March 20, 2025 • 38 mins
Kathleen Griffith, the mastermind behind the bestselling book "Build Like a Woman," sits down with Farnoosh for an inspiring conversation about becoming a corporate burnout to building an empire. Kathleen reveals her transformative journey from feeling trapped in corporate advertising to becoming a serial entrepreneur and founder of Grayce & Co, where she has directed more than $500M in marketing dollars with clients ranging from NIKE Women to Verizon. Kathleen shares the essential principles that guided her success, giving intimate insights from her book and explaining how these lessons can help other women build thriving businesses without sacrificing their dreams.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Ninety percent of who we are is completely subconscious.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It is all buried under the surface.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And in my opinion, to be a great leader, you
have to uncover all that lies underneath, What triggers you,
what excites you, who you really are as a leader,
who you really are as a person. And I think
part of the problem is that so many people are
leading others without truly knowing themselves.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Those powerful insights come from Kathleen Griffith, the visionary behind
the best selling phenomenon Build Like a Woman, a book
that's transforming how women approach entrepreneurship. When Barbara Corkran called
it equal parts heart and hustle, she captured the essence
of not just the book, but Kathleen herself. But before
she was leading thousands of women along the path to
(00:58):
launching their own businesses, Kathleen was climbing the corporate ladder
at an ad agency, feeling that familiar sense of intuition
that there had to be more. Her story is the
journey from corporate burnout to entrepreneurial breakthrough, but Kathleen unpacks
the raw truth about what it really takes to build
a business on your own terms. I'm furnished to RAVI
(01:20):
and this is leading by example, executives making an impact. Kathleen,
Welcome to the show. Welcome to leading by example.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm so glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Good way to start the day at an eight am
for me, So glad to start it with.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You eleven am for me. So you're really putting in
the effort here because I've at least had my coffee. Well,
I feel like you're an early riser. I feel like
you've had a lot of gay already.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, you nailed that. I'm a part of the five
am club.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
So, oh my gosh, crazy. Well, speaking of you know,
I've known you for some years and I've been watching
you build this incredible busy and thought leadership. You've architected
this so beautifully for yourself and for everyone who is
in your orbit. You strike me as someone who has
been just extremely proactive, strategic and early riser. You've designed
(02:15):
your career the architecture of it. So, speaking of like
you know, getting up early in the morning, I'd love
to start off just by having you take us behind
the scenes Kathleen of what a typical workday or work
week looks like for you. And while we're there what
is something that someone who doesn't know your work closely
would be surprised to discover about your leadership style or
(02:38):
how you lead.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So there is no typical work week. Each week is
filled with very different things. So some weeks I'm doing
public speaking, I'm on tour doing that, I'm doing book
signings for my new book, shooting television, producing television.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Brand consulting, recording a podcast, doing media. So it is
all over the place.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And what I discovered is that I really needed rooting
habits to ground me, so there was some foundational consistency
in each day. Otherwise you just feel like this ping
pong ball that's all over the place. And I don't
know if you know that feeling where you're just spinning,
you feel.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Like a whirling dervish.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, it can happen really easily, right, Like, it's very
easy for that to take hold. I think when you
even have a few days like that that are just
not consistent. And so I do something. I call it
the sixty minute prime. And what I do is every
single morning, I do three things. I sweat, so I
(03:42):
move my body for twenty minutes. I have sustenance. So
really good greens and nourishing things in the morning to eat,
and silence, So twenty minutes of silence. I practice TM
and also MBSR, which is mindfulness based stress reduction in
and that might be something that's surprising to people. Meditation
(04:04):
is a huge part of my life and it is
one of the things that I attribute most to the success.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That I've had. It's a game changer. I could wax
poetic about it forever.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I love the alliteration sweat, sestenance, silence, the three ses. Yeah,
twenty minutes of sweating. I mean most people are like,
I got to put in an hour and a half
in the gym. No, you're very efficient.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, Well, when it becomes overwhelming, right of like it's
a sixty minute commitment or it's a two hour commitment,
then I find that you don't have the consistency where
you just knock it out every day. And more than
anything else, I really needed that rooting because the rest
of my life has now become so extreme.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
You've always been a mover. I was reading about how
when you were a kid, your entrepreneurial spirit was well
and alive. As a child, you sold candy in middle school.
Take me back to Kathleen as a young girl, and
how would your friends describe you back then?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I've heard that candy arbitrage is an early indicator of
being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Not lemonade, not let lemonade.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
No, everyone has a lemonade stand, but it is true.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And if that's the case, I was a born entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I had this little thing called the Snack Attack Pack,
and so I'd put snacks in their candies in there,
buy low, sell high. I'd wrap every single morning on
the loudspeaker. Come and pick up your Snack Attack pack.
Surprising enough, your hunger isn't coming back, Like didn't exactly rhyme.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
But I'd sell it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And then I had all this pocket money, and I
just love the sales of it. And then I love
the freedom of having this money in my little pocketbook
that I could then go spend on whatever I wanted
and no one could tell me otherwise. And then life changes,
as we know, and so I kind of took that
(06:02):
innate entrepreneurial quality and shoved it down the drain for
a very long time. But I would say that my
friends would describe me at the time as a little
force of nature.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
What was your profit margin on the snack Attack pack.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
We were doing good. I think it must have been
seventy five percent.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, I think it was up there.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
And it signals that you had a mind for branding
and marketing and advertising back then, not just you know,
a sales driven or a finance driven, but you had
it all. You were the whole package. It really it
signals a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, I always love to start with childhood because I
don't think it's a coincidence who we become. I think
there are clues as young as in your case, middle
school and when you finally got out of college, you
are getting ready for your first sort of corporate gig,
and I was reading that in those early years, I think,
as so many young adults feel, you felt very unseen.
(07:01):
You are working on really big brand projects. You were
given quite a bit of responsibility, but you didn't feel
as though you had a true seat at the table.
So looking back, was there anything that you think you
would have done differently to experience more fulfillment on the job.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
There is this great study that came out of McKinsey
that talked about seventy eight percent of women experience microaggressions
at work, so you're kind of self shielding and contorting
yourself so that you don't take up as much space,
which in turn makes you not feel as seen.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think everything from just being interrupted to having a
point of view restated, all the things that we've.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Heard a million times.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And I think the biggest piece that I would tell
myself if I were able to go back, and I
don't know how I would have cultivated this, would be
to have spoken my mind more so in every single meeting.
I just remember sitting there thinking, what's the right thing
to say? What should I say to sound smart in
(08:09):
this room? When I was in the room, which wasn't
very often, How can I endear myself to this person
who's more senior than me, you know, the laughing when
something isn't even funny, the smiling even when you don't
feel like smiling. And so i'd probably go back to
those rooms and just say, have a point of view,
(08:32):
your point of view, stand behind it, and let the
chips fall where they may.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
But I was.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Always monitoring in my own head and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Kind of cycling through a million things that I should
be saying, and so I never really said very much,
and I'd leave every kind of interaction mentally exhausted because
of the gymnastics that I was doing.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
The mental gymnastics. There's a lot of fear too, like
to your point, you're going to say the wrong thing.
