Latest / CEOs and ABCs / Deborah Palmer Keiser (Pair of Thieves, Boardriders, Yeezy, Timbuk2) Navigating Career and Parenting: From Provider to Present: A COO’s Wake-Up Call at Home #019

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Deborah Palmer Keiser (Pair of Thieves, Boardriders, Yeezy, Timbuk2) Navigating Career and Parenting: From Provider to Present: A COO’s Wake-Up Call at Home #019 · CEOs and ABCs

• 0:00
  Speaker A: To she would ask me to tell her our bank balance. What she was trying to understand was, why am I choosing work over her? If we had enough money in the bank, why was I not choosing her? I missed a lot of my daughters first. Not only working and building a career, but I traveled like a crazy person. I honestly naively thought, that's fine, there's a parent at home. And when she got to about six, she let me know that I was wholly unacceptable. That took about five years for me to earn my space back. I had to sit there and, you know, whether it was painting our nails or drawing, I had to only do that. It feels really disorienting to sit calmly. Focusing on one thing with one person being truthfully unavailable, I think made me more human to people who worked with me and actually let them step into the ring and they would rise to the occasion. What my daughter's wisdom has taught me is to really open up and realize that everybody is going through the same. Moments of aggravation, moments of insecurity, moments of joy, and to open yourself up to allow people to share that with you.
• 1:16
  Speaker B: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, parenting wins and fails and everything in between. I'm your host, Kevin Rice. Here's today's episode. Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today has spent three decades turning messy global supply chains into engines for growth. From Gap to Williams, Sonoma, Victoria Secrets, All Saints, Yeezy, board riders. Deborah Palmer Kaiser built her career by saying yes to the hard stuff. New markets, turnarounds, flatlines that needed a second life. Today she's the COO at Pair of Thieves. She's the operator brands call when they're ready to grow up, tighten the seams and still keep their soul. But this isn't just a story about operations. It's a story about a seven year old girl in Paris asking to see the family bank balance. Not because she cared about money, but because she wanted to know why her mom kept choosing work over her. Debra spent years as a primary breadwinner because she believed stability, a roof and a steady income was enough. Her daughter Tilly eventually made it clear they were not. We talk about raising a young artist in a world that wants safe careers. And why Deborah now tells her daughter to take that dream all the way and what it looks like to shift from dragging people uphill to leading as a servant both at home and at work. This is a conversation about fearlessness repair and choosing presence over perfection. My guest today is Deborah Palmer Kaiser. Thank you so much for being here.
• 2:44
  Speaker A: Thank you. Happy to be here.
• 2:46
  Speaker B: I appreciate you making time during the Thanksgiving break. I know it's like a busy time of the year for all of us so I really appreciate you being here.
• 2:54
  Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, I, I appreciate it.
• 2:57
  Speaker B: We got introduced through Arne Ahrens who is one of our previous guests here and you guys worked together while you were at Board Riders and as I got to know you and understood the incredible career you've had, you've led in the C suite across some of the world's greatest, you know, retail brands from Gap to Williams Sonoma. I know you did a stint at Yeezy. You know, what does kind of life look like today for you?
• 3:23
  Speaker A: That's a really good question. I have worked across brand from size and scale to product categories. These days I focus on mid, mid sized brands where I can act as mentor, advisor as well as hands on operations. So I think a lot of my career was pushing water uphill with a rake. I would describe it that way of either trailblazing opening up markets. The retail industry in the last 30 years has grown remarkably, truly globally, but remarkably in terms of commerc and markets. So a lot of my earlier career was honestly trailblazing and bushwhacking. And now I spend more time in the retail environment today taking from what I've done, what I know by trying to coach and mentor young professionals who haven't had or didn't have the benefit of growing up in the trenches, so to speak. I am of the generation that worked with and in factories in America. I'm of the generation who you know, took sewing class in school, homex sewing. I so I feel like I have a great advantage because I understand the very visceral essence of operations and supply chain where for a lot of young professionals today or mid career professionals, it's in the abstract. It's the, you know, manufacturing is overseas, logistics happens out there, there's a big port but it's a lot in the abstract. And so I spend a lot of time trying to bring it in and home. And so people really understand what they' the work that they're doing.
• 5:01
  Speaker B: And you've, you've taken that experience and you're now at Pair of Thieves, which is a brand that I'm intimately familiar with. If you get the phrase tell us about that decision to join Pair of Thieves.
