Empowering Women Through Project 1490: An Interview with Sarah Dale

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com.

[00:00:29] Let's get started. Hi and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and sitting in front of me, really, really interesting set of quotations behind her head is Sarah Dale. Good afternoon Sarah, how are you? Thanks, thanks for having me. Where in the world are you? I am about an hour north of New York City. Oh okay, right up there. That's lovely isn't it? Isn't that, is that going close to Lobsterland?

[00:00:59] No, we're a little south of there but we were right on the Hudson River, right when the suburbs get to have a little bit more space and recreation and hiking trails and that sort of thing. And you're a fan of the big outdoors aren't you? It's your thing isn't it? Yeah, when we moved here we were trying to get as close to Montana in communable distance to New York. Not the easiest thing to do. So what's the love affair with Montana? Because I know you're a massive fan of it aren't you?

[00:01:29] Yeah, yeah. It started, I'm going to date myself here, but it started with all the movies that came out. It's like Legends of the Fall. There are a lot of Brad Pitt movies. River runs through it and I was such a Jersey girl that I was asking people how they got the backdrops to look so real. They said, no, Montana really looks like that. And I was like, I gotta go. And so I did. And yeah, a real love affair.

[00:01:58] And is this, forgive me because I'm just British and I'm not a great, great job of it. Is this the big sky state? Is that the one? Yes. Or is that somewhere else? Big sky country. Yes it is. Here's an obvious question, but why is it called Big Sky? I can explain the science behind it, but when you, there is science behind it and you're at a certain elevation and the, the sky is just miraculously bigger.

[00:02:22] So what you can see in the sky at any given time, whether it's day or night, and you see the stars, it's unbelievable how much more sky you actually get. So it's an accurate description. Interesting. And so that was going to have a call, that's going to have a call on you, isn't it? That's going to be part of your story. There's going to be something that's going to appear out of Montana. But first of all, you went into the sort of, and took the corporate shilling, didn't you?

[00:02:50] You became quite a powerful female leader. So tell us about that journey. Yeah. So that, that was in sort of two parts, honestly, with Montana in the middle of it. I grew up with a CEO father and just really was intent to follow his footsteps. And I started very young. I started 17.

[00:03:14] I was working at Fortune magazine and I worked there all through school, got jobs out after school, and was really just trying to climb the corporate ladder as fast as I possibly could. And I was doing a fairly good job of it. By the time I was in my early twenties, I was almost mid management. And that's when I took a vacation to Montana. And we can talk about that chapter as well. But I spent seven years out there.

[00:03:40] And then I returned to New York and got back, got myself back on the ladder. A lot out of survival, to be honest with you, as we're talking about resilience. It's, and worked my way, way back up there until I reached the C-suite at an ad tech company. I was the chief revenue officer. I worked at Wall Street Journal for 10 years, had a lot of senior roles there. And then I just left corporate last year and to do my own thing.

[00:04:09] So a lot of transitions along the way. So it's interesting, isn't it? Because you must represent a very small minority of people who at C-suite are women. And I might be wrong with that, but certainly in this country, there's always a demand on boards for senior female executives. And women seem to get ahead one of two ways. They either become the baddest bitch you've ever seen or more like a bloke than a bloke. And, but I'm guessing you probably have a third way.

[00:04:37] So how did you find that ascent? Yes. Oh, that's a multifaceted question and answer. But I think for me, one, for my own experience and where sort of Montana connects to this in my stories, when I went out there, I was from the city. I didn't know how to do anything that people did in, in Montana.

[00:05:01] And I was very lucky that I hooked up with a lot of people who just taught me how to everything from snowboarding to chopping wood to bow hunting. And I had a lot of experiences that had to build a certain amount of bravery, a certain amount of confidence, a certain amount of getting into places I just had no business being and figuring it out.

[00:05:26] And when I came back to New York and started trying to climb the ladder again, it finally occurred to me how much I was drawing on those experiences that I had seemingly totally unrelated to what I was doing in corporate.

[00:05:44] But it's, it's really shown scientifically, honestly, like how we build confidence in other areas of our lives then translates into things like our careers. And so I think I drafted a lot on that kind of self-reliance that I had built there for the most part.

[00:06:07] And then, you know, there's a series of work ethic and luck and the people that help you along the way, the people who see your potential and give you a chance. We can't do it without all of that as well. And there's often a theory, isn't there, that a woman at a senior level doesn't always open the floodgates for other women to come through. I don't know if that's become a cliche rather than a fact. I don't know. What would you think?

