People, especially women, are often warned against taking risks, all in the name of preserving their safety from whatever harmful things lurk around. But the truth is, if you stay inside the “safe” zone, if you straight-up refuse to take risks no matter how calculated the risk is, then you’re also decisively shutting the doors to growth and ultimately, success. Carol Meyers is a board member and advisor to several high-growth companies. Drawing from her experience as a leader in her field, she talks to Michelle McGlade about the necessity of risk in one’s life. You may not realize it yet, but the next risk you take might just be the one that skyrockets you to the success you’ve been seeking all your life. Risks can be smart – you just have to have the right tools for the job – so why stop yourself?
Taking Smart Risks With Carol Meyers
We are back in action. I have nothing left at the end of that, but what I do have is Ms. Carol Meyers for you. Carol is the former Chief Marketing Officer of Rapid7, a public cybersecurity software leader. She is a board member and advisor to several high-growth companies and a mother of two. Meyers helped lead Rapid7 to tenfold revenue growth in eight years, mature to a multi-product company, and execute a successful IPO. She has executed four successful IPOs, growing companies from early-stage to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and billions in valuation. Meyers is known for her ability to craft winning growth strategies, attract and develop top talent, and build brands and corporate culture. Most of all, what I can’t wait to share with you about Carol is the wisdom that she offers to you in this interview. Sit back, relax, and let’s get started.
I’m inserting my $0.02 here because I want to make sure you tease out some of the juiciness in my conversation with Carol. The through-line to this interview after reviewing it several times is risk-taking. This interview is a lot about risk-taking and as you’re reading, I encourage you to think about where you are in that spectrum because I do believe it changes over time and based on what we have going on in our life. Carol talks a lot about the pivots that she’s made in her career, which also known as would be a risk. If you pay attention closely, you’ll notice a very common word she uses over and over again, which she doesn’t say this exactly but I believe part of her decision-making process when to pivot. She talks about something that exhilarates her and I love that word. It comes up several times.
I believe that is what drives her to try new things and grow and make the pivots and take the risk. My favorite quote in this interview, I got it to almost a tee, but you’ll notice Carol saying this, “You don’t need to know it all. You need to be willing to grow and find out.” I love that. There’s a question that she imparts that also is powerful, but I’m going to save it to the end. There’s a lot in here. We jump around on all sorts of things. She’s got a wide breadth in her experience and wisdom and there were so many topics to dive in with her and it was clear I was trying to get as many in as possible. Without further ado, let’s learn from the beautiful Ms. Carol Meyers.
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One of the things you wrote that we didn’t cover that intrigued me was you wrote finding your voice. What does that mean to you?
There have been a bunch of different things that I read about and seen and I think overall, women have a tough time finding their voice, expressing themselves because they get many mixed messages such as, “You should do that, but you need to be careful how you do that.” It’s not always the same. I know that when I worked with a coach earlier in my career, one of the pieces of feedback I had was that I was often too business life, too down to business. Not enough laughs or saying things too directly maybe. I completely altered my language, which was great in coaching and working with my staff. I also adapted that in my engagement and time with my peers. I find that while I would sometimes think it was very effective, it helped people not feel I was being overly direct, but it hurt me in many cases too. Making sure you find your voice is important.
That’s such a wide range. That’s more of the essence of who you are. It’s communication, in my mind, plus infusing it with your style. If you’re naturally more professional, trying to go to the complete opposite end isn’t going to work for you.
You have to find that middle ground. Defining your voice also goes back to something we did chat about which is that women often see something that is injustice or they are hurt by something someone said, but they don’t want to say anything about it or they’re afraid to speak up about the things. Sometimes women are more often afraid to speak up in meetings, afraid that their idea won’t be smart enough. Men go through this too, but women go through it may be at a stronger degree.
Where do you think that comes from? Is it being criticized from an early age?
