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Ep 47: Steering Companies Through Crisis: Chelsea Grayson, Managing Partner at Pivot
72 Plays4 months ago
How do you build trust with investors who tap you for the CEO role? How do you prepare yourself to lead companies through some of their toughest moments, including bankruptcy, and guide other companies through their transformations as a board member?
Chelsea Grayson, managing partner of corporate restructuring at Pivot > and former CEO and board member of brands like American Apparel, True Religion, and Spark Networks, has steered many ships through rough waters, including post-chapter 11 turnarounds, corporate wind-downs, and firing CEOs for cause. She has transitioned from board member to operator and back again, and is currently sharing her expertise on the boards of Xponential Fitness and Beyond Meat.
Listen as Chelsea discusses her legendary journey from law firm partner to GC, CEO, Board Member, and now managing partner of an all-star corporate restructuring company, and offers tips to lawyers who are looking to find a board seat.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-46
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Rising to partner at Jones Day and Loeb & Loeb, two big LA-based law firms: 3:00
Transition to in-house legal (and a CEO role) at American Apparel: 9:35
Tips for building relationships with investors: 15:11
Managing CEO transitions: 18:34
Joining boards and positioning yourself as a good board member: 26:30
Becoming CEO of True Religion Jeans during a turnaround: 34:19
Sitting on the board of Sugarf ina after a bankruptcy turnaround: 37:45
Stepping into a tech CEO role at Spark Networks: 42:00
Founding Pivot >, a corporate restructuring company: 47:39
Book recommendations: 55:08
What you wish you’d known as a young lawyer: 58:10
Connect with us:
Chelsea Grayson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseagrayson24/
Tyler Finn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft: https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading CLM platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
What makes a good board member?
00:00:00
Speaker
So what makes a good board member? It's tried and true. It's head in, fingers out. The opposite of what you've been doing all your career. Other things that make good board members are
00:00:15
Speaker
How can you build trust with investors so they tap you for the top job? CEO. Prepare yourself to lead companies through some of their toughest moments, including bankruptcy. And guide other companies through transformations as a
Who is Chelsea Grayson?
00:00:28
Speaker
board member. Today, we're lucky to be joined on the abstract by Chelsea Grayson, who has risen from being a partner at Jones Day and Loeb & Loeb, to a general counsel role and then CEO of American Apparel, True Religion Brand Jeans, and Spark Networks. In addition to serving on the boards of these companies and in a number of other companies, including household names like Sugarfina and Exponential Fitness, she most recently joined Pivot as a managing partner to work on corporate restructurings where she has a lot of experience both from the board level and as an operator. Congrats on that new role, Chelsea, and welcome to the abstract.
00:01:06
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
What inspired Chelsea to pursue law?
00:01:09
Speaker
I want to get started by asking you a little bit about your path into law. I think, is as you know, many of our listeners are chief legal officers, general counsels, other folks who who work on in-house legal teams. What inspired you to become um a lawyer at the at the very beginning? What an existential question to start with, boy. um Well, you know from a really young age, my grandparents but just kept saying she's going to be a Philadelphia lawyer, which is a really old fashioned way of just saying she's you know she's adversarial, I guess.
00:01:46
Speaker
yeah or better better characterized as she vigorously advocates for her client's position, you know, or her client leads myself at that young age. So I had sort of heard it over and over and over as I was growing up. And, you know, my parents being old hippies, you know, who met at Berkeley in the sixties, grandparents were union people from, you know, the early days and the depression and coming out of that. So, you know, the old was sort of open to lots and lots of healthy debate and lots of interaction at the dinner table, which people don't even know about today. You know, hardly ever anyone. like Everyone's so busy. So it was sort of, you know, drummed into me from an early age. And then, you know, it sort of went from there. I was an English Lit major at UCLA, go Bruins. And, you know, as an English Lit major with a minor and busy con, which came into play much later on.
00:02:36
Speaker
you're reading a text, you're taking a position on the text, you're advocating for that position, and you're pulling out examples from that text. And then mostly in the later parts of getting your degree, you're not writing a final, you're arguing with the professor, staying in the office and debating the position. So it prepared me really well for ultimately going to law school. When you became a lawyer, you ended up, as I mentioned, sort of rising to become a partner at at two great law firms here in in Los Angeles. Was that a difficult path? ah what What was it like at that time? like Do you have strong mentors who were able to bring you there or did did you feel like you really had to advocate for yourself to become a partner? Tell us about that journey.
The role of mentorship in Chelsea's career
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question because I do feel like the art of mentorship is lost today. And I really regret that for the millennials and the Gen Z's and the young Gen A'ers that are coming up. I really try to give that to folks as they come up, including my kids you know who you know sometimes accept it and sometimes don't accept it. yeah It doesn't matter. I think you're very, very cool at all. You know, um but yeah, absolutely. And I mean, back then we were taught to seek mentors. I don't even know if we had the word mentor back then it was just we were taught to
00:04:01
Speaker
Invest in relationships with the older seasoned folks in the office you know um i understood when i got to jones day for example skipping over a lot of detail of course i understood my i had to understand the leadership structure of the firm. You know, which most people today, if you ask them what's the leadership structure at your organization, they might be able to tell you the CEO, but not much else. So and I understood who the managing partner was, you know, who was on the comp committee, who was on the partner committee, I understood who, which all the different practice groups who ran those practice groups nationally, who locally, who ran each of the offices, you know, I mean, I very much wanted to understand who was in control of my career.
00:04:42
Speaker
And then i yeah know I proactively sought to develop relationships with them, whether it was, what can we work on together if that's appropriate? you know Whether it was, what can I do for you? Otherwise, how can I help you out? Or is there a committee I can join? Is there something I can do that you know contributes to your pro bono you know platform, whatever it is? So I really sought to try to control the direction of my career and understand you know but the relationship with the decision makers in my career on the one hand. And then on the other hand, I was a 98 grad and for a bankruptcy judge right out of law school. And then I went right to the firm who had given me my permanent offer from my summer associate position. And that was Jones day. And when I got to the firm, it was nine 99. And that was sort of the end of the height of that, you know, initial kind of tech boom.