[00:06:34] It's very interesting because I literally just wrote a LinkedIn post on this today. Because I think when I was coming up, that was like 30 some years ago when I started my career. And I think that was very true back then. There were so few spots held, not really even held, but made for women that it did cause us to be more competitive against each other.

[00:07:01] There certainly wasn't a women supporting women ethos. And I do think that although the statistics, if you look at them, have not changed nearly as much as they ought to have had by now. The one thing that has really changed, I think, is that the women supporting other women. There are so many different organizations out there that that is their mission.

[00:07:26] And they're bringing women together to network, to mentor, to have a real community to rely on. And that just didn't exist before. And despite where we're headed or policy change or anything, I believe wholeheartedly that we're not going back to that and how I got it. I came up. Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Because in this country, we wrestle with things like quotas.

[00:07:57] We say things like in politics, for example, there was a quota in one of the parties about how many percentage of people should be male, female, whatever they were. And the rebellion against it was immense. And there was huge consultations, all this sort of stuff. And of course, it happened. And now we have much greater female representation. After all, 51% of people in the UK are female. We had about 3% of women who represented us. And now it's much more equitable.

[00:08:24] And I think that's probably the stage in the US. But I get the feeling there's quite a bit of pushback against that at the moment. Yes. And see, the most ridiculous thing about it all is there's so much data that diversity itself, right? If you had an all-female-led company, these stats would be different, right?

[00:08:50] So it's diversity that is actually helpful to the bottom line. There are so many of these statistics how female-led companies, companies with at least 30% of executive leadership being female, females on the board. All of those companies statistically do not just a little better financially, a lot better financially.

[00:09:17] And so if you're just using logic, and that's your point to make the profit, why wouldn't you have a more diverse executive leadership team aboard and be raising women up? Because it's just logical. So the fact that we actually need the policies or need the quotas, it just defies logic.

[00:09:48] But that's the case because companies, even with policies and quotas in place, and all the data to support that it's actually good for the bottom line, we are still underrepresented in every single measure. It's funny you say that because I was working with an organization which is a medical world. And I think the group of people I was speaking to at the time must have been about 400 or 500 people.

[00:10:14] And looking out into the sea of this world of singing, caring, and midwifery and such, like 99% must have been female. But the three people at the top were all male. And I thought that's fascinating as well. Because I used to work many years ago in a company with just 1,100 people. And there were only eight people that were male. Oh my goodness. And of course, there's two of them were the founders and runners of the people that ran the company. So it's people who talk about quotas and such like, I still think there's quite a lot of resistance.

[00:10:44] And there's this idea that it's not a meritocracy if you promote some people above others. It is because actually the meritocracy needs time to grow, doesn't it? I was also quite taken when you were talking about Montana. They seem to be quite, and forgive me for this, they seem to be quite male gendered activities in a funny sort of way. I wonder whether that gave you the sort of things that are missing in what was probably called a traditional childhood, weren't they? Rough house ring, jumping around the place, physical tools, hitting things with axes, firing bow and arrows and things at people.

[00:11:14] It's that sort of stuff seems to have vanished from her childhood a little bit, doesn't it? One of the things I found that was really interesting about moving from New York City really to Montana was if you're going to go snowboarding and you're a girl at the time, I was a girl, you carry your own snowboard. To me, that was real equity.

[00:11:39] It was like there was no lowered expectations because I was a girl or I was a woman. It was you hold your own and nobody expected anything less from you. And I really do. I have two daughters and it was amazing to me when they were much younger. There was this proliferation at one point of all the movies and everything saying like, you can do it, you can do it.

[00:12:09] And it was like, my girls never thought they couldn't do it. Yeah. So like the fact that we have to over do the, hey, cheerleading us on. It's we only need that later when we've now been told we're somehow lesser than. We don't come out this way. We don't come out thinking that we can't do things. We there's, you know, it's only as we get educated, so to speak. So that was a wonderful thing about living in Montana.

[00:12:39] There really was no gender difference in terms of what you could do, what you could be involved in. And I was lucky that I had people around me that just expected me to keep up. So I did. So that's interesting because. So you talked about being on the in the corporate C-suite, but you went the chief revenue officer route. And I always thought it's interesting because that's quite entrepreneurial. In effect, what you actually done now is created your own business.

[00:13:05] And I often find some phases of entrepreneurship is quite interesting because we used to have marketing and salespeople who ran companies. And then it became a bit, forgive the pun, Wild West. But then we had accountants and risk officers and such like running companies. And now we're sort of rebalancing. It's a great side of the business to be in if you want to be entrepreneurial, isn't it? Because actually you're managing risk. You're using different strategies, aren't you? You're seeing in the world of opportunity.