• 5:14
  Speaker A: Well, I first of all am an underwear fanatic. I've not worked in men's underwear so much. But I've worked in women's lingerie earliest days with Victory's Secret. And then I had founded my own lingerie brand when I lived in Europe as well. But I. I'm a big believer that if you good in your underwear, you likely are going to feel good for the rest of the day. That's the first thing you do. It's the closest to your body. And if one were to have to dress down, you don't want to be embarrassed in your underwear. The founders of Pair of Thieves, they are looking to get back into growth mode. And so that's when I usually join companies, when there's either a flatline or a turnaround or something where there's heavy lifting to be done. That's usually when. When I come in. Because oftentime times, operationally, a company will be fragmented or stalled out, and that's where my expertise is. So I'm happy to be both in the lingerie world, underwear world, and doing what I do best.
• 6:17
  Speaker B: That's amazing. They're based down in Los Angeles.
• 6:20
  Speaker A: They're based in Los Angeles, which I live in Northern California, but my daughter is living in LA too. So I got the added benefit of playing in underwear and seeing my daughter.
• 6:32
  Speaker B: That's amazing. How. How old's your daughter?
• 6:33
  Speaker A: She's. She's 24. She's in music school in LA and she's gigging usually. I'm down there almost every week and I usually get to see her every week gigging at some little music club or bar in la.
• 6:48
  Speaker B: That's amazing. I'm always curious how the relationship evolves as our kids get older. What is your relationship like with your daughter now that she's kind of entering into young adulthood?
• 7:00
  Speaker A: I learn a lot from my daughter. She is. She is a deep empath. What I have found remarkable about her as long as I've known her is that she takes her observations, her feelings, and she articulates herself very well in the moment. I stuff stuff down, you know, I'll deal with it later. I'm not gonna make a situation awkward by commenting in that moment. Tilly finds the apt words in the moment to honestly express herself and leave space for the other person to respond and Santa and express themselves. Even yesterday we flew. We flew from New York and Newark airport was not a happy situation. Of course, Mama wound up instantly in an airport. And my daughter was kind of doing cleanup after me. She would go and talk to the people and she would explain, this is what happened. This is why My mama is reacting that way. Perhaps I would suggest that you could do XYZ and she would close it all with but we love you and walk away. So she just. She's a really feeling person who leaves room for other people's feelings. And so my relationship with her right now is very much learning how to process my own emotion and share them for the betterment of those I'm around. Maybe being female, maybe being of my generation, especially professionally, I feel like the untold lessons were, show up, suck it up, work hard, never let anybody see you crack, never say you can't do anything. So there was a. There was a cactus coat that I wore where it was. It was a real facade of holding everything together. And because I thought the alternate was completely falling apart. And what my daughter's wisdom has taught me is that to really open up and realize that everybody is going through the same. Moments of aggravation, moments of insecurity, moments of joy, whatever it is, and to open yourself up to allow people to share that with you, that actually builds connection. Even in moments of frustration, it builds connection. It's been truly, truly eye opening for me. My daughter makes me much more emotionally wise.
• 9:24
  Speaker B: That's amazing. I. I have many similar experiences. I very much kind of was closed. I kept a lot of my personal life close to the vest. I showed a public perception that everything was going great, when in reality, like behind the scenes, my personal life was. Was not. I think that was what I learned from not only my parents, but also society. And there's kind of this new wave of encouragement to be more expressive and open and honest and candid about what's going on in your personal life. And our kids are a good. A great mirror to learn those kind of lessons. Was your relationship with your daughter always this way?
