November 9, 2022 • 18 mins
The influential leader we will learn from this month is Cheryl Bachelder. Cheryl built a highly successful career with companies like LifeSavers, Domino’s, and Popeyes, but a career in business was not what she originally envisioned for herself when she started college. In this episode, Cheryl and I talk through successes that she considers are defining to who she became as a professional Christian woman and who she is today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is sponsored by Ronald Blue Trust.
Ronald Blue Trust is honored toserve women from all walks of
life, professionals, mothers,daughters, retirees, widows, and
students across the nationproviding biblically based
wisdom for their finances.
Their advisors are experts inmany areas of financial planning
(00:20):
and investments, and offeruseful resources to guide you in
gaining clarity and confidence,helping you leave a lasting
legacy.
Learn more@ronblue.com.
This is Driven ForwardInfluential Leaders powered by
God's will, hosted by me.
Jordan Johnstone.
The influential leader we willlearn from this month is Cheryl
(00:43):
Batchelder.
Cheryl built a highly successfulcareer with companies like
Lifesavers Dominoes and Popeyes,but a career in business was not
what she originally envisionedfor herself when she started
college.
In this episode, Cheryl and Italked through successes that
she considers our defining towho she became as a professional
Christian woman and who she istoday.
(01:09):
Well, thank you again for beinghere today.
Um, and I would love to startoff with my favorite question,
, to start off with, whois Cheryl Batchelder?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Wow.
Who is Cheryl Batchelder?
Um, you know, the conventionalhour, uh, answer to that
question is always like name,title, serial number kind of
thing.
Um, yeah,.
But I guess the way I wouldanswer that question is, uh, I
am a Christ follower, um,married 41 years, my husband
Chris, and we've raised threedaughters, two of, but are now
(01:40):
married.
We have five gorgeous grandsons.
So I would define myself as, youknow, why mother, grandma, um,
as well as a business executive,uh, in our business community.
Uh, multidimensional complicated is how I would describe
myself.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Oh, well, over the next couple of episodes, we will
definitely get into that alittle bit more, but what we're
also gonna be discussing aresetbacks and successes that you
have had, have had.
So just to kind of begin thatwhole conversation, I would love
to have you define what asuccess and a setback are for
you personally.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
For me, a success is a rewarding outcome for the
people involved in the endeavor.
Um, and that could be at home asparents, and it could be in the
workplace on a team project, orit could be the turnaround of a
major enterprise.
Um, but for me it, it's thatrewarding feeling that, uh,
(02:47):
people and enterprises were wellserved by the actions you took.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And then how about a setback?
What would that be?
Defined as?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Setbacks are, I think, easier for me because
for, for me, they've all fallenin the category of trials and
tribulations you can learn from.
Um, as a believer, I thinktransformation is a lifelong
journey.
Um, I'm always learning andgrowing, and usually from
situations I'd rather not behere.
(03:16):
Um, so those would be thesetbacks that I think enrich us
in our understanding of, uh,what god's up to and the role he
has for us in his kingdom.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Hmm.
I love that answer.
So today what we're gonna talkabout is, uh, what you've
identified as some of the mostimportant successes in your
life.
So the first that I'd like tohave us have you talk us through
is when you graduated fromIndiana University, Kelly School
of Business, and you acceptedyour first real job.
So walk us through what thatexperience was like.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, I was very young.
I graduated from college with abachelor's and a master's degree
at the age of 21.
I had gone through a combinedbachelor MBA program, is how I
did that in four years.
So I was truly very young, veryinexperienced in work, uh, very
deeply experienced in school.
(04:12):
Um, and so it was an excitingtime come out of that, uh, Kelly
school, uh, where I had learneda great deal, uh, from my
faculty and colleagues, uh, butwas now stepping into the real
world with Proctor and Gamble.
I would tell you at the time, Ididn't realize the importance of
that first success.
(04:33):
Um, because Procter and Gamblereally set in motion my career
and set in motion careerrelationships that influenced me
for years to come.
Um, it put skills in place thatI very much needed post mba.
Um, so it was a incrediblyimportant starting point, uh,
(04:54):
for my 40 year career thatfollowed.
