Mommy CEO

I posted this on Palo Alto Software’s BIG BLOG but thought it was relevant and wanted to re-post here. These days I feel like all I do all day is fight fires. Case in point, I have been wanting to write this blog post since March 26th, when Seth Godin posted about fighting fires as a career vs. a career of what you really want to do. I know that most people feel like there is not enough time everyday to get everything they want to get done accomplished. But I think it is really important to think about urgent things vs. important things. Seth suggest making the important things urgent in order to knock them out and get them done. Unfortunately I think that is easier said than done, but I think that Seth is absolutely right.

My goal for the next 3 months is to change my thinking: to understand what is really important and figure out a way to make those items very urgent on my task list. I am currently up against a book deadline and have not finished the book yet because I keep stopping to be a fire fighter. Now I am under the gun, feeling very rushed, trying to get something done that should have been easy to accomplish given the time that I have had to do it.

I truly believe that you will accomplish more for your business if you can change your mentality. Small businesses often get mis managed because the owner is also the accountant, is also the stock manager, is also the market, etc. and is too busy dealing with the every day fores to take a step back and try and think strategically. So heed Seth’s advice. Think long term goals and make time EVERY day to get through some of those more important, but less urgent tasks.

Sabrina Parsons aka Mommy CEO
Palo Alto Software
Email Center Pro

Lately life is going too fast. I mean to write on my blog every day and then all of a sudden it is the next day.  So in the interest of posting something here are some random thoughts from my life in the last few weeks:

1. The other night my almost 4 year old was having trouble going to bed. We could not get him to stay in bed and he was just antsy. I went int to talk to him about this being the last time I was going to come in. He said to me:

I know Mommy. I had this conversation with Daddy already.

If my not yet 4 year old son is already exasperated with me… I am not sure if I want to think of all the stuff that is yet to come!

2.  We have been really busy at work lately. There are a lot of cool exciting projects on the horizon which I am very excited for. Because of this though, I have had a few evening meetings and work commitments which I generally turn down in favor of spending time with my boys.  Really the only time the boys are not with us in the evenings are for the occasional business meeting, and recently for a few evening weddings. I came home from one of my meetings and my three year old said:

Hi Mommy! I have been saving some pizza that I made for you. But first I want to know how was your wedding?

He confused “meeting” with “wedding”. I was on the ground laughing.

3.  I was at a venture competition over the weekend in Portland.  My company sponsors many competitions and for this one we had sponsored a Best Written Plan Award. This meant I had read most of the business plans for the teams presenting and was excited to see the presentations. Sometimes a plan that was just not that good comes alive with a presentation, and sometimes it is just the opposite. During one o the presentations, at the Q and A portion one of the teams was asked about how they would handle customer service. One of the team members said that they had thought about this, and had decided that they would hire “house wives” to do their customer service.  I was appalled. Who uses that word these days? I mean seriously they couldn’t have used “stay-at-home workforce”, or “part-time work force”?

4. I have been helping several different  business plan competition events organize and launch initiatives lately. I am constantly shocked at how many people volunteer to be a part of something, want to take ownership, take full authority, but then just simply don’t do what they have committed to do. I just don’t get that. How can you be a successful business person and do that?

OK my random thoughts are at an end as I have to finish 5 more things before rushing home to my boys!

Over the last week I have been deeply involved in negotiating pricing for a new service my company, Palo Alto Software, decided to purchase. It is an SaaS (Software as a Service) and is a service that will help Palo Alto Software grow by providing some good infrastructure. We needed to upgrade our current home-grown system, and our COO evaluated every last option available. We finally settled on one particular SaaS and started down the road of getting pricing. I have to say I was shocked at the whole experience. The whole process was almost enough for me to make the decision to NOT buy this particular service, even though it was our best solution.

As I negotiated the deal I started to feel more and more like I was negotiating with my three year old.  He and I make “deals” all the time. It’s my way of helping him choose the right options. For example:

Me: Timmy, let’s make a deal. If you go to bed and go right to sleep, without making a peep, we can go to the park tomorrow instead of running errands.

Timmy: OK Mommy.

Me: Timmy why are you out of your room?

Timmy: Well Mommy I wanted to talk about which park we are going to go to tomorrow. I don’t want to go to the “sand” park.

Me: Timmy remember the deal was that you had to go to bed  quietly and not come out of your room?

