From Corporate Exec to Career Coach

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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an original transcript–edited for sense, length, and clarity.  If you have any questions or concerns, please email our host, Doria Lavagnino, at doria@sheventurespodcast.com.

Intro:

Doria Lavagnino:

She spent nearly two decades working at the global marketing research company, Nielsen. She’s known as a pioneer who shifted the way the nation regards Black American spending power and cultural influence. Five years ago she started her own firm, Powerful Penny, an executive coaching firm for people who want to be intentional about identifying and achieving the next level in their careers. Here to tell us about what she calls “fabulosity” is Cheryl Grace. Cheryl, welcome to SheVentures. It is great to have you!

00:47.30

Cheryl Grace:

Thank you, Doria. So great to be here!

Cheryl’s Background

00:57.62

Doria:

I wanted to start by asking you a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up, and maybe something about a person or an event that had a major impact on you.

01:10.82

Cheryl:

Yeah, so I am originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’m a Hoosier by nature, and I grew up with a large family so I have like 64 first cousins. I’m the oldest of six girls.

01:24.38

Doria:

Wow!

01:28.17

Cheryl:

My mother had 10 siblings —  so a big loving family. My grandma was 4'11'' tall. She never learned how to drive or ride a bike. Never really saw any part of the world. She was pregnant for like 10 consecutive years and then had all of these grandbabies.

01:53.76

Doria:

Oh my goodness.

02:05.16

Cheryl:

She was the person who really fulfilled my heart. She told me that I could dream bigger. My middle name is Lynn and she would call me Cheryl Lynn and say, “Oh, Cheryl Lynn, just make sure you see the world. Go see the world — and if you can, do it on somebody else’s dime.” And I took that to heart and have enjoyed roles that have taken me all over the world, and I still travel and I think about Grandma every time I go somewhere.

02:39.53

Doria:

That’s a beautiful story. It’s amazing to me how often I hear that it’s people’s grandmothers who have a major impact on their lives. 

Early in your career, you worked for various organizations, nonprofits, a boutique marketing agency, a local NBC affiliate in Chicago, a television affiliate. At that point in your career, were you intentional about your goals? Or was it a little too early? Were you kind of trying things on and seeing how they felt?

Setting Intentions

03:16.68

Cheryl:

I got intentional about my goals. I would say there were two points of intention that throughout my career I felt were kind of milestone markers for me. The first was my very first job, right out of college. I was making a whopping $17,000 a year and it wasn’t what I went to college for but I thought it was a great stepping stone to my next role. I vowed that I was going to do the best work that I could possibly do, even though I didn’t love the work. That got me noticed. It allowed me to have the highest performance evaluation in the entire company after one year. My boss, who was the VP of the advertising department, was thrilled by that and called this big meeting to make the announcement that someone on his team had gotten the highest performance evaluation of anybody in the entire company. They announced that it was me and everybody was excited. I went out of that meeting and I called my mom and asked her if I could move back home because I was going to quit my job. My girlfriend, who worked at the company, was like “What would make you quit your job, now?,” and I knew that if I could do something so amazing for a job I didn’t have passion for, imagine what I could do if I worked somewhere where I really loved what I was doing.

So that was the first milestone for me in terms of living with intentionality —  only do work that you love. 

Then the second milestone for me was: I refuse to go and settle. I made a pact with myself that every four years, I would either move up or out. I was either going to be promoted or I was going to take my ball and bat and go someplace else that valued [me]. What I had to bring to the table was at that next level. 

05:33.00

Doria:

So that’s amazing. You had a four-year clock, basically. That was your countdown clock and I think that’s really important. When I worked at Condé Nast, for example, I was there for about 10 years. It’s easy, sometimes, to get stuck in a velvet coffin where you’re not really that challenged but you’re also comfortable. It sounds like you’ve always aspired to challenge yourself as much as possible. 

06:05.45

Cheryl:

Absolutely, being comfortable is the most dangerous place. Being comfortable means you end up settling; it means you end up not doing some of your best work. Because everything comes easy doesn’t mean that you’ve also lost a sense of curiosity. When you start settling into that, then your work is not always your best. I like to stay on my tiptoes. I like to stay curious.