Um, and I look back on it with,uh, very, very positive
feelings.
You know, I interviewed likeeverybody did coming out of
business school hoping for that,you know, first great job that
would set my career in motion.
I was very blessed to go toProcter and Gamble.
It was a training company.
(05:15):
They invested a lot in me.
I happened to meet my husbandthere too, which was an extra
bonus.
Um, but it was, it was a veryimportant beginning.
And I think as we look back overour lives, uh, we often see a
couple of places that were waymore important in our lifetime
than we knew at the time.
And that was wonderful for me.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Aw.
Well, and then the next successthat you identified was your
first major impact on a company,uh, which was when you proposed
three new product innovationsfor Life Savers.
Uh, so that sounds veryexciting.
So what did that look like?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
It was fun.
You know, it was the first bigopportunity I had to truly
create a new business for acorporation.
I was asked to map out a newproduct plan, leveraging the
trademark lifesavers.
Um, I came up through researchand teamwork with three ideas.
(06:13):
The first one was calledLifesavers Fruit Juicers.
It was a regular lifesaver hardcandy with 10% fruit juice,
which was very trendy at thetime.
Mm-hmm.
.
The second idea was, uh,lifesavers holes, which we
thought, you know, there alwayshad been a hole in a lifesaver.
Maybe we should sell the hole,but of course, we didn't make
(06:34):
the hole.
So we had to make them andpackage them and create an
identity around that, which wedid.
And then the third one wasLifesavers gummy Savers, which
was the first United Statesentry into the gummy, uh, candy.
Uh, which at that time was onlykind of hard fruit gummies that
(06:55):
came, those little bears outtaGermany.
So we created a really tender,juicy life savers flavor, uh,
profile product.
And of the three that was themost successful, uh, life savers
companies became a hundredmillion business right out of
the gate and still exists todayas a great representative of the
(07:15):
lifesavers paid money.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I was gonna say, that's my favorite
mine too, so that's pretty cool.
Yeah, that's pretty cool thatnow I know who created it.
Well, another success then thatyou also shared was when you
first got into the world offranchising, which ends up being
quite a big part of your story.
Um, and this was via a positionwith Dominoes.
So what about your time therewas significant to your career
(07:39):
trajectory?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, you're right, this was a bit of a turning
point, mid-career for me.
I had spent the first 15 yearsof my career in what's called
package goods marketing.
That's basically marketingthings that are sold in grocery
stores, drug stores, massmerchants.
Um, and I had spent a lot oftime in the food sector, uh,
handy gum, snacks, those kindsof things mm-hmm.
(08:02):
.
Um, so when I joined, uh,Domino's Pizza, it was a totally
new kind of business.
It was franchising a pizza chain, um, and it was retail, right?
It was a business where you calland order a pizza and it's
delivered to your home.
You don't go to a store to getit.
Um, and so it was kind of an allnew thing for me.
(08:24):
I was so excited to be workingfor the actual founder of the
firm.
Tom Monahan still was runningthe firm when I joined, which I
thought was an excitingopportunity to learn, um, about
a business from its founder.
And it was, uh, Tom was also avery devout Catholic Christian,
uh, which I admired, and I wasexcited.
(08:45):
He was the first, um, knownChristian I had worked for in
business.
And I was excited to see what itwould look like to put your
faith beliefs into action in theworkplace.
And then what really captured meabout this business was the
franchisee themselves.
Um, they're all first timeentrepreneurs into a retail
(09:08):
business concept.
They start with one pizza store,um, and build their career and
business out of that experience.
And so it was so, um, new andexciting to come alongside, um,
family businesses and try tofigure out how to provide them
with good tools, good marketingplans, good products that would
(09:28):
build their business and helpthem thrive.
Many of them were firstgeneration business people.
Many of them are immigrants toour country.
And, uh, I got really excitedabout being part of that
endeavor.
In fact, I spent the rest of mycareer in food franchising as a
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Result.
Well, possibly the biggestcareer success that you've had,
uh, was your time as CEO ofPopeye's and those 10 years of
transformative work that you didthere.