Timmy: Yes Mommy but I just needed to tell you……

You get the picture. It was the same way with this sales person that I was dealing with. It seemed like every step we took forward, he would then turn around and move us 3 steps backward with some ridiculous  item added to our estimate. Ever single line item needed to be negotiated, and there was just this general feeling that they were trying their best to just get as much money as possible from us, disregarding whether their pricing was fair, and giving us good value.  After a lot of work  and a lot of not so nice calls we finally got to a number that I felt happy with.  But the whole experience was just so arduous and felt so wrong. Why can’t they just price their services fairly? Why do I have to get into long not so nice negotiation calls when they could just provide their service at a fair price and I would pay it?  I just don’t see how companies win using these practices. They put you in the position of feeling that if you don’t negotiate you are getting taken for a ride. They put you in the position to feel like they think you are stupid. Why not just do honest business and make everyone feel good about the whole process?

I feel very strongly that people who work hard and do honest business will eventually get ahead. It may be naive. It may be wrong. But I truly believe that it is the only way to do business.  I don’t understand how anyone can justify being slimy, shady, sleazy, etc. At the end of the day this company came very close to losing my business. And not because their solution wasn’t the best one. I just can’t believe that they wouldn’t close more deals if they treated prospective clients like intelligent business people and not stupid monkeys.

I am a member of the Work It Mom Community. I subscribe to the blog and as I have time read entries. Some of them are relevant to me, some are not. Some of them are interesting, some are not. Some of them are in my opinion intelligent, some are not. You get the point. Recently Nataly, the founder of Work It Mom had to defend a post titled 10 Reasons Working Moms Should Feel Great About Themselves (Reason number one: Working women are happier). The author of the article is also the author of a book that has been controversial as it pits working moms against stay at home moms (or so the controversy goes). I don’t know the book. I quickly read through the article. What I don’t understand is why there is so much venom between women and their choice as mothers?

A few months back I was feature in an article on USA Today called Mommy Wars. You may have seen my post about it here on Mommy CEO. I felt that the worst comments, the most venom I received was from other mothers. Those mothers who have chosen to stay at home with their children felt the need to say some really ugly, really mean things to me about my choice to work. Let me be clear. In the article I DID NOT claim that I thought working mom’s were happier (Leslie Bennetts does claim that in her article). I simply said I was happy, and I thought i had made the right choice for me, and for my family. So why the venom? Can I not have my choice? Can I not have my opinion? Does the nature of me working offend other mom’s so much that they feel the need to get defensive and attack? I thought that as women we were all working together to make life better for ourselves, and our children.

While I can see why Ms. Bennetts’ article may not sit well with some people. It is not LAW or FACT. It is simply an opinion - hers. And I do have to say that I do believe it is better for every person to be in a position to be self reliant and take care of their children on their own should that terrible situation present itself. So here is a little story I think is appropriate here:

I have a friend, who is helping a very close friend of hers through an very ugly divorce. This couple (I don’t know them) apparently had the dream marriage. Let’s call them Mom and Dad. They lived happily ever after in a mid west city with their 2 young children. Dad was an executive make very good money, Mom was a very happy stay-at-home mom. Before they got married Dad made it very clear to Mom that he had grown up with a mother at home and that is what he wanted for his children. Mom agreed. She gave up her career (although she has a great college degree and had good career opportunities) while she was 5 months pregnant with her first child. Five years later she is in a terrible divorce as Dad has left her for his assistant (seriously). Dad has now told Mom that he is not going to let her “sit around on her butt doing nothing all day” and that he expects her to go out and find a job. He has wiped out all money from their bank account and she is having trouble paying the bills. She has not been employed for over 5 years and she has no day care options for her 2 very young children. Dad is not letting her get any money right now. Sure the courts are not going to let him get away with this - when they finally get there. Sure he sounds like a class A jerk. Sure, we all know that won’t happen to us. But of course that is what Mom said. And now I can’t help but think that she might be regretting giving everything up and staying at home. Maybe not. But there is a little part of me that wants all women to be able to be able to be self sufficient. NOT that I think staying at home is the wrong choice, or a bad choice. I just worry that it can dis-empower a woman and put her at the mercy of someone else. And that is what I don’t like.

What is the solution? I don’t know. I am not saying everyone should work. I am not saying that working mom’s are happier. I think every woman has a right to decide what works for them and their families. But I do know this - not letting people have an opinion is not the answer. Getting angry and aggressive because someone is saying something you do not agree with is not the answer. I think this is a very complicated situation and one that has not “right” answer. But it does bother me at my core that Ms. Bennett has to feel the ugliness I felt when the USA today article came out. Can’t we all just get along?

