- If you could sit next to Howard Schultz
at a board meeting, which I do.
I sit as close as I can.
Breathe on me.
Give me a little bit of it.
He said you don't go and watch video from when you win.
You watch video from when you lose.
It was one of those things where you think
you're going to go in and you're going to make a pitch
and they're totally going to shoot you down
and then ultimately they say yes and you're like holy shit.
(group laughs)
- Hello Believe Nation.
I'm Evan Carmichael.
My one word is believe and I believe that
entrepreneurs are going to solve
all of the world's major problems.
So to help you on your journey we're going to learn from
Ariel Investments president Mellody Hobson
and my take on her top 10 rules of success.
Rule number 10 is my personal favorite
and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best
and as always, as you're listening, if something really
resonates with you, there's a message that really
holds true to you, please leave it down the comments
below and put it in quotes so that other people
can be inspired and when you write it down,
it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well.
Enjoy.
(upbeat music)
- Be a fanatic.
Warren Buffet supposedly interviews people
and he says are you a fanatic?
And when you meet the fanatics, you know them
and I don't use fanatics in a bad way.
You know, it's this, the people that I most admire
have so loved their work and so wanted a good outcome
you understand why they're so successful
and when I think about our young leaders of color,
I want to tell them just, you know,
it's never going to get easier.
You think it gets easier, it doesn't.
It never gets easier.
I'm still doing homework every weekend.
I'm still, it never gets easier and if anything,
the stakes go up so much,
you actually have to work even harder.
You have to be fanatical.
You do not give up.
You don't take it so personally.
You figure out how you're going to get up.
Do not let people talk you out of your dreams.
Do not let them tell you no
and you own that you have to convince them.
I've spent time with people who are world class.
I know what world class looks like
and I have to bring that back to my organization
and bring that to life for them.
But I can tell you with the people that I spend time with,
I am learning world class from them.
- [Interviewer] Yeah.
- And so therefore I have big dreams.
If you could sit next to Howard Schultz in a board meeting,
which I do in every --
I sit as close as I can.
Breathe on me.
Give me a little bit of it, you know?
Look my way.
No, I'im joking but I sit as, you know,
I'm watching how he watches, how he's studying,
how the presentation's being made,
how he's interacting with people and I am learning
and I want to make sure our people have that same
level of energy around this.
That's because that's what world class is.
Do not make decisions based on money, none.
It's the worst way to make a decision,
which I know is so hard to say.
I mean I didn't grow up with any money
and I know so many of us are,
our families have a lot at stake.
They put a lot into us, made a lot of sacrifices for us
and you say you don't have the luxury
of doing that, but I actually think you do.
You will be more successful if you make decisions
based upon what is going to feed your soul,
make you feel value, valued, validated,
you know, have you waking up in the morning
and racing to work, whatever it might be,
and I can tell you after a short amount of time,
money will not be enough.
At the end of the day, a bigger paycheck is another suit
or more real estate, more square footage.
That's what it comes down to.
You end up with another room and a fuller closet.
And after a while, that's not going to do it.
I read this quote during an obituary for Floyd Patterson
the boxer and he said he only learned from losing a fight.
He said you don't go and watch video from when you win.
You watch video from when you lose and it is the failures
that build the character, that make you smarter,
stronger, tougher.
I was told people were scarred but smarter
and I think that is a really thing to be.
You could build on all that accumulated knowledge
in a way that can serve you and your clients or your company
very very well, but there have been, you know,
numerous moments of great pause and reflection
where I've sat and say, and I say to our team
and I say to myself, what is the universe
trying to teach me?
That idea of I'm not looking out five years,
I'm looking out long-term, I'm not thinking about
there's another job for me somewhere else.
I'm thinking about this job right now.
Those are the kinds of things that, you know,
I think have been able to lead to my success.
When I started working at Ariel, our founder
John Rogers said something to me
that I have never forgotten.
On my very first day, he took me to TGI Friday's,
big spender, and he said every game
in life is won with patience, every single one.
And he said I don't care if it's dating,
to you can't win the Indianapolis 500
in the first lap to a basketball game.
If you look at all sports, just a very simple
just one sort of portion of the world,
patience is how you win and that has been something
that I intuitively got at that moment.
I think when I think about what I'd like to be
remembered for, I would like to be thought of
having been very kind, who did right by society.