00:05:32
Speaker
Sure. And lots and lots of, there were lots of startups at that time and we all knew the people. It was all young people doing those startups. So a lot of us young lawyers, it was ingrained in us early on that we could develop business amongst our peers because it wasn't always like their generation. So our peers were starting companies that were getting crazy valuations. We're being sold, we're going IPO. So I brought in a couple of clients to the firm And this is when I was in the new practice, when the new associate group where you don't want to declare your practice. And I was pretty sure I was going to be a litigator, just like my grandparents had always said, you know, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia lawyer. So, but these clients needed corporate help. They needed transactional help. So I brought, I brought these clients to the head of M and&A, head of corporate transactions in California, who happened to sit in my office, Bert Zweig.
00:06:24
Speaker
ah And I said, I've got these clients, you'll know what to do with them. This isn't my area, you know, have fun. And I just thought I was really so amazing because I was a little first year bringing in clients. And he said, hold on, not so fast. We are very, very, very busy in our group. I don't have any hands to spare and congrats for bringing in these two clients. But you're going to have to help me out with this work. And I said, well, what I'm, I don't know anything about corporate transactional work. I'm a litigator. And he said, That's cute. You're not anything yet. He said, you're literally a second-year lawyer in your first year of practice at a clerkship. He said, you don't know what is going on. He said, come on. It's going to be fun. Let me just teach you. You never know. And I never looked back. I became a total deal junkie, glum for him, realized he was my rabbi for life, you know did all my deals under him. He was so happy to tutor me. He only took
00:07:24
Speaker
two associates every year to train and develop. And this was the last two years of his career before he retired from the law completely. And I was trained with him for two years. And he trained me to be an honorable lawyer, an ethical lawyer, a principled lawyer. You know, he taught me to be intellectually curious at the very end. He was still debating what defines a security, you know, is with an ls security, you know, cause these were sort of new beasts. So, I mean, he was curious to the end. And you know everything I learned about the fundamental meat and potatoes of being a deal lawyer, a transactional lawyer, I learned from Bert. So absolutely from from day one, you know I do think it's vital to have someone train you how to do it right for someone to show you doors that you didn't even know existed to rooms you didn't even know existed. It's not about they are the doors for you. I mean, there were places he took me, people he introduced me to,
00:08:21
Speaker
that I would have never even known to ask to network with had it not been this 67-year-old you know curmudgeon from the midway you know from Cleveland. He had a transplant to LA, but the two of us together, it would never happen. and He just gave me my start. you know He launched me and it went from there.
Leadership and agency in career
00:08:43
Speaker
The other thing that I love about what you, the story that you just told us is the idea of agency there, right? That you have, you have some agency over your career. You can shape the arc of your career. You can try to, you know, find the right people or open these doors for yourself. That is in balance, I guess, with the idea that you need others to help sort of pull you up. this lee that is
00:09:06
Speaker
but There's always somebody, even if you're the CEO of a big public company, you still have a board. That's your boss. Their whole job is to be your boss. Even if you're their boss, if you're on that board, you've got a chair. Even if you're the chair of that board, they're shareholders. ye Always have somebody who's in control of your career somehow, some way. And if you don't understand that power structure and that dynamic, and you don't invest in those relationships and communicate correctly, you're sunk. Super wise, when you transition to go in house, a first general counsel role, actually I think maybe you're, I guess I would say you're only general counsel role because you ended up rising to become CEO and at American Apparel.
Why did Chelsea move to American Apparel?
00:09:49
Speaker
How did that come about? You'd you know you'd been a successful partner for 12, 14 years, something like that. is yeah was was that um Was that a scary leap? Did you go out and seek out that opportunity or did it come to you? yeah where Where did that come from? I mean, if you look at my high school yearbook, my senior yearbook, you know, they made us all put a little blurb under our senior picture and mine was, you know, it was where you see yourself in 10 years. And, you know, I said, I see myself, you know, running a big company in the corner office on the 50th floor of a high rise downtown. when i guess I sort of planned it out, but, and like what you you know, I, um, I had, well, let me, I'll guess I'll take, there were two parts to the question. One was how did I can get to the GC job? And then, yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
switch to the CEO gig. I mean, I what it was not planning on going in house, you make a lot of money at a partner at a big law firm, you know, and I was an expert, which is pretty rare, especially for a woman back then for a woman back then. And, you know, I was never planning, I was at low, but I was planning to laterally transition back to Jones Day, where I'd started. And, you know, I was going to get my same office, I was going to get, you know, all the same stuff, my same assistant, even, you know, and I was just I was nesting. I was going to retire and get the gold watch at 67 like Bert Zweig. And I got a call. you know I'd represented CBS Corp for years. And ae the general counsel of CBS Corp randomly happened to be having lunch with the woman who had just been placed as the chair of the board at American Apparel. Again, I'm always going to cut a little bit of those out.
00:11:26
Speaker
She said to him, and she had been in media for a long time. And so they were just having lunches, you know just social, business networking. And he said, well, what's up with you? And she said, well, you know I'm chairing American Apparel. We're obviously in eight different types of crisis, liquidity, culture, yeah ah governance, everything. And she said, and we've cleaned out the C-suite. And well the first thing I'm doing is I'm looking for a new general counsel. And she said I've you narrowed it down to three folks, i'm sort of not really jazzed about any of them, but I'm going to have to pick one. you know and the general counsel of CBS said, well, have you talked to Chelsea Grayson? She'd be perfect for this. She loves to run into a burning building. She's in governance. She loves to make rules and then enforce them. you know She's boss. And he said, you should talk to her. And so the chair reached out to me and I said, absolutely not. Because I was going to take a pay cut by 50% and they were going to offer me equity that I knew was going to go to Ashes and Dust, which it did because they we ended up filing for bankruptcy.
00:12:26
Speaker
And I said, there's just too much hair on this. you know And she said, look, this company is headquartered in Los Angeles. It is one of the rare public companies that's headquartered in Los Angeles. She said, employees of its 10,000 employees globally, 7,500 of those are here in LA. And the vast majority of those are immigrant manufacturing workers, because remember, we were vertically integrated. Yes. This company, if this company is destroyed, if this company files and has to scatter into the wind, the barriers to entry are so high that nobody will ever make a company like this again. And all these people are going to lose their jobs. They're not qualified to do anything else. They came here. Textile manufacturing is a very unique beast. And she said, you are born and raised in Los Angeles. This is your hometown.