I just got back from the Women In Leadership conference given at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. More often than not, I am disappointed in conferences and their agendas, which is why I do not go to very many. But the WIL conference was fantastic! The Keynotes were great and all 3 were given by women in very different times int heir lives and careers. The workshops and panels were well run and had interesting topics and very interesting presenters.  There was not one time throughout the day where I felt that I was wasting my time.

Here are some highlights:

1. Laura Alber, the President of Williams-Sonoma Inc spoke in the morning keynote. Her talk was fantastic and extremely inspirational. She has gotten where she is in her career because of her smarts, hard work, dedication and PASSION. She had an incredible story to tell about starting the Pottery Barn kids and PBTeen lines at Pottery Barn. She is the person behind those initiatives and took a huge chance to prove herself with these new lines of business. She didn’t say it but I am pretty sure her entrepreneurial drive to make Pottery Barn Kids successful is what lead her eventually to get the Presidential position at Williams-Sonoma Inc.  She is a no-nonsense person who also feels real. And from the looks of her bios it also looks like she managed to get this far and still be under 40. Does it get more inspirational?
2. A great hands-on workshop on entrepreneurship where a new start-up presented some real problems they were facing and everyone got involved helping them find real solutions. The presenter, Kirsten Tobey was very well prepared and controlled the audience and workshop very well, and the session was very interesting.  Her company, Revolution Foods, is helping low-income school kids have better, healthier, less processed foods.
3. Holly Schroth’s workshop on Managing Perception to Achieve Impact was fascinating. She has done some really interesting research about perception, first impressions and how it relates to business and business negotiations. The only problem with her workshop was that she only had an hour!
4. Alice Waters. Enough said. When else do you get an opportunity to be up close and personal with someone as revolutionary in the food industry as Alice Waters? And if you do not know who she is - then read up. She has been behind the SLOW food movement since way before it was trendy. Check out her very cool Edible Schoolyard project.

I definitely recommend this conference to any women interested in advancing themselves.  And the bonus of it all? Unlike conference which charge hundreds of dollars and sometimes thousands of dollars, this one costs a MERE $85.00. What a worthwhile spend of that money.

Yes, I know. We all are too busy. There is just never enough time. We all need more minutes, hours and days to get everything done. Lately I feel like I am struggling more to try and get everything done. Palo Alto Software is in the middle of a very good, very exciting time, about to launch some new products. But this means that I am swamped at work and not only am I not getting through my daily To Do list, I don’t even seem to even be able to get through my inbox. This much to do at work naturally then overflows into my time at home. I don’t want it to affect the time I spend with my kids, so it has basically eaten away at the very little precious ME time I have.

I have found unfortunately what has gone out the window during these extremely busy times is my daily workout. I know - I shouldn’t let my health be what suffers. And I do at least workout out 2-3 times a week. But these days, when I am running like crazy it ME time that seems to suffer. I am lucky enough to have workout equipment in my basement so that I can work out after the kids have gone to bed. But these days I am trying to get everything I didn’t get to done after the kids go to bed, and still attempting to go to bed by 11pm in order to not be exhausted. So last night for instance was TAX night. My husband and I dug through our mess of papers in the “to file” pile to get everything we needed together for our CPA. Try as I may to still get my workout in, the idea of working out at 10pm is just exhausting. If I don’t get on the StairMaster by 9pm all my resolve goes out the window.

That being said, there are some things I have found help me get “me” time:

1. Buying good used workout equipment for my house. I also have an old TV set up in the basement and attached to our cable so that I can watch trashy TV while I work out. It makes this time seem luxurious to me.
2. I try and go to the grocery store BY MYSELF. Yes I know it sounds pathetic that I consider this ME time. But those of you who have shopped with 2 kids under 3 years old know what I mean. My time alone in the store feels luxurious.
3. On weekends I have stopped trying to do household chores while the kids nap. Instead I use that as “me” time. If I am ultra exhausted I nap with them. If I am still standing and have the energy I work out. I DO NOT do laundry, clean, or organize during this time. This is my “ME” time
4. I do employ a weekly house cleaner. As I see it, one of the upsides of having both parents work is that you should be able to allocate 30-60 per week to have someone come help you do the really deep cleaning. the last thing my husband and i want to do on a weekend is argue about who needs to clean the toilets this week. We decided we would reduce our “entertainment” budget and allocate it to cleaning instead. We go out to dinner less and we buy fewer new things for ourselves. But our house stays relatively clean, we get our weekends off, and we have one less thing to argue about.
5. When my parents offer to take the kids for a day, or a night. We say yes! Our kids are finally getting old enough to spend the night at their grandparents house. My parents have been nice enough to offer to take them every 8 weeks or so. When they offer, we say yes. No matter what else we had planned for that weekend - we change things, adjust them, and take the time for the 2 of us.
6. The very few times I have the business reason to go somewhere overnight by myself - I try not to feel guilty and take the opportunity. This has only happened once the last 4 years, and will happen for the second time this weekend. I do feel guilty. I do feel like I should not go by myself. BUT I know that it is good for me to have a little bit of time to myself. I am going to San Francisco for a conference (Women in Leadership at The Haas School in Berkeley), where I know a lot of people, and where all my girlfriends have set up an adult, “girls night out.’ Guilty as I feel right now - I know I will have a blast tomorrow night!

