big career and that my as
a mom. I was shooting for mediocre right there, middle
of the road. I wasn't I wasn't going to be
the best home although I make cookies all the time,
(28:34):
but I wasn't going to be the best home baky
ist mom around. But I wasn't gonna hit them right there.
How would your grown kids rank you as a mom?
In hindsight? You'd have to ask them. I think you know,
we can do. You know, we've we've all got stuff.
But here's what I'll tell you. I love them with
every fiber of my being. They love their parents with you.
(28:57):
They probably have some fibers left over because they're young.
But they're both hard workers, and they're both successful. I mean,
they're both getting it done in their work. And they
are raging feminists, both of them. So when I look
and say, okay, you know, I'm glad, I'm glad I've
shot for the middle of the road because they've turned
I can tell you now they've turned out. Okay, I
(29:18):
now know. I know because they're old enough, we have
a lot of preconceived notions about motherhood. I think before
we become mothers, and you did quit. You quit Wall
Street when you're pregnant. Yea, Why because I didn't think
I could do the job and be a mom and
I felt sick and I felt tired, and I grown
up in the South and you stayed home with your kids.
And it was only when I realized that that pit
that we talked about at the beginning of my stomach
(29:40):
was overtaking me and that it just wasn't good for
any of us. For me to be taking the excess
energy I have, of which there is so much, and
pouring it all into my son. I think they've benefited
because they've both had You know, my son was unemployed
for a little bit of time, and rather than me
pouring everything into it, it was like, let's give him
(30:01):
some space to figure this out, as opposed to the
I gotta you know, my ego is here with you.
What are your kids doing today? I am very proud
of them. My son is a writer for John Oliver's
Last Week Tonight, and my daughter works at Adelman Intelligence
as a research analyst there. I'm one proud mom. There
were a lot of your peers who opted out of
(30:23):
the workforce. What is their life like today now that
the kids are out of the house, in comparison to
your yeah, I look, I think it. There's a moment
of if you define yourself in a way and turn
the page on that chapter, what's your purpose? What are
you you driving for? And so I went through a
period when all of our kids went to college, when
(30:44):
I was hearing from my friends from college and business
school of well can I get back in? And the
answer is it's really tough. You're trying to go to
a traditional corporate from working in the home for so
many years. That is a tough transition to make, particularly now,
by the way, with a pandemic and so many folks
who are unemployed. And one of the things I've realized,
and Sam, I'm just going to take this in a
(31:05):
different direction, one of the things I've realized in my
mature age is how much of my career was luck.
I have been to the fortune most powerful women's conference.
I have been there year after year. I have answered
all the questions about how I was successful. I have
talked about my resilience and my grit and my growth
mindset and not giving up. And I have got the
(31:27):
spiel down and I recognize now that just as I
was as smart as the guys at Solomon Brothers in
eight whatever, so so many of my friends, my women
friends who left the workforce, were as smart as me,
and as hard working and as gritty and as determined
(31:47):
and as whatever. So I don't know if I've shared
with you my baby turtle analogy, but again, I grew
up in the South, and so down south, um, one
night a mother turtle will emerge from the ocean, and
she will go up into the dunes and up into
the wild grasses, and she'll lay her eggs, and she'll leave.
And some time passes, and then one night all the
(32:07):
baby turtles hatch and they run for the ocean, and
they work hard, and they're gritty, and they're determined, and
they swerve and they go fast, but the seagulls are
pecking at them. And they pack and they pack, and
they pack and they pack, and this one flies away
with this baby turtle, and this one flies away with
this baby turtle, and this one and some of the
baby turtles make it to the water, and some of
the baby turtles are murdered as babies. The analogy here
(32:30):
is my business school female women classmates and our baby turtles,
and some of us made it, and others worked for
Matt Lur and others worked for Harvey Weinstein, and others
worked for the creepy dude at x y Z Wall
Street firm. Even more worked for what I call Todd,
and Todd is a super nice white dude, two daughter's wife,
(32:52):
lovely talk, so you know, goes to the unconscious biased training,
goes to the women's diversity group cocktail party, talks a
big talk. He's middle manager. He promotes one person a year.
He promoted Jim this year, next year he promotes Steve.
And all of a sudden, you're about five years in
and this woke dude who says the right thing just
(33:13):
never promotes anybody but himself. And he doesn't mean it.
It's unconscious bias. He just likes these other people better
than he likes you. And what really happened is that, yes,
I was smart and driven a bupa. I was a
baby turtle who made it to the water. And I
know too many of my friends who just didn't make
it because they worked for the wrong person. That is
the most oppressing analogy I've heard. I might just start
(33:37):
crying at this point. But our thanks progressing. I mean,
are things are changing? Isn't matter if there anything good?
Yes and no. So you you let's look at different places, right.
So the gender pay gap is slowly moving in the
right direction. If you're a white woman, it's decades away
from closing. If you're a black woman, it's a hundred
plus years away from closing. If you're Latin next woman,
it's two hundred plus years away from closing. So it's
(33:58):
getting a bit better. We also have the law of
small numbers where oh, look, we have the most female
CEOs of fortune companies. Ever, it's like not that many, right,
and so we do that whole thing. I'm looking forward
to day when it's just like a like we don't
even talk about it, it it happens. The difference is that
it is so much less expensive to start a business
today than it was twenty years ago. Not easy, not easy.
(34:21):
But if you wanted to start a business twenty years ago,
what you have to like open a plant and hire
full time people, raise the money to go on ABC,
NBC or CBS to advertise. Today you can start a
business in your kitchen if you've got the right idea.
If you've got the right idea and get the idea out,
doesn't mean it's easy, but there are more options for
(34:43):
people today than there were some number of years ago.
By the way, we talk about raising venture money, very
small percent of companies raise venture money. It's mostly bootstraped.
So that's my little bit of hope that the right
idea can be successful. I just wanted to ask you
about being liked. So you talked in the beginning about
(35:03):
being picked last for a team. How important is it
to you to be liked me? Not at all. I
don't care. So what I have experienced in my life
is what the research tells us, which is that when
I have been successful, it's been shocking. What a bit
I apparently turned into that I would. I'm just I'm
in the same person since I was fifteen. But when
I was the CFO city, the nasty articles written about
(35:26):
me and people cheering for me to be unsuccessful. When
I was running Meryl, I remember there was an article
that I was sitting on the top floor of a
skyscraper with diamonds, you know, in a white dress, black time.