00:13:13
Speaker
This is your moment, you know, to come in and help save this company. And I mean, what do you say to that? Right. So good pitch so it was a pitch. Right. I found myself on December 15th of 2014, you know, yeah going up the Rickety elevator. It was like one of those old New York elevators where you've got the two gates you have to close. yeah Anyway, and you know we're off to the races. That very first day is the day we terminated the CEO for cause. and
00:13:45
Speaker
Your first day of as general counsel. I had to go out and do that. And then I had to put shareholder rights plan on the shelf because you know, the poison pill because he was going to come after us and attempt to hostile takeover. And we had over a billion dollars of litigation that year. We had an SEC investigation. We had a proxy contest. I had to do an ATM raise to get more money and in the company to make our big on our on our notes but for our bond holders. And we had a unionization attempt that had to defeat in the and NLRB. Everything that happened that could happen happened in that one year. And all that business went into my office and we happened to make some t-shirts that year, but that was like a peripheral thing. So at the very end of that year, I'd gotten to know the board really well because I had done so much of what we had to do. And I wanted to know our bond holders really well. It was a group that was led by Goldman Sachs. And
00:14:39
Speaker
At the end of that year, we had negotiated a debt for equity swap with them, took it through at 11, you know, to sell it to them. And we came out of the 11 and they said to me, you should be the CEO of this company. And I remember I was doing a speaking engagement in DC and I was sitting in my hotel room. My daughter had come to watch me speak and I was like, do you have to say yes right away and not I'll think about it. No, back to you, not no, for sure. You just have to say yes. And you just have to think about the details in the house later on. And that was that, you just jump
How to build investor trust?
00:15:11
Speaker
in. What have you learned? I mean, there's like there's there's two themes there that I want to come back to across other companies that that you've helped turn around or served as a board member. I mean, one is sort of managing through bankruptcies. The other is managing executive level transitions. But the key to this one, I think, is is is also the relationship that you had with the investors and the trust that they had in you
00:15:35
Speaker
absent long tenure of operating experience. What do you think was key to, to building those trusting relationships with investors, uh, both at American apparel and, and at other companies since? Yeah. I mean, I think for one thing, you need to be a grownup and I know that's a weird, simple thing to say, and it seems obvious, but you have to show them that you have a level of maturity. Regardless, your seasoning, regardless, your, you know, how much history you've had in this particular operating role. You have to show them that you can keep your powder dry. that You can remain calm under pressure. You have to give them a sense that you.
00:16:15
Speaker
have leadership charisma so that people in the company will follow along. They might not be in love with you, but they'll follow along. Most people want a leader. Where any people are not leaders, and they want a leader, whether they can say it out loud or not. you know And so once they're a leader, they'll follow. you know And that's not a good thing. And very few people are really willing to step into the void of leadership. But investors, boards, you know shareholders of public companies, bondholders, or whatever, they know the most important thing is keeping unless they just want to take the company apart. They know the most important asset are the people and they know that the most important thing is to keep those people unified, rowing in the same direction, and just continue to rely on the prize, which is growth, which is you know profitable revenue, positive EBITDA, and keep the stock price up.
00:17:09
Speaker
so The thing the key to all of that is calm, steady leadership. And so they want that fundamentally for those reasons. And in connection with that, they need to understand they need to see and feel that you're communicating with them to the extent you can public companies, there's obviously restrictions, but they want to get the sense that you're communicating with them as transparently as possible, as honestly as possible, and as frequently and regularly as possible. here It's very easy. Then obviously they want to understand that you have this operator experience, okay, it's what it is, but that's kind of a, in some ways a second, especially when you're in a crisis situation like that, when somebody they need to urgently put someone in that seat, you know,
00:17:58
Speaker
The thing about you know talking about the board of directors for a second, i mean you know the board's first and last job is to hire and fire the CEO. And that's based on this concept of you always have to be thinking about, do we have the right CEO in place? Can we trust the CEO? And you're constantly asking that question within the boardroom. you know and If you don't, you immediately have to think about successor planning, whether it's sooner rather than later, or we can do this you know over a period of time planfully or what have you. So those are all the things that go through people's minds. it's It's really just about leadership in that position.
Managing CEO transitions smoothly
00:18:34
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit more just based on the sort of broad experience about managing CEO transitions, things that you've seen that can make that process, maybe a little less acrimonious or or adversarial and in ways that folks can get it right. Even if it's inevitably going to be difficult. I mean, look, obviously, unless it's a situation where you're just terminating somebody and you know, it's going to necessarily be adversarial. Yeah. If you can. Again, try to plan it out. i mean The CEO knows always that they are constantly being evaluated. yeahp You could have been there for three months. You know you're constantly being evaluated. That's no secret. The CEO knows that every time the board convenes to executive session at the end of the regular board meeting and kicks the CEO out,
00:19:26
Speaker
They're talking about you. i mean they but like That's the bummer part of being a CEO. you know i mean it's just like It's a very lonely and alienating job. you know um But as much as a board possibly can, if you've got time, you need to you should loop in the CEO into as much of those conversations as possible, maybe all of those conversations. you know what How much more of your plan do you have left you know after you've accomplished these things in your plan? Do you have a second part to your plan? you know, do you want to stick around and implement that? If the person is thinking about moving on to something else, they've gotten another offer, they're thinking about resigning or what have you, that's going to be really peaceful because they want to go, you understand, let them go. You you should include them as in as much of the retaining, you know, one of the search firms, interacting with the search firm, interviewing all the candidates as they come down the pike. If you have time and it's planful,
00:20:20
Speaker
But you think the CEO is not going to be ready to go, even when you let them know that, look, you know, your time here is coming to an end. We're not firing you, but we're going to ask you to resign. You know, then you might want to start to do some of that process behind the scenes because they're going to say no to whoever candidate you pick for them anyway. You know, I mean, they're going to say they're going to be salty. I mean, let's face it. People are paying our self our preservationists, you know, at heart, you know, and so. they're going to sting me the process and might even turn candidates off, you know, by not particularly amicable. So you want to be careful about those interactions. You definitely want to understand. That's interesting. CEO stance. Yeah. But, you know, look, once you've made a decision, again, and assuming it's not this the dire situation where it's got to happen and it's got to happen right now, you know, as much as you possibly can have that CEO bring the person you've now chosen to replace them into the office.
00:21:15
Speaker
introduce them to the group, have a big town hall, have a few weeks of overlap where there's a handoff period. you're introducing them around warmly, you're telling your group, your team that, look, this is great, this is peaceful, this person's gonna be a remarkable sub you know replacement for me. I'm a phone call away if you wanna talk socially, but no more no more business chatter because it's confidential and I can't know this stuff once I'm on the outside of the company. If you can do it like that and you can have the CEO co-signing their replacement, best case scenario. And sometimes it happens like that, you know, in the best of cases.
