Alicia:

Hello. And welcome to the Soul Of A Leader Podcast. Where we ignite soulful conversations with leaders. On today’s episode, Dr. Alicia and Dr. Eileen sit with Betsy Zeigler to discuss leading with intent.

 

Eileen:

Hello, and welcome to Soul Of A Leader. On today’s episode, we have Betsy Zeigler. She is the CEO at 1871 here in Chicago. At 1871 is what happens next. Their startups and founders explore ideas, build solutions, launch products, and grow businesses. 1871 impacts Chicago and beyond, there’s over 450 member companies, 650 alumni companies, over 11,000 jobs have been created and they have raised over 1.5 billion dollars to support this wonderful initiative. So thank you Betsy for being here today, we’re so glad to have you.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah, my pleasure.

 

Alicia:

Welcome Betsy. Now Dr. Eileen did a great job reading that bio and I read some of that. I went to your LinkedIn. Did she leave anything out that you want to share with our listeners? I’m sure she didn’t make a dent in it.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

I know. I think 1871 is a magical place. I think for me, the only other thing that’s important for people to know about me is I’m a deeply, deeply passionate Ohio State Buckeyes fan. So I’m in the camp of being really excited that college football is back on for the big 10.

 

Alicia:

Oh yes. Football season, right?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yep.

 

Alicia:

So with that, I would like to get a little more in depth about what does it take to run such a big organization like 1871 as a leader? What is a typical day like for you when you go into the office? Well, now everything is virtual. But just really interacting with individuals. What is a typical day like for you?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah. And you know, I think probably a lot of people on your show say, “No day is typical, every day is different.” I would echo the same sentiment. 1871 is actually, we’re nonprofit, we’re not super large, but we’ve got a really big footprint. So people think we tend to be a lot bigger than we are, but we are a complex little organization. So we’ve got as mentioned earlier, we’ve got founders that are there trying to turn their idea into a business. We’ve got growth stage companies who are already existing businesses. They’re trying to accelerate and we’ve got corporate innovators, so great big companies that are trying to solve problems. And my team is trying to work with all of them in lots of different ways. And so, my day is filled with problem solving at the individual level, interacting with different people, trying to solve those problems, people on my team, setting priorities, checking in on progress against those priorities.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

I spent 90% of my day talking or listening. I have very few moments of time that are me being able just to think quietly, I have to do that. I do that at 4:00 AM every day. [crosstalk 00:03:43] And I have for the past 15 years. So 4:00 AM to 6:00 AM is my time. And so, days are hectic, but I feel inspired frankly at the end of every one of them because the people I get to work with are these phenomenal leaders themselves who are like really big about how to change the world from their lens. And if I can play a small role in helping them, that is meaningful to me.

 

Eileen:

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I have a question and many people, we talk about authentic leadership. It’s about being centered and keeping those values of who you are and your core value and balance, right? And I heard you say 4:00 to 6:00 AM. Could you share with us how do you keep balance and what your core values are to support that?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

I think everyone has to define balance in the way that works for them. And it took me a while to figure that out because I still have this idea of from outside looking in what balance might look like. I have a seven-year-old, I’m a single parent, I’m running this organization and I have a seven-year-old that is in virtual second grade. So balanced has taken on a whole new [crosstalk 00:05:07] shape and form [inaudible 00:05:09] I think for me it’s being really clear about what are the most important things I have to do to get done and try to kind of cut away the superfluous. I’m not great at that, by the way. But I try hard. My 4:00 to 6:00 AM routine is my time.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

It’s frankly to be the only time during the day that is actually my time that’s quiet time. I’ve had that routine for 15 years. That way predated my son being born et cetera. But I read and that’s when I read and I think, and I sort of connect dots and I sort of plan my day and then chaos begins at 6:00 AM because the child wakes up and then it’s just [inaudible 00:05:59] and then I fall asleep at like 8:30. So I get enough sleep. There’s no question. I get enough hours of sleep. It’s just they’re different hours than most other adult people. I go to bed way earlier than most other adult people. I don’t live with regrets. Acting with intent is a major theme of mine, which we can spend more time talking about if people are interested.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

That I didn’t really understand until I was about 37. Until I was about 10 years into my McKinsey career and taking ownership for my life, and being really deliberate about what I say yes to and what I say no to, who I spend time with and who I don’t spend time with. And that has given me balanced defined by Betsy, right? Again, everyone’s ruled that as different. And the context keeps changing. I found out last night that our school district was supposed to go back into the schools on October 1st and now it’s going to be after Thanksgiving. And then I had to like work through the emotional roller coaster of that. And I got on my Peloton Bike and I rode myself out of my stress around that.