• 10:05
  Speaker A: No. No. I. I think I assumed the role of provider. So I was the primary breadwinner in the family. My husband chose to be at home. Papa. He's a freelance creative. So, you know, there's a little bit of an assumption of you can do what you do anywhere, which also was a little daft on. On my part. But he wanted to be at home. Papa. And I thought, okay, this is perfect. I provide a care, she thrives, and everything's perfect. Yay. And I missed a lot of my daughters first, not only working and building a career, but I traveled like a crazy person. So I would be gone two weeks, three weeks at a time, and repeatedly, just constantly. And because I've had global organizations, it wasn't necessarily destination Travel for work. It was. I live there for a period of time and then I go to another location to live. And I thought it would be destabilizing the dragon my family around. And so I've spent pretty significant periods of time away. So I missed a lot of my daughters first. But I honestly naively thought, that's fine. There was a parent at home, and when she got to about seven, she let me know that I was wholly unacceptable. She was kind of taking tabs on how much I missed. She told me I was not listening to her when she asked for time. You know, at the time I had, it was before our phones were as sophisticated as they are, but I had three phones, depending on, you know, which continent, because I managed between three continents. And I was pretty much 24, 7 all the time. So I would be with her, but I would always have a text or an email or a phone call or, you know, something going on. And it took me a while to hear her message, but I did not have a relationship with her. I was kind of a mom by function, but I left a lot of the intimacy and the closeness to be had between her father and her. So I. I've had to earn it because she just would not spend time with me if I wasn't going to put everything down and pay attention to her. Which, my analogy is riding a bike 100 miles an hour down a hill into a sand pit because I had to sit there and, you know, whether it was painting our nails or drawing, I had to only do that. And I think we got so used to this frenetic being pulled in all directions that it feels really disorienting to sit calmly focusing on one thing with one person and at the time, one person with whom I didn't really have a dialogue or rapport. I had to get to know her, but she was pretty clear. I had to earn her trust. I had to earn her intimacy. I had to show up in a way that was convincing to her. And that took about five years for me to earn my space back. And once I started to understand that, I was determined to never let it go. It had to be my commitment to myself as much as my commitment to her. But I realized how much I had been missing earlier on. But I. I attribute the recognition to her wisdom.
• 13:10
  Speaker B: I mean, I certainly relate to that in my career. I was traveling a lot. I was working long hours. I had become a single parent myself. And so I was the breadwinner. And I figured as long as I was taking care of the Kids, they had a roof over their head. They were fed that I was doing my job. But I had quite a few moments where my three and a half year old, he couldn't verbalize what was he was experiencing. But through his behaviors, I could tell, like, there was a huge rupture and disconnection between our relationship. And it later materialized in their behavior and their inability to, like, listen to me and their kind of defiance. And it makes sense, right? Like, I wasn't around as much as I would have liked to be because I was prioritizing my career and what I thought my role needed to be. So when I came home from work and I told them it's time to like, make their bed or clean their room, why would they listen to me? We weren't connected. That's a big part of like, the dynamic of parenting is like, if you're not connected, why would you have all these expectations of them? I'm curious, were there any key turning point moments for you? It sounds like your daughter was very clear, which is incredibly impressive for a young woman to be able to articulate that to her mother. But was there, were there any moments that really stood out to you where you're like, I need to make a change?
• 14:33
  Speaker A: An odd period to. She would ask me to tell her the bank balance. I was like, yes, how much money do we have in the bank? Like, that's a really weird question. We have enough money to live. No, I want to see how much money. And at the time, it was during the 7, 8 year old period. At the time, I think the number would have been abstract. It took quite kind of a lot of debating with her. What she was trying to understand was, and what trying to get clear from me was, why am I choosing work over her? And if we had enough money in the bank, why was I choosing that? Why was I not choosing her? And I think it was over the course of three months of kind of battling over, why does she want to know how much money we have? Just as you said, she's got a roof over her head, she's got everything she needs. And what she was trying to understand, what was better about that than her? That was a big turning point for me because I realized, first of all, kids are not as dumb as we treat them as being. So of course my daughter would feel like I was choosing work over here because that is what I kept doing on a day to day basis over and over again, willingly, enthusiastically. And I was not doing time with her and spending time with her and planning Time with her. There's a level of wisdom in that what you do is more important than what you say. And I realized at that point that I had to demonstrate through action what my. Both my intentions and my wants were. So if I said, oh, no, Tilly, I've. I. I've just got to take this trip. I've got to take this trip. She's like, do you really. I mean, do you really. What's going to. What's going to be solved? So on the one hand, I had to start speaking in different language. I want to take this trip because this is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to get.
• 16:25
  Speaker B: Out of it, and that's more honest.
• 16:26
  Speaker A: And when I come back. Yeah, yeah. And when I come back, I want to spend this kind of time with you. I will commit that time. Ironically, I studied linguistics in school. The linguist in me started coming out, realizing I have to use words that actually convey meaning, not just throw these words out to a kid and say, that's good enough. She'll understand. I've got to do this. Because what she saw was I was making choices and I was not choosing her. That was a big turning point. But it started with a bank balance.