I'm like, my god, it was like a tweed knockoff.
And a cubic zirconium. And then when I've been down,
I've been to all of a sudden, this really likable person.
(35:47):
So I don't care. What I'm focused on is helping
women advance financially economically. I don't care if you like
me or not. You know, that's what my mission is,
not to win a mislikable popularity contest. Who are your friends?
It was actually nice is that I have women friends
now that when I was working so hard on Wall
(36:09):
Street for so many years, I mean, and the guys
that I got along, but there just wasn't the time
with the kids, et cetera. With my kids now launched,
you know, I've got a group of women, mostly women
I would say, that have been through the wars. There's
some number of us who were all of a certain age,
and we've all got the scars, and we're all incredibly
supportive of each other. What is your morning routine? Wake
(36:36):
up cat, the cat and have coffee as quickly as possible.
What book are you reading? I'm actually reading. I read
many simultaneous books all at once. I'm reading and I
never know the titles anymore because they're all on my
Kindle I'm reading sort of the series of Fortunate Events
about how we all got here in the Big Luck,
(36:56):
and I'm reading a bunch of ton of French books
as well. Love a murder Mystery. I think that's it.
And I have several TV shows obviously, what are they? Well,
I'm making my way through Ship's Creek. Everybody tells me
it's amazing. I haven't gotten to the amazing part yet.
Oh if you don't think it's amazing yet, you should stop.
I get better. It's the same the whole didn't. It
didn't do it for me, Sallysworth. So our final question
(37:21):
is going to be asked by lu Burns, who in
every episode shares the male perspective, and Lou has been listening.
You three are funny, oh man, But actually, this this round,
I have a question for all three of you, maybe
centered around one of the last comments that you made, Sally,
(37:41):
because Amy asked, who are your friends? And you're like
that you actually have girlfriends, and growing up and being
an adult, I started to see that kind of divide
where women have more men friends and they say, I
don't get along with other women. I'm not in the
financial industry, but I started to see that as a norm,
and I'm being a man, I don't understand it because
(38:01):
I'm a friendly, outgoing, happy, go lucky person. If you
walk to share with me the things that kind of
create that friction between women and lms, do you, guys,
cultivate a community where women are really working with other
women total support of each other. Could you all touch
on that topic. I love that question. So first of all,
(38:22):
you're gonna get me motoring again. When I was in
big corporations, I didn't have a lot of female friends
at the time. I would have told you it was
because there weren't a lot of other senior women. Right now,
I would tell you that I got brainwashed, as did
by entire generation of women senior executives. Whether we were
competing with each other to get that seat at the table.
(38:44):
I wasn't competing with Joe or Jim or Bob. I
was competing with Susie because there was one seat at
the table. There wasn't knives out, but it definitely was
a let me just side by you a little bit.
And we were taught that, and I'd say men learned
quite the opposite. Men learned that there's power in numbers.
And there's power in the pack, and they promote each other,
they talk each other up, they put each other on
(39:04):
the board, they do business together. And we were sort
of taught that success as an individual sport all these
books that are published about how you can be successful,
and we sort of internalized it, and we're making the
journey on our own, whereas the guys were making the
journey together. And what I love about this stage of
my life, and I love about being friends with folks
like Sam and Amy, is that we actually recognize that
(39:26):
our success not only doesn't it take away from another woman,
it adds, and that particularly for those of us who
are raising outside venture money, for example, it's better if
more women are raising more money because then people are like, oh, yeah,
I've got seven other examples as opposed to know examples.
And so what is a revelation of this stage of
my career is that we've gone from feeling being told
(39:50):
we should compete, in feeling like we have to compete,
to this openness to let me try to help you
be more successful because it's good for every buddy. I
really appreciate that, and I personally thank Lou. My female
friends are very, very important to me, I learned about
ten years ago that friends didn't have to be like
the moms from school or just my college friends, but
(40:13):
the women I met that were my equals or people
that I met at conferences at different work events, that
we could actually support each other from Afar as well.
And Sally and Amy came into my life in that way.
And so for me, I feel like I have the
friends that are in proximity and the friends from my
history and then my work peers that I feel very,
(40:35):
very connected to. My best friends have always been women,
and I am really fortunate to be surrounded by so
many amazed women. Friends from kindergarten, friends from law school,
and then lately getting to meet women like Sally and
Sam and just create this amazing ecosystem where we're all
rising together. It's pretty incredible. So it's funny, Amy, I
(41:00):
happened to have had one of those mornings where I
felt like the lone ranger in battle against so many
sexist things, and I'll just share with you that one
of them. This morning, I was supposed to speak on
this diversity panel coming up in my very sexist industry,
which I've talked to you about, and they sent me
(41:20):
the artwork for it, and it's a diversity panel and
it was a sea of bald men with one of
them had a mosaic on his head. And so I
said something to them because I was like, this is
seems a little off brand if you're trying to market
a diversity event. And so they sent back new artwork
(41:44):
and I mean, I can't make this up, but it
was a bunch of bowling pins and one of the
bowling pins they put a hair squiggly on with lipstick. No, no,
that didn't happen. But you know what that sounds like
some of the stories that Sally told us. Yeah, it
really does. And it's twenty and so I just after
that and this other board meeting that was just really daunting. Today.
(42:05):
I just felt like I'm exhausted fighting and I just
wish someone else would be by my side fighting with me.
And I really felt like Sally is the leader of
our army. I think that is a great position to
put her in. We want to thank our production team
at Large Media l A r J Media, as well
(42:27):
as our podcast associate Emma Hard and our male perspective
Lou Burns. This podcast is powered by my company, park
Place Payments, which you can find at park place Payments
dot com, and Amy's company, The Riveter, which you can
find at the Riveter dot co. We would love to
hear from you, especially on our YouTube channel. We post
(42:47):
three times a week little vignettes of Emy and I
gabbing about the day's events and our lives as working moms,
and you can also reach us on our social media channels.
Thanks for listening.