00:21:49
Speaker
In the worst of cases, you've got a founder CEO that you know you've got to rip out of there because founder CEOs can sometimes stick around too long and and it's not good for them. The longer they stick around, something bad is going to happen and then you've got to ask them. you know right And in a situation like that, the best thing you can do is immediately is drop in somebody who immediately coalesces everyone around them and says, look, um you can say, or you can go. I won't be upset if you leave. But if you stay, although I can't tell you who to talk to and who not to talk to, so you can still talk to your former boss, the founder.
00:22:24
Speaker
who I'm sure, you know, everyone worships a founder CEO, right? They'll talk to that person socially. You just can't talk to them about what's happening in the business. But the important thing is to show people that you're not mode moderating their behavior, modulating their behavior. that you really want them there, you really appreciate all the value they can bring to the business. You're not imposing all sorts of arbitrary rules that make people feel more and more like I'm going to be a bad apple and I'm going to be disloyal, you know, hold on to this right paycheck. But really, my loyalty lies with this person outside the four walls. Because unless they're rowing in your same direction, all day every day in the company, they're rowing against you.
00:23:02
Speaker
you know, and so that's the biggest thing is to reduce the tension not to put a V in between you and that and the person you just ousted to reduce the adversarial nature of it as much as possible. Calm it all down and say, it's all good. You can talk to whoever you want, you know, you can miss that person or whatever. But when you're here, this is your job. And I'll send a message that says, by the way, nobody's indispensable. So I'm going to be evaluating everybody in my first 90 days here. And you know If I find that you're good but your loyalties are split and you're not here to work every day, nine hours or whatever, then yeah we're gonna have to part ways and and that's okay too.
00:23:45
Speaker
I think that's great advice. I mean, I personally, as an employee of a business have been through three different founder CEO to outside CEO transitions. And it's not always easy for everyone who's there. And you know you you hope that the the person who's coming in is sometimes going to be a bit more of an operator or know how to bring the business to the next stage. um but It comes with comes with a lot of departures, a lot of institutional knowledge leaving, executive transitions, new culture ah sometimes too. That's why you'd be replacing the founder's CEO generally. i mean Even if they've done something bad, the person you're replacing them with is going to Yes, professionalize the the team yeah is going to be yeah about you know corporate growth strategies. you know Yes, it's absolutely going to reduce the entrepreneurial nature of the company. And that's all because you can't be a startup forever. you know I mean, public big company, Apple was a little garage company, right? But they don't want to stay that forever. I mean, they want it to be Apple. So I mean, it's by nature you're going to
00:24:53
Speaker
I was talking to somebody yesterday from Lululemon. And she said that, you know, up until about i don't know four or five years ago, one of their core, you know, companies always have a set of core values. And she said one of the core values was entrepreneurship. And she said, it then about five years ago, they took that out of their core values, and they redid their core values. And some people loaned that, she said, but she obvious when you get to be you're an $8 billion dollars company or however big Lulu is, you know, you're no longer an $80 million dollars startup, not be entrepreneurial anymore. I mean, you can't be public company, there's rules, you know, you have fiduciary obligation people. So I think that just, you know, that happens for sure. And, and you're right, culture changes when you bring in, you know, the replacement for the founder CEO. And not everyone's going to stick. But like I said earlier,
00:25:52
Speaker
Nobody is indispensable. Absolutely. Nobody. I mean, not even the president of the United States. We've got a spare, right? We've got a VP. ah So and so yes, institutional knowledge, yes, institutional history, yes, understanding of everything that's transpired before. But that's not always a good thing. You know, that's not always a good thing. Holding on to that stuff, hoarding information, doing the same thing we've always done. you know working on tradition, sometimes it's better to shake it up and just have someone drop in and say, I'm just going to do something better here.
00:26:30
Speaker
I want to ask you a little bit more about your experience with board service. And I promise we will get to True Religion and yeah and Spark and and others. But your time at American Apparel was really the start of of joining corporate boards. First of all, sort of you know what do you think for for folks coming out of the legal profession or coming coming out of you know working as a general counsel, what do you think makes a good board member? and And I think a sort of secondary part of that question, right, is how do folks position themselves for for board seats, including at public companies, right? Maybe private and public companies, both. Yeah, that's a really good question. So what makes a good board member? It's tried and true. It's head in, fingers out.
00:27:15
Speaker
I like that opposite of what you've been doing all your career. So you're not doing, and you absolutely have to remember that for a few reasons. One, it's the only thing DNO insurance policies cover. you know If they find out you've been meddling, they're not going to cover anything. So got to prove that you haven't been meddling in the operations and management of the company, the day-to-day operations of the company. That's also important when it comes to you know kind of corporate shield stuff, but we won't we won't get into all of that. But it's also important because there is already management. of that There's a management team, there's a middle management team, there's the staff generally. Those people, that's a huge payroll for any company. They're being paid a lot of money collectively to run the company day to day. They don't need you. They don't need you stymieing their efforts. They don't need you getting in their way with lots and lots of questions.
00:28:10
Speaker
And you're certainly not getting paid the way they're getting paid, you know, to do their jobs as a board member, by the way. You're not getting paid the way they're getting paid for sure. You know, we can talk about that in a sec. So you're not doing it for the money, that's for sure. you know So of course you're there to, if anyone needs anything, they can ask you for guidance. They can ask you to talk to them for 30 minutes, maybe to work out an issue that they're experiencing that you may have seen 27 times in your career. That's why you're there. You've had a seasoned career. You've seen a lot. You've done a lot. You're there to provide guidance when asked. you know There's another way of saying this, by the way, it's ask, don't task when it comes to how deals with management. so you During a board meeting or even ahead of a board meeting and prep, you can ask questions, but you should never task anybody with with doing anything. oh Can you prepare a spreadsheet so I can see? Can you make a dashboard so that I can track? Can you?
00:29:04
Speaker
make a deck for this and present it in that that's just a lot of work for people and it takes them away from the day-to-day operations. You're a guiding light. If they have to ask you questions, if they need some advice, you can drop in and do that. But generally speaking, you're there to manage the CEO and then the CEO is managing everybody else. So that's what makes a good board member. And other things that make good board members are being decisive, but after thorough and good academic and healthy debate. So there should be lots and lots of discussion in the boardroom. And then when they go around the horn and ask what everybody's opinion is, don't be wishy washy, have an opinion and be decisive and giving your vote one way or the other.
