1 Body Language Mistake That Makes You Look Small | Mellody Hobson

If you can sit next to Howard Schultz in a board meeting, which I do, and every— I sit as close as I can. Breathe on me. Give me a little bit of it. He said, you don't go and watch video from when you win. You watch video from when you lose. It was one of those things where you think you're going to go in and you're going to make a pitch and they're totally going to shoot you down. And then ultimately they say yes, and you're like, shit.

Hello, Believe Nation. I'm Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs are going to solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn from Ariel Investments President Melody Hobson and my take on her top 10 rules for success. Rule number 10 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, as you're listening, if something really resonates with you, if there's a message that really holds true to you, please leave it down in the comments below and put it in quotes so that other people can be inspired. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick. With yourself as well. Enjoy.

Be a fanatic. Warren Buffett supposedly interviews people and he says, "Are you a fanatic?" And when you meet the fanatics, you know them. And I don't use fanatic in a bad way. You know, it's this— the people that I've most admired have so loved their work. And so wanted a good outcome, you understand why they're so successful. And when I think about our young leaders of color, I want to tell them just, you know, it's never going to get easier. You think it gets easier, it doesn't. It never gets easier. I'm still doing homework every weekend. I'm still— it never gets easier. And if anything, the stakes go up so much, you actually have to work even harder. You have to be fanatical. You do not give up. You don't take it so personally. You figure out how you're you're going to get up. Do not let people talk you out of your dreams. Do not let them tell you no. And you own that you have to convince them. I spend time with people who are world class. I know what world class looks like. And I have to bring that back to my organization and bring that to life for them. But I can tell you with the people that I spend time with, I am learning world class from them. Yeah. And so therefore I have big dreams. If you can sit next to Howard Schultz in a board meeting, which I do, and I sit as close as I can. Breathe on me. Give me a little bit of it. Look my way. No, I'm joking. But I sit as— because I want to— I'm watching how he watches, how he's studying, how the presentation is being made, how he's interacting with people. And I am learning, and I want to make sure our people have that same level of energy around them. That's what world class is. Do not make any decisions based on money. None. It's the worst way to make a decision, which I know is so hard to say. I mean, I didn't grow up with any money, and I know so many of us are— our families have a lot at stake. They've put a lot into us, made a lot of sacrifices for us. And you say you don't have the luxury of doing that, but I actually think you do. You will be more successful if you make decisions based upon what is going to feed your soul, make you feel value— valued, validated, you know, have you waking up in the morning and racing to work, whatever it might be. And I can tell you after a short amount of time, money will not be enough. At the end of the day, a bigger paycheck is another suit or more real estate, more square footage. That's what it comes down to. You end up with another room and a fuller closet, and after a while, that's not gonna do it. I read this quote during an obituary for Floyd Patterson, the boxer, and he said he only learned from losing a fight. He said, "You don't go and watch video from when you win. You watch video from when you lose." And it is the failures that build the character, that make you smarter, stronger, tougher. I always tell people we're scarred but smarter, and I think that is a really good thing to be. You can build on all of that accumulated knowledge in a way that can serve you and your clients and your company very, very well. But there have been, you know, numerous moments of great pause and reflection where I've sat and say— and I say to our team and I say to myself, "What is the universe trying to teach me?" That idea of, I'm not looking out 5 years, I'm looking out long-term, I'm not thinking about there's another job for me somewhere else, I'm thinking about this job right now. Those are the kind of things that, you know, I think have been able to lead to my success. When I started working at Ariel, our founder John Rogers said something to me that I've never forgotten. On my very first day, he took me to TGI Fridays. Big spender. And he said, He said, "Every game in life is won with patience. Every single one." And he said, "I don't care if it's dating, to you can't win the Indianapolis 500 in the first lap, to a basketball game." He's like, "If you look at all sports, just a very simple, just one sort of portion of the world, patience is how you win." And that has been something that I intuitively got at that moment. I think when I think about what I'd like to be remembered for, I would like to be thought of having been very kind, who did right by society. I actually learned that probably in my most formative years from my business partner, John Rogers. I actually just read a graduation speech that someone gave at one of the universities about kindness, and I thought that he, really spoke to everything that John started to tell me when I was 22, that you could always take the kind path, and you could win with kindness. And I've tried to think a lot about that. And it doesn't always work, and sometimes I know I'm not as kind as I'd wanna be, but it's in the back of my mind a lot. I sit in a lot of rooms with people who wait. Wait for someone to say something. Or my favorite line is, I give this all the time, at Princeton we had a professor, and if you were in a precept group with him, someone spoke and you said, "I want to reiterate what Sally said," he would say, "You mean iterate again," which meant you have no original thoughts. And so it's one— these are the kinds of things I think about. Have an original idea, be willing to speak it, because it will get you noticed. I love to swim so much that as an adult, I swim with a coach. And one day my coach had me do a drill where I had to swim to one end of a 25-meter pool without taking a breath. And every single time I failed, I had to start over. And I failed a lot. By the end, I got it, but I got out of the pool, I was exasperated and tired and annoyed, and I said, "Why are we doing breath-holding exercises?" And my coach looked at me and he said, "Melody, that was not a breath-holding exercise. That drill was to make you comfortable being uncomfortable, because that's how most of us spend our days." If we can learn to deal with our discomfort and just relax into it, we'll have a better life. I think there was a very specific risk that I took very early