Hi. I'm Sam Atis and I'm Amy Nelson, and this
is what's her story with Sam and Amy. Today we
will introduce you to Sally Crowcheck. She was the top
woman on Wall Street. She's now an entrepreneur, and she
has done so much for women in general, and she's
just a really inspirational leader who has had an impact
on my life and Amy, I think yours as well.
(00:25):
She definitely has. She's someone I've known of for decades
and Sam, this is actually the first time I've ever
gotten to talk to her, so I feel really lucky.
And the thing I love about this episode is that
we focus on a topic that is near and dear
to our hearts, and that is money. Women and money.
It is I I really hope Amy that eventually people
go out to girls dinners and instead of just talking
about the men in their life, you know, or their romance,
(00:47):
they talk about their relationship with money, because it's the
longest relationship they're going to have in their lives. I agree.
And one thing I really love that we touch on
is that we should celebrate how much money we make
and how much money we want to make. Used to
feel bad talking about it sometimes, but I want to
make a lot of money. Like it's a big motivator
for me. And it's funny because when you say I
want to make a lot of money, you know, as
(01:09):
especially as a woman, you're going to turn off so
many people in the room. And one of the things
I loved about this interview and was kind of surprised by,
was at the end Sally's response to do you care
about being liked? And I think as women, so often
a lot of our motivation for how we behave or
how we manage people is a concern about being liked.
(01:31):
I agree. It's definitely something that's impacted me in my life.
And it's interesting because the further I've gotten into my years,
and actually also the further I've gotten into building my
own company, I realized it's impossible for everyone to like me,
and I've just given up on it. I once heart
of statistic that when you walk into a room, people
will like you and ten percent will hate you no
matter who you are, and there's something heartening about that
(01:52):
and knowing that there's actually no way for everyone to
like you, so it's something you probably shouldn't chase. Let's
hear what Sally has to say. I was sharing with Amy.
The last time I interviewed you was a few years ago.
You had one of the best answers ever on how
to deal with getting fired. So I thought we'd start
(02:14):
at the low points. Let's go up into the right.
I say, well, I just remember you saying that the
feeling of opening the Wall Street Journal and having your
name on the front page. Can you take us back there?
So I can take you back there? And then actually,
Sam had happened twice, so I can take you back
(02:36):
there twice. And you know, my view in life is
you can do one of two things when you're fired
on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. One
is to say this is so humiliating and embarrassing and
awful and poor me. And the other is to say
score front page of the Wall Street Journal, and that
(02:56):
if you had told me when I was a little
girl growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, second to last
one chosen for all the sports teams, that if you
had told me that anything, I would do much less
getting fired would be anywhere on the Wall Street Journal,
much less on the front page. I would have done
backflips down the hallway. I think it's basically means of recognizing,
(03:19):
you know, my privilege, you know, to have had the
opportunity to do something that that would get you that
kind of recognition. That's obviously the perspective of and years later.
But at that time, what did it feel like? It hurt?
It was? It was embarrassing. I drank a lot to
(03:41):
drive coming home from being fired, and um my husband saying,
would you like me to order some dinner? I'm like,
I don't need any solid food. I need liquid sustenance.
But you know, Sam, I just never wallowed in it.
Of course, it hurts, and and even today I can
sort of poke around at it emotionally and it hurts.
(04:04):
Just like when my ex husband had an affair with
my ex friend. I can poke around. That happened in
my twenties, but I can poke at it and it hurts.
But you know, one thing, I recognized that there were
going to be other opportunities to be successful. And there
are many opportunities in any given day. I just don't
see many of them. They just wing, you know, go
(04:26):
right past me and I don't see them and take
advantage of them. But that success might look like something
that was different, But by definition I was not supposed
to be in that job. By definition, if you're being fired,
you're not supposed to be in that job. And maybe
your fault and maybe somebody else's fault, but by definition,
was leaving a bad situation and opening up opportunities to
(04:48):
do other better things. You just mentioned success. You have
done so many different things. What does success mean to you?
At one stage, it meant money. You know, I grew
up in a pretty modest, middle class household in which
six of us shared a bathroom without a lock, and
so there was a period of time when I wanted
(05:08):
to earn money so that I could have my own
apartment and frankly, my own bathroom. And then there have
been times, frankly when it was about being sort of
famous where you know, I grew up I wanted to
be an actress. And I know we're not supposed to
admit that. I know that in our society, the drive
for fame is like the shameful thing. But there was
a period of time when I was a research annelist,
(05:29):
when I wanted everybody to know I was the best
research annelist in my industry. At this point, Amy, it's
it's about mission, it's about impact, It's about purpose. It's
about taking the decades of experience that only I have
and is a woman only I have, and using that
to found Lavest with a mission to get more money
(05:50):
in the hands of women. That's how we measure our success.
So let's talk about that mission. That's a mission that
my company is also focused on, Amy and I are
so passionate about it. How do you think about women
and money today? Yeah, differently from most. Um. So today,
if you say the word money to a man, the
(06:13):
words that come into his head he said, quick money
and use all power, strength and dependence. To a woman,
you say money and she said, oh yeah yeah. Loneliness isolation, uncertainty.
And we have received messages since childhood that have told
us money is not for you. Money is tacky. Money
(06:34):
is You're not good at it. You're not that good
at math, you're not that good at coding for example,
you're not that good at investing. Um, you're frivolous when
it comes to money, so you're not very good at it.
You spend it on silly, silly, silly things like fashion
and Latte's and shoes and whatever. Um. And as a result,
(06:56):
you know, we have internalized these messages and think, you know,
we don't talk about our salaries. There's no amount of
money we make that we don't feel ashamed of. It's
either too much and my friends they work hard too.
I feel so embarrassed for, you know, so weird, or
I don't make enough. My parents spent so much money
on college, so we have this shame around money. It's
(07:16):
sort of you know, say, it's a little bit like
when I was in middle school and being sporty, being
athletic was sort of yuck. You know, you want to
be a cheerleader. You didn't want to be athletic. That
didn't get you a date. We've still got that for money,
even amongst young women, that it's still acceptable and sort
of cute for a woman to be bad with money.
(07:37):
I'd love to say if the men got together two
years ago and said how do we keep women from
having full power, this is what they would have done.
