Shellye Archambeau

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable people. I joked with this episode's guest and told her that she is perhaps Wharton's second most famous graduate. Her name is Shellye Archambeau. She is a powerhouse - a woman with a plan. She is unapologetically ambitious.
She worked for IBM while in college and then took a sales job there after graduating. She's well versed in leading technology companies because she was the president of Blockbuster, CMO of Loudcloud, CEO of Zaplet, and CEO of MetricStream. She's currently one board of directors of Verizon and Nordstrom.
She has written two books, Co-author of Marketing That Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add Sustainable Profits to Any Sized Company, and author of Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risk, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms.
This episode starts with a discussion of her relative's manumission. You will learn what this shocking document is. You will also hear some great career advice including why ambition is a good thing, what the impostor syndrome is and how to get over it, and how sometimes you just have to fake it until you make it.
This episode of Remarkable People is brought to you by reMarkable - the paper tablet company. Yes, you got that right. Remarkable is sponsored by reMarkable, I have version two in my hot little hands and it's so good, a very impressive upgrade.
Here's how I use it. One: taking notes while I'm interviewing a podcast guest. Two: taking notes while being briefed about a speaking gig. Three: drafting the structure of keynote speeches. Four: storing manuals for all the gizmos that I buy. Five: roughing out drawings for things like surfboards, surfboard sheds. Six: wrapping my hand around complex ideas with diagrams and flowcharts.
This is a remarkable well thought out product. It doesn't try to be all things of all people, but it takes note better than anything I've used. Check out the recent reviews of the latest version.

I'm Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now, here's Shellye Archambeau.

Guy Kawasaki:
I would like you to explain what a manumission is. When I read the draft of your book, I learnt about a document called a manumission. I had never heard of such a thing. Please explain what a manumission is?
Shellye A.:
So a manumission was the document that slave owners wrote and signed that indicated for whoever saw that piece of paper, that this particular person who had been a slave is now a free person. It literally was a piece of paper, and if anything happened to that piece of paper, then freedom was gone because there was no proof that somebody was actually a free person. So it was extremely, obviously, valuable once you had it and tenuous at the same time.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's all that separate a person from, really, incarceration, that piece of paper?
Shellye A.:
That's right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you have it?
Shellye A.:
I do. As a matter of fact, we have a manumission for one of my relatives, my aunt Dolores, my aunt Deedee is the keeper of the family papers on my mother's side of the family.
I can't even explain in terms of reading it, the chills that it sends down, because at this point, it's really yellowed and brown. The ink has gone brown, it's not black, I don't know if it was black or blue, you can't tell. It's literally just scratched out, and when you read it, there's no reason to even know you're reading about a human being. You're reading about something that was living, but the way it describes and... Anyway it's just a very painful piece of paper.
Guy Kawasaki:
What is the impact of that upon your psyche and your perspective? In a sense, something that made you strive to achieve, or is this something that brings out anger, or all of the above? What does this mean to you?
Shellye A.:
What it means to me is, it is an example of just how far my family has come. It shows the strength of everything - character, physical, mental, all of it, that has enabled my family to survive all the way through the generations. Each step of the way, we keep taking one more step into that, think of it, the ladder to freedom. The ability to actually live and have the life that we want.
I actually see it as a position of strength, frankly. Now when you said, “Does it make you angry?" You know, it is interesting, when I first saw it and read it, for me it wasn't so much anger as it was great sadness. It was just great sadness because you're looking at this and you're trying to imagine the life...
One of my ancestors, he bought himself out of slavery, and then worked to buy his mother out of slavery. You think about what... I can't even imagine what that had to have been like. So I'm more empathetic in thinking about that time and what transpired. So it's not anger, it is much more just a great sadness.
Guy Kawasaki:
With hindsight, and now that you're successful and should I say, mature, do you think life is fair?
Shellye A.:
Oh, no. Absolutely not. My parents made that very clear when I was a little girl, that life is not fair. You come home from school and something's happened, somebody hasn't treated you right, has pushed you, you didn't get something that you felt you should have based on what you understand was the criteria, whatever it was. So you come home, and you do what kids do, "Mom, it's not fair. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
Instead of basically coming and saying, "Oh, Shellye. It's okay. Da, da, da, da." No. My mom was like, "You're right, it's not fair. Life isn't fair." And you're like, "What?" But it was literally drilled into me - life is not fair, so don't go looking for it. Don't expect it, It's just not. So what are you going to do about it?
Guy Kawasaki:
What's the answer?
Shellye A.:
The answer is you have to decide what it is that you want, and then you have to figure out how to go get it, in a world that is not fair. So it really meant, for me, that I learned to be extremely intentional. I knew that if I did what everybody else did, I wasn't going to get anything.
I used to look up, people didn't look like me that were doing great things. So I said, "All right. I have to figure out, how do I improve my odds. What can I do to improve my odds, because life is fair and that's just the way it is?"
Guy Kawasaki:
What did you decide was necessary for you to make it happen?
Shellye A.:
I became very goal-oriented. I'd set a goal or a target and then I would just work toward it. I’ve found that that actually improved my odds of making things happen, Guy. I have done that my entire career.
I had a fortuitous conversation with a guidance counselor in high school. So roll the clock back, we all remember junior year, you have the conversation with the guidance counselor, "Well, what do you want to do with your life? Are you going to college? Going to trade? What's happening?" And I said, "I want to go to college, and I want to get a job." She goes, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I don't know. I just want a job where I can keep the thermostat at seventy-two degrees. I can eat out and travel," because those were all things that I couldn't do growing up. She laughed; I was serious but she laughed.
