Cynt Marshall: From the Bay Area Projects to CEO of the Dallas Mavericks

and I both went to Berkeley at different times. It's actually there where I first heard of her, when she came to speak to the black student. It was interesting to find out through a conversation that we had similar experiences at Berkeley. I'm forever grateful, of course, to the school for taking a chance on me, but both Sin and I had a tough time feeling like part of a larger community without many other kids being around on campus. We'll talk about that. Plus they're a sent at at

and T and more. Let's get into it was sent You came in to a whole job that was a whole lot of work. Mark Cuban, owner of the MAVs, Yes, called you directly. You he needed you. Your whit persons have to come in here. And you know, I didn't know when he called me, You didn't know? Yah? Yeah, how are you approaching being the CEO of the of the Mavericks giving kind of what was happening before you

got here? And there were no people of color and the executive correct We had ten white man sitting around the table in my first meeting, and then they brought in two women who were not a part of the permanent leadership team. So now our leadership team, executive leadership teams fifty percent women and fifty percent people of color. And when you go down through the tables, we have a diverse employee body. So I feel great about that, and so that's important to me. But equally as important

is to have an inclusive culture. So not just have these people in their great jobs and doing great things, and you know, our employee body looks like the community that we serve and the fans that we serve, but that people are included, that we actually embrace people. So representation is important, but then also just the whole culture and the climate. That's what we focus on every day.

And then of course we want to make money. Somebody told me when I first got here about the financials, and Mark Cuban is a billionaire and if he needs to write a check back to the company, he will. I'm like, well, that's not a good attitude to have because I come from a place thirty six years where it was about profit and loss and Mark Cuban and gets to keep his money that he has. We should be making money to give back to this organization. Why

he called you. I mean, we should be making money, okay, Mark Cuban should not be funding this every year. And so we just had a very good, a very good year. COVID hit us hard, but we still made money. But we just had a very good record setting unprecedented year. So I feel good about that. I truly don't take the credit. I mean the Lord blessed me to be able to bring people together and we get it done. If I lost the people around that table, we would

not be as successful as we are. If my boss didn't have the faith that he has in us, and if he didn't actually slow down long enough to teach me the business of basketball, which he promised he would do. He knew I didn't know a thing about basketball, okay, and he's done that. So we're we're all in this really together. We have our season ticket holders and our fans, and then our players who are absolutely phenomenal and they

are men of character and they love that. You got a colbear running, you got running the team, come on, j And then of course our general manager Nico Harrison, so uh, and then Mike Finley, this is in general manager. We have a good team on and off the court, and so I'm blessed to be able to be the face of it a lot. But they're they're doing it. I mean I'm in there too. No, I work hard, but we all do. We all do, and so we're all going to leave it better than we found it.

I'm so glad you came out here. I see glad that you agreed to do it. And then of course over here it's great to do. It's fun. And you know, I m we have a Berkeley connection. Yes, I went to Berkeley undergrad and eventually to grad school there. Awesome. When I was in college and I was at Berkeley, yeah, I kind of thought that was it, Like I made it like it's over right. Well, I didn't like, this is like a whole journey ahead. And I didn't really

know how to navigate that. It's the beginning of that journey. It's the beginning of the journey. You step on that campus and you see say their gade and the big camp and nearly and you're like, Okay, this is big stuff here. I made it. Yeah, and everyone's telling you you made it. You know that. I congratulations you did. And you're at Berkeley. Don't want probably institution in the world. All that, right, And it's just the beginn of the journey.

We'll talk about how you got to Berkeley. What was it like growing up in Richmond, California. Oh, I love nine four eight oh four. Okay, So my parents left Birmingham, Alabama, So you know your civil rights history. So the church that was bombed in Birmingham in nineteen sixty three, the sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Okay, that was one of my mother's churches, okay, right there in her neighborhood. Okay, And that always sticks out to me because four girls lost

their lives that day. My mother has four girls and two boys. Okay, So I think about those girls every day, just think about them and the sacrifice that they had to make. Or my parents left there. Oh absolutely could have been. I mean absolutely could have been. So, but my parents left there because they wanted us to They didn't want us to grow up in the gym crow segregated South. So moved to the Bay Area, Richmond, California. My dad had a sister and a brother in law there,

and so we landed in the projects. Okay, And I described it as a good childhood even though there was a lot of stuff that happened. Okay, because a lot of things happened to all of us. It's just how you grow up. But we were the victims of domestic violence. I mean I saw a lot. I saw my mom being abused. My father broke my nose when I was sixteen years old. I just I just saw a lot of stuff happen. Actually, fifteen, how do you how are you prossing this as a at the time that it's happening.