They would have made being bad with money cute, and
they would have made looking for money and trying to
make more money an unattractive, feminine, you know feminine thing. Now,
I mean, you've talked about your first marriage and how
(07:57):
one of the reasons that broke up. Was money that
you're your first husband's career was plateauing, yours was exceeding
and you were making more money. Did you talk about
money with your first husband. No, that would have been
so tacky. And by the way, I grew up in
the South as well, we did what so many couples
at the time, and I feared too many couples today do,
which is he took care of the money, the investing,
the saving, the big expenses. The money that I took
(08:21):
care of was more the budgeting and then the social life.
I was in charge of getting us together with our
couple of friends. So he was sort of the CFO,
chief financial officer of the household, and I was sort of,
you know, the treasurer, sort of the in and out
of money. So when you know, I discovered that he
was having an affair at a point when I was gosh,
I don't know how to trust you, and he was
(08:42):
telling me there's just not that much money, I'm like,
how do I even trust that? And then what's really
interesting about this is it, first of all of women
manage their money on their own at some point in
their lives. Eight percent of us die single when we
outsource that money to our partner, our spouse, and important
person or life. When it comes back to us, typically
when we're experiencing grief, grief from a divorce or grief
(09:06):
from a death. When it comes back to us, of
us have a negative surprise. And so that for me
it was a moment of I can't let this happen
to me again, and I wanted to not happen to
as many other women as I possibly can help. What
is elves exactly? Of our people who are listening and
don't know and tell us what kind of dent you're
(09:26):
making in the women in money space. So it's interesting.
I'm still trying to figure out how to describe Elves.
So if we've been here a few months ago, I
would have said it's a digital first investing platform for women.
But during the pandemic, we got so much demand for
women for all things money saving spending. They want to
(09:46):
make more money at work, they're looking for coaching, they're
looking for opportunities to learn. So we added a whole
bunch of new capabilities and let me try this on you.
I'm starting to describe elves as the first real fin
actual wellness company built by women for women, where we've
got the products that can be the solution, starting with
(10:07):
the only gender where investing algorithm and you know, investment
approach that exist with the savings as well, but also
with the education and spanning career, making more money, earning
more money into how to save more and grow more.
You know, I think we're unique in this that for
so many it's either products or education. You know, it's
(10:28):
either what to do at work or what to do
with the money when you have it. I think we're
really the first that really surrounds a woman or one
of our allies when it comes to money in an
ideal world. How does someone use LMS? So they go
onto the platform and what are all of the things
(10:48):
they're using, Well, they can invest with us, you know. Again,
the only gender aware retirement offering. Why does that matter? Well,
doesn't matter that much if you're a man, because you
typically you know, the algorithm will say you earn more
and you die sooner. Matters tremendously if you're a woman,
because unfortunately you earn less, your salary peaks sooner and
(11:10):
you die later. So if you're not gender aware, then
you could run out of money, so you can use it,
you know, to invest with us for retirement or to
buy a home, or for a trip around the world
when we're all allowed to do that again, you know,
or save with us, spend with us. It really works
to take care of the range of money issues. And look,
you know, Sam, I get it. I get it. While
(11:32):
we were being taught as young girls that we're not
really good with money, we were taught that for women
was inferior and junior varsity. I get that. Some of
the listeners like, oh, I don't need something for women
money gender neutral. I want the varsity version. I want
the version for men. But just as Bumble, you know,
Whitney Wolf at Bumble discovered that women want dating sites
(11:55):
where they can make the first move, or Jen Hyman
discovered that women actually want to rent clothes as opposed
to buy all of them. There are problems that women
have that existing solutions, existing men were not solving. We
think all of s Two is the first that said
you know what you know on investing, that trading bitcoin,
(12:15):
frantic bylow, try to sell high watch the NBC. It's
just women are staying away in droves and it's costing
us hundreds of thousands, for some women millions of dollars
over the course of their lives. What is one piece
of investment advice you would give someone, So, first of all,
I would say, the investing mistakes that you read about
investing mistakes people make are investing mistakes men make. The
(12:39):
overwhelming mistake women make and investing is not doing it.
That is the overwhelming mistake that we keep our money
in the bank and that we therefore lose the power
of compounding. Compounding is when you invest your money and
you're on a return, and then you are in a
return on the return plus the money. Then you're in
a return on the return on the return on the return.
But etcetera. And we tend to wait to invest until
(13:01):
we feel like we can get an A plus in
our PhD in advanced investing, whereas the guys were like,
let's go and they get the benefit of investing. And
so some percent out of every paycheck, one percent, ten percent,
whatever you can afford to do, and it will, you know, historically,
will grow over time. One of the things that I've
always admired about you through the years is that you
(13:23):
have almost a tireless strength and optimism for a space
that can be very defeating. I know even this morning,
I was at a board meeting where I was the
only woman using my voice about the fact that they're
all white men on the stage and some days I'm
just exhausted by it. How do you not get down?
(13:44):
How do you just keep on going? Well? I do
get down, um, And I'm gonna be honest with you.
I've walked around. I was talking to my daughter last night,
who's you know, in her early twenties and her first job,
and we're both talking about how we're walking around with
in my case of pit in my stomach and in
her case of pit in her chest, and how do
we work around the pit? How do we breathe into
(14:07):
the pit? What are we doing to get rid of
the pit? The pit always comes back, So for both
of us, it's exercise. For both of us. I'm not
very good at meditating, so it's not I'm doing it
and there is no pain. We're doing it despite the pain.
And it's a recognition that every day above ground is
a gift. You know, it's not guaranteed, it's not promised,
(14:28):
and I believe you make as much impact as you
can in this time on earth, and then I think
it's dark for a really long time, and so how
do you make that impact and find that joy? We
sort of have fun with the fight, and I think
for me to the pit sort of goes away when
I'm active and moving. And it's further a recognition of
the privilege. I've been given a lot of gifts. I
(14:50):
got to use them, and particularly me Sam, because there's
so very few women who made it to senior levels
on Wall Street, so very few, and many of you
have have gone to do I had gone to do board,
and that's amazing. But when I saw that women don't
have nearly as much money as men do, that this
gender investing gap can cost women more than the pay gap.