She said, "What do you like to do?" I honestly give her huge credit for this, and I said, "What I like to do is participate in organizations. I love to run them. I'm at everything. The American Field Service and the French Club, National Art Society, I'm a Girl Scout... And whatever I get engaged in, ultimately, I find that I'm running, or leading, and I enjoy that." She said to me, "Business is just like a club. Running a business is like running a club for people to gather to a common objective and go and make things happen,” and I said, "Done. I'm going to go run a business."
When I had looked up, the people that ran businesses were called CEOs, and I said, "Great I'm going to be a CEO." I was so, literally, that naive at sixteen.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let me get this straight. So at sixteen, you decided you were going to be a CEO?
Shellye A.:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
That was it?
Shellye A.:
That was it!
Guy Kawasaki:
Basically, you had this goal, and going to Wharton, all that? That was just the plan?
Shellye A.:
It was. I mean, literally. I was like, "Okay." So the way I've always down it is, "All right. What's my goal? What needs to be true for me to achieve my goal, and how do I make it true?" That's literally how I've lived my whole life.
So I want to be a CEO, what has to be true? I'm like, "I'd obviously need credentials because there aren't people who look like me, so I've got to have the top credential." I looked it up and the top undergraduate business school was Wharton. I said great, it was the only school I applied to. I literally, the bottom of my application I wrote, "This is the only school I'm applying to. It's the only place I want to go, it fits in my plan, take me. I don't want to go anywhere else." I literally wrote it in there.
Fortunately I was a good student. The key is, you always want to create an environment in which you have as many options as possible. So I was a good student, so it gave me that option, and they took me. So first up, accomplished.
Guy Kawasaki:
You may be the second most famous graduate of Wharton.
Shellye A.:
Oh, gosh. You're not going to bring that up, are you, Guy?
Guy Kawasaki:
No. I'm just making an observation.
People often ask me, "What was your motivation?" I think they fully expect kind of a Sandra Bullock response about world peace, or ending climate change, or creating a better democracy, or something like that. I'll tell you, the honest answer is that twice in my high school days I was robbed, and once someone gave me a ride in a Porsche 911. Those three things made me study and work hard. So I'm glad that it was the thermostat, eating out, and travel, which is probably better than my motivation, but in the broad spectrum, we're pretty close together.
Shellye A.:
We are.
Guy Kawasaki:
So do you think that maybe we're the norm, and the people who say, “I wanted to make the world a better place” are lying?
Shellye A.:
Oh, I don't think they are lying. I just think that by the time they get asked the question, that's what they remember. I do believe that, when we were younger, it's some very basic things that try to drive us.
Guy Kawasaki:
And who were your heroes at sixteen, Thomas Watson?
Shellye A.:
Oh, gosh. It's funny, I didn't find out about him until I was doing research actually in college to say, "All right. What company do I want to work at? What industry and who were the CEOs? That kind of stuff.
At sixteen, in all honesty, when I looked around looked, my heroes were people that I saw leading things. I was always inspired by leaders. In the Sixties, I was in elementary school, and Martin Luther King played, obviously, a big role, even though I was very young. He continued to way beyond his life and his life plan. You had people who were able... What I really admired were people who were able to do what they wanted to do appear. They were able to do what they wanted to do, at the same time impact others.
To me that was just the win-win, because I grew up in an environment that... “Listen, you don't get anything by yourself, get a lot of people, a lot of people helping and you make sure you help all along the way.” Those are the people that I found to be the most inspiring.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you have a modern day hero or source of inspiration?
Shellye A.:
Oh, right this second, if you look... I will say, so many people. One of my heroes is the late Bill Campbell. I love Bill Campbell.
Bill was somebody who was really trying to make an impact, really trying to support people, but he wasn't something he needed to be in light. He wasn't a, "Look at me. Look at me." He was just out there doing things, helping, supporting, making an impact. Yes, he's definitely one of my modern-day heroes.
Guy Kawasaki:
I love the part of your book where you discuss the impact of two teachers, and I would like you to discuss how teachers affected your life.
Shellye A.:
Oh, big time. So my family moved to an area outside of Los Angeles, a suburb kind of outside of LA. And we were moving to Philadelphia. I was in the first grade and we literally moved over Christmas. So imagine, you're starting a new school and you're not starting when everybody else starts, but you are just plopped in there. Now that's hard enough, but then, I'm the only black girl, not just in my class, in the entire grade, and honestly, I think the school.
Okay, but it's the 1960s, so it's racially charged. There's many people that want civil rights, there was many that don't, and here I am, so I was not an easy time for me at all. Frankly, I kind of went into a shell after a number of things that happened to me.
So it's now third grade, and my mother use to make us go to summer school. My parents had four children in less than five years, so summer school was not because we didn't do well in school, summer school was, "You have to be out of the house." So we all had to go to summer school. We got to pick what classes we took, but we had to go.
So summer school had a sewing class, so I took a sewing class, and here I am, we laid out our patterns. Well, I was too tall, so she had to cut the pattern and spread it out to get extra space and pin it. So we did all this, and then we went for a lunch break and we came back and it's time to cut out our patterns. So I'm cutting away, cutting, cutting, cutting, and I forgot about the separation. So I'm cutting around the pattern, and I literally cut the dress that I was supposed to be making in half.