on at Ariel that was unique and unprecedented at the time. I was about 24 years old. I'd been there for a couple of years, and we had these public mutual funds that were in partnership with another company. And I went to our board of directors and said, "We need a divorce." It had never happened before, and we pulled apart two operating mutual funds from an existing mutual fund family, $400 million in assets, paid $4 million for the right to do it. It was the whole nest egg of the company, and that was a very, very, very bold call at the time. It was one of those things where you think you're going to go in and you're going to make a pitch and they're totally going to shoot you down, and then ultimately they say yes, and you're like, that's crazy. They're not supposed to be listening to me. Don't they know I don't know what I'm doing? It ended up like marrying me to the company. It's where Ariel became mine. Now on a day-to-day basis, what I'm now pushing very hard, and Catherine Berardi is with me who is my new teammate at Ariel and a spectacular superstar, and she's heard me now say this story like 100 times in 4 months, but my new thing that I'm really pushing very, very hard, especially with women, and my friend Sheryl Sandberg is also doing the same thing in her own in a magnificent way. I can't even compare myself because she has a book that's coming out on this idea. But I feel like, as women, the risk is us speaking our truth. And the story that I've now been telling is a story that I read about a woman in a magazine who said every single day, every single day, her daughter walked out of the house, starting when she was a very small child, she said the exact same thing to her every single day through college. "Be brave." Every single day. She said she wrote her letters in college and she always signed them, "Be brave." And that now just speaks to me because I'm in so many rooms where I feel like the courage is not always there. And I don't know what the fear is. Maybe it's the fear of not saying the right thing or not fitting in, but I'd rather the person totally, you know, make a giant mistake than not say anything at all. And I just find with women, sometimes we're really sort of waiting to add our voice. And I don't mean to say this in any way that diminishes us, because we have the good ideas. But, you know, when I was at Princeton, in our precepts, our small groups when we weren't in lecture, they would say something to you that if you were piling on with what someone else said, and you'd say, I'd like to reiterate what this person said, they'd say, oh, you mean iterate again. And that was their way of making you see, like, that is not an original thought. Right. And I feel like a lot of the women in the room have the original thought in some situations and are waiting to be validated, and I'm just like, go for it, go for broke, pound the table, speak your truth. And I've now noticed it in ways even in my own firm where I give people real-life examples. We had a board meeting recently at our firm, and one of my colleagues who's a superstar woman was presenting, and she was only looking at our CEO when she was talking. And I was like, don't ever do that again. It was like she was looking for his validation and all the other people around the table, it was like they didn't matter. And I was like, it just made you look small. Right. And you're not. And that was like a simple example of that being brave. What about her needed to lock on on him and have him nod and, you know, have her keep going versus just owning the room with her presence. Stand up for you, what you believe in. Do not back down. And that doesn't mean you have to do it with a fist in the air or, you know, with aggression. You can do it with grace. And I cannot be talked out of what I believe. Now that doesn't mean, like in my core values, you cannot convince me me that racism will ever be a path to something good. You cannot convince me that excluding people ever leads to a better outcome. You cannot convince me of that. I will not be moved. I will not compromise that point of view. And as a result of that, I'm gonna do everything I can to keep pressing those perspectives. And I think if any issue I have with some of the millennials that I've had the opportunity to work up close with, don't be compliant. You know, just, you know, you were taught sometimes winning is the path of least resistance. And I think this is now more than ever, your voice and, you know, being willing to put yourself in harm's way. It's like the question of losing a job. I know it sounds like I'm being flip. I have often asked myself, do I belong here? Should I walk out? Nothing is worth this. And, you know, I think that, you know, just really pushing yourself to understand that sometimes certain things you're just going to have to walk away. If you really, really, really believe it, you've got to stand up for something. So, you know, I went to this program at the Aspen Institute, the Henry Crown Fellows Program. We were in these small leadership groups, 20 people, and Skip Battle, who's this amazing guy and known in Silicon Valley, was my moderator. I have so much respect and admiration for him. And one day we were in the room and he said to me, Melody, I know you will do good. I was like 30 years old. He goes, but will you stand in harm's way? Will you put yourself in harm's way? He's like, you could go through your whole life just doing the easy path and feeling good about yourself and patting yourself on the back, but will you allow yourself to be hurt? Will you allow yourself to have a tremendous setback because you stood up for what you believed? And that forced me to really think about the path of least resistance and saying versus believing that I will allow myself to be harmed. And then I start to think about people like John Lewis standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and I start to think— I literally cannot even say this without welling up— saying, could I have that kind of courage? And I think this is the moment we're standing in right now. We have to have that John Lewis courage, that Martin Luther King courage, that dogs-turned-on-teenagers, fire hoses-turned-on-people courage. Because I think that if we were standing there, if I was standing there, I think I would run. And now I'm telling myself, stand.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Sarah Green asked me to. If there's someone you'd like me to profile in the next top 10, check out the link in the description and go and cast your vote. I'd also love to know what was your favorite message from this video? What did you learn from this video that you're going to immediately apply somehow in your life or in your business? Please leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to the Essatino Artists YouTube channel. Thank you guys so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and having me on your show in an interview to talk about it. I really, really, really appreciate the support, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book.

