Speaker 1: It's only fitting that me a male lead off today's
Speaker 1: episode about women in the workplace. This is an issue
Speaker 1: that has proved problematic for decades, with progress that has
Speaker 1: been both fleeting and fitful. How can women truly succeed?
Speaker 1: Is leaning in enough? This is game plan? Hey everybody,
Speaker 1: I'm Sam Grobart and I'm Rebecca Greenfield. Four years ago,
Speaker 1: the topic of conversation in this nation was a book
Speaker 1: by Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg called Lean In, Yes, So Lean,
Speaker 1: And it was a huge sensation And the basic message
Speaker 1: of the book was that women need to understand all
Speaker 1: the forces working against them in the workplace and then
Speaker 1: lean up against them. So you don't speak up in meetings,
Speaker 1: for example, women tend not to do that, but you
Speaker 1: need to do that because that's how you're going to
Speaker 1: get ahead. Or you don't want to ask for the raise,
Speaker 1: but you need to ask for the raise because that's
Speaker 1: how you're going to get paid more or equal to
Speaker 1: what the men are making. And that was the general
Speaker 1: theme of the book. And like many ideas in this
Speaker 1: nation and in this world, there was a usual cycle
Speaker 1: to this. There was an initial excitement and embrace of
Speaker 1: the idea, and then Yeah, there was a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: huge backlash. There were two main criticisms of lean In
Speaker 1: the first one was that it put a lot of
Speaker 1: the responsibility on women to do all of the work.
Speaker 1: It's like the you know you're fat because you don't
Speaker 1: work out enough now because the food that you eat
Speaker 1: is made terrible by big companies exactly different, um. And
Speaker 1: so that was one criticism. And then the other criticism
Speaker 1: was that Cheryl Sandberg was elitist, um, and that the
Speaker 1: book was elitist, and that when it talked about working women,
Speaker 1: it was only talking about a specific type of working woman,
Speaker 1: white educated, really educated. Um. One thing that you know,
Speaker 1: Cheryl Enberg is also a white woman, and she was married,
Speaker 1: and a lot of women in this country who are
Speaker 1: working aren't. That that's correct, And she's quite wealthy. Yes,
Speaker 1: So that was where the two main criticisms. Still, it
Speaker 1: was a huge conversation that a lot of people found
Speaker 1: refreshing and needed to hear. I think, yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: raised topics that needed to be discussed. Even if there
Speaker 1: was disagreement over what the proper remedy was, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a big sensation. I don't think if people it
Speaker 1: didn't have in a hot moment for a lot of
Speaker 1: working women, and certainly a lot of people I knew
Speaker 1: found the advice very refreshing. Since then, Chellete Sandberg herself
Speaker 1: has come out with some articles and statements walking back
Speaker 1: some of the things that she said in lean In.
Speaker 1: So there's been a lot of research that's come out,
Speaker 1: specifically as a result of the book, showing that lean
Speaker 1: in can backfire for women in what kind of ways
Speaker 1: does that happen? So we talked about this on the
Speaker 1: meetings episode that we did. But when women speak up
Speaker 1: in meetings, they are judged more harshly and negatively than men.
Speaker 1: Sure there, Yeah, exactly. Another piece of research was found
Speaker 1: that when women do ask for raises, they're a lot
Speaker 1: less likely to get them. It seems like a case
Speaker 1: of the system, which is the mail dominated. And when
Speaker 1: we talk about this, I mean I say mail dominated
Speaker 1: because the workplace has been mail dominated since the beginning
Speaker 1: of time. So it's only very recently that we've begun
Speaker 1: to sort of poke at it and try to change it.
Speaker 1: But when the system is challenged, it just it rejects it.
Speaker 1: It says no. I mean, so I can get away
Speaker 1: with it because I am part of that system, but
Speaker 1: you don't have that privilege as the system views it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really frustrating to say like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: play by your game. I'm going to play by all
Speaker 1: the rules, and then only to be those aren't your rules.
Speaker 1: Oh no, actually that's not those are my rules. And
Speaker 1: as an ambitious person who wants to succeed, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not trying to knock anybody else down. You just
Speaker 1: want to get paid this. You want to get that money.
