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The CEO Who Went From IPO to Pie · Not All Business

• 0:00
  She was Miss Rodeo Arkansas, then a Harvard MBA, then the
• 0:04
  first woman director at Eli Lilly, then CEO of the largest
• 0:10
  angioplasty company in the world, then she became interim
• 0:14
  CEO of Walgreens, and then turned down the permanent
• 0:18
  position to run her pie shop. You heard that right.
• 0:23
  Today we are talking to Ginger Graham, a woman who spent her
• 0:26
  career running massive companies and breaking every mold she
• 0:30
  walked into. She is here to talk to us about
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  saying yes, owning your choices and what it actually looks like
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  to lead people, not command them.
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  And she will tell us how she started a pie shop, which has
• 0:43
  become something much, much more.
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  So welcome to Not All Business, a podcast by two former CEO's
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  who went from competitors to friends.
• 0:53
  I'm Blakely Graham. My Co host is Heather Cooper and
• 0:56
  we're joined by our producer, Clay Cornell.
• 0:59
  Now let's get down to business. Blakely last week or whatever
• 1:11
  that was a couple weeks ago when you were getting the electric,
• 1:15
  what was it? The electricity pool.
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  And when I had that massive crane on the top of my.
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  House Well, you said something about hopefully, like a spark,
• 1:24
  like the sparks aren't going to set a fire in your backyard
• 1:28
  Well, it's happened before. Yeah, well, guess who got
• 1:30
  mandatorily evacuated out of her house last week?
• 1:33
  Are. You guys having fires up there?
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  Yes. We had like a vegetation fire
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  just the next street over and it was wild.
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  Couple concerns. One, I didn't get any like
• 1:43
  buzzing on my phone. Like, hey, get out of there.
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  That's a real concern. It is a real concern I did
• 1:48
  especially. None of that, right?
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  Yes. Exactly.
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  So I got none of that. And then my mom showed up and
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  she was like, 'cause they were on their way here for a family
• 1:56
  thing we were doing. And she's like, Heather, you,
• 1:59
  your, your neighborhood's on fire.
• 2:00
  I was like, whatever, come on. And and just like, what are you
• 2:03
  talking about? She's like, no, it actually is.
• 2:05
  So we went outside and sure enough, and then the cops pulled
• 2:08
  up and they were like going around to every house, banging
• 2:11
  on the doors saying you have 10 minutes to evacuate, like get
• 2:14
  out. And it was, that's wild.
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  It is, it was, but it's fine. I mean, I took the passports, my
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  laptop, chargers and the dog and off we went.
• 2:26
  And actually that part wasn't so bad.
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  You know, I was like, eh, I walked around.
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  I did like 1 sweep of like, do I need to bring any of this?
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  And it was kind of like, no, it was a little freeing that way.
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  Yeah, we're on, I think our 4th or 5th evacuation since we've
• 2:40
  lived here. And let me tell you, hot tip, go
• 2:44
  home tonight and record every room of your house, open every
• 2:50
  drawer and just record it. It's just, it's too hard to
• 2:53
  catalog all that stuff. But once you get to like, you
• 2:56
  lose your home, which a lot of my friends lost their home in
• 2:59
  the big fire. What was that three or four
• 3:01
  years ago? You The insurance debacle is
• 3:06
  ridiculous. Yeah.
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  The board, it's awful, like down to like, how many big pens do
• 3:14
  you have in your drawers? What?
• 3:16
  Well, you have two things. You either have to settle with
• 3:19
  them and they it's a game. It's like a.
• 3:21
  Sales game? No, you.
• 3:23
  I know you won't. So what you need to do is
• 3:25
  actually open your drawers and record how many big pens you
• 3:27
  have, because you'll get a better settlement.
• 3:30
  OK, that's really good. So that's a good tip.
• 3:33
  We do it about every year. We record every room in the
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  house. We talk, just talk about, oh,
• 3:37
  this art piece came from Santa Fe and this artist, you know,
• 3:41
  things like that. So I feel like I'm going to do
• 3:43
  this and I'm going to be like, this is an original Monet.
• 3:47
  Right. OK, that's your own personal
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  thing. Damn it.
• 3:52
  Tell lies we all know like. Yeah, I would like this behind
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  me. This, this is an original, it's
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  original O'Keefe and it's, it would cost me 36. $1000 Well, I
• 4:02
  hope you have that insured because actually for insurance.
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  I got it at the ARC thrift shop. I just walked by it one day.
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  I didn't think it was $6, but it's pretty.
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  Really. That's like your signature
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  piece. That's what you're looking for
• 4:13
  on the show. I I love.
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  That your shirt today, I was just noticing, like how perfect
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  of a color it is with your piece and your hair and your color.
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  It's gorgeous, Yeah. Wow, OK, thank you.
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  I appreciate that. I do.
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  I needed that pick me up because listen to what came out of the
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  whole fire situation. Of course we go to friends
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  houses because we had to evacuate there, which led to a
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  conversation about apocalypse. What would we do?
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  Who's on your team? Conversation, which I'd never
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  had before. So we started.
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  Everybody handed out teams like who?
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  Who are you going to be in your bunker?
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  Want. Who do you want on your team in
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  the apocalypse? So everybody Internet's down,
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  all of the grocery stores are, you know, nobody can get
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  anything. Who do you want on your team?
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  So everyone starts handing out roles, right?
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  Like, OK, so I obviously we want Joe Sullivan because he has guns
• 5:02
  and we want so and so who? Whatever.
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  It's just, you know, obviously Amy's got to be there because
• 5:07
  she's a leather Craftsman. She can make our clothes.
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  Guess what I got? Guess what?
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  Guess what role I got? OK, wait, don't tell us.
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  OK, Blake, I think like trying. To free this story like you're
• 5:17
  going to like, make the moonshine.
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  I'm not an alcoholic. I don't know why everyone thinks
• 5:21
  I'm an alcoholic. OK, Comic Relief, basically.
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  I, I think you're like the distractor.
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  You're like the person that says help me over here, help me over
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  here. And then people come over and
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  then you rob those people. God I didn't think it could get
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  worse, but it just got worse with some of my 2 closest
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  friends. You've made this worse than
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  what? It was what they gave me.
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  OK, so I'm the fucking jester. Or, or the the moonshine.
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  The the no, no, you're the damn still in distress that ends up
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  being like, Oh no, Oh no, my arm.
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  And then that's the arm that you say I'll.
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  Take your but don't forget she can thigh fight.
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  What else? Can we talk about she?
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  Can she wrestles? She wrestles like leg wrestling.
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  So she's going to like, take it out, right?
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  And then she'll capture them. All right, next topic.
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  Let's pretend I never even brought this up.
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  It was queen. It was queen.
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  I was queen. They named me Queen.
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  Sorry, what? Yes, I was offended, but also it
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  wasn't as bad as what you guys said because at least they trust
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  in my decision making capabilities and my, you know,
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  ability to keep people on track. So it's not a democracy in your
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  bunker? Is any There's not going to be a
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  democracy in the apocalypse, Blakely.
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  It's no, it's going to be dictatorship.
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  It's going. To be on dictation, don't tell
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  me what my team's going to be. OK, this is your team.
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  OK What's your role, Blakely? OK, Are you going to make
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  spreadsheets for everybody or are you going to be the
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  spreadsheet queen? Do a queen rules?
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  A queen says yes, this is a good idea.
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  Yes, I do think we should invade Boulder, but I don't think that
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  we quite have the artillery. So.
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  Go over right like the drone ants.
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  Soldier ants. Yes, it's, it's a little bit of
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  strategy, but also there's no muscle there.
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  So it's like the queen can only take you so far until people are
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  sick of the queen and then they go to the guy with the guns and
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  they're really taking orders from him, which I do understand
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  that, but essentially I had no value whatsoever except for my
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  ability to make decisions. Now hang on, that's so that's a
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  huge, that's a huge thing. Well, I'm sorry to.
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  Compliment. I'm starting to think it was at
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  first I was offended, but now that you've said I could be
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  damsel in distress or the maker of moonshine, I feel like I know
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  who's not my bunker and it's you and it's you.
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  So although you do have the Van Blakely which I feel like UPS
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  your. The van it really helps like
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  that's my getaway car and so by the way there's.
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  No Internet though in the apocalypse.
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  There's Starlink? No?
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  Elon Musk just launched 1000 satellites last.
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  Month Blakely Elon Musk is dead in this scenario OK, we.
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  Are dead but the satellites are still orbiting so I am going to
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  be the only one with Internet. And by the way, I have had this
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  conversation like I don't go through life at all.
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  At every day I look and decide if you're going to be on my team
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  or not like this. It's COVID.
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  I just thought this was a normal thing.
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  Oh my God, are you a prepper? Yes, you are a prepper.
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  See this might come this out when you have this conversation.
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  How many cans do you have in your basement?
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  Here, actually, I don't have any cans, but my business idea is
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  what if we take those prepper sites?
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  Have you ever been on a prepper website?
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  They're like. Real.
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  Guns animo like kind of like not for me.
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  What if we took all the prepper materials and rebranded them
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  feminine because we are like the people that shop and buy and
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  really get our families ready. I think we would make a killing
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  if we took like every, you know, first aid kit and just put some
• 9:03
  like branding and made it aesthetically pleasing.
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  This is my business idea. I've not been able to find a
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  partner in it but. The.
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  Costs are low. We're just like, what do you
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  call it when you have a generic? What's the word am I?
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  Looking for a silent partner? What?
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  No. No, no, a generic you go to like
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  a factory and they're already making the product.
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  I feel like our guest is going to know our.
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  Guest is going to know what I'm trying to say.
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  But anyway, you just take every product and rebrand it, make it
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  beautiful and sell it for a premium.
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  And I think we would have all the money we need for the
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  apocalypse. And that's my role is supply
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  chain logistics, by the way. Yeah, it's a really important
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  role. It's.
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  A really important role I've been saving.
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  This is not, This is a truth. So I don't have cans of soup or
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  rice or beans or anything like that.
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  Who needs food? Yeah.
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  And I have medicines and I that's, I don't know legally if
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  I should put this on the air, but I think by the time we get
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  to the apocalypse, it won't matter.
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  I have taken all of our leftover medicines for like the last 20
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  years and I have them in a lock box and I like it's going to be
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  my supply. They're going to be our guest is
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  going to know this too. OK, So they're going to expire
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  those medicines. They don't.
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  Expire. They tell you they expire.
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  They don't. We're going to have so much fun
• 10:16
  today. Fine.
