Choices, Dolphins and Love: An Interview with Brenda Schmidt

#enduringsuccess #powerofchoice #fivecriticalchoices #dolphins #embracelove #leadbyexample

Hello from Trish

Newsletter Intro   

In the Choose & Become Interview series, I delve into the five critical choices that led me to enduring success, and I unearth the inspirational stories of my guests as they share their journeys to enduring success with us using this five-choice framework.   

Each Create Enduring Success newsletter edition highlights one episode that you can link directly to or start by reading the quick summary along with some quotes from my guest that stuck with me.   

Today’s Episode—Brenda Schmidt    

In today’s episode I am joined by Brenda Schmidt, Head of Growth, Redesign Health. 

I met Brenda 8 years ago when she was the founder and CEO of Solera, a leading health care company, and one of her business success stories. I am lucky that my business partner and I got to work with Brenda and her Solera-team, rolling our sleeves up, deep in the muck, letting our scrappy-selves shine as we worked to create the right partnership to help more people live healthier lives. Brenda didn't even realize the impact she had on Jennie and me.

In this interview, Brenda and I reconnect as she shares her wisdom and experience as an innovation leader, entrepreneur, seller, mentor, wife, mother, former Girl Scout pizza-business operator😊,  friend and very recent NYC resident!  

Brenda's mission is to create and support impactful initiatives that improve the quality, accessibility, and affordability of care. Brenda accomplishes this mission and so much more to truly inspire the growth of others and improve the world around her.  

“Failure has typically not been an option for me.  If someone says 'no', that just means I can't do it with you and I move on to someone else.”

Watch now . . . or check out the summary with some of my favorite excerpts below the video link.    

Create Enduring Success

We all have our own definition of success, and perhaps that definition evolves over time. What does enduring success mean to you? 

"Enduring success, I think a lot about that. Where I am in the stage of my career, we probably all think about “what's my legacy”. And it was also a decision point when I was at Baxter for a long time and I thought, what's my legacy at Baxter? What have I contributed, not only to the company but to the world through working there. . . how was I impacting the cost and quality of care or the patient experience? 

I think that's what led me to be an entrepreneur. Have I made a positive impact on society, however you define that, and other people? 

And that's why I appreciate your podcast and some of the other areas where I spend my time. I teach entrepreneurship at NYU. I am on the Health Council at Springboard Enterprises, which is a female focused company with a female founder. I'm choosing to spend my time helping lower the speed bumps for other people and lots of women who are starting their journey that I've been on. I can't eliminate those speed bumps, but I can make them lower based on sharing a lot of experiences and difficulties that I've had too, to hopefully help them completely." 

Ladder versus Lattice—I love this nugget!   

"I think people earlier in their career, they think of ladder, right, how am going to get to the next promotion. And I think it's sometimes much more impactful and beneficial to think lattice—what can I learn, what teams or projects should I expose myself to? To both understand what I love to do and I'm good at, and conversely, what I really don't like to do, because that's just as important."

Five-Critical Choices—Brenda’s Journey

Come along with me as I explore these five-choices with Brenda. 

Make a First Choice 

Success begins with making a first choice. 

What's a first choice you made that impacted your journey to enduring success? 

"Well, first, I think not making a choice is a choice." 

I totally agree! 

One-Way Door Vs Two-Way Door

"In many instances, the choice is scary. But if you think about one way versus two-way doors, if you're making a choice that's a one-way door, that's so significant you can't go back through that door, give that choice a little more thought.  But if it's a two-way door, then go for it.  If you think about those choices as experiments, if they don't work, you did not fail, the experiment just wasn't the right experiment for you."

Brenda shares with us two of her first choices—going to graduate school “which taught me what I didn’t want to do . . . and my next choice was doing what I did want to do!”. 

And then . . . taking a 50% pay cut and moving to a new city!

"And I remember at that time I was like, Why would I do that? And Baxter said, “you can be in your job for the rest of your career and do well, or you could take this path and have a very, very different trajectory in your career, and in your life.” 