My mother was a woman of faith, and so we just always felt like the Lord would take care of us. I mean, for example, the summer my father left us and it was a bloody, ugly summer where we had to flee our house that summer, but my mother's prayer was that we would make it back home before school started. And we made it back home. There was one match was in the house for me and my younger sister

to sleep on. My father had taken everything and eventually, you know, he started to bring, you know, send it back. But my mother told us that day because we were going crazy. I ran track. Our trophies were gone. I mean, it's amazing the things you care about at that age. Yeah. I were in my drunk. Yeah okay, and then you know, school is getting raised. We don't have any clothes, and I'll never forget what my mother said. She said, everybody'd be quiet, and it was just dead silence. She said,

all I want is peace of mind. The Lord will provide, and he did. Literally, people start bringing us stuff. The firm to start to show up again. I went to school, but I went to school with embrace on my nose from where my father had broken my nose that summer. But my mother told me to go to school, just keep going. And three teachers and a principle. I'll never forget this. Three teachers and a principle embrace me. I want to know what was going on. I mean, at

this point, I'm a junior. So they know me, talk to my mom, and they just got me involved in all kind of activities and the rest is history. Miss Irvin, mister o'telly, mister Chapman, and mister Parris just decided, Okay, this girl is going to college. We know her mom, we know the desires of her mom, and we're going to embrace her. And my zipkoe didn't matter. I got a great public education. They embraced me, and I ended up with five full scholarships to the college of my choice.

So of course, get into school your choice, full ride, no problem. I mean, Berkeley is an interesting place. It is because you know everyone. I think everyone thinks it's like a bastion of racial and the harmony, and but the truth of it is, and I went there thirty forty years after you. It's not it's not. It's not, it's not. I mean people think that it's the San Francisco Bay area. It's very diverse, is very liberal, I mean all of that. And when I went to Berkeley,

Black's made up one percent of the school. There were three hundred of us, and I think they're by thirty thousand students. I mean, we made one one percent of the school. I was the only African American in my sorority, one of the first black cheerleaders. It just was not It wasn't diverse, and it's still is not as diverse as it should be as it relates to blacks. Yeah, yeah, how did you handle that? I just did what I normally did. I mean, like when I went out for

to be a cheerleader. I was a cheerleader in high school. My high school was about I mean, you saw as many Asians, as many white, as many black, some Hispanics in my high school, right, so very mixed. And then when I got to Berkeley was very different. But I didn't change so the things I wanted to do. If I saw an activity I wanted to participate in a class I wanted to take, I mean, I just did what I normally would do. I didn't get scared because of the fact that there weren't a whole lot of

people looked like me. There weren't a lot of professors that looked like me, and so I didn't realize I was one of the first black cheerleaders until somebody said that to me. Until people are coming up and putting their hands in my afro and so we're so glad to have you as a cheerleader, and we're so glad to have you out there. It looks good to see you there. We need more black kids out there. And I, okay, did you have a sense of what you wanted to

do while you were there? Like, did you have an aim? Say, I want to get out of here and do this? Okay. So I came in as an engineering major, and by the end of that year, I didn't like it. Getting good grades, but I didn't like it. I took one business class and said, I think I want to change my major. And I took one organizational behavior class, and I sum, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna work for

a big company and lead people and all that. And so I knew from that first class I want to go work in a corporation and I wanted to lead large groups of people. And so I remember when I was recruited and I had thirteen job offers, and I said, I'm going to take the one that pays me the most money because I want to help my family, you know, get out of Easter Hill. And then I'm going to take the one that lets me be the boss. At

twenty one years old. At twenty one years old, I'm going to come in and lead people because I want to serve people. So what positions were you applying for them? Oh? So I had Wells Fargo, so kind of an assistant manager at a bank, Chevron, I mean, just your typical kind of I mean across industry though, so the energy, the oil and gas industry, energy companies, banks, retail companies, and then AT and T was there, so just a variety, and I was just looking at who was going to

pay me the most money. I mean, but I want to supervise people. So that was my criteria. Is it typical straight out of college to apply for like a job? It's like a system, like a management job. Is that I guess it was for me because I mean they had those jobs available, and what AT and T had Pacific Belt they had a fast track management program. So they'd bring you in in a supervisory job and just help you kind of advance and the goal was to

get you to director by five years. I mean, so they wanted people who had proven kind of leadership experience, you know, leading clubs whatever however you did that at that age, and then they would help you grow as a leader. So I came in on our fast track program. Hardly any blacks in that program, and it was quite an experience. It was quite an experience. What did you learn? Okay? So what I learned is that there's some people who are truly invested in you. They want you to do well.