What I love though, when yousent me these highlights was
that you specifically said thatthe best part of this time at
Popeye's for you was servantleadership.
So can you share more aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Well, I would say in addition to being a, uh, food
retail executive, my career wascharacterized by a fascination
with what is good leadership.
And from a very early stage, Iwas constantly reading about
leadership from academics, fromconsultants, book writers,
(10:27):
authors, uh, trying tounderstand.
And I came across aboutmid-career, I was kind of
disillusioned with some of theleadership I'd seen and said,
you know, what would good looklike?
And I came across this idea ofservant leadership, uh, kind of
the theory of it, which RobertGreenleaf talked about, um, a
lot early in my career.
(10:48):
He was just another businessperson like me, trying to
articulate what a goodleadership approach might look
like.
And he said, Those who, uh,serve the people as the filter
for decision making, uh, notonly create the best results,
but they create the bestenvironment for people to do
good work.
I really bought into that.
That made a whole lot of senseto me.
(11:09):
I read other authors like JimCollins from Good to Great, that
talked about humility inleadership, uh, being, having an
ambition for the enterprise, notfor yourself.
I thought that was compelling.
I was a huge fan of Steven Coveywho was writing about, you know,
win-win decisions, um, andlistening skills and some of the
(11:32):
traits of good leadership.
And so these were formativeyears.
Um, eventually though I lookedaround and said, I don't see
many examples of this kinda, Ine, you know, as I acknowledged
earlier, I never really workedfor faith-based leaders.
I never really worked forvalues-based leaders.
And I certainly had never workedfor anybody who, uh, called
(11:54):
themselves a, uh, servantleadership or a mindset of
service leader.
Um, so by the time I reached thePopeye's opportunity, which was
truly, um, a fabulous capstonecareer experience, uh, very few
people get to be CEO of a publiccompany for nearly 10 years.
It was exciting, rewarding, um,experience.
(12:18):
But the thing that I'm proudestof is that we used that
opportunity to live out theprinciples of servant leadership
in the workplace, and it didcreate a place where people
thrive and perform their bestwork.
So we're publicly known for anincredibly successful turnaround
of the Popeyes company, wherethe stock price went from$11 to
(12:40):
79.
But what I was passionate aboutwas getting the story out of how
we accomplished those resultsthrough servant leadership.
And that's why I wrote a bookabout it called Dare to Serve.
I wanted to capture the lessonswe learned and share them with
others that hope to lead in thatpassion in the future.
(13:01):
And so that was the fun of thePopeye's experience.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
, the last
success that you shared with me
was how your family came to be.
So how did adopting yourdaughter impact you as a parent
and make this chapter the mostsatisfying success of your life?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Well, I think when we are asked about success,
particularly those of us in themarketplace, uh, we should think
about the whole person in thewhole life.
Uh, because I always wanted tobe married and have a family as
part of my, uh, anticipated lifeplan from the very beginning.
Um, and I would not be able tocall any aspect of my life
(13:42):
rewarding or successful had Inot done.
So, uh, your family is, uh, thefoundation really of all those
other things that you experiencein life.
And so, um, getting married wasa very important decision.
Deciding to have children andraise them, uh, in our faith was
a very important part of ourlives.
And so we had, uh, two daughtersthat were, uh, natural born
(14:05):
daughters, uh, Tracy, ouroldest, and Katie our second.
Um, and enjoyed raising them andseeing them develop into
beautiful young adults, uh, withgreat giftedness and now their
own beautiful families.
Our third daughter we adoptedkind of un unexpectedly.
Um, she was adopted first byanother family, and uh, when
(14:28):
that did not work out, webrought her into our family.
Uh, she was, uh, you know, ourthird girl, we thought more
fingernail polish and more fun,um,.
And, uh, she has been a delightin our life.
Uh, but I think the mostrewarding part of it, um, you
know, when you adopt a child, Ithink you go into it hoping to
offer her something.
(14:49):
I think what I rejoice in iswhat we learned from the
experience of adoption because,um, you know, adoption of a teen
girl is difficult.
You know, she's in her identityformation.
Uh, she's coming from a verychallenging childhood.