I've been that twenty something year old who does speak
up in a meeting mostly to ask more questions about
what's being expressed, because I'm still learning, and I feel
like in the beginning you might feel stupid. I mean,
(09:18):
people will make you feel like an idiot, and I
have been made to feel like an idiot. But it's
like you have to keep flexing the muscle.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's such an important point, like asking the questions. The
smartest people in the room are those who are comfortable
asking questions and wanting more clarification and are curious. So
it's a sign of intelligence, it really is.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I'll tell you though, in the beginning it can feel
like you're an impostor and you're a disruptor. But my
just advice to anyone listening, like keep asking the questions.
If you're not getting the right answers and you're not
in the right rooms, you know you're not in the
room of growth. So all this sort of keeping silent
and then the burnout. It culminated to a point where
(10:01):
you're in a pizza shop in New York and you're
having a meltdown and there's like truffle sauce all over
your face and you're with her, a really good friend
who's sort of calling you out, and your life kind
of changes in that moment. So take us back to
that New York pizzeria.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, so I was good girl bred, and I think
that's what you know, going back to the beginning where
I was a born entrepreneur, but then felt like that
wasn't an option, to be an outlier, and so decide
to do all the right things. Go get the good job,
Go get the good looking partner, get engaged to them,
Go get the nice house, the white picket fence, all that.
(10:39):
Like I was on that exact track and working very
very hard at it all, and I ended up at
this pizza joint. I'm just stuffing my face with pizza,
which there's nothing wrong with, but drowning my sorrows and
pizza because quietly, and I thought no one would notice,
(11:00):
I just felt numb and dead inside, like I was
not living my purpose. I was doing all the right
things and yet it was such a joyless existence. I
felt like I was eating like a dry saltine every day.
And so my friend looks at me and says, you
look like a ghost.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Are you okay?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I was pale faced and just unhealthy at the time.
And so I left that dinner and I walked home
and it was one of those rainy nights in New
York City, you know, where the light is just glistening
off the pavement. And I walked forty some odd blocks home.
I didn't want to take a cab. And this quote
from this woman who I had met at a workshop
(11:42):
a few weeks before, Tama Keeves, who's a Harvard trained,
very bright lawyer. She had said, if you are this
successful doing what you don't love, imagine how successful you'd
be doing what you do love. And that haunted me.
That haunted me that whole walk home, and finally I
(12:05):
was able to get the courage to quit my corporate job.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
How did you figure out to do what you love?
This is the question that so many of us struggle with,
because what you're describing is essentially high functioning depression. Yeah,
it's a new study. I just interviewed doctor Judith Joseph.
She's put a name to this that I think a
lot of us experience, which is that we have this
feeling to use your words of like emptiness and vacuousness,
(12:33):
and although we are like killing it at work and
in our professional lives, like on our resumes, on paper,
on LinkedIn, people are envious, but we're not fulfilled. We
are numb. To use your words and recognizing it as
one thing, then moving on from that, it requires understanding
what does bark joy? What does make you happy professionally
(12:56):
at least and for you, what was that discovery? Like
how did you come to this idea? I got to
open up my own agency and be a multi hyphen
it who I thought?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Okay, once you make this brave decision your purpose and
what you're meant to do, it just like lightning, like
here we go.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It is common and it doesn't work that way. As
we all know. It whispers to you.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It is this quiet knowing that as you get closer
to it, you feel warmer, you feel more energized, you
feel more excited, and the further you get away from
it to borrow. Martha Beck has this great concept, the
way of integrity and credible book too. It feels colder
and more agitating, and it makes you feel small, and
(13:42):
so it really became an experiment, a great social experiment.
So I'd been working in advertising and I figured I'd
go into an adjacent space and help nonprofits with their
marketing and branding and brand campaign because I had a
non compete in the corporate space and so had never
(14:04):
done that before, had never worked in nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
But it was all I could do where.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It seemed kind of easily transferable from one skill set
to the other, just different category essentially, And that was
the beginning of me starting my brand consultancy, Grays and Co.
But it was very much a feeling my way through
the dark.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
But that to me felt better.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Than sleepwalking through life, which is what I'd been doing before,
because I believe there was a light at the end
of that tunnel.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Let's talk about being a woman in business. Let's talk
about from your perspective as a founder, what are the
models of leadership that you deploy and what are the
ones that you think we don't use enough of. You know,
there's so many books on leadership, and I just want
to understand and what you bring to your teams every
(15:03):
day and the leadership models that you follow.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So when I started my own small business, You're strapped,
you have very limited resources, time, You're paying only a
few people to work for you. So it ain't great, right,
You're dealing with a lot of constraints. And so I
was a horrible leader. I was like running very fast
with super sharp scissors. It was dangerous, it was reckless.
(15:29):
I do NDAs after the fact. I do contracts after
people had already started working.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I was laid on billing.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It was just disorganized. Chaos is an understatement. And over time,
as the business actually continued to do well, I took
a step back and I developed something which I call
mindful leadership that I needed for myself. So moving from
kind of this more toxic model to a more mindful model,
(16:00):
and what it essentially means is to first know thyself.
So ninety percent of who we are is completely subconscious.
It is all buried under the surface, And in my opinion,
to be a great leader, you have to uncover all
that lies underneath, what triggers you, what excites you, who
(16:21):
you really are as a leader, who you really are
as a person. And I think part of the problem
is that so many people are leading others without truly
knowing themselves. So starting there, doing the excavation work, bringing
it to the surface, and then really owning this is
the sort of leader that I am. And I had
(16:41):
to radically redefine my company and leadership style because I'd
been co opting this style and that to try to
make it seem like we were one of those cool
girl companies. I was a cool founder. We were going
to drink rose and wear wreaths and go on versions
once a week that were team wilding and go eat
(17:03):
a wellness retreats.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Right, it ain't me like that, Ain't me.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I'm a nerd okay, first and foremost, I'm not grade
at operations. I have a temper at times that I'm
working very much to get a handle on. I continue
to work through that. And so it meant that I
had certain attributes that I wanted my team to have, professionalism, positivity,
and performance. I love alliteration, as you can tell. And
(17:32):
we were going to move and operate like a woman's
sports team, and it was going to be tough, and
I was going to coach you and I was going
to have high standards. But that's what works for me,
for you, it's going to be something completely different because
you're bringing so many other beautiful qualities to the table.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
But I think that's.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
What it comes down to, and then communicating that to
your team in a way that's transparent, where you own
it so they know what they're getting. And if you
want to be more of an Elon Musk founder, like
he's awful in my opinion, but.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
At least you know what you're getting, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So I think that's part of what's problematic in the space,
is that people are trying to pretend they have a
culture that is not what it is.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
You bring up Elon Musk. Can you imagine if his
name was Elaine Musk? And what sort of reception would
the media and the world give to a woman who
was leading with that iron fist? And even yourself, you know,
not that you had an iron fist, but you were
in hearing your leadership style. You're like, I set boundaries.