• 16:58
  Speaker B: Wow, that's a. Like you said, it's an incredibly insightful thing for a young woman of that age to be thinking about. And it would have taken me a bit to connect those dots to figure out why she's. Why she's asking. I'm curious, when you did make that decision to be more conscious and have more intention in your relationship with your daughter, what changed in your work in order to be able to facilitate you repairing the relationship?
• 17:25
  Speaker A: Um, so I've had the benefit of being a senior leader for a very, very long time. I'm kind of an alpha dog personality. So at a very young point in my career, when in doubt, if nobody's taking charge, I'll take charge. It's less about the title. It just has my personality. I like to get stuff done. I'm organized. I can see what has to get done, and I am physically, mentally, and emotionally willing to step out and do it. When I had to reorganize work, what I realized is it also enriched the relationship I had with people on my team because I became the type of leader who didn't ghost people. I just wasn't not available. I would let people also know what I was doing. Hey, you guys, when I get home, I'll be. I'll be these days. But I'm cutting off at 4 because I'm going to take. I'm going to go off and do stuff with Tilly or I would have lunch with my daughter and I would block that out. Being truthfully unavailable, I think made me more human to people who worked with me and for me and actually let them step into the ring and say, okay, we know exactly where she is and we know that stuff has to carry on. And they would rise to the occasion either to have my back if something happened or to step in and just start taking charge of things. It opened up a whole. A whole new thought bubble in my career and my leadership style because I saw people willingly want to step up and for them to understand that I, again, I wasn't. I didn't have a side gig sleeping. I was spending time with my kid and I really loved my kid. And they would get to know Tilly as well. I think built a tremendous amount of trust and reliance and having each other's back spirit with people I work with to this day. Those relationships have lasted and my very early career, to my middle career to now are marked by the connection I was able to garner with my colleagues by letting my family in and letting my daughter be a part of my schedule. It really changed my relationships at work. I know people feel like it's very risky and everybody's situation is different, but it really is true. People want to know people again. You know, people work with people. People quit their jobs not because of the company, it's because of the people. It is so true. And I think we continually forget that, that being a real person and a rich person and an open person builds that connection and helps build that culture of interdependency and reliance on one another.
• 20:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, isn't it wild? Because I, and I'm sure many others would be really afraid and be in fear to cut back on hours because I thought this is the only way that I have so much responsibility, there's so much pressure to perform. This is the only way that I can get it done. And then by pulling back, you actually that your team was able to rise. You had better relationships with them. And you know, it's. It's amazing to see the positive benefits that come out of something that you would logically think would be detrimental to your career. Hi, Kevin here. If you're enjoying this conversation and you know someone else who's working to grow in their career while staying present at home, I'd really love it if you could share this episode with them. It's one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they're proud of without missing the moments that matter most. I constantly am finding the parallels of what I'm learning in my parenting and what I'm learning in my career. I'm curious, do you find that you learn different but the same amount from maybe the teams that you work with in your professional career?
• 21:18
  Speaker A: I would say in my early career I was a leader of I will show you how to get something done because I will do it alongside you. But it was more in the spirit of kind of dragging people along, like, we're going to do this come hell or high water, and I'm going to show you how to do it the whole way. You know, I think having my daughter taught me leadership as a service model. I am in service to the teams who I lead and part of being in service to them is asking genuinely, what can I do to help? What can I do to contribute? What do I need to hear from you and understand in order to grasp what the situation is? Rather than a tops down leadership model, it's really the servant leader of being in service, similar to a child. I am continually amazed at the magic of children. Their insight, their ability to articulate what they see. Again, not laden with emotion or context or history or, you know, it's unburdened. And I realized that as we grow up, there's a level of conformity and expectation and it kind of tamps down that honest observation, insight, articulation. And if we could keep that in our adult life, we could relate to one another differently. We could share insights without them being threatening or insulting or judging. There's a lightness to what children do. So I tell you, after having my daughter and observing her and listening to her say the most remarkable things out loud, I was like, oh, do we say that? And then realizing that, yeah, it's perfectly fine. And it's the tone and intent and spirit in which things are said. It fundamentally changed who I was as a leader and coming into my own emotion. Having a kid in the background or having my husband come and put his face in a zoom call just to meet people. He always says to me, can I please see the org chart? Because every new organization I'm working with, I just start throwing names at it. And to invite my husband and my daughter into my work and have people know them, it gives them insight into me and makes me a deeper, richer person in service of them. And it really has made me a much more holistic leader in that respect.