Uh, she didn't know what shewanted out of adoption in the
(15:09):
family.
And so there were somechallenging years for her and
for us mm-hmm.
.
But what I, uh, would call thesuccess is that today she's a
lovely young woman, uh, working,uh, in the city of Atlanta as a
medical assistant, um, maturingand growing, um, and coming to a
nu her own understanding of lifeand work and faith.
(15:34):
Um, and we're just so proud thatwe could be a part of that, um,
for lives.
So it has enriched our familyand enriched our lives to be
part of her life.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Mm-hmm.
, why do you thinkGod allows us to have and
experience success in our lives?
Like what do you think it'spurposes?
Mm.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Wow.
That's a really good complicatedquestion.
So, I'll give you my bestshorthand from my response to
that, which is I think I have,uh, come to believe and come to
understand that the purpose ofour lives is not our purpose or
about us, but the purpose of ourlives is in fact figuring out
(16:14):
what God's up to and how we joinhim there.
And so for me, success in therealm of, uh, my purpose is does
it align with God's purpose?
And have I done work that bringshonor and glory to him more than
it does to my myself?
Um, and for me, I came tounderstand my work purpose as
(16:37):
kind of resurrecting servantleadership, which really is the
leadership, teaching andphilosophy and actions of Jesus
Christ.
Um, and so if I could beevidence of that, if I could
role model that, if I couldteach it as, um, a platform for
leadership in the marketplace,I, in some small, very small
(16:58):
way, but in some small way wasjoining God at work, God, when
he created work said it wasgood.
Uh, it was only our nature thatmessed it up and created, you
know, poor workplaces or toxicworkplaces, whatever your word
for it is.
So if I could be one personworking on, uh, God's team to
(17:19):
make work a better place wherepeople thrive and become, uh,
close to him and use their gifts, uh, and do work that can be
held up as, as glorifying tohim, I would be really excited
about that.
If that's, that's how I think ofmy career of working for God.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Next time I'm driven forward, Cheryl and I dive into
the setback she's encountered inher career and life and how she
has learned to acknowledge andlearn from each one.
If you enjoyed this podcast,please take a moment to
subscribe and leave us a reviewto let us know what you think to
learn more about forward.
You can visit forward women.org.
That's the number four w o r d wo m e n.org.
(18:02):
Thanks for listening.
This episode is sponsored by Ronald Blue Trust.
Ronald Blue Trust is honored toserve women from all walks of
life, professionals, mothers,daughters, retirees, widows, and
students across the nationproviding biblically based
wisdom for their finances.
Their advisors are experts inmany areas of financial planning
(00:20):
and investments, and offeruseful resources to guide you in
gaining clarity and confidence,helping you leave a lasting
legacy.
Learn more@ronblue.com.
This is Driven ForwardInfluential Leaders powered by
God's will, hosted by me.
Jordan Johnstone.
The influential leader we willlearn from this month is Cheryl
(00:43):
Batchelder.
Cheryl built a highly successfulcareer with companies like
Lifesavers Dominoes and Popeyes,but a career in business was not
what she originally envisionedfor herself when she started
college.
In this episode, Cheryl and Italked through successes that
she considers our defining towho she became as a professional
Christian woman and who she istoday.
(01:09):
Well, thank you again for beinghere today.
Um, and I would love to startoff with my favorite question,
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Wow.
Who is Cheryl Batchelder?
Um, you know, the conventionalhour, uh, answer to that
question is always like name,title, serial number kind of
thing.
Um, yeah,
But I guess the way I wouldanswer that question is, uh, I
am a Christ follower, um,married 41 years, my husband
Chris, and we've raised threedaughters, two of, but are now
(01:40):
married.
We have five gorgeous grandsons.
So I would define myself as, youknow, why mother, grandma, um,
as well as a business executive,uh, in our business community.
Uh, multidimensional complicated
myself.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Oh, well, over the next couple of episodes, we will
definitely get into that alittle bit more, but what we're
also gonna be discussing aresetbacks and successes that you
have had, have had.
