Here's Why You Should Never Ask a Busy Person to Lunch (and What to Do Instead)
The secret to getting ahead.
Photo: ColorJoy Stock
Networking is every successful person’s middle name—but meeting with a busy person is a challenge. Although we can’t give you the secret handshake that will land you a meeting with Sheryl Sandberg (there’s a secret handshake, right?) we can dole out successful networking tips and tricks that will get you in the door with someone high-ranking who has the potential to advance your career.
Just because networking can feel impossible, doesn’t mean it is. Meeting your career heroes isn’t unheard of and landing that crucial meeting can be done, but you’ll have to get creative. Your career crush didn’t make it where they are by taking every lunch meeting they were cold emailed about. So, here are some ways you can stand out and get your foot in the door.
Try Getting in Touch With Their Assistant First
There are some who claim that a cold call or cold email shows bold initiative. And sometimes, when the work powers that be are acting in your favor, a cold email will launch your career in a way you can’t imagine. There are always outliers.
Case in point: Jaclyn Johnson, CEO and founder of Create & Cultivate, cold emailed Garance Doré, and she responded and then spoke at C&C Chicago. You never know what will happen until you put yourself out in the universe. But if after a cold email and a follow-up you’re still not getting anything, you should try a new road before either, a) giving up, or b) hounding someone to the point where they will never meet with you.
When you are just getting started, don’t assume that you are the exception. Assume you are the rule. (That’s not to say you shouldn’t be confident. There is a difference.) Most busy people will not appreciate you clogging up their inbox. It’s not uncommon for a CEO to receive 1000+ emails a day, and wading through those can feel like torture.
Think of the assistant as Saint Peter at The Gates. You’re not getting in unless you make good with Pete. Many CEOs and executives will have their assistants linked to their inboxes. Meeting with them could be a great inroad. Offer to take them to coffee or lunch. Ask for 15 minutes of their time before you try and meet with their boss. Assistants are overworked, overtired, and often under-appreciated. Get on their good side and it just might land you on their employer’s schedule.
Skip the Standard Cold Call and Email Vernacular
There is a story in Silicon Valley about Tristan Walker, who recently raised $24 million for personal care products for POC. Before branching out on his own as CEO of Walker and Company, he worked for Foursquare—a job he got from cold emailing the founders eight times. Two years after landing the position, Walker posted the correspondence that landed him a meeting on his blog. You can read it here. There were many, including IA Ventures’ Ben Siscovick who said, “If you are outside StartupLand looking to get in, read this then read it again—this is how it’s done.”
However, despite his success, Walker’s original email is exactly what we would warn against. There is passion in his voice, yes, but he notes nothing concrete that he would bring to the Foursquare team. It worked for Walker, but in most cases, this will not work. Don’t tell a company how awesome they are. Don’t tell someone you’re “hungry.” In a few short sentences, you should be able to explain exactly what you can bring to the table. Be as specific as possible.
For example, if you want to meet with the CEO of a marketing company, convey in two sentences how you’ve helped another company grow, or an idea you had for a client that performed on social well. When applicable, give stats.
If You’re Asking Them for the Meeting, You Go to Them
This is really simple. Don’t ask someone to coffee and then suggest a place to meet. Bring them coffee. Show up where they are and make it easy.
By Failing to Prepare, You Are Preparing to Fail
Come with questions. If person X is giving you 15 minutes of their time, you should be prepared to make use of every. single. second.
I recently had someone tell me, “I have three.” As in minutes. You better believe that I wrote down what I needed and made those three minutes count. If you waste three minutes of someone’s time, you can be sure that they won’t give you ten in the future.
You don’t need to print out your resume. Honestly, it’s a little dated and most people are more interested in getting a read on you, not reading what you print on paper.
While You’re There…
If you shake their hand and walk out of the office thanking them for their time, you’ve biffed it. LEAVE WITH NEXT STEPS. Let’s repeat that. LEAVE WITH NEXT STEPS. Ask for something concrete that you can do that, a) keeps you in contact, and b) is actionable for you. You’re not taking a meeting to schmooze, you’re taking a meeting to move the needle on your career. So move it.
Once You’ve Left…
Don't ghost. Follow up. Send a thank-you email, at the very least. Pro tip: Send a thank you with cupcakes for the office. Or send something that says, I paid attention to what you said, and I’m working to take the next steps.
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This post was published on February 16, 2019, and has since been updated.
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47 Gifts From Women-Owned Brands for Everyone on Your Holiday Shopping List
Shop small, make an impact.
Photo: Christina Jones Photography
If there’s one thing we are in full support of over here at Create & Cultivate HQ it’s women-owned businesses. So many of them have joined us at our summits and conferences, contributed to our panels or blog, and educated us all on their journeys to success (including the mistakes they learned from along the way).
Since we’re committed to shopping small this holiday season, we’re supporting women-owned businesses with our wallets and encourage you to do the same if you’re able to. Ahead, we’re sharing products for every type of gift receiver, so check out these ideas and wow your friends and family with these creative, by-women products.
For the Wellness Enthusiast
Ceremonia The Scalp Power-Duo
What’s more relaxing than a scalp massage? This gift set includes both a miracle-oil hair treatment and a scalp masajeador for maximum benefits.
$38
Gilded The Marble Body Brush
This handcrafted body brush will inspire even the most stressed out person on your holiday shopping list to make more time for self-care.
$88
Highborn Salome Aromatic Anointing Oil
Crafted with organic, sustainably sourced and extracted essential oils, this distinctive aromatics treatment offers a moment of bliss.
$40
Palermo Replenishing Salt Soak
Made with a combination of Himalayan pink and Dead Sea salts this pretty pink blend will instantly upgrade a bath time self-care ritual.
$12
Dieux Forever Eye Mask
Created to reduce unnecessary waste caused by single-use eye masks, these reusable eye patches holds gels, serums and creams close to the skin for maximum absorption. Win, win.
$25
Fur Fur Oil
Put your gift-giving dollars behind a company that’s tackling the stigma of body hair by giving the self-care savvy person in your life this luxe-feeling oil.
$46
Lalah Delia Vibrate Higher Daily
Give them a gift that will allow them to tap into their inner power, thanks to Lalah Delia, the self-help pioneer behind the internet community Vibrate Higher Daily.
$20
Moon Juice SuperYou
Designed to reduce stress, these adaptogen daily supplements are the perfect stocking stuffer for the hard-to-shop-for wellness junkie.
$49
For the Accessory Lover
Oma the Label The Babba Ring
Inspired by classic Cuban links, this ring is one-size-fits-all and adjustable to fit any accessory lover on your list.
$79
Vrai & Oro Lightweight Hoops
These 14k gold beauties are a beautiful reminder of how much this person means to you.
$90
Bird + Stone “My Body My Business” Cuff, Set of Two
This gift speaks for itself. Remind your friend what they’re worth with this statement piece.