 

Eileen:

You released it.

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Every day is hard for all of us right now because we’re all juggling a whole bunch of stuff.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. And I think one of this is for women in business and it’s about just like you said, just putting things in perspective and knowing when it’s time to kind of channel that stress level of something that is a change that you wasn’t expecting. And so, with that, how do you challenge others around you to be their best?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah. I think a lot of it do it in a couple of different ways. And at the moment, my team is pretty young, meaning the average age is about 32 or so. So I’m quite a bit older than the average age person on my team. Which is beneficial in a lot of ways because I can spot things. I can see them getting caught in traps that I remember being caught in at age 32. Now sometimes this are things that you have to experience before you understand the lesson. Like you can’t just hear somebody tell you something and then be like, “Oh yeah.” You have to live it yourself before you can do it.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

But it’s been interesting to use my own stories and share my own stories about where I was at that age or how I was thinking about things that age or where I got stuck to give people a framework for how to think about their own choices in their life, particularly professionally. And so, some mistakes I made or some pitfalls that I had, or some blind spots or caring too much about what other people think. I have a large library of personal stories that I pull out and share with the hope that it can help others at least know that they know somebody else who felt that way at some point in time, right? That they’re not alone.

 

Eileen:

Well, thank you for that. And earlier you did say acting with intent. And what I liked to I heard was saying no, when you want to say yes to yourself. All these different things. I watched the TEDx not too long ago about people floating through life. And many of us do, do that unintentionally. So could you share a little bit more about the acting with intent that you mentioned earlier?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah. So I’ll do it through a story that made it really clear to me. So I was a partner at McKinsey for a long time, and I was 10 years into my career there and serving financial services institutions, and the economic crisis hit in 2009. And my clients went away. They didn’t literally leave the earth, but they put a pause on wanting to do work with us. And so, I was feeling a little bit stuck because all my clients had gone away and I had to kind of rebuild my client portfolio. Along with many other partners. But I was 37. And I’d like to say I took out a piece of paper, but I opened my computer and I opened Excel. And I wrote down in about 20 minutes, the 40 things I wanted to do by the time I was 40.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

And that simple act of just writing down those things. And if they weren’t professional, they were… I wanted to meet Bette Midler and lots of people you guys know who Bette Midler is? I think, but a lot of people don’t. Like the younger people I talked to are like, “Who’s that?”

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

Yeah, we know her.

 

Alicia:

Oh, yes.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

If you don’t know who she is, like not going to engage.

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

But I wanted to go to Sundance Film Festival, I wanted to travel certain places, I wanted to meet certain people, et cetera. So I wrote down this list and purely just the act of writing down the list, completely changed my orientation about how I thought about my life. And then pursuing the list, reinforced it, and started to create some muscle memory to kind of continue that path.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

And when I finally met Bette Midler, which I, like I said, I did do. I told her that I had learned through this experience that you have to plan to live a full and happy and interesting life that you have to plan. If you don’t plan, it doesn’t happen. I’ll talk about that just a second. And she said to me, I wish somebody had told me that 30 years ago, and I laughed because obviously from outside in, it looks like she’s led a sort of an incredibly interesting life.

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Eileen:

Absolutely. You totally correct.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

I’m sure she was just being kind. But so many people define themselves by their professional accomplishments and/or their title and/or what they do. And I’ve always been pretty good at not conflating who I am as a person and what I do for a job because that gets super dangerous, super fast. But some people define their life with those accomplishments. And I understand why because they get rewarded for them and that makes sense. But at some point, you may find that you actually didn’t do things that you wanted to do or thought that were important to you because you were so focused on the professional.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

So my encouragement to people I’m now writing my 50 by 50. But part of the reason I made the decision to be a single parent and have a child, is it came from that 40 by 40 list, right? That gave me courage and confidence to say, “Wait, what am I going to regret in my life, at least not trying to do?” And, this story is probably too long for you guys.

 

Eileen:

Absolutely not, keep going.

 

Alicia:

I said it’s really good.