So the kids around me start giggling and laughing, I ruined my dress, the whole bit. At this point I’m shy and I'm kind of inward and I'm just feeling mortified. Right here, she had another reason why I don't fit in and why I'm just not good.
My teacher after that... I mean, she helped me fix it, and then after that, she actually approached my mom and offered to have continue taking sewing lessons at her place. She had a ranch kind of place. I honestly think I want nothing to do with sewing, because when I got there she actually had horses. She asked me if I would like to ride? And I said, "Yes."
I mean, imagine a kid... I will tell you, Guy, that whole experience of riding a horse, sitting on top, it's just me, it's her, we're doing things... For the first time I started to feel like I'm on top of the world, maybe I can actually do something. Maybe I can actually control something. I honestly think she just saw something in this little shy girl and made an extra effort to really help me, and it did. It helped me come out of my shell. So Mrs. Lutzinger was her name, and to this day I credit her.
The other one that really helped was fifth grade, and math teacher named Mrs. Misrahi, and I liked math, I was good at math, so she told me, because I just liked helping people, if I finish my math first, I could help other students with their math. That was all I needed. I was always first one done and then I would go around and help other people.
So suddenly I started to be seen differently, as someone who is actually smart, who knows what she's doing, and then she's helpful. So it all fit into this image of what I ultimately wanted to be and do anyway. So those two teachers really made an impact in helping me to build some self-esteem in an environment that was not very supportive.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is it not so ironic, if not just plain stupid, that teachers are paid so little? I can't wrap my mind... There's like an inverse relationship - the less do for society, it seems the more you make. I think that's just a crime, and we should take all the monies being spent on building a wall and give it to educators, but we don't want to go down that hole.
Shellye A.:
Yes. I was going to say that's a much bigger broader discussion, Guy, I don't think we have enough time.
Guy Kawasaki:
You had a great discussion about how to make your own luck. So please, how do you make your own luck?
Shellye A.:
Yes. I felt I found that, by setting goals and being intentional, that you absolutely can make your luck. While many people will set goals, some people put plans in place, very few people make decisions every day consistent with teacher plans.
Let me just give some examples. I just assumed that what my plan was, that it was going to happen, so therefore, I made decisions today, consistent with what I planned for in the future, and now what would happen is, when things actually happened, I was actually ready and I was prepared. A really simple example is wedding.
So my parents said, “We will help you with college or we'll help you with the wedding cost, you have to pick one.” So of course, I picked college, which means I knew the wedding I had to pay for.
In my plan, I wanted to get married younger versus older, meaning I'd love to get married ideally in my early twenties. I wanted to have kids younger and so that's why I wanted to do that. So that meant that while I'm going to school and I'm paying for part of school too, I need to start also making money and saving it for a wedding because we had a big family and I wanted a big wedding.
So I actually started working... I mean, I worked twenty hours a week. I catered on weekends, I did all kinds of things while I was going to school, and I didn't spend it. I spent so, so little, even though I had enough, I spent so little.
I used to volunteer for receptions on campus, because the faculty's always having something. I would volunteer to help serve and clean up. Why? Because all that leftovers, I got to take leftovers home. I lived on macaroni and cheese and salami and ham and all the right, whatever, olives, whatever. I lived on that stuff because now it saved me food bill and I had more money to save.
Okay, so fast forward. I had no boyfriend that was serious at the time, I had no engagement, but I'm saving for this wedding, because that's when I want to get married. Fast forward, I got married at twenty-two, and I paid for my wedding and we had just about 300 people there.
So I got lucky, right? I got lucky that I was able to pay for it and I didn't have to take a loan? Absolutely right, I got lucky.
Guy Kawasaki:
But I would not call that luck.
Shellye A.:
I know.
Guy Kawasaki:
It was not. Luck is you within the lotto. Luck is you find $5,000 in a sack, on a bench. I mean, that's lucky. That's not luck what you did.
Shellye A.:
But here's the thing, Guy, luck is in the eye of the beholder, okay? So luck is when things seem to work out. You got lucky, and so I have been lucky often in my life.
If you look from the outside I have absolutely been lucky, and that's really my point. My point is you can by being intentional, by setting some things in place, you can actually have want you need when an opportunity comes forward. The skills, the experience, the knowledge, who knows, the flexibility, something and therefore you make yourself lucky.
Guy Kawasaki:
I read your back, actually twice now and I will say that of the factors that helped you achieve success I would not say that "luck" was very important.
Shellye A.:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Grit maybe, work your ass off, maybe.
Shellye A.:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Discipline maybe, but not luck. Luck is that you just had the right name and whatever.
Shellye A.:
I know. But, Guy-
Guy Kawasaki:
Light skin color, whatever.
Shellye A.:
But, Guy, I can't tell you the number of people that have told me, "Oh, Shellye, you are so lucky." Something happens, "Oh, you're so lucky." All I'm saying is, luck is in the eye of the beholder, and that's how you improve your luck.
Guy Kawasaki:
They're clueless if they think it's luck, but anyway, how do you define ambition? Because the word ambition is in your title and it can be taken - not your title, I mean - but the word ambition has both positive and negative connotations. So how do you define it and what's the right level?
Shellye A.:
Absolutely. So I believe that all ambition means is that you have objectives, goals that you are trying to accomplish, and to me, that's want ambition is. So whether that is in business that you're trying to aspire to a role, or a job, or a company, or something, or you're trying to aspire to make an impact and what have you.