$60
Sophie Monet The Wood Charm Necklace
Some like it simple. This necklace appears delicate, but the quality and intricate detail makes it a perfect gift for a minimalistic loved one.
$140
Second Wind The Tina Mask
For those who like to be a little flashier, this silk mask complete with an 18k gold chain is just the purchase for them. The simplistic design pairs with the eye-catching chain to create a simplified luxury piece.
$85
Cuyana Mini Leather Zipper Pouch
Sophisticated yet practical, this pebbled leather pouch is a busy girl’s necessity.
$65
Catbird Baby Pearl Hoops
Subtle and timeless, these pearl hoops will be beloved for years to come.
$88
ByChari Two Initial and Diamond Necklace
Give a personalized gift with this two-initial and diamond necklace from the brand that brought us Michelle Obama’s coveted Vote Necklace.
$285
For the Skincare Junkie
OneKind PM Power Couple
Dream Cream Nighttime Moisturizer + Midnight Magic PM Serum
This two-step nighttime routine is no joke. With supercharged ingredients targeted to repair and hydrate skin, trust us on this one—your friend (and their skin) will thank you.
$72
Shani Darden Skin Care Perfect Cleanse Set
With A-list clients by the likes of Chrissy Teigen and Jessica Alba, Shani Darden has a sought-after skincare line for a reason. Snag this set for the skincare obsessed.
$44
Tata Harper Resurfacing Mask
This glow-giving treatment instantly restores radiance to dull, rough skin. But the best part? It’s made with clean ingredients.
$65
Peach & Lily Eco Your Skin Holiday Kit
This jam-packed skincare mask kit takes traditional Korean spa techniques straight to one’s doorstep. Easy to use and effective, this gift is unique from many other skincare products on the market and is well worth the purchase.
$90
Summer Fridays The Hydration Set
Help them beat dry winter skin with this set of Summer Friday's bestselling Mini Jet Lag Mask, CC Me Serum, and Lip Butter Balm.
$75
Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum
It doesn’t have a devoted following for no reason. Since it’s launch a few years ago, this face oil has become a global phenomenon and anyone who is gifted this will treasure every drop.
$185
Golde Papaya Bright Face Mask
This is made with 100% pure, edible superfoods such as lucuma, papaya, and sea buckthorn berry so it's packed with vitamin C and smells like a tropical vacation.
For the Foodie
Pomelo Casa Coral Mini Bowl
This chic, hand-painted mini bowl is an essential for any modern table-setting.
$24
Brightland 100% Extra Virgin Heirloom Olive Oil
You’ll be hard pressed to find a more lovingly crafted olive oil. You’ll want to put this one on display.
$37
The Little Market Cookbook Gift Set
This gift has a philanthropic touch that will be sure to warm the hearts and satisfy the tastebuds of any gift receiver. The cookbook gives readers a look into the lives and kitchens of immigrants and profits go toward a charitable cause.
$58
Sugarfina Candy Care Package
Because, who doesn’t like a bit of a sugar rush during the holiday season (or, any time of year)?
$24
Yola Mezcal
To toast to the holiday season (and the new year!).
$60
Mija Superstar Complete Superfood Supplement
This adaptogenic formula has been designed to provide the ideal daily ratio of vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, alkaline greens, and phytonutrients in a daily dose of just two teaspoons. Stay healthy and make it taste good, too.
$78
Gaby Dalkin Eat What You Want: 125 Recipes for Real Life
This is brimming with deliciously simple recipes that anyone can cook. Our favorite? The cauliflower shawarma bowl.
$28
Estelle Colored Glass Champagne Coupes, Set of 6
These blush-hued coupes are surefire crowdpleasers, especially when brimming with Champagne.
$195
For the Go-Getter
Create & Cultivate 2021 Planner
This way, you can make sure your most important dates are all locked in ahead of time. Let’s make 2021 a year to remember.
$10
Otherland Black Velvet
Give your work wife something to look forward to seeing (and smelling) every day at work. This candle is a breath of fresh air and will break up the monotony while reminding them of you, too.
$36
Allswell The Deck
Draw one of these when you’re in a creative rut. Developed in collaboration with psychiatrist Dr. Monisha Vasa, each card includes a “Write” and a “Draw” prompt. Shuffle them up, grab a pen and see what emerges.
$25
Hija De Tu Madre Yo Quiero Dinero Keychain
This speaks for itself.
$16
Create & Cultivate Energy Up Charging Tassel
Add some spice to your friend’s working life with C&C’s energy up charging tassel.
$20
Create & Cultivate Success Never Sleeps Card Case
Buy this for a friend who is ready to achieve their goals and do something big in 2021.
$30
Clare V Clare Crespo 2021 Ice Cream Calendar
Make 2021 a treat with this ice cream calendar.
For the Homebody
Vitruvi Blush Diffuser
This stunning stone diffuser doubles as décor when it’s not in use and the soft pink hue will really make your loved one blush.
$119
Rootfoot Palo Santo Pure Essential Oil
This sustainably harvested essential oil is the perfect complement to any home. They only use naturally fallen dead branches that have that have been lying on the ground for more than two years for their products.
$12
Have a Nice Day Work From Home Mug
Designed by artist Steffi Lynn Tsai, your java-loving friend will love this gift.
$17
Parachute Cloud Cotton Robe
For that special someone who loves to lounge in style at home, this is the perfect gift.
$99
The Sill Rubber Plant
This glossy burgundy beauty really makes a statement in any space and the best part? It thrives indoors.
$52
Lunya Washable Silk Sleep Mask
Nothing beats sleeping on a 100% silk sleep mask, and this one is washable!
$48
Ayla Sea Soak
This deeply restorative full-body treatment is as close to a spa treatment as you can get without having to leave your house.
$59
Jiggy Snow Day by Jo Taylor
Give the gift of a cozy night indoors with a fun puzzle. All that’s missing is a blanket and a glass of wine.
Ouai Rose Hair and Body Oil
Jen Atkin really changed the game with this one. It performs double duty as a head-to-toe hydrator and it’s also a perfume.
$32
This story was originally published on December 3, 2019, and has since been updated.
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5 Tips to a Successful Negotiation
Professionalism ensures a win-win in the long run.
Photo: Jess Bailey Designs for Pexels
Negotiation is an unavoidable occurrence in life. But, as the late John F. Kennedy said, “Let us never fear to negotiate.” And he’s right—there’s nothing to fear about negotiation, especially with these tips.
Be Prepared
Go into your negotiation with as much background knowledge as possible. This means you have to do your research! If you have a meeting with your boss about a raise, investigate what others in your position are earning in your company and in the market. If you’re negotiating a sale price, know the market for that particular product and know how much others are selling it for.
Likewise, know what you’re bringing to the table. Anticipate some of the more challenging issues that may arise and know how you’re going to handle them. Practice tip: Put yourself in the other side’s shoes. What would they want to know? What concerns might they have?