00:29:47
Speaker
And so don't be a read in the wind. And the last thing you heard is the thing that you're going to agree with. People will start to see that. The third thing I'll say, and then we can get to kind of your path to the boardroom. The third thing I'll say is two things available in between board meetings, because a lot of back channeling happens. Usually it's your chair, you know, that's reaching out and getting people's opinions and thoughts about stuff in between board meetings so that once you get to the board meeting, you know, waste time on that. you know, or just notify people of things that are happening. So they're totally up to speed when you hit the board meeting, make sure you're available for that. There's lots and lots of stuff that happens in between the actual board meetings, you know, and make sure that when you're called to duty, you're prepared to drop in because that is for sure. One of the things that you need to be prepared to do when you're a board member is step up to the plate and be a chair of a committee, step up to a member of a special committee that has to investigate something.
00:30:39
Speaker
step up to the plate and drop in as an interim CEO. If we have the tragic situation where we have to get rid of the CEO very quickly, you know, up the plate and get on squawk one morning and talk about the company, whatever whatever it is within reason, you know, be prepared to do that. And I would just say for lawyers, you know, coming up the path to the boardroom, you you know, first and foremost is in your practice, be in the boardroom as much as possible. So I was in the I was in the M and&A group, you know, when I was a partner at Jones Day and Loeb and, you know, so yes, I was doing a lot of deals. But in the end, I really tried to be more of a board advisor. So I'd have my yeah it's making the documents and doing the minor negotiations. I was in the boardroom counseling the board and the CEO.
00:31:25
Speaker
I was in the providing updates. I was negotiating the big points and then talking and then bringing them back and giving a status report to the boardroom. So then you understand the mystery of the boardroom. Cause lots of people are scared of that room. You understand the dynamic, how it works, the etiquette, how people act, what you can do and what you can't do. So there's no mystery any longer, you know? So that's cool. So once you arrive at at your first board, you kind of know how it works. You know, number one, number two, you network a lot when that, when you do that. So all those people will remember you for the next thing. Maybe they've got another board where they're experiencing a similar issue or they have to do a similar thing or whatever. And so you either get your next gig or they might actually suggest that you be placed on that board because you're a heck of a lot cheaper as a board member than you are as outside counsel. Right. Once you, once you become a general counsel,
00:32:18
Speaker
You know, same thing. You should always be in every single board meeting. Always. I mean, that's what I'm saying. If you're not, there's something wrong. and you shouldn't be You shouldn't be at that job. So always be in every board meeting. Always take the opportunity to talk to the board and present slides. If there's any sort of a ah business position that's going to open up or you see kind of ah a gap and they don't want to hire somebody from the outside, volunteer to take that. and then volunteer and then hopefully you can achieve some sort of a business, any kind of business title, chief administrative officer, do anything. So then you can start to be associated ah but as a business person. You're much more likely to get a board seat if you have a business title than unfortunately, if you have a ah law title, sure still that way. And you'll start to understand the business side of things, which is really what you need when you go to sit in the boardroom. So now you're actively interacting in the boardroom. But again, also your board is,
00:33:11
Speaker
thinking about other boards they sit on and maybe there's vacancies there. you know And so it's really just about getting in, understanding dynamics, networking with people who are in the boardroom and getting comfortable in that situation. That'll start you off really nicely.
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00:33:28
Speaker
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00:34:00
Speaker
And because it should work where you work, it integrates with all the tools your business already uses. Spotdraft is the key that unlocks the potential of your legal team. Make your contracting easier today at spotdraft.com. Let's talk a little bit about true religion, which I think is an interesting case of moving from the boardroom into the CEO role for for you. Tell us a little bit about how that came about. Was that another turnaround? And I think another sort of question in there too is is, when is that right? Because there's probably a number of situations where it's wrong for a board member to step in and become the CEO or that's not good governance, but there are certainly circumstances where that might be essential. So yeah, tell us a little bit about true religion.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, true religion. So when back at American Apparel, it was Goldman Sachs that asked me, they were our largest bond. They asked me to step into the CEO role. ah Then they did, they're not gonna hold on to the company for too long. So they asked me to beautify it and take it to market. So we retained a banker and we put it through a process. So a couple of years later, we sold it to another public company. Well, that's came back around to me and said, what do you want to do next? And I said, I want to sit on boards. You know, I really like that. I think that looks like a good lifestyle to me, you know? Yeah. Me too.
00:35:17
Speaker
They said, sure, sure, of course. And so and they said, well, we own true religion and just came out of an 11 and they're, you know, gonna make another go at it. And so we'd love for you to step in and chair audit because we still trade those bonds publicly. So we are allowed a board designee, but it can't be one of us because we'd constantly be cleansing ourselves of MMPI. So we want to really trust to chair audit so that you're right in the thick of it. You can't report stuff back to us for the aforementioned reason, but we trust you because we've seen you in action for you know four years or whatever. I started out actually as a board member at True Religion and I started out chairing the audit committee. It very quickly became obvious that the CEO, he was he was going to resign. He wanted to transition out. you know And so we started talking about me you know stepping in. And that's totally appropriate. you know It didn't happen with urgency necessarily. It happened quickly, but not with urgency. It was not a bad situation. I knew the company very well. By the time they asked me to do it, I had been on the board for a while. So I knew the company. The people knew me. They really liked me.
00:36:25
Speaker
they started to come to understand that probably i would drop in and then the ceo took me under his wing for a couple weeks and walked me around introduce me to people like i said earlier you know we had a big yeah he so it's actually you know that was very nice and very amicable and so really my first day on the job was. like a nothing. Didn't even feel like my first day on a job because I felt like I'd been doing it for a really long time. That's why we were so successful with it, you know, and sort of went from there. And then I was, it was great because just like an American apparel, but even more so, I mean, I had just been on that board. I remained, I took, kept my board seat. I couldn't obviously retain my chair of the audit committee position, but sure. But those were all people I had just been sitting shoulder to shoulder with. So
00:37:06
Speaker
They were my boss, but we still had a really good relationship, a really open relationship. I was in many of the executive sessions because there was just nothing to hide from me. you know And so that worked really well. you know It's not always right because you know sometimes the board member isn't a known commodity in the company. That person, they don't understand the difference you know between sitting on a board and then you drop into company. you know There's a dramatic difference between
Board roles vs. CEO roles in turnarounds
00:37:31
Speaker
that. You can't you have to make a company every day, even now, you know when lots of people are working virtually. So there can be situations where it's not right, but sometimes you just have to do it. I mean, if it's if you need an interim for a while, you just sometimes that has to be the bridge.