Had I had my second boss, Norm McBride, he's in the Bay Area. I remember one time when he says, Cindy. He'd called me Cindy back then, because I also learned, if people call you what they want to call you, okay, even though I would say I am Sent Okay, my name is Cynthia, but I go by Sent. Well, people never heard of Sent. But he'd called me Cindy because he just couldn't get with the scent thing. And he said, Cindy,

what are you gonna do in this company? So it's my second job, right, he goes, what are you gonna do in this company? And ironically my job was a network engineer okay, because they wanted to promote me into my boss's job in operator services. By that point, I had gotten like all this input, even from my own operators. Since Sent this company is big, it's a technical company. Go and learn this company, because you want to know this company as you start to go up. So I

turned down that promotion to be my boss. I turned on that job and took a lateral to go to the network engineering department. At that time, it was telecommunications, right. The industry has changed a lot, but at that time, I did need to know our network. I needed to know how these phone calls were being made. I needed

to understand the network underneath and behind it all. And so I took a lateral to the network engineering department, which was so funny to me because I spent all this time kicking and scream and I didn't want to be an engineer, right. And so my boss, the engineering manager, came up to me and he goes sending, what are you gonna do in this company? What's your next job? What's your vision? What's your vision? What do you want

to do? I said something to him that was so stupid. Okay, but I'm twenty three years old, I said it, so I can a minute now, okay. I looked at him and I said, mister McBride, I had my head down with all my demand and capacity charts. I'm trying to figure out how the network to call flow and make sure that we got enough capacity and all that. And so I put my head up and I said, mister McBride, my job was to do my current job and to deliver it, and I'm going to do it well, I said,

your job is to figure out my next job. So I'm gonna leave it to you. How stupid is that? Like? Is that? How stupid is that? Right? And so I really thought that all right, I didn't know any bed idea. I didn't know anybody three years ago. I didn't know any better, right, And so he just looked at me. Thank god he did, though, this white man, okay, totally invested in me. And he said, oh, Cindy, mmm, come

on back here with me. And so he took me back to his big engineering manager office and he had all these white boards and easel sheets and all that. And that man spent two hours showing me the different departments of the company, what they do, how it all hangs together. He looked at my skill set what he thought would be a good path for me. I mean, he spent two hours. Wow, Like, who does that? And he says, okay, so Cindy, let's start thinking about the next kind of job you need to have. You need

something where you could see the big picture. He laid out, like my next three jobs, based on what he knew about me. He says, so this is how this works, and you gotta have somebody to help you do this. But then it's your decision. And so as I was leaving his office, he said, sind Y, don't ever put your career in somebody else's hands. He says, you have to own it. There will be people who will invest in you, and then there will be some people who

are not invest in you. You know, you have to watch out for those people as well, but you have to own it. And I walked out of his office with a plan. A couple of days later, he came by and he goes, Cindy, where are you going girl? Where are you going in this company? What you're gonna do with your career? And I said, mister McBride, what I want to do. I want to have a job with the big picture of the company. I would, and so I just like real out. He goes, we got

it good. I love Norm McBride. I gotta find him. I gotta gotta be in his nineties or something now, I gotta find him. Is that beautiful? So lucky that you said what you said and not somebody, I mean, because he really did. I thought that. Yeah, I thought, I'm going to work hard because results matter. Results matter. You have to deliver the goods, right, Okay, But that's

not all that matters. Because you can deliver the results and all that, But if nobody's invested in you, and if you don't know how to navigate the terrain, if you're just sitting there because you know you're a black person or you're a black woman, but nobody is truly telling you the culture and including you and helping you understand what the rules are and all that, you're just there and before you know it, twenty years pasted or