 

Eileen:

Keep going.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

But that completely changed. And so, that’s like an ongoing touchstone for me and is always living in the back of my head. Now, my team would tell you that I’m terrible at saying no to things because I get excited about the shiny, happy things in the corner and Oh, that’s super cool. “And what if we did this and this and this?” And so, which is, they are also correct. I am not good at saying no to things that I think are good opportunities for either individuals on my team or the organization itself. And so, I’m personally working on that because I get excited. I’m much better at saying yes to things that help me continue to develop as a person than I used to be.

 

Alicia:

And one of the things I heard about in your story, which was really great. It’s that goal, you did 40 for 40, and then all of a sudden you meet Bette Midler. That’s amazing in itself, and she’s a wonderful actress in her own right. But what are some of your top three to four values that you use? Because when you have to sit and do that, 40 to 40 at some part of that, putting that together, some values came into play. What would say would be your top three values that kind of help you construct, creating that list?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

It’s a good question. I never tied it back to values specifically, but I think there’s stuff clearly in there. There’s close to an achievement theme in there.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

It’s not a competitive theme, but there’s an achievement theme. There’s kind of no regret. I use the language, “no unmanaged outcome.” If you Google the word, no unmanaged outcome. A picture of me shows up just as FYI. I didn’t coin it, but if you say it so often that if you look at images.

 

Alicia:

Right. That you got coined with it, right?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

What was this sort of theme around like envisioning the end state of what that end state looks like? And thinking through all the things that go wrong that prevent you to get that end state and kind of solve for it. You know, there’s certainly a theme around courage and…

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Value around courage. Now, if you asked me sort of what my leadership values are? I’m not sure I would say those same things. [crosstalk 00:16:10] And if you asked me my values as a leader, I think I would talk more about trust and collaboration and….

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

And empathy, but I’m not sure I would apply those same things to me owning my life and like having them making that list. It’s an interesting question. That’ll get me out at 4:00 AM. I’ll start thinking about that again, then I’ll let you know.

 

Alicia:

Because I and I love that because it’s a good starting point because then you realize who you are and what you want. And so, achievement is a part of a value that you want out of creating that list. You know, you want to choose something out of it. You didn’t do it just to be doing it. And so, but look what you accomplished out of that. So I just thought it was a way to ask, did you have some values connected to your creation, which is a great way to think about it.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah. it’s a good question.I’ve never connected that dot.

 

Eileen:

As you create your next list and you do this so intently and you know it’s. I love the idea. I’m thinking I’m going to create a list tonight or tomorrow.

 

Alicia:

I just wrote a note to myself to try this list.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

A lot of people are going to create it Less now as a result, I will say. And it’s funny because I gave a talk to a bunch of graduate students on Sunday and I said, “As I get older, it’s not clear that the number of things has to continue to match the age, right?”

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Because they are. But am doing my 50 by 50, but it was not clear that like, in the next decade, if I have to do 60, or if I can do like 30.

 

Alicia:

Right?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

But I think if you try it, whether you make a list or not, but if you sort of have that orientation of trying, it doesn’t take longer write down, right? Things are stored in your head about what your what’s, your latent interests are. Anyway, I’m sorry. I interrupted you.

 

Eileen:

No, this is all great. It’s a nice flow. And the question about that is what are the… Well, the opportunities to do that as achievement. But are there challenges to this when you write the list? The positives, I think you’ve shared, the achievement, but share with us opportunities and challenges as you, successfully went through that list.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

So I guess there’s a couple ways to answer the question. So one version, and I think that I also don’t want to sort of over rotate on the theme of achievement. Yes, that’s true for the list, but I don’t… And I think that I am a very aspirational, high achieving person measured against myself.

 

Eileen:

Yes, I understand that.

 

Alicia:

Absolutely.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

I am not a competitive person. Plenty of my friends are competitive and they’re amazing and brilliant leaders. But I measure against my own expectations of what I think I’m capable of and what I can do just as sort of a side note. I think on the opportunity side, I was in a very fortunate position. I was a successful senior person at a consulting firm. I had a very good income. I’ve left there and went, nonprofit and then smaller nonprofits of my earning potential keeps going down that depression which is fine [crosstalk 00:20:05].

 

Eileen:

Yes.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

That’s a choice of how I want to live my life and who I want to spend my time with . That’s true, but I was fortunate, right? I had the financial means to actually do the things I wrote down. And given the list I wrote it required some financial investment. And I recognize that I’m. in a fortunate position to have been able to do that. I don’t know if I really had it. I mean, I did all of them, except for one. I’ve done that one since. And the one I didn’t get done was get something published, which I, my 40th birthday in 2011. So I, at that time it was not as common, like blogging and stuff was just starting. And so, now I’ve been published, a million times, but at that point in time, I hadn’t sort of officially published anything. And so, I did that the year after. But yeah, I’m not sure I have a great answer to that, to your question on that particular story.