So just to kind of begin thatwhole conversation, I would love
to have you define what asuccess and a setback are for
you personally.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
For me, a success is a rewarding outcome for the
people involved in the endeavor.
Um, and that could be at home asparents, and it could be in the
workplace on a team project, orit could be the turnaround of a
major enterprise.
Um, but for me it, it's thatrewarding feeling that, uh,
(02:47):
people and enterprises were wellserved by the actions you took.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And then how about a setback?
What would that be?
Defined as?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Setbacks are, I think, easier for me because
for, for me, they've all fallenin the category of trials and
tribulations you can learn from.
Um, as a believer, I thinktransformation is a lifelong
journey.
Um, I'm always learning andgrowing, and usually from
situations I'd rather not behere.
(03:16):
Um, so those would be thesetbacks that I think enrich us
in our understanding of, uh,what god's up to and the role he
has for us in his kingdom.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Hmm.
I love that answer.
So today what we're gonna talkabout is, uh, what you've
identified as some of the mostimportant successes in your
life.
So the first that I'd like tohave us have you talk us through
is when you graduated fromIndiana University, Kelly School
of Business, and you acceptedyour first real job.
So walk us through what thatexperience was like.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, I was very young.
I graduated from college with abachelor's and a master's degree
at the age of 21.
I had gone through a combinedbachelor MBA program, is how I
did that in four years.
So I was truly very young, veryinexperienced in work, uh, very
deeply experienced in school.
(04:12):
Um, and so it was an excitingtime come out of that, uh, Kelly
school, uh, where I had learneda great deal, uh, from my
faculty and colleagues, uh, butwas now stepping into the real
world with Proctor and Gamble.
I would tell you at the time, Ididn't realize the importance of
that first success.
(04:33):
Um, because Procter and Gamblereally set in motion my career
and set in motion careerrelationships that influenced me
for years to come.
Um, it put skills in place thatI very much needed post mba.
Um, so it was a incrediblyimportant starting point, uh,
(04:54):
for my 40 year career thatfollowed.
Um, and I look back on it with,uh, very, very positive
feelings.
You know, I interviewed likeeverybody did coming out of
business school hoping for that,you know, first great job that
would set my career in motion.
I was very blessed to go toProcter and Gamble.
It was a training company.
(05:15):
They invested a lot in me.
I happened to meet my husbandthere too, which was an extra
bonus.
Um, but it was, it was a veryimportant beginning.
And I think as we look back overour lives, uh, we often see a
couple of places that were waymore important in our lifetime
than we knew at the time.
And that was wonderful for me.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Aw.
Well, and then the next successthat you identified was your
first major impact on a company,uh, which was when you proposed
three new product innovationsfor Life Savers.
Uh, so that sounds veryexciting.
So what did that look like?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
It was fun.
You know, it was the first bigopportunity I had to truly
create a new business for acorporation.
I was asked to map out a newproduct plan, leveraging the
trademark lifesavers.
Um, I came up through researchand teamwork with three ideas.
(06:13):
The first one was calledLifesavers Fruit Juicers.
It was a regular lifesaver hardcandy with 10% fruit juice,
which was very trendy at thetime.
Mm-hmm.
The second idea was, uh,lifesavers holes, which we
thought, you know, there alwayshad been a hole in a lifesaver.
Maybe we should sell the hole,but of course, we didn't make
(06:34):
the hole.
So we had to make them andpackage them and create an
identity around that, which wedid.
And then the third one wasLifesavers gummy Savers, which
was the first United Statesentry into the gummy, uh, candy.
Uh, which at that time was onlykind of hard fruit gummies that
(06:55):
came, those little bears outtaGermany.
So we created a really tender,juicy life savers flavor, uh,
profile product.
And of the three that was themost successful, uh, life savers
companies became a hundredmillion business right out of
the gate and still exists todayas a great representative of the
(07:15):
lifesavers paid money.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I was gonna say, that's my favorite
mine too, so that's pretty cool.
Yeah, that's pretty cool thatnow I know who created it.
Well, another success then thatyou also shared was when you
first got into the world offranchising, which ends up being
quite a big part of your story.
Um, and this was via a positionwith Dominoes.