00:37:45
Speaker
That's a good lead-in actually to to my next question. ah Another you know household brand I think that that folks have heard of that you served as a board member on was Sugarfina. Another example of a bankruptcy turnaround. yeah and You talk about the difference between being the CEO and and being on the board needing to be in there every you know every day in the office. and That's really sort of my question. is doing ah doing a turnaround, how do you need to act differently? What's the difference in your role when you're doing it from the board level, like you are at Sugarfina as opposed to in an operator role? Yeah. Wow. That is a really good question. So the main difference is you know sort of so twofold. So the difference in the situation between being the CEO or management of a company and turnaround of being a board member is
00:38:33
Speaker
We are there, and hopefully the company has also hired a restructuring firm. or They're also called FA's, financial advisors. We're there to do that. You CEO and management are here to continue to operate the company So there's some they're there once we get finished, you know, so your focus should still be running the company Yes We're gonna have things for you to do that are different because it's a turnaround and we're gonna ask you to cut costs and renegotiate and Indirect procurement costs. I mean whatever we're gonna ask you to Better cash management in place probably, you know, we're gonna ask you to put together a 13 week we're gonna add you know a cash flow we're gonna and we're gonna mind a lot of things and you're gonna have to maybe do some reductions in force, you know? But for the most part, we don't want you to be distracted by what we're doing. So that's one of the main differences. So a board will really drop in, roll up their sleeves during a restructuring and turn around and do that work so the rest of the people can run the company. And then the advisors too. Now, what you have to be as a board member during that time
00:39:37
Speaker
And this is frequently why you'd refresh a board if you're about to do a turnaround or a restructuring. You really have to be steeped in that life. You have to understand what to do in that situation. Because if you're just a big, healthy, you know, public company, like, la, la, la, I've always had a nice big budget and I've always never seen crisis, you're going to be terrified. Right. Lawsuits coming in, you're going to be hitting in the hit in the face. Like people are going to be punching you in the face every single day. there's losses, there's investigations, we're having these scary conversations about potentially making a chapter 11 filing, I mean, there's going to be you know, but even looking at a 13 week is terrifying, you know, just to see where the money is going and how quickly it goes out the door, you know, this is not for everybody. So if you're not a restructuring turnaround person, you're probably going to be probably better for you to refresh off the board.
00:40:26
Speaker
That's how you would drop in as a board member in that situation as a person who really does this, who really does this for like, has the right network and isn't going to scare under pressure. here I've spoken to a number of GCs who've led their companies through bankruptcy. And some of those, by the way, have led to like the total wind down of a company, which I think is is probably pretty tough. When you've done this, you know, you've been able to turn around some of these businesses and and lead them out the other side. What's your North Star? Like what what what are you really deeply focused on? I mean, look, we I serve at the pleasure of the board, you know, or if I'm the board, I'm serving at the pleasure of the shareholders. So if it's a private company too, you know, my fiduciary obligations are always to the stakeholders, and those are generally investors in the company. When you're in the zone of insolvency like that, it's also the lenders. The lenders become obviously intensely important, you know, because the shareholders, their equity is going to go to ashes and dust.
00:41:20
Speaker
But that's the long-winded way of saying my North Star is to whichever body of stakeholders I owe my fiduciary obligations to. So yes, I've got all sorts of beautiful ethical ideas about it's preserving jobs, you know, it's making sure we continue to provide this product or service to the public who totally deserves it. That's great. And those are things I think about, of course, and I continue to try to focus on. But my North Star is who do I owe my fiduciary obligations to? Hmm. Full stop. That's great. Last of the sort of CEO roles that I want to ask you about before we learn about what you're up to now yeah is, uh, is spark networks.
Challenges in tech CEO roles
00:42:01
Speaker
Um, which is a little different than the other ones. Right. And that it's, it was tech. Um, so, I mean, you know, the first sort of question I guess would be, um, stepping into a CEO role there. Did you feel like there was a steep learning curve or a steeper learning curve? I've been on that board for ah five years or so, you know, and I knew that company really well, you know, so thank you for recognizing it as a tech company because a lot of people say, Oh, we we owned a bunch of dating apps. I mean, yes, that happened to be what we did. But we were a tech company. Yeah, yeah it was it was a lot. You know, I mean, luckily, I had really cool board members like Bengali Kaba, who was a former he actually wrote the friend
00:42:48
Speaker
Connect your request or whatever algorithm for Facebook and then did the color interesting yeah I'll go for an Instagram and then he was a Twitter after that and so like this guy was like, you know Like chef's kiss of the tech guys, you know, and so luckily I had next to me but so but I did know the company really well and That was one of those situations where it became obvious that you know We had a great CEO but you know There's a reason in a season for everything and the reason in season was over for that and so we were gonna think about you know making a switch and um But at the same time, and it was but had been publicly disclosed, we had started to run a process. Many people felt that we shouldn't be public any longer, that we should take the company private. So we had retained a banker to take us private. And so there was, you know, and also we were in a crunch. And so as I mentioned earlier in my comments, we had a lender that we were working very closely with because we were
00:43:42
Speaker
shifting into a zone where you really were starting to have to pay attention to the lender just a little bit more, you know, along with our public shareholders. You got all that meatballed, you know. And so there was this sense that we shouldn't we just drop someone in off the board to be the CEO of this company rather than do an outside search and waste somebody's time if we're just going to take it private and maybe hand it over to the lender. So I screamed first and I insisted, I said, all right, I'll step in as the inter interim CEO, interim, like all caps, fluorescent, bold, underlined, because this is a mess. You know, it was a mess and the price was kind of swirling. You could tell it was going to maybe get delisted at some point, even though we were really trying, you know, it was headquartered in Berlin, which was
00:44:29
Speaker
It shouldn't have been for years, but it was headquartered in Berlin because of a merger we had done. There was just a lot going on there and I didn't necessarily feel like I wanted to be the permanent CEO. I dropped in as the interim did my duty and about a month in, you know They started saying to me, look, the market is clamoring for the announcement of a public i mean have a permanent CEO for all the reasons. We really don't want to do a search. Would you please agree to take the word interim off your title and be the permanent CEO for as long as we need one? And again, you really you're loath to say no in a situation like that. I do feel like you owe an obligation to the shareholders at that point you know to do what you've been asked to do.