There’s a lot of research. I don’t know the true sense of is it strong and scientific research that girls are always sent a message from an early age. It’s important to be a good girl, to be nice, to go along with things, not to ruffle feathers because good girls are fun to be around and they listen. It’s all wonderful things, but less about asserting themselves, whereas young boys are encouraged to be competitive, speak up. They’re rewarded for those things where girls are sometimes less rewarded. There’s a lot of research that in classrooms, teachers still call on boys more often. There’s a lot of research into math that girls often approach problems differently. They get the right answer, but when the teacher looks at the work behind it, they go, “That’s not how you’re supposed to do it.” There’s no one right way to get to the answer. There’s some of that too, which is interesting.
I’m sure if this was about men speaking their truth, we could talk about how they struggle with being pushed to be competitive all the time. Instead, we’re over here having our girly conversation about holding it in, not saying and expressing fully what you’re thinking. I’m into the energetics of the woo part of it. If you’re holding something in, it has to go somewhere. Where does that go?
You sometimes turn it internally then you beat yourself up about what you didn’t say, what you didn’t do, “I should’ve said that, done that.” I will say, now that I’m doing my third board, I have shifted my thinking too. Don’t leave the meeting without asking the question that you had or it’s not a dumb question, and your job is partly to be governance, and so ask the question. I’ve gotten much better at it and I think the board meetings are more engaging and fun.
You’re having a better time too.
I’m feeling I’m contributing more.
How long have you been doing corporate board work?
I probably did my first board in maybe 2009. It’s been a while.
It’s trendy now, which is a good thing. You’ve probably been in the situation where you’re the only woman on the board in the room.
Taking Risks: Defining your voice often goes back to women seeing injustice around or they get hurt, but they get too afraid speak up about those things.
Other than what I’m on now where I am the only board member, an executive typically in the room, on other boards, for example, one of the investors was a woman. That was refreshing and great that she was on the board. In the others, while there weren’t board members who were women, there were board observers and executives who are women.
What have you learned about yourself? The reason behind this question is because there are a lot of conversations about getting more women on corporate boards. That sounds great from the corporate perspective, but from the women’s perspective, what have you learned about yourself? How has it helped you grow? Why would I want to do that besides being driven? What have you received from that experience?
I received a lot from being on boards, which sometimes I feel guilty about. I’m like, “I’m supposed to be giving, but I get a lot out of it.” What I have found I get out of it is learning for myself. I remember when I started my career early on and I was going for my MBA at night. It might be 7:00 by the time a class would start. I’ve worked all day, I had a long commute. I go to class and they weren’t doing them online back then. You get out of class at 9:00, 9:30 and then you have to drive home. People would say, “Aren’t you exhausted?” I said, “No, it’s exhilarating.” I am thinking about different businesses. I’m thinking about different kinds of challenges and problems people have and exercising my brain in a new way. That is a lot of what I get out of the board work is I have an opportunity to use all the things I’ve learned, both the things I know and being cognizant of what I don’t know. I use that to try and help other people solve different challenges that they have that perhaps I’m not facing now. I find this a great exercise for my brain.
That’s one of my motivations behind it. You use all aspects of your brain, but then bring in new pieces. One of the things that I wrote down when we were first getting to know each other that fascinated me the most is you talked about resisting being part of all women’s organizations. I love that you said that for many reasons because I’m not like all pro-women. I like the balance and I believe that we’re different and we need both sides. I could see where or make some guesses as to where that was coming from. I wanted to talk with you about it a little bit more because there are other women out there thinking the same thing.
The reason I hesitated a lot with it was I’m a big believer of leading by example. I thought, “What I don’t want to do is recreate the old boys’ network as the old girls’ network.” Suddenly say, “We’re going to create our own thing.” Here we are as executives of a company putting a differential focus on developing women over men. In other words, we’re exposing women to some things we weren’t necessarily exposing men to. The back of my mind, I thought, “What are we doing?” We are trying to say to people it should be more inclusive, it should be more diverse. There are a lot of other disenfranchised groups and I often find a lot of women groups, sometimes people of color are less represented.