[00:13:30] And I often think a lot of entrepreneurs would do well to actually spend a bit of time in a corporate setting doing that marketing revenue. That side of the world. I don't know what you think about that. I'm not saying exclusively. I just am intrigued at that background for you. Yeah, very early days when I was working at Fortune when I was very young. Part of my job was to edit the bios of the CEOs coming to their big global forum.

[00:14:00] And that was a great education for me. At the time, first of all, that all of the CEOs were old white men. And when I was editing their bios, all of their careers either started in the going into the military or in sales. And I, as a 17, 18 year old, read those and thought, I'm not going into the military. So I guess I'll go into sales.

[00:14:25] And that's how I came up because my dad used to say, too, everybody's got to sell something. No matter what kind of role you're in a company, whether it's from department to department, you're going to sell your idea. You've got to whether you're selling directly to customers.

[00:14:41] So I do think that that kind of background actually is a great platform for entrepreneurship because at the end of the day, you've got to figure out how to sell your stuff. And also, it's great for resilience because you learn quite quickly how to deal with someone saying no or rejecting you or saying horrible things to you. Or in my day, you used to have to ring up, do phone calls, and they used to slam the phone down on you. That never happens anymore.

[00:15:10] But that coping with rejection is really visceral for a human being. And it's good to learn at an early stage, isn't it? Yes. Oh, gosh, 100%. It's very interesting, actually, because even for myself, I had the idea of what I'm doing now many years ago. And it took me a very long time to get through my somewhat imaginary obstacles to do it.

[00:15:39] And it's amazing how easy it is to believe the naysayers, which externally come from the rejection or people hanging up the phone on you and that kind of thing. But internally, we have those very strong voices that tell us why we can't do something or it won't work and all of that.

[00:16:00] And I think that a big journey for entrepreneurs is deciding whose voice you're going to listen to internally, mostly, because that sort of can spur you on to actually get over those obstacles and do it. Yeah. It's quite interesting. That's a fascinating way of putting it. I remember someone telling me that it probably takes 20 sales calls to make a deal. So the fact that you've had rejection 14 times, it means that you've got six to go. And I remember at the time thinking, that's just so trite, so stupid.

[00:16:29] Why would you say such a bizarre thing? But actually, it's true because what it did is it focused you on meeting number 20 and actually you didn't worry so much about it. Then suddenly, if it came at 17, you're thinking, wow, I'm getting better. That's right. But it focused you away from the fact that you'd not won to that point of thinking, how do I do it differently next time so I get to 20 quicker? There's a great story. You all use WD-40 there? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.

[00:16:56] So WD-40 is named that because they tried 39 times and failed. And then they got to the 40th time and realized they had something. And I love that they kept the name, right? Yeah. WD-40. And I always try to remember that. It's all the 39 times were very important lessons as to what doesn't work, right? So you have to be willing to go through that. And not that it's easy. It's not easy.

[00:17:25] You have a lot of feelings, a lot of roller coaster ups and downs about it. But I do think for the people who can plow through, the only thing that can really make you fail is if you give up. Yeah, exactly. And of course, the thing with entrepreneurs, the thing with salespeople is they're constantly judged by showing up, aren't they? And even if they get it wrong or get it right, you have to turn up in the first place. So obviously, you had 1489 goals of thinking of your business.

[00:17:52] And then because you started a really brilliant organization, which we're much to add into now. And it's called Project 1490. Now, why 1490? I've read the website, so I know. And I'm European, so I'm very well educated. But it didn't immediately dawn on me. But it's such a great reason to call it 1490. Thank you. So the original name was Grace and Grit. But I couldn't use that because of all places, somebody in Montana owns that name.

[00:18:19] And so I was trying to really think about what is it I'm trying to express. And the word Renaissance kept coming to me because I've always admired those people who just know a little bit about a lot of different things. And there's this both and in the way that sort of grace and grit goes together. And so the more I started thinking about it, Renaissance kept striking me.

[00:18:48] But everything that has Renaissance in its name is also taken. And it's a swine spell, isn't it? Yes. And I was like, nobody knows how to spell it anyway. So I just looked up what year do they claim this really started? Because I feel like Project 1490 is the beginning of something. And it's the beginning of something as a community, but also the beginning of something for the women who join.

[00:19:17] It's the beginning of a journey for them. And we do a lot of completely different kinds of things to celebrate both kind of what's gritty about us and also what's graceful. So I'm so pleased you didn't choose 1492 again because that would have been quite predictable. 1490 is really clever. It's got that edge of mystique, hasn't it? So tell me what Project 1490 is all about and who's it for?