Have a Flexible Bottom Line
People sometimes use a “bottom line” to gauge when they are willing to walk away from a negotiation. The better practice is to use a flexible bottom line. Things can change during the negotiation—new facts pop up, new options are on the table, or you realize that the bottom line you established before is simply unrealistic. Being flexible enables you to consider all of the possibilities before deciding it’s time to walk away.
You should also know what you’re looking to get out of the negotiation (and why you deserve it —see #1). But again, be open-minded and don’t commit yourself to anything before you have all of the facts.
Choose an Interest-Based Approach:
Ask Questions & Listen to the Answers
There are two “types” of negotiation: distributive aka positional, and integrative aka interest-based. Positional is a win-lose mentality—there is one pizza and we are splitting it. Interest-based is a win-win mentality—there is one pizza and we are enlarging it.
People tend to engage in positional negotiation, especially if they are on opposite sides of an issue. However, using an interest-based approach increases the chance of success for both sides. (And who doesn’t want a bigger pizza?!)
The key to interest-based negotiation is identifying the other side’s interests. The easiest way to do this is to simply ask, “Why?”
For example, two little girls are having a fight over an orange. Both girls take the position that they want the whole orange. If their mom cuts the orange in half and gives ½ to each little girl, she would be using a distributive approach. But the mom decides to ask each little girl why she wants the whole orange. Girl A tells the mom that she just loves oranges and she wants to eat it. Girl B says she wants the orange peel to use in baking some cookies. The mom gives the whole orange to Girl A, Girl B gets the whole orange peel, and both girls are happy.
By simply asking the girls “why” they wanted the orange, the mom was able to ascertain each girl’s respective interests and realize that their interests did not conflict.
Engage in dialogue with the other side. Actively listen to what they are saying; repeat and ask questions if necessary to truly understand their interests and their concerns. Likewise, be transparent about your interests and concerns—but see the caveat in the next paragraph.
If the other side in your negotiation is being competitive and positional, don’t give in. If they’re attacking your ideas or slinging insults left and right, resist the urge to counter-attack. Recast the attacks on you or your ideas as attacks on the issue. Try using questions and strategic silence to figure out the other side’s underlying interests. You can also bring in a third party to talk to each side separately and try to understand each side’s respective interests. If the other side is simply not willing to cooperate, not sharing any information, engaging in trickery, or otherwise being untrustworthy, be very careful about what information you choose to divulge and don’t lay your best cards on the table upfront.
“Things can change mid-negotiation. Having a flexible bottom line is more important than a bottom line.”
Brainstorm Ideas Without Judgement
After you’ve figured out the other side’s interests, brainstorm ideas and encourage the other side to do the same. Don’t immediately throw any of the ideas out. Instead, after both sides have come up with every possible solution, go through each one, and talk about why an idea is satisfactory or not satisfactory. Use your flexible bottom line and your intentions to evaluate the ideas, but remember to be open-minded.
Don’t Lose Your Cool
Sometimes parties reach an impasse—and that’s ok. But don’t flip out on the other side and jeopardize all of the time and work you’ve put into this, and even worse, jeopardize your relationship with the other side. Separate the people from the problem. Take a break and resume, if possible, when both parties have had time to cool off. Always be gracious and take the high road. Professionalism ensures a win-win in the long run.
Alex LoCasto is the founder of The Fashion Brief, a fashion blog for professional women that refuse to dress within the expected confines of “corporate attire.” Check out her blog here. Alex is also an attorney in the Dallas office of the firm Locke Lord LLP. She focuses her practice on business litigation and dispute resolution. Get more info on Alex and her firm here.
DISCLAIMER: This article has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for legal advice.
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This story was originally published on April 20, 2019, and has since been updated.
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12 Questions You Should Ask to *Really* Nail Down Your Life Mission
Life with a capital “L.”
Photo: Create & Cultivate
"What’s your overall goal?”
It's the first question I ask any entrepreneur, client, friend, (just about anyone) who is in the midst of a career transition or looking to start or grow a venture. I follow it up with, “Where do you see yourself in five years? 10 years? Life-wise.” The question is basic and BIG.
But answering that question, or at the very least attempting to answer that question, creates clarity; crystal clear or not, it's an important step in the right direction to figuring out Life with a capital "L." And guess what? Your business is part of that Life. So before nailing down a business mission, start with your life goals.
You don’t have to have the destination 100% set (if you do, awesome) but you do need a map so that when you get lost or head down a path less traveled and find yourself in parts unknown (which, is inevitable and healthy) you have a map to consult—to help you redirect and continue on.
Answer these 12 big life questions and you'll find that in the process you'll get further clarity on your business mission as well:
1. Visualize yourself in 10 years. What do you see for yourself? What/who do you see yourself surrounded with? What do you see yourself doing?
2. What do you feel the most fearful of right now?
3. What are you willing to sacrifice to stay true to you? What are you okay saying “no” to?
4. What areas of your life are humming?
5. What areas of your life do you want to make changes in?
6. What do you wish you were doing more of that makes you happy?
7. What kinds of problems do you enjoy solving the most?
8. What about you makes you uniquely you?
9. What are your values?
10. Who are some other people in your life that you admire? Why?
11. What are some commonalities in the people that you are drawn to?
12. What aspects of who you are do people find energizing?
Alison Gilbert is a business coach and consultant. She’s helped over a dozen owners and entrepreneurs grow profitable businesses quickly and efficiently, including such companies as Well+Good, Levo League, Maiyet, and Plum Alley. Prior to building her consultancy, she was hire number four and COO of food media company Tasting Table where she grew it into a forty person team reaching a readership of millions. Visit her site and schedule a free consultation.
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This story was originally published on April 22, 2019, and has since been updated.
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Poppin' By: Meet Paloma Jonas, Lingerie Designer Who Believes in the Power of Good Undies
Cute knickers. Good mood.
Introducing "Poppin' By" a Create & Cultivate profile series in Partnership with Chandon. Every month this year we're profiling a female entrepreneur, popping by their work space and enjoying a bit of bubbly. Here's a cheers to amazing, working women!
Paloma Jonas co-creator and designer of Valentine NYC lives in Los Angeles with her hubby, Jason, and two babies, Bowie and Rome. It's a full household with two under two. But the challenges, and joys, of motherhood have not stopped her from pursuing the company she and fellow former model Whitney Brown started in 2012.
It didn't start with lacey underthings. Rather, it was an online photography and interview editorial the duo dubbed "Valentine."
According the the co-founder, "It seemed people were in need of more intimacy, romance and human connection. Valentine was giving them just that. Inspired by this need for affection." As such, Whitney and Paloma decided to create their version of the best intimacy instigator, lingerie.
Before she turned her design sights on your top drawer, Paloma worked as a model where she, "learned a lot about the fashion industry through watching people who were working in it. I worked with big companies for a while and learned about how the fashion industries worked through these big companies."
