As a society, we have this perception that women are emotional. The research, however, tells us that, on trading floors, that poor risk rises and falls with testosterone levels, and these trading floors are 85 percent, 90 percent male, and these gentlemen tend, under periods of stress, to show off for each other. That's dangerous.
— Sallie Krawcheck
Women aren't driven by or thrilled by outperforming the market. They're much more excited about, 'Can I meet my goal?'
Assume the best intent in others around you. You will often be right, and even when you're not, people can rise to your view of them. Not always, but enough that I believe it's worth it.
My advice for folks on networking is give, give, give. You will later receive. But you are really planting these seeds. Some of them will die, and they won't become anything. Many of them will take many, many years before they pay off for you if at all.
Whenever you start a new business, the sheer number of variables at hand makes failure a constant possibility.
One thing I never thought about in my big-company job? Cash flow. When your business has billions of dollars in revenue, you can make a lot of mistakes and still have a viable business. But in a startup, make a few hiring mistakes, and you can find yourself in real jeopardy fast.
If you aren't committed to diversity of thought, you have no business launching a startup.
If you don't share information among your startup's team, then it'll be just about a coincidence if product, marketing, and engineering are ever aligned. Those odds are too low to succeed.
As an entrepreneur, it's easy to feel ownership over every aspect of your business because you're putting your reputation, your money, and other people's money on the line. Oh, and you're sleeping, breathing, and eating your passion project - that, too. But if you try to do it all yourself, you're almost certain to fail.
I have a very simple point of view, which is, I'm going to be alive for some amount of time; I don't know how long that's going to be. Then I'm going to be dead for a really, really long time. Right? You need to squeeze everything you can out of this time when you're alive.
Hard work most often leads to success, but it's not every day, and it's not every week. It will pay off at different times over the course of your career.
When I feel risk-averse, I am much more likely to surround myself with middle-aged, professional, southern females; I just am.
I make it a priority to keep in touch with people with whom I've worked in the past. And I'm fortunate, because I've worked with some terrific folks.
I'm a Weeble. Remember Weebles? The toy whose tagline was, 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down?' I'm resilient. Oh, and I work really hard.
The 'aha' moment came one to me one morning when I was applying my mascara, and I realized that the retirement crisis is actually a woman's crisis: Women live longer than men yet retire with less money.
I've managed many people in my career. I've managed very diverse teams. And it's interesting because what I've found over time is that when it would come to bonus time or raise time, I would hear from the gentlemen, 'I want to make X.' I don't think I ever heard from a woman who worked for me, 'I want to make X.'
I love to talk. I love to share. I love to vent. But I prefer action.
Investing isn't a game to be won. At the end of the day, it's a way to achieve your big goals, like buying that home, starting that business, and retiring on your own terms.
Recognize that the issues we face as women advancing in business are issues my grandmother would have loved to have had. And fight the good fight nonetheless. For yourself and your peers - but also for your daughter, when it's her turn.
We haven't always been aware of it, but the 'locker-room bro talk' has long been going on not just in locker rooms but in some corporate conference rooms. Of course, not by all men. But by some - including some who hold positions of power. And that matters in holding women back.
One of my passions is women in business and helping women to get ahead in business. For women, that feedback loop can be broken. Women won't get as much feedback from male bosses as men will get. Therefore, they have to make an extra effort, whether that is unfortunate, good, bad, indifferent.
You may find it more relaxing to work with people just like you, but entrepreneurship is about finding new approaches to problems, and discomfort can be an important part of that process.
If your idea is truly innovative, you're going to hear from the naysayers. After all, if it really were such a good idea, someone would have already done it, right?
Follow the money at all costs, and you might wind up regretting it.
A dysfunctional team means a dysfunctional - and likely doomed - company.
On Wall Street, the industry in which I grew up, a culture in which 'my word is my bond' shifted over the past few decades toward one where the big print can say 'Free' while the small print gives the real costs.
I'm about impact. One can make impact if they run a big business with a lot of zeroes. I've done that. One can also make an impact when you're a research analyst, where it's you and your associate. I've done that.
Like many entrepreneurs, I never have two days that are alike. One thing that's consistent is I wake up early, around 4:30 A.M. It's my most productive time of day because I can think and work uninterrupted.
My kindest interpretation of my younger self is, 'Boy, was I busy.' I had two kids, a husband, two stepkids. I mean, how many darn things can a person do at the end of the day?
My low point was after being reorganized out of running Merrill Lynch. That dismissal deeply contradicted my sense of fairness, since, at the time, my team and I had done what we were brought in to do: We had turned Merrill Lynch around from the depths of the financial crisis.
The Ellevest target client is the professional woman who either has her own money or has agency over her family's money. She is among the 75 million women in the U.S. workforce who want to take financial control and is looking for a straightforward way to achieve her dreams on her own terms.
I never really considered myself much of a feminist until I left Wall Street. I did all the right things - such as put together gender-diverse teams - but feminism wasn't deep in my bones.
We just haven't had enough women in senior roles on Wall Street overall - fewer women in the investment banking function overall as well.
The research indicates that when we women invest, we women do tend to be more patient, take a longer-term perspective and as a result of it, tend to be better investors than men. But the messages we get are that investing is sort of 'the guys' world.'
Most financial questions don't have one right answer - just an answer that's right for you.
Ask any woman who has gone through a divorce and had her standard of living decline substantially. Ask any woman who's been fired or 'reorg'ed out' and had to scramble to take a job she didn't want. Ask any woman who wanted to quit a job but couldn't afford to. Investing is possibly the best career advice women aren't getting.
I read research like other people read sports magazines or fashion magazines.
Leadership is a lot of hard work. I hoped, when I was younger, that I would just be a natural leader or that it was something that was innate, but it is really a learned skill.
You know those days at the office when you used to come in and not really do much? You don't get days like that as an entrepreneur. If you don't do the work you need to, nothing happens that needs to. It's that simple.
Knowing your customer inside and out is mission-critical, and it takes time. It's impossible to hit on the insights that will ultimately decide your company's fate without putting them to the test - literally - even if that takes longer than you'd have liked.
As an entrepreneur, I've learned how crucial it is to be able to call a spade a spade and avoid falling in love with a particular strategy or product. Instead, you need to let the customer tell you what she needs - and to change her as she changes.
Starting a business from scratch and having little money in the bank focuses your mind in a way that running a multibillion-dollar business never does. It brings the key drivers of performance into sharp relief. I promise.
Your career is not going to go the way you planned. It is impossible at the age of 23 to pick the right industry, the right company, and you can visualize what you're going to be doing in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, but chances are that it's going to be something quite different. So remain open to opportunities and change.
There are a lot of things in business that are completely out of your control, but hard work isn't one of them.
In terms of challenges, I think finding the right people to maximize the chances the business will succeed is the hardest thing. You can crunch the numbers any way you want, but at the end of the day, you really need good employees and investors - and they aren't always easy to find.
People say to me, 'Has being a woman helped or hindered your career?' And the answer is yes.
I wish I had known that that process of figuring out what you're good at, what you want to do, and where you want to have an impact is not a one-time exercise, but an ongoing one. Instead, I bought into success being an endpoint rather than a constant process.
We all know money is power. And women won't be equal with men until we are financially equal with men. Getting more money into the hands of women is good for women, but it's also good for their families, for the economy, and for society.
What you hear and what the research shows is that gentlemen negotiate for their first job. Women do not negotiate from their first job and on. And I tell women there is no H.R. fairy godmother. There might be, but you better not count on it.
Networking has been cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. Who you know really impacts what you know.