So ambition obviously has a broad definition. I can be ambitious and my full ambition is trying to help my church increase their overall membership. To me, that is an ambitious objective, that is absolutely ambition. It could be becoming a CEO, it could be that my ambition is to ensure that my kids... Ambition shows up in so many different ways and honestly, when the negative connotation comes in, I just think it's misinterpreted.
When we say, "Oh ambition is bad." How can ambition be bad? When ambition just means that you're striving, working and trying to make an impact, to achieve, to inspire... It means a lot of different ways in which it comes across.
My mother is one of the most ambitious people I know. Mom never worked outside of her home when she got married, but did she impact things? Absolutely. PTA, church, family. When you look at it, she was always making an impact and had objectives, and things she was working towards. That is what ambition is, and the reason it's in my title is because I'm tired of ambition good being used as a negative.
I've heard that people use ambition yet it's not meant to be a compliment necessarily. I'm thinking, "What are you talking about?" Think about it, would you actually raise a child and say, "Now, listen. We want you to work hard and study and do all these things, but don't be too ambitious. Don't be..." We would never do that! So why do we want to tell anybody not to be ambitious?
Anyway, so the whole unapologetic thing is just everyone has a right to ambitious, and you should not have to apologize for it. Figure out what impact you want to make and go make it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you think society judges ambitious women more harshly and more negatively?
Shellye A.:
Oh, for sure. For sure. I have yet to have a man tell me that someone told him they were ambitious and it was actually a negative versus a positive. With women, we have absolutely heard it in terms of as a negative. So, yes, it does.
Guy Kawasaki:
What can we as society do about that?
Shellye A.:
Think! Just think about it. Go back to the analogy I gave, why would we ever see that as a negative?
If I'm running a company, I want employees who are working hard, and striving, trying to accomplish something, right? You want to take in and foster that ambition, not harness, "Oh, don't work too hard." What? So I think we're just not thinking about it.
We have these expectations, honestly, that are just left over from the roles that we expect people to play. Honestly, women, we are supposed to be supporters. We are supposed to support, we are supposed to help. We're supposed that great number two.
Guy Kawasaki:
Says who?
Shellye A.:
I don't know. Says a lot of people who feel that we're too ambitious, and I think that's ridiculous! I think it's also... Guy, I think it's subconscious. I don't think people are sitting there in their mind thinking, "I don't want ambitious women,” but somehow, when it comes right down to it, something happens, it's almost like this reaction, this knee-jerk. I'm very hopeful, I think it's actually declining.
Guy Kawasaki:
This is also going not on another rat hole, but this weekend I had a discussion. My wife and I had a discussion with two of our close friends and it got to the point of the analysis of why Hillary lost, and my analysis is that, if there were a man with the identical resume - everything else is the same, just gender was different - that man would be president today. There is no doubt in my mind, and shame on America.
Shellye A.:
Listen, studies show that time and time again, Guy, time and time again... The famous Harvard business case on Heidi Roizen versus Howard Roizen. There are so many studies that just show that we absolutely do have this subconscious view that, deep down, we believe men make better leaders. Deep down, we believe that women don't, and we have to work hard to change the paradigm and I think the more of us that actually step into leadership and demonstrate and show, people will start getting used to the fact that women do this as well, if not better at times.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you think women believe that too? Have they been conditioned to believe it?
Shellye A.:
Oh, yeah, I do. Again, I'm not talking everybody. When I say men, I'm not talking about every man, and when I say women, I'm not talking about every woman, by any degree, but studies have actually shown that indeed some women do believe, again, deep down, that men make better leaders.
Again, a lot of it has been how we were cultured. Who do we see as our leaders? Who shows up? What are the visions in the pictures that we see from the time we're really small? All of that plays into it. This the same thing that plays into race, it's the same concepts, so it's unfortunate, but time will improve this.
Guy Kawasaki:
Imagine if there was a supreme court justice who was brought up believing that men have the sole leadership position, that's another hole we could go down. Anyway, okay.
So kind of the flip side of leadership and luck and grit and all that is the imposter syndrome. So tell us about the impostor syndrome.
Shellye A.:
Absolutely. Actually it runs - I talk about it in depth in a few pages - but it runs all the way through. Impostor syndrome is something that I have suffered from my entire life. Studies show that most people suffer from it at some point or another, women more than men, and then women of color the most.
So what is it? For those of you that may not have heard the term, basically it means that you get to a point where you get an opportunity, get invited into a room or a new job, a new project, something, and you suddenly feel, "Oh my God. Do I know enough? Do they know that I don't know everything? Can I really do this? I'm not sure I can do this." It's all that self-doubt that eats away in your mind and in your head that tells that you're just not good enough, and that one day they're going to figure it out, you're to be found to be a fraud." So that's the whole concept of impostor syndrome.
I'll tell you, it's hard. I'm not over it. I'd love to say, “Am I over it?” There's still some times when you get that little needling, if you will, of doubt. What I have learnt is how to deal with it because if you don't deal with it, then it can stop you. You don't take the opportunity, or you don’t take the job, or you don't walk into the room, or take the project, or speak up, because you're afraid.
So here are my quick steps - and there's more covered, obviously, in the book - but number one is: realize everybody has it. So as I used to tell my kids when they watch TV and crazy things happened, I'm like, "Guys, remember: this is television. This isn't real. This is all make-believe." Well, this whole impostor syndrome, it's make-believe; it's not real. Everybody has it, it's not you, it's not personal. That's one.