• 23:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. It sounds like you have a really close relationship with your daughter, which is special. I, I know a number of business executives who, their kids grew up and they just don't have a really, really close relationship because they chose to prioritize their career and they weren't able to, you know, really have that deep connection with their kids.
• 23:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. One thing I like about supply chain and operations is that it has exposed me to the rest of the world throughout my career. There. There are some unique peculiarities of American professional culture that is go, go, go, do, do, do, get it done, get it done. Exceed, exceed, exceed. That many cultures around the world don't share. It's not that they don't value accomplishment or, you know, professional respect. It's that they allow their culture, they allow their family to be much more holistically a part of their life. I think spending time living overseas and then working with so many other cultures gave me a good lens back into America that sometimes I think Americans look ridiculous because we do act like we have no family, we have no personal time, we take no vacations. I, you know, the people around the world are like, is that, is that real? I mean, are you guys happy? A really, a really simple example is everywhere I travel in the world, wherever I'm going, the receiving party will make sure they know my flight information. They'll make sure I have a pickup at the airport. Even if, you know, I arrive in India at 2 o' clock in the morning, they are making sure that they're either they are picking me up or an arrangement are made. They check in that I got into the hotel, they ask about the hotel, they will come and pick me up in the morning. When people visit America like we have, we have a meeting at 10 o'. Clock. I don't know what time they got in, I have no idea what hotel they're staying in. I didn't check in with them. There's, there's a, an interpersonal connection that many, many other cultures have, that Americans just take for granted. You're fine, you have a credit card, you'll get there. And so to have lived outside of America and see America through a different lens really taught me a lot about the culture that we think is excellence and professionalism is actually just a stifling of a lot of things. And those lot of things are the things that my daughter brought to me. My husband also, but my daughter especially of why are you acting like I don't exist? You know, why are you not letting me be A part of something. And humorously, I think Covid had brought that to life, where everybody had their kids climbing on their laps and, you know, behind them or animals or whatever. It just forced the issue for people to realize, like, yes, life is all around you. It's all around you, and you can't isolate yourself in a closet from it. So maybe it's eased up a little bit, but there it is. A very American thing that we got caught up in.
• 26:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. I just got back from a trip to Fiji, and probably the biggest thing that surprised me, that I was not expecting, was just how family oriented the culture is and how much they love little kids. We brought our 19 month old, and he would run around the restaurants, and if he walked within 10ft of any of the staff at the resort, they would run to him and play with him for five to 10 minutes. He was like the highlight of the restaurant. He's really cute. But this is part of their culture. This is how they live. And if an American tourist was there, he would stop and wave to them and they would just kind of walk by and he would look at them like, like, you guys are broken. Yeah, there's something wrong with you. Our server would pick our son up and fly him around the restaurant like he's an airplane. And my fiance and I were able to enjoy a conversation at dinner. I was like, this is wildly different than American culture. You would never expect something like this. And we really, we loved it. We fell in love with the culture and the people in Fiji.
• 27:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's. It really does connect you with people. We had a similar situation. I was in Europe for an extended period of. Had to extend my trip one more week. And I said to my husband, I bought you guys a ticket, just, you have to get on airplane tomorrow. I can't. I'm not going to be away from you one more day. And they arrived in Florence that afternoon. We went to dinner, and my daughter was too, sitting on her lap, and we're kind of eating around her shoulder. And the wife, the owner of the restaurant, came out of the kitchen, picked up my daughter, put her on her. Her lap, and then walked back to the kitchen to give her her own little kitchen experience. And came back, Tilly had her own bowl of parmesan and everything. And they just wanted us to enjoy the food. Yeah. The thought of that happening in America, like, wait, what, what are you doing? Where are you taking my kid? Yeah, it's. It's very different. It's really. Those kind of experiences really stayed with Me and really changed me. So it was a combination of my daughter and then what my daughter's presence opened up during my professional experience. That never left. Left. It really never left me.
• 28:41
  Speaker B: I know you've traveled a lot in your career. Did you travel a lot when you were growing up or. I'm curious how your kind of childhood influenced how you thought you should act as a mother in those kind of early years.