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  OK, like think. About it, is someone going to
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  say is this expired? They're not.
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  They're going to. Need antibiotics and narcotics
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  and by the way, we don't really ever take we are on surgery #14
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  in this house. We do not take our narcotics
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  around here. We kind of like don't like them.
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  I have like a whole again. I don't know that I should say
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  that's a publicly lawyer. Well, you shouldn't, because
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  especially if people can look up where you live, you're about to
• 10:41
  get broken into. For legal reasons, this is a
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  joke. This is a completely made-up
• 10:46
  scenario. All of a sudden, Boulder high
• 10:48
  schools like, well, we know we're going to do our next pill
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  party. The grandma, we do not do drugs
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  in this house. Well, all right, sounds like
• 10:56
  you. Waste a lot of drugs in this
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  house, okay? Anything else?
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  Because I'm just itching to bring our guest on with all of
• 11:03
  this conversation. Anything else you wanted to
• 11:05
  cover? No, I think that's plenty OK.
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  Yes, because this is I, I can't think of anyone better and I did
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  not plan this ahead of time, I swear to God.
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  But I don't think there's anyone else I would want more on our
• 11:18
  team for the apocalypse than our guests that we're having today.
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  She can. She can attest to all of these
• 11:24
  things. I can't wait.
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  So let's bring her on. Welcome to the show, Ginger
• 11:28
  Graham. You've hustled, climbed,
• 11:35
  pivoted. By most measures, you've made
• 11:38
  it. And yet something still feels
• 11:41
  off. Francis Walsh works with women
• 11:44
  in the middle of exactly that moment, making a bold career
• 11:48
  move, rebuilding after time away, or just sitting with that
• 11:52
  feeling that something more is waiting.
• 11:55
  Her clients leave with renewed energy, a clear sense of
• 11:58
  direction, and tools that hold up in the chaos of everyday
• 12:02
  life. Start with a free intro
• 12:05
  consultation or join her upcoming Four week Own Your Path
• 12:09
  Spring Workshop and walk away with a plan that actually
• 12:13
  sticks. Francis is a certified Wayfinder
• 12:17
  Life Coach Finder at franciswalshcoaching.com.
• 12:26
  Hi, Heather. Hi.
• 12:28
  Ginger, whose team are you going to be?
• 12:30
  Are you going to be on Heather's team or my team or Clay's?
• 12:34
  I think she's going to. Be on her own team.
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  She's. Like so.
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  Like, I don't know you very well yet.
• 12:42
  I'm not thinking. Yeah, but OK, so how long do
• 12:47
  drugs last? Ginger, you have experience in
• 12:49
  pharmaceuticals? Not indefinitely.
• 12:52
  Unfortunately. They do eventually lose their
• 12:56
  potency and some of them actually break down into things
• 12:58
  that you might not want. Push them on into the supply
• 13:04
  chain. They'll already be available,
• 13:08
  it'll be fine. Yeah, exactly.
• 13:11
  Well, Ginger, it is an incredible honor to have you on
• 13:15
  not all business. You know, as you know, Blakely
• 13:19
  and I started this podcast because we were trying to create
• 13:22
  an environment for people to have real conversations based on
• 13:25
  their experience. And when we were prepping for
• 13:28
  this prepping, no pun intended for this podcast, we, you know,
• 13:33
  we kind of go through and, and look at our guests and their
• 13:36
  experience and what they've done and hone in on, you know, one or
• 13:39
  two things that came out of a career.
• 13:41
  Yours was the most fun and most challenging, to be honest, one
• 13:45
  I've had to prep for because you have you have spanned so many
• 13:49
  industries and been the first and only in so many rooms and
• 13:54
  basically had real life tactical interactions with everything why
• 13:59
  we started this podcast. So I really appreciate you
• 14:02
  coming on to give us your insights.
• 14:05
  I mean, we could take the whole hour and go through your bio and
• 14:08
  like walk through, but we just have time for that.
• 14:11
  Yeah, but just, you know, from a quick overview, just to give our
• 14:14
  listeners who potentially may not have heard of you across the
• 14:19
  world, you know, you started out.
• 14:22
  You started out on a farm, muck and stalls learning about, you
• 14:25
  know, farming farm to table. You were Arkansas rodeo queen.
• 14:29
  You went into some huge corporations as the first and
• 14:32
  only women to do so. You went on from there and took
• 14:37
  companies public. You were on Wall Street.
• 14:40
  You turned and down the role of permanent CEO of Walgreens.
• 14:45
  Like these are things that, you know, take tenacity and take
• 14:50
  courage. And I'm sure you've learned a
• 14:52
  ton in your career. So with your permission today,
• 14:55
  what I'd love to do is kind of dive in to a few of the
• 15:00
  learnings and then hear your your take on that and kind of
• 15:03
  where those stories came from and and how you came to that
• 15:06
  wisdom. Does that sound like a plan?
• 15:09
  It sounds like fun. It's very nice.
• 15:10
  I have had am having a great career and a great life and a
• 15:16
  lot of it is luck and a lot of it is opportunism and a lot of
• 15:21
  it is other terrific people around me and I feel very
• 15:25
  blessed. Well, that's yeah.
• 15:28
  Well, that's another reason of why you're so wonderful is you
• 15:30
  give credit where it's due, right?
• 15:32
  So one of the things that you you say which I which I love is
• 15:38
  trying to fit in is a crazy idea.
• 15:42
  Tell us what you mean by that. Well, it is really such an odd
• 15:47
  concept for me to think about trying to fit in.
• 15:50
  And maybe it is because I was always the first or the only
• 15:54
  female, often a lot younger than other people in the
• 15:58
  organization. And so fitting in is an
• 16:02
  interesting challenge. And for me, it was more, why am
• 16:07
  I here and how can I make an impact?
• 16:10
  And often what's expected of you is not that helpful.
• 16:14
  And, you know, I can think of 100 stories where if I had done
• 16:18
  what everyone said I should do or wanted me to do or expected
• 16:21
  me to do #1 it wouldn't have been me.
• 16:24
  And I don't think you can be your best if you're trying to be
• 16:27
  somebody beside yourself. And it also would not have aided
• 16:30
  me. And standing out, making a
• 16:32
  difference, having an impact. So, you know, there's everything
• 16:35
  from wearing the wrong clothes. When I was in corporate America,
• 16:40
  you were supposed to wear suits and white shirts and those silly
• 16:43
  little rosettes that were like girl ties.
• 16:45
  I never. Owned those, right?
• 16:48
  Yeah, I never owned 1, and I got lots of feedback about how I
• 16:54
  wore tennis shoes from the parking lot into the corporate
• 16:57
  headquarters instead of heels. And it's like, of course I did.
• 17:01
  Why would I walk on gravel in the winter and ice and snow in
• 17:05
  my nice shoes? But those were things that
• 17:08
  fitting in seemed important to other people, but not to me.
• 17:13
  And. So wait, you you got you got in
• 17:16
  trouble just for wearing them into the build?
• 17:18
  Like once you got into the building, you swapped out and
• 17:20
  went into heels, or you stayed in tennis shoes the whole time.
• 17:23
  Oh no, I moved to heels instantly.
• 17:25
  And you still got trouble for wearing your your tennis shoes
• 17:28
  in Yes, well. I know, but there's so much
• 17:32
  pressure, isn't there everywhere?
• 17:34
  So much pressure. It doesn't matter if you're a 13
• 17:37
  year old girl or if you're a corporate executive or if you're
• 17:42
  a basketball player and it doesn't matter you, you are
• 17:46
  supposed to be like us, fit in. And maybe it's, you know, one of
• 17:50
  the great failings of humankind is our biases to fit in.
• 17:56
  And because we try so hard to fit in, we don't maximize who we
• 17:59
  are. And we also begin to think of
• 18:02
  other people that don't fit in, not like us, are not good
• 18:05
  enough. And I think those are really
• 18:08
  unfortunate endpoints. And so for me, it was literally
• 18:14
  how can I make a difference? How can I make a difference, not
• 18:17
  how do I fit in? And that was about energy and
• 18:20
  effort and enthusiasm and people and outcomes, not about what
• 18:26
  other people expected. Where did that come from?
• 18:29
  Where did you learn that and have the courage to be able to
• 18:33
  push back and the self esteem and the self-confidence to not
• 18:38
  care about fitting in? Where did that come from?
• 18:41
  Like I'm definitely sure it comes from how you're raised and
• 18:45
  maybe you're born with some world view in you.
• 18:48
  Every person's different, but I had very strong, amazing
• 18:53
  parents. I'm one of the lucky ones on the
• 18:54
  planet. I had amazing parents and they
• 18:57
  were incredibly supportive about me doing what I wanted to do in
• 19:03
  life. And it was always we don't care
• 19:06
  what you do, do anything you do, just be a good person.
• 19:09
  So it was go for it. And they had high hopes.
• 19:11
  My mom thought I would be the first secretary of agriculture.
• 19:15
  My parents were very fierce about US going out and trying
• 19:21
  and learning and experimenting. We were going to go to college
• 19:24
  no matter what. Neither of them had that
• 19:27
  opportunity. So it was always this push to be
• 19:30
  all that you can be. Just be a good person.
• 19:33
  Wow, she must have been pretty impressed when you got into
• 19:36
  Harvard Business School. She's like I was telling on
• 19:41
  secretary of agriculture. Oh, and then by the way, later a
• 19:44
  professor there too. So yeah.
• 19:47
  Yes. Well, actually it wasn't true.
• 19:49
  My parents didn't know about Harvard, and they didn't know.
• 19:54
  I didn't know where it was. I applied to Harvard and I
• 19:57
  didn't even know where it was located.
• 19:59
  I didn't know anyone who'd ever been.
• 20:01
  I was not exposed to business people or people with East Coast
• 20:07
  education. So they were worried because I
• 20:10
  had to sell everything I owned my car, my furniture,
• 20:13
  everything. Borrowed a junk car from my
• 20:16
  brother, went to. Boston.
• 20:18
  My mom rode with me because I've never been there before.
• 20:21
  And it was scary to them that I gave up a good job with a
• 20:25
  company car and expense account and a nice little condo in
• 20:28
  Indiana, and I moved off to do something that they didn't
• 20:33
  really understand what it meant. Wow, I was just thinking through
• 20:36
  about all these firsts and you know, we hear about glass
• 20:39
  ceilings and and I mean, you ran Fortune 500, NASDAQ 100 or five,
• 20:46
  I don't know, all the five hundreds to one hundreds and you
• 20:50
  hit that glass ceiling so many times.