Two: when people offer you a job, when they invite you into a room, when they ask you to participate, they're doing it because they believe that you are capable and that you have that potential, and that capability, so believe them!
Three: if those two things still don't get you, then fake it. Fake it until you make it is, honestly, the strategy that I deployed a lot, which is "Okay. I'll make it.” Fifty-years-old and I'm walking into my first Verizon board meeting, and I have now been CEO, I've served on public boards for eight years already. I've done all these things, and just as I'm getting ready to walk in, I'm thinking, "Oh, God. Oh my God, I'm I really... Am I ready? Do they know..." it all kind of comes back. So shoulders back, deep breath, I'm like, "All right. I'm walking in as a Verizon board director and I'm going to act like I know exactly what I'm doing because, eventually, I will. Eventually we all do. So just remember that.
Then, if that still doesn't work, then get a cheerleader. Get somebody to remind you of how good you are. Somebody who'll literally say, "Shellye, go. Guy, go." I mean, a really cheerleader. Somebody who pumps you up, gets you ready for the game.
Guy Kawasaki:
Bill Campbell.
Shellye A.:
Exactly!
Guy Kawasaki:
Right? Bill Campbell.
Shellye A.:
That's right! That's right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Couldn't I make the case that, at least, some impostor syndrome is a sign of intelligence and maybe even humility? If you have no impostor syndrome, if you truly believe you deserve everything, and it's all merit and you've done it and blah, blah, blah; aren't you a little delusional? I don't know what's worse, delusion or impostor syndrome?
Shellye A.:
Okay. Now I'll call it, you're giving two ends of the spectrum, all right?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes. Yes.
Shellye A.:
You’re somewhere in the middle. The middle is when somebody offers you a job and you think, "Oh wow. That's great, they think I'm ready. Okay." Right?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Shellye A.:
Now that's having humility that's coming in, but that's not really imposter syndrome. Impostor syndrome is something that will actually stop you if you lean into it. It will actually stop you from moving forward. Stop you from accepting a job, stop you from raising your hand, taking the lead. It will actually stop you. So there's two ends of the spectrum, but there's definitely a middle.
Guy Kawasaki:
No one has ever called you on, "It's immoral. It's not transparent. It's a lie when you fake it until you make it"?
Shellye A.:
Oh, no! Honestly, it's just a concept you're trying to psyche yourself up. It's not so much that I'm faking what I know, as it is, I'm just telling myself, "Okay. Act like you're confident. Act like you know," It's that.
No, I've never had anybody call me on it because I don't actually pretend. I mean, I don't talk about things that I don't know about. I mean, I don't jump into is things. It's really more of mental psyche.
It's not much different than this concept of teams. Football players get ready, they go into the huddle, they talk about the strategy, then it's, "One, two, three, go!" But why do they that, "One, two, three, go"? It's, "Okay. We're get our energy. Get ready, we're ready to go to battle." It's getting that mindset right. That's what I'm talking about.
Guy Kawasaki:
What is a CEO today? In a pandemic, what's the role?
Shellye A.:
I will tell you that CEOs today are expected to be more of a statesman than ever. Unfortunately, when leadership is not as strong as people need it to be in government, then they tend to look towards their corporate leaders. Right now, I think that's what's happening. I believe that CEOs are having to play a much broader role, not just running the company, and delivering returns to shareholders, but much more of the statesman.
Just look at the what the Business Roundtable decided, which is, "The role of the company is not just optimize returns to shareholders, but also to make sure that employees are taken care of, the overall suppliers, the community," it's a much broader definition of the role, and we're seeing it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Who do you think personifies this?
Shellye A:
Oh, gosh. I think there are a lot of good, but I would call people who are out there trying to do what's right for their company as well as what's right for the community, et cetera. I’d put Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon, I would totally put him I that category. In many ways, I'd put Jamie Dimon in that category. He was leading the Business Roundtable when they decided this new definition, et cetera.
The good news is we have executives all over the place, even the CEO of Alaska Airlines, Brad Tilden, I’d put into that category. There's a number of them that are out there, that are trying to actually do the right thing by business but also by overall community.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's say, in this current political situation, what is the role of… Let's say that you are a CEO, and you don't support racism, misogynism, anti-immigrant, all the bad stuff. Do you say to yourself, "If I have to play ball with the current government. If I have to go to the business luncheon at the White House. If I have to show that I'm giving tools of our factory with the leaders of this political party, is my responsibility to the shareholders? Because that may mean that maybe our product won't be on the list in this trade war with China,” or do you say, "My greater responsibility is to society to not endorse someone who has these negative connotations?" Where do you draw the line between shareholders, employees, and society?
Shellye A.:
I'll be very honest. I think the situation that we've gotten in, the polarization of where we've ended up in terms of, "You're with us, or you're against us," and there's nothing in between,” is ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous.
So when you ask me, "Well, what should we do in terms of our company and leadership and the whole bit,” bottom line is I don't have to agree with you to be able to talk to you. I don't have to agree with you to be able to discuss and determine what things should happen.
I mean, believing that we can't even have conversations or dialogues or compromise or whatever just because people have different views? I think it is ridiculous.
So to me, for a leader of a company or an organization, it doesn't matter who the country elects. We still have to work within the framework of business, government, laws, all those things. So I need to talk to who I need to talk to, right? I need to have discussions and compromise, so I don't see it as of...