• 28:53
  Speaker A: We largely grew up with my father. My mother had some mental health issues and basically checked herself into a psychiatric hospital way back in the day. Like, this is, you know, early, early 60s. Women were given uppers to get skinny and down hours to sleep. My mother couldn't have her own bank account at the time. Like I explained to my daughter, the environment for women of my mother's generation. And it's pretty shocking to think just in two generations, how different things are. But my mother had a hard time. We ended up moving with my father, who was a serial marrier. So we moved quite a lot between the United States and England, and from one coast to every two years, we moved. My father was either an educator in or the headmaster of the schools that we went to. And so it's kind of hard to be the. It's kind of hard to be the new kids every two years and headmaster's kids and whatnot. So we grew up with a lot of insecurity, a lot of financial insecurity, a lot of home insecurity. And I think that that fed into my assumption, my belief that if I created a home, especially with a parent there, if I just provided that, then that was. That was good job done. I did a good job because I didn't really grow up with a mother. I would say I have had a lifelong mother. Want to find female mentors, to find female friends has always really been challenging because I don't know what it feels like. And strangely enough, in this period of my life with my daughter, I get a sense of what that feels like, that, you know, the feeling of being home with your parent, wherever you are. But being home, it is safe, it is accepting, it is loving. I have that feeling with my daughter in reciprocity or in reverse and reciprocity, that I feel very much home when I'm with my daughter. And I realize how much I missed from my. From my mother. I'm the youngest of three. I think it kind of. It's a bug that stayed in me. I have therefore moved my entire adult life. It's just something in my biorhythm that I Don't mind traveling. I don't mind picking up and moving locations. But I think it has affected my biorhythms, how my brain works to the extent that now I realize that maybe my daughter wouldn't have liked to have moved around so much in her youth. She grew up on three continents. You know, born in America, but largely brought up in France. Had a stint in Singapore, moved back to France, then came back to America. And I think only now that she's 20 before is she's starting to realize she's a child of the world. The trade off of being a child of the world is you are a little bit homeless. Like, you never really feel that you're entirely at home in any culture, which makes it easy to be kind of at home in any culture. But there's a trade off there. That's the way I raised her. She's handling it now. But I realized I just perpetuated what I grew up with and, and offer that to my daughter.
• 32:11
  Speaker B: So it sounds like you really focused on what you needed as a child and giving her that security or safety, but missed what she actually needs. And that's the connection, like more than just attention, but real presence from you.
• 32:29
  Speaker A: I think in. Sorry. I think in early parenting we spend a lot of time projecting. I think, I think it takes a while for us to learn what parenting is and sometimes parenting is making up for the parenting we had before. Before you can actually truly, it's reparenting yourself.
• 32:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think we're kind of the first generation like, or just this time of the world where we're thinking about reparenting ourself while we're parenting others.
• 32:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:01
  Speaker B: You moved around a lot as a young kid. How did that influence who you became in your career?
• 33:07
  Speaker A: I'm ready to pick up and go anywhere for something that's interesting. My career is built from curiosity and more often diving into that which I don't know or do not necessarily have the skills yet. I have taken on challenges that either nobody else would or that I wasn't really equipped for. I think the way I was raised, having to navigate around the world oftentimes without parental oversight or support made me really self sufficient, willing and unafraid. I don't know. I learned, I learned long ago that our greatest towering strengths are also our towering weakness, that it's usually not a collection of strengths and a totally different collection of weaknesses. My towering strengths are fearlessness, willingness to jump into the unknown, and self reliance. And I can go full tilt on that. And you know, I used to describe myself as an isolationist, honest introvert, because I can spend an enormous amount of time alone and I have great courage to believe that I can do anything that is set before me. And again, I think in my early career I would just drag people along versus inviting them to be part of it. And when I learned to paint a portrait, to lure people into wanting to be a part of that portrait, that's when. And I became a much deeper person and a much more effective leader because then everybody rallied around that.
• 34:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, I know that you are a very confident and capable leader. And you were mentioning earlier that your daughter is going into a very different career path and she's going into the arts. She's a vocalist, a budding singer. I don't know that. I've talked to a lot of parents who have kids that are going into like non traditional careers. Almost everybody I know have kids that are being groomed for entrepreneurship or. Or tech. I love that your daughter is pursuing her passion of being a singer. How did you feel about or how did you support her dream of becoming a singer as she was moving out of the house and saying, this is what I want to do?