• 20:52
  And I think we have come far right.
• 20:56
  Like it's a little bit easier for us now.
• 21:01
  Like, you know, Heather and I have both run companies and are,
• 21:04
  is there things that you think business still gets wrong when
• 21:07
  it comes to women in leadership? Are we, are we, are we all
• 21:12
  equalized now in terms of men, women, equality, just knowing
• 21:17
  what you went through and kind of where, where, where our kids
• 21:20
  are in terms of opportunity. Well, there's definitely a
• 21:24
  change, and I'm a big fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and all the
• 21:29
  things that she did that actually made my career possible
• 21:33
  because of the cases she argued at the Supreme Court and the
• 21:36
  idea that women had a right to a job, that women could have
• 21:40
  opportunities and make differences.
• 21:42
  And so I benefited from that right as I was coming out of
• 21:45
  college. And for me, it was more, you
• 21:50
  know, when you said to me, well, we have to hire a woman and I
• 21:54
  thought, well, you got a good one.
• 21:57
  So lucky for you, you know, and the idea that when I was first
• 22:02
  promoted to the first woman director at this corporation and
• 22:07
  they bragged about it a lot, and I'm thinking it took you 120
• 22:10
  years, I wouldn't brag too much. You know, it's, it's an idea
• 22:15
  that things have gotten so much better.
• 22:18
  But humans still come to work and interact.
• 22:22
  And so we are all naturally biased.
• 22:25
  We like to hang out with people like us, who like things we
• 22:28
  like. We find it discomforting to have
• 22:32
  to interact with people very different from us.
• 22:35
  We have stereotypes in our heads about school teachers or doctors
• 22:39
  or nurses or farmers or and so that reality is not changeable
• 22:45
  in my opinion. We, we are different men and
• 22:49
  women, Americans and non Americans.
• 22:51
  You know, if you're from Australia, you think differently
• 22:53
  than if you're from India. And so if you're raised in the
• 22:57
  South, in this country, you think differently, you talk
• 22:59
  differently than if you were raised in Boston.
• 23:02
  And that difference, I think, is more appreciated than it used to
• 23:07
  be. But it's still a barrier, A
• 23:09
  barrier to comfort, a barrier to confidence, a barrier to
• 23:13
  communication. I used to work for a guy that
• 23:16
  was from the, you know, kind of upper Midwest.
• 23:20
  And when I would go home to Arkansas and then come back to
• 23:23
  work, he would say, don't talk to me.
• 23:25
  Don't talk to me for a week. I can't understand a word you
• 23:27
  say because I go to Arkansas and I would pick up my accent again
• 23:32
  fully. And it would take me a while to
• 23:34
  get back to muting my accent, which I did because it made me
• 23:40
  more effective. People could listen more
• 23:42
  clearly. And so I made a lot of choices
• 23:46
  that I would say could be called fitting in because I was first
• 23:51
  and only and the always only all the time.
• 23:55
  But it was great advantage. And it also was many choices I
• 23:59
  made because it increased my effectiveness.
• 24:02
  So my goal was to have impact, not to be different on purpose
• 24:06
  or not to I'm just going to be who I am.
• 24:08
  Well, The Who I am could be better.
• 24:11
  And so to your point, Blakely, it's better, but it's still
• 24:15
  human and we still have to break barriers and we still have
• 24:19
  impediments to effective communication.
• 24:21
  We still have bias when we look at other people.
• 24:25
  And for me, the goal is how do I break that down?
• 24:29
  How do I build relationship first so that you can enjoy the
• 24:33
  trust and then effectiveness comes because there's higher
• 24:36
  trust, better communication, not proving to you I don't have to
• 24:40
  be like you, I don't have to comply because that gets you
• 24:44
  nowhere. Yeah.
• 24:47
  It's so interesting. You just reminded me.
• 24:48
  My father is from Georgia, kind of outside Atlanta, and he was
• 24:53
  the first one in his family to go to college, first one in his
• 24:56
  family go to law school, first one in his family to leave the
• 24:58
  state and pretty much the only one that ever left the state.
• 25:02
  And the first thing he did was mask his accent.
• 25:05
  And it was so startling for us to go down to Georgia and hear
• 25:11
  everyone. I'm like, what are y'all saying?
• 25:13
  And yet he would fall right back into it.
• 25:15
  And then he, it took him like a day.
• 25:17
  He's like, oh, I got to go back to DC.
• 25:19
  I've got to be my a robot. And but it took him far, you
• 25:22
  know, and he did fit in. And so I do.
• 25:26
  Now that you've said that out loud, it's like, OK, all right.
• 25:29
  Well, there's a bias. Like, Yeah.
• 25:31
  Like, you want to like, invite in those accents now?
• 25:33
  Like, come here, all you little Southerners, a lot of your
• 25:37
  accents. Come bring your droll to my
• 25:40
  meeting. And it's not about.
• 25:44
  I don't think there's as much bias that you must be stupid if
• 25:48
  you speak like that, but it is sometimes harder to understand.
• 25:52
  The colloquialisms are different.
• 25:53
  The expressions are, and sometimes I still pull out good
• 25:57
  old Southern expressions because I want to use them for effect.
• 26:01
  And so it feeds another preference I have, which is to
• 26:05
  use being different as an advantage.
• 26:08
  So I have an expression that'll make you smile.
• 26:11
  I have an old quip that'll make you laugh when it's tense.
• 26:15
  I can turn on my southern accent if you need me to.
• 26:19
  You know I will, but I will be funny if it makes you relax and
• 26:23
  we can have a more important conversation.
• 26:26
  Because for me, it's having a tool kit.
• 26:29
  I don't only have a hammer. And if you can't be a nail and
• 26:34
  we can't do the same thing over and over, we can't talk.
• 26:37
  I can carry a power grip, A screwdriver or a vice.
• 26:40
  You know, I can just try to be more effective in my ability to
• 26:45
  communicate with you, to persuade you.
• 26:48
  Yeah. Like what I'm hearing is instead
• 26:50
  of you trying to fit in, you are looking for the tools to disarm
• 26:55
  the environment. So the person you're talking to
• 26:58
  fits in almost, but without having to change themselves,
• 27:02
  which is a really interesting way to think about that.
• 27:06
  Yeah, how are you using it to get to the end goal?
• 27:08
  Yeah, I want to. I just want to include the way
• 27:11
  you think, or I want to call out your bias in a way that helps
• 27:17
  disarm it because you may come into a business discussion
• 27:21
  thinking I don't belong there and I may need to work on a
• 27:27
  relationship with you before you're comfortable and I can
• 27:30
  demonstrate to you that I do belong there.
• 27:33
  And I'll tell you an example. When I was a pre vet, so I went
• 27:37
  to pre vet school, I was going to be a vet.
• 27:39
  It was my whole life goal. My parents sacrificed
• 27:42
  enormously, sent me to an out of state vet school, pre vet and
• 27:47
  then I worked for. Wow.
• 27:49
  That was not in your bio gender and let's be clear.
• 27:53
  Like when did that happen? Were you 12 years old?
• 27:56
  OK, but. I ended up working for a vet for
• 28:01
  a year. This is while I was in this
• 28:02
  Radio Arkansas Heather. So I dropped out of school for a
• 28:06
  year and went and worked for a vet.
• 28:09
  And then I found out nobody thought a girl should be a vet
• 28:12
  back then. Nobody, especially I wanted to
• 28:15
  be a large animal vet because I grew up on a cattle and horse
• 28:18
  ranch and they didn't think I should see those things.
• 28:21
  They didn't think I should be in those places.
• 28:23
  They didn't think girls were safe to do that work.
• 28:26
  And it was very demoralizing. And I actually did switch there
• 28:32
  and didn't go to vet school. I ended up in AG economics in
• 28:36
  the School of Agriculture, moved back home.
• 28:38
  It was a lot cheaper. And that was one place where I
• 28:42
  realized that my career aspiration and the opportunity
• 28:45
  were not In Sync. And so, you know, am I
• 28:49
  impervious to feedback and to signals?
• 28:53
  No, those are very important. But for me, it was about my
• 28:58
  choice to go places where I could have impact.
• 29:01
  And if you can't, you know, I use the positive side of it when
• 29:05
  I coach younger people. Go where you can grow.
• 29:08
  I'm not going to go someplace where I cannot grow, where no
• 29:11
  one, no one allows the opportunity.
• 29:17
  Yeah. So that is that ties into
• 29:18
  something else you say, which is say yes to everything.
• 29:22
  And so with that in mind, it's like, what are your
• 29:25
  opportunities like? Tell us more about what does
• 29:28
  that look like? Say yes.
• 29:29
  Blakely doesn't like the word yes.
• 29:31
  She likes the word no. Terrifying.
• 29:34
  Yeah. What does that look like?
• 29:36
  Is that when, how do you evaluate, quote, everything?
• 29:41
  Is that when opportunities are matching up?
• 29:42
  Is that more about taking risks? Well, it is about stretching
• 29:48
  beyond what you know you can do and where you are.
• 29:51
  It's definitely about seizing opportunities and putting
• 29:56
  yourself in a position that you know you have to grow.
• 29:59
  You know you have to choose to be something different.
• 30:03
  Learn more, get a new skill, put a new tool in your tool belt
• 30:05
  cause the ones you have are not gonna be enough.
• 30:08
  So for me, saying yes to Wall Street when I'd never had a
• 30:12
  financial course, didn't even know Wall Street existed before
• 30:16
  I went to Harvard Business School and a friend convinced me
• 30:19
  to interview. And even when they offered me
• 30:22
  the job, I still have the little tape somewhere in my life.
• 30:25
  They don't even have answering phone tapes anymore.
• 30:28
  But I kept it. And the guy who offered me the
• 30:31
  job from Morgan Stanley said, I can't believe we're doing this.
• 30:35
  We're going to offer you a job at Morgan Stanley and for me.
• 30:39
  Oh. It was just.
• 30:42
  It's a vote of confidence right there.
• 30:45
  I. Know no nothing like it well
• 30:47
  it's like the first time I got hired out of college they said
• 30:49
  well we have to hire a woman or a person of color and so we have
• 30:53
  to interview you and that. Thanks.
• 30:59
  You know, it's like, of all the unfit people that we have to
• 31:01
  hire, we're looking for one we can accept.