(15:11):
That the pay gap is moving in the right direction.
The wealth gap, how much money we keep is moving
in the wrong direction. The pay gaps eighty two cents
to a man's dollar. The freaking wealth gap how much
we keep is thirty two cents to a man's dollar.
I see my background, and I see the ability to
do something about it. I don't do something about it.
How could I live with myself? I couldn't. What is
(15:31):
that pit? I just identify what is causing the pit
for you and for your daughter. We were talking about it.
We don't know because I was talking. We were I
was talking. I went to see someone years ago about
it and I was like, I have this pit and
she's like, well, what do you What do you think
it is? And I'm like, I don't know. It's just
this pit of anxiety. And she's like, well, no, what
do you really think it is. I'm like, I don't know,
(15:52):
and she and the woman and my daughter were laughing
so hard. The woman said, you're you're scared of death
and I was like, I know, I'm pretty sure that's
not it. She's like, you're scared to death. And I'm like, no,
I'm pretty sure I'm not scared of death. So I
don't know. You know, I think it's just a long
line of anxious people. My mother's anxious. I think it's
just something we have and we live with. How do
(16:12):
you operate with it? Bravery is not the absence of fear.
It's moving forward when you have fear. And for me,
it's not I don't have the pit. I've got the
pit I go anyway. Speaking about Wall Street and your
work on Wall Street, Sally, I was a financial services
litigator before I started my company, and so I worked
on Wall Street for k Hill Gordon and during the
(16:32):
financial crisis, which was a fascinating experience, like drinking from
a fire hose, and I was, I think, almost always
the only woman in the room. And I imagined that
was your experience. You were in Wall Street for years,
long before I was, and just breaking new ground. I
read in an interview where you said there was nothing
they could do to me at Solomon Brothers in the
nineteen eighties. That was worse than the seventh grade. So
I think there's more there to talk about your childhood
(16:54):
in South Carolina. But what did they do to you
in the nineties and Solomon Brothers, I mean, what was
it like being the only woman? It was warfare and
it wasn't even hidden at the time. It wasn't even hidden.
It was xerox copies of male genitalia left on my
desk every day, just like whoa, and just we're gonna
(17:15):
throw so much at you. We're gonna make you work
until three o'clock in the morning. Right, We're gonna work
till three and then we're gonna go to a new
you know, to a titty bar and leave you out,
and then we're gonna play golf. And I just remember,
like I just they're not going to get rid of me.
That is not going to happen. But I've got to
find a way to something somewhat because I can't. I
(17:35):
don't know how to play this game right. I don't
know how to take credit when I should take credit.
I don't how to take credit for other people's work.
And so was throw it at me. And I'm going
to find a way on Wall Street, not with you people,
to make it work. And I found my way to research,
which at least you could sort of take a breath.
And I found my way to a company's hand for
(17:56):
Bernstein that celebrated diversity. I used to all off saland
of of misfit toys. But ayman, I'll tell you something
else I learned there that has really stayed with me,
which is you hear so much about the impostor syndrome
and then people say to me, do you have the
impostor cinema? Like, no, I don't. I do not. I
do not have the impostor SYNDROMEA. And it's because I
(18:17):
think I was there with those those guys who were
so aggressive, so hard charging, running so many major companies today,
and I'm like, you're you. You might be smarter than me,
but you're not that much smarter than me. And you're
not going to outwork me either, And so early on
I said, I deserve as much of a seat at
the table as anybody does. I'll flip it a little bit.
(18:40):
The rawness of it. You know, you've got a little
bit more mature. The rawness of it was gone. I
gotta be honest. There was many times that being the
only woman in the room or one of few, was
as much of a benefit as a detriment, because you
couldn't forget me. You might not like me, but you
couldn't forget me. And the combination of okay, everybody's to
remember who I am, and secondly, where's the power? And
(19:04):
on Wall Street, the power was having the numbers and
Corporate America's having a pen l But it was I've
got the numbers, and if you want to know the numbers,
you've got to come to me. So I became a
chief financial officer. So the center, you know, the center
of the numbers, at the center of the number industry
was my means of sort of growing my my power.
One of the conversations in my life that I'm sure
(19:26):
you don't remember, but it's had a big impact on me.
As I was sitting in your office years ago and
you looked at me, and I had just come out
with my last book, and I was so excited about it.
And he said, that's great that you have a new
but but how are you making money? You just raised
a ton of money. Talk about the experience of raising
that money. What was that like for you? Yeah, you know,
(19:48):
it was the best of times. It was the worst
of times. I've raised a few different rounds of venture
capital money for Labast and look, I'd say the first
round was actually sort of easy. It was, you know,
people who I had worked I didn't focus on sand
Hill Road, Silicon Valley. It was, hey, I need X
millions of dollars to really start to tackle the issue
(20:10):
of why women aren't investing as much, aren't as you know,
don't have their finances and as good order as men do.
And so I went to people I've worked with in
the past and pretty easily raise the money. See the friends,
the colleagues and so on, and that's you know. I
was thrilled to be able to do it, and they
said to me, I don't know if you can solve
this problem, but we know you're going after a big problem,
(20:33):
and we know you know you won't give up. It
was the other rounds that got more challenging. When it
did get a little bit more, let me get you know,
now we're raising enough money that we need to get
to some more traditional venture capitalist it was no fun.
You could just sort of feel that you don't look
like what I'm used to thinking about for an entrepreneur.
One you're a different gender. Second, you're not twenty six,
(20:57):
and nobody says it, but you can, you know, you
can sort of feel it. And then you could feel
the different ways that the these I don't want to
say sexism, but sexism, the inherent biases would come out.
For example, almost to every meeting, you'd be sitting there
and someone would say, oh, lavast working with women, engaging
women with their money, and blah blah blah blah blah.
(21:19):
What if a competitor gets in and you're like, okay,
so let's be clear that there are dozens and dozens
and dozens and dozens of multibillion dollar investing firms, wealth
management firms, asset management firms are serving mostly men, where
I've just shown you that the percent of men users
is like seventy five, but half the population. With ten
(21:42):
trillion dollars in festival assets, there can only be one
of us. Nobody meant it, but just that question, you're right, okay,
all right, you can only have one for women. And
it got to the point where with the venture capitalist,
I said, I've recognized I would go in. I'd say,
how do you make your invest steam decisions? And if
they said, oh, well, one of us champions it or
(22:04):
two of us champions, I'm like, all right, let's meet.