So what about your time therewas significant to your career
(07:39):
trajectory?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, you're right, this was a bit of a turning
point, mid-career for me.
I had spent the first 15 yearsof my career in what's called
package goods marketing.
That's basically marketingthings that are sold in grocery
stores, drug stores, massmerchants.
Um, and I had spent a lot oftime in the food sector, uh,
handy gum, snacks, those kindsof things mm-hmm.
(08:02):
Um, so when I joined, uh,Domino's Pizza, it was a totally
new kind of business.
It was franchising a pizza chain, um, and it was retail, right?
It was a business where you calland order a pizza and it's
delivered to your home.
You don't go to a store to getit.
Um, and so it was kind of an allnew thing for me.
(08:24):
I was so excited to be workingfor the actual founder of the
firm.
Tom Monahan still was runningthe firm when I joined, which I
thought was an excitingopportunity to learn, um, about
a business from its founder.
And it was, uh, Tom was also avery devout Catholic Christian,
uh, which I admired, and I wasexcited.
(08:45):
He was the first, um, knownChristian I had worked for in
business.
And I was excited to see what itwould look like to put your
faith beliefs into action in theworkplace.
And then what really captured meabout this business was the
franchisee themselves.
Um, they're all first timeentrepreneurs into a retail
(09:08):
business concept.
They start with one pizza store,um, and build their career and
business out of that experience.
And so it was so, um, new andexciting to come alongside, um,
family businesses and try tofigure out how to provide them
with good tools, good marketingplans, good products that would
(09:28):
build their business and helpthem thrive.
Many of them were firstgeneration business people.
Many of them are immigrants toour country.
And, uh, I got really excitedabout being part of that
endeavor.
In fact, I spent the rest of mycareer in food franchising as a
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Result.
Well, possibly the biggestcareer success that you've had,
uh, was your time as CEO ofPopeye's and those 10 years of
transformative work that you didthere.
What I love though, when yousent me these highlights was
that you specifically said thatthe best part of this time at
Popeye's for you was servantleadership.
So can you share more aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Well, I would say in addition to being a, uh, food
retail executive, my career wascharacterized by a fascination
with what is good leadership.
And from a very early stage, Iwas constantly reading about
leadership from academics, fromconsultants, book writers,
(10:27):
authors, uh, trying tounderstand.
And I came across aboutmid-career, I was kind of
disillusioned with some of theleadership I'd seen and said,
you know, what would good looklike?
And I came across this idea ofservant leadership, uh, kind of
the theory of it, which RobertGreenleaf talked about, um, a
lot early in my career.
(10:48):
He was just another businessperson like me, trying to
articulate what a goodleadership approach might look
like.
And he said, Those who, uh,serve the people as the filter
for decision making, uh, notonly create the best results,
but they create the bestenvironment for people to do
good work.
I really bought into that.
That made a whole lot of senseto me.
(11:09):
I read other authors like JimCollins from Good to Great, that
talked about humility inleadership, uh, being, having an
ambition for the enterprise, notfor yourself.
I thought that was compelling.
I was a huge fan of Steven Coveywho was writing about, you know,
win-win decisions, um, andlistening skills and some of the
(11:32):
traits of good leadership.
And so these were formativeyears.
Um, eventually though I lookedaround and said, I don't see
many examples of this kinda, Ine, you know, as I acknowledged
earlier, I never really workedfor faith-based leaders.
I never really worked forvalues-based leaders.
And I certainly had never workedfor anybody who, uh, called
(11:54):
themselves a, uh, servantleadership or a mindset of
service leader.
Um, so by the time I reached thePopeye's opportunity, which was
truly, um, a fabulous capstonecareer experience, uh, very few
people get to be CEO of a publiccompany for nearly 10 years.
It was exciting, rewarding, um,experience.
(12:18):
But the thing that I'm proudestof is that we used that
opportunity to live out theprinciples of servant leadership
in the workplace, and it didcreate a place where people
thrive and perform their bestwork.
So we're publicly known for anincredibly successful turnaround
of the Popeyes company, wherethe stock price went from$11 to
(12:40):
79.