• 35:21
  Speaker A: Well, she articulated it at a very young age. She was six. And she started to tell us that she wanted to be a singer. And you know, kid is six and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute. And you put on your little sequin dress and dance, lip sync to Mary J. Blige or something. And it's. And it's darling. It's cute. But she, she did not relent following music, taking up piano. And her, she had a jazz piano teacher at the time. And her jazz piano teacher said, you're gonna perform with me in the restaurant. And Tilly, Tilly grew up, she was pretty shy. You know, she would hide behind her. Her father's legs, you know, when she was introduced to people and whatnot. But when she breaks through, that kid comes alive. We watch her kind of throwing a fit, not wanting to do it at the last minute. And then when Ramona gave her the mic and piano and then Tilly started to sing, and I thought, oh my God, maybe, maybe that dichotomy of she's very reserved and shy, but there's this person waiting to bust out of her. And that is the medium that enables it. And we just continued to see that. We continued to see that when she was on stage in any capacity, she would come to life. And there was something calling her for that. So I think she Comes by it naturally. Her father is a creative, he's a photographer and a video videographer. All self taught, crazy talented. And I, I guess that's part of. I'm not really afraid of that world, what it implies. I think everything is hard. I think every career is hard, every self actualization is hard. But people get scared because their kids aren't gonna make any money. It's like, I don't know, you could be a consultant for 25 years and find yourself just gutted and from your soul and actually not really have any money. You know, it's, it's.
• 37:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:13
  Speaker A: Personal path is, is a personal path. I would rather see her follow that energy and follow that life that comes out of her and see where it takes her. She's a beautiful ceramist, she's a beautiful graphic designer. So she's got backup stuff if she needs to. But if music is really where she wants to go. My feeling is take it all the way so you don't have any regrets. If you decide ultimately not to do it or it didn't work out. You, you took it all the way. Because I see too many people not take things all the way. And I don't know, I think it's only when we get to about 50 years old that we say life is short, but it really is short.
• 37:55
  Speaker B: Follow your passions, not to mention arts could be the safest career path. Moving forward. With so many business, professional like, you know, knowledge working jobs being replaced by AI the arts might be the, the safest place for. But it's beautiful to hear you talk about her pursuing her passion and you almost have a sense of awe when you, you speak about her singing and performing. Did she ever, she ever want to throw in the towel and quit singing or was she always like moving forward in that direction?
• 38:25
  Speaker A: She wanted to quit playing piano a number of times and we, it was just a hard no. And I mean, we would say her piano teacher would come over. Lovely woman. And if Tilly was, was having a day of it, they would just sit at the piano bench and talk. I was like, that's fine, I don't care. It's, you know, it can be going through the motions, but no, you can't flip piano. So didn't do your homework. You gotta tell Ramona that. But. And if you just wanna sit at the piano and talk, then that's fine. But Ramona will talk music theory or she'll talk, you know, it was always music related but she wasn't allowed to quit that. And that's I mean, it's kind of how I roll anyway. It's. I think people quit cause they get afraid. They quit because they're scared. They quit because they're not perfect. And to break through that perfection, oftentimes people can be great at something just because they're having fun. It doesn't, they don't have to be the best at it, but they're great at it just because they're having fun. And that, that fear, the kind of perfectionist spirit, when it starts to hold people back, I think it starts very young and that's really difficult to break through as people grow older. So. So we did our best to push her through stuff. You know, my husband, he's done all the cooking in our family and really enjoys food, really enjoys food. And they would travel together and he would say, whatever the food is, you have to try it at least twice because the first time may not be the best one. If you try it a second time, then you can opt out of it. And she is very much in that spirit. Like, I don't know what that is, but I'll try it. And if we could capture the spirit of children in adventurousness and support them through the fear of something, they come out the other side and they own that spirit. But if we give in to them saying, I don't want to do it, I'm scared, that kind of get, that gets frozen in our, in our adult heads.
• 40:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I imagine that those values that you were helping instill in her, like resilience and grit and not quitting, are probably values that you carried into your professional career and, and probably helped instill in your teams as well.
• 40:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I tend to overuse the expression, you know, the Socratic model of we don't have to agree on anything. But I want you to walk me down your path of reasoning and process because we're going to get there. And when in doubt, I will always have a way. But it doesn't have to be my way. Take me down your path of how you think we can get there, but we're going to get there. There's no, like, oh, you know, it's, it's too hard. There's, there's none of that. I think that's where my, my self reliance comes in, that I don't give up. And when in doubt, I will follow my own path. But I really enjoy bringing people along and, and asking them. You show me, you tell me I am happy to change my mind in that. And it's, yeah, I think it's that's probably the only little childh and I I held on to.