• 31:04
  And there's a frame there that you can live with or you can
• 31:08
  discard. And I kept a little saying in my
• 31:12
  desk for 20 years that was if there is guilt to bear here, it
• 31:15
  is not mine. I earned the right to be here
• 31:18
  and that's very important to me. If you think I got this through
• 31:24
  entitlement or I was handed this, you just haven't met me
• 31:28
  yet because I earned this right to be here.
• 31:31
  I work hard, I study hard, I'm smart, I care.
• 31:34
  I'm going to have an impact. Just watch.
• 31:36
  And that has served me well and also fueled my ability to say
• 31:41
  yes. Yes to running an angioplasty
• 31:44
  company when I didn't know how to spell it and had never seen
• 31:48
  one. Yes to running a big part of a
• 31:52
  middle of the US sales force when I'd never been the sales
• 31:55
  Rep in that field. Yes to going to Elizabeth Arden
• 31:59
  and running an auction to sell a huge cosmetic company when I had
• 32:04
  never done any such thing. And yes, for me is jumping off
• 32:10
  that Cliff into a space that is going to offer me enormous
• 32:15
  growth and opportunity to learn. But it does have to have some
• 32:20
  resonance with me. You know, some either the
• 32:23
  values, the company, I've I put that very high.
• 32:26
  I'm not going to work in a place that doesn't have values.
• 32:30
  People who are smart and push you and care about you and want
• 32:34
  to see you succeed. Industries that have big impact.
• 32:38
  That's why my whole career mostly was in healthcare,
• 32:41
  because being able to say, I truly believe the companies I
• 32:44
  ran save millions of lives and continue to, that matters to me
• 32:48
  a lot. And for me, the yes is go.
• 32:54
  It's go. Don't worry about what if I
• 32:58
  can't? What if I fail?
• 32:59
  And that's deep. You know that's deep.
• 33:02
  Yeah, and I think I'm so impressed by, well, first, I
• 33:06
  guess to say yes to something someone has to offer you at some
• 33:08
  level, someone's offering you this opportunity and then you
• 33:11
  say yes. I think what's so fascinating
• 33:13
  about you, Ginger, is that people, the the fact that you
• 33:18
  didn't have experience in an auction sale for Elizabeth Arden
• 33:22
  sure as hell didn't stop them from asking you delete it.
• 33:26
  So what was it about you that attracted these opportunities
• 33:32
  where people were like, you know what, yes, she hasn't done it,
• 33:34
  but we believe that she can. What do you think that was is?
• 33:39
  You write your own script, you know, and you have to be careful
• 33:42
  that you're not just believing things.
• 33:46
  But I just reconnected with someone that I worked for a
• 33:49
  long, long time ago, and he sent me a note, something I didn't
• 33:53
  even know. He said.
• 33:55
  One of the best things I ever did was hire you to come work
• 33:58
  for us. And I didn't know he felt that
• 34:01
  way, but it was really nice and he said a few things about how I
• 34:06
  was a great partner and he was my boss.
• 34:10
  But I do think one of the keys to the opportunities that I have
• 34:14
  received is I worked very hard to make sure that my boss was
• 34:20
  successful, that I did what they needed, that I did their
• 34:25
  homework, that I forewarned them things they might not hear in
• 34:28
  the organization. That I prepped them for key
• 34:30
  meetings, that I gave them honest feedback because it's the
• 34:35
  hardest thing on the planet to get is someone to tell you the
• 34:38
  truth about things. And I believe that that helped a
• 34:44
  lot in my career because I did not duck my head and accept the
• 34:50
  way it is or what other people said.
• 34:52
  I was relentless in pursuing how to make it better.
• 34:56
  Could it go faster? Could we do more?
• 34:58
  Why is it this way? Shouldn't it be some other way?
• 35:01
  How do you need it done? Is there a way I can help you?
• 35:04
  And those are really important contributions to the team goal.
• 35:10
  And I strongly believe that if you're focused on the outcome
• 35:14
  and the outcome is not about you, it's about the
• 35:17
  organization's goals and priorities, that you can do
• 35:21
  anything because people want you on their team.
• 35:24
  You know, if you're all about the team, people want you.
• 35:27
  Right, Yeah. Even if you have no real core
• 35:30
  skills, like you can't make clothes or you can't, you know,
• 35:34
  cook, you know, they still want you on the team, right?
• 35:37
  Guys in the apocalypse. Yeah, you.
• 35:39
  Gonna need that moonshine. OK, Ha ha, ha.
• 35:44
  No, but I think what you did Ginger is you, you kind of went
• 35:47
  into these companies and even before you were an owner or
• 35:51
  ACEO, you kind of just started acting like 1 Sounds like you
• 35:54
  were like, OK, so what's the mission of the company?
• 35:56
  How am I going to put it forward and put the boss in the best
• 35:59
  light? And instead of how am I going to
• 36:01
  get forward in my career or how am I going to look successful?
• 36:05
  Is that is that what you're saying?
• 36:07
  It's very true. It's a it is a strongly held
• 36:10
  belief that I didn't ever intend to be ACEO.
• 36:14
  It wasn't an aspiration. I never knew one.
• 36:16
  It's not like I set out to run companies, but I wanted to
• 36:22
  matter. I wanted to contribute.
• 36:25
  I wanted to be working on something important.
• 36:27
  I wanted to have a voice. And those things are very
• 36:33
  valuable. They turn into ownership.
• 36:35
  You know, we always say, well, we want our employees to feel
• 36:38
  like they have an ownership stake in the company.
• 36:40
  And to me, that's right. You want people to own the
• 36:45
  outcome and the sense that they can help others around them be
• 36:49
  better, achieve their goals, do more by being all in.
• 36:54
  I value that almost more than anything in life is.
• 36:58
  If you come in and punch a clock and don't care, I don't need to
• 37:02
  spend time with you. There's nothing about that
• 37:05
  that's going to push me. Help me grow, be honest with me.
• 37:08
  Create a new possibility. That is, you're in it for you,
• 37:13
  not for us, and life is too short for that.
• 37:17
  Yeah. And as an owner and CEO, what do
• 37:20
  you look for in someone that you're promoting?
• 37:23
  Well, I love the attributes of curiosity because if you're
• 37:26
  curious, you're a learner, and you're going to absorb more
• 37:30
  information, you're going to take more feedback, you're going
• 37:32
  to learn more skills. Curiosity is critical.
• 37:36
  The second thing is integrity, but I don't mean it in some kind
• 37:40
  of pie in the skyway. I mean, you do what you say
• 37:43
  you're going to do. I can count on you every time.
• 37:48
  And that ability to be reliable is enormously valuable.
• 37:55
  And then I love people who are brutally honest and direct a
• 38:00
  sales Rep who tells you that the competitors product is better
• 38:04
  than the one they have in their bag because they know it's best.
• 38:07
  The person who says to you after a meeting, hey Heather, can I
• 38:12
  give you some feedback? The way you did that in the
• 38:15
  meeting actually derailed us for a while.
• 38:18
  And I know you had a good idea, but next time could you try
• 38:21
  this? I mean how?
• 38:22
  Are you giving me that feedback right now?
• 38:24
  Like did I? Not, are you?
• 38:25
  Doing that right now. Did I did I throw us off OK?
• 38:27
  No feel free like I well anytime I could take it feel.
• 38:30
  Free to just jump in and just say it.
• 38:32
  We're likely and I'll back it. Yeah, we can.
• 38:35
  Thanks, Clay. Sorry, go ahead.
• 38:39
  It's, it's just a state of mind, I think.
• 38:43
  Don't you, I mean, you either, you either want to be part of
• 38:46
  something great. You want to be part of people
• 38:50
  fulfilling themselves, being who they are at their best, finding
• 38:54
  they're capable of more than they ever knew of themselves.
• 38:56
  I mean, one of the greatest gifts I've gotten and many times
• 39:00
  is people believed I could do more than I knew about myself
• 39:05
  and I got the chance and the support to do it.
• 39:07
  And what a gift. What an incredible gift that is.
• 39:11
  Yeah, I look for people who don't have, who they're not led
• 39:15
  by their ego, like their ego isn't the thing driving them
• 39:18
  that they, there has to be something beyond that.
• 39:21
  And I think the way you've led and I'd like to you to share a
• 39:27
  little bit, you've said you can't command people into better
• 39:30
  behavior, but you can lead them to it.
• 39:33
  And I want to hear like when you're, when you're promoted or
• 39:36
  you're given the CEO job and someone's coming in.
• 39:39
  My guess is over the years, it wasn't always received with the
• 39:43
  best open arms. Or did you kind of walk in and
• 39:45
  everybody just immediately was excited about it?
• 39:48
  And if, how, how did you deal with that and how did you win
• 39:51
  everybody over? Yes, my first CEO job was great.
• 39:54
  I was, I think 37, maybe on the verge of 38.
• 39:58
  I'm going to run the largest angioplasty company in the
• 40:01
  world. I literally had never seen one
• 40:04
  and nobody knew I was coming. I didn't.
• 40:07
  It was a big surprise to me, too.
• 40:09
  But the guy before me introduced me to the management team and
• 40:15
  said your next CEO is going to be someone who's a former bull
• 40:19
  rider and a Harvard NBA. And actually both of those
• 40:22
  things are true, but they were not imagining this particular
• 40:27
  package when I showed up and it was just there.
• 40:32
  They left the rodeo beauty queen out of it.
• 40:35
  They didn't say that part. They left that part out.
• 40:37
  And so there was a tremendous amount of resistance, which you
• 40:40
  can appreciate that I was quite a bit younger than anybody on
• 40:45
  the management team. I had never been in the field.
• 40:47
  It was my first CEO job. I mean, how thrilling would that
• 40:51
  be for you as an executive? And so there does have to be
• 40:56
  this journey of relationship and trust building, but also
• 41:00
  credibility building. And for me, it's about being
• 41:07
  honest about what you know, what you don't know.
• 41:09
  And so I spent the 1st 90 days just going to everybody,
• 41:13
  listening to everybody working on the line in the factory,
• 41:16
  riding with the sales reps, talking to the customers,
• 41:19
  sitting in team meetings, going to R&D reports, just being in
• 41:24
  the business. That's all I did for 90 days and
• 41:27
  at the end of that. How do the people on the line
• 41:29
  react? Scared to death, you know, which
• 41:33
  is another thing about ACEO title.
• 41:36
  When your business card says CEO, everyone immediately
• 41:40
  freezes. They don't want to ever give you
• 41:43
  any negative feedback because they think they'll get fired,
• 41:46
  and they don't want to give you any positive feedback because
• 41:49
  they think you'll think they're brown nosing.