Speaker 1: I want to get that money. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: keep anybody else from getting their money. But yes, and
Speaker 1: then on the elitism thing, it was really interesting. Cheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg lost her husband. He died suddenly, and she wrote
Speaker 1: a Facebook post talking about how she didn't realize how
Speaker 1: hard it was to lean in when you're a single mom. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so lean in isn't really working right. The idea was proposed,
Speaker 1: it's been examined, it's not quite the solution perhaps we
Speaker 1: were all looking for. Now we have another proposal from
Speaker 1: former Wall Street executive and women's finance advocate Sally Crawcheck,
Speaker 1: who has a new book out called Own It. Sally,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us today. Let me jump
Speaker 1: right in with a question, can you sort of help
Speaker 1: plot the journey from lean in to own it? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, i'd say len In did, and Cheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg you is her purchaed Facebook and the credibility and
Speaker 1: profile she'd built to start an amazing national conversation about
Speaker 1: the advancement of women at work. What I would say
Speaker 1: with own it is that we look at the next chapter,
Speaker 1: which is hold on a second. We've had lots of conversation.
Speaker 1: We've had some progress, but we really haven't had as
Speaker 1: much progress as I think we might have expected. We
Speaker 1: can talk about the election, but we're really but even
Speaker 1: before the election, even before particularly with regards to business,
Speaker 1: if we actually go to the industry that I grew
Speaker 1: up in Wall Street financial services, would you believe that
Speaker 1: gender diversity is less farther forward? That was I don't
Speaker 1: know if that was grammatically correct, but has actually gone
Speaker 1: backwards in the past decade. There were more women in
Speaker 1: senior roles before the financial crisis than there are today.
Speaker 1: Pretty unexpected. I think that is also because of all
Speaker 1: the national conversation about leaning in and just knowing person
Speaker 1: only so many strong, successful women it's hard to believe that,
Speaker 1: but the numbers that don't lie like that is the truth.
Speaker 1: Like the workplace has not involved as much as we
Speaker 1: wanted to. What do you attribute that that sort of
Speaker 1: backwards momentum to. I'd say for that industry, it is
Speaker 1: not unusual for an industry that goes through crisis to
Speaker 1: go backwards in terms of gender diversity. And some could
Speaker 1: say it's circling the wagons. What I observed was, Hey,
Speaker 1: we'd love to put Susie or Jose or Jamal or
Speaker 1: anyone else who's different from the majority of us in
Speaker 1: that role, but you know, we're going through a financial crisis,
Speaker 1: and you know we can't take that risk. Is going
Speaker 1: to have to take a break for a minute. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just not as important this, of course, despite the
Speaker 1: research that is clear, and I mean clear, crystal clear,
Speaker 1: that diversity of all kinds, gender diversity in this case
Speaker 1: leads to superior performance, leads to higher returns on equity,
Speaker 1: lower risk, greater innovation, greater client focus, greater employee engagement.
Speaker 1: I mean, you name it. Having people of difference, whatever
Speaker 1: kind of difference in a room, leads to better decision
Speaker 1: making and ultimately to your point, affects the bottom line
Speaker 1: in a positive way. This isn't just diversity for diversity,
Speaker 1: saying absolutely, and you know we are you know, we
Speaker 1: like to believe this country is want of equal opportunity.
Speaker 1: We can debate that as well, but it really is
Speaker 1: in this case a business issue. And you tell me
Speaker 1: you're a mail I am. Do you think the financial
Speaker 1: crisis would have been worse if there were more women
Speaker 1: on those trading floors? Worse if there's been more people
Speaker 1: of difference. In fact, there's research in the book that
Speaker 1: says the homogeneity can lead to miss pricing and markets
Speaker 1: because we trust each other, right, rather than you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna really think this through. Nobody's really tricking the
Speaker 1: balloon there. Nobody's saying, wait a second, my experience is
Speaker 1: something different than yours, and I'm going to bring together
Speaker 1: so I don't know you that well, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to check those prices right as opposed to hey, come
Speaker 1: and we both go to the same restricted golf club.