I actually learned that probably in my most
formative years from my business partner John Rogers.
I actually just read a graduation speech
that someone gave at one of the universities
about kindness and I thought that he really
spoke to everything that John started to tell me
when I was 22, that you could always take the kind path
and you could win with kindness and I try to think
a lot about that and it doesn't always work
and sometimes I know I'm not as kind as I want to be,
but it's in the back of my mind a lot.
I sit a lot of rooms with people who wait,
wait for someone to say something or my favorite line is,
I give this all the time.
At Princeton, we had a professor and if you were
in the preset group with him and someone spoke
and you said I want to reiterate what Sally said,
he would say you mean iterate again,
which meant you have no original thoughts.
And so these are the kinds of things I think about:
have an original idea, be willing to speak it
because it will get you noticed.
I love to swim so much that as an adult I swim with a coach.
And one day my coach had me do a drill
where I had to swim to one end of a 25 meter pool
without taking a breath and every single time I failed
I have to start over and I failed a lot.
By the end I got it, but I got out of the pool,
I was exasperated and tired and annoyed.
And I said why are we doing breath holding exercises?
And my coach looked at me and he said Mellody,
that was not a breath holding exercise.
That drill was to make you comfortable being uncomfortable
because that's how most of us spend our days.
If we could learn to deal with our discomfort
and just relax into it, we'll have a better life.
I think there was a very specific risk that I took
very early on at Ariel that was
unique and unprecedented at the time.
I was about 24 years old.
I had been there for a couple years and we had these
public mutual funds that were in partnership
with another company and I went to
our Board of Directors and said we need a divorce.
It had never happened before and we pulled apart
two operating mutual funds from an existing mutual fund
family, $400 million in assets, paid $400 million
for the right to do it, it was the whole nest egg
of the company and that was
a very, very, very bold call at the time.
It was one of those things where you think you're
going to go in, you're going to make a pitch and they're
totally going to shoot you down and then ultimately
they say yes and you're like holy shit.
(group laughs)
They're not supposed to be listening to me.
Don't they know I don't know what I'm doing?
But it ended up like marrying me to the company.
- Right.
- It's where Ariel became mine.
Now on a day to day basis, what I'm now pushing
very hard and Catherine Berardi is with me
who is my teammate at Ariel and a spectacular superstar
and she's heard me now say this story like 100 times
in four months, but my new thing that I'm really pushing
very, very hard especially with women and my friend
Sheryl Sandberg is also doing the same thing
in her own magnificent way,
I can't even compare myself because she has a book
that's coming out on this idea, but I feel like
as women, the risk is us speaking our truth
and the story that I'm now been telling
is this story that I read about a woman in a magazine
who said every single day, every single day
her daughter walked out of the house starting
when she was a very small child, she said
the exact same thing to her every single day
through college.
Be brave.
Every single day.
She said she wrote her letters in college
and she always signed them be brave
and that now just speaks to me because I'm in so
many rooms where I feel like the courage is not always there
and I don't know what the fear is.
Maybe it's the fear of not saying the right thing
or not fighting in but I'd rather the person
totally, you know, make a giant mistake
than not say anything at all and I just find
with women, sometimes we're really sort of
waiting to add our voice and I don't mean to say this
in any way that diminishes us
because we have the good ideas,
but you know, when I was at Princeton in our presets,
our small groups when we weren't in lecture,
they would say something to you that if you were piling on
with what someone else said and you say I'd like to
reiterate what this person said, they'd say
oh you mean iterate again and that was their way
of making you see like that is not an original thought.
- Right.
- And I feel like a lot of the women in the room
have their original thought, in some situations,
and are waiting to be validated and I'm just like
go for it, go for broke, pound the tables, speak your truth
and I now notice it in ways even in my own firm
where I give people real life examples.
We had a board meeting recently at our firm
and one of my colleagues who's a superstar woman
was presenting and she was only looking at our CEO
when she was talking and I was like,
don't ever do that again.
It was like she was looking for his validation
and all the other people around the table,
it was like they didn't matter.
And I was like, it just made you look small and you're not.
And that was like a simple example of that being brave.
What about her needed to lock on on him
and have him nod and you know, have her keep going
versus just owning the room with her presence.
Stand up for what you believe in.
Do not back down.