five years passing year, unhappy and you leave. I have done that exercise that I tell you Norm McBride did for me. I've done that with a lot of people. I've done it with a lot of people. What else did you learn at and t oh Man? I learned a lot of thirty six years years thirty six years okay. I learned how to be an effective leader and a servant leader, which is what I am. I serve people and my three l's is if I want to be

really effective, I need to do three things. I need to listen to the people, learn from the people, and love the people truly listen, not just hear them, but listen to what they're saying and what they're not saying, which is what I did when I came here to the MAVs, one on ones with every single employee, just listening to them and trying to understand who are these people that I need to serve a lot of people might say, well, Okay, you're gonna you know, you get

in a position where you need to go and you kind of need to like triage, like what's going on here and figure things out. And Okay, but if I go start talking to everybody, everyone's gonna have different grievances. Everyone's gonna want different things. You want all that. You want all that because it's a recipe. I mean, you're you're trying, you're trying to bake a cake. You don't just bake it with the eggs. Okay, you gotta have all of it. I mean, And like I make sweetpotator bies, Okay,

so I need my sweet potatoes. I need I mean, I want to sign that. By the way, they're famous. Okay, they're famous, But I don't just say Okay, well I got to sweet potatoes, so now I can make my bies, right. No, I gotta have the butter. I gotta have the eggs. I gotta have this sugar. I gotta have the nutmeg. I gotta have the cinnamon, and yeah, and yeah, and the nutmeg and cinnamon. That's only like two tablespoons, but that's what you really taste. Okay, if it's missing, you

know it's missing. So everybody brings something different, so you got to hear all of that. I have two hundred people here. We have to know these people. We got to understand. Like I asked the people when I got here, I said, okay, I would start out by saying, how long have you been? Give me your whole give your whole life story, And undoubtedly they would say something like, well, this is my seventh season at the Maps, And I said, were you born here? Like? Were you born here in

this building? Were you born on the court at the Maps? I want the whole life story. So then I make them go all the way back because I want to know the story, just like I started with you about being born in Birmingham. And here's what I learned in that process. So many people in this organization, they literally chose to have a career in sports, Like very few somebody like call them or they showed up to help with a crisis or whatever. They chose a long time

ago to have a career in sports. I was so emotional by the time I interviewed all these people. I mean like, I was crying, and I called in the two women who had come here with me and I said, Okay, so, just like we chose to have a career in communications, these people chose to have a career in sports. Like some of these people were sports management majors in college. I've never even heard of that. Okay, They've invested in their lives getting ready for this. This is their life.

That's why authenticity is one of our values that's important to us. And so I often say the people, and I've said this for years, the people who get up out of bed in the morning, the issues they have, the baggage they have, the backgrounds they have, the cultural attributes they have, all of that. Those are the people we should want to walk into our doors every day

as employers. We don't want them to get up and go onto a phone booth, change out of who they are and put on a big cape with an M on their chest for Mavericks or T on their chest for AT and T and come in and be the people we want them to be. We want the person who got up out of bed in the morning. Wow.

That's why I want to walk in in the morning or show up on the screen, because that authenticity gives us creativity, It gives us innovation, It helps us understand different cultures, it helps us tap into different market segments. I don't want people going in and putting a cap on with an M on it, because then we're all the same when we come back. Sint Marshall talks about how getting people to perform is the mark of a good leader and how community focused businesses make more money.

We're back with Sint Marshall. Do you have a strategy for how to how to get your ideas across? Like, how do you know? How are you when you when you go into a place, how are you looking to implement? Okay yourself? Okay, So I'm I'm naturally a positive person. I'm naturally an optimistic person and I'm a person that believes in people, and so I approach it that way. I approach it very in a very positive manner and try to get people to understand what I think needs

to happen. Now, in a leadership job, I have a bigger picture and so I have to do that with my team members sometime and they'll tell me what they think and I said, okay, well you give it to me from where you sit, from your vantage point, and I'll give it to you from where I sit. And every now and then I just got to make a decision and we got to go. But usually is bringing people together because I think it's about knowing what your

mission and your goal is. If your mission is to get the best out of people and to get them to perform for the sake of the share owners. At the end of the day, you're running a business. It's about profit and loss, and you get to do good on top of all of that. Okay, a company does well by doing good, and so you get a chance to reach out to the community and do all that. But you got to make you want to be able to do that, and so there's a way to get people,