More so the creative has, "always been interested in design-- that’s what I went to school for." Though she admits, lingerie wasn't the direction she initially intended. "I thought I was going to do shoe design when I was studying," Paloma says. Until she noticed, "a need for lingerie in my life that I could not find. Something that wasn’t too cheap or expensive and fit me well. I couldn’t find it, so it’s something we set out to do ourselves."
Born from the desire to reinvent romance, the Valentine aesthetic is simple, sexy shapes in a range of four sizes. It's dyed in classic colors that compliment a variety of skin tones and its stretchy enough to fit a variety of body types. By combining premium lace with fabrics like spandex and cotton their lingerie is comfortable enough to wear everyday.
Even for busy mums, like Paloma.
Though the Aussie-born Paloma admittedly lacks personal time she is learning to love every moment, which, between running a company and raising two cuties can be quite a challenge. One she's certainly proving up for. "It’s extremely difficult to be running a business as a mother of two. I’m still trying to figure it out to be honest. What helps me is having allocated business hours and being very present with my kids at home. I try to not bring my work home unless the kids are in bed and I can sneak out my laptop."
At the moment, Valentine focuses mainly on e-comm, but the co-founders know that a brick-and-mortar presence is important when selling something that fits so closely to the skin. A couple times a year they host a pop up shop selling their latest collection along with items from other aligning brands. Select pieces are sold in key retailers as well, but the plan is to keep that portion of the business to a minimum.
The women use three main goals to guide their brand. It all starts with the product. "We try to create premium product at an affordable price and that product is sexy everyday lingerie," shares Paloma. Second, they employ women, "in every aspect of our business," she explains. "From female photographers to our accountants, we’re always trying to support." And, "Lastly, reinventing romance is really what guides us. Love and intimacy have just seemed to disappear and we always try to bring it back. We do a lot of events where we do speed dating and we include romantic love notes in our orders. We really want people to feel beautiful in lingerie. We don’t want women to feel like sex objects but to feel really good about themselves and to feel understood."
As is such with a great hair day, Paloma knows, "There’s nothing like a good pair of underwear. A good pair of underwear can entirely lift your mood. If you’re wearing a good pair of underwear and bra you feel good about yourself-- and it’s not about other people seeing it, it just gives you a little bit of bounce in your step."
Be sure to check back next month for the next installment of Poppin' By.
Photo credit: Anna Maria Lopez
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How Cold-Calling Chanel Landed One Woman Her Dream Job
Twist ending on this one.
Alyssa Wasko cold-called her way into a job a Chanel. For most, that sounds like a dream job. (And it was.) But after six years at the fashion house, the budding designer struck out on her own, launching DONNI (previously Donni Charm). Wasko named the brand after her late father, whom she lost during her time at Chanel. She started making scarves as a way to cope with his passing, but it quickly turned into something more.
Today, DONNI, is a collection of everyday essentials, each with endless ways to wear. Scarves, capes, and more are made in Los Angeles by women who are like family to the brand. Something her dad would certainly be proud of.
You started you career at an incredibly chic fashion house. How did you land the job?
Persistence. I called the head of Chanel USA’s Visuals and Image department every day for about 3 months leaving him voicemails until he finally called me back. I think he gave me the job so I would stop bothering him. He was my boss for 6 years and now one of my closest friends.
Where does that drive and ability to pick up the phone come from?
I think it was how I was raised. If you want something go and get it. But, above all, I am old fashioned and I believe that the best things happen from a phone call. Every day there seems to be a new means of communication and I just like to keep it classic. The phone leaves no room for misinterpretation.
What did you learn while working there?
So much. What to do, what not to do. Working for a big corporation, you learn about infrastructure and procedures, experience that have proven invaluable for running Donni. I think my biggest take away is how important it is for each team member to see how their work directly affects the outcome and the brand’s success. Every email, phone call, meeting, brainstorming session, or even mistakes, by a member at Donni directly correlates to our growth and I think that is such a rewarding feeling. And I hope what makes them happy and excited to come to work each day!
When did you decide to strike out on your own?
I had already started Donni when I was working at Chanel, there were a few years of overlap. I was very lucky that my bosses were so supportive of Donni from the beginning. My father passed away during my first summer working with them so they lived through it all with me in a sense. Because I was able to sustain both for a while, it was hard to figure out when made sense to focus fully on Donni. But, as they say, man plans and g-d laughs and it just kind of happened after a few big orders and trips to our factory in LA. It just became too hard to sustain both and I wasn’t able to put 100% into both anymore.
Sometimes it’s the hardest moments that lead to our greatest development. Can you chat a little about this and how the loss of your dad gave birth to a new chapter?
My mantra and truly my survival was constantly telling myself to act and make decisions that would make my dad proud. A lot of people told me to take a semester off of school to cope, and while I considered it an option I knew my dad would have laughed and said “get your tush in gear. Wasko’s don’t give up.” I not only went back to school, but I took on another 3 classes to my already full course load and a few odd jobs. When that wasn’t enough, on an afternoon that wasn’t sufficiently busy I decided to make a scarf for myself and a friend adding a good luck charm to each. I had always loved scarves and found them so to be comforting yet effortless. Before I knew it, my piers wanted these scarves, and I was so confused! I went to school in Arizona where it was 90 degrees daily. But that’s how I realized my product was a real business, because people wanted more than just the scarf, they were buying into the idea, and the feel good component that it represented.
What would you encourage young female entrepreneurs to test out before they dip their toes in the startup world?
It sounds cliché, but don’t just start a brand to start a brand, let the idea find you—make sure you are truly solving a problem or filling a need, and make sure each of your products goes back to your fundamental solution. But furthermore, anyone can have an idea, and it is execution that determines your success or failure.
"Don’t just start a brand to start a brand, let the idea find you."
Tweet this.
What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about starting a business?
That it has this glamour to it. It doesn’t. You are always on the clock, always schlepping, always thinking of how to make things better—even when they are great. There is always room for improvement. I think a lot of people think you start something and hire all of these people and you can go on vacation whenever you want. Couldn’t be farther from the reality, its hard work! And it never stops. Ever.
You did a slight rebrand this year. Can you chat about that decision and why now was the right time?
Who knows if it was the right time, but it just happened. I felt simply that we had outgrown the Charm. I started this brand in college, and I have grown up a lot since then, so I wanted the name to reflect the more sophisticated lifestyle brand that we have grown into.
How do you expect DONNI to grow and change?
Retail is changing a lot these days, so I do see expanding our Direct to Consumer business, but I also try not to worry about the future, and just keep allowing the change as it comes. So far all of our growth has been such an organic evolution. Each pivot and change coming when something presents itself. I hope that that is how it continues. For a very long time.
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Why This Emmy Winner Says You Should Flip Off Failure
And the best takeaways from her new book.
Fearless and free. It’s a pretty good place to be when it comes to your career. Which is exactly what Emmy-award winning TV news producer and author Wendy Sachs writes about in her book, Fearless and Free, How Smart Women Pivot— and Relaunch Their Careers.
