Finding Your Crew (or Cru!) with Tiffany Dufu.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode ninety five. Sarah and I are very excited to be talking with Tiffany Doufu today. We've both read her book, Dropped the Ball, and of course she's been doing other great things since that came out a few years ago. Who were looking forward to that? But the end of the school year is coming up with its blitz of end of year activities. Sarah, how are you faring with all that? I'm okay. I've got two different schools this year, and I guess I will for the foreseeable future, actually, because then of people will be in her own little school in quotes next year. But No, it's a lot because there's kindergarten events, and then it seems like the Mother's Day events. I mean, this is airing past Mother's Day, but they're kind of mixed in there somewhere. And then a bunch of sort of end of year performances which happened to come at a very very busy time for me at work right now, as we're trying to finish it up at year of residence and onboard new ones. So yeah, I'm mildly frustrated with my calendar right now. Well, it's also that you need time. You need to know ahead of time because like you know, you can't just like easily move patient visits. I mean it's not you know, yes, that's actually a big part of it. If they could just and I get maybe they just can't, but if if by January we could just know what all the dates were so I could work around them, it would be wonderful. I can't be the only person that this kind of thing impacts, but somehow the end of the stuff always seems to get thrown together and you get an email in mid April and then all of a sudden, it's like, well, I have patients and the patients have their own things that they've probably scheduled around, so they're not happy to be moved either. So it causes a bit of a mess. And you had mentioned in your notes feeling sometimes judged if you miss an end of the year event. Yeah, I'm debating this upcoming event at Cameron's school, and I feel like if I don't go, they're gonna say something or at least think something, right, I know, And why should I even care? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You're right, is it me or is it them? Yeah? Because the end of the world, It seriously isn't. I mean, there will be end of year events every year, it turns out, so that is true. No, And I said I had resent that I didn't think my husband would be judged for Yeah, no, that's true. If well, and you know, we generally try to have one of us there, but you know, sometimes it doesn't work. But yeah, I've you know, I probably go to more of them. His take on it was that also that I should not worry about it either, was that if we can't go to something that it's probably no one cares in the long run. Maybe he's right. I'd like to think he's right. Yeah, And if you know, you can always do something special with your kid. At another point too, it may you'd be like, well, we're going to go out for this special evening together. You know, I couldn't do it during the day, but maybe there's something you could do. Yes, if it's something that they care about. Yeah, that is so true. Do you have a ton of stuff? You've got four in different places. That's got to be four and three different schools. You know, it's it's not too bad. There's somewhat limited performing arts stuff. We've got one choir concert, one recital. But the recital you had an option of like six different days you could go in and on those six different days, there's like two shows a day, so you could even say the earlier show or the later show. So that was not difficult to find a time that would work. We have a like a tee in the preschool that I've scheduled some things around, but it just said, you know, I send one special adult. So I was like, well, if it's not me like our army and a special adult, I love that. No, our school has not done that, but that's lovely. That opens up the door to so many options, so many other special adults, I mean, grandparents or a caregiver, what you know, this neighbor, what it could be anyone, right, like some special adult for this child. So that's that's always a great way to get around that as well, if that's an option. Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it, not being too bad. I'm the room parent for one of my kids classes, and so I think I need to plan an end of year party. But I've got that day marked off, and I in fact marked off the next days as well, because when we didn't know how many snow days we would have, right, That's that's the problem. The end of the year, at the end of the school year can move, and maybe that's why it often doesn't come out so far in advance for us. I mean, that's it. I mean, you guys don't have snow although you might have her days. I don't know. Whatever cockroaches take over the school days or whatever happens in South Florida like that many cockroaches, I mean, I don't know, similar to New York, exactly a lot of bugs there. All right, Well, let's let's dive into Tiffanyfoo. Well, Sarah and I are excited to welcome Tiffany to the program today. Tiffany, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Yes, thank you so much for having me on, Tiffany Dofoo. My life's work is advancing women and girls wonderful and Sarah and I both read your awesome book Drop the Ball a couple of years ago and your evolution from being the overworked, overworked mom to achieving a partnership. So it's been a few years now since that came out. I'm sure those of our listeners who've read the book, how have things gone since then? Were you guys able to maintain this good system or you know, how's everything been? Well, it's been great, So, you know, Drop the Ball was a journey that I had to go back and really reflect on in hindsight. I dropped the Ball about ten years ago now, and I went back in time because I was getting so many questions from women about how do you create a life that you're passionate about? How do you manage it all? And I felt it was important to go back far enough in my own journey before I could afford to outsource anything, because I think there are a lot of women who are at that point in their lives and careers, and I wanted to really tackle the nitty gritty of how I had to reshift my own perspectives and my own expectations around who I was in order to really free myself up to be able to do what I'm doing now. So