I want to be hungry and I always want to be challenged. If I’m not learning something new, that means I’m not growing. If you’re not growing, then you’re dead and I don’t want to be dead. So for me, it was every four years.

Career Highlights

06:52.60

Doria:

So every four years or earlier you would move up or move out? One of your biggest stints was at Nielsen, which most people know as a television ratings company. Obviously, it does a lot more than a lot of marketing research. One of the highlights of your career at Nielsen was bringing awareness to the multicultural consumer and how brands reacted to them. I think that this is really significant because I’m of an age that I remember in the 80s there was no such thing as multiculturalism —  at least mainstream. I feel like in the 90s it just began to become a part of the dialectic. So I was curious: Was the experience the same? Did it formally exist for you before that time? What were the catalysts for changing that multicultural paradigm in marketing?

08:01.38

Cheryl:

For me, it was seeing all of the data come across my desk that I found fascinating —  simply fascinating. Until that point, I had no idea that companies cared about how often you visited a grocery store, how you spent your time inside that store, and how what you watched on television influenced the time and the number of trips that you made to the store. I had spent four years in the television business and then two years before taking on this CPG [Consumer packaged goods] role at Nielsen. I was on the television side of the business, and so I’d spent all these years and hadn’t connected the dots about consumerism, especially as a person of color. Nobody was talking about that. I recognized that if I didn’t know, then the chances were that our clients didn’t know the information and the consumers and organizations who were spending the money didn’t know about it either. My goal was to share it.

Quite frankly, when I proposed the idea to my manager at the time he said, “Ok, thanks. Yeah, no, we’re not going to do that. Clients aren’t asking for it. It’s not something we want to spend our bandwidth on.” I vehemently disagreed with him. I started working with analysts around the department that could help me bring these numbers to life. We went ahead and created a report that to this day has garnered so many awards. We were able to successfully get clients to understand the consumption habits, behavior, and buying power of multicultural consumers, and I’m incredibly proud of the fact that I didn’t let a “no” stop me.

10:01.32

Doria:

Yes, incredible. It sounds like you relied on team members that you knew shared your values to help get you the information that you put together. I’m just also shocked at the closed-mindedness of “Oh, people aren’t asking for it. It must not exist.”

10:30.60

Cheryl:

I think one of the other ways that we were able to successfully move past that limited thinking was we had to establish an external advisory console. When multicultural leaders from around the country heard about the idea, they became champions for it. They helped do some of the research because many of them were researchers themselves and that’s how we were able to move this along. We recognized the value as people of color. We were Asian, African-American, and Hispanic. We were women. We recognized the value and we propelled it forward.

11:13.59

Doria:

And that you did —  in a big way. I want to talk about something that happens today and get your take on it. For social media, there’s a month for everything. June, for example, is to celebrate LGBTQ+ people. A lot of companies are accused of doing what’s called: rainbow washing; putting up a rainbow because it’s June and saying “We’re an ally.” What is your point of view about how brands are reacting to multicultural consumers today? Is there a lot of that going on? How can you tell if a brand is authentic?

11:56.11

Cheryl:

The easiest way to tell if a brand is authentic is to talk to its employees or read their employees’ posts. What if you go to their website to see what their leadership looks like? What did their board members look like? What do their senior leaders look like? That’s the way you meander around. That’s what I call “PR Social Media Speak.” Get right to the heart of who the company truly is and whether or not they’re walking the talk.

12:31.00

Doria:

Right? What really matters is having that executive leadership and putting their money into a multicultural team is what I’m hearing.

12:40.95

Cheryl:

Yeah, where are they putting their dollars? How are they promoting and elevating people of color? Women? What is their strategy around that and how do they celebrate the wins in that space? How do they champion bringing on a diverse slate of candidates for any role? What type of communication is happening with hiring managers so that they understand that it’s important to have a diverse slate of candidates? What gets celebrated with that and how do those numbers look? What’s their retention rate of associates of color? What’s their attrition rate, right? 