• 41:52
  So you live in this crazy bubble where no one says anything good,
• 41:55
  no one says anything bad. Plus, I didn't know anything
• 41:58
  about the industry, so you can imagine how inept I could be
• 42:04
  without honesty and feedback. So it was all about breaking
• 42:09
  that down and trying to change people's expectations, which
• 42:13
  goes to our very first topic about trying to fit in.
• 42:17
  I could have just been ACEO like they expected, you know,
• 42:21
  difficult. Knew it all, sat in my office,
• 42:23
  told people what to do. But I knew that wasn't good for
• 42:28
  the company, certainly not good for the management team or me.
• 42:31
  So I asked them, and I asked the employees and I asked the
• 42:36
  customers. And then when I learned that we
• 42:39
  had lots and lots of issues, I got a whole group of the company
• 42:43
  together and just told them what they had told me over the prior
• 42:48
  90 days. But nobody said out loud, you
• 42:51
  know, we're failing. Our products are not good, Our
• 42:55
  customers are really mad and they're leaving us.
• 42:58
  Everyone's blaming everybody else.
• 43:00
  There's a lot of whining going on around here and not much
• 43:03
  action. And that's powerful because if
• 43:07
  you give a problem a name, somebody can start solving it.
• 43:11
  But if you never say it out loud, you pretend like it's not
• 43:14
  there, it's not solvable. And I surely couldn't solve them
• 43:19
  myself. So I needed the 1900 people in
• 43:23
  the company to say those problems out loud and then go,
• 43:26
  oh, but we could fix that. We know how and it was an
• 43:30
  amazing experience for me. Yeah, but from when your first
• 43:34
  day till the kind of that day and people getting on the same
• 43:37
  page and problem solving together, how long was that
• 43:39
  process? Well, behaviors take a long time
• 43:44
  to change. I started October 2nd and I had
• 43:46
  this meeting in January. So that was the first step.
• 43:50
  And it was also a power move because saying the truth out
• 43:56
  loud makes you a very powerful person.
• 44:00
  And then all of a sudden, everyone has to say out loud the
• 44:03
  truth because the CEO said it. You can't hide and pretend like
• 44:07
  it didn't happen. And so then the question was how
• 44:10
  to change the behaviors in the direction to actually fix
• 44:13
  things. And that took many more months.
• 44:16
  We shut down all of R&D and said that our processes were broken
• 44:22
  and that could be a death knell in a medical device company.
• 44:24
  So we shut the whole thing down. That's scary, really scary.
• 44:30
  We reorganized the company. We had management meetings, and
• 44:34
  basically people had to get on the train or get out.
• 44:39
  You know, we had executives that were pointing fingers and
• 44:42
  blaming each other for everything.
• 44:44
  And I had a few of those meetings as a young CEO where
• 44:47
  I'm thinking, I can solve it, I'll figure it out.
• 44:50
  And then it dawned on me, I have all these executives and they
• 44:54
  can't seem to solve anything unless they come to my office.
• 44:58
  So something's wrong with this picture.
• 45:00
  And I started saying things like, well, if we have to solve
• 45:04
  every problem and I have to be in the room, then I guess you 2
• 45:07
  can't. Is that what you want me to
• 45:10
  believe? That you're not capable of doing
• 45:12
  your jobs? And I got a bunch.
• 45:14
  Of monkeys. I want to say that that's so
• 45:17
  good. That's so good.
• 45:18
  That's. So good, I'm going to steal that
• 45:21
  1000%. There's, you know, language is
• 45:26
  so powerful. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:29
  It's just so powerful, like when people come into you and say I
• 45:32
  can't or he won't or they won't or I didn't know.
• 45:35
  It's victim language. And you say to someone, oh, this
• 45:39
  sounds like you're not capable of doing this.
• 45:42
  Is that what you want me to hear?
• 45:44
  And people go, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I meant.
• 45:46
  Said, OK, then say it differently.
• 45:49
  There's a problem here and I'm working on it.
• 45:51
  I could use your help. That's a totally different
• 45:53
  conversation. And part of it empowered me from
• 45:58
  an article in the Harvard Business Review a million years
• 46:00
  ago, before my time at Harvard, it was called, I think, Who's
• 46:04
  got the Monkey? I highly recommend it.
• 46:07
  It's very old in its language, but the concept is when people
• 46:11
  come into your office and they're sitting across their
• 46:13
  desk and they have a problem. It's a monkey sitting right
• 46:16
  here. And the monkey crawls down their
• 46:18
  shoulder and across your desk and up your shoulder.
• 46:23
  And then you've got the monkey and they leave the office and
• 46:26
  they're like, whoa, great. I left that problem with the CEO
• 46:30
  or with my boss. And this article really talks
• 46:34
  about how you need to push that monkey back and say, how could I
• 46:39
  help you solve that problem? Do you need more resources?
• 46:43
  Have you thought about what your next step is like?
• 46:45
  There's so many ways you can not be a monkey collector.
• 46:49
  So I bought a bunch of stuffed monkeys.
• 46:51
  And when I would get that behavior in my office, I would
• 46:53
  throw a monkey at someone and. It became funny, you know that
• 46:58
  is. Like we had a little.
• 46:59
  Clear. I love that.
• 47:02
  I love that because if they can't solve it, then they're not
• 47:06
  good for the company. And so and then if you push it
• 47:10
  back, that's why I can see how you scaled these large companies
• 47:13
  and you continue to grow because you let people have the
• 47:16
  ownership of the problem because if you have to be in all the
• 47:19
  meetings, there's not enough hours in the day for you to you,
• 47:21
  you're capable, you could solve all those, but it's not
• 47:24
  physically possible. So you can't scale until you
• 47:27
  have trusted people who are going to own the problems and
• 47:30
  take those forward. I agree, but I'm curious about
• 47:33
  that though, Heather, like Ginger, do you feel like you
• 47:36
  knew the answers? Like as a sometimes, because I'm
• 47:43
  running supply chain logistics for the apocalypse, like I'm
• 47:47
  just one of those people that can see the path, right?
• 47:51
  I see a path forward, a path here, a path here, and it's been
• 47:54
  a real benefit to me, but it was a real detriment to me in
• 47:58
  leadership because I loved solutioning.
• 48:02
  I just wanted to provide solutions, but I couldn't hold
• 48:06
  all that, right? Like that led to my own burnout.
• 48:09
  I had to, like you said, I had to not take the monkey.
• 48:15
  And so I wonder for you, like, do you feel like you had the
• 48:18
  solutions, you knew the answers, and you were just like tossing
• 48:21
  the monkey so you could have lots of people sharing the
• 48:27
  burdens of the company? You know, optimistically, right?
• 48:31
  Or did you not know? Did you not actually know the
• 48:33
  answers? Just curious.
• 48:35
  Yes, well, there's some of all the above, Blakely I I do
• 48:39
  believe metaphorically, I love this idea that if you have a
• 48:44
  forest with giant trees, there's a huge canopy and nothing below
• 48:48
  it can grow. And so sometimes you have to
• 48:50
  chop down the big tree to get your forest to grow.
• 48:53
  And the idea that your management team needs to tackle
• 48:58
  tough problems so that your company is capable of more.
• 49:02
  As Heather says, if it's if it's only what I can do, we're not
• 49:05
  going to get much done. So there were times where I had
• 49:08
  no idea. So we had to have a lot of
• 49:11
  exploration and a lot of input. One of the pieces of advice I
• 49:15
  got a long time ago was to be careful about what you
• 49:18
  described, which is I'm often able to go way out and
• 49:23
  strategically see the future. Imagine what needs to happen,
• 49:28
  imagine the capabilities that need to be built on the way to
• 49:30
  make that happen. And I can get ahead of others.
• 49:35
  And when you do that, one or two things generally happen.
• 49:38
  Either one is you're become command and control and
• 49:41
  everyone's waiting for you to decide because you always have
• 49:43
  an opinion or two, it feels like a gotcha because it's like I
• 49:48
  know and I'm waiting to see if you're smart enough to catch up
• 49:51
  with me. And so it really stifles the
• 49:55
  initiative and the creativity and the risk taking in your
• 49:58
  organization. So I do think self management in
• 50:02
  that regard is really important. But there's no doubt I didn't
• 50:06
  know nearly enough. I still don't today.
• 50:08
  I can tell you at Ginger and Baker, my vision had a 10 year
• 50:12
  vision, a 10 year plan. We're still working on it, but
• 50:16
  so many things we're doing that are great were not my idea.
• 50:20
  They were from the team, from our experience, from our
• 50:23
  customers. And so that that room to grow
• 50:27
  has to come from everywhere. And if you're a traditional CEO,
• 50:30
  command and control in your office, not approachable, you're
• 50:33
  not going to get fed all that future possibility.
• 50:36
  So for me, it was the challenge to not let that happen, not let
• 50:40
  that be the reality that I didn't get the benefit of 2000,
• 50:45
  eventually 13,000 employees who knew more than I did.
• 50:49
  Yeah, I love that. And I love that you have brought
• 50:52
  that to Ginger and Baker because I think these lessons you're
• 50:55
  talking about, like I'm learning them now as a parent.
• 51:00
  I had a very good friend of mine recently tell me I was worried
• 51:03
  about something. I'm trying to member what it
• 51:04
  was. I think it was about the college
• 51:06
  choice maybe my son was making or like, what if he didn't go to
• 51:10
  college? Or what if he went abroad or
• 51:12
  started a band or, you know, what happened if this failed or
• 51:15
  this? And And so I was like, in my
• 51:18
  head, I was like mapping all these paths my my kid could go
• 51:21
  down. And this friend just said, you
• 51:23
  know, maybe instead of mapping all the paths and having backups
• 51:29
  for them and maybe just arrive to the problem with them And
• 51:33
  when they get there, you know, be curious and ask questions
• 51:36
  about how they might approach it and let them guide you to the
• 51:40
  path. You don't need to have all the
• 51:42
  answers already. And so it's just a, it's a, for
• 51:45
  me, like you said, it's a management or bad management,
• 51:48
  self management. I think it's what you said.
• 51:51
  And it's like a, it's not a neat.
• 51:53
  I'm a I did not actually know all the answers by the way, I
• 51:56
  just thought I'd you have. Opinions.
• 52:00
  Opinions are different than the answer.
• 52:02
  That's. Right.
• 52:04
  My mom had so many great sayings.
• 52:07
  Likely one of them was don't borrow trouble.
