Prepare To Launch U Blog

Published in 2017 and widely promoted last year, Sheryl Sanberg and Adam Grant’s book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy, has a pretty bold title. Heck, any one of those things in the tag line can be singularly daunting, and they think I can accomplish all three?!

But that’s not really the point. The point is, and it’s a good one, that we have fuller, richer and, yes, more joyful lives if we can face our challenges head on and smiling.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

I have often called myself an “accidental businessperson”. I majored in Literature and planned to go to law school. Despite taking full advantage of my school’s liberal arts curriculum and studying everything from Biology to Middle Eastern Relations to Computer Science (in addition to the full canon of essential American and British Lit), I didn’t take one business class.

Between undergrad and law school, I planned to bike cross-country with my roommate Gail. Unfortunately (much more so for Gail), our travel plans were thwarted by the broken femur she sustained in a car crash just weeks before graduation. Unprepared to apply to law school and still hopeful Gail would recover in time to resume our trip, I set out to find an interim job to occupy me for the six months of Gail’s recovery.

When I launched my first business, Be You Bravely, after years of being a stay-at-home mom I was terrified. I was taking a leap of faith, pivoting from the world of education into an arena that was, well, not so defined. I knew what I had to offer had great value, life-changing value actually, but the success of growing a viable business was not certain and that uncertainty was terrifying. During those early days there were many moments when I said to myself, “Kelley why did you not just go back to education?” A job in education came with benefits, a steady paycheck and a predictable schedule. Educational consulting was an even better option with lucrative pay and plenty of client connections. This business I was launching came with none of that. The personal risk was also overwhelming. I was in an extremely defined role at home. I did just…

“What can I do to help?” These words spoken from young lips are music to any mother’s ears. I have four children, 22 nieces and nephews, and 9 godchildren, so the odds are favorable that I hear that phrase on occasion. It always warms my heart.

We hosted 40 for Thanksgiving last week. The shear number of our gathering is testament to our many blessings and our many reasons to be thankful. Twenty-seven of our family stayed overnight, and 17 of them were “the kids”. (I use quote marks because some of them are technically adults now). As I savored many moments of “Aunt Susan, how can I help?” I pondered the significance of their question in the context of my work.

It’s Girl Scout cookie “close-out” season and I’m all in. Outside polling stations around the country last week, boxes of last year’s cookies were selling like hotcakes. And they taste as good as they did back in January! I know this because, yesterday, I polished off the remainder of a nearly full box of Samoas in Kelley’s pantry. Gross, I know, but is the Samoa not cookie perfection? Shortbread, caramel, toasted coconut, dark chocolate. I am weak in its presence.

The scouts are marketing geniuses. Whatever doesn’t’ sell in spring, they pull back out during the dark days between Halloween (which primes our sweet tooths) and the holidays (where sweets are abundant), when the days are darker and our clothes are baggier.

For years, I looked forward to the arrival of adorable clipboard-carrying girls dressed in their green uniforms, badges aplenty, towing their red wagons of ‘samples’ and cheerily asking for my order. I didn’t disappoint; over the years I even noticed an asterisk next to my address on the order form suggesting that my generous orders were well documented.

Not every homeowner was generous or even friendly. My neighborhood girl scout, now 21, reports that she had doors closed in her face, angry admonishments for disturbing the peace, and even raging dogs released in protest of her visits.

“It was all good training,” she says now with the wisdom of a young adult. “Rejection stings, but we deal with it and get stronger from it.” How true.

When we were newly married, Bob and I saw the play “Defending the Caveman” with some friends. Caveman is a one-man comedy that explores the innate differences between men and women with hilarious clarity.

Its premise is simply that we have been primally wired since pre-Neanderthal days in gender-specific ways that have stood the test of time.

Men descend from hunters who spent the better part of their days hiding in trees, focused on the singular task of finding an unsuspecting mammal that might become dinner.

Women descend from gatherers, who spent the better part of their days watching over children and completing any number of concurrent tasks like planting and harvesting vegetables, collecting water, preparing food, cleaning huts, building fires, whittling, sewing, cooking.

In short: Men are wired to do one thing at a time. Women are wired to multi-task.

I began my career in Xerox Corporation’s executive training program, which, in the mid-80s, was reputed to be one of the top three executive training programs of the time. How I, an English major who never took a business course and didn’t know a balance sheet from a cookie sheet ended up there is another story for another blog post.

Suffice it to say, I interviewed really well.

There were about 15 or so trainees in my training class year – a collection of lively, confident, competitive achievers of which only a portion were expected to last beyond 12 months. On my first day, I met Sherrie Potenza. Nothing in Sherrie’s and my histories matched up. Being Connecticut natives and part of this training program was about all we had in common. But it was enough. Sherrie and I became fast friends, partners in crime. Ultimately, we became each other’s lifelines.

My first year as a teacher I had 29 students in my 3rd grade classroom. Seventeen of those students were the cutest, most high-energy boys you could ever encounter. The school district was financially struggling and there was no class-size policy in place. I was hired because the previous teacher took early retirement, as she knew what she would be facing in the fall. I was so grateful to have gotten the position straight out of college that I resolved myself to the fact that there was no room to complain. I was tossed in the deep end and it was one of those life “sink or swim” moments. I was determined not to sink.

I knew I had to find a mentor fast. My principal assigned me to a well-respected teacher I met during my interview process. She was organized, dedicated and filled with a wealth of knowledge. I was so grateful to have a wise mind guide me and support me during those early days. I am convinced I may have left teaching all together in that first month had it not been for her. This is something I told her and our administration often. 

Seeking to be more fully and objectively informed, Kelley and I invited randomly selected new Prepare to Launch U students to participate in small video chat focus groups about the course last week. And we learned a lot.

First off, the nagging idiosyncrasies that are all we see and hear when we watch ourselves on film, are barely noticed by our students. That’s a relief. Secondly, the content that we have worked tirelessly for two years to pull together (based on decades of professional experience before that) is accessible, easily understood, and valued by our students. Phew.

As any astute observer of, or participant in, the American workplace will acknowledge, employers and hiring managers have some degree of age bias. We all do, and it runs both ways: “The millennial is lazy; the baby boomer is tech illiterate” – sometimes these statements are cliché; other times legit.

That said, although the digitally native millennial may face skepticism or bias, her résumé will still be picked up, and she won’t likely be overlooked because she’s young.

But that’s not true of her mother or aunt because the cost of ageism is born much more by older candidates. And, according to a rather disconcerting (to this over 50 mom) study conducted at Tulane University, it occurs earlier (age 50 vs. age 65) and more frequently, with women.

So, what can an older female candidate do to remain relevant and employable?