00:45:11
Speaker
firmly it goes back to my birds wide days where he taught me how to do your job with honor and So I said yeah, you know, of course and I essentially moved to Berlin I mean I lived in Berlin for the better part of that year Oh Wow, you know because I had to be a headquarters and you know everybody the bulk of the folks were there FP&A was in New York, you know but the rest everybody the tech folks in a particular were there and the marketing folks and ah huh that was That was tough. you know i mean i I'm based in Los Angeles. That's not an easy flight, so you didn't want to make it a whole bunch of times. And while I live on a plane, and I do live on international flights for sure, because I tend to do a lot of global stuff, it's different, you know essentially, to kind of move your whole life you know like that rather than make go back and forth. And it it was a transition, understanding the difference between you know web-based engineers and app engineers.
00:46:04
Speaker
understanding what I need to do with the first set of folks and why I needed to move to the second group of folks, understanding why it might be better to offshore that, understanding, you know, ah you know, going through the nuances of figuring out re-headquartering to hear, you know, the lender, everyone's very testy and everyone, you know, really is, there's a lot going on, a lot of pressure. So, you know, coordinating with those folks, I had lots of advisors, we had an FA, we had lots of law firms, as you might imagine, you know, there was a board that you know, had been through it for sure, you know, and so a lot of swirl in the boardroom, there was a lot going on, you know, and I just did my very, very best to reduce my emotional connection to all of it, and just look at everything, you know, back up and look at it from a very objective perspective, because of the things we needed to do there that were difficult, that we had to cut the changes we had to make. So it was it was a lot, you know, and I
00:47:02
Speaker
I left just before we delisted. i yeah There's no glory of being in a company when you delist. There's glory in Eleven. Elevens can be beautiful things. Restructuring can be a gorgeous thing. Crisis can be great and great for you and your career and your psychology, but delisting is never a good never fun. And we, you know, we ended up handing it over to lender, like I said, so it was just a very, it was a gig that was necessary for me to take. And I feel good that I did it. You know, it's just, it's just one of those things you have to know that if you become a board member at a public company, you might have to do the craziest of things. Right. Tell us a little bit about what you're up to now with pivot and working in restructuring.
Chelsea's crisis management at Pivot
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, so well, yeah, so I've joined as a managing partner at pivot, which is a new restructuring firm slash FA financial advisor, that you know, as a group of, you know, hardcore seasoned, restructuring professionals, most of whom I've worked with for decades, you know, I'm sort of like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, I probably lie on my, you know, 10 wood woodsman and my scarecrow. And you know, I kind of we go down the um the yellow brick road together and So we, you know, kind of collected ourselves and, you know, from having all worked together on different things at different places over the years. And we finally all at this point in our careers, we're ready to break off and join a firm that amongst ourselves. So it's run by my former general counsel at American Apparel after I stepped up to the CEO. hu He was also council sugarfina, which is how I gone on the board there.
00:48:35
Speaker
And he and I have worked together on many restructuring since then. Lance Miller, so he's the founder and CEO of Pivot. And we're off to the races. We're very busy already. You know, we're for companies that public or private, when they feel like they can see crisis coming, there's a liquidity crisis and kind of culture crisis, you know, governance crisis, the leadership crisis. They either want to preempt the crisis or they're in the crisis already and they need to manage all of that risk, whether or not they feel like they're going to file for an 11 at some point down the road. Some folks come to us and say, we'll never file an 11 and we help them avoid that.
00:49:13
Speaker
Some folks say we'll never find 11 and we have to slowly ease them into the reality that actually you're going to have to file an 11 and say, but excuse my language, we're about to have it really prepped correctly at all. You know, can he help can you help advise us? So it's for all stages, you know, along that life, ah along that lifespan and bring in financial help we can bring in just you know your plane vanilla restructuring we know where are the hidden costs that we need to cut out how can we get a better control over cash management just cash controls generally. Put a good thirteen week you know together help people understand where all the pieces are in the chess board and how to move them because there's no risk you can avoid if you do it right.
00:49:57
Speaker
You know, and again, we come in and help you, you know, operate your company day to day. We do all the other stuff that you probably don't know how to do anyway. If you haven't been through crisis before, if you haven't been through a restructuring before, you're not the person who should be doing that. You should have us do that for you and then you can keep. making your widgets or providing whatever service it is to your customers so that you'll still exist after we get done restructuring with you. We also have a really good network, you know, when it comes to bringing in the right banks, whether it's to put you through a process or to help value the company, maybe get you a pipe, you know, or, you know, just sort of market tests because you have to explore all and all strategic alternatives when you're in a situation like that. And you need a banker anyway, if you're going to go in.
00:50:42
Speaker
you know, you just do and we can point you in the right direction to all the right advisors. So that's one of the things I'm doing, you know, and I'm pretty really well versed in that. They bring me in either as an independent board member with the company that they're working with, or ih I just do CEO consulting for that. Lots of CEOs want to have someone they can just talk to and bounce ideas off of and understand long term strategy in this context. And I've done that so I can chat with their CEOs about that. And then otherwise, I'm on the exponential fitness board still, I I'm currently the lead independent director of that board. We're a New York Stock Exchange company. I also, I chair audit in Omgov. And I've also been nominated to join the board of Beyond Meat, the plant-based food company. Oh, fantastic. cool Wow. Yeah. Super cool nickt company trade on the NASDAQ that ah probably by the time you air this, it'll have become official knock on wood barring exigent circumstances. So we are yeah meeting as May 23rd next week. So, huh
00:51:42
Speaker
You know, again, so I'm nominated to that board and that'll be the, that'll be the vote. And then once I onboard, I'll chair risk, which is actually a kind of a new beast that lots of companies are exploring. So there's always been, of course, the three committees always are audit, non-gov and comp. yeah Sometimes they have different names, but those are essentially the three main committees of any public company board. Lots of public companies now with the new rules surrounding disclosure requirements um with respect to cyber attacks are creating a totally new committee called RISC. There's always been something called a RISC committee, but it's just never been ah something that's always been one of the main committees. So lots of companies are creating a RISC committee to deal with cyber and then any other sort of risk they feel like they want to park there. Sometimes they want to move all the non-financial risk away from audit over to RISC committee.