• 52:09
  And I still have to play that in my head all the time because I
• 52:13
  can tell you 87 things out there that can go wrong and all the
• 52:16
  reasons why that won't work and why we shouldn't do that.
• 52:19
  But you're foreclosing so many possibilities and maybe 90% of
• 52:26
  them will not present themselves anyway.
• 52:28
  And so that idea of being in the moment and respond to what is I
• 52:34
  think is a grace move that all of us could work on some.
• 52:38
  Absolutely. Can we borrow that?
• 52:40
  Don't borrow trouble. We're going to make that emerge
• 52:42
  and give your mom credit. What's your mom's name?
• 52:45
  Her name was Erlene, so if you come to Ginger Baker, you'll see
• 52:48
  Erlene's Pickles and Erlene's strawberry pie and.
• 52:52
  Oh my gosh, all these years she never knew that was her Mama
• 52:54
  for. That.
• 52:56
  How? Did this happen?
• 52:58
  Can we talk about Ginger? Baker like we can but you and.
• 53:01
  Baker. We can, but we, I, I need to ask
• 53:04
  her one more question before we get to Ginger Baker because it's
• 53:07
  a beautiful story and I want to give it to you.
• 53:09
  But before we jump to that, one of my favorite things I've heard
• 53:14
  you say, Ginger, is do you need to be right or do you need to be
• 53:18
  effective? And I think that's such a
• 53:21
  powerful distinction when you're leading.
• 53:24
  And I'd love to hear where that came from in your life and how
• 53:26
  you learned that lesson. Well, I I definitely have strong
• 53:32
  opinions about almost everything.
• 53:35
  One of my bosses nicknamed me often wrong, never in doubt so.
• 53:39
  There is. That's another one.
• 53:43
  Yeah, that's a good. One that's a good one, a strong
• 53:47
  inclination to always be foot forward and I've got a view and
• 53:52
  I know and blah, blah, blah, which is not always the best
• 53:56
  approach in life, relationship, family, business, whatever, but
• 54:01
  it has served me well. It's kind of one of those fun
• 54:04
  metaphors as well that I was taught once that everything,
• 54:07
  every attribute you have is like a coin.
• 54:10
  The good side, the head side can be really strong, but it has a
• 54:14
  tail. And if you overplay your
• 54:16
  headstrong side, you make it at fault.
• 54:20
  And so this idea of confidence has been very helpful to me in
• 54:24
  my career. But you know, when it's
• 54:26
  overconfident and I had a a very meaningful experience.
• 54:30
  I was promoted to the first woman director in this big
• 54:33
  company. And it was a sea of men, you
• 54:37
  know, most of them in an industry that I had not been in
• 54:39
  before. And every Monday morning there
• 54:42
  was a giant meeting of all the directors above in the company.
• 54:45
  And I'm a big student. Every day of my life, I'm
• 54:49
  watching body language and who's presenting and who gets
• 54:52
  eviscerated and why that happened.
• 54:54
  And I was, I was appalled at some of the things that were
• 55:01
  said in that room. And we're talking 30 years ago,
• 55:04
  40 years ago in corporate America and the sexism, racism,
• 55:11
  you know, all kinds of isms, the biases, the condescension was
• 55:16
  pretty appalling. And these are really nice people
• 55:20
  in a great company. And many of them are still
• 55:22
  really good friends. But it was socially the way we
• 55:26
  thought. And I would leave those meetings
• 55:29
  and my boss was a wonderful older man who's since deceased,
• 55:33
  but such a great coach for me. And I would go into his office
• 55:37
  and I would say, Wally, this week of the meeting, they said
• 55:40
  this and they said this and they and I can't believe they said
• 55:43
  that. And they can't.
• 55:44
  And he goes, oh, Ginger, they didn't say that.
• 55:48
  Oh, that's not what he meant. Oh, no, that wasn't what?
• 55:52
  And you know, I'm just boiling. You can see the red coming up.
• 55:55
  I'm having all this attack. And so I had the bright idea
• 56:00
  that I would take notes. So I'm sitting in this giant
• 56:03
  room and we're having these meetings and I'm taking notes
• 56:06
  like crazy. Bob said this and Jim said that
• 56:09
  and then Joe said that and then Kyle said that.
• 56:12
  And so I go visit my boss again and I read him my notes.
• 56:17
  And you can imagine, you can imagine I have recorded all of
• 56:21
  this, basically. And so the next thing that
• 56:25
  happens, the head of all HR of this big corporate entity walks
• 56:31
  into my office, closes the door and says, Ginger, can we talk?
• 56:35
  And of course, I'm thinking, sure, because I don't think
• 56:38
  anything wrong with what I've done.
• 56:40
  And he sits down and talks to me about being the person in the
• 56:46
  room that is right and incensed and always a broken record and
• 56:52
  always takes the same position and is isolated and essentially
• 56:57
  isn't heard and has no impact. Or the person who builds
• 57:01
  relationship and trust, who helps other people see what they
• 57:06
  see and who then others come to the subject and breaks the mold
• 57:13
  because it's the right thing to do.
• 57:15
  And he asked me, you know, did I want to be right or did I want
• 57:18
  to be effective in my organization?
• 57:22
  And it was really life altering for me, not just career, because
• 57:27
  I realized that building deep relationships, appreciating
• 57:30
  where other people came from, being able to listen to things
• 57:34
  that were biased, but not about me, not from me, not to me, but
• 57:39
  just the way they were and helping others see the impact
• 57:44
  had a lot more power than getting red faced and blurting
• 57:49
  out and always being the gatekeeper and the person who's
• 57:53
  judging. And so it really changed my view
• 57:57
  about my role in the organization and about my
• 58:00
  ability to have impact. I think you hear today that as
• 58:05
  meeting someone where they're at, right?
• 58:07
  Like, you just people are at different stages of their own
• 58:13
  personal growth. And sometimes if you can just
• 58:15
  meet them where they're at and then, yeah, kind of nudge them
• 58:19
  like, maybe that bias shed a different light on it, right?
• 58:23
  And So what a hard thing to have heard, maybe because I'm
• 58:28
  definitely an always writer, but always wrong.
• 58:33
  But yeah, what a gift. What a gift that he was able to
• 58:37
  tell you in a way that you could hear that was so life altering.
• 58:40
  Yes, and also still affirming of, you know, not saying, hey,
• 58:44
  it was fine, like don't worry about it.
• 58:46
  That's just the way it is. Accept it.
• 58:48
  It was more like, OK, so I hear you.
• 58:50
  What's the best strategy to actually influence change?
• 58:54
  And you know, sometimes something is going to be grave
• 58:56
  enough that it does need a full on report and action and
• 59:00
  discipline and a termination. And I know you've done those
• 59:04
  yourselves and called that out and been a part of it.
• 59:06
  And you know you've absolutely executed when the system called
• 59:09
  for it, when the situation called for it.
• 59:11
  But from a systems perspective and a growing leader, having
• 59:14
  that longer term vision for true real change versus in the moment
• 59:20
  squeaky wheel, it's a different approach.
• 59:24
  And it is. And I recently was struck by the
• 59:28
  experience when the president was talking to the men's hockey
• 59:31
  team and then made a side comment about, oh, I guess we'll
• 59:34
  have to invite the women. And what I felt bad about for
• 59:38
  that is, OK, Well, you know, that was not a very smart thing
• 59:41
  to say and shame on you. But the guys laughed.
• 59:46
  And I think about the relationship between the men's
• 59:50
  team and the women's team then, and what damage was done in that
• 59:53
  relationship, not because it was their statement, but because in
• 59:59
  that moment, in that pressure, in that microcosm, they had a
• 1:00:04
  nervous laugh. And then are they demeaning
• 1:00:07
  their women peers? And did that break
• 1:00:09
  relationships? And it just reinforces for me
• 1:00:12
  the power of leadership and our words that leading people.
• 1:00:20
  Into more open and honest communication and more effective
• 1:00:25
  relationship building to get to outcomes is easier.
• 1:00:29
  You can scold those men now. You can be appalled that they
• 1:00:34
  laughed. You can also be affronted by the
• 1:00:37
  statement itself. But none of that is the impact.
• 1:00:42
  That is the future. And so then how do you turn it
• 1:00:45
  into a constructive conversation and also have a little grace
• 1:00:50
  about the moment and say, gosh, how awkward was that?
• 1:00:53
  Aren't you glad you weren't the one who was in the camera in the
• 1:00:56
  moment? Yeah, You know, taking it one
• 1:00:59
  step deeper of the damage that can happen then between the
• 1:01:04
  employees, between being pitted against each other and how
• 1:01:07
  leadership, if not really carefully choosing your words
• 1:01:11
  and carefully at choosing your approach, can dismantle your
• 1:01:15
  organization from the inside out.
• 1:01:18
  Our words matter as the leader, and we have to be so careful
• 1:01:24
  with them. And I think there's just not,
• 1:01:26
  while we can excuse the behavior of the guys who laughed because
• 1:01:30
  it was awkward and I could see myself, I've laughed so many
• 1:01:33
  times when I probably shouldn't or that there is that moment.
• 1:01:36
  There's no excuse of that coming from the leader and there's no
• 1:01:40
  forgiveness of that coming from the leader.
• 1:01:42
  He should know better. We should know better.
• 1:01:45
  CE OS. If you're stepping up into that
• 1:01:48
  level of an organization, understand your impact and value
• 1:01:52
  it. And if you make a mistake, come
• 1:01:55
  out and ask forgiveness. Lose your ego, be humble.
• 1:01:59
  But if you don't, then you are communicating something.
• 1:02:03
  You're communicating one thing or another.
• 1:02:06
  But if you're not seeking apologetic, you know, requiring
• 1:02:10
  people to come in and ask for forgiveness, you're still
• 1:02:16
  sending a message that that's OK.
• 1:02:18
  Whether you're saying it or not, that message and that
• 1:02:20
  communication is still happening.
• 1:02:21
  And that is what I was left with that whole conversation.
• 1:02:24
  And you know that the way that came out in the India, it was
• 1:02:27
  like, OK, well, you're communicating something.
• 1:02:29
  You, we, I do think leaders have disproportionate responsibility,
• 1:02:33
  period. And for me, any time I was
• 1:02:38
  getting an outcome that was not what I wished for, my first
• 1:02:42
  lecture to myself was look in the mirror, you know, what role
• 1:02:46
  did I play? What part did I have?