Guy Kawasaki:
I think many people don't understand, what is it like, and what are your responsibilities, to be on the board of directors of a company like Verizon or Nordstrom?
Shellye A.:
You're right. A lot of people don't know. It's like, "What goes on in that room?" So I'll tell you, our jobs are to represent the shareholders.
We need to ensure that the companies have the right strategy, then the right management - so that's the CEO - and are following the right rules, regulations, policies, procedures, et cetera, to be able to execute and deliver consistent returns to shareholders, while being a good corporate citizen. Need to ensure that they've created an environment in which people are safe and able to work and to thrive, and that we have good relationships and working business practices with our suppliers all over the world. So think of us as representing each of the different shareholders in the room to ensure that the company is operating the way we want it to operate.
We don't actually make operational decisions. We're there to provide oversight, advice, counsel, support and review, but not to actually make operating decisions, that's the management's job.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think people have this impression that, let's say, there's nine people on the board, and Verizon decides to do something, and they think, "Oh, yeah. It was at least a five/four vote that doing that was approved." On the other hand, is it always a rubber stamp for the management? How does it work at that kind of Fortune 500 board?
Shellye A.:
Certainly. So back to operational decisions, typically most boards have policies and procedures about what decisions or level of investment, what have you, actually have to have board review or don't. Back to management actually operates.
At the end of the day, the board has a voice, but management decides. Can management actually make decisions that the board doesn't agree with? They absolutely can. It's just that over time, it's the board's decision as to where or not that management stays in place.
So that is the ying and yang with regards to this. Board provides oversight, input, perspective, management ultimately decides what to do, and the board decides is doing a good job.
Guy Kawasaki:
Shifting gears. Talk about planning for life now.
You bought a coat at the age of nineteen, with the plan that this coat has to work when you are twenty-five or twenty-six and pregnant. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around someone who could plan that far, and who would even think, "In six years, I'm going to get pregnant, I'm going to need a bigger coat, so I'm going to buy that now"? Just help me understand how... Do you have a different kind of brain? I'm speechless, like "What?"
Shellye A.:
Yeah. This goes back to the point I was making earlier about once I made my plan, I just assumed that the plan was going to happen, and therefore I made decisions consistent with that. So I told you already, I was saving for the wedding. Well, I said I wanted to get... Ideally, I got married early and I ideally therefore I had kids early. I didn't have a lot of money, because I'm in school and I'm saving for a wedding. So I didn't have a lot of money to spend.
I am super practical, so I thought, "Okay. I need a new coat. I'm nineteen, I need a new winter coat, and how long should a good winter coat last? I'm not on fashion, just how long should it really last?" My family I was like, "Okay. Well, you know what? That should be like, six, seven years at least. A coat should last that long." So I said, "Well, if everything works out the way I want it to, in six or seven years, I should be pregnant."
When I was trying on styles, the whole style that was in... Let's juice say, that was cool and fashionable, was the double-breasted pea coat, real fitted coat, and I thought, "Well, that's not going to work,” and so I bought a swing coat. It can still be warm, I used it all the way through, and I did wear it when I was pregnant with my kids.
That was just me being practical as well as... But I also have to tell you... Here's what this does, and I know sounds super, super crazy, but here's what it does when you actually make those decisions. Every time I put on the coat, every time I brought home the leftover cheese and salami home; every time, all those little things are happening, it is just reinforcing in my brain, my goal, my plan and my focus and then things happened, I found a man that was lifelong partner, I sure did. I got married at twenty-two, I had two kids, still while in my twenties, which is what I wanted to do. I mean, all that ended up happening, but I was visioning that every step of the way, with all these little decisions. I know, I'm really over the top.
Guy Kawasaki:
Have you seen a generational drift in the sense that your two kids are buying clothes figuring out what they need in years or…?
Shellye A.:
Well, I'll tell you. In some ways-
Guy Kawasaki:
Is it genetic?
Shellye A.:
No, it’s definitely not genetic. So I would tell, my daughter is closest to me. I like to tell people; my daughter wants to conquer the world and my son just wants to impact it. She told me in no uncertain terms. She said, "Mom. I'm not making a list." Let me explain what that meant. I actually had a list of what I thought I needed in a life partner, and that way when I was dating, I could figure, "All right. Is this partner material or just fun? And if it was fun, then that was nice, but I need to find my life partner.”
She told me, she goes, "Mom. I am not making a list." She goes, "I know you had a list for daddy, I am not making a list,” and I said, "Fine. You don't have to make a list, but you know what? I bet you, if you ask her now, she did not write down a list, she had a list in her head," and she picked a great man.
Guy Kawasaki:
When she was nineteen, did she buy a minivan figuring out that she'd be...
Shellye A.:
No. She didn't do any of that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Really tactically, a young person listening to this. How do you make a life plan? Do you literally sketch it out for the next sixty years?
Shellye A.:
No. Okay. No, I didn't sketch out all the details over a sixty-year period. Literally, the overall goal which when I first started out, was CEO. Then it was breaking that down into, "Okay. So if I want to be CEO, then what has to be true?" Looking at what kind of roles people took, but I didn't have it all mapped, I just had the first step.
