At October Research’s second annual Women’s Leadership Summit, Sheri Olsen, national director of banking services and senior vice president at First American Trust, and Jenny Martin, senior vice president, chief business development officer and national division manager at Futura Title & Escrow, presented “Growing Our Journey Together.” They discussed some successes and failures they faced within the real estate world and shared lessons learned to aid others in their search for success.
Olsen began with the story of 3M’s Post-It Notes and how this well-known invention almost failed. In 1968, Spencer Silver was creating adhesive for airplane construction and instead made an adhesive that could be reused without leaving residue everywhere. His bosses saw this creation as a failure. Ten years later, Post-It Notes hit the market and now, even in an age of technology, 3M produces over 50 million sticky notes a year, Olsen said. Instead of completely scraping a perceived failure, it was shaped into an undeniable success.
On the more technological side, Martin detailed the evolution of ePaper. In 1975, Nick Sheridan worked for Xerox, where they dreamed of replacing physical books with computer monitors. It didn’t take off. Years later, a different team continued Sheridan’s work and launched E Ink in 1997, which Martin said is considered a pioneer in ePaper.
“For me, is this a success or a failure? I think it’s a bit of both,” Martin said. “The initial idea that Sheridan had way back in 1975 actually did come to fruition. … It took contributions of many researchers in the period of 48 years to make this to where we are today.”
Martin listed numerous inventions by women, including the circular saw, the globe, the ice cream maker and the dishwasher. Notably, movie star Hedy Lamarr developed technology for missiles that could be guided without detection in World War II, paving the way for Wi-Fi.
Some of these inventions were initially perceived as failures until they eventually reached fruition, she said.
“There was a lot of failure along the way, and they had to overcome a lot of challenges to get to where these are now common household items for us,” Martin said. “And they’re also responsible for a lot of groundbreaking technologies. … I think that we continue to honor these women by persevering through a lot of the perceived failures in our minds to get to those wins and those successes.”
Olsen shared her own experience with a perceived failure at work that was anything but. She had recently been promoted and had to make a risky decision. Her peers encouraged her not to do it and warned that she could be fired, but Olsen stuck to her process and consulted with leaders at their company, from legal to marketing. She took the initiative and went to senior leaders for support, which she ultimately received.
“It was the best decision I made in my career for a couple of reasons,” Olsen said. “Number one, market share grew, which was really good. Number two is I was seen as a leader that was willing to make tough decisions, and that’s hard to do; it’s hard to do as a woman sometimes.”
Martin’s perceived failure was of a different sort. A number of years ago, her company implemented a new sales training program. However, she couldn’t buy in to the training wholeheartedly because of its scripted nature.
“I kind of failed,” Martin said. “They sort of took leading the project from a business development perspective away from me and the [chief operating officer] took it on. … What I realized is that yes, in a way, it was failure because it was something that I just couldn’t buy in a 100 percent.”
In the end, the initiative failed because the sales representatives couldn’t buy in to the training either, for the same reason Martin struggled with.
“It’s a failure, but it’s a success because we took away some really valuable parts from this system,” she said. “We took away what we could implement …and we learned how much we, as a company and in our sales approach, value being authentic.”
To conclude their talk, Olsen and Martin shared some of the lessons they learned in their struggles against perceived failures.
Olsen’s first reminder was that there is no conspiracy theory.
“I used to feel, at least a couple of times a week, that someone was out to get me, someone was out to take my job, my boyfriend, whatever it might be,” she said. “So, I have to remind myself that there is no conspiracy theory.”
Another is, there is no “Foam Finger #2,” meaning no one wants to take second place.
“We all want to win. It’s human nature,” Olsen said. “But should it always be about the win? The journey along the way is important, too.”
“As we’re going through this process of wanting to win or succeed, what are you learning?” Olsen asked. “This note reminds me that I need to pause, and even though my goal is to win because of my competitive nature, what am I learning and am I passing on that knowledge to those around me?”
When Olsen began her career in the title industry, she planned on getting a corner office and making a million dollars. Thirty years later, she realized her career more closely resembled a jungle gym than a ladder.
Her best career advice comes from Sheryl Sandberg who said, “A ladder is really limiting. You can only do three things. You can go up, you can go down, or you can get off the ladder. A jungle gym offers a more creative exploration.”
To Olsen, this means that “you can go sideways, you can go lateral, you can go up, you can go down. And it offers people more opportunity, and there’s a lot more ways to get to the top than just going up.”
Martin’s favorite quote was: “It is what it is, but it will become what you make it.”
She shared the story of her mother’s health struggles. “We just kept moving on. It was always kind of ‘make the best of it,’” she said. “So, we get frustrated, we have failures, we have a lot of self-doubt, and this is a reminder to us to just do the best with what you can control.”
Another of her favorite quotes is from Brené Brown: “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” To Martin, this was encouragement to strive for more.
“Go for that promotion. I’m sure you’re qualified,” Martin said. “I know as women sometimes we think maybe we’re not, but we are. And so just take that opportunity and let yourself be seen. And that’s really the second part of it. A lot of being successful is showing up and speaking up.”
Martin had the same quote on her desk for 10 years which read: “Our deepest fear is not that we’re inadequate, it’s that we’re powerful beyond measure.”
“I always struggled with how this quote would be perceived because I was worried that people were going to think that I thought I was really powerful, which wasn’t the intention at all,” Martin said. “The intention behind this is just to not be afraid to let your light shine.”
If you enjoyed reading this story about converting failures to successes from the 2023 Women’s Leadership Summit (WLS), be sure to join us for this year’s WLS on Nov. 3-4. Visit www.OctoberResearchWLS.com to learn more about the upcoming event and register yourself and/or your team today.