I was invited into so many Fortune 500 companies to talk about diversity, inclusion, and representation. I am still amazed at the number of times I got pulled over into a cloakroom or an empty office to hear, “Oh my God, oh my God! I’m so glad you’re here because we really need our leadership to hear about how important this is.” The leaders were bringing me in but they weren’t necessarily following the advice of their employees or even listening to them. The employees didn’t feel comfortable holding these conversations because, quite frankly, they were worried about losing their jobs.

14:11.43

Doria:

Of course, yeah. I mean I hate to say, “of course,” but it makes perfect sense that that is someone’s fear and that’s so paralyzing when one feels that way. You decided to make a pivot to entrepreneurship. What made you decide to do that?

14:34.86

Cheryl:

I started what I called back then a side hustle —  my business —  while I was still working at the company. What propelled me to do that was as one of the co-leads for women in Nielsen (which was 5,000-plus women around the globe), I was getting a lot of emails and phone calls asking, “Hey, do you have a few minutes to just talk to me about what I can do to help advance or what I’m doing wrong?” I went into a lot of those conversations. I wasn’t necessarily sharing with the company that I was helping employees but a number of advancements and promotions started to happen with some of these women that I was coaching behind the scenes. I recognized, “You know what? That’s what I’m meant to do”: to help other people navigate this whole process of climbing the corporate ladder. That’s why I founded my company, Powerful Penny. I think that there’s power in numbers, which is why I named it penny because pennies add up. When you take things down to their lowest common denominator and build from there, you know that you’ve got power.

16:02.33

Doria:

I love that, and I was wondering about “penny.” Like why was it a penny and not like the $100 bill? I mean that doesn’t really work in the name of a company but I love how simple that is. And true right? The other thing that’s amazing is it was a side hustle for you. You were doing market research. You were validating your idea, essentially, so you knew once you decided to transition that it was likely going to work because there was a need for it.

16:30.14

Cheryl:

Yeah, I knew it from both perspectives. I was a woman of color and I was climbing through the ranks. I had climbed through the ranks and I was an executive-level leader. I knew what we were looking for with people who were coming up through the ranks. There was a disconnect that people who were trying to get up didn’t always know what we were looking for and how to align with those leaders. I try to be that link now for corporations and individuals —  ensuring that the leadership is getting what they need. That those individuals who desire to go to the next level know how to best position themselves to do that.

Working with Powerful Penny

17:13.94

Doria:

Do you want to talk about the different ways in which people can work with you?

17:26.35

Cheryl:

We are an executive coaching consulting and lifestyle firm. We work with businesses that are interested in advancing diverse associates to the next level. It impacts their corporate culture. It improves their retention numbers and it really has a positive boost to their revenues, as well. We work in 2023. We’re moving toward working directly with the corporations. I’ve been getting a lot of corporations who have been calling to help them train, advance, and prepare their diverse associates for the next level.

We do that through our coaching programs. We do group coaching, as well as executive one-on-one coaching. We’ve got online courses and webinars that we offer. We also have what I call a set of empowerment tools. What is going to help you identify what your goals are? Then, what are the steps you need to take to advance those goals? I call them big goals. I call big goals “pink elephants.” So what are you going to do? How do you eat those pink elephants? One small bite at a time? We work through that with our empowerment tools. How to break those big huge pink elephants into minuscule small bites that you can track as you progress in your career. But I also focus on it work in love and at home.

19:06.76

Doria:

I saw that on your YouTube channel. You had some really great stuff on relationships.

19:12.94

Cheryl:

Yeah, because it’s not just about your work life if you’re unhappy in love. You show up a little bit differently at work. If you’re stepping out of chaos at home, then you’re not bringing your best self to work. I believe that they’re all integrated. I believe you can have a life of fabulosity if you choose, but it’s definitely a choice you have to do with intentionality. Intentionality means simply plotting out exactly what it is first, identifying what you want, and then plotting it out. Small bite by small bite until you get it.

19:47.10

Doria:

Do you believe that anyone can have fabulosity if they are intentional?

19:52.29

Cheryl:

I do. It’s a mindset. All of my sessions start with mindset —  mind shifting from a fixed perspective, a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. The “I believe that I can do it.” That is really, truly the first step, especially as women, which I focus on more than any other demo[graphic]. As women, we tend to talk ourselves out of things before we even give it a chance.