In the book she discusses the self-imposed barriers that hold women back. The job market’s radical change in recent years. And how we can all take small steps that lead to massive growth.
Here are our 5 favorite takeaways that you can apply to your career today. Free? Fearless? Right this way.
1. “The only career goal you should be focusing on right now, is staying relevant.”
In the book Wendy quotes Karen Shnek Lippman, a managing director at the Sloan-Koller Group. Lippman says, “There is no such thing as a career path now.” It’s scary to think about, but in the last decade we have seen industry change exponentially. Keeping yourself relevant, continuing to advance and develop your skills (ahem, learn new ones), and evolve with the times is a way to make sure you keep your job.
2. Your sorry’s add up.
Wendy references the Amy Schumer May 2015 sketch on Inside Amy Schumer, that documents the female tendency to apologize. It’s satire sure, but that means it’s biting. And it packs some truth. Think of how many times you say “sorry” when someone runs into you. Sorry! It’s innocuous enough in that moment, but the propensity to apologize adds up and seeps into our other behavior.
We suggest testing out actively not saying sorry in instances that aren’t your fault. Someone runs into you? Look them in the eye and wait for their apology. See if it shifts your attitude and self-worth even a smidgen. Because smidgen's add up too.
“Inertia is a confidence killer.There’s no time to get stuck.”
3. Confidence is more important than competence.
Wendy cites research from journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman and their book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance, in which they found that we’re either hardwired for confidence or we’re not. “Like blue eyes,” Wendy writes, “this inheritable trait is something we are born with— imprinted in our genetic code. Kay and Shipman found that the correlation between genes and confidence may be as high as 50 percent and may be even more closely connected than the link between genes and IQ.”
Did that make your heart stop? We’ve always been told that we can power pose our way to confidence! (Something Wendy also discusses in the book.) And these women are telling us, maybe not? “The key here,” says Wendy, “is that those with overconfidence weren’t faking it—it simply wasn’t bravado or bluster—they actually believed they were that good.”
So what’s a woman not born with the confidence gene do with this research? We say, allow yourself off the hook for not getting the [insert anything you’ve ever beat yourself up about here] and then rewire your brain to become more confident.
Wendy says, “While confidence may be partly genetic, the good news is that it is also very malleable. It’s like a muscle that can be strengthened.”
She also says that “confidence creation is about taking risks.” So go ahead and make some risky moves.
4. Get Up and Go After It
If you’re making risky moves, you’re going to fail. You’re going to fall. Sometimes that means starting all over again.
Wendy recounts the story of Jill Abramson, The New York Times’s first and only female executive editor, who was fired two and a half years into her job. “Some reported,” writes Wendy, “that Jill was ‘difficult,’ which for a female executive is a word loaded with gender double standards. It was also reported that Jill had hired a lawyer before she was fired to look into compensation issues, believing that she was not paid the equivalent to her male predecessor.”
But Jill didn’t stay down. According to Wendy, “The morning after Jill was fired, she went to a session with her trainer that handed her pair of boxing gloves. She had never boxed before, but hitting the bag was intensely satisfying, Jill asked her trainer to take a picture of her with the gloves and she emailed it to her kids who were worried about her.” The pic went viral after her daughter Cornelia posted it to her Instagram.
It’s a great reminder that no one fall is your end. Only you can decide your professional end.
Which is why we love #5…
5. Flip off failure.
Seriously. Process your failure and then give it the bird. (And the wings so that it may fly away.) You can’t become paralyzed because something doesn't work or survive in the marketplace.
"Process your failure and then give it the bird. (And the wings so that it may fly away.)"
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We’re reminded of this modern day biz facet the whole book through. And it’s a vital Wendy says, “Inertia is a confidence killer, and with the world today moving at the speed of social, there’s no time to get stuck.”
For more career advice and how to fail forward, check out Wendy’s book, available on Amazon here.
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Cracking the Code: Atlanta Is Changing the Face of Startup Culture
The peach of the south is also a hub for female entrepreneurs.
Women in Atlanta are proving that you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to explore your tech dreams. Over the past few years, Atlanta has been growing as hub for female entrepreneurs and defying the status quo with its increasing number of women in tech.
Does it come as any surprise as to why we made the big peach of the south our next stop for Create & Cultivate?
According to Allyson Eman, Executive Director of Venture Atlanta, the premier tech conference held every October for Georgia’s top technology innovators and top-tier investors told Forbes, "Women are seizing the opportunity to start tech companies in Atlanta’s key industries—fintech, health IT and IT security—as well as in emerging industries, such as marketing automation." According to Eman, Atlanta is much more open to female techies than many other cities. In San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle, for example, tech workforces are more than 75% male.
At the beginning of 2016, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced the inaugural class of a new program geared at women in business. Called the Women's Entrepreneurship Initiative, Mayor Reed said the program is "an important step forward in strengthening our city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem." The group of women, selected through a rigorous process in the fall of 2015, now have opportunity to operate their small businesses in an incubator environment, with designated workspace. The WEI initiative lasts for 15 months and is housed on the 11th floor of Downtown Atlanta’s iconic Flatiron Building – the city’s oldest standing skyscraper. This signifies an important step forward in the city's diverse history and demographics.
Likewise there are venture firms, Atlanta-based Valor Ventures for one, that are focussing on female entrepreneurs in Atlanta and setting up women-only capital funds. Designed to fill the gap in the startup world, Valor also sees this as smart business. In Quarter 2 of 2015, Atlanta tech companies raised more venture capital — $206.8 million — than in any quarter since Q2 2001. General Partner of Valor told Upstart Biz Journals, "Of the $48 billion in venture capital invested last year, just 7 percent went to female founders. It’s a market niche that’s incredibly underserved, yet is high opportunity.”
She also told them that female-led companies perform better.
Tickets for Create & Cultivate Atlanta are on sale now! Get yours before they go.
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Finding Joy in Your Work: The Joie de Clare Vivier
And creating a line that outlasts trends.
“My strategy is definitely slow and steady,” says Clare Vivier, Founder and CEO of Clare V. the CA-made luxury leather handbags, apparel and footwear line that has a definitive California cool imbued with a French timelessness. “But to be an entrepreneur you have to trust your instincts.”
In bright red socks and silver shoes, carrying a matching vibrant red leather drawstring pouch, Clare is her brand through-and-through.
“The thing I strive for— and I think I hit, thankfully, is making a product that feels special and makes people feel confident to buy something on their own without having to subscribe to a trend.”
Clare first made waves on the fashion scene in 2007 after asking herself the simple question: “Why don’t we have cute work bags and laptop bags for women?" So was born La Tropezienne, a single vegetable-tanned leather tote, the first to hit her blog and website. So was born Clare V., a company started in her home where Clare and her earliest first employee, Jocelyn, were hand-sewing bags while learning the ins and outs of wholesale and e-commerce.