Those things weigh on me in terms of saying, “We want to lead by example and say we’re all equal. There should be more inclusion.” It also has caused me often to respond when I see things posted about, “We need more flexible work because women have childcare duties.” I like to remind people if we want to tackle some of these issues, men need to feel that they can go home and take care of the children. Many men want to. They have found over the years, as they’ve been freer to get involved in child-rearing, how rewarding it is. I also don’t like talking about the policies that companies are implementing is being for women. I like them to be for people because we as women are going to have more time and more ability to do what we love when we have partners who are empowered to do the same and feel comfortable with it. Feel comfortable taking their paternity leave as opposed to thinking, “I should get back. The other men aren’t going to like that.” I would love there to be more freedom overall for people to see each other as more equal than separate.
You know how this stuff goes, the pendulum swings and hopefully, it will swing back. We’re not going to call anybody out here, but I definitely can think of companies where it’s gone way too over here where what you’re describing is happening. Have you seen that as well in companies where it’s too far favoring one side?
I haven’t seen that too much yet. Most of the companies I’ve been involved with where they’re making more family-friendly policies, they are definitely extending them to men. I don’t know too many who have given men 6 or 8 weeks off. They are doing 2 or 4 and saying, “Please go and take that time to be with your young family,” and doing it for adoptive families and so on and so forth. Especially now, we also have same-sex partners. Which man should stay at home? Let’s make it open to all of them. Fortunately, most of the companies I’ve been involved with are somewhat cognizant of this. I have been involved with some women networks too and I find it helpful and rewarding. Women are also cognizant. We don’t want to get too exclusionary.
Most of everybody I’ve talked to feels the same way as you. I find it fascinating. There are a lot of different conversations going on out there. One of the things you talked about, like all women’s organizations, there are a lot of those out there as well. I belong to some too. We have men groups, so there you have it. One of the things that I’ve heard, I’ve not talked to anybody about this, I wanted to ask you. Should we have men here because we won’t be able to express ourselves freely? That never crossed my mind.
I have to say I’m used to it from a couple of different angles. One is there are probably some things we can talk about, but those are probably not always the professional things. Realistically as working mothers, some women might want to chat about, “When I came back and the nursing room,” and whatnot or the mother’s care room is they’re usually called. There are some things that are unique and maybe feel personal but don’t have to be talked about in that big group. You can always, out of the group, find a friend you can talk to about some of those things. I hope we avoid that. Working in high tech, I remember sometimes we would have big sales meetings where we would always invite the marketing people as well. I was in sales at the time. We felt it was important to let them hear what some of our challenges were and vice versa. There was always a time when the head of sales would kick all the marketing people out and say, “Because we want to have a chance to talk in a way that’s freer,” and that was code for, “We want to talk about you.” It’s like, “If you have something to say or challenge, let’s talk about it. Let’s say it.” The same thing probably applies there. Is that code for, “We want to talk about men?” We want to talk with men about what we perceive and we want to hear what they perceive. That’s healthy.
You said something though that helped me think differently about it. When I’ve heard this like, “We don’t necessarily maybe want men in the room now because we can’t be as expressive.” I wasn’t thinking about talking about women’s stuff like nursing. That’s a perfect example. You probably don’t want to have that conversation and I get it. It doesn’t have to be with the whole group. I don’t have children so those things don’t come into my mind. That’s an interesting tidbit right there. I think differently.
Maybe a good reason to take some of those things offline. Find a friend in that meeting who is in the same situation as you, and then you guys can talk about anything and everything as much as you want. The wonderful thing is there are lots of opportunities, forums, and ways that we connect with people we have some shared interest with.
This is like a couch trip for me all a sudden, Carol. I’m like, “I don’t have sisters either.” Maybe that’s why.
I have tons of sisters. I come from a large family of 9, and 6 were women, 3 men. We have our sisters.