20:20.26

Doria:

Absolutely. And then there’s the dude who’s in the conference room who just says whatever is on his mind. I mean this is a generalization but then everyone’s like, “Yeah, great idea.” It was even probably something you’ve already thought of but didn’t say.

20:45.76

Cheryl:

Yeah, we don’t own our great ideas. We don’t believe that they can become reality so we stop. We just stop. I encourage women not to stop and to dream big. We do a vision board workshop, where we actually talk about what stops you from dreaming big. We identify some of those obstacles and roadblocks that stop you from dreaming big and focus on what does big mean to you? [This is] because big to you may mean something different than what’s big to me. Having the audacity to even dream, and to allow yourself to dream big, is the first step.

21:31.27

Doria:

I think that is so true. What comes to me as a small business owner is you speak about corporations and I understand how you work with them. Would a small business owner go to your website and look at courses? Do you do some webinars where people can see you live and work with you in that way? How do you, I guess, satisfy the needs of small business owners who really do need your amazing energy and experience?

22:06.44

Cheryl:

So I satisfy a couple of different ways. I have a regular newsletter that is published every Monday on LinkedIn. It’s called “Level Up with Grace,” and it tackles some of these obstacles that pop up in our lives as we’re trying to climb through the ranks for women who are business owners and entrepreneurs. I think that my empowerment series of resources are really great in helping you identify: “Ok what is it that you really want to work on right now and then how are we going to do that annually/monthly/weekly/daily.” If you truly stay the course —  and I’m going to tell you right now, it ain’t easy to stay in the course. It’s not easy. Life gets in the way; kids get sick, parents start to age, the dog needs to go to the vet. All of that will try to move you away from what you said was important to you. By making yourself the center of all of this and keeping your focus on you —  especially, if you’re a business owner —  that’s the only way you’re going to grow. You have to make yourself a priority. Treat yourself like you’re someone you’re responsible for.

Taking Space for Yourself

23:57.24

Doria:

I think as women, we’re often taught not to take up space. We’re taught to be caretakers. I know for myself when I started to really be mindful about taking care of myself, I felt my inner voice tell me a little bit, “Oh, Doria. That’s kind of selfish.” Then I realized “Whoa, like what is that? What is that happening?” If we’re not okay, we can’t be good business owners. We can’t be good to our own bodies. We can’t be good to our children or to anyone.

24:35.50

Cheryl:

That’s absolutely right! I mean it’s almost become a cliche at this point that self-care isn’t selfish. I myself have never suffered from that because of my grandma. I watched her with all of these kids and always serving everybody. I knew that I [didn’t] want to be like that. I wanted to make sure I have a great life, too. That meant, yes I am going to be a little bit selfish —  if that’s the way you want to think of it — but I’m also going to be selfish with how I spend my time with you. I’m going to make sure that I’m selfish with me and I’m selfish with you. That means that together we’re all going to be doing really great things as a family member, as a friend, [etc.]. [As a result,] I can bring my best self to you and not be apologetic about it.

25:26.32

Doria:

Exactly. “I’m sorry” is a [phrase] that I am trying to eliminate from my vocabulary unless it’s really heartfelt. You mentioned that women are more of your demographic than men. What would you say are the career hurdles that you see consistently by gender, as a consultant?

26:04.23

Cheryl:

The number one thing is the lack of confidence. It doesn’t matter what position someone is in, what level of education they have obtained, and if they’re in business for themselves. That they’ve gone through the process of owning a business, confidence is such a success sucker. It is amazing how often I see these very accomplished women coming in and not having confidence in what that looks like for them. To not have confidence in the fact that well “I’ve achieved all of these other accolades. What makes me think I can’t do this too? I’m just not ready. I need more education. I need more certification. I need more years of experience. I need, I need, [etc.]” You have everything you need, you are enough. What you have to focus on is channeling that and believing in it. It’s again going back to changing your mindset and celebrating what you have done so that you can use that as a platform to lift you up to where you want to be next.

Taking Space as a Woman and a Woman of Color

27:34.58

Doria:

Love that. If we were to go a little bit more into intersectionality with women, what would you say? Are there differences between what you observe with challenges that white women face versus women of color?