I'm not like doing retreats every day. I play like
(18:40):
a soccer team. That admission is not sort of the
soft yess that we expect from women. And I was
just speaking the other day with a friend, a woman
friend who worked in finance in her early career, and
she said, in all of my reviews people called me pleasant,
and as a result, I got high marks. And they
(19:02):
would say things to her like, oh, but you always
have a smile on your face and you.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Dress so nice.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
You know these other women, they're so harsh, and I
just wonder. I guess the question is, how do you
reconcile wanting to have a certain style of leadership as
a woman in business that is incongruent with what society
expects of you. We don't give women leaders, especially I
think of like Sofia Amarusso and others who like the
(19:29):
girl Boss era. There's so many women leaders that have
been knocked down, have not been given the amount of
sort of makeups and makeovers that we give men. I'm
speaking generally, but I think we know what I'm talking about, right.
We don't give women enough grace and enough opportunities to say, Okay,
I messed up. I'm going to try this again. Like
(19:49):
you even said, I have a temper, I'm working on it.
I think that as a woman leader that's scrutinized more
than as a male leader. Do you agree with any
of this, and what do you think about it.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It's exactly right. The bar is different.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
It's not fair, it's not right that we're held to
a very specific standard. The box is very tight for
how we're expected to operate. That said, I think the
elixir is very easy because once you stop caring and
just own the truth of who and what you are,
(20:30):
negative criticism in the media be damned. It's just do
you life short, lead the way that you want to lead,
Just be honest about it. And I think that is
maybe I don't want to generalize, but I think that's
maybe where we ran into some issues where a lot
of us, for a period of time, we're starting our
(20:52):
own businesses and then trying to operate them as if
we really weren't. People were like cyborg robots who were
just so perfect and smiley, happy, and it was going
to be this great kumbaya circle. And it's not realistic
for how you need to operate a business. And so
(21:13):
maybe that disingenuousness, that lack of honesty about what it
really takes and how you need to lead, is what
got some of us into a little bit of trouble.
And I feel for those who were on the headlines
because there were so many more of us who were
operating that way too. They just got it because they
(21:37):
were more known at the time.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, it's sort of the double edge, right where the
sort of like you put yourself out there and while
that's great, then you're also putting yourself out there and
so now, yeah, we're open to the wounds.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
But this is something I hear all the time and
the women entrepreneurs I talk to is that double standard
makes them so stressed out. They're giving criticism to an
employloyee and the employees saying, well, I don't like your
tone and your mean to me, and then they're in
group chats sharing that the founder is verbally abusive for
whatever it is, and it's terrifying too. So it puts
(22:14):
this additional layer of stress on your management.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
When we come back, Kathleen Griffith and I talk about
the mindset shift that helped her grow her business, how
she moved past imposter syndrome, and the game changing power
of asking for what you want.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
My first outrageous ask was to Jessica Alba and her
team said yes, one yes can change your life.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
We'll be right back. So in your book, Build Like
a Woman, Why did you want to take it from
that lens? Like, what is it about building like a
woman that is so unique?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I really didn't want women to even be a part
of it initially, and I hope that the womanness of
it falls away. That's my dream, and I've shifted everything
to now it just being built. But it feels important
as a starting point to acknowledge our gender because all
the business books I was reading were predominantly authored by men,
(23:25):
you know, and then there are some great ones from you,
et cetera, But for the most part men, and I
just felt like I was having all these really weird
experiences building the company that I spoke to more and
more other successful founders about and they it had similar
experiences around the emotional upheaval of your crying on your
(23:47):
bathroom floor once a week, because we're emotional by nature,
which is what makes us great too. Write to having
all these strange encounters with men where sometimes there were
just strange dynamics around power, and the more powerful you
were becoming, the more there seemed to be this blowback.
So I really don't want to live in a world
(24:09):
where things are gendered. It isn't where I truly want
to be, but it felt important because one, we have
these experiences that are different, and two I only really
wanted to hear other amazing women who I have featured
in the book, you know, everyone from Jessica Alba to
Eva Longoria to neuroscientists like doctor Amishi Jahd Martha Beck,
(24:33):
who's one of my great life teachers who I mentioned earlier,
Sarah Blakely for sales.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Do that because there's this wealth of knowledge and insight
from women, the unvarnished truth that lives below the surface
that I have found so deeply inspiring that because I
had close proximity to these women, I wanted to bring
that insight to more women as well.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I love that, and it worked. It worked, you know.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
To bring these voices to the forefront intentionally is not
something we do enough of. I mean, I think about
Julia Louis Dreyfus's podcast Wiser than Me. It's all about
listening to women that are older than her, because she says,
quite frankly, we don't ask them for their advice, and
by golly, they have things to say. They have so
much to say life and have learned some things, and
(25:23):
we all want to get the advice from like the
wise old man, what about the wise old woman? Right,
it seems like so silly that we don't do that enough,
and so I really appreciate that perspective of yours.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I love that you referenced her by the way, I
had her best friend last night.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, her best best friend from college.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
They go way back, and it's so important to have
these voices at the table who have so much institutional knowledge.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So yeah, shout out to JLD. We love you, Yeah, Kathleen.
A lot of people aspire to be authors. We have
a lot of idea and even if we're working in
a nine to five, a book can be a game
changer for your career, right. It's a way to have
ownership over a collection of ideas that you want to
(26:11):
put out in the world. For me, my first book
was my Parachute. When I got laid off, I had
a book, so it allowed me to have a platform.
And I think I've built literally everything that I have
because of that decision in my twenties to author a
book and never have to go back to, you know,
working full time somewhere. So, as you wrote build like
(26:34):
a woman, I want to know how did the book
change your life in some ways? And any advice for
somebody who wants to become an author. You know, your
biggest tip.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
I really believe all of us have something to say.
Everyone is sitting on something that is unique and true
to them, and so if that is on your heart,
just go do the darn thing. You can figure it
out as you go. You can figure out how to
get an agent, and how to sell to a publisher
or self publish, how to then market it and do
(27:06):
pr It's all figure outable. So it just requires that
you take a little bite each day. It's a very
it's a marathon. No better than anyone else. It's a marathon,
and you need to be really disciplined. There's this great book,
The War of Art, which.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Is all about that. I get for anyone who wants
to write a book, because you really need to be
able to sit.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Down in the chair every single day if you're going
to write it yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
It's a battlefield.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Get greater around that, right, and even folding the laundry
feels very attractive at the time on any distraction, right.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
But it has brought for me personally you'd asked about that.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
It has been one of the great joy points of
my life because now I'm able to actually face to
face meet these women, these perfect strangers.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
I get notes from them every single morning.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I can now meet them at live events, and we
have this shared vernacular, we have this common experience that
we can kind of short circuit with each other. So
I can't get over that I show up places and
I hear more than anything else, I felt seen. You
made me feel seen, and as someone who felt so
(28:20):
unseen for so long, that is the highest compliment you
could ever get.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Let's talk about this outrageous ask. I'm going through the
archives here, so you have a practice. You call it
the outrageous ask. It's essentially part of being bold in
the workplace, and I want you to bring that to
life for us. And maybe what is an outrageous ask
that you've recently requested that is worth noting?