That’s got to be an interesting family get together. Let’s talk about risk-taking because that was another theme that I felt came up. I haven’t talked with anybody yet about this. I’ve talked a lot about the mindset with people and that word comes up in a lot of different ways of confidence and imposter syndrome. There’s some interesting intersection between risk-taking, mindset and success. I don’t know how we move into that, but there’s something there that’s juicy.
Part of the reason for it a lot is often when I talk to people, they’ll say, “What’s the biggest mistake you made?” They’re looking for something like one person joked, “You sent an email blast because I was in marketing to all the wrong people.” I thought, “Those things happen and they’re mistakes and they’re painful.” You understand it, you can understand the root cause then you fix it. Those things stick with me. When I think about one of the biggest mistakes you’ve made, they’ve generally been errors of not taking a risk, not doing something, not putting my foot in the water, not saying yes to an opportunity or being too afraid to pursue something that is of interest to me.
Taking Risks: We refuse to take risks because we tend to fall into one of two traps. First, you believe that talent is fixed. Second, you always want to be right.
On the converse side, when I think about some of the big pivotal moments in my life, those have been when I was willing to take that risk. To jump in, to ask for what I wanted, to go for something. Examples are I was originally in finance and I was generally doing financial analysis and planning for the sales and marketing team. One day, my boss asked me to take a new role and I said to him, “Do you know what I want to do? I don’t want to analyze sales or marketing anymore. I want to do sales and marketing.” He did help me move into that role, which is how I ended up being a VP of a large sales team and ultimately a chief marketing officer. My life is riddled with those times when I jumped up and said, “I’m going to do this.”
Another pivotal one, my husband is like, “Are you crazy?” I quit my job, I bought a house and I joined a startup company in about two weeks into it. I said, “I don’t know if we’re going to make payroll, but don’t worry, it’s all going to work out.” He was like, “What are you doing?” That was exhilarating. It totally changed the course of my life. I started doing startups and that sent our life in yet another wonderful direction. What I have also observed is that women are often less inclined. There are plenty of women who take wonderful and enormous risks. In general, less inclined and some of that also goes back to that, “I want to protect my little girl.” We don’t want our little girls to do certain things. We don’t want our little girls to get hurt. That ends up being a little message in our brain that we shouldn’t step up and take the risk.
I started my career in finance too and moved into sales. I’ve got to find more women out there like that. There are probably a lot of us. On top of that, I had this theory I call the report card syndrome where we’re raised in schools to get the next grade, get the next thing. Most of us, these are generalizations, move into these corporate gigs and it’s the same thing. We get the next promotion, the next, and it’s almost like we’re trained not to think about making leaps.
Also, afraid to make mistakes because we’ve got to be right. You wouldn’t get an A if you had some answers wrong. There is a wonderful book out called Mindset. It’s all about this whole idea of not taking risks, not learning new things because we fall into two traps. One is that we start to believe that talent is fixed. You’re either born a good singer or you’re not. You’re either born good at math or you’re not. We also start to get ingrained in us that it’s important to get good grades and to be right. Who wants to try something we don’t know we’re any good at because if we aren’t, we’re going to be wrong for a long time? That hurts because we were going off to that next grade. It’s been a wonderful journey because I’ve always thought of myself as a lifelong learner and open. As I’ve read it, I thought, “I do some of these behaviors of where my mindset is not as open as I happen to think it is.” That’s been great because it’s all about how do you get yourself back in that open mindset mode.
Here’s the thing. You talk a lot about this risk-taking, which is like in pivoting, major pivots in your career, which is a through-line that I’ve seen in a lot of the women that I’m interviewing. If any of you reading are wondering how to get to these next levels, one of the key things is willing to take risks and pivot. When you do things like that, it can challenge your confidence. Could you open up a little wider your personal experience around that because it’s not all rosy? It’s not easier for you, Carol, because you’ve probably had some times, I’m thinking where it’s like, “What am I doing? Am I good enough?” I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so share a little bit more about your experience.