 

Eileen:

Well, thank you. I think that was a wonderful answer.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. I liked the fact that you say you because a lot of people are very competitive and I’m not either, but when you measure that achievement against yourself, that’s a good strategy to do that. Because it really tells you how much effort and what measures you had to take to continue to achieve the other things off that particular list. But I have another question related. In a time that we’re dealing with what the pandemic. How do you make a difference in other lives? What is it something that you do phenomenal through the organization or on a personal level that you know, that you enjoy doing to make a difference in others’ lives?

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah. So I think we have multiple crises going on right now, right? We’ve got the health crisis, we’ve got the social justice crisis, we’ve got the climate crisis, we’ve got a mental health crisis, and they’re all layering on top of each other.

 

Eileen:

Yes.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

What I learned about myself from McKinsey to Northwestern, to 1871 is that, I do best when I get to wake up every morning, in service of somebody else. And so, at McKinsey, my job every day was to help my individual clients, like the people at those companies be successful. At Northwestern it was the students. And at 1871, it was the entrepreneurs and the growth stage leaders and the innovators, right? Those are individuals and my job every day is to increase the probability of their success and shorten the timeframe for them to reach that success.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

That is my job. And so, I hope that I’m doing that. And I have a very clear impact orientation. So I know, and I was trained as a consultant on this sort of belief that if I wasn’t delivering 10 times my fees, and I knew how much clients were paying for me, then I wasn’t delivering on the impact. Right. So for me, I know when I’m having impact and I know when I’m not. And so, I work every day to make sure that I at least I can feel that with at least one person. It could be a member of my team. You know, it could be a member, it could be my neighbor, it could be a family member or it could be one of the phenomenal innovators that I, or partners that I get to work with every day. And, and the good news is because there’s so many of them, I’ve got a lot of swings at bat to try to make that happen.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

But I’m that is very central to how I think those sort of what my massive transformational purpose of being on this planet is about.

 

Eileen:

Yeah. We always, talk about life purpose, and it sounds like you just shared your life purpose with us and why you’re here. So thank you.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

Yeah. That’s my current view at least. it could change, but that’s my current view

 

Eileen:

Absolutely could change. And as we come to a close in the podcast, we always ask if you could leave us and our listeners with some words of wisdom.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

The first is to remember that people will remember how you responded to the bounce versus the bounce. Meaning everyone makes mistakes. Nobody cares, they made a mistake. They will remember how you responded to that mistake or what I call the bounce. They’ll remember that response and that attitude supersedes all else. And that’s the most important. So you havto e a choice to make when you make a mistake, if it’s a big one, right? Do you get up and move forward or do you wallow? So that’s point one.

 

Betsy Zeigler:

And point two is resist the urge to go underground. And what I mean by that is, when people get overwhelmed or stressed or feel like they’re a hiring mistake or an admissions mistake or anything physically, they fold in their head, goes down. And my encouragement is that I think it’s a strength to ask for help. I think it’s a strength to say you don’t know. And instead, just try sitting back, straight up and calling somebody because every single person has gone through that, whether they are willing to admit it or not.

 

Eileen:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing those wonderful words of wisdom because we all have been there before.

 

Alicia:

Yes, and if you haven’t been there, you are going to cross that path one day. And so, it’s so extremely important to know what to do in that certain time of moment when you’re in need.

 

Eileen:

And as humans, we need each other and we’re always there and we can share experiences and lift each other up. So Betsy, those were wonderful words of wisdom.

 

Alicia:

Absolutely.

 

Eileen:

We cannot thank you enough. And we are so grateful for your time, your wisdom, your knowledge, your stories on sharing and leading with your soul on today’s episode. So thank you, Betsy.

 

Alicia:

Thank you. [crosstalk 00:27:06] Yes.

 

Eileen:

Thank you for joining us on Soul Of A Leader Podcast. We are knighting a new way of leading with your soul and interviewing ordinary people with extraordinary impact. Thank you for listening to the stories of our leaders who will help and guide you on your leadership journey. For more information on our podcast, please visit our website at wwwsoulofaleader.com. Thank you for listening.