[00:19:46] And do yourselves pitch. Yeah, okay. So 1490 is for career women. Mostly, I would say, living in urban areas who are ambitious, high-achieving, high-performing, that want to have a community of like-minded women, but are also open and willing to do and to have new experiences.

[00:20:14] Because it's based on the fact that we all tend to get into our comfort zones and ruts. And if you look at the neuroscience behind what happens when we have new experiences, all sorts of neural pathways open up in our brain. And it lends us to more confidence, more risk-taking,

[00:20:42] and a lot of the things that women need to actually achieve their career aspirations. And so we do things like we, it's a very live event-driven business that we get together and we shoot bows and we learn to tie knots and jumpstart cars and build fires and wilderness survival skills and that sort of thing.

[00:21:06] And then we have really deep discussions and fabulous dinners and dress up and really, and have a bunch of wine. And so that it's networking, it's community bonding, and it's also this sort of skill building. But behind the scenes, it's really about how we have new experiences. And then that translates into rising up in our careers. And I think what you're doing, I love the phrase badassery.

[00:21:35] That's what it's all about, isn't it? It's that allowing people to express a different side of themselves, isn't it? So they can see themselves as a different sort of person. Because I think that's quite important, isn't it? I'd love to come along, but sadly, I don't qualify. But a lot of the things you've got there are just really interesting things to do. But what I also love you, that you've got, is that you've got stuff that's not quite as badassery. So you've got like crafts and things. So there's a range of things people can get up to. And is it all in Montana or is it, where is it?

[00:22:04] No, we actually haven't been to Montana yet. But we have members in most of the large cities across the U.S. We do a lot of events near my home, about an hour north of New York City. We do the retreats that we've been doing, have been in the Berkshires. And then eventually, we'll start venturing out into places like Montana, and maybe even farther, so that we can really get more and more outside of our comfort zones.

[00:22:32] I think that's really the key. That's interesting. And I noticed that you've got a day of badassery playing poker and pool. That's very clever, isn't it? Because actually, you say it links to leadership, but I can see how it does. But for those who can't, how do you say that those two things link together? It's very interesting about poker specifically, because most boys growing up are taught how to play poker, and most girls are not. Really? Yeah.

[00:23:02] And obviously, lots of exceptions out there. But for the most part, that's on point. And something like poker teaches you all kinds of things. Read the room. Calculated risks. All very helpful things when you turn it into sort of leadership lessons. And so we do a lot of playing poker because...

[00:23:28] And it's also something that I think women in particular, because we didn't learn as kids, it's very intimidating to say, go to Vegas or Monte Carlo or someplace and walk up to a poker table. But those are the kinds of things that when you're scared or a little intimidated and you go do them anyway, that also feeds in itself of public speaking that you might be asked to do,

[00:23:59] being pushed into more of a leadership role or more public role. Those are all experiences in our life that we can get intimidated. But if we've conquered that other thing, whether it's walking up to a poker dealer or putting your name up on a pool table in a New York City bar, those things help, like our brain is basically going, I did that, so I can do this now. And so it translates really well for a lot of different reasons.

[00:24:27] I remember years ago, it's forgiving because I seem to be turning bright yellow here in this very strange light with the wrong light on today. But I remember the big five personality indicators being used to talk about poker. And it actually is quite interesting to show that people do learn a lot about other people's personality. And there's a sort of thing, isn't there, that women, the terrible stereotypes is that women are interested in people and men are interested in things. And so women should be better. It doesn't mean they are.

[00:24:55] But it is interesting that you can learn new reading skills. And that's right. It's about confidence, about understanding your desire for risk-taking. You often find people who are quite cautious in the real world can go mad at playing gambling games. And they're back the house on a really weak hand. You'd never do that in the real world. And that's why I did it here. So you learn a lot about yourself, don't you? Yeah.

[00:25:20] And it's really important to have those kind of places where we can experiment. Because you don't necessarily want to go experimenting with your career. There's a little bit of room for that. But you want to have other places where you can do that and build that kind of badassery, as I've been calling it, too. And then transfer that over to where it really counts. Right?

[00:25:47] So I love that story that you can be a little somebody else playing poker. You don't have to play it the way you play your career. And a lot of this is interesting, isn't it? Because it is play. And a lot of us have forgotten how to play since we were kids. And actually, there's a ton of information coming out of the Lego academies about the ability to harness creativity and show different skills. You're right about the neuroscience of it all. But play is a serious business, isn't it? And people think that play is the preserve of children. But it's not.