to engage people and to get them to perform. Make an important point. I mean, you know, doing good is a thing that you want to do, but when it comes to this down to down to dollars and cents the end of the day, you need to make money. That's like, that's the goal, right, and you can you can actually make more money. I've seen it. I mean I've lived it where you could actually even make more money by taking care of more people and by doing good in the world. Because in fact, I just had

an example. I'll give you a perfect example. We have an organization I won't mention who they are, big sponsor of hours Okay, fabulous actually a fabulous business model they have, right, And so our sponsorship guy asked me. He says, I need you to come to this meeting. The sponsor this company. They want you in the meeting because it's important to them that they connect with you and all that. So I get to the meeting the CEO of the company.

He looks at me and he says, we're looking at all the things that you and the organization, all the things you guys are doing in the community. We want to be a part of that. We're all about single mothers, we're all about so he rattled off, kind of their whole agenda when you guys do, aligns with what we're doing, and we're seeing you out there, and I am blessed that I get to be the face a lot. I mean, we have fabulous people all over the organization, but a lot of times I get to be the face. So

the people think it's me, but it's everybody. And so he says, we want to have a relationship with the MAVs because of Saint Marshall and the things that you guys are doing. Now I know that's him saying because of the MATHS and because of our agenda, including Mark Qban and everybody else. Because this organization had a community focus before I got here. We just elevated it. My boss said, go okay, and so we just elevated it. Responded to the George Floyd incident, responded to COVID, I mean,

we just took our game up. We have a whole social justice agenda called Maths Take Action. We are not playing about social justice. So we're doing a lot and people recognize that and because of that, they want to do business with this. We have two sponsors that came on board. Tia and Coca Cola. They actually said, we want to sponsor. We want to be a sponsor for Maths Take Action. That's crazy because we're doing math take Action anyway. But now people want to partner with us.

We're making more money because people are seeing what we're doing and they want to partner with us. So by putting people first, you feel like more money can be made. There can be more money brought to the table. Absolutely, a lot of people view it as you know that those are conflicting ideas. Now when you hear people say a company does well by doing good, it's the truth.

And I saw that with ATND. I saw us bring in a lot of different customers and partners because of the things that we were doing in the community, because of our focus with employee resource groups and diversity, equity inclusion. Supplier diversity is a good example I like to always use. You actually can show where you are spending less, where you're purchase spend is less when you have a diverse group of suppliers, but your quality has not lessened at all.

I've seen that. I've seen. I saw it at ATNT and we are experiencing it right now at the MAVs. We just hit this week, like thirty one percent of our spend is going our purchasing spend is going to minority, women, disabled,

veteran business owners. And we said, we said that target out, We said, we want to impact an influence and be a good We want to do good for those businesses, especially coming out of COVID because a lot of those businesses were struggling, and so our purchasing spend is down, but our product is even better because of doing business. Who wouldn't want that doing business with these diverse vendors.

There is a bottom line dollars and cents equation to focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, philanthropy and all that. It is very, very real. The diversity dividend is real. The return on investment and reaching out to community these and doing well and living up to your corporate social

responsibility israel you make more money. There's another idea I'll say, floating around people my age, a little younger, a little older, perhaps be interesting to ask you about this, This idea of again, what's good for my company isn't necessarily good for me. That those are opposing ideas that not finding the right work life balance and having that skill to

too much towards work. It's a detriment to you as a person, this idea of maybe quiet quitting, right, Like, how important is work really when when ultimately it doesn't add to my life? And so maybe I'm just going to do how do you approach work life balance? And okay, lord have marks? I have so many thoughts on that. Okay, first of all, I personally, so this is Cynthia Janelle Marshall here. Okay, there is no way in the world my kids and my family is going to be right

here at the same level as my job. That's not happening. Okay. My family will always be up there and my job will always be there. What I try to do is what I call integration. There sometimes when I got to focus more on what I'm doing here, the season is getting ready to start and all that, and I'm not gonna be at home with the folks that are hanging around in my house, like my daughter today, my mom coming over to have lunch. Well, that's great, you can't

eat with that lot. On my way out, I'm pulled a lot of the driveway right now, okay, And I'm not gonna just stop it, like have lunch with her. Okay, I get out with you. Okay, I's already planned, right, but I just integrated. You just do what you have to do. And not everybody's blessed to be able to do that where they can just kind of like pick and choose. But here's what you can do. You can identify your crystal balls and the rubber balls. And I wish I had and I wish I had my actual example.