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, so this is fun.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So for anyone listening, you're going to want to activate
this this week. It is so powerful it can honestly
change your life. So this came from the desire to
have bigger things happen in my business, but it applies
to anyone who has their own business or who was
in a corporation. The idea is that you make an ask,
(29:10):
so you think about something that you want that could
be game changing for you. Person you want to meet,
a partnership, you want to do, project, you want to
work on, game changer, something that makes you terrified when
you think about it.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It's that big.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
It's a basic ask to the tenth exponent. It's something
that ninety nine point nine percent of people would say
no to if they got it right, and they're gonna think.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
One of two things, Who does she think she is?
And is she crazy?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Like that's what they should be thinking when they open
up this email from you or get this call from you.
And it's amazing because one yes to an outrageous ask
can change your life. Like when I was starting this
interview series for Build, I didn't know who was gonna
do it.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
No one knew who I was.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
And my first outrageous ask was to Esca Alba and
her team said yes, and then that paved the way
for all because she was this anchor person who'd come
on yeah, and then all these other women ended up
saying yes on the back of that.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
So it's that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And I've had this happen so many times in my
own life. If you make one a week, it's fifty
two ass a year that are just hanging out there
in the ether. And even if someone says yes to one,
it's life changing. But please don't everyone email me, because
this is what tends to happen. I end up with
a thousand outrageous asks. Don't give one to farnoushe or
(30:38):
to me, but send them out into the world. No,
unless we can uniquely help you, then that's a different story.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
What's the most outrageous ask you've gotten?
Speaker 1 (30:47):
One that was really fun was I went to UNC
Chapel Hill and this girl was graduating and she really
wanted to intern for me, and so she had everyone
in her marketing class. It was one hundred women or
something send me messages across every single social media platform
on why she would be an amazing intern who should
(31:10):
be given the opportunity. The outrageousness of that was she
had enrolled all of these people and then they're posting
on my LinkedIn publicly, they're sending me dms. I mean,
these women came for me, and I gave her paid
work and she actually helped you some other research for
the book.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
So it works. Wow, it works.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
That's a great, great story. Someone listening is going to
do that for their north star. I love that. Something
we really like to ask all of our guests, Kathleen,
is what leading by example means to them. So I'd
give you the floor to tell us, what does leading
by example mean to you?
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Leading by example means you live your life with total alignment.
You live in a way that is maybe unconventional, unique,
but it is true to you because that is what
the world needs now more than ever. It needs more
people who lead in their own unique ways.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I love that. Thank you so much, Kathleen Griffith. We
loved having you on. I loved reconnecting with you. I
took many notes.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh I love being here with you.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
I think you inspired a few people too.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
We are very appreciative. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
All right.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
That's Kathleen Griffith. What a leader, Kia. I just I
really appreciated how disciplined she is in sort of the
learning how to lead. She recognizes that it's a work
in progress. She's done a lot of self work, and
I like that she admits when she's wrong or has
a weakness, which can be really scary to do when
(32:52):
you're in a position of power to say you know
what I was wrong or I don't know enough and
I'm going to go back and learn. What was your
favorite part of the interview?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Ah? Yeah, this was such a great interview. I was
just like so engaged and so excited to hear everything
she said. I think being intuitive with yourself is so important.
It's something that I feel like a lot of people
lack in general, beyond business, but like in their everyday lives.
It's so important to just check in and look inward.
And I feel like that's not something we see a
(33:21):
lot of people doing, and I really feel like it's
a disservice to like yourself. But also like society, we
have to coexist in this world, and it's almost in
a way selfish to not look inWORD because the people
around you have to deal with that. So I really
love that she said she takes a moment every morning
to do that. And another thing that she said which
I thought was great, You guys talked about if Elon
(33:44):
Musk was Elaine and Musk, and I'm also not a
fan of.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Him for other reasons.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
We don't have to go into it, but I do
think there's a thing where it's like a woman makes
an ounce of a mistake and.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
She's like admonished. Yeah, the sman of so tired, young
Farnoushe felt so validated when she said asking questions is
a sign of intelligence and curiosity, because I remember being
terrified in my junior writer role at a magazine in
(34:16):
New York. I was so I guess, just intimidated by
all these like very successful writers and editors around me.
And I remember we would go into the morning pitch
meetings and one month we were going to talk about
real estate, and the whole issue was going to be
about the housing market and why it's a great time
to buy a house. This was many years ago. And
(34:36):
I raised my hand because again I'm here to learn
mostly right, I'm new on the job. And I said,
can you tell me a little bit about like why
we're talking about real estate is the most important thing
for the month of August and the issue doesn't come
out for another four months, so how can we be
sure that in four months it's still going to be relevant?
And I tell you the looks I got, like how
(34:58):
dare you ask this question?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
And their answer. We just know, like it's all we
talk about with our friends. So it was like, well,
that wasn't very scientific.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, it's the ego.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
It's ego.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Talk like ego, and you know it's so easy when
you get a reaction like that that you just quiet yourself.
I thought that was such important advice. I can't say
I practiced it back then. You know, maybe I did
quiet myself a little bit. But for others who are
new to the workplace or even not, you know, I
think there's always that intimidation factor and to be the
(35:32):
curious one is a sign of intelligence, and it's a
sign of commitment, right, Like I want to learn so
I can grow, so that hopefully I can be an
asset to this team. It's not appreciated enough.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Yeah, absolutely, it's poor leadership on their behalf. And I
also think people just want to convince you that their
way is the only way. And another thing that she
mentioned was like stop caring about other people responses, and
that's like the criticism of women and we don't give
them enough space. But just her vice of like stop caring,
(36:09):
I feel like I've practiced that so much and maybe
too like far off, but I'm also like, I look
at people and I'm like, you were trying so hard
to convince me of your point, of your way of lifestyle,
of your values. That's simply not aligning with me. And
I'm not going to change myself to make sense to you.
And I'm just simply not going to do it. I
(36:30):
just once I started implementing that, I just became happier.
And I'm like, we can all say that our way
is the right way, X, Y, and Z, but why
should I have to just think this is the only way.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
We're often playing the defense when we're trying to move
an agenda, and anyone sort of questions it, we see
it as an offense. I think when Kathleen talked about
navigating the workplace as a woman and standing in your
truth and doing things your own way, I think that
takes a lot of courage. I think until all women
(37:01):
can get on board with that, when we can normalize that,
that's when we can stop talking about it. You know,
the issue is that if you're the one woman in
the office who's taking a stand, who's the one woman
in the office asking for the promotion or saying, hey,
I have a different idea Yeah, everyone's going to look
at you like you have four heads. But when everyone
(37:23):
who identifies as a woman, who identifies even on just
as an other, starts to speak up more, then that
gets normalized and then we stop seeing a lot of
what is still unfortunately a backlash to that. And it's
going to take some brave women like Kathleen to pave
the way. But I'm so glad she has a book,
(37:43):
Build Like a Woman, to democratize this, to teach others
how to do this, because a rising tide does lift
all boats. Yeah, I'm very excited to read her book.
So thanks Kathleen, and that's our show. I hope you
enjoyed our conversation with Kathleen. If you like what you're hearing,
please follow in subscribes you don't miss out on any
new episodes, and as always, we want to hear your
(38:05):
thoughts to make this the best show possible, so please
leave us a review. In the meantime, you can find
me at Farnoosh Charabi on Instagram and I'm always on
the So Money podcast. I'll see you next time. This
podcast is a production of iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio. Our executive
producer is Matt Stillo, and our supervising producer is Nikiah Swinton.