Speaker 1: So part of the point I try to make of
Speaker 1: the book is having been one of not very many
Speaker 1: women on Wall Street. Really that's an extreme right. That
Speaker 1: was a very male business very male oriented, and not
Speaker 1: only do we not get the returns from diversity, but
Speaker 1: we had a financial crisis, and those things I believe
Speaker 1: have some relationship. But industries that aren't in crisis also
Speaker 1: aren't that accepting of women. Well, have not had as
Speaker 1: much progress in closing the gender pay gap, which depending
Speaker 1: on which research study you look at, will take eighty
Speaker 1: one years, a hundred eighteen years, a hundred eighty eight years,
Speaker 1: whichever one it is, or getting more women into senior
Speaker 1: roles or getting more women onto boards. Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 1: I was just looking actually, in preparation for this segment,
Speaker 1: an older newspiece that Pinterest actually at one point had
Speaker 1: made a goal to hire of its engineers as women,
Speaker 1: to hire women for thirty percent of their engineering again grammar,
Speaker 1: they missed it. They came in at like twenty four,
Speaker 1: and their solution was that they were going to reset
Speaker 1: the goal to twenty to change your goal it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's move the goal posts and we'll not do as
Speaker 1: much work in the future. And so there's always this
Speaker 1: sort of starting off with big expectations, lots of rhetoric,
Speaker 1: and then kind of backtracking hard. It's hard. It is
Speaker 1: look I'll tell you as as a manager I've been
Speaker 1: a manager, it is so much easier to manage people
Speaker 1: who are just like me, And it's so much easier
Speaker 1: to tell people to act in a certain way. And
Speaker 1: in the case of American business, that certain way has
Speaker 1: been both the advice women have gotten from so many
Speaker 1: advice books out there and the performance reviews I've gotten
Speaker 1: over the years, is to be confident, to be strong,
Speaker 1: to be assertive, to ask for the raise, to raise
Speaker 1: your hand for the promotion before you are ready. In fact,
Speaker 1: the much of the advice could be boiled down to
Speaker 1: act like a man. Yeah. And so it's just easier
Speaker 1: to manage people who are like you, and it's just
Speaker 1: easier to tell people who are not like you to
Speaker 1: act like you. So to me, your book seems to
Speaker 1: have kind of two messages. One of the messages to
Speaker 1: the businesses that feminine qualities and women in the workplace
Speaker 1: it's going to be good for your business. And we've
Speaker 1: just talked about that. Well, it already is, according to
Speaker 1: the research. And then I believe as business is changing
Speaker 1: that it's going to become more so. I mean, back
Speaker 1: in the day when no one had any information right,
Speaker 1: it was. You know, when I ran Merrill Lynch, I
Speaker 1: had the clients survey. No one else could afford to
Speaker 1: do it. Today everyone's got the information. Information is cheap,
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, that command and control that
Speaker 1: Jack Welchian approach to business may not be as valuable
Speaker 1: as the ability to see things holistically, which women can do.
Speaker 1: So the second message that I took away from your
Speaker 1: book was that for women, working women that they don't
Speaker 1: have to act like men, that they should act like
Speaker 1: more like women because that is an asset. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about that? This is what you know when you
Speaker 1: actually sit back and look at how much power we
Speaker 1: have as women today. We direct consumer spending. We control
Speaker 1: five trillion dollars of investable assets we jointly control with
Speaker 1: our spouses and partners an other six trillion. We're going
Speaker 1: to inherit the forty trillion dollars of wealth transfer over
Speaker 1: the next few decades. We are half the population, we
Speaker 1: are more than half the workforce. The qualities we bring
Speaker 1: to the workplace make them better. So why do I
Speaker 1: have tack like a man? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, And
Speaker 1: what I think is really exciting. That's happening now that
Speaker 1: was very different from ten years ago, even five years ago.
