Respected vs Liked
Over the past 15 years, I’ve heard several female executives utter some version of “I’d rather people respect me than like me”. I was new to corporate America the first time I heard this and the speaker was, definitively and obviously, neither. She was a mid level sales manager and enabling ability were/are the prized …
smashbox, Karl Lagerfeld and Tom Ford
I’ve been fascinated with beauty products ever since I found the higher end ones in the fancy urban malls. In the mid 90’s I went into a free standing MAC store for the first time. Lauder had just purchased the artistry brand in 1994 and its DNA was still intact. MAC was Mecca. I moved …
Round Tables of Ten
I recently attended my company’s annual leadership conference. Now back in person after several years of a digital format. A couple thousand people dutifully piled into shuttles and sat politely ignoring the stranger next to us, for the couple of miles from our parking garage to conference center. Then we queued up for the check …
“Sell In” Meetings
I buy Beauty products, from vendors, so that the retailer that I work for can mark them up and sell them to you. You don’t need most of these products. Sure, some fall into a grey hygiene area, like Shampoo and Body Wash. But, technically speaking, you could use one giant bottle of generic goop …