(38:26):
This podcast was edited by Sierra Spreen.
Ninety percent of who we are is completely subconscious.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It is all buried under the surface.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And in my opinion, to be a great leader, you
have to uncover all that lies underneath, What triggers you,
what excites you, who you really are as a leader,
who you really are as a person. And I think
part of the problem is that so many people are
leading others without truly knowing themselves.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Those powerful insights come from Kathleen Griffith, the visionary behind
the best selling phenomenon Build Like a Woman, a book
that's transforming how women approach entrepreneurship. When Barbara Corkran called
it equal parts heart and hustle, she captured the essence
of not just the book, but Kathleen herself. But before
she was leading thousands of women along the path to
(00:58):
launching their own businesses, Kathleen was climbing the corporate ladder
at an ad agency, feeling that familiar sense of intuition
that there had to be more. Her story is the
journey from corporate burnout to entrepreneurial breakthrough, but Kathleen unpacks
the raw truth about what it really takes to build
a business on your own terms. I'm furnished to RAVI
(01:20):
and this is leading by example, executives making an impact. Kathleen,
Welcome to the show. Welcome to leading by example.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm so glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Good way to start the day at an eight am
for me, So glad to start it with.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You eleven am for me. So you're really putting in
the effort here because I've at least had my coffee. Well,
I feel like you're an early riser. I feel like
you've had a lot of gay already.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, you nailed that. I'm a part of the five
am club.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
So, oh my gosh, crazy. Well, speaking of you know,
I've known you for some years and I've been watching
you build this incredible busy and thought leadership. You've architected
this so beautifully for yourself and for everyone who is
in your orbit. You strike me as someone who has
been just extremely proactive, strategic and early riser. You've designed
(02:15):
your career the architecture of it. So, speaking of like
you know, getting up early in the morning, I'd love
to start off just by having you take us behind
the scenes Kathleen of what a typical workday or work
week looks like for you. And while we're there what
is something that someone who doesn't know your work closely
would be surprised to discover about your leadership style or
(02:38):
how you lead.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So there is no typical work week. Each week is
filled with very different things. So some weeks I'm doing
public speaking, I'm on tour doing that, I'm doing book
signings for my new book, shooting television, producing television.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Brand consulting, recording a podcast, doing media. So it is
all over the place.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And what I discovered is that I really needed rooting
habits to ground me, so there was some foundational consistency
in each day. Otherwise you just feel like this ping
pong ball that's all over the place. And I don't
know if you know that feeling where you're just spinning,
you feel.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Like a whirling dervish.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, it can happen really easily, right, Like, it's very
easy for that to take hold. I think when you
even have a few days like that that are just
not consistent. And so I do something. I call it
the sixty minute prime. And what I do is every
single morning, I do three things. I sweat, so I
(03:42):
move my body for twenty minutes. I have sustenance. So
really good greens and nourishing things in the morning to eat,
and silence, So twenty minutes of silence. I practice TM
and also MBSR, which is mindfulness based stress reduction in
and that might be something that's surprising to people. Meditation
(04:04):
is a huge part of my life and it is
one of the things that I attribute most to the success.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That I've had. It's a game changer. I could wax
poetic about it forever.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I love the alliteration sweat, sestenance, silence, the three ses. Yeah,
twenty minutes of sweating. I mean most people are like,
I got to put in an hour and a half
in the gym. No, you're very efficient.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, Well, when it becomes overwhelming, right of like it's
a sixty minute commitment or it's a two hour commitment,
then I find that you don't have the consistency where
you just knock it out every day. And more than
anything else, I really needed that rooting because the rest
of my life has now become so extreme.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
You've always been a mover. I was reading about how
when you were a kid, your entrepreneurial spirit was well
and alive. As a child, you sold candy in middle school.
Take me back to Kathleen as a young girl, and
how would your friends describe you back then?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I've heard that candy arbitrage is an early indicator of
being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Not lemonade, not let lemonade.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
No, everyone has a lemonade stand, but it is true.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And if that's the case, I was a born entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I had this little thing called the Snack Attack Pack,
and so I'd put snacks in their candies in there,
buy low, sell high. I'd wrap every single morning on
the loudspeaker. Come and pick up your Snack Attack pack.
Surprising enough, your hunger isn't coming back, Like didn't exactly rhyme.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
But I'd sell it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And then I had all this pocket money, and I
just love the sales of it. And then I love
the freedom of having this money in my little pocketbook
that I could then go spend on whatever I wanted
and no one could tell me otherwise. And then life changes,
as we know, and so I kind of took that
(06:02):
innate entrepreneurial quality and shoved it down the drain for
a very long time. But I would say that my
friends would describe me at the time as a little
force of nature.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
What was your profit margin on the snack Attack pack.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
We were doing good. I think it must have been
seventy five percent.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, I think it was up there.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
And it signals that you had a mind for branding
and marketing and advertising back then, not just you know,
a sales driven or a finance driven, but you had
it all. You were the whole package. It really it
signals a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, I always love to start with childhood because I
don't think it's a coincidence who we become. I think
there are clues as young as in your case, middle
school and when you finally got out of college, you
are getting ready for your first sort of corporate gig,
and I was reading that in those early years, I think,
as so many young adults feel, you felt very unseen.
(07:01):
You are working on really big brand projects. You were
given quite a bit of responsibility, but you didn't feel
as though you had a true seat at the table.
So looking back, was there anything that you think you
would have done differently to experience more fulfillment on the job.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
There is this great study that came out of McKinsey
that talked about seventy eight percent of women experience microaggressions
at work, so you're kind of self shielding and contorting
yourself so that you don't take up as much space,
which in turn makes you not feel as seen.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think everything from just being interrupted to having a
point of view restated, all the things that we've.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Heard a million times.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And I think the biggest piece that I would tell
myself if I were able to go back, and I
don't know how I would have cultivated this, would be
to have spoken my mind more so in every single meeting.
I just remember sitting there thinking, what's the right thing
to say? What should I say to sound smart in
(08:09):
this room? When I was in the room, which wasn't
very often, How can I endear myself to this person
who's more senior than me, you know, the laughing when
something isn't even funny, the smiling even when you don't
feel like smiling. And so i'd probably go back to
those rooms and just say, have a point of view,
(08:32):
your point of view, stand behind it, and let the
chips fall where they may.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
But I was.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Always monitoring in my own head and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Kind of cycling through a million things that I should
be saying, and so I never really said very much,
and I'd leave every kind of interaction mentally exhausted because
of the gymnastics that I was doing.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
The mental gymnastics. There's a lot of fear too, like
to your point, you're going to say the wrong thing.
I've been that twenty something year old who does speak
up in a meeting mostly to ask more questions about
what's being expressed, because I'm still learning, and I feel
like in the beginning you might feel stupid. I mean,
(09:18):
people will make you feel like an idiot, and I
have been made to feel like an idiot. But it's
like you have to keep flexing the muscle.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's such an important point, like asking the questions. The
smartest people in the room are those who are comfortable
asking questions and wanting more clarification and are curious. So
it's a sign of intelligence, it really is.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I'll tell you though, in the beginning it can feel
like you're an impostor and you're a disruptor. But my
just advice to anyone listening, like keep asking the questions.