[00:26:16] It is about mental fluency and synapse of adaption and such like. It's something that's really good to do. And people take play very seriously. Let's not forget that. It's interesting, too, because I know for myself, when I was a kid, you're forced into things. When you're going to school and you have to do gym or PE, you have to do music, you have to do art. It doesn't really matter if you're good at this or that. You're enrolled.

[00:26:46] Right? When I was a kid, I thought my life would just get bigger and bigger as I got to be an adult. But actually, what happens to us is it gets smaller because we tend to stay in the lanes where we're comfortable, where we know what we're doing. And we don't want to feel vulnerable or I don't know how to do this. So we tend to stick with our knitting, so to speak.

[00:27:13] And so when people come, it was one of the things that was surprising me when we did this. We do these events called Days of Badassery. And one of the comments that women were saying afterwards was like, wow, I haven't played like that since I was a kid. And how much joy that can come from just a day of play. And not having to be good at everything.

[00:27:40] Because I think in particular, women, we focus a lot on competency. And for larger conversation of why that is. But in some cases, we really just feel like we have to. Right? We have to be more competent to get the job, to accelerate in our careers. So we focus on this competency. So we end up having to show up all the time feeling like we know everything.

[00:28:06] And so to get outside of that and be able to have it in a very safe kind of environment, a place where you really aren't supposed to know. Most city women don't know how to shoot a bow and don't know how to tie a bow and knot and chop wood and whatever else we're doing. We herd some chickens. We do some lassoing. You're like lots of different stuff. So women are allowed to show up and be a little bit more vulnerable.

[00:28:32] And then what happens is women see that vulnerability and they come to help. And that forms a community. It's a difference. Yeah. I think you've hit on an amazing point now about how our life narrows in, especially around the genders as well. Because women are expected to do child rearing and all that sort of stuff. And men are supposed to go out to work and do what they do. And none of which is really true anymore. But what's interesting is that you reach a stage in your life often when kids have left home and such.

[00:29:02] And a lot of people now, because we're living so much longer, come to that point in the thought of thinking, what's all this for? What is, who am I now, now that I've lost my identity as a mother or whatever that might be? I'm thinking about the third stage of my life and 50. I could be living another 50 years. What's that going to be about? And I can see you could come and reinvent yourself at something like this, couldn't you? It's not just for leaders, I'm guessing. It's for personal development.

[00:29:29] Yeah, it's, we have people who are 30 to 60 in the community and they're CEOs and there's down to sort of manager director kind of level. I think you have to be in your career a little bit so that you get banged up a little bit. But it's funny that you say that in terms of what's it all for?

[00:29:47] Because I feel like the best way to describe like who I made Project 1494 is I feel like early in our career, we get on a train, right? We get on the train that is most available to us. And then we were there. We're trying to prove ourselves. We're trying to learn. You're just running as fast as you can to sort of, you don't know how far you're going to get. You're just going.

[00:30:13] And then at some point, and it happens at different points for different people. But at some point, you start to look around and go, wait, is this all there is? Or is that, did I even get on the right train? Like I made that decision when I didn't know anything. Am I going in the right direction? Is this where I, is it because possibly it happens when you start to realize that the time is finite.

[00:30:42] And I'm a similar age to you. And I am 54, no, just 54. And so I can see much more clearly that there's an end. Yeah. And what am I going to do with this time? What am I going to make of it? What am I leaving behind? All of those questions start to come up at some point.

[00:31:06] And I think that women in particular are having a place where they can say all that earnestly and say, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is and be able to have a journey to find out. I'd like to be allowed to be an honorary woman one day and pop across and see what's going on. And I hope you say no to that. But how can people find out more about your work? Where should they look? Tell us all the deets.

[00:31:34] So it's project1490.com. And you can find us on Instagram. You can find us on LinkedIn. And if anybody wants to connect with me personally, I'm on LinkedIn under Sarah Dale. And you can find me there. Brilliant. I really enjoy it. That's been such a lovely thing. We've had a couple of guests recently who have talked about the emptiness of success.

[00:31:55] And I think your whole concept is about actually how do you fill success up with meaning in a funny sort of way by seeing yourself in a different way. I know you're doing all the things you said as well. But I just thought that was another thing. But fantastic. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, Sarah. You've been an absolute joy. And should I have asked you something that I haven't asked so far? Or are we all happy? Oh, no. This was delightful. Thank you so much. That's no problem.

[00:32:25] Lovely to talk to you. Thanks very much for your time. You take care. Hi. I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining. If you want to support our work, please go to resilienceunravel.com. And you can become a member there as well. You can also send us a question there and even apply to do a podcast. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast hosts of your choice.

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