What’s been interesting when I think back about the big changes that I made. At first, it’s exhilarating and it’s exciting and you feel proud of yourself. You have a sense of confidence because you were confident enough to make that choice. You’re working off this glow. When you get into it and you start realizing, “I don’t have a wealth of experience. I can draw on doing this and I’m not entirely sure what I should do next.” Maybe you feel a little bit of a lack of other people’s confidence in you. They may or may not even have it, but you start to go, “They asked me a tough question. Does that mean they doubt me?” All your headspace starts going crazy and you come to doubt your capabilities and you have to fight through that. There were times in my life that caused me to resort to being more closed and less of an open mindset. Somehow when you feel like you’re under siege, at risk, “I don’t know what I’m doing. Everyone’s going to know,” you don’t want to let anybody in.
Early on, I did that when I first shifted into marketing and then I thought, “I need help. I have to tap into a network and ask people what they’ve done and what they think.” You end up working yourself through it. It can be challenging. The most important thing is don’t assume the fact that you’re feeling that, you’re feeling doubt, you’re feeling imposter syndrome is bad or makes you bad or means you’re not suited to doing what you’re doing. It’s important to remind yourself that almost every successful person goes through it too. Acknowledge it and then you have to work through it, which I fully acknowledge is easier said than done.
If this is happening on a daily basis for you or somewhat daily, when you see it come in and you acknowledge it, how do you move through it so you don’t stay frozen in that fear? This will shut you down. Some people shut down for days or weeks. What I believe is it’s like going to the mental gym and you build that muscle. It’s not that it doesn’t happen for people anymore, it’s how quickly you recover.
A lot of it is recognizing that it’s happening. Saying, “What’s one step I can take to start moving in the right direction in breaking through that fear and then keep building?” Almost like anything else where you set goals and milestones, you go, “It’s happening. I’m going to pick up that phone and I’m going to follow-up with that person. If they tell me I didn’t get the role I wanted, then I know I need to move on, but I’m not going to bury it.” A lot of it is acknowledging it and telling yourself you need to move through it. Another wonderful thing I read was about procrastination and the fact that when we procrastinate, it’s not because we’re lazy. Usually, the things you’re procrastinating about are the things that are bringing up negative emotions. Fear is a big one.
Procrastination is a form of self-sabotage, letting it get to you. I want to go back because there’s one more piece of this that we didn’t talk about, which is making the decision. I’m trying to unpack. If I’m going to take a risk moving in from finance to marketing, once you do it, you talked about the exhilaration and I was eating that up because it’s once you’ve decided. How do you make that decision? A lot of people get stuck there.
You want to take smart risks, but nothing’s guaranteed. Smart risks mean you try to do your best to understand what you’re getting into and you’re doing things to reduce the risks. Let me give you an example. Let’s say I had been in finance then I was a VP of sales. We sold the company I was working at. I worked out a sweet deal. I was the integration leader, so I helped the company integrate. I worked at this sweet deal that if I were willing to stay in the company until it was sold, because I had other offers to go work elsewhere, that I would get time off. I was like, “I’m going to get the summer off like going back to school,” which was fun and exciting.
I decided I was going to be this VP of marketing. I’m like, “I’m going to take a marketing job. I’ve never done it before. That’s okay.” When you think about doing something like that, it’s important to think about, “That’s great. I’m going to do it. I can do it. I have to believe in myself, but I also have to recognize that it’s not just going to happen. I’m going to have to work at it. I need to think about what are the things I need to do to help improve my chances of success. Creating a network of other marketers I could tap into, talk to and learn from. Doing some reading. That’s the cool thing about the concept of mindset is it’s not that you jump in and go, “I can do this.” You say, “I can do this, but it’s going to take work and practice and I’m willing to put that work in practice in.” That’s probably the difference with recognizing that in yourself and believing I can do this because I understand the work it’s going to take and I’m willing to put it in.