Speaker 1: Is this power I have I can use now? Before
Speaker 1: I was oh, look there's a Tackie Carl Jrs. Hamburger
Speaker 1: commercial with the woman with you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy a Hamburger. Today, they're actually services where
Speaker 1: you can go online and see how companies are impacting
Speaker 1: the environment. You can see you can go to the
Speaker 1: grocery store and see how the companies from which you
Speaker 1: buy are advancing women. We can invest in companies their
Speaker 1: mutual funds now that in which you can invest in
Speaker 1: companies that advance women to a greater degree. But the biggie,
Speaker 1: and I think it's an important one, is that back
Speaker 1: when I was younger and the company wasn't treating women well,
Speaker 1: or me well, or people well, I could stay. I
Speaker 1: could go without much information to another company, you know,
Speaker 1: talk to a few of my friends. Have a glass
Speaker 1: of wine. How do they do it over there? What's
Speaker 1: their maternity policy? I don't know right, I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. That Okay, fine, I'll go or I
Speaker 1: could go home. Today I can still do those things,
Speaker 1: but with much more information I can go to websites
Speaker 1: that will tell me everybody's maternity leaf policy. I can
Speaker 1: go to websites that crowdsource company called Cultures. Or I
Speaker 1: can start my own business because the price of starting
Speaker 1: your business is plummeting. Or I can put together a
Speaker 1: nonconventional career path. I have so many more options today,
Speaker 1: so I can use this power. So I really want
Speaker 1: to get to the part about starting your own business.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, are there ways you suggest
Speaker 1: women should work in the workplace, so you know, like
Speaker 1: negotiating or asking for the promotion that will be better
Speaker 1: than acting like a man. Well, I'll tell you. In
Speaker 1: the irony of so much of this, and in the
Speaker 1: shame of so much of this, is that when we
Speaker 1: women do act like men, the research is clear that
Speaker 1: there's a backlash that you know, she's she's too masculine
Speaker 1: and I too aggressive. There's an anecdote in the book
Speaker 1: when I was running Smith Barney and we were doing
Speaker 1: the managing director promotions, and we promoted a gentleman because
Speaker 1: he was aggressive, because he broke eggs. We need that,
Speaker 1: we need someone to break eggs, And then the woman
Speaker 1: who was next broke eggs. Such amenity and aggressive. Oh
Speaker 1: she's aggressive, right, We you know we were collegial. We
Speaker 1: don't need that, and so we recommended she get a coach.
Speaker 1: And it was It wasn't me, I'm embarrassed to tell you,
Speaker 1: wasn't even ahead of my hr. But it was a
Speaker 1: gentleman who a few minutes later said, wait, look at
Speaker 1: what we just did. So what we talk about, what
Speaker 1: I talk about in the book is a term I
Speaker 1: really like, which is the courageous conversation. Each of us
Speaker 1: can have a courageous conversation, some like Cheryl Sandburg, who
Speaker 1: wrote lean in kind of a big courageous conversation. Others
Speaker 1: like in that room is a courageous conversation of do
Speaker 1: we realize what we just did? Or hey, Joe, you
Speaker 1: interrupted Susie six different times in that meeting, but you
Speaker 1: never interrupted Jimmy. Right. So also in that performance review
Speaker 1: or that when you're asking for the raise, recognizing and
Speaker 1: saying before we start, I just this is going to
Speaker 1: sound a little dope, but we all know that women
Speaker 1: who ask sometimes are viewed as aggressive. But I'm about
Speaker 1: to ask, And the research shows that by putting that
Speaker 1: on the table and saying it, you pretty quickly negate it.