00:52:34
Speaker
And Ron Neat is actually on the cutting edge of that governance. So they were really early adopters of this. So about a year ago, they created the Risk Committee. The Risk Committee looks at cyber, you know continuity, non-gov on succession, you know big handful of risk issues they deal with. I think they're really leaning in and really forward on this. And I love, it's a very, very progressive and at the same time a very governance conservative board. So I think I'm really gonna have a good time there. That sounds super interesting. I'm going to have to have you back on in a couple of years to talk about some of the things that you've, you've been through at exponential and, and also beyond me, both really interesting companies. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
Board role at Beyond Meat
00:53:19
Speaker
And by the way, for all this, I'll just make a pitch for plant. this You can be, you don't have to be vegan or even vegetarian or even pescatarian. You can be, yeah you can be a flexitarian.
00:53:32
Speaker
Once a week, you can add one of the Beyond Meat products into your meal or make it a totally Beyond Meat meal or what have you. You can do it as as little as you want. It's about health, but it's also about a pro-environment lifestyle for sure. Seth is actually, well, the CEO and the chair of the board are both, you know Ethan and Seth, they are both very much about preserving the environment yeah doing the right thing for the environment, doing the least amount to tax the environment, and that's a lot for plant-based food diets are about. so I knew a guy who was one of their engineers, like one of their meat engineers a few years back, and he brought some of their prototype sausages to a ah to a barbecue. and i like As soon as I was like, these are great, as soon as they're on the market i'm buy and they're delicious, I still buy them. yeah
00:54:24
Speaker
The hamburgers were actually on a totally new you know like 4.0 version of the burgers and the sliders. like You would never know that the taste and the feel and just the experience of eating those burgers. There's steak. I mean, there's everything you can imagine. And then there's we just have products that aren't meant to mimic anything. They're just meant to be what they are. And they just taste delicious. you know So it's not even about sort of like, I need to have something that mimics my hamburger or my eggs or whatever. and It's just sometimes you can just eat something. That's just what it is. It's just healthy. It's great for the environment and it just can be a cool supplement to your diet.
00:55:02
Speaker
I've got just two closing questions for you, Chelsea, that I like to ask my guests. The first is, you know, and I have way too many of these at this point, but but I'm a big reader and I travel all the time and i I really like to read on airplanes as opposed to send a lot of emails. And I'm curious if there's a book either that you've read recently or that's been really important to you in your career that you'd like to recommend to to the audience. Yeah, so actually, I'm terrible at remembering the names of books, but I can tell you. um So Jim Cook, okay, actually, I'm looking at my bookshelves, and I can tell you what the name of it is. So Jim Cook wrote a book called Quench Your Own Thirst. Jim Cook is actually one of my colleagues on the Beyond Meat Board. He was the founder and CEO of Boston Brewing Company, which is the Sam Adams Company.
00:55:53
Speaker
Uh-huh. If you're a beer drinker, you know. Yeah. Great beer. Yeah. Most popular. I mean, they basically almost created the micro brewing industry in in America and they hu like actual good tasting beer to them. American made good-tasting beer here and yeah realize that even the beer that the Germans were importing here wasn't great So you have to actually go to Germany to get good German beer to Sam Adams So Jim Cook wrote this book called quench your own thirst Which I read once I was appointed or once I was nominated to the board because I just I don't know I want to have something to talk to him about have a so Yeah, get to know him a little bit and It was actually a great book. it was He's really um irreverent you know in the way that he provides methods. He's kind of a cat. I don't know how else to say it, you know? but all like Kind of gritty anecdotes to tell, which is sort of shocking. what you know i thought I was reading and I sort of thought it was going to be a stodgy business advice book and it wasn't at all. so
00:56:47
Speaker
It was a really fun read, really quick read. You know, you can read it over a weekend on a plane like you said. I recently interviewed Allie Webb, who is, she founded Drybar. I mean, you're a guy you might think that is, but yeah. So Drybar, she was never the CEO, which is actually a whole interesting part of her book. And she talks about why she was not the CEO. She was the founder of the business. She ultimately sold the business for $255 million. dollars I mean, she came from, she was a hairdresser. wow She created Drybar and just a handful of years later, she sold it for $255 million dollars and now she invests in small companies. And she also has a, which was particularly interesting to me, she's got a franchised company called Squeeze, which is a franchised massage company. Interesting. I love the franchise model. Exponential is a big franchisor. So I'm very geeked out by franchise models. So I interviewed her at the Women Retail Leadership Conference. We were the keynote fireside chat.
00:57:47
Speaker
So her book, and her book is called, it's called the messy truth, I think something like that. And anyway, out webb it's a good read. And then of course, everybody should read Phil Knight's book, Shoe Dog, Phil Knight. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, I have read that one. but That's from a long time ago. But yeah, every everybody should read that book. So All right. A last question for you. And this is something that I ask pretty much, pretty much everyone who's, who's come on.
Early career lessons
00:58:15
Speaker
Uh, and that's, you know, if you could look back on your days, just getting started as, as a lawyer at Jones day, something that you know, now that you wish you'd known back then.
00:58:27
Speaker
You know how, like, I don't know if you've ever seen a nature show about scorpions and they say that baby scorpions are actually much more lethal than adult scorpions because adult scorpions know when to stay, know exactly how much poison to give you to stun you so they can get away or whatever. You know, huh baby scorpions will give you all the juice, you know? So like you will die as an adult. You could die from a baby scorpion sting. You know, as an adult, you might actually live because they just wanted to like get away from you. As a baby lawyer, I think all baby lawyers are like this, you're a baby scorpion. So you are absolutely the department of no, absolutely not. You don't lean into risk at all. You can't afford to because you don't know what you don't know. And so you can't afford to say yes to ever anything because everything is a no. That is not appreciated by clients. Clients do not yeah just want to hear.
00:59:17
Speaker
no but or no and or yes but or yes and I mean, they want to hear solutions, they want to hear creativity, they want to hear that you can work with them and they'll never hire you again if you just shut everything down. So I wish I would have understood a little bit better how to lean in a little bit to the business needs of the clients. earlier on I learned it of course, but it would have behooved me earlier in my career to learn that. That's a common theme. Um, but I've never heard that metaphor used before. Uh, it's incredible. I'm going to start using that myself. I'm going to steal that getss into every conversation. Cause my birthday is October 24th. I'm a Scorpio. Well, Chelsea, thank you so much for joining me today for such a fascinating conversation about your incredible career.
01:00:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. This has been really fun. You have great questions. And to all of our listeners, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the abstract and we hope to see you next time.