Mellody Hobson
speaker
238 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard May 2025
Mellody Hobson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And ultimately, she's like, no, my name is Linda Frankel and I'm Diane Sawyer's sister. Do you think you can go meet with her in New York? So I go to meet with Diane in New York. And she says, you know, I thought this story was pretty amazing. And I've never seen anyone like you on television talk about money. And I think you could be great. Wow.
And so she asked me, she says, you know, I think you should be on television talking about money. I said, well, I have a job in Chicago. And she's like, if I make it work on my end, will you make it work on your end? I said, you mean do both? She said, do both. We do this one show. We had these young people come in and I was young myself, but they were young.
So I said, yeah. And she's like, you know what happens when she comes out on her show and she's in the middle of the aisle? Everyone wants to hug her. Everyone. She said they want to hug her. And she said, you want to be someone that someone wants to hug. That's not what I saw. Whoa. Feedback. How'd you take that? I was like, wow. Wow.
It felt the truth? Yeah. She's like, that's not what I saw. She's like, you could be honest with someone, but you don't have to hurt their feelings.
And I remember I never, I mean, I tell you the story like it was yesterday. I never forgot that. It's a great piece of advice.
Okay, this is funny and this is true. I started off in the industry. I'm 22 years old. I don't know anything. I haven't grown up in the home where the stock market is discussed. I didn't major in finance. I majored in international relations and public policy, but I took a lot of math. I thought about being a math major for a little while.
But that, when you get to theoretical math in college, you're not even dealing with numbers. And so I go to work at Ariel. I don't know anything. And one of the first,
So then the next person, your melody. And then it's another person, your melody. And I'm like, what is going on? And then I started to realize I'm the only one. I'm the only one. So I was like, wait a minute. What if I use this in my favor?
Not pointing a finger.
I'm like that. If you can stand out. then have something to say. You better have something to say. Especially in those terms. So then I started to think a lot about, okay, so if you can be a Beyonce or a Cher in terms of a one name individual in an industry. You got to have the skill to back it up. Right. So you have to have something. So no inanities.
And so you try to find a way and you don't, you know, this is one of my pet peeves to this day. Someone who comes and talks to you and they talk to you about something and it's like a headline in the Wall Street Journal. And you're just like, yeah, I read that too. Yeah. That is not insightful. That is not insightful.
Yes, and going back to your question, which I did not answer, my mom always told me, make yourself indispensable. She was like, make it so people can't live without you. So I did every job that they asked me to do. I never was unhappy about any job because I always thought to myself, I'm learning something here.
There's a degree of conformity that exists in my industry that's very important. And... I found a way to be original in my conformity. Explain that to me. So, for example, in the financial services industry, you wear business attire. But mine is different from everyone else's.
Well, it is because I was walking in as a black woman. So I was already in this sort of no man's land. Especially things have changed, but not... meaningfully. And so as a result of that, you had to, first of all, that lens of what do they see? Because that's going to affect an opinion before you've even spoken. And I was always very realistic about that.
You know, I was, you know, I think we'd like the world to be what we want it to be, but it's not. It's not. So, you know, we could hold on to that idea. And that's what I mean. I conformed, but in my own way. And so I was always authentically me. I think, you know, authenticity is key to success. I've seen people not be authentic. They try to be someone else.
Like John Rogers and I, we are co-CEOs at Ariel. He's very different from me. I didn't try to be him. That would have been a logical thing. People try to fit a mold. I'm very different than him. We therefore become complimentary and become yin and yang. Absolutely. But that probably would have been an instinct of someone to say, well, this is the model that you're dealing with.
So first of all, they need to see discipline. Discipline is very, it comes through in lots of ways, right? I mean, big and small. My assistant, who is a vice president, because she's so amazing, she constantly, or my chief of staff, before I had email sent, read over my shoulder, are there any typos in this? A typo could kill an opportunity for us because they think you're half-assed.
And my husband always jokes, he's like, she does not like half-assed. He always says, she likes whole-assed. course you do.
It's not about perfection, but it's about process. You want processes that you don't cut corners. That's a, I don't know if you ever knew that from Dave Thomas, who started Wendy's. No. The hamburgers are square because his grandmother always told them don't cut corners. Yeah.
I was going to say, you waste it. But yeah, that I don't cut corners. So if you have a process, you're sending out an important email every time someone reads it. Not sometimes. Every time. Even in my own office, I'll send out something and I'll say, I'm writing a loan. No one's here to prove this.
Showing 61–80 of 238 · page 4 of 12
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