It sounds like you were ready for something new. I don’t know where you were in your career at the time, but it sounds like you were ready like, “This is the season. I’m done with finance, no more all-nighters for me. I’m ready for something different and this opportunity is presenting itself.”
Some of it is also seeking new opportunities and that comes from engaging with lots of different people and reading, which can expose things to you that you might not have even thought of. Some people are lucky enough to have something in mind. I talked to many people who were like, “I want to do this. That’s fabulous,” then mapping out how you’re going to get through. Learning is referred to often as an S curve. You come into something new and initially low slope. You’re not learning as fast as you want and then suddenly it all clicks and you go through this steep learning curve where you are learning great new things, trying new things and then it peters out again. For me, it’s often been finding out, “When am I petering out again? What am I going to need to do to get myself back on a big learning track?” It’s meant career shifts typically for me.
I want to call this out because what I’m hearing is you’re taking the reins and the responsibility for your personal and professional growth. If something isn’t right for you, you’re taking on the responsibility to figure out what would be the next step or what will be right for you moving forward and then mapping a plan to get there and not allowing things to happen to you. That’s what you’re saying and people miss that. It’s not that you miraculously moved up the chain and all these things are handed. You’re mapping the path and making the connections and asking for what you want.
The truth is there’s always a balance. You do hit situations where you aren’t necessarily treated fairly. Who knows why? Probably not because the people are mean. They might be. That happens too. I do know that it happens to some people, but a lot of times its other factors. They’ve got other things on their mind. Some of it is maybe how you’re communicating. The only thing you can control is yourself. If you’re in a situation where you definitely don’t feel people understand your value, helping you get to where you want to be, the best thing you can do is to figure out, “Maybe I need to be in a different environment.” That’s okay. You can’t always change your environment. Sometimes you need to find a new environment that’s going to suit you better. It’s important to remember the only thing you can control is yourself.
One of my audience reached out and said, “Ask more questions about the spouse and the partners.” When you’re making decisions to pivot, for example, what’s happening at home? How do those conversations go down? That can put stress on the relationship, the family, whatever it is you’ve got going on.
I have been lucky in this regard and I’m completely mindful that not every woman has the same situation, not every man has the same situation. Early on, my husband and I both worked. We were working full-time, we had our kids. I would say he was a good partner in helping with things, but I definitely was in that I do the cleaning, I’m more likely to want to stay when one of the kids are sick. As my career took off, he would be like, “You’re right. I’m going to have to say I have to stay home when the kids are sick. We’re going to have to split the day.” What ultimately happened for us, maybe it goes in the risk category, is as my career did start to take off, we eventually made a decision that he was going to stay home and raise the kids, so he did. He’s stepped out of his career altogether and took care of the children. Dinners were not gourmet. That wasn’t his thing. It freed me up but there’s a risk to that too. I’ve talked to other women whose husband has since done that too who are young, more of the age I was when my husband decided to stay home. Suddenly you are the breadwinner. It comes with some responsibilities. There isn’t someone else if something happens that you can rely on as you get with two earning couple situations. It’s generally talking about it and saying, “Here are the things I’m thinking about doing and needing a supportive spouse.”
Being the sole earner for the family, that adds stress in general. Do you remember a specific time where you’re like, “I feel at risk,” or “I feel like I don’t want to do this anymore?” Something where your stability or income was in question for the family.
I was much more confident when I was younger. When I took that little hiatus, I was talking about between being a VP of sales and going into marketing, we were Catholic at the time. When we would go into the church, the priest would always say to me, “Carol, did you find a job yet?” I would say, “Father, I’m not looking for a job. I’m taking the summer off.” He was floored. “What’s going to happen to your family?” He asked me every week. I had total confidence that I was going to land a great job when I decided I wanted to go back to work. That worked out well. It was probably September when I said, “I better start thinking about it. Fall is coming,” and I got a shot. It also drove me to work hard. I do sometimes look back and think, “I should have been home for more family dinners during the week as opposed to staying and working late.” I felt that, “I need to work hard because I’ve got to make sure I do well. I’ve got to make sure I get promoted. I’ve got to make sure I’m contributing enough to a company.” It drove some maybe semi-manic behavior.