If you're not getting the right answers and you're not
in the right rooms, you know you're not in the
room of growth. So all this sort of keeping silent
and then the burnout. It culminated to a point where
(10:01):
you're in a pizza shop in New York and you're
having a meltdown and there's like truffle sauce all over
your face and you're with her, a really good friend
who's sort of calling you out, and your life kind
of changes in that moment. So take us back to
that New York pizzeria.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, so I was good girl bred, and I think
that's what you know, going back to the beginning where
I was a born entrepreneur, but then felt like that
wasn't an option, to be an outlier, and so decide
to do all the right things. Go get the good job,
Go get the good looking partner, get engaged to them,
Go get the nice house, the white picket fence, all that.
(10:39):
Like I was on that exact track and working very
very hard at it all, and I ended up at
this pizza joint. I'm just stuffing my face with pizza,
which there's nothing wrong with, but drowning my sorrows and
pizza because quietly, and I thought no one would notice,
(11:00):
I just felt numb and dead inside, like I was
not living my purpose. I was doing all the right
things and yet it was such a joyless existence. I
felt like I was eating like a dry saltine every day.
And so my friend looks at me and says, you
look like a ghost.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Are you okay?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I was pale faced and just unhealthy at the time.
And so I left that dinner and I walked home
and it was one of those rainy nights in New
York City, you know, where the light is just glistening
off the pavement. And I walked forty some odd blocks home.
I didn't want to take a cab. And this quote
from this woman who I had met at a workshop
(11:42):
a few weeks before, Tama Keeves, who's a Harvard trained,
very bright lawyer. She had said, if you are this
successful doing what you don't love, imagine how successful you'd
be doing what you do love. And that haunted me.
That haunted me that whole walk home, and finally I
(12:05):
was able to get the courage to quit my corporate job.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
How did you figure out to do what you love?
This is the question that so many of us struggle with,
because what you're describing is essentially high functioning depression. Yeah,
it's a new study. I just interviewed doctor Judith Joseph.
She's put a name to this that I think a
lot of us experience, which is that we have this
feeling to use your words of like emptiness and vacuousness,
(12:33):
and although we are like killing it at work and
in our professional lives, like on our resumes, on paper,
on LinkedIn, people are envious, but we're not fulfilled. We
are numb. To use your words and recognizing it as
one thing, then moving on from that, it requires understanding
what does bark joy? What does make you happy professionally
(12:56):
at least and for you, what was that discovery? Like
how did you come to this idea? I got to
open up my own agency and be a multi hyphen
it who I thought?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Okay, once you make this brave decision your purpose and
what you're meant to do, it just like lightning, like
here we go.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It is common and it doesn't work that way. As
we all know. It whispers to you.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It is this quiet knowing that as you get closer
to it, you feel warmer, you feel more energized, you
feel more excited, and the further you get away from
it to borrow. Martha Beck has this great concept, the
way of integrity and credible book too. It feels colder
and more agitating, and it makes you feel small, and
(13:42):
so it really became an experiment, a great social experiment.
So I'd been working in advertising and I figured I'd
go into an adjacent space and help nonprofits with their
marketing and branding and brand campaign because I had a
non compete in the corporate space and so had never
(14:04):
done that before, had never worked in nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
But it was all I could do where.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It seemed kind of easily transferable from one skill set
to the other, just different category essentially, And that was
the beginning of me starting my brand consultancy, Grays and Co.
But it was very much a feeling my way through
the dark.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
But that to me felt better.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Than sleepwalking through life, which is what I'd been doing before,
because I believe there was a light at the end
of that tunnel.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Let's talk about being a woman in business. Let's talk
about from your perspective as a founder, what are the
models of leadership that you deploy and what are the
ones that you think we don't use enough of. You know,
there's so many books on leadership, and I just want
to understand and what you bring to your teams every
(15:03):
day and the leadership models that you follow.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So when I started my own small business, You're strapped,
you have very limited resources, time, You're paying only a
few people to work for you. So it ain't great, right,
You're dealing with a lot of constraints. And so I
was a horrible leader. I was like running very fast
with super sharp scissors. It was dangerous, it was reckless.
(15:29):
I do NDAs after the fact. I do contracts after
people had already started working.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I was laid on billing.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It was just disorganized. Chaos is an understatement. And over time,
as the business actually continued to do well, I took
a step back and I developed something which I call
mindful leadership that I needed for myself. So moving from
kind of this more toxic model to a more mindful model,
(16:00):
and what it essentially means is to first know thyself.
So ninety percent of who we are is completely subconscious.
It is all buried under the surface, And in my opinion,
to be a great leader, you have to uncover all
that lies underneath, what triggers you, what excites you, who
(16:21):
you really are as a leader, who you really are
as a person. And I think part of the problem
is that so many people are leading others without truly
knowing themselves. So starting there, doing the excavation work, bringing
it to the surface, and then really owning this is
the sort of leader that I am. And I had
(16:41):
to radically redefine my company and leadership style because I'd
been co opting this style and that to try to
make it seem like we were one of those cool
girl companies. I was a cool founder. We were going
to drink rose and wear wreaths and go on versions
once a week that were team wilding and go eat
(17:03):
a wellness retreats.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Right, it ain't me like that, Ain't me.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I'm a nerd okay, first and foremost, I'm not grade
at operations. I have a temper at times that I'm
working very much to get a handle on. I continue
to work through that. And so it meant that I
had certain attributes that I wanted my team to have, professionalism, positivity,
and performance. I love alliteration, as you can tell. And
(17:32):
we were going to move and operate like a woman's
sports team, and it was going to be tough, and
I was going to coach you and I was going
to have high standards. But that's what works for me,
for you, it's going to be something completely different because
you're bringing so many other beautiful qualities to the table.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
But I think that's.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
What it comes down to, and then communicating that to
your team in a way that's transparent, where you own
it so they know what they're getting. And if you
want to be more of an Elon Musk founder, like
he's awful in my opinion, but.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
At least you know what you're getting, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So I think that's part of what's problematic in the space,
is that people are trying to pretend they have a
culture that is not what it is.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
You bring up Elon Musk. Can you imagine if his
name was Elaine Musk? And what sort of reception would
the media and the world give to a woman who
was leading with that iron fist? And even yourself, you know,
not that you had an iron fist, but you were
in hearing your leadership style. You're like, I set boundaries.
I'm not like doing retreats every day. I play like
(18:40):
a soccer team. That admission is not sort of the
soft yess that we expect from women. And I was
just speaking the other day with a friend, a woman
friend who worked in finance in her early career, and
she said, in all of my reviews people called me pleasant,
and as a result, I got high marks. And they
(19:02):
would say things to her like, oh, but you always
have a smile on your face and you.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Dress so nice.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
You know these other women, they're so harsh, and I
just wonder. I guess the question is, how do you
reconcile wanting to have a certain style of leadership as
a woman in business that is incongruent with what society
expects of you. We don't give women leaders, especially I
think of like Sofia Amarusso and others who like the
(19:29):
girl Boss era. There's so many women leaders that have
been knocked down, have not been given the amount of
sort of makeups and makeovers that we give men. I'm
speaking generally, but I think we know what I'm talking about, right.