• 1:02:48
  And we have a little book club at the management at Ginger and
• 1:02:51
  Baker. We read books together and talk
• 1:02:54
  about leadership and management and the importance of our own
• 1:02:57
  behaviors. And we recently read 1 called
• 1:03:01
  What You accept is What You Teach.
• 1:03:05
  And I think that's a really good example is if you accept
• 1:03:09
  something that happens in a public environment, then you've
• 1:03:13
  just taught everyone it's OK. And the question is, how do you
• 1:03:17
  handle it? I, I don't believe in public
• 1:03:19
  executions. That's not effective, but hard,
• 1:03:23
  talking about hard topics, saying out loud the experience
• 1:03:28
  we just had together and how we wish it had been different.
• 1:03:31
  Those are very important responsibilities.
• 1:03:33
  If you are trying to hold yourself to some cultural
• 1:03:37
  expectations that maybe are a change for some people or are
• 1:03:42
  new ways of thinking about it, you have to be rigorous, I
• 1:03:47
  think, in upholding those. Yeah, see, that's what I was
• 1:03:51
  trying to say. So we can just cut out
• 1:03:53
  everything I said you could just that's that's exactly what I was
• 1:03:56
  trying to say. Much better said.
• 1:03:59
  All right, well, you brought up Ginger and Baker.
• 1:04:02
  We've we've touched on it a couple times.
• 1:04:04
  Ginger and Baker is a treasure in the Fort Collins Northern
• 1:04:09
  Colorado community. Thanks for that.
• 1:04:12
  It's true. So let tell us why you said no
• 1:04:15
  to the CEO of Walgreens role and instead yes to Ginger and Baker.
• 1:04:20
  Tell us about this next stage of your life.
• 1:04:23
  Well, I can tell you that I think pie is an important part
• 1:04:28
  of any community. We moved to Northern Colorado
• 1:04:30
  and it's like, why isn't there any good pie in Northern
• 1:04:33
  Colorado? But it really is.
• 1:04:37
  Like pie means so much. It does mean so much.
• 1:04:40
  If you think about it, almost everybody has a pie story.
• 1:04:43
  If I ask you, you know, what's your favorite pie?
• 1:04:46
  Who made it for you? Do you remember when you last
• 1:04:49
  had it? People come up with these lovely
• 1:04:52
  stories about their grandmother or their great aunt or their dad
• 1:04:55
  every Thanksgiving or some place they visited, some moment in
• 1:04:59
  life. And those are warm memories.
• 1:05:02
  Those are lovely experiences that bring us back to something
• 1:05:06
  that matters to us. And so for me, pie is a
• 1:05:09
  metaphor. It's about handmade, made with
• 1:05:13
  love, made by someone who cares about you.
• 1:05:17
  It's usually locally sourced ingredients, usually seasonally
• 1:05:21
  relevant. You know, you have to have
• 1:05:23
  pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. It just has to happen, and then
• 1:05:27
  it's shareable, at least for most people.
• 1:05:29
  They don't eat a whole pie. So this idea that pie is a
• 1:05:34
  metaphor for values that I believe communities want to have
• 1:05:40
  need to have resonate with people.
• 1:05:43
  So I wanted to start a pie shop. That was my retirement project
• 1:05:47
  and it just got a little out of hand.
• 1:05:50
  Shocker. I don't know how that happened.
• 1:05:53
  I'm sure your husband was like, so ginger, what?
• 1:05:56
  What happened to the pie shop on the corner that we were going to
• 1:05:59
  do fine? Yeah, I know.
• 1:06:01
  Well, it's a lot of it's about the building is on the
• 1:06:05
  historical record and so it has constraints and blah, blah,
• 1:06:09
  blah. We had to build another
• 1:06:09
  building. And he asked the relevant
• 1:06:12
  question. He said how many pies a day
• 1:06:14
  would you have to sell to pay for the renovation of that old
• 1:06:18
  mill. And I did do the math.
• 1:06:19
  It was 67,238 pies a day. It's.
• 1:06:26
  Probably not going to happen. It's.
• 1:06:28
  Probably. So, well, it grew a little bit.
• 1:06:31
  Yeah, now it's a fancy. It's it's a pride and joy.
• 1:06:35
  Whenever we have visitors come to Fort Collins, we always take
• 1:06:38
  them to our fancy dinner there. Clay, we haven't taken you yet.
• 1:06:41
  We will absolutely do that next time you're in.
• 1:06:43
  But. Yes, I'm looking.
• 1:06:45
  Forward to it. So Ginger, you also talk about
• 1:06:49
  and I know you do a lot of team building events there.
• 1:06:50
  You have a beautiful event space so beyond just the pie shop, but
• 1:06:54
  tell us about the power of making something together.
• 1:06:59
  There's a team or a family. What?
• 1:07:01
  What happens? Well, I have to tell you, the
• 1:07:04
  very first day we opened, it was like a dream come true.
• 1:07:07
  There's a space in the center of the building that we call the
• 1:07:10
  teaching kitchen. And for me, it's really a
• 1:07:13
  metaphor about so much in life. But I always say to people, I
• 1:07:16
  learned a lot of things at my mother's kitchen table, not just
• 1:07:19
  how to cook. I learned my manners.
• 1:07:21
  I learned about caring for other people.
• 1:07:24
  I learned about the importance of community.
• 1:07:26
  I learned the alphabet. You know, there's a lot that
• 1:07:29
  happens at a kitchen table. And so this I idea that the
• 1:07:33
  teaching kitchen at Ginger and Baker is really the soul of the
• 1:07:37
  business idea and it's bringing people together.
• 1:07:40
  And the very first day we opened, we had our first class
• 1:07:44
  and the class was grandmothers, daughters and little bitty
• 1:07:47
  granddaughters making apple pie together.
• 1:07:50
  And I stood outside the door and just tears rolling down my face.
• 1:07:53
  There's something so powerful to see.
• 1:07:57
  A little 5 year old girl sitting on a table covered in flour and
• 1:08:01
  her grandmother is holding her hand and showing her how to roll
• 1:08:04
  pie dough. That idea that making something
• 1:08:08
  together is not just physical, it's an emotional tie.
• 1:08:12
  It's a it's a warming activity. We watch people in the teaching
• 1:08:16
  kitchen swap phone numbers. They've never met each other.
• 1:08:20
  They cook together for two hours, have dinner together and
• 1:08:22
  then next week they're back in having lunch together or meeting
• 1:08:26
  for coffee. We had a three generation family
• 1:08:30
  have a French dinner. The grandmother loved Paris and
• 1:08:33
  wanted her big birthday to be her whole family together
• 1:08:36
  cooking a French dinner. The pictures from that night
• 1:08:40
  were stunning. And that was the first year we
• 1:08:43
  were open and they were back about a week and a half ago,
• 1:08:47
  that whole family and did it again.
• 1:08:49
  And you know, the kids have grown up and the.
• 1:08:53
  The mother was celebrating her daughter's 50th birthday.
• 1:08:58
  And so it was this idea that building things together,
• 1:09:03
  learning together, doing things you don't know how to do,
• 1:09:06
  putting yourself a little bit at risk with other people is
• 1:09:10
  another one of those learning moments, another one of those
• 1:09:13
  places where you can be who you really are.
• 1:09:16
  You can get to know who they really are.
• 1:09:19
  You can let down your guard a little bit.
• 1:09:21
  We have a competition. We had a bunch of giant men from
• 1:09:25
  Wyoming that were an explosive company and they came and of
• 1:09:30
  course they walk in in their suits and ties and you can see
• 1:09:33
  on their faces, like, what on earth are we doing here?
• 1:09:37
  And before it was over, we have this cream whipping competition
• 1:09:43
  by hand because it takes a little manual dexterity to whip
• 1:09:46
  cream and we time it. And the first team to whip their
• 1:09:50
  cream so they can turn their bowl upside down and not get
• 1:09:53
  covered in whipped cream wins. And.
• 1:09:55
  These guys, these guys could not whip cream.
• 1:10:00
  They couldn't, you know, they. Couldn't do that motion.
• 1:10:03
  It was hysterical. They were laughing.
• 1:10:06
  They had their jackets off. You know, it's really amazing
• 1:10:11
  when you step out of your mask and your facade and you join
• 1:10:17
  people in an adventure together. Some wonderful things can happen
• 1:10:22
  and I personally believe that our communities, our country,
• 1:10:25
  our families, we need those things to happen together.
• 1:10:29
  Multi generations, multi types of people, businesses, different
• 1:10:35
  backgrounds, because there's a lot of joy in that.
• 1:10:39
  If we really step into it as who we are and find out who they
• 1:10:44
  are, I just love that part. Unbelievable.
• 1:10:47
  It's beautiful. It's beautiful and I'm so lucky
• 1:10:51
  to get to be down the street from this and we we just this
• 1:10:56
  needs to spread ginger. It needs to spread through our
• 1:10:59
  community and our nation and our world that this type of kinetic
• 1:11:03
  energy that you're creating in your kitchen with that vision as
• 1:11:07
  the backdrop, not as just a, I mean, look, we know that margins
• 1:11:10
  are tight in hospitality retail space.
• 1:11:14
  I mean, they just, they frankly are very tight.
• 1:11:16
  But it the there's intangible benefit that will never show up
• 1:11:21
  on AP and L statement that we are in such need of.
• 1:11:25
  So I thank you so much for bringing all of your years of
• 1:11:30
  experience to land in this beautiful place where it's tying
• 1:11:35
  it all up in this beautiful bow that is giving back to companies
• 1:11:39
  and families and friends and small business incorporating,
• 1:11:45
  like you said, the local farmers.
• 1:11:47
  You're, you know, you're sourcing all of these local
• 1:11:49
  things, you're helping our local businesses too.
• 1:11:51
  And it's it's such a perfect model of how to reach the the
• 1:11:56
  last stage of your career. I mean, you're probably going to
• 1:11:59
  go do a million other things. I don't know, you're still young
• 1:12:01
  and you have a ton of fire in you.
• 1:12:03
  But I love this stage and and how you're giving back to the
• 1:12:06
  world. Thank you so much.
• 1:12:08
  Well, thanks. So, Ginger, before we let you
• 1:12:12
  go, we do ask you one final question and we answer it
• 1:12:15
  ourselves, which is what brought a smile to your face this week.
• 1:12:21
  I have a new I have a new donkey.
• 1:12:23
  I'm. Sorry, wait.
• 1:12:26
  That might be the most unique, unique smile answer we've ever
• 1:12:29
  had. I have a new donkey.
• 1:12:31
  Donkeys. Of course you do, Ginger.