By 2012, she had done $2 million in sales and was still self-funded. She took everything one day at a time, something she says is still her absolute motto. “I was self-funded, and didn’t have family money to put in, so every dollar I earned I put back into the business.”
The brand is now on the cusp on turning ten. A double-digit feat.
“I own five stores now,” she says, the fifth of which just opened in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and the first still selling and sitting strong on a lovely corner in Los Angeles' Silverlake neighborhood. “A lot of people are scared of owning retail stores, but I’m excited by that. A common thread among entrepreneurs is the desire to take a risk.
“A common thread among entrepreneurs is the desire to take a risk.”
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In the beginning she was entirely self-funded. “I wouldn’t say it was a conscious decision, but every dollar we made I put back into the business.” She liked having “complete autonomy and producing locally,”-- a part of the Clare V. story that is extremely important to her.
When she first started she had little experience in the fashion grind world or in production. “When I knew I could no longer sew the bags myself, I thought, ‘I don’t know anything about production in China or India, and I’ve never been to those places.’” Nor did she have money to travel and scope it out. So her solution was the alternative right in front of her: produce in L.A.
Every place she went— from where she bought her leather to where she purchased the bags' hardware— she would ask questions about production, eventually falling upon her first factory, one of five local L.A. factories she still uses today.
“There are many things I love about this company. I do what I love. I get to design. I love that I am creating jobs for people in the community— meaning our factories are growing because of us and they are creating jobs in Los Angeles county.”
As for hiring practices and expanding? When the company was smaller she was hiring friends, and friends of friends; people who could do the job. “We all can be scrappy and smart, if we’re willing to put in the work,” she says, “but at this point I’m looking to hire people who are qualified who also fit into the culture of the company."
Adding, “I never realized how important it is when you have a growing company to keep transmitting the beliefs, ethics, and aesthetics— everything that went into making this company. As you grow, so does the potential for that message to get watered down. You really have to find creative ways to transport that message and you need to transmit the message of the company loud and clear to everyone that’s hired."
Part of conveying the message to the team supporting her from the studio in Atwater Village (and beyond) is the open-floor plan of the office. There are leather samples to the back right, bright light that shines through west-facing windows, and an easy, relaxed feel to the space. Which is something Clare says her newest employees keep telling her reflects the aesthetics of the company. "We're no-nonsense," she says, "but we don't take ourselves too seriously."
‘Liberez les sardines’ print, referencing Ile de Re’s fish by way of French street art.
Hers is an open-door policy. She also shares her office space with three other women: Lizzie Swift, Art Director, Colleen Englestein, Director of Product Development, and Greta Heichemer, Design Director. Something we’ve seen from many successful CEOs.
“So I’m interrupted 900 times a day,” she says, “which, I love. But when outsiders, or say, my sister comes to visit me at the studio, she’ll say ‘I don’t know how the hell you get anything done, you are interrupted every five minutes.’”
People wander in and out, but Clare recognizes this as her employees really wanting her input— information she's happy to share because it means they have an real interest in the brand and understanding her vision.
“You need to transmit the message of the company loud and clear to everyone that’s hired.”
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Even when she was legally required to rebrand from Clare Vivier to Clare V., the through-line of the company helped her ride that wave— the logo may have had to change but the meat of the company was still, undeniably Clare.
“It’s not a 'label' that’s going to make you feel good. It’s looking at something and knowing, 'this is going to be beautiful, for me.'”
That’s what she strives for when creating her product— something that feels special while imbuing the wearer with confidence. With five stores, five factories, and no plan to slow down, she's looking to forward to "having more retail stores, growing our e-commerce presence, and telling our stories in more places."
Consider us ready to listen. (And wear.)
Arianna Schioldager is Create & Cultivate's editorial director. You can find her on IG @ariannawrotethis and more about her on this site she never updateswww.ariannawrotethis.com
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Sarah Kunst Is Part of the 4%, But She's Changing That
Women of color may represent a small percentage in the tech space, but not if this entrepeneur has a say.
In an op-ed for Fortune last month, Sarah Kunst, founder of Proday, referenced a report published by Digital Undivided called Project Diane. The report found that just 4% of female-led startups are run by black women, and that those companies pull in about .01% (an average of 36K) of funding typically raised by a successful startup. She wasn't surprised by the findings, but she wasn't impressed either.
And while Project Diane calls that 4% "the real unicorns of tech," Sarah is no mythical creature. She's astute and purposeful in her own efforts and her leading work to bridge the digital divide.
We checked in with Sarah pre-SXSW where she will be joining us on panel: How to Launch Your Business, Create Community, and Stay Relevant in the Modern Marketplace.
The stories we hear about women in tech, and WOC in tech are usually upsetting due to the lack of diversity and frustration of fundraising. But let’s talk about the positive to start. What are some surprising conversations you’ve had about Proday?
The best thing about building Proday.co into an app that connects pro athletes with their fans for workouts has been the support from the sports community. The doors that have been opened and the help I've gotten from top athletes and agents has been beyond my wildest dreams. I'm so grateful for it.
What’s the most surprising backlash you’ve experienced?
Many tech investors have gotten jaded or burnt and they are afraid to believe that someone can finally break through in a crowded market that's seen a lot of failure. Much like many investors weren't hot on Facebook a decade ago because Myspace seemed unstoppable and Friendster had failed, I sometimes talk to investors who think that fitness and apps are hard markets and that because no one has won the entire thing yet, no one will. It's fun to prove them wrong.
Where do you see your work changing what you’ve called the “broken dynamic” of venture funding? Can you talk a little bit about the stats in the Project Diane report?
My work is building a billion dollar company in the sports, fitness and content space. That I do that as a black female founder may make me an outlier in an overwhelmingly white male tech world, but it doesn't change my mission or discourage me. It's kind of cool to beat the odds and know that my success will only help pave the way for more like me.
Businesses with diverse leadership teams are proven to do better in the marketplace, and yet parity is still rare at high-level jobs. Why do you think it is so hard to break this mold?
People who run the most successful funds and countries in the world aren't dumb and they aren't incapable of changing things when they put their minds to it. They are though, not incentivized to make these much needed changes. When you see top execs fired for not having diversity in their teams you will see a change. Releasing diversity data from top companies in tech is a start, but there needs to be accountability and action for these execs to take the truth to heart and start building diverse companies that will deliver better returns.
"When you see top execs fired for not having diversity in their teams you will see a change."
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Why is it important for you to invest in other women?
I invest my time, money and expertise into things that will make me money. When I was a venture capital investor that meant focusing on founders who I knew would be successful. Clearly, female and minority founders will be successful so I've invested in a diverse group of founders as an investor and advisor and I know that I will see huge returns on those bets.
Piggybacking on that, you’re female and black in an industry known for blatant sexism. How does the idea of intersectionality influence your work?