When I started working, I wanted to pick the right industry, which is a growing industry, because if you pick a growing industry you tend to get more responsibility faster because they never have enough resource, and then I picked the first P&L role, I knew I had to have profit and loss responsibility. So my goals became chunked, if you will, just five or six years out, as I worked each way to get to that ultimate step. So, no, I didn't have everything mapped out, but I usually had a pretty good plan that was a five, six year in detail, and then the rest was just chunks as I kept moving up.
Guy Kawasaki:
Isn't your advice contrary to want many people tell young people, which is, pursue your passions? You didn't have a passion for technology, you just decided that it’s a growth industry and that's where I'm going, right?
Shellye A.:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're touching on something that gets to one of my pet peeves. We tell young people, people getting ready to go to college and whatever we say, "Follow your dreams. Follow your dreams, do what you're passionate about." Let me tell you why I have a challenge with that advice.
At nineteen, twenty, even twenty-one, you actually have not had that much experience, not as a quasi-adult. I say quasi-adult so I'll give you sixteen on. All right, let's say, sixteen on. So for sixteen on, you've had three to six years of experience, how can you possibly know what dreams you have for the world, for your life? You haven't had a broad enough experience. I think it's terrible advice.
I think we actually cause a lot of kids to like, "Oh my God. I have to figure out what my dream is and what my passion is right now and I don't have it so something's wrong." People get all stuck trying to figure all this out. "No, just pick something." I mean, the CEO was not that I said, "Oh, my passion and my dream and it's to be this..." No. I just picked something.
Now, you may pick something and then figure out, "No. This isn't it,” but you know what? That's okay. Because by picking something, you've at least moved forward. You've gained some skills, you've gained some experience and you can build on that when you need to move to the next thing. So I'm a big believer in, not so much, "Follow your dreams."
If you don't know what you want to do, then it really doesn't matter, so why don't you pick something that is in demand, build some skills that are actually in demand? You might find that you like it. There's a book that's written... Grit is a great book, but one of the things that it's true is that you tend to like things that you're good at.
Give yourself a chance to get good at some things, to see you might like. If you pick things in demand, you'll always have lots of choices and opportunities. No matter what industry you end up choosing or that you fall in love with or like, et cetera. So yeah. I don't like the advice of follow your dreams to somebody who has very little experience yet.
Guy Kawasaki:
What happens if your kids come home someone day and say, "My dream is to be a professional accordion player. I love the accordion"?
Shellye A.:
Yeah. "I think that's great. Then take accordion lessons, absolutely." I will tell you, "Hey..." The best example I can give you, I'll talk about a niece of mine. So I have a niece and she is passionate about acting, and she's good at it, okay?
Guy Kawasaki:
Mm-hmm.
Shellye A.:
She's good at, but I've also had an influence in her life and I've talked about having options, so she ended up going to University of Pennsylvania and becoming and engineer.
Now she acted all the way through school. She was leads in play, she did the whole bit, and then as she's getting ready to graduate, one of her advisors tells her, because she's still interested in acting. One of her advisors tells her, "Oh, now is the perfect time. Why don't you try... You love acting, follow your passion. Do the acting, you're only young once."
She's graduating summa cum laude, from University of Pennsylvania, with an engineering degree, all right? I just want to say, she's been told, "Follow your dreams to be an actor." I couldn't get to that phone fast enough when my sister told me that. I'm like, “Sierra…”
Now, here's what I told her though, I said, "Listen. Acting… What do people that when they start acting? You have to go find jobs. That's why people have all these part-time jobs, waiting tables, doing et cetera." I said, "Go work. Even if it's only for a year or two. Leverage your degree, get the value your degree will build, and then if you literally decide that what you really want to do is acting, great. But now that part-time job you do, you can make like fifty to seventy-five bucks an hour because you can do programming stuff on the side, not waitressing for nineteen bucks." So let's talk about practical here, definitely.
I'm not telling people, "Don't ever follow your dreams,” but I am saying, “Lets be practical about it. Set yourself up for it. So it'd be fabulous, she wants to become an actress and she's great, wonderful. But she at least now has skills that she can leverage in ways to help support her.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why did you think sales is a good place to start in your career?
Shellye A.:
Oh, there's so much you learn in sales that can help you throughout the rest of your career. The number one thing is, you learn that ‘no’ does not mean ‘no.’
No means not now. It means something is not right. Either if you're selling something, the price may not be right, the terms and conditions are not right, timing is not right, the support's not right, something is not right. Therefore, you learn that it's actually great to get a ‘no.’ It is so much better to ask and get a ‘no,’ than to hint around, guess around, because then you never know what you're dealing with.
In business, that is phenomenal, it opens you up. Most people don't want to get ‘no’s.’ They're afraid they're going to be told, ‘no.’ I'm like, "No. If you don't get ‘No’s,’ then you're not asking for enough." So you absolutely want to get ‘No’s.’ You learn that in sales, and you learn it's not the end of the world, and it's all good.
You also learn how to qualify. Qualify, qualify, qualify, and that also helps you in business. It helps you understand opportunities, is it real, what's the opportunity? Not just for yourself and career, but frankly, whatever business you're running, organization, what you're trying to do. The resiliency, the realization that you have to ask a whole bunch of times before you get a yes. All of that, I think, is very helpful for building your overall career and being successful running operations
Guy Kawasaki:
Perfect. Okay. What should one look for in a first job?
Shellye A.:
Honestly, the key to the first job is to get the first job. I mean, when you say, "What should you look for?" Ideally, you look for it in the field that you're looking for. You want to look for a boss or et cetera, that you like, but a lot of times even in your first job, you never even interview with your actual boss, companies hire people right off of campus and then decide what they're going to do with you.