Speaker 1: You've been talking about issues within a sort of more
Speaker 1: conventional workplace. But as you've alluded to, as Becca you
Speaker 1: were referring to earlier, you also talk about starting your
Speaker 1: own business, going independently. What are some of the strategies
Speaker 1: that women can use that may be different than what
Speaker 1: men might do? Similar, how do you see a woman
Speaker 1: who is looking to be independent of a corporation proceeding? So,
Speaker 1: first of all, let's acknowledge the less than positive, which
Speaker 1: is adventure capitalist Today do not give women the same
Speaker 1: amount of funding or resources that they give men. And
Speaker 1: depending on which year and which study, women run businesses
Speaker 1: get three percent of venture capital funding or six percent
Speaker 1: or eight percent or some ridiculously small number. The good
Speaker 1: news is that as the price of starting businesses has plummeted,
Speaker 1: the price of technology has plummeted, the price of renting
Speaker 1: office space has gone from you have to have a
Speaker 1: long term lease to who we works, business travel, you
Speaker 1: can do a video conference, full time employees, you can
Speaker 1: hire some of those freelancers, and so you really able
Speaker 1: are able today to start businesses, some businesses with a
Speaker 1: smaller amount of capital or a small amount of capital,
Speaker 1: and so what we're seeing, which is terrific, is the
Speaker 1: infrastructure around starting businesses and particularly women owned businesses, is blossoming,
Speaker 1: and women are able to are more successful in things
Speaker 1: like crowdfunding than than mentor and so there are other
Speaker 1: means of getting capital, but some of it is the
Speaker 1: old fashioned bootstrapping. Now, what I've done with l Vest,
Speaker 1: which is I think a really exciting business is a
Speaker 1: digital investment platform for women, is I saw what I
Speaker 1: think is a substantial market opportunity. It's probably no coincidence
Speaker 1: that Wall streeting the investing industry are mostly male and
Speaker 1: that women don't invest. Those potential customers and clients don't
Speaker 1: invest to the same degree that men do. And so
Speaker 1: what we did was saw the opportunity, did tons of
Speaker 1: research with women about why they don't invest. Essentially, it was, hey,
Speaker 1: they tell them me to act like a man at work.
Speaker 1: They tell them me to invest like a man over
Speaker 1: here with my money, and spending the time with them
Speaker 1: to determine what it is they're looking for, not trying
Speaker 1: to change the women, but really trying to change the
Speaker 1: investing offering. And so you know, as I talked to
Speaker 1: female entrepreneur apter, female entrepreneur, apter female entrepreneur, and there's
Speaker 1: so many more of them. Now. What they're saying is,
Speaker 1: perhaps ironically, perhaps happily, the fact that business is so
Speaker 1: male means that they're missing some of these female markets,
Speaker 1: whether it's a rent the runway or a dry bar
Speaker 1: or the real real you know, business after business are
Speaker 1: seeing opportunities that are available that the guys are just
Speaker 1: looking right past. Do you think that the ultimate solution
Speaker 1: for women to find only succeed. I mean, you climbed
Speaker 1: so far within the field that you were in on
Speaker 1: Wall Street, only to be eventually knocked down. I'm really fine,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to my own thing. Is that is that
Speaker 1: kind of the way forward for women? I think it
Speaker 1: is a way forward because here here's what I think.
Speaker 1: I think that if you were a company that historically
Speaker 1: did not treat women well and there was very little
Speaker 1: penalty for it, and that today again we can as
Speaker 1: women see that our company is not treating us well,
Speaker 1: see that we're not getting the promotion, that our friends
Speaker 1: are not getting the promotion, that that dope is getting
Speaker 1: the promotion, and we can start our own businesses. To
Speaker 1: a greater degree, we can go to other companies with
Speaker 1: more information. To a greater degree, we can go on
Speaker 1: social and share this with our friends. To a greater degree.
Speaker 1: We can not buy from those companies, and we cannot
Speaker 1: invest in those companies. So you can see not tomorrow,
Speaker 1: not the next day, not the third day, but you
Speaker 1: can see where companies who are going to get it,
Speaker 1: and there are some who are will be an employer
Speaker 1: of choice. Women will buy increasingly from them, women will
Speaker 1: invest increasingly in them. And those that don't, well, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, another quarter just wasn't quite as good.
Speaker 1: They miss by penny, and the next quarter they missed,
Speaker 1: buy a couple of pennies, and they missed by you know,
Speaker 1: a few more, and that they will get hollowed out
Speaker 1: and won't see some of these big opportunities from these
Speaker 1: massive markets. Another thing that you really try to hammer
Speaker 1: home in your book is the importance of women just
Speaker 1: having their own money. And you say money has power.