But if it was we have to have consensus, I'm like,
I'm not gonna waste your time. I can convince you
in a meeting. I can get through your inherent biases
and say, hey, it's half the population blah blah da
da da da da. But if you get into that meeting,
and it's probably if complexion is that of the traditional
venture capital industry, it's all guys or one woman in
(22:26):
a more typically in a more junior role at most
of these firms, I can't equip you enough to go
in and convince your entire set of partners. So let
me just not waste your time or mine. That is
incredible advice. By the way, I've never heard anyone say that.
Isn't that amazing? I would say, Sally, I've raised thirty million,
and I would say I wish I had heard that
advice three years ago, because it is spot on and
(22:48):
exactly right. Yeah, you can. I can convince anybody in
a meeting because the business case is so strong. I
can't equip you to convince everybody else. But the problem
is it's hard to say no to a meeting. Takes
intestinal fortitude to be like, my time is valuable. I'm
not going to waste your time or mine on this.
This is something Sam and I talked about a lot,
and I think it's important to talk about with you.
(23:08):
Since you've raised so much money, how many pitches will
you do to close? Say, like if you were raising
a ten million dollar rounds, how many pitches do you
think you'll do? I can't even I think most people
have no idea. It's it's tens and tens and tens,
and it is you know, it is so many nose
along the way for so many different reasons where they're
(23:29):
not telling you the real reason. Do you remember where
you were the first time you got a term sheet? Yeah,
in the mouse infested will we work or what we work?
Want to be that we're in sure, I'll never forget it.
The other thing that I don't love is how we
then portray it, because it's sort of a game you
(23:51):
have to play. Oh my gosh, we were oversubscribed and
oh my gosh, and I managed to do this and
heals dancing backwards and whatever. And I think one of
the things that hit MO when we raised our last
round is that we had an annotated press release and
it was like, we're announcing we're raising this much money,
and we had little pop ups, and the pops ups
were I think, I feel like I ran a marathon.
I vomited and I broke my leg in the last mile.
(24:12):
Like none of this was cute and fun. This was
horrible and no fun at all, and we we got
it past the finish line. I would describe it as
like the hardest, longest sales process you would ever go through,
because it is a sales process in a way. It's
like spreadsheets and calls and meetings, and we had one
where one of the investors who was going to invest
(24:32):
a sizeable portion last rount the last minute, literally the
last minute, like literally the docs were due at four
and at three forty seven they called and said, we're
not going to invest because we see this risk here.
And I'm like, oh, that risk that you know, that's
we let me tell you how Wed mitigated. Let me like,
we're not investing. And I ended up Amy sending his boss,
who I had met with, an email over the weekend saying, look,
(24:56):
I'm just going to call it. This is gendered that
you have spent all this time on these risks that
are infinitesimal. Let me tell you about the upside. And
by the way, here's a piece of research I'm linking
to that says that when venture capital investors invest in men,
two thirds of their questions are about the upside, for
women two thirds about the downside. And when you focus
(25:17):
on the downside, you don't make the investment. And so
here's this risk you've zeroed in on. We've mitigated it.
The senior guy came back and he's like, you're right,
and they invested in us, Well, you are right. Like
the science shows that you are right. It's very clear,
and so that's amazing that you did that. I think
it takes it takes a lot of curs. My co
founder was like, you don't do that, you know, Like
(25:38):
I'm like, what's my down side? They're going to invest zero.
What are they gonna do, like make me give them money?
Like I have no, that's right, But I think that
fear of speaking up happens all the time. I'm in
the middle of finishing my seed ground right now, so
this conversation is actually giving me hives. It's like kind
of having triggers everywhere. But with my Angel round, I
had sent out all the ducks. I was done. I
(25:59):
was like celebrating basically, and then this one guy called
me who was kind of the lead, and he's like,
you know, I'm thinking about it, and you have a
lot of people in your life counting on you, which
was code for you have three children, and how are
you going to handle this? And he ended up you know,
I sent him all these extra things he wanted, and
(26:20):
I thought if I was a guy with three kids,
he'd say, oh good, she has so much response. He's
so much responsibly. He's going to make this kind of
motiv I had to replace him, and I replaced him
with all women, people of color. But like it was
so in the end it ended up being great. But
these things scarre you. I mean, it's definitely it's rough.
Nobody tells you right, Nobody tells you. And you also
(26:47):
do have to come up with a plan of how
to respond. Like I remember in a pitch once, I
had just had my third daughter, she was like three
months old, and great pitch was our second meeting and
the investor said, I love your business. You've got a
strong model, you have amazing attraction. But I just have
one more question. Do you think that you're capable of
doing this? You've got three kids once a baby. Are
you up for this? And at that moment in time,
(27:09):
I was like, you know what, Sally, I mean to
your point, I was like, what do I have to lose?
And I said, the fact that I built this company
with three babies while pregnant means I can do anything.
And I just left it there. You didn't invest, But
I'm glad I said it, and I will always say that. Sally.
Let's talk about your life as a working mom. You
were obviously an incredible success while you were raising kids
(27:29):
at home. What was that like? So how did you
divide and conquer with your husband? Well, yeah, I mean
you have to have a great partner. I think or
makes it a lot easier if you have a great partner.
And I didn't in my first marriage, and I do
in what I hope is my last marriage. And there
was I mean, look, we we had all the I'm
going I'm going to be in l A on these dates.
(27:50):
You can't travel right, and happily we were. We both
had the flexibility or we can say, okay, well then
I'm got to go to Hong Kong. And so our
rule was we had a couple of rules. One was,
but there'd be a parent eage event. We just wouldn't
guarantee which parent. We took turns waking up in the
middle of the night when they screamed mommy, that meant
parent of any gender. And we just tried to be
kind to each other. And you know my other rule.