27:55.27

Cheryl:

Yeah, so I think with women of color, particularly Black women, it is reassuring ourselves that we are even supposed to be in the room, right? We are. We second-guess ourselves like: how did I get here? Why did they choose me? Do they really want my true thoughts or do they want my assimilated thoughts? Sometimes they are night and day. Recognizing that the diversity of perspectives that we bring to the table can indeed move a company forward is something that we have to embrace. 

Again, if I had let my white male manager tell me that clients weren’t interested in multicultural insights, I would not have gone on to do these reports that really serve Nielsen. I had to trust that I knew what was needed for people who look like me and people who wanted to understand people like me better. You couldn’t keep putting things out through a blue-eyed lens if a brown-eyed person saw it differently and could help you with your client base. That’s exactly what I was able to do with Nielsen. 

For women of color, Black women, Hispanic women, Latinas, it is owning the fact that your differences are worth hearing, learning, and sharing about. It can also impact a company’s bottom line.

29:44.11

Doria:

Yes, and what would you say for white women? Is it confidence?

29:54.70

Cheryl:

[For] white women it is a lot of confidence. It is [a lot of] being raised to be quiet —  the quiet type in the back room —  and not to shake the status quo. It’s owning your voice when you’re in that room as a woman.

Mindset and Fabulosity

30:08.72

Doria:

Yes, yes, absolutely 100 percent. You help people advance their careers as you said. You’ve talked about some of the shifts that people have to make after they’ve made their mindset shift. What are the next steps that go into fabulosity?

30:47.23

Cheryl:

Yeah, so first of all, after they make the mindset shift, there’s something that changes in them. A lightbulb goes off, right? Then we sit down and write smart goals. We [make] sure that those goals are big and that they’re passionate about them. I was on a call with [a] client this morning and she was talking about her goal of losing weight. She couldn’t do it because she just couldn’t drink or make another green shake. I’m like, “Do you like green shakes?” 

She said, “No, I don’t.” 

Then, [I asked], “Why would you be forcing yourself to do something that you don’t like and then questioning why it’s not working? How about we start with what do you love?” 

“Well, I love brussels sprouts.” 

“Why don’t we start there and instead of the green shakes, why don’t you do brussels sprouts? You can have brussels sprouts for breakfast right? You can do whatever you want to do.”

There are no rules of fabulosity. The only rules are those that you decide are important for you. Everything else you can toss out the window. Do what you love and that’s how you end up with a fabulous life.

32:16.51

Doria:

That is so freeing. I love it. What would you say is the most overlooked reason for employee dissatisfaction? You can answer it by demographic, if there’s a difference. Absolutely the most overlooked reason for employee dissatisfaction.

32:33.81

Cheryl:

The most overlooked reason for employee dissatisfaction is not feeling valued, heard, or respected. When you don’t feel that you’ve been heard, that you don’t have a voice that you can speak up [with]. That your manager is going to [dis]respect what you said. That someone else is not going to —  usually a male —  take those ideas and present them back as their own. [This] causes you to shut down when you feel that you’re not being seen, valued, or heard. It’s enough to stop you from doing or saying anything. You settle into being comfortable and playing small. When employees feel that way, then they wonder —  because they’re playing small —  “Well, I’m not getting a promotion.”

33:19.13

Doria:

Yes, yes, and then they get resentful. Yes, right!

33:37.23

Cheryl:

They don’t understand their connection to the outcome. So I encourage people how to have some of those courageous conversations. How to go in fully prepared with your conversation and dialogue for your performance evaluation. I talk you through how to raise your hand and ask for a promotion. When the best time is to ask for a promotion because there’s a timing to it, right? You don’t have to deal with “We don’t have the money in the budget.” I talk them through how to take whatever it is.

First of all, I’ve had people who said to me “I’d love to be in a senior-level role making great money.” That is so big, but that means nothing versus “I want to be a VP earning $150,000 a year.” [With that,] you know exactly what you’re going after. People will even say why they want to be a VP but they apply for a director or lower roles. I’m like how are you going to be a VP if you’re still applying for a director or a lower-level role? When you say what you want, you have to go through with that and not be apologetic about going after it; not limiting yourself with your own self-talk. It all works together and that mindset is really incredible. 