• 1:12:34
  OK. I do.
• 1:12:36
  I have a new donkey named Mickey and he's a hoot.
• 1:12:42
  I have to tell you, mornings with Mickey are pretty special.
• 1:12:46
  What does what do you do with Nikki in the morning?
• 1:12:50
  Wait, is it Mickey or Mickey? Mickey Big ears like Mickey
• 1:12:56
  Mouse. I'm thinking mornings with
• 1:12:58
  Mickey is another coffee mug mornings.
• 1:13:01
  With Mickey with the big donkey ears.
• 1:13:03
  OK, yeah. Do you go out with Mickey in the
• 1:13:05
  mornings? Yes, well, we bring all the
• 1:13:08
  horses up every morning and check everybody, and I feed.
• 1:13:11
  I have an older mayor. She has to be fed.
• 1:13:14
  And then Mickey wants something and he tells you very loudly if
• 1:13:18
  you don't give him enough attention.
• 1:13:20
  So he's a bucket of smiles. That's awesome.
• 1:13:24
  I love it so much. All right, top that Clay or
• 1:13:27
  Blakely? I can't.
• 1:13:29
  I can't. That's so Heather set up, but I
• 1:13:33
  think that I don't know what award that wins.
• 1:13:36
  I want to say best. We've heard some pretty good
• 1:13:38
  smiles, but that one is definitely the most unique.
• 1:13:42
  Haven't heard got a new donkey. It's a bucket of smiles.
• 1:13:45
  I haven't heard that one before and I don't think we'll hear
• 1:13:48
  that again. I'm sorry.
• 1:13:53
  My. My, you know, I've actually
• 1:13:56
  believe it or not right in front of me.
• 1:13:57
  I kind of have some tools here. It's a little loud, but I've got
• 1:14:01
  some tools here that I have out because my.
• 1:14:04
  There you go. Because we gave my 6 year old
• 1:14:10
  son his first bike yesterday and so I installed some training
• 1:14:16
  wheels and did some maintenance on the bike and.
• 1:14:18
  Did you do it right? Because that's that's Zamma.
• 1:14:20
  And when they when the training wheel falls off because Dad put
• 1:14:23
  it together wrong. That happened to me.
• 1:14:24
  True story. That's why I know he still have
• 1:14:26
  a scar. Yeah.
• 1:14:27
  He felt so bad. OK, I'm telling you, I did.
• 1:14:31
  I did hit the moment where I put these on and I said I really
• 1:14:36
  can't have this fall off. So I just really gave it.
• 1:14:40
  So, you know, an extra little bit of elbow grease there.
• 1:14:43
  But it was it he he got the bike, he he wanted to ride.
• 1:14:48
  It was time to eat dinner. And my wife said, all right, I
• 1:14:52
  think it's time to go inside to eat some dinner.
• 1:14:54
  And then I kind of looked at Emrus.
• 1:14:56
  I looked at Ray and I was kind of got the feeling I was like
• 1:15:01
  he's not ready to go in. So I was like, you want to do
• 1:15:04
  one more time around the block and he's like, yes.
• 1:15:07
  So then we went and did one more time.
• 1:15:08
  He rode all the way to the end of the block.
• 1:15:10
  We worked on, you know, stopping and everything.
• 1:15:12
  It was great. He loved it.
• 1:15:14
  He's ready to ride, so that was fun.
• 1:15:16
  Beautiful. I love it.
• 1:15:18
  Good job dad. I guess you can be in the
• 1:15:20
  apocalypse with us if you can put on training wheels.
• 1:15:22
  Yeah, I'll tell you what. You know your way around the.
• 1:15:24
  Wrench. I'm a mechanic, you know, You
• 1:15:25
  run. Out of gas.
• 1:15:26
  I'll fix your bike. All right, all right, all right.
• 1:15:29
  Blakely Well, mine changed about 10 minutes ago because listening
• 1:15:35
  to your pie stories, Ginger it just if you ever had like an out
• 1:15:40
  about like a visceral somatic experience, like a memory just
• 1:15:44
  flooded into my head. And as I was telling you, I was
• 1:15:48
  raised while my family is from the South.
• 1:15:50
  And so Thanksgiving was a very big deal.
• 1:15:53
  And my grandmother used to make this cornbread And it's like the
• 1:15:56
  perfect cornbread because I had like this really buttery crust
• 1:15:59
  on it, but it was a little bit sweet and just it was amazing.
• 1:16:03
  And so she had passed and I had these two aunts, Aunt Nancy and
• 1:16:08
  Aunt Betty, whom I adore, and they had taken over as
• 1:16:13
  matriarchs and making the Thanksgiving meal.
• 1:16:16
  And I one day realized, like, I've got to learn how to make
• 1:16:20
  this cornbread because like, we just need to pass this down from
• 1:16:24
  the generation. So I said, can I, could you
• 1:16:26
  teach me this year to make the cornbread?
• 1:16:29
  And so they're like, oh, yes, like they were so excited.
• 1:16:31
  And I'm like, well, where's the recipe?
• 1:16:32
  Well, like, there's not really a recipe.
• 1:16:34
  And I'm like, OK, well, like, why don't you just tell me the
• 1:16:36
  ingredients? And so they were telling me the
• 1:16:38
  ingredients and I got a bowl and I was like pouring the stuff in
• 1:16:43
  and I got a spatula and I was like mixing the ingredients in
• 1:16:48
  cornbread. And they both just stopped and
• 1:16:50
  like stared at me. And they're like, what are you
• 1:16:52
  doing? And I'm like, what do you mean?
• 1:16:54
  They're like, you don't mix with a spatula.
• 1:16:56
  They're like, come to your child and like.
• 1:16:58
  You got to. Feel the batter and I'm like,
• 1:17:02
  really not going to feel it. Like the last thing I want to do
• 1:17:04
  is put my fingers in a bowl of cornbread.
• 1:17:06
  Like you'll never know. You got to.
• 1:17:08
  Feel it. You got to like.
• 1:17:09
  Check the consistency. They're like, are you feeling?
• 1:17:12
  They just like took their hands and my hands and we're all this.
• 1:17:15
  Big. You're like, That's why it's so
• 1:17:17
  flavorful. But he's still like, oh,
• 1:17:21
  Yankees, we don't put our hands and feet the cornbread we.
• 1:17:24
  Did. So anyway, that's how I learned
• 1:17:27
  to make cornbread, and it's pretty good, yeah.
• 1:17:30
  There's something different my my cookies turn out differently
• 1:17:32
  if I if I use my hands to mix versus a mixer for sure you.
• 1:17:36
  There's something to it. Fingers to mix the cookies.
• 1:17:39
  Well, as far as. We know we put in this in our
• 1:17:42
  sub stack. I put a a recipe for Sunday
• 1:17:46
  sauce. This first instruction is crush
• 1:17:49
  the. With your hands.
• 1:17:51
  I noticed that and I immediately it was like, yeah, I'm probably
• 1:17:54
  not going to make plays Sunday. Sunday.
• 1:17:55
  Gravy me. Neither, I still have a hard
• 1:17:57
  time feeling the butter but I love that memory was just so
• 1:18:01
  strong. I just felt it all the way
• 1:18:02
  through so. That's your pie story blankly.
• 1:18:06
  Yeah, well, I have pie stories too, but they're different.
• 1:18:09
  Mine. Is not my pie story.
• 1:18:11
  I don't, I don't know what my pie story is, but my smile is I
• 1:18:15
  was at a funeral yesterday and the son is in his mid 20s and he
• 1:18:21
  gave it was for his mother and he gave the most beautiful
• 1:18:25
  tribute. And so I just like to say to any
• 1:18:28
  moms out there who kind of try to get traditions going, like
• 1:18:34
  first day of school traditions or Christmas traditions or
• 1:18:37
  whatever that might be. And you feel exhausted and you
• 1:18:40
  wake up and you're like, do they even know?
• 1:18:41
  Do they even remember? And is, you know, should I keep
• 1:18:44
  doing this? Yes, keep doing it because he
• 1:18:47
  gave the most beautiful tribute about their first day of school
• 1:18:51
  tradition where they would get up and go for a hike before
• 1:18:53
  sunrise, which is so impressive. And way off the charts of what I
• 1:18:57
  ever very cool mom. Yeah, like mine got pancakes.
• 1:19:01
  Maybe you know, but. So but she would do that and
• 1:19:03
  then they. Would go to.
• 1:19:05
  A special breakfast with him and his brother and they would talk
• 1:19:08
  about what they were hope. You know, what teacher did they
• 1:19:10
  hope they were going to get that year and what was their hope for
• 1:19:12
  that year? And then they drop off at school
• 1:19:16
  and they did that every single year all the way through high
• 1:19:19
  school. And she never, she never quit.
• 1:19:23
  It's what they always did. And he, he remembers it and he
• 1:19:26
  said it was the one day. He said he never told her, but
• 1:19:28
  it was the one day. They called it the famous day
• 1:19:31
  every year. It was the famous day that he
• 1:19:33
  looked forward to with her every single year.
• 1:19:37
  And it was beautiful. And I think she did hear it that
• 1:19:40
  day. She wasn't present with us, but
• 1:19:41
  she did hear it. So keep doing what you're doing,
• 1:19:44
  ladies. Makes a difference.
• 1:19:45
  That's so sweet. And men. 33% male.
• 1:19:51
  Listeners out there, all you dads making traditions, keep it
• 1:19:54
  up. Traditions are great.
• 1:19:56
  Speaking of which, Ginger, thank you.
• 1:19:58
  So much for coming on the show. Before we let you go, we always
• 1:20:01
  ask our guests what is the best way for people who are
• 1:20:05
  listening, who maybe are being introduced to you now Or like, I
• 1:20:08
  really want to stay up to date with what Ginger is up to.
• 1:20:11
  Where can they keep up with you and what's the best way for them
• 1:20:14
  to do that? Yes, but you can always find me
• 1:20:17
  at my Instagram page. Ginger Graham 4 O2 one or Ginger
• 1:20:22
  and Baker and find us there on Facebook, Instagram, our website
• 1:20:26
  or just come see me. That'll be more fun.
• 1:20:30
  I'm in. That's great.
• 1:20:31
  Gotta eat some pie. Ginger, you have been an
• 1:20:34
  absolute joy and. An honor to talk to.
• 1:20:37
  Thank you so much for being here and thanks everybody.
• 1:20:41
  Yes, thank you. Thank you, Ginger.
• 1:20:43
  Thank you. Bye, see you next time.