(28:12):
And people don't like it when I say this. I
don't know why this triggers people. But my role was
that I was trying to be excellent at work. Um,
not every day, in every single thing. But I really
wanted to have a big career and that my as
a mom. I was shooting for mediocre right there, middle
of the road. I wasn't I wasn't going to be
the best home although I make cookies all the time,
(28:34):
but I wasn't going to be the best home baky
ist mom around. But I wasn't gonna hit them right there.
How would your grown kids rank you as a mom?
In hindsight? You'd have to ask them. I think you know,
we can do. You know, we've we've all got stuff.
But here's what I'll tell you. I love them with
every fiber of my being. They love their parents with you.
(28:57):
They probably have some fibers left over because they're young.
But they're both hard workers, and they're both successful. I mean,
they're both getting it done in their work. And they
are raging feminists, both of them. So when I look
and say, okay, you know, I'm glad, I'm glad I've
shot for the middle of the road because they've turned
I can tell you now they've turned out. Okay, I
(29:18):
now know. I know because they're old enough, we have
a lot of preconceived notions about motherhood. I think before
we become mothers, and you did quit. You quit Wall
Street when you're pregnant. Yea, Why because I didn't think
I could do the job and be a mom and
I felt sick and I felt tired, and I grown
up in the South and you stayed home with your kids.
And it was only when I realized that that pit
that we talked about at the beginning of my stomach
(29:40):
was overtaking me and that it just wasn't good for
any of us. For me to be taking the excess
energy I have, of which there is so much, and
pouring it all into my son. I think they've benefited
because they've both had You know, my son was unemployed
for a little bit of time, and rather than me
pouring everything into it, it was like, let's give him
(30:01):
some space to figure this out, as opposed to the
I gotta you know, my ego is here with you.
What are your kids doing today? I am very proud
of them. My son is a writer for John Oliver's
Last Week Tonight, and my daughter works at Adelman Intelligence
as a research analyst there. I'm one proud mom. There
were a lot of your peers who opted out of
(30:23):
the workforce. What is their life like today now that
the kids are out of the house, in comparison to
your yeah, I look, I think it. There's a moment
of if you define yourself in a way and turn
the page on that chapter, what's your purpose? What are
you you driving for? And so I went through a
period when all of our kids went to college, when
(30:44):
I was hearing from my friends from college and business
school of well can I get back in? And the
answer is it's really tough. You're trying to go to
a traditional corporate from working in the home for so
many years. That is a tough transition to make, particularly now,
by the way, with a pandemic and so many folks
who are unemployed. And one of the things I've realized,
and Sam, I'm just going to take this in a
(31:05):
different direction, one of the things I've realized in my
mature age is how much of my career was luck.
I have been to the fortune most powerful women's conference.
I have been there year after year. I have answered
all the questions about how I was successful. I have
talked about my resilience and my grit and my growth
mindset and not giving up. And I have got the
(31:27):
spiel down and I recognize now that just as I
was as smart as the guys at Solomon Brothers in
eight whatever, so so many of my friends, my women
friends who left the workforce, were as smart as me,
and as hard working and as gritty and as determined
(31:47):
and as whatever. So I don't know if I've shared
with you my baby turtle analogy, but again, I grew
up in the South, and so down south, um, one
night a mother turtle will emerge from the ocean, and
she will go up into the dunes and up into
the wild grasses, and she'll lay her eggs, and she'll leave.
And some time passes, and then one night all the
(32:07):
baby turtles hatch and they run for the ocean, and
they work hard, and they're gritty, and they're determined, and
they swerve and they go fast, but the seagulls are
pecking at them. And they pack and they pack, and
they pack and they pack, and this one flies away
with this baby turtle, and this one flies away with
this baby turtle, and this one and some of the
baby turtles make it to the water, and some of
the baby turtles are murdered as babies. The analogy here
(32:30):
is my business school female women classmates and our baby turtles,
and some of us made it, and others worked for
Matt Lur and others worked for Harvey Weinstein, and others
worked for the creepy dude at x y Z Wall
Street firm. Even more worked for what I call Todd,
and Todd is a super nice white dude, two daughter's wife,
(32:52):
lovely talk, so you know, goes to the unconscious biased training,
goes to the women's diversity group cocktail party, talks a
big talk. He's middle manager. He promotes one person a year.
He promoted Jim this year, next year he promotes Steve.
And all of a sudden, you're about five years in
and this woke dude who says the right thing just
(33:13):
never promotes anybody but himself. And he doesn't mean it.
It's unconscious bias. He just likes these other people better
than he likes you. And what really happened is that, yes,
I was smart and driven a bupa. I was a
baby turtle who made it to the water. And I
know too many of my friends who just didn't make
it because they worked for the wrong person. That is
the most oppressing analogy I've heard. I might just start
(33:37):
crying at this point. But our thanks progressing. I mean,
are things are changing? Isn't matter if there anything good?
Yes and no. So you you let's look at different places, right.
So the gender pay gap is slowly moving in the
right direction. If you're a white woman, it's decades away
from closing. If you're a black woman, it's a hundred
plus years away from closing. If you're Latin next woman,
it's two hundred plus years away from closing. So it's
(33:58):
getting a bit better. We also have the law of
small numbers where oh, look, we have the most female
CEOs of fortune companies. Ever, it's like not that many, right,
and so we do that whole thing. I'm looking forward
to day when it's just like a like we don't
even talk about it, it it happens. The difference is that
it is so much less expensive to start a business
today than it was twenty years ago. Not easy, not easy.
(34:21):
But if you wanted to start a business twenty years ago,
what you have to like open a plant and hire
full time people, raise the money to go on ABC,
NBC or CBS to advertise. Today you can start a
business in your kitchen if you've got the right idea.
If you've got the right idea and get the idea out,
doesn't mean it's easy, but there are more options for
(34:43):
people today than there were some number of years ago.
By the way, we talk about raising venture money, very
small percent of companies raise venture money. It's mostly bootstraped.
So that's my little bit of hope that the right
idea can be successful. I just wanted to ask you
about being liked. So you talked in the beginning about
(35:03):
being picked last for a team. How important is it
to you to be liked me? Not at all. I
don't care. So what I have experienced in my life
is what the research tells us, which is that when
I have been successful, it's been shocking. What a bit
I apparently turned into that I would. I'm just I'm
in the same person since I was fifteen. But when
I was the CFO city, the nasty articles written about
(35:26):
me and people cheering for me to be unsuccessful. When
I was running Meryl, I remember there was an article
that I was sitting on the top floor of a
skyscraper with diamonds, you know, in a white dress, black time.