And that doesn't mean you have to do it
with a fist in the air or you know with aggression.
You can do it with grace and I cannot
be talked out of what I believe.
Now that doesn't mean, like I mean in my core values.
You cannot convince me that racism will ever be a path
to something good.
You cannot convince me that excluding people
ever leads to a better outcome.
You cannot convince me of that.
I will not be moved.
I will not compromise that point of view.
And as a result of that, I'm going to do everything
I can to keep pressing those perspectives and I think
if any issue I have with some of the millennials
that I've had the opportunity to work up close with,
don't be compliant.
You know, just, you are taught sometimes
winning is the path of least resistance
and I think this is now more than ever your voice
and you know, being willing to put yourself in harm's way.
It's like the question of losing a job.
I know it sounds like I'm being flip.
I have often asked myself do I belong here,
should I walk out, nothing is worth this.
And you know, I think that you know,
just really pushing yourself to understand that.
Sometimes just certain things, you're just going
to have to walk away if you really, really, really
believe that you've got to stand up for something.
So you know, I went to this program at The Aspen Institute,
the Henry Crown Fellows program and we were in these
small leadership groups, 20 people and Skip Battle,
who's this amazing guy and known in Silicon Valley
was my moderator.
I have so much respect and admiration for him.
And one day we were in the room and he said to me,
Mellody I know you will do good.
I was like 30 days old.
He goes, but will you stand in harm's way?
Will you put yourself in harm's way?
He said you could go through your whole life
just doing the easy path and feeling good about yourself
and patting yourself on your back,
but will you allow yourself to be hurt?
Will you allow yourself to have a tremendous setback
because you stood up for what you believed?
And that forced me to really think about
the path of least resistance and saying versus believing
that I will allow myself to be harmed.
And then I started to think about people like
John Lewis standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
and I started to think, I literally
cannot say this without welling up,
saying could I have that kind of courage?
And I think this is the moment we're standing in right now.
We have to have that John Lewis courage,
that Martin Luther King courage, that dogs turned on
teenagers, fire hoses turned on people courage
'cause I think that if we were standing there,
if I was standing there, I think I would run.
Now I'm telling myself stand.
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because Sarah Green asked me to.
If there's someone you'd like me to profile
in the next top 10, check out the link in the description
and go and cast your vote.
I'd also like to know what was your favorite
message from this video, what did you learn from this video
that you're going to immediately apply somehow
in your life or in your business?
Please leave it down in the comments below.
I'm really curious to find out.
I also want to give a quick shout out to the Essetino
Artists YouTube channel.
Thank you guys so much for picking up a copy of my book
Your One Word and having me on your show
in an interview to talk about it.
I really, really, really appreciate the support
and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book.
- We're interviewing author of Your One Word,
Evan Carmichael live on our YouTube channel.
- So thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is.
Much love, I'll see you soon.
- If you follow your passion, you're going to be successful
no matter what because one, you'll be happy,
and I think happiness is really important.
You can't do anything well if you're not happy.
You can't be a good parent, good spouse,
girlfriend, boyfriend, you can't be a good co-worker.
Happiness is important and that doesn't mean
euphoria everyday, but a basic sense of peace
and for some of us, especially Type A and especially
hard on ourselves, we don't give each other,
give ourselves a break and so the pursuit of happiness
as we have it written obviously in our Declaration
of Independence is something that is challenging.
So pursuing happiness I do think is important
as pursuit of anything else.
Observe your environment, at work, at school, at home.
I'm asking you to look at the people around you.
Purposefully and intentionally invite people
into your life who don't look like you,
don't think like you, don't act like you,
don't come from where you come from
and you might find that they will challenge
your assumptions and make you grow as a person.
You might get powerful new insights from these individuals.
Some of our best ideas also come from pushing
something that other people are afraid to do.
So we've innovated in areas that cause people
some trepidation and I think that's just
the part of us that is a little irreverent
and the part of us that's willing to be very very different.
So it's everything from having a turtle as a logo
when Merryl has a scary bull and Drefyus has a lion.
And we have this turtle holding a loving cup
that was a drawing and you know looks very friendly.
That was very different.
So we had this turtle, it was John's original logo
for Ariel and then we just blew it out.
I mean all of our materials look like storybooks
and our brochure was like a storybook
and people would get them and say
I took this home.
And then you knew you had something special.