We don't give women enough grace and enough opportunities to say, Okay,
I messed up. I'm going to try this again. Like
(19:49):
you even said, I have a temper, I'm working on it.
I think that as a woman leader that's scrutinized more
than as a male leader. Do you agree with any
of this, and what do you think about it.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It's exactly right. The bar is different.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
It's not fair, it's not right that we're held to
a very specific standard. The box is very tight for
how we're expected to operate. That said, I think the
elixir is very easy because once you stop caring and
just own the truth of who and what you are,
(20:30):
negative criticism in the media be damned. It's just do
you life short, lead the way that you want to lead,
Just be honest about it. And I think that is
maybe I don't want to generalize, but I think that's
maybe where we ran into some issues where a lot
of us, for a period of time, we're starting our
(20:52):
own businesses and then trying to operate them as if
we really weren't. People were like cyborg robots who were
just so perfect and smiley, happy, and it was going
to be this great kumbaya circle. And it's not realistic
for how you need to operate a business. And so
(21:13):
maybe that disingenuousness, that lack of honesty about what it
really takes and how you need to lead, is what
got some of us into a little bit of trouble.
And I feel for those who were on the headlines
because there were so many more of us who were
operating that way too. They just got it because they
(21:37):
were more known at the time.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, it's sort of the double edge, right where the
sort of like you put yourself out there and while
that's great, then you're also putting yourself out there and
so now, yeah, we're open to the wounds.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
But this is something I hear all the time and
the women entrepreneurs I talk to is that double standard
makes them so stressed out. They're giving criticism to an
employloyee and the employees saying, well, I don't like your
tone and your mean to me, and then they're in
group chats sharing that the founder is verbally abusive for
whatever it is, and it's terrifying too. So it puts
(22:14):
this additional layer of stress on your management.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
When we come back, Kathleen Griffith and I talk about
the mindset shift that helped her grow her business, how
she moved past imposter syndrome, and the game changing power
of asking for what you want.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
My first outrageous ask was to Jessica Alba and her
team said yes, one yes can change your life.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
We'll be right back. So in your book, Build Like
a Woman, Why did you want to take it from
that lens? Like, what is it about building like a
woman that is so unique?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I really didn't want women to even be a part
of it initially, and I hope that the womanness of
it falls away. That's my dream, and I've shifted everything
to now it just being built. But it feels important
as a starting point to acknowledge our gender because all
the business books I was reading were predominantly authored by men,
(23:25):
you know, and then there are some great ones from you,
et cetera, But for the most part men, and I
just felt like I was having all these really weird
experiences building the company that I spoke to more and
more other successful founders about and they it had similar
experiences around the emotional upheaval of your crying on your
(23:47):
bathroom floor once a week, because we're emotional by nature,
which is what makes us great too. Write to having
all these strange encounters with men where sometimes there were
just strange dynamics around power, and the more powerful you
were becoming, the more there seemed to be this blowback.
So I really don't want to live in a world
(24:09):
where things are gendered. It isn't where I truly want
to be, but it felt important because one, we have
these experiences that are different, and two I only really
wanted to hear other amazing women who I have featured
in the book, you know, everyone from Jessica Alba to
Eva Longoria to neuroscientists like doctor Amishi Jahd Martha Beck,
(24:33):
who's one of my great life teachers who I mentioned earlier,
Sarah Blakely for sales.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Do that because there's this wealth of knowledge and insight
from women, the unvarnished truth that lives below the surface
that I have found so deeply inspiring that because I
had close proximity to these women, I wanted to bring
that insight to more women as well.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I love that, and it worked. It worked, you know.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
To bring these voices to the forefront intentionally is not
something we do enough of. I mean, I think about
Julia Louis Dreyfus's podcast Wiser than Me. It's all about
listening to women that are older than her, because she says,
quite frankly, we don't ask them for their advice, and
by golly, they have things to say. They have so
much to say life and have learned some things, and
(25:23):
we all want to get the advice from like the
wise old man, what about the wise old woman? Right,
it seems like so silly that we don't do that enough,
and so I really appreciate that perspective of yours.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I love that you referenced her by the way, I
had her best friend last night.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, her best best friend from college.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
They go way back, and it's so important to have
these voices at the table who have so much institutional knowledge.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So yeah, shout out to JLD. We love you, Yeah, Kathleen.
A lot of people aspire to be authors. We have
a lot of idea and even if we're working in
a nine to five, a book can be a game
changer for your career, right. It's a way to have
ownership over a collection of ideas that you want to
(26:11):
put out in the world. For me, my first book
was my Parachute. When I got laid off, I had
a book, so it allowed me to have a platform.
And I think I've built literally everything that I have
because of that decision in my twenties to author a
book and never have to go back to, you know,
working full time somewhere. So, as you wrote build like
(26:34):
a woman, I want to know how did the book
change your life in some ways? And any advice for
somebody who wants to become an author. You know, your
biggest tip.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
I really believe all of us have something to say.
Everyone is sitting on something that is unique and true
to them, and so if that is on your heart,
just go do the darn thing. You can figure it
out as you go. You can figure out how to
get an agent, and how to sell to a publisher
or self publish, how to then market it and do
(27:06):
pr It's all figure outable. So it just requires that
you take a little bite each day. It's a very
it's a marathon. No better than anyone else. It's a marathon,
and you need to be really disciplined. There's this great book,
The War of Art, which.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Is all about that. I get for anyone who wants
to write a book, because you really need to be
able to sit.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Down in the chair every single day if you're going
to write it yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
It's a battlefield.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Get greater around that, right, and even folding the laundry
feels very attractive at the time on any distraction, right.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
But it has brought for me personally you'd asked about that.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
It has been one of the great joy points of
my life because now I'm able to actually face to
face meet these women, these perfect strangers.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
I get notes from them every single morning.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I can now meet them at live events, and we
have this shared vernacular, we have this common experience that
we can kind of short circuit with each other. So
I can't get over that I show up places and
I hear more than anything else, I felt seen. You
made me feel seen, and as someone who felt so
(28:20):
unseen for so long, that is the highest compliment you
could ever get.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Let's talk about this outrageous ask. I'm going through the
archives here, so you have a practice. You call it
the outrageous ask. It's essentially part of being bold in
the workplace, and I want you to bring that to
life for us. And maybe what is an outrageous ask
that you've recently requested that is worth noting?
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, so this is fun.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So for anyone listening, you're going to want to activate
this this week. It is so powerful it can honestly
change your life. So this came from the desire to
have bigger things happen in my business, but it applies
to anyone who has their own business or who was
in a corporation. The idea is that you make an ask,
(29:10):
so you think about something that you want that could
be game changing for you. Person you want to meet,
a partnership, you want to do, project, you want to
work on, game changer, something that makes you terrified when
you think about it.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It's that big.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
It's a basic ask to the tenth exponent. It's something
that ninety nine point nine percent of people would say
no to if they got it right, and they're gonna think.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
One of two things, Who does she think she is?