I would add to their statement. . . “and the life of so many others."   

Commit to Two Way Agreements

The second critical choice I made was to commit to a two-way agreement.

We all enter into two-way agreements—informally or formally. The power is in committing.

What's your perspective on committing to a two-way agreement? Will you share an example from your life?   

"I'll go back to being an entrepreneur, and Solera is a great example. I started one company and bootstrapped that, which was a really interesting opportunity to learn how to manage cash, and then Solera raised about 82 million in capital. I left after the Series C and I think people were really shocked that I left . . . just couldn't understand, you built this company, you were the founder???

But I think when you start a company and you have external investors, your perspective always must be we are going to do what's in the best interest of that company, right? That's a two-way agreement. Every day I'm going to go through all of the emotional, financial rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship, which is thrilling and terrifying at the same time. But at the end of the day, you have an obligation to the shareholders and the employees and the broader ecosystem of the success of that company.

I am phenomenal 0 to 1. I love building things and I love strategy; I love vision, I love operational infrastructure and culture. I don't care why something costs $1.16 or $1.10 in the call center!"

When the business evolved to needing to focus much more on the operational infrastructure to be profitable, which is a different phase of growth, it was time for me to step out. And I think that was maybe not as well recognized. So, I think that's one of the really big two-way agreements."

And Brenda, of course, shows how we can each apply this to our lives:  

"I think that was a big two-way agreement that others have to really think about in their careers. As employees . . . you could work at a great place. But it might not be great for you, and you have to be really honest with yourself . . . are you on that journey and committing to that company or are you not? If there's a better place for you—that’s okay. It's not right or wrong or good or bad. It's just—there are good fits and there are not good fits."

"It's got to be both ways. I commit, you commit and therefore it's together. And sometimes one of those parties doesn’t follow through with the expectations . . . acknowledge it, move forward. It's not a fail. It is not a failure." 

Build Trust

The third critical choice I made was to build trust.

Brenda and I explore how she builds trust in herself and inspires the trust of others.

Have you ever had to build trust in yourself? How did you?   

"Earlier in my career I had a first marriage and a pretty, from my experience, horrible first marriage. And after I left that marriage there was a time when my self-esteem, my confidence, everything was at an all-time low. And it took a lot for me to really dig out from that. And I would have probably started a business earlier if I had the confidence to go out and do that.

I think I would have followed my passion earlier had I had the confidence to do it earlier. But I really had to build that trust back in myself that I could be successful coming out of a relationship where I felt very unsuccessful."

I got married again, married for 28 years now! I had to build trust in others and trust in myself that I could be successful and have the confidence and the resilience."

"The really horrible times build the two things that are critical for success in my mind - resilience and resourcefulness.  And that's where I think people just need grit.  If you have grit and that hardship makes you stronger, I see that driving lots of people's success."

How do people inspire your trust?   

"Trust is showing up, being very human and humble, being transparent, following through on what you say you’re going to do, and then expressing your opinion about something that we may or may not disagree on, but allows for an honest, productive discourse."  

And I think this next excerpt could have rolled us right into love, the action!

"Feedback is a gift. People are really uncomfortable giving feedback and it's hard to get feedback, but feedback is a gift. I think that the more we can give each other real time feedback and as close to whatever that event that caused the feedback is, the better. Not in an annual review, not in, you know, every six months or even every quarter.

If you view feedback as a learning opportunity and assume good intent about helping that individual or even the feedback that I get helping me be better, I think that's another piece that builds trust."

Do the little things great and great things happen.

I believe in doing the little things great and great things happen.

Is there a little thing that you do consistently that helps you build trust in yourself and others?

The Dolphin Award!

"I tend to recognize people. I say thank you. I recognize them. Even within our team here, we created a little award called the Dolphin Award, and it's because we did an off-site in South Carolina and we saw dolphins and we started talking about dolphins versus sharks and how dolphins behave. Dolphins (our team) protect the pod and help each other fish. 