I'm like, my god, it was like a tweed knockoff.
And a cubic zirconium. And then when I've been down,
I've been to all of a sudden, this really likable person.
(35:47):
So I don't care. What I'm focused on is helping
women advance financially economically. I don't care if you like
me or not. You know, that's what my mission is,
not to win a mislikable popularity contest. Who are your friends?
It was actually nice is that I have women friends
now that when I was working so hard on Wall
(36:09):
Street for so many years, I mean, and the guys
that I got along, but there just wasn't the time
with the kids, et cetera. With my kids now launched,
you know, I've got a group of women, mostly women
I would say, that have been through the wars. There's
some number of us who were all of a certain age,
and we've all got the scars, and we're all incredibly
supportive of each other. What is your morning routine? Wake
(36:36):
up cat, the cat and have coffee as quickly as possible.
What book are you reading? I'm actually reading. I read
many simultaneous books all at once. I'm reading and I
never know the titles anymore because they're all on my
Kindle I'm reading sort of the series of Fortunate Events
about how we all got here in the Big Luck,
(36:56):
and I'm reading a bunch of ton of French books
as well. Love a murder Mystery. I think that's it.
And I have several TV shows obviously, what are they? Well,
I'm making my way through Ship's Creek. Everybody tells me
it's amazing. I haven't gotten to the amazing part yet.
Oh if you don't think it's amazing yet, you should stop.
I get better. It's the same the whole didn't. It
didn't do it for me, Sallysworth. So our final question
(37:21):
is going to be asked by lu Burns, who in
every episode shares the male perspective, and Lou has been listening.
You three are funny, oh man, But actually, this this round,
I have a question for all three of you, maybe
centered around one of the last comments that you made, Sally,
(37:41):
because Amy asked, who are your friends? And you're like
that you actually have girlfriends, and growing up and being
an adult, I started to see that kind of divide
where women have more men friends and they say, I
don't get along with other women. I'm not in the
financial industry, but I started to see that as a norm,
and I'm being a man, I don't understand it because
(38:01):
I'm a friendly, outgoing, happy, go lucky person. If you
walk to share with me the things that kind of
create that friction between women and lms, do you, guys,
cultivate a community where women are really working with other
women total support of each other. Could you all touch
on that topic. I love that question. So first of all,
(38:22):
you're gonna get me motoring again. When I was in
big corporations, I didn't have a lot of female friends
at the time. I would have told you it was
because there weren't a lot of other senior women. Right now,
I would tell you that I got brainwashed, as did
by entire generation of women senior executives. Whether we were
competing with each other to get that seat at the table.
(38:44):
I wasn't competing with Joe or Jim or Bob. I
was competing with Susie because there was one seat at
the table. There wasn't knives out, but it definitely was
a let me just side by you a little bit.
And we were taught that, and I'd say men learned
quite the opposite. Men learned that there's power in numbers.
And there's power in the pack, and they promote each other,
they talk each other up, they put each other on
(39:04):
the board, they do business together. And we were sort
of taught that success as an individual sport all these
books that are published about how you can be successful,
and we sort of internalized it, and we're making the
journey on our own, whereas the guys were making the
journey together. And what I love about this stage of
my life, and I love about being friends with folks
like Sam and Amy, is that we actually recognize that
(39:26):
our success not only doesn't it take away from another woman,
it adds, and that particularly for those of us who
are raising outside venture money, for example, it's better if
more women are raising more money because then people are like, oh, yeah,
I've got seven other examples as opposed to know examples.
And so what is a revelation of this stage of
my career is that we've gone from feeling being told
(39:50):
we should compete, in feeling like we have to compete,
to this openness to let me try to help you
be more successful because it's good for every buddy. I
really appreciate that, and I personally thank Lou. My female
friends are very, very important to me, I learned about
ten years ago that friends didn't have to be like
the moms from school or just my college friends, but
(40:13):
the women I met that were my equals or people
that I met at conferences at different work events, that
we could actually support each other from Afar as well.
And Sally and Amy came into my life in that way.
And so for me, I feel like I have the
friends that are in proximity and the friends from my
history and then my work peers that I feel very,
(40:35):
very connected to. My best friends have always been women,
and I am really fortunate to be surrounded by so
many amazed women. Friends from kindergarten, friends from law school,
and then lately getting to meet women like Sally and
Sam and just create this amazing ecosystem where we're all
rising together. It's pretty incredible. So it's funny, Amy, I
(41:00):
happened to have had one of those mornings where I
felt like the lone ranger in battle against so many
sexist things, and I'll just share with you that one
of them. This morning, I was supposed to speak on
this diversity panel coming up in my very sexist industry,
which I've talked to you about, and they sent me
(41:20):
the artwork for it, and it's a diversity panel and
it was a sea of bald men with one of
them had a mosaic on his head. And so I
said something to them because I was like, this is
seems a little off brand if you're trying to market
a diversity event. And so they sent back new artwork
(41:44):
and I mean, I can't make this up, but it
was a bunch of bowling pins and one of the
bowling pins they put a hair squiggly on with lipstick. No, no,
that didn't happen. But you know what that sounds like
some of the stories that Sally told us. Yeah, it
really does. And it's twenty and so I just after
that and this other board meeting that was just really daunting. Today.
(42:05):
I just felt like I'm exhausted fighting and I just
wish someone else would be by my side fighting with me.
And I really felt like Sally is the leader of
our army. I think that is a great position to
put her in. We want to thank our production team
at Large Media l A r J Media, as well
(42:27):
as our podcast associate Emma Hard and our male perspective
Lou Burns. This podcast is powered by my company, park
Place Payments, which you can find at park place Payments
dot com, and Amy's company, The Riveter, which you can
find at the Riveter dot co. We would love to
hear from you, especially on our YouTube channel. We post
(42:47):
three times a week little vignettes of Emy and I
gabbing about the day's events and our lives as working moms,
and you can also reach us on our social media channels.
Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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