Imagine a crystal ball. You drop it, it shatters, it never comes back. I mean, you drop it's over Okay, rubber balls they bounced back. I can throw it to you, you'll catch it, maybe you'll do something with it. I can throw it over there to Aaron maybe maybe she'll drop it. I can throw it over here, maybe to David. Maybe he'll throw it back. Okay, who knows. Okay, but it's not urge you right now, you got time to fool with all that your crystal. It's urgent. You can't

drop it. And so what I try to do on a regular basis is say what is crystal in my life right now that I cannot drop? What is rubber? And I'll give you a good example. When ATNT named me the president of ATNT in North Carolina, to go on and run the North Carolina and then eventually also the Virginia operation. It's a big job, okay. And since it was close to Washington, DC, they would ask me to come to Washington, DC periodically to help them with

policymakers and big issues. And so one time they asked me if I could come and actually be there all week. And I said, okay, I got a great team here in North Carolina. They can carry the day. I can be there all week except for Wednesday afternoon. I can't be there on Wednesday afternoon. And so I said, because it's my son's first high school swim meet. And so they said, okay, great. So I get there Monday morning.

We're in the meeting. They're laying out all the policymakers we have to meet with, and all the committee heads and the big wigs. The meetings are on Wednesday afternoon. And I said, I told you guys, I can't be here Wednesday afternoon. They're like simp, but these are people are important, blah blah blah. I said, no, no no, no, I told you guys. It was my son's first high school swim meet. That's a crystal ball. It's not a

second high school swim meet. It's not his third. It's his first high school swim meet in a new school, in a new state. I'm not dropping this. So I'm gonna have the meetings. I don't even meet to have a Monday and Tuesday, and then I am flying home so I could be at his swim meet and then I'm gonna fly right back and then we can finish out. So you're gonna have a move these people, So at first they start laughing, They're like, no, it's a swim meet.

I'm like, it's not just a swim meet. It's crystal ball. It's not like a swim practice. It's crystal ball. Okay, So of course I went home right and my boy looked up, and I'm convinced to this day he won that individual medley race because his mama, he's in the stands. He looked up for his daddy and his sister, and I was up there a smile that was important to me,

and then I went right back. Okay. And a lot of times I'm not there, A lot of times i'm not at activities, I'm not there and all that, but I know what's important to me, and I know what's crystal, and I ask people to stop and do that because most things are rubber. Okay, a lot of things just actually don't matter. They'll come back later, you can pick them up later, somebody else to get them. But what

is crystal? So I ask people to do that. And if people have things that are crystal in their life and they're working for an employer and they're somewhere where they just cannot handle the employer won't allow them to handle what's crystal, they need to reassess. They need to truly reassess is this the place I'm supposed to be? Because you can't live like that. And I truly believe that there are places when you know who you are, you know what your values are, there's a place for you.

Somebody is waiting for you. Now, you're not gonna do anything crazy, or you're just gonna walk out and then you're gonna get home and say, Okay, how am I gonna buy bread and cheese? Yeah? Okay, like I can't eat. You're not gonna do anything like that. But it's time to start thinking about what you're going to do next, because you need to be You don't have to be

smiling and running in cheery every day. Yeah, but you shouldn't be walking in crying, and you shouldn't be leaving crying and your heart beating fast and you can barely breathe. You can't work like that, yeah, And sometimes it's Sometimes it's just a matter of talking to your employer and telling them, Okay, so here's what's not working for me. Our employees do that, and then if it just ends up not working for you, then you have to start

making some changes. If the employer won't make changes, then you have to start making changes. When we return, Dallas Mavericks CEO sint Marshall tells us why speaking up in the workplace is important and how she learned to pay attention to her whole job and not just the parts she liked. We're back with sint Marshall. You've also experienced a lot of personal tragedy in your life, yes, as you're ascending. Yes. And just for people don't know, I

mean miscarriages, yes, four second try mester miscarriages. So I had to like deliver all these babies, you know, have him Mommy signed a death print to foot aroun All that. Okay, So four try it. I almost died a couple a few times. So four second try mester miscarriages. A daughter who was born four months prematurely, who died at six and a half months old. Um, husband, who's okay special, Okay, you did your homework. Yes, August when he first was