Well, if I tried to split the parts of me that are black from the parts of me that are female, I'd literally die because humans aren't capable of separating their race from their gender any more than you can put ingredients in a smoothie back into their separate, pre-blended form. Intersectionality doesn't 'influence' my life, it is my life. It's all of our lives. We all are the sum of our experiences and bringing that whole self, all our parts, into our work is vital to innovation.
In what ways do you think it is a key component of building a strong movement?
If we ask people to silo themselves - to not like a certain kind of music or dress a certain way or be a certain thing because we assume that their resume or race precludes them from certain interests or traits, we're being close-minded and shallow. Close-minded and shallow people rarely change the world for the better. Be open minded and don't be afraid to go deep. Don't assume to know where someone else 'intersects' and what drives them. Ask. If we remind ourselves that everyone we meet has intersects that we'd never expect, it's a lot easier to remain open to the new ideas and innovation they bring. To think that we're a sum of our demographic qualifiers devalues all of us.
"To think that we're a sum of our demographic qualifiers devalues all of us."
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Be sure to check out Sarah on panel at #CreateCultivateSXSW.
Arianna Schioldager is Create & Cultivate's editorial director. You can find her on IG @ariannawrotethis and more about her at www.ariannawrotethis.com
Why Business Cards Still Matter & 3 Go-to Sites
Stock not an option.
Just because your entire business lives online does not mean you can’t make an impression in real life. Business cards provide an inexpensive, customized way for you to leave your mark with a new networking connection, collaborator, or client.
And since most business cards are available online, there is really no excuse not to have cute business cards—you can create a bespoke, on-brand card in less than 15minutes and for around $20. Check out these sites to get started.
You can create a bespoke, on-brand card in less than 15 minutes and for around $20.
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VISTAPRINT
Arguably the most inexpensive, basic business cards on the market, Vistaprint offers an affordable, professional way to get the word out about your brand. You can browse their designs or upload your own logo, and the interface is very simple. Standard cards start at just under $10.
MOO
A favorite of creatives, Moo has a clean, easy-to-use website and on-trend fonts, colors and designs. You can choose from a huge collection of the brand’s pre-designed business cards, many of which are specifically tailored to the arts, fashion, beauty and media industries. The company also has a large collection of specialty cards, like spot gloss, raised spot gloss and gold foil. Doubled-sided business cards start at $9.99.
ZAZZLE
Basic business cards at Zazzle start at $21.95, so it’s a little pricier than Vistaprint or Moo. However, Zazzle offers a money back guarantee, so if you don’t like what you create, you can send the cards back for a full refund. The company offers over 50,000 custom templates, or you can design your own.
What is your go-to for business cards? Share with us in the comments!
The 5 Clutch Business Tools Every Startup Needs Now
Cutting out and pulling ahead of the competition starts here.
Managing the day-to-day stressors of a startup is, well, stressful. These five tools will help you mitigate and manage, so that you have time to focus on the million + 1 other tiny details. No one ever said rising, grinding, and making your own way was easy!
Breather: Your Place to Pitch
A startup doesn't always come with a cute office space. In fact, most of the time it's you hustling from your living room in the attempt to get your idea off the ground. Well, think of Breather as your wings-- because you should never pitch where you eat. If you need a space to look professional, Breather is your new startup BFF. Take meetings with potential investors or new clients in one of their rentable spaces. The way it works is simple. Sign up on their site for free, and book "peaceful and practical" spaces when you need them.
Freshbooks: The Fresh Way You Get Paid
If billing clients and keeping track of invoices is SBT (small business torture) Freshbooks is your savior. Freshbooks is an accounting software program that makes it easy to keep track of billing. Built specifically for small business owners to get organized and get paid, you’ll be tracking time, logging expenses and invoicing your clients with efficiency. It will make you look professional and gets that money in the bank an average of 5 days faster (based on a Freshbooks conducted of 2,000 users) than what you're used to. That's a whole business week.
Sell Hack: A Cold Email Is DOA If You've Got the Wrong Contact
Cold emailing is the new cold calling, but without the right contact you're wasting a fair amount of time sending off emails to info@bemyclient.com. Generic email accounts will sometimes get forwarded to the right place, but when you're attempting to build your business, the right contact is a golden ticket. Sell Hack gives you just that, and was created to make prospecting on the Internet easier. It's a simple plugin that gives you the option to search and build out email lists. So create an account, look up the people you want to pitch, and start hacking into success.
Bench Accounting: For the Numbers You Don't Want to Crunch
Make keeping your finances in order Bench's problem. For small businesses and small business owners, Bench collects all your financial data and turns it into tidy financial reports. Which means no: data entry, number crunching, or worrying that you are going to severely screw up your entire life with QuickBooks. Bench offers you a personal bookkeeping team, ready to tackle all of those receipts. You'll get financial statements every month and year-end reporting. It also makes TAX SEASON a breeze.
Sunrise Calendar: Keeping You Organized and On Time
So you don't have the capital for a personal assistant? Not a problem. Sunrise Calendar is a free calendar made for Google Calendar, Exchange, and iCloud that automatically syncs between your phone tablet and computer so you can access your calendar from anywhere. Fashionably late is not a thing in the startup world.
What It Takes to Become Two of the Most Successful Female Architects in America
“I have learned to talk hunting and fishing and SEC football.”
“Oh…I guess girls are going into architecture now.”
In the 1970s, this was the type of pronouncement one might hear as a female high school student trying to ask a professional architect about his job. And by “one might,” I mean it was Jane Frederick’s real life. The architect in question was likely not trying to be rude—female architects were still a fairly new concept at the time. Nowadays, women earn about 42 percent of architecture degrees in the United States, but they only hold about 25 percent of industry jobs. So: progress, but not enough.
Becoming an architect is no small feat—it usually takes about eight years of post-graduate training to complete 5,600 internship hours and seven exams—but you don’t hear encouragement toward the field as often as you do other go-to prestige categories like law and medicine. So, what is it really like to be a female architect today? For this piece, I spoke to major success cases: first, Jane Frederick, the principal architect at Frederick + Frederick, a small, well-established South Carolina firm that specializes in custom residences for hot, humid climates. She is a Fellow in the Aspen Global Leadership Network and currently serves on the American Institute of Architects Board as one of three at-large directors.
Then we have Courtney Casburn-Brett, the youngest entrepreneur-architect in the United States. Again, in an industry with an exceptionally long path to licensure, a 40-year-old professional is considered a “young architect.” Casburn-Brett started college at 14, was working for one of the top firms in the world at 20, and started her own firm when she was just 24.
The Early Years: “I’m lucky I stuck with it.”
It is perhaps no surprise that Casburn-Brett’s fast-track to architecture began at an early age. “We moved around a lot when I was young, and I was fascinated by how different all the houses we lived in and all the schools I went to were,” she says. “And I loved to draw. I would draw these buildings that I was experiencing depending on where we were.” For her 11th birthday, Casburn-Brett’s parents gave her graph paper and an architect’s drawing tools, including a scale and tracing triangles, and explained to her that this interest of hers could actually be a job one day. “From that point on, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she says.