To be honest - I don’t always follow my own guidelines. BUT at least I have some, and at least I try! I know that I can’t DO IT ALL. But if I play my cards right, I give the appearance that I can do it all, while still having a successful career, and spending lots of time with my kids!

-Sabrina Parsons

This weekend I am heading off to San Francisco to attend the Women in Leadership Conference on Sat. I am excited as I have heard lots of great things about this one day conference. the agenda looks great and the speakers look top notch. I will let you all know what I think next week.

I know, I know. Not the topics you might expect on my blog. But I am just appalled that someone that is in such a sad sad state, embroiled in criminal cases and with a terrible, terrible drug problem could be rewarded in such a public way. As someone who has worked very hard to get where I am today, I am offended. I know she is a talented artist — but aren’t the judges of the Grammys adults? Don’t they live in the context of this world? Can’t they use their judgment and realize this is a person who needs to take a little time off, take care fo herself and be responsible? Really, really, we want to give her 5 Grammys?

As I look at the news I only see mention of one person who has spoken out against Winehouse’s win. Natalie Cole was quoted at an after party saying:

“I don’t think she deserved it, I think she needs to get her life together first, and then get the awards later.”

Amen to that. Yes she is talented. Yes her music is great.  But since when do we give the highest honors to someone who runs around injecting themselves with illegal drugs, smoking crack, etc. etc.? How can we look at our children and tell them that they need to work hard, be smart, and be responsible in order to be successful in life, when they look at the news media and see Amy Winehouse, drug addict, sweeping the Grammys? Is this a ploy for ratings?

I really don’t understand and I really don’t agree. I know people will say that extraordinary artists throughout history have been “tortured” souls. Look at Van Gough, or Picasso. I understand that this type of talent can be overwhelming and it sometimes comes hand in hand with emotional, and mental problems which are often times self medicated. I get that. But seriously, to reward Winehouse at this time, as she is dragged from rehab to rehab, found bloody and beaten after a drug induced fight with her drug addict husband, simply is wrong. What will all those vulnerable high school students take away from the Grammys this year? They will see that using drugs, and endangering yourself and others gets you the ultimate rewards. Too bad.

I just posted on my company blog, about how the Palo Alto software succession strategy, that turned me into the CEO of the company has worked out so well. I thought it was worth mentioning here and pointing you over to it to read it if you are interested in how my father passed the family business on to me just about 9 months ago. So far so good!

More. Of course. But Nataly at Work It Mom has an interesting post about time and whether more time really makes people more productive. I truly believe that in a work environment, there is only so much a body can do in one day. I think that when people try and fool themselves into thinking that they can and should work 80 and 100 hour weeks, the only thing they are doing is heading for a burn out, and in my opinion, working hard but not smart. And the reality is that everyone needs time “off” in order to be truly productive and creative.

When I worked in the Silicon Valley I was deeply disturbed by the “face time” culture that existed in the dot coms where I worked. It felt like people were at the office just to be there — but not necessarily to work. There was a lot of water cooler talk, too many video games played, and lots of long leisurely meals. No offense to my fellow employees, but I have my own personal life. When I am at work, I want to work, but then I want to go home and have my life. Most people when it really came down to it were really only working 6-7 hours a day, and mixing it up with lots of socializing.

I truly believe that you accomplish more and are most productive when you are realistic. Think about the most important, busiest, people in business who I think, give us all this idea that to be truly successful you must work 100 hour weeks. How many hours a week do they spend in meeting after meeting, or traveling to important meetings? How many hours a week do they actually spend working? they are forced to work longer hours because they have to deal with a bunch of time sucking activities– not because they are actually sitting down and working in front of a computer those 100 hours.

So my advice is WORK SMART. You will see more results, and you will be a happier person!