the date that she passed away. And then I had a husband, my husband, he's still my husband thirty thirty nine years. But he ended up with brain damage. Um, and so they said he would never walk or talk again. And so he is walking and talk again. Okay. Um. And so uh, just you just kind of go through you just you get through it though, yea. But how do you cancer as well? I mean oh yeah, okay, yeah, I forgot about the cancer. Okay, yeah, cancer. They don't

think I would be here. People's like, come on now, okay, we all have problems. Yes, most of our problems. Aren't life or death your problem, right right? I mean, you've been through it. I've had life and death problems. How do you how do you allow yourself to still care about work and find it important? Okay, So I'll give you an example. When my daughter died, I relied on work that. Actually, I mean I relied on work almost to a fault, because that's how I actually became a workaholic.

I actually had pretty decent schedule where I was working my little hours eight to ten and then I go home. After my daughter died, I just went full blown twelve fifteen, sixteen hour days because that was a distraction for me. But I needed it. I needed that distraction until one of my employees called it out and said, okay, long enough, because now we're all working those hours too long enough. So now let's get a handle on it. Let's see if you need therapy. What do you need to do

now because you have decided that this job. One of your employees said that to you. One of my employees walked in my office, Carmen Cooper. She walked in my office one day and she goes, okay, since we need to talk, and they were like three other employees outside of her office. So I guess they had all been talking and so because I asked them to all come in and they said no, no, Carmen's company. And they said no, no, Carmen's company. And I'm like, okay, So

Carmen comes in. She closes the door and she says, Boss, we need to talk. I said what she says, Um, we're all grieving the loss of special Ka. Obviously we're not grieving the loss like you're grieving. Okay, We've never had to bury our kids, but we're all grieving it too. You decided that the way you're going to handle it is to just try to ignore or it and just dig into work. Okay. So from the minute we all left the funeral that Friday until now, it's been all work.

Our hours have doubled. I mean, she just laid it all out, she says, because obviously that's what you need to do, where you think you need to do to get through it. She says, been going on a few months now, and it needs to stop. You need to breathe, and you need to let us go home and breathe. It's out of hand now. I mean, she just thought she called me on it, and I said, no, no, girl, because we got this going on, and we got that

going on. She said, We've always had that going on, but we didn't have to attack it at the pace that we're attacking it now. We're attacking it at the pace that we're attacking it now because you're putting all your energy and emotion into this because that's how you're grieving, and it's affecting all of us. So number one, yes, we are concerned about our work schedules, but more importantly, we are concerned about you. We think it's unhealthy and

so we need to all talk about it. So then she opened up the door and the other ones came in, and then we just all cried and they were right, and we just kind of all dealt with it. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. And did you start to oh, yeah, we backed up, backup. They were right. I mean, they were absolutely right, and the quality was still great, it was even better. We were just like joined together at

that point because they called it out. That's why the speak up culture is really important to me, and being able to walk in your boss's office and talk to them is so important because sometimes people will see things that you don't see. And I am just a workaholic by nature. I won't be in a job that I don't love. But every now and then you could just go too far with just pouring everything into it, and you need somebody to kind of just say stop. Like I just all my team members that people need to

try to get their vacation time in. The schedule is out, the season is coming up come October twenty second. We're going to be in it until we win it all into right, hey, so get your time in. So so, and when you're going through things, sometimes you need other people. The people who are close to you. Work people are close to you, spend so much time with them. They can help you see what's going on. They can give you advice and all that and so, and that's something

I also speaks to. I mean that goes back to again, like you making sure other people are taking care of yes, right then, but gets people feeling comfortable and going in respectfully. Kind of. It's a ripple effect. And it doesn't always happen. I mean, you know, we'll experience losses and things happen, and then you'll see what happened there and you'll think, oh, I think we could have like avoided that loss, or I think we could you know, were we there for

that person? I mean, so every now you'll something you say is one of your biggest missteps in business. If you had to look back, oh man, I've all been pretty charmed. But if oh no, I know this one. I mean, I love the question when they're saying, did anything ever like not work for you? Oh? Yes, I could give you a few examples, but this one in particular, and I'll try to make it quick. It was back when I got my first big, my big director job.