Speaker 1: Can you explain why you find that so important? Can
Speaker 1: I stand up and jump and scream and such money
Speaker 1: is power. We live in a capitalist society. I can't
Speaker 1: say it enough. Um, Then I will further say that
Speaker 1: women will not be fully equal with men until we
Speaker 1: are financially equal with men, that we will not have
Speaker 1: the full range of choice is in our lives until
Speaker 1: we have the same amount of money as they do.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. I call investing because there's
Speaker 1: a gender investing gap in this country that cost some
Speaker 1: women as much as the gender pay gap, but costs
Speaker 1: some women hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars
Speaker 1: over the course of their lives. Do you feel better?
Speaker 1: Are you more able to start the business you're dreaming
Speaker 1: about if you have more money or less? Are you
Speaker 1: able to leave the relationship with the and our partner
Speaker 1: who you're not so crazy about anymore? If you have
Speaker 1: more money or less, do you even feel better about
Speaker 1: walking into your boss's office to ask for the promotion,
Speaker 1: the raise, the overseas assignment to move you to a
Speaker 1: new department if you have more money or less. The
Speaker 1: answer for all of this is more and we've identified
Speaker 1: over at l US. We actually have an e book
Speaker 1: that we put out called Mind the Gap. We've identified
Speaker 1: six or seven money gaps. The gender investing gap I
Speaker 1: talked about in the book. There's a gender pay gap,
Speaker 1: there's a gender work achievement gap, there's a gender debt gap,
Speaker 1: takes us longer pay off our debt, gender expense gap,
Speaker 1: gender funding gap. They're all of these and these can
Speaker 1: cost women the group of them millions of dollars, and
Speaker 1: it changes the texture and the complexion of our lives
Speaker 1: in the context of a of a domestic partnership of marriage.
Speaker 1: What have you? I get the feeling you might be
Speaker 1: more of a separate checking account fan ab so loutly
Speaker 1: when not necessarily separate checking account. I'm all for combining
Speaker 1: the expenses and paying for the expenses on based on
Speaker 1: the ratio of your earnings, so if one earns more,
Speaker 1: they pay more for the expenses and the other. But
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of keeping investment separate. Behalf of
Speaker 1: or just under half of marriages in divorce, I went
Speaker 1: through one. I thought we were going to be married
Speaker 1: until the end of time. He and my friend did
Speaker 1: not have that same point of view. And you know,
Speaker 1: I honestly never imagine it could happen to me. But
Speaker 1: when it does, trying to figure out where the money
Speaker 1: is is a poor time to do it. In addition,
Speaker 1: we women live, depending on the piece of research, five six,
Speaker 1: eight years longer than men. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many of my friends I've seen trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the money in the aftermath of their spouses passing away
Speaker 1: again another not great time to a great time? Where's
Speaker 1: the key to the you know to thee, where's where's
Speaker 1: the will? And look, these are hard, hard things to
Speaker 1: talk about, but of women manage their money on their
Speaker 1: own at some point in their lives, and so having
Speaker 1: knowledge of it and control over it is important, and
Speaker 1: having more of it by closing some of these gender
Speaker 1: gaps is important as well. I have one final question,
Speaker 1: what is the number one piece of advice you can
Speaker 1: give for owning it? I think the number one piece
Speaker 1: of advice is to have the confidence that we we
Speaker 1: as women bring great things to the workforce. Um, we
Speaker 1: as women, the research is clear, make businesses better. We
Speaker 1: as women today have more options than we've ever had,
Speaker 1: and to recognize that and act upon it, and recognize
Speaker 1: that we have degrees of freedom that our mothers and
Speaker 1: grandmothers didn't have, that we don't have to play the
Speaker 1: game the men's way all the time, and then in fact,
Speaker 1: playing the game the men's way can lead to inferior
Speaker 1: business results. But more importantly, acting like something you're not.
Speaker 1: Day after day after day, acting like a man is
Speaker 1: exhausting and can drive us out of the workforce. And
Speaker 1: so I think just having that confidence and really having
Speaker 1: joy in work and recognizing that we can have a
Speaker 1: positive impact, make a difference. Have some fun, not every day,
Speaker 1: but have some fun, have an impact, I think are
Speaker 1: the messages I'd love people to take away. All right, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me. So, Becca,
Speaker 1: are you ready to own it? I'm ready to own it.