With an interior designer mother and an engineer father, architecture was a perfect synthesis for Frederick in more ways than one. “I was strong in math and really enjoyed art, and I felt like it was a good mix of the two,” she says. But female architects were few and far between at that time. Starting college at Auburn in 1978, there were only six women in Frederick’s architecture class of 50 people, and she did not have a single female professor.
Fast forward to 2004, when Casburn-Brett started at Auburn, and the class gender gap had thankfully closed a bit. She entered the first architecture class at Auburn that was half women, half men. Since then, however, “I’ve found that the higher I’ve climbed, the fewer women I’m around,” she says.
Climbing the Ladder: “I just didn’t fit in at all.”
In Casburn-Brett’s first job at SOM, the legendary firm behind projects like the Freedom Tower and the Sears Tower, she was lucky to find a female role model in her immediate team manager. “She was this really powerful, go-getter woman,” she says. “I was able to see the way that she interacted both with her peers and the next tier above her.”
Graduating in 1982 during the recession, Frederick was not so lucky. She started out working at a small firm in Washington D.C. who hired architects not as employees but as independent contractors. Frederick found herself babysitting for one of her co-worker’s kids to try to make ends meet. At her next job, Frederick was happy to discover her first female co-worker, but her boss ran into a cash flow problem yet again. “Then I worked in another job where I was not only the only woman but the youngest employee,” says Frederick. “That was the most challenging job I ever had. It wasn’t like they were unkind or anything, I just didn’t fit in at all.”
Back at SOM, Casburn-Brett started noticing that there really is a difference in how people interact with men and women in the industry. She says: “One of my favorite stories is about one of the leaders in my studio, an older gentleman who had been practicing hospital architecture for almost 50 years. He had this habit of micromanaging everything that I did. I had been out of school for a year and I wasn’t a licensed architect, so it made sense that he would want to keep an eye on his younger employees. But everything that I did, he would follow up my email with additional information or constantly insert himself, even when I was doing my job well. It drove me crazy because he didn’t do it to one of my male colleagues on the team.”
Instead of writing it off as something she would “just have to deal with,” Casburn-Brett took action. “I marched upstairs to his office and I told him that what he was doing, whether or not he was aware of it, was undermining my ability to do my job well. I said that if he would let me just do my job, I would take responsibility for any mistakes I made and we could re-visit the conversation, but if I didn’t make a mistake, it would save him a lot of time and effort,” she says. After that conversation, Casburn-Brett says he became her greatest mentor: “At that point, I don’t think he really knew the way that his behavior and training were coming across. To his credit, as soon as I brought it to his attention, he immediately changed the way that he interacted with me and treated me on the team. I learned that sometimes you just need to be a little more assertive.”
Of course, being an assertive woman also puts you on a tightrope of sorts. In her next job at a small development company in the South, Casburn-Brett was once told by a male colleague that her attitude was “very I-am-woman-hear-me-roar.” She remembers thinking, “Wow, that is an extremely inappropriate and a horrible thing to say,” but also taking it as a lesson on how to interact with different types of people. She explains: “What was a direct, business-oriented, confident approach to my work in the setting of New York wasn’t translating the same way here. My confidence level didn’t change, my competence level didn’t change, but the way I was being perceived did. I don’t want to suggest that you should necessarily change your behavior based on the people around you, but you do have to have an awareness about the best way to interact with certain people. So now that I’m a business owner and I interact with so many different types of clients and vendors, I find myself trying to actively at least show the warmer side of my personality if I’m being that direct all the time.”
Becoming Your Own Boss: “You get more control that way, but it’s tough.”
Without any female mentors in architecture—let alone those who had started their own firms—Frederick just became one herself. “I was 26 when I got my license, and six months pregnant when I passed my test,” she says. “And I was like, ‘I need to pass this test because once I have a baby I’m not going to be able to,’ which is what a lot of young women find. It’s very difficult to do with a family because you need that time to study.” She passed. And when her oldest daughter was born, Frederick set out on her own, doing freelance work from home that amounted to about six hours a day. A few years later she moved to South Carolina and opened Frederick + Frederick alongside her husband—a firm that has been going strong for almost 30 years.
Both Frederick and Casburn-Brett appreciate the freedom they have found by starting their own firms, though the challenges are many. “You get more control that way, but it’s tough,” Frederick says. “You have to bring the work in, and if there’s a recession you have to figure out how to make it through, but if that’s your temperament, it’s a really good route.” She acknowledged that at major firms you’ll have the opportunity to work on bigger projects, but that can be difficult as well. “One thing I’ve heard from other women is that in large firms they sometimes tend to get pigeon-holed doing interior architecture instead of doing say, big tall buildings,” Frederick says.
As she approaches the four-year mark of her company, Casburn-Brett is grateful that her client relations have been overwhelmingly positive. “I’ve definitely been fortunate that my story has brought to me the types of clients that I really want to work with,” Casburn-Brett says. “Being a woman is a part of that story, but it has more to do with being tenacious and young and going after something that other people may not have had the gumption to go after, like starting a business and getting a license at this stage in my career.”
What No One Tells You: “I have learned to talk hunting and fishing and SEC football.”
Casburn-Brett says the most important thing she’s learned is to come to the table prepared. “I want to make sure that I’m the person at the table with the answers, because I don’t want to give anyone any reason to doubt me and think that it has something to do with my gender,” she says.
And as Frederick has learned in her 35 years in the industry, having street smarts is just as essential. “One thing that’s really different is doing construction site visits—typically you are dealing with men, so I have learned to talk hunting and fishing and SEC football,” she says. “The other thing that might make a difference is I’m really tall—I’m 5’9—and I think that’s an advantage for me.”
Frederick urges young women to consider something she didn’t have the opportunity to consider when she was applying to architecture school. “Even though most schools now are mostly 50-50 male-female overall, I would check and see how many women there are who are full professors,” she says. “Not that you can’t have a man that is a mentor, but having some women there too is really important.”
Once you graduate, she adds, keep doing that type of research. “When you’re looking for your first job, really look at what the culture is like,” she says. “Make sure that it’s a diverse office, which will have a broader mindset and often have more flexible policies, particularly if you have small children or want to have children. Those types of firms can be large or small.”
As for architecture’s youngest entrepreneur, Casburn-Brett’s best advice is to make like Nike and just do it. “This is exactly what I knew I wanted and I went for it,” she says. “So whenever there were times that I could have given myself an out or it seemed hard or even impossible, there was no, ‘It might be easier to XYZ.’ I’ve never had a plan B. I was going to get into architecture school, I was going to be an architect, I was going to be a small business owner. I didn’t waste any time thinking about whether or not I should try to execute a different plan. I found a way through.”