But what I was passionate aboutwas getting the story out of how
we accomplished those resultsthrough servant leadership.
And that's why I wrote a bookabout it called Dare to Serve.
I wanted to capture the lessonswe learned and share them with
others that hope to lead in thatpassion in the future.
(13:01):
And so that was the fun of thePopeye's experience.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
was how your family came to be.
So how did adopting yourdaughter impact you as a parent
and make this chapter the mostsatisfying success of your life?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Well, I think when we are asked about success,
particularly those of us in themarketplace, uh, we should think
about the whole person in thewhole life.
Uh, because I always wanted tobe married and have a family as
part of my, uh, anticipated lifeplan from the very beginning.
Um, and I would not be able tocall any aspect of my life
(13:42):
rewarding or successful had Inot done.
So, uh, your family is, uh, thefoundation really of all those
other things that you experiencein life.
And so, um, getting married wasa very important decision.
Deciding to have children andraise them, uh, in our faith was
a very important part of ourlives.
And so we had, uh, two daughtersthat were, uh, natural born
(14:05):
daughters, uh, Tracy, ouroldest, and Katie our second.
Um, and enjoyed raising them andseeing them develop into
beautiful young adults, uh, withgreat giftedness and now their
own beautiful families.
Our third daughter we adoptedkind of un unexpectedly.
Um, she was adopted first byanother family, and uh, when
(14:28):
that did not work out, webrought her into our family.
Uh, she was, uh, you know, ourthird girl, we thought more
fingernail polish and more fun,um,
And, uh, she has been a delightin our life.
Uh, but I think the mostrewarding part of it, um, you
know, when you adopt a child, Ithink you go into it hoping to
offer her something.
(14:49):
I think what I rejoice in iswhat we learned from the
experience of adoption because,um, you know, adoption of a teen
girl is difficult.
You know, she's in her identityformation.
Uh, she's coming from a verychallenging childhood.
Uh, she didn't know what shewanted out of adoption in the
(15:09):
family.
And so there were somechallenging years for her and
for us mm-hmm.
But what I, uh, would call thesuccess is that today she's a
lovely young woman, uh, working,uh, in the city of Atlanta as a
medical assistant, um, maturingand growing, um, and coming to a
nu her own understanding of lifeand work and faith.
(15:34):
Um, and we're just so proud thatwe could be a part of that, um,
for lives.
So it has enriched our familyand enriched our lives to be
part of her life.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Mm-hmm.
experience success in our lives?
Like what do you think it'spurposes?
Mm.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Wow.
That's a really good complicatedquestion.
So
that, which is I think I have,uh, come to believe and come to
understand that the purpose ofour lives is not our purpose or
about us, but the purpose of ourlives is in fact figuring out
(16:14):
what God's up to and how we joinhim there.
And so for me, success in therealm of, uh, my purpose is does
it align with God's purpose?
And have I done work that bringshonor and glory to him more than
it does to my myself?
Um, and for me, I came tounderstand my work purpose as
(16:37):
kind of resurrecting servantleadership, which really is the
leadership, teaching andphilosophy and actions of Jesus
Christ.
Um, and so if I could beevidence of that, if I could
role model that, if I couldteach it as, um, a platform for
leadership in the marketplace,I, in some small, very small
(16:58):
way, but in some small way wasjoining God at work, God, when
he created work said it wasgood.
Uh, it was only our nature thatmessed it up and created, you
know, poor workplaces or toxicworkplaces, whatever your word
for it is.
So if I could be one personworking on, uh, God's team to
(17:19):
make work a better place wherepeople thrive and become, uh,
close to him and use their gifts, uh, and do work that can be
held up as, as glorifying tohim, I would be really excited
about that.
If that's, that's how I think ofmy career of working for God.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Next time I'm driven forward, Cheryl and I dive into
the setback she's encountered inher career and life and how she
has learned to acknowledge andlearn from each one.
If you enjoyed this podcast,please take a moment to
subscribe and leave us a reviewto let us know what you think to
learn more about forward.
You can visit forward women.org.
That's the number four w o r d wo m e n.org.
(18:02):
Thanks for listening.
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