We're interviewing author of Your One Word, Evan Carmichael, live on our YouTube channel.

So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever Your one word is much love. I'll see you soon.

If you follow your passion, you're going to be successful no matter what, because one, you'll be happy. And I think happiness is really important. You can't do anything well if you're not happy. You can't be a good parent, good spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend. You can't be a good coworker. Happiness is important, and that doesn't mean euphoria every day, but a basic sense of peace. And for some of us, especially Type A and especially people who are hard on ourselves, we don't give each other— give ourselves a break. And so the pursuit of happiness as we have it written, obviously, in our Declaration of Independence is something that is challenging. So pursuing happiness, I do think, is important as a pursuit of anything else. Observe your environment at work, at school, at home. I'm asking you to look at the people around you purposefully and intentionally. Invite people into your life who don't look like you, don't think like you, don't act like you, don't come from where you come from. And you might find that they will challenge your assumptions and make you grow as a person. You might get powerful new insights from these individuals. Some of our, our best ideas also come from pushing something that other people are afraid to do. So we've innovated in areas that cause people some trepidation, and I think that's just the part of us that is a little irreverent and the part of us that's willing to be very, very different. So it's everything from having a turtle as a logo when Merrill has a scary bull and Dreyfus had a lion, and we had this turtle holding a loving cup that was a drawing and, you know, looks very friendly. That was very different. So we had this turtle, it was John's original logo for Ariel, and then we just blew it out. I mean, all of our materials look like storybooks, and our brochure was like a storybook, and people would get them and say, "I took this home," and then you knew you had something special.