Speaker 1: I think that practically speaking, she has a lot of
Speaker 1: good practical advice for someone like me who wants to
Speaker 1: be successful and make money and rise up in the
Speaker 1: ranks and all that. That's all happening for you already, Yes,
Speaker 1: because I've I've been owning it. But I think from
Speaker 1: a big picture standpoint, owning it, like lean in, is
Speaker 1: just going to run up against a wall. Eventually. Maybe
Speaker 1: owning it will be seen as aggressive or pushy or whatever,
Speaker 1: and we'll joke about it and it will become a
Speaker 1: meme and it will be sort of silly. Right, And
Speaker 1: as long as we're working within this system that is
Speaker 1: working against certain people, the individual actions just they're not
Speaker 1: gonna get you that far, which Sally knows from absolutely. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: she's not being like utopian about this. But that's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to push her to say that starting your
Speaker 1: own business is a good solution in making your own systems. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that once we see more successful companies that
Speaker 1: are run by women, that will begin to actually perhaps
Speaker 1: change the tenor of this conversation, because as it remains,
Speaker 1: while there are certainly some stand out examples, the majority
Speaker 1: of businesses are still run by men, and most of
Speaker 1: the big ones and so forth. I had a thought
Speaker 1: about something that she was saying in the conversation when
Speaker 1: she talked about courageous conversations, and this goes out to
Speaker 1: all the fellas out there, Hey, dudes, you can own
Speaker 1: it to. The truth is that if you are a
Speaker 1: man and you care about these issues, and you should,
Speaker 1: then it is incumbent upon you two identify situations or
Speaker 1: actions that are discriminatory, that are unfair toward women or
Speaker 1: towards other people if it's another issue, Because the fact
Speaker 1: remains that as a white male, I have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to open my fat mouth whenever I want, and people
Speaker 1: generally will listen to me like on average, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe not me personally because they know I'm sort of
Speaker 1: a jackass, but demographically, I am in a lot of
Speaker 1: those rooms. I am in those meetings, I am talking
Speaker 1: to that leadership, and I can do so unquestioned. So
Speaker 1: I have to be sure that I am representing those
Speaker 1: interests and the things I care about, because it's quite
Speaker 1: possible that somebody might, in a rather cynical way, might
Speaker 1: hear you Becca say something and be like, whatever, that's
Speaker 1: just that upity woman who you know is all angry
Speaker 1: all the time. But if they hear it from me,
Speaker 1: they might actually go, oh, I haven't really fun about that.
Speaker 1: You know, Sam's a pretty cool dude, and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that seeks to another thing that she was talking
Speaker 1: about that struck me, where it's like she rattles off
Speaker 1: all this research that shows that having diversity, gender diversity,
Speaker 1: all types of diversity is good for workplaces, and she
Speaker 1: argues that things that women are better at are going
Speaker 1: to be helpful to business, and that's all great, and
Speaker 1: that's all been true for a while, but the people
Speaker 1: who are empowered don't want to change and don't want
Speaker 1: to hear it. Well, they don't. I think I'm not
Speaker 1: speaking to any specific person, but I mean generally, I
Speaker 1: would assume that, you know, they don't want people who
Speaker 1: aren't like them. It's just easier. It's just exactly like
Speaker 1: you know, it's like if we all went to the
Speaker 1: same kinds of schools and we all came from the
Speaker 1: same parts of the world, and we all make the
Speaker 1: same kind of money and all that, you know them,
Speaker 1: that's just stuff we don't have to think about. It's
Speaker 1: I mean, on some level, it's requires more effort. It
Speaker 1: takes work to hire different kinds of people and to
Speaker 1: work alongside them and understand where they're coming from, and
Speaker 1: that is all necessary. But you know, people are lazy
Speaker 1: and I benefit in this case, it's something that benefits them,
Speaker 1: So why in the world would they ever change exactly?
Speaker 1: So that's depressing. It is depressing that. That's why then
Speaker 1: you have to shift the game and build your own business.
Speaker 1: Build your own business, make your own money, and men,
Speaker 1: if you care what you should own it. Yeah, speak up,
Speaker 1: and now it's time for half baked takes, fake takes. Becca,
Speaker 1: Are you ready with a sort of semiformed opinion. I
Speaker 1: would like to reclaim the Sunday evening from what are
Speaker 1: known as the Sundays scaries. So Sunday you're dreading Monday.