I mean I had like a small one before then, and so I was over like all the installation and maintenance crews and like thousands of people. So I said, I'm getting to know everybody. I gotta be out there. I gotta know what the technicians do. I gotta know what the inside maintenance administrators do. I just kind of like them because I didn't really know this area of the business, right. So in order to learn this business, I said, I got to be out there with the people. Okay,

I went to pole climbing school. I mean all that I interacted with the union, I mean the works right. And then I got totally out of balance, because when you're a leader, there's a whole job that has to be done. There's kind of like the paperwork and the process and the audits and the reviews. There's stuff you have to do as a leader, stuff that you have to have your eye on. You have to run your business, you got to pay attention to the details. You don't

have to be in the weeds with your people. Let them do their jobs. But there are just certain things as a leader, I have to look at so reports, I have to look at certain things I need to do. And so I used to have this model that was as ridiculous as what I told Norm McBride. Okay, I used to have this model that says, I do my people work by day and my paperwork by night. Meeting, I'd be out in the field with the people. I'm going to get to know these people. I'm a hands

on leader. I love these people. I got listened to a learn from all that, right, and then I would get around and all this other stuff on my desk, the paperwork and stuff I do that at night. I take that home. And so sometimes I take it home and I'd work long hours and I'd get it done, and sometimes I'm like, I'm just too tired. I'm exhausted. Well, this one night, I'm actually looking at a report and I found some anomalies in the report and it actually

was somebody actually engaged in some unethical activity. And I kept looking. I said something right, and I'm a numbers person, right, and I said, these numbers aren't adding up. So then I go in the next day and I asked for the previous month's report, and I asked for the month before that. So then I went back quite a few months, and the anomaly is there. Now. I didn't see it, you know, I didn't see it because I was out there doing people work by day and my paperwork by night.

If I could get to it this particular night, I focused on it. Previous months I had not focused on it. I missed it, like I flat out missed it. So then of course I gotta raise the flag. And so I gotta raise the flag. I gotta do the investigation. I gotta do all this, and so we uncover everything. And so I'm feeling pretty good about myself because I found the problem. Or should I have really been feeling good about myself? No, because I should have found it

a long time ago. And that's what my bosses had to tell me, like, since this is great, but like, you weren't paying attention. And so then I was cutting up and just like, oh I found it, I was paying attention. Blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah, And it actually took me months. It took me months to actually accept accountability for my role in what had happened. And it truly came down to not doing the whole job, focusing on the pieces that I liked, or the pieces

that I felt work important, even if I didn't like it. Okay, the pieces that I felt were important. Well, at that level, it's all important. But you have to set priorities and you have to figure out how to do that whole job. Because I know there's a whole job to do, and there's nobody else to do my whole job except me, and so I give that advice a lot. Do the whole job. Know what that whole job is. Understand when you get it in a new, big position like that,

what is the scope of this job? What has to be done in this job? What do you think you need to do to be effective? And then do it and not just get sucked up into fun stuff or the stuff you like or the stuff that somebody else thinks is a priority. Because you know there's a whole job to be done, and when you find out that there are some negative consequences for not doing that whole job, there's nobody to blame but yourself. Right. I learned it the hard way. You have a whole hell of a

whole job right now. I love my job of an NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks sent Marshall. Thank you so much. It's like as as as incredible as it was to read your book, which and then there's so much more in there that we you know, we could we couldn't get you. I could talk to you for hours. To have the pleasure of sitting with you and feeling your spirit, it's even better than I couldn't imagine. Thank you so much. Opportion, keep for coming in there, thank you for flying out

just to like talk to me. I'm feeling pretty special right now. I'm gonna do it again. Saint Marshall, y'all. I got done talking with her and literally felt like I had just went to the best version of church imaginable. Her advice is so solid and also simple. I find myself repeating her crystal ball rubber ball litmus test. And I've been thinking about her a lot this entire school year as I figured out how to prioritize work and

also my kids schedule. Her book, You've been chosen. Driving through the Unexpected is everything this conversation was and more. In fact, it's the only book I could think of that's made me cry both times of reading. Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited by Keishaw Williams, Engineered by Bent Holliday, Booked by Laura Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show's executive produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the videos for Pushkin Industries.

Our theme music's by Bent Hoaliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Yaggs and Stvannah Joe Lack. Listen to Start It from the Bottom. Wherever you get your podcasts and if you want ad free episodes available one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page for more information. If you like your show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast staff. I'm justin Richmond.