And is she crazy?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Like that's what they should be thinking when they open
up this email from you or get this call from you.
And it's amazing because one yes to an outrageous ask
can change your life. Like when I was starting this
interview series for Build, I didn't know who was gonna
do it.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
No one knew who I was.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
And my first outrageous ask was to Esca Alba and
her team said yes, and then that paved the way
for all because she was this anchor person who'd come
on yeah, and then all these other women ended up
saying yes on the back of that.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
So it's that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And I've had this happen so many times in my
own life. If you make one a week, it's fifty
two ass a year that are just hanging out there
in the ether. And even if someone says yes to one,
it's life changing. But please don't everyone email me, because
this is what tends to happen. I end up with
a thousand outrageous asks. Don't give one to farnoushe or
(30:38):
to me, but send them out into the world. No,
unless we can uniquely help you, then that's a different story.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
What's the most outrageous ask you've gotten?
Speaker 1 (30:47):
One that was really fun was I went to UNC
Chapel Hill and this girl was graduating and she really
wanted to intern for me, and so she had everyone
in her marketing class. It was one hundred women or
something send me messages across every single social media platform
on why she would be an amazing intern who should
(31:10):
be given the opportunity. The outrageousness of that was she
had enrolled all of these people and then they're posting
on my LinkedIn publicly, they're sending me dms. I mean,
these women came for me, and I gave her paid
work and she actually helped you some other research for
the book.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
So it works. Wow, it works.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
That's a great, great story. Someone listening is going to
do that for their north star. I love that. Something
we really like to ask all of our guests, Kathleen,
is what leading by example means to them. So I'd
give you the floor to tell us, what does leading
by example mean to you?
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Leading by example means you live your life with total alignment.
You live in a way that is maybe unconventional, unique,
but it is true to you because that is what
the world needs now more than ever. It needs more
people who lead in their own unique ways.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I love that. Thank you so much, Kathleen Griffith. We
loved having you on. I loved reconnecting with you. I
took many notes.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh I love being here with you.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
I think you inspired a few people too.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
We are very appreciative. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
All right.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
That's Kathleen Griffith. What a leader, Kia. I just I
really appreciated how disciplined she is in sort of the
learning how to lead. She recognizes that it's a work
in progress. She's done a lot of self work, and
I like that she admits when she's wrong or has
a weakness, which can be really scary to do when
(32:52):
you're in a position of power to say you know
what I was wrong or I don't know enough and
I'm going to go back and learn. What was your
favorite part of the interview?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Ah? Yeah, this was such a great interview. I was
just like so engaged and so excited to hear everything
she said. I think being intuitive with yourself is so important.
It's something that I feel like a lot of people
lack in general, beyond business, but like in their everyday lives.
It's so important to just check in and look inward.
And I feel like that's not something we see a
(33:21):
lot of people doing, and I really feel like it's
a disservice to like yourself. But also like society, we
have to coexist in this world, and it's almost in
a way selfish to not look inWORD because the people
around you have to deal with that. So I really
love that she said she takes a moment every morning
to do that. And another thing that she said which
I thought was great, You guys talked about if Elon
(33:44):
Musk was Elaine and Musk, and I'm also not a
fan of.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Him for other reasons.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
We don't have to go into it, but I do
think there's a thing where it's like a woman makes
an ounce of a mistake and.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
She's like admonished. Yeah, the sman of so tired, young
Farnoushe felt so validated when she said asking questions is
a sign of intelligence and curiosity, because I remember being
terrified in my junior writer role at a magazine in
(34:16):
New York. I was so I guess, just intimidated by
all these like very successful writers and editors around me.
And I remember we would go into the morning pitch
meetings and one month we were going to talk about
real estate, and the whole issue was going to be
about the housing market and why it's a great time
to buy a house. This was many years ago. And
(34:36):
I raised my hand because again I'm here to learn
mostly right, I'm new on the job. And I said,
can you tell me a little bit about like why
we're talking about real estate is the most important thing
for the month of August and the issue doesn't come
out for another four months, so how can we be
sure that in four months it's still going to be relevant?
And I tell you the looks I got, like how
(34:58):
dare you ask this question?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
And their answer. We just know, like it's all we
talk about with our friends. So it was like, well,
that wasn't very scientific.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, it's the ego.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
It's ego.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Talk like ego, and you know it's so easy when
you get a reaction like that that you just quiet yourself.
I thought that was such important advice. I can't say
I practiced it back then. You know, maybe I did
quiet myself a little bit. But for others who are
new to the workplace or even not, you know, I
think there's always that intimidation factor and to be the
(35:32):
curious one is a sign of intelligence, and it's a
sign of commitment, right, Like I want to learn so
I can grow, so that hopefully I can be an
asset to this team. It's not appreciated enough.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Yeah, absolutely, it's poor leadership on their behalf. And I
also think people just want to convince you that their
way is the only way. And another thing that she
mentioned was like stop caring about other people responses, and
that's like the criticism of women and we don't give
them enough space. But just her vice of like stop caring,
(36:09):
I feel like I've practiced that so much and maybe
too like far off, but I'm also like, I look
at people and I'm like, you were trying so hard
to convince me of your point, of your way of lifestyle,
of your values. That's simply not aligning with me. And
I'm not going to change myself to make sense to you.
And I'm just simply not going to do it. I
(36:30):
just once I started implementing that, I just became happier.
And I'm like, we can all say that our way
is the right way, X, Y, and Z, but why
should I have to just think this is the only way.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
We're often playing the defense when we're trying to move
an agenda, and anyone sort of questions it, we see
it as an offense. I think when Kathleen talked about
navigating the workplace as a woman and standing in your
truth and doing things your own way, I think that
takes a lot of courage. I think until all women
(37:01):
can get on board with that, when we can normalize that,
that's when we can stop talking about it. You know,
the issue is that if you're the one woman in
the office who's taking a stand, who's the one woman
in the office asking for the promotion or saying, hey,
I have a different idea Yeah, everyone's going to look
at you like you have four heads. But when everyone
(37:23):
who identifies as a woman, who identifies even on just
as an other, starts to speak up more, then that
gets normalized and then we stop seeing a lot of
what is still unfortunately a backlash to that. And it's
going to take some brave women like Kathleen to pave
the way. But I'm so glad she has a book,
(37:43):
Build Like a Woman, to democratize this, to teach others
how to do this, because a rising tide does lift
all boats. Yeah, I'm very excited to read her book.
So thanks Kathleen, and that's our show. I hope you
enjoyed our conversation with Kathleen. If you like what you're hearing,
please follow in subscribes you don't miss out on any
new episodes, and as always, we want to hear your
(38:05):
thoughts to make this the best show possible, so please
leave us a review. In the meantime, you can find
me at Farnoosh Charabi on Instagram and I'm always on
the So Money podcast. I'll see you next time. This
podcast is a production of iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio. Our executive
producer is Matt Stillo, and our supervising producer is Nikiah Swinton.
(38:26):
This podcast was edited by Sierra Spreen.
Host
Farnoosh Torabi
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