And so we actually created a little award that we give to people for embodying the team norms in my team. And it's not an individual award. It's if we get up to 20 different awards across the team, then everybody gets rewarded, everybody gets swag. I think it's that appreciation. People will do a lot, and I will do a lot, just for a little appreciation." 

The dolphin award leads us beautifully to my fourth critical choice.

Create Community and Belonging   

The fourth critical choice I made was to create community and belonging.

"To develop friendship and belonging requires a sense of vulnerability."

 Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong?

"Many, many times. And I think to develop friendship and belonging requires a sense of vulnerability that is very difficult sometimes to do in the situations that I was in as a CEO. So, talk about not belonging in the early days of raising venture capital and walking into a typically male dominated networking event. When I was taught don't interrupt people in conversations like that. 

There were so many times I didn't feel like I belonged . . . just the reality of men throughout my career and I've been here a long time including the eighties and nineties where it was difficult to know even how women fit into the workforce and how to actually incorporate women into the culture that had been traditionally male dominated." 

Tell me about some of your communities? How do you create belonging? 

"I'm very friendly, but it takes a lot to actually become my friend, not because I don't want that, but it's a level of vulnerability that I'm pretty protective of. So, in many instances and especially as I was an entrepreneur, you can't have it all at once, all at the same time. 

I am married, I have kids. I'm trying to be an entrepreneur. What got sacrificed were friends and self-care. Just no time. If you look at the percentage of the brain of the 100% of my time, friends were zero. 

So, work became my community. And that's where I think culture became incredibly important. They were my people. I mean, they are my teams, my people. I care deeply about them. If you think about community and belonging, I hope people feel a sense of belonging there and I hope I create a sense of belonging. 

Now, I have found room in my life for some really, really incredible friendships, and that's been nice because that was a part of my life that I just didn't have time for. 

I think COVID was an inflection point for me around belonging because prior to that I was traveling all the time. I didn't have an opportunity to really step back and understand what and who was valuable in my life and how did they show up in different ways in my life that was valuable. So, it was a two- or three-year opportunity to step back and say, who is in my pod? 

It was the first time that I actually had both the time and intentionality and frankly, the need, to spend a good amount of time with others. 

It became a really close-knit set of friends, accelerated. Now when I am traveling a little bit more, those bonds are built to be able to have that continue." 

Embrace Boundless Love 

The fifth critical choice I made was to embrace my boundless capacity to give love and to receive love.

How does love, the verb, manifest itself in your world? 

"Treating people the way they want to be treated, that is the biggest gift we can give other people."  

 And it can be little things at work:

"I have people who communicate via Slack, others only want to use email and so I get up every morning and I have four or five different channels. Some people will text me. But it's the way they want to communicate. 

"I think that if we can show up and treat people the way they want to be treated and actually understand the difference and understand what they need, that's how I show love. It's what they need."

"How do you perceive that people love you and how do you feel love from people based on how they show up towards you. So, it could be listening. It could be leaving you alone. It could be buying things for you. It could be whatever that love language is of how people express their love with you. 

And it fosters lots of good conversations, whether that's with your family or your friends or the people that work with you, how they want to be treated." 

Final Thought 

Brenda didn’t hesitate when I asked her to be my guest on this interview series. Giving her time, advice, lessons, and straight-forward advice, is how I receive love!!! She is a gift and I feel lucky to share her with my community.  

Episode Reflection and Action

• The next big choice you have in front of you . . .is it a one-way door or a two-way door?
• How can your team win a Dolphin Award?!?
• Write down two examples of giving love, the verb, that you experience this week. You could be the giver or the receiver!  

Thank you!  

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Wishing you all the best on your journey to enduring success.     

Choose & Become!    

Trish   

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More About Trish    

Trish Kendall, an expert in creating enduring success, is proof that anyone can transform their life and become the most successful person they know!    

Inspiring people around the world, and providing a pathway to enduring success, Trish brings candid stories, humor in the face of true hardship, simple lessons, compassion, and love to all her speaking engagements and workshops.     

Book Trish for your next conference or team offsite.  

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