Speaker 1: Sunday is half the weekend. It's unfair that it becomes
Speaker 1: this horrible thing we don't want. I found recently that
Speaker 1: in order to feel less upset about impending work day
Speaker 1: Monday doom, I try to make plans for Sunday evening,
Speaker 1: much like I would make plans after work on a Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Sure you got work the next day on Tuesday exactly,
Speaker 1: but before I would just say like, oh, Sunday, I
Speaker 1: need to do laundry, cooked, dinner, chill. No, don't do that,
Speaker 1: Go do something power through, power through so yeah, like
Speaker 1: get a drink, go see a show, lean, lean in,
Speaker 1: own your Sunday Sunday. Yeah. So that's that's what I
Speaker 1: have been doing, and I think it's great. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I wish I could do that with two kids at home.
Speaker 1: I can't really be like I'm heading out. Yeah checking, sorry,
Speaker 1: checking my single no kid privilege. There we go. I'll
Speaker 1: use it, truly, no honestly, to everyone out there, please
Speaker 1: use it as long as you can. Yeah, what is
Speaker 1: your unformed half opinion for this week. Well, Becca, I
Speaker 1: have discovered a great new place to go and do
Speaker 1: work if I'm not in the office and I don't
Speaker 1: want to be at home on It's a I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever heard of them. This is a
Speaker 1: small furniture retailer there from Sweden. Um Ikea, Yes, I've
Speaker 1: read ia. Okay, So here's the deal. All Ikeas have
Speaker 1: a cafeteria, if I may say, a pretty awesome one
Speaker 1: because you are delicious. They have lots of other things.
Speaker 1: But all Ikea is also now have free WiFi so
Speaker 1: long as you sign up for their like frequent Shopper card,
Speaker 1: which is free and you may as well do it anyway,
Speaker 1: and my wife has actually started doing this. She will
Speaker 1: go to an Ikea with her laptop. There are power
Speaker 1: outlets everywhere, there's decent coffee to be had. If you're hungry,
Speaker 1: you get up, you walk over. If you do this
Speaker 1: during the week, by the way, remember that an Ikea
Speaker 1: during the week is a ghost town, so it's nothing
Speaker 1: like when you go on the weekends, and it's quiet
Speaker 1: and if you get bored you can kind of like
Speaker 1: go walk around a little bit and check out, you know,
Speaker 1: like my beautiful four square foot home or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it turns out to be a really pleasing and productive time.
Speaker 1: You have to live close enough to an Ikea to
Speaker 1: make it, I think so. I think that if we're
Speaker 1: talking about a pretty extensive travel time, it might not
Speaker 1: make it worth it, But otherwise you may want to
Speaker 1: go check it out. I'm into this. Are like alternative
Speaker 1: places that have free WiFi where you can sit and
Speaker 1: do work. Because Starbucks are your local cool cafe is
Speaker 1: always going to be crowded, run the table's wobble and
Speaker 1: they don't have enough plugs right or as I found,
Speaker 1: like if you go to the library, somewhere along the way,
Speaker 1: no talking in the library fell by the wayside, and
Speaker 1: now libraries are like, hey, let's all just hang out
Speaker 1: and have a really great time at the library. No,
Speaker 1: I kea got it, love it, check it out all right?
Speaker 1: And that was some half baked takes. Hath baked takes.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. If you like what you're hearing,
Speaker 1: please feel free to rate and review our show on iTunes.
Speaker 1: We definitely read them. We've been getting some from you
Speaker 1: recently and we really appreciate it. And you can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. I'm at rs Greenfield and I am
Speaker 1: at Sam Grosbart. By the way, if you have any
Speaker 1: half baked takes of your own, please tweet at us.
Speaker 1: We will be sure to use them on the show.
Speaker 1: And this week's show was produced by Liz Smith and
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson and the head of Podcasts is Alec McCabe.
Speaker 1: And we will see you next week. So long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she'saw top going with the end and she's like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to become a weekend the only way out of
Speaker 1: this date