I appreciate you widening it, that conversation for people because maybe they’re not the ones out working and they’re home. Our perspectives are not always true. Instead of going down that rabbit hole, I want to go back to what you said, which is, “I felt more confident when I was younger than I do now.” That’s insightful. What makes you say that?
It is the opposite of what I read a lot, that when women get older, they feel like, “I don’t give a hoot what anybody thinks.” I knew less when I was younger. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. A lot of times now I realize how much I thought I knew and maybe things don’t always work out the way you want them to. You’re running a business and you took three steps and they worked perfectly for that business, but you go into another business and they don’t work. It happens all the time to me from a marketing perspective. People say, “What did you do with that other company?” I had learned through experience because I did something when I was in the marketing automation industry. Those exact tactics aren’t necessarily going to work in cybersecurity, for example. My whole life, I feel that way a little bit. There’s so much I don’t know. Regaining the confidence is reminding yourself you don’t need to know at all. What you need to do is be willing to grow and find out.
We started with finding your voice. What is the next voice of Carol that’s bubbling inside that wants to come out?
I’m still trying to figure that out a little bit. This period of my life is about exploring. I know I enjoy boards. I want to do more. I enjoy working with companies that are going through high growth or growth challenges and being able to work on the challenge with them and help them map out a good strategy. I’m also exploring nonprofit things. I’m doing some work with the United Way where they have a venture arm that invests money in other nonprofits who are going to be doing things for community good. I have a bit of a passion for healthy food being accessible, affordable, available in areas where it isn’t. It’s not about money. It’s also about access to what’s good and healthy for you and knowing what’s good and healthy for you. I’m exploring where I want to put my time and talent in some of those areas as well.
That’s a lot of different things, but there’s definitely a through-line there too.
As opposed to working with one company on one set of challenges, to me, it’s about exploring a ton of different things and challenging myself to bring value in a huge variety of situations.
Thank you for being here.
It’s my pleasure.
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I told you that it was going to be juicy. Did you catch the question that I was alluding to? The thing is when you’re taking risks, Carol and I talk about it in the interview, there’s no guarantee. It’s scary. All the things around that beautiful imposter lady shows up day in and day out. By the way, I love how Carol said it shows up on the daily for her. Isn’t that golden to know that a woman that’s helped build companies into the millions of dollars and billions in valuation still gets imposter syndrome each day? That is important to know and recognize.
What I wanted to add on was the question that Carol laid out in the interview. It’s simple, but yet you don’t do it. That’s the opportunity for growth. The question is, what do I need to do to improve my chances of success? I believe this was around our conversation where when you take a risk, there are no guarantees. Ask yourself and this is what one of those tiny tactics that could get missed in the conversation but can be powerful to help you get to that next level. When you’re taking on a new venture, when you’re imparting on a new risk, when you’re making a pivot in your career or your life, ask yourself, “What do I need to do to improve my chances of success?” I love it. Thank you so much to Carol and I cannot wait to hear what you think. Reach out EvolutionizeMedia.com and leave your comments.
About Carol Meyers
Carol Meyers is the former Chief Marketing Officer of Rapid7, a public cybersecurity software leader. She is a board member and advisor to several high-growth companies, and a mother of two. Meyers helped lead Rapid7 to ten-fold revenue growth in 8 years, mature to a multi-product company, and execute a successful IPO. She has executed four successful IPOs, growing companies from early stage to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and billions of dollars in valuation. Meyers is known for her ability to craft winning growth strategies, attract and develop top talent, and build brands and corporate culture.