So the big thing to look for is the company. Is it a company whose values, whose strategy, whose role in their industry is one in which you want to be a part of? You're really choosing company more so than people only because they'll put you wherever they need you, when you first get on board. The key to the first job is just get a first job because once you have a job, it's so much easier than to figure out what you want to do next.
Guy Kawasaki:
So totally agree. Next question, is college necessary anymore?
Shellye A.:
It depends upon what you want to do and also who you are. For my children, I think college is necessary no matter what they want to do. I think it's harder food people who are minorities to actually get... Hmm, what should I say? To actually get the validation and the respect for what it is that they bring, and I do think credentials help.
Now, that said, I think there are therefore some people, and some jobs, that you don't need degrees for, at all. I think we have just overinflated that you need degrees. You can learn a number of skills. You can learn a number of technical skills that you can learn and you don't need a whole four-year degree to enable you to actually be good at doing that.
I think companies should go through and look at their jobs and reclassify them. For options, I still encourage people to get a degree, that can get a degree because it will give you more options later.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's say magically, tomorrow you wake up and you're president of the United States. What are the top things you would do?
Shellye A.:
I would try to bring the country together. Honestly, it's the same thing I would do with those entering a company, where there was huge divisions. It would be the same thing, "It's all right. We got to repair and bring people back together because if we're not operating as a team, we can't be successful, and if we're not operating as a team in the country, it's going to be really hard for our country to be as successful as it can be.
I would be all about how to unite, and then once we're bringing people together, now we can start to solve real problems. What are real problems? Focusing on, what I would call, some of the basics - healthcare, education, opportunity. That's where I would put my focus.
Guy Kawasaki:
How would you bring the country together?
Shellye A.:
It starts with listening. It really does start with listening. At the end of the day, I don't believe that we're really that different in what we want.
So I would treat it the same way I treated it in business, when you have conflict, which is, peel the onion. When I say, peel the onion, "All right. We disagree on this. Okay, fine. Let's peel the onion until we find what we do agree on." Because you could typically find that if you're in company, at the end of the day you're trying to achieve the same strategy, goal and/or objective. You might have different ways on which you think it should be achieved, so you peel the onion back until you find the point at which you do agree, and then once you find that, then you build it back up again together through conversation and compromise and discussion. You got to find that common ground first, and the good news is, the common good exists, we just have to dig a little bit to find it.
Guy Kawasaki:
What is your advice to a young black woman in America today?
Shellye A.:
Be ambitious. Set big goals and go after them wholeheartedly. Buy my book and read some steps and ways to get that happen. That's what I would tell them.
Guy Kawasaki:
As you look back on your life, and your success, and your determination. You threaded the needle many times, you achieved your goals, it was grit, it wasn't luck. What's the lesson, or the meaning, of your life?
Shellye A.:
I have been very fortunate that a lot of people have helped and supported me along the way. My whole reason for being is I want people that I come in contact with, where it's for a short moment or for a long relationship, to feel that, somehow, I have made a positive impact on them and their life. That's my whole reason for being.
Guy Kawasaki:
Bear with me everybody as I read you a few reviews.
Supratentorial TNT;
“I'm a relative newcomer to the Remarkable People Podcast. Having discovered them after learning about Guy from a IDEO creative conference webcast, and he had me at ‘hello.’ I started with Jane Goodall and Margaret Atwood - my comfort zone - before venturing into the business and technology interviews. With each one, I gained a valuable nugget or several. A party favor that I could use later, presented in a way that tech semi-literates such as myself can comprehend.
Now, listening to this latest podcast with Sinan Aral, Guy has created a treasure trove, and just like his, my head was exploding throughout the hour-long conversation. Packed down insights into the pitfalls of social media, how it plays on the human herd mentality, and the potential for drivers of this essential human currency to cause harm, as well as enrich us. This episode is so dense that I had to listen to it twice. All I can say is, this is going to be a tough act to follow, and can't wait to hear who else is on Guy's roster.”
Another one from Filly Cheese;
“Remarkable People is by far my favorite podcast. I get excited when I open the application, and there's a new episode. Guy always has the coolest guests. On another note, the production quality is top-notch. It really bothers me when I have to struggle to hear a guest speak on a podcast, to the point that I would just skip it and move on. I don't have that problem with Remarkable People. The audio is always clear, the mark of a true professional. Thank you, Guy, and keep up the good work.”
Last one. Bittersweet one by Interested Bystander;
“Guy is very interested in Guy and it often shows. He is now letting his guests carry the show.” Whatever make you happy. Go to the Apple Podcast app an leave a review, maybe I'll read it next time. Thank you.
Back to Shellye Archambeau. I hope you appreciated the strength and power of Shellye Archambeau. I hope you learned about ambition and why it's a great thing. The impostor syndrome, how to get over it, and sometimes how you just have to fake it until you make it. Truly, she is a woman with a plan.
Speaking of plans, Jeff Sieh and Peg Fitzpatrick are always planning how to make this podcast better; my thanks to both of them.
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People.
Remember, please wash your hands. Don't go into crowded places and wear a damn mask. One more piece of advice, just listen to Tony Fauci and Vivek Murthy. Mahalo and aloha.

This episode of Remarkable People was brought to you by reMarkable - the paper tablet company.

This is Remarkable People.