I was seated Tuesday morning enjoying a cup of joe, thinking about Carla A. Harris’ message from Black Enterprise’s 2015 Women of Power Summit opening night event. More than 1000 black women had come to Fort Lauderdale for the Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit. I was hoping to have the opportunity to ask Carla A. Harris what her best message for mature women was. Carla is a vice chairman, managing director and senior client advisor at Morgan Stanley.
Carla A. Harris on experience. Strategize to Win
In a nutshell these were my takeaways from the dynamite speech of Carla A. Harris.
1. Ask yourself what is your buyer really buying?
2. Once you know what that is, tell your story in the context of what they are buying
3. Your goal is to connect your truth to the key success factors of your client..
4. You must be comfortable taking risks if you consider yourself a leader
5. Information is a commodity.
6. The differential is in your comfort level.. by showing you are comfortable taking risks
7. Do not listen to people who tell you to keep your head down.
8. When you submerge your voice you become irrelevant.
9. Fear has no place in a success equation. Fear is really just false evidence appearing real
10. Failure brings you a gift because now you have new branches on your personal tree.
I asked Carla what she recommended for a woman who feels that she didn’t get what she needed in life.
Her response was, “I write about that in my new book. Read the back third. It talks about repositioning yourself. A woman that has had significant experience, well it is about chronicling that experience, connecting the dots. She has to think about all the ways in this new economy that she can connect the dots. You have a major advantage and that is experience.Young women can bring agility. They can bring technological skills but they cannot bring experience
Expect to Win is the underlying message. To that end, Carla A. Harris says experience is what mature women should highlight when you are talking about the next opportunity.
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