• 41:30
  Speaker B: I recently had somebody ask me. He was a entrepreneur, he's kind of scaling his company. He knew my story of growing a business and selling it. He'd asked me because we had kind of a personal conversation about some similar topics, about some of the milestones that I had missed and sacrifices I had made. And he asked me, would you have done anything differently knowing what you know now? And I'm curious, as you look back on your career and your personal life, what have you learned or what maybe would you have done differently or what advice would you share with the audience?
• 42:02
  Speaker A: My advice to people would be if there's something you want to do, take it. Take it all the way. Take it all the way and develop an openness of expressing fear or trepidation to allow people to help you. I was a little bit of a black sheep in my family because I was a self taught seamstress. I went to FIT after I went to college. Learn the trade by doing, just by taking jobs and doing. But I started my career in this industry wanting to be a designer and I had a custom clothing business when I was young. I did not have the resources and support system around me and I lost confidence and I switched tracks. I just was not in that place as a young professional, you know. So I, I started a men's luxury tailored clothing business. I had been making custom clothing for men in New York City. And one of them said, your, your product is so beautiful. If you, if you give me a business plan, I can see how I can help you. I didn't know what a business plan was, was. I didn't go to business school. I went to, you know, liberal arts and studied linguistics and then I went to fit. I didn't know what a business plan was and I was so fearful of the fact that I didn't know what it was. I didn't ask anybody. And I just kind of froze and I never got back to that person. And there were repeated things like that, like little signals of you might want to open yourself up. If you want to realize this dream, this is, this is what you want to do. I just think a lot of people get too fearful of what they don't know or, you know, lacking perfection or the stories of entrepreneurs starting companies at scales. And it's a story that almost inhibits people rather than propels people because if it's not done a certain way in a certain amount of time at a certain, you know, X factor it's not done well. So that I, I, my advice would be stay the course. Stay the course of what you are wanting to be and do. Stay the course and figure out ways to build a work or find those mentors or find those people who are willing and able to support you to realize what you want to do. When you decide it's not what you want to do, change course because one will have acquired skills and learned a bunch of stuff on the way. That's what made me a great person in supply chain because I knew to the textile, to the needle, how product is made. So I don't have to be in a foreign country, in a factory to understand I know how product is made. I can interpret it. It's a very, very visceral understanding. So it made me really good at what I ended up doing, but I didn't do the thing I wanted to do. And that's why I am so pursuant for my daughter of run the course, do it, take it all the way. Because there's going to be plenty of stuff that is going to knock you down. You're not going to know, you're going to feel scared of no matter what you do. So you might as well be doing the thing that you really, really set out to do and that you really want it.
• 45:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. Especially when you're getting those kind of cues from the universe. Like you mentioned, somebody coming and asking you for a business plan. And I, I think the universe leaves breadcrumbs if you're willing to look for those breadcrumbs at a number of those when it came to just starting this podcast. And so I felt called to do it because so many little things kept adding up and it was something that I've been very passionate about.
• 45:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I've had a great life partner, I have to say. I've been with my husband, not married the whole time, but for 33. And finding a person who is your partner in life who not only helps you grow, but forces you to grow out of love is very meaningful. And so it could be a friend, it could be a life partner, but it's, I don't know that I would be half the person I am also without him.
• 46:08
  Speaker B: Debra, thank you so much for being with me today. I really appreciate the candor and the vulnerability and some of the, the deeply personal stories that you shared with us. I think what really will stick with me is kind of that story of your daughter asking to see your bank balance. Not because she was really worried about the money, but because it was proof of your priorities, but mainly how you responded, not with just a perfectly timed career move, but by slowing down and spending days painting nails with your daughter. And then I loved how that actually turned into a advantage for your career. Your team could see you as a more humanized leader. It gave them an opportunity to really elevate and take that opportunity to step up in their own roles. So I'm deeply grateful for your honesty, your vulnerability and your wisdom and just sharing the stories behind, you know, your personal journey. Journey as you've grown as both a leader and a mother.
• 47:11
  Speaker A: Thank you. I. I really appreciate it.
• 47:13
  Speaker B: If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We've got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow and stay tuned.