Then, make sure, again, that you break out the small steps and the milestones along the way. So if you want to be a VP, then you want to make sure that your résumé looks and reads like a VP-level resume. That may be a cog that you have to tackle first. Then, you want to apply for VP roles. It’s step-by-step and that’s what I help work clients through. With that whole step-by-step process, they feel empowered to go after what it is that they want.

35:47.00

Doria:

Right and that type of mentorship is so hard to find. The fact that you’re able to do it with the level of expertise that you have is incredible. To women that are entering the workforce —  anyone from a college graduate to maybe a woman who might be reentering for whatever reason and might be older —  what are three things that she can do today to make herself stand out to potential employers?

36:25.78

Cheryl:

The first thing is to get clarity about what she wants. Do you want to work in corporate America or do you want to work in your own business? Where do you think you’d like to work in corporate America? Name the companies. Don’t be afraid to say “I want to work for Twitter,” “I want to work for Google,” or “I want to work in some other social media outlet.” Get clarity on what you want. 

The next step is to identify other people who have already gotten interviews. You can do that by looking at LinkedIn and typing out the titles of VPs. Then, have an informational interview with them. Find out what it took for them to get there.

37:20.29

Doria:

Exactly, because it’s not only what they did today. It’s what they did 10 years ago that you want to look at.

37:26.38

Cheryl:

Absolutely, and then find out where that gap is and give yourself an allotted amount of time to close any gaps. You don’t need to spend five years closing a gap if three months will do.

37:42.42

Doria:

Right? Yes, absolutely, which can also be a reason not to do things right? It can be an excuse when people fail to meet their goals. What are the most common reasons for that and how do you ensure that people maximize their chances of success? What do you tell them?

38:05.49

Cheryl:

Yeah, when we fail it’s for one or two reasons: The number one reason is they just stopped. The reason they stop is generally that they got overwhelmed, right? They stop, they were overwhelmed, or they weren’t sure how [or] what to do next. One of the early coaches that I trained under was Lisa Nichols. She used to say to us: “Action is the antidote to despair.” When you don’t know what to do, do something. That something may or may not work but it propels you into action. The law of gravity says it’s harder to stop something when it’s moving than when it’s not moving. You want to be moving forward and you want to make it hard to stop yourself.

Cheryl’s Advice

39:04.19

Doria:

I love it. I love that visual. It’s so true. Yes, you start to roll down a hill, you start to gain momentum, and then you reach fabulosity. I love it. Would you give it to your younger self?

39:16.78

Cheryl:

Oh, you know people ask that question a lot. I’ve always been a pretty confident person. I think at some point in my career I’ve felt like I needed to tamp down my fabulosity factor because it intimidated other people. I would tell myself, “Don’t tamp yourself down, just go and grow. Don’t just be. You don’t tamp yourself down. Trust your gut.” Those are the two things.

39:51.57

Doria:

Be you. You do you. I love it. This has been so wonderful. Where can listeners learn more about you and how to have a fabulosity career?

Where to Find Cheryl

40:14.27

Cheryl:

Yes, you can follow me on any of the social media platforms under “I am Cheryl Grace.” My website is I am Cheryl Grace.com. LinkedIn is where my tribe lives for career-related issues and “Level Up with Grace” is my newsletter that comes out every Monday. I’d love to have them subscribe to that. They can follow me at Cheryl Grace on LinkedIn, as well.

40:49.32

Doria:

You also have a great YouTube channel. It is really good. I loved it. It was great.

40:54.95

Cheryl:

Oh, thank you! Cheryl’s Channel of Fabulosity: Live from the Pink Couch. 

41:04.62

Doria:

Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on today!

41:08.90

Cheryl:

Oh my God, this has been so wonderful, Doria. I appreciate that you’re doing this because women need what you have to offer. Kudos to you for recognizing the value of bringing these stories to other women who may not otherwise have access to them. Thank you so much for including me on your podcast.

41:28.61

Doria:

Absolutely and thank you for having the courage to show up authentically. That is not easy for some but you are fabulous.