it's been really rewarding, and in a lot of ways, my partner and I have switched roles in ways. You know, now I'm kind of like, you need to read my book. You need to drop the ball. He's like, then, who's going to pick them up? Because you've already dropped the ball? Just we can all drop the balls. Yeah, it was one of the lessons from your book. I think when we did your exercise, it was in our particular household. It was like, and by the way, to remind everyone, actually, can you remind our listeners about that very famous part of your book where you and your husband went through an exercise. It was very impactful as many people of listing all the things you were doing. Yeah, so you know, this was a very important moment in my own journey, but also a very important moment in the book because, like many readers, I read books, and I believe the person who's writing, and so you know this whole idea of it. This woman is very busy, and she's got this husband who's really not pitching in the way that he should. You know, you kind of believe that narrative until you get to this point in the book where I basically had what I call a Tiffany's epiphany at work one day when I was leading a team in delivering a new project, and my first inclination was to put the team in a room to determine what needed to happen in order for this project to be a success, and then to distribute roles based on our gifts, our talents, our skills, our abilities, our functions. And it was great. And I was walking home that day thinking, you know, I don't manage my home the way that I manage at work. It doesn't occur to me to think about our skills and our talents and our gifts and our abilities and our schedules and thinking about who's going to do what. I just kind of do it all. And so I thought we should do this at home, and so we just completed an Excel spreadsheet. I started off by writing all the things that I thought were acquired in order for our home to function smoothly. And it turned out that when I sat down with my husband and I asked him if there was anything missing from the list, there indeed were things that were missing that he did that I didn't know that he did. And there were a couple of learnings from that exercise. One was the fact that I had just listed tasks on the list, but he listed job roles. So like, one of the things he added to the list was botanist and I was like what and he was like, yeah, I water all of the plants around here, you know. And then he put travel coordinator and I'm like travel coordinator. He's like, yeah, Like, you don't even know your frequent fire miles, you know. I'm the one who researches, you know, the tickets when we go on vacation. I'm like, okay, okay, you've got that. But I think the another the other insight was we had to create a column that I wasn't anticipating, called the No. One column. Because when you go through the process of actually detailing everything that you feel is required in order for your home to function smoothly, and you do it with another person. You realize that no two people or three people or four people could actually accomplish everything that's on your list. So we mutually agreed that there would be tasks or rules or jobs that neither one of us would have the capacity to do, and that we would be okay with that. So it would prevent us from blaming the other person if the car wasn't washed, which was one of the first things that ended up in the no one callum, like, who cares? We live in New York. It's not like we're driving in LA in this fancy car. So it'll just sit there and it'll be dirty and it'll rain occasionally, right, so exactly unfolding the laundry, like you know what, it could just be in the bind. We could just both fox and T shirts like out of the bin. I think it'll be fine. So that column was important for managing our expectations of ourselves, but it also turned out to be an important column in engaging our community because people ask you if you're paying attention, People ask you quite frequently do you need anything? Is there anything that I can do to help? We kind of by habit decline, Oh no, it's great, Oh it's all good. But when no one called them there, we actually had tasks that we could assign to other people. So, you know, if a neighbor was like, hey, I know that you're traveling. You guys seem really busy, Like is anything that I can do, We're like, yeah, our car is really dirty, you can drive it and give you the keys and can you take it to you can watch well. Of course, when you actually give people things to do and they feel like they're supporting your family and your journey together, they then start doing things without being asked. Yeah, and that's how you build a community of support. That's wonderful. Yeah, and I'm sure that's been I mean that sort of segues into our topic of what you're doing now in terms of the communities of support. So you have this fascinating book come out, you do a lot of speaking. I know, I've seen you all over the speaking circuit, and then Tiffany decides, hey, I should start a business, So why don't you tell what led to this and what you're doing now. Yeah. So I mentioned at the top that my life's work is advancing women and girls, and you know what that really means for me is that I'm here to serve them and to answer questions and to help solve problems. And I felt that the best medium for answering the question, well, how do you manage it all? Was a book. It's kind of a long drawn out story. I felt there was some humor there. I felt that I could take women on a psychological journey. But the next question that I started really getting for women was around this idea of a village. It was this idea of community and how do I build that. So I've been proselytizing and kind of evangelizing this idea of a crew for a couple of years now and telling women, you know, you don't have to lean in alone. You were never meant to. We all need scaffolding and really encouraging women to develop a community of women who can help hold them accountable for their ambition, who can help them create plans and help them execute on these plans. And I kind of would give it as a pep talk, you know, at the end of all of my conversations with women that reach out to me. But last year about this time, then thirteen fourteen months ago, I had a woman who at the end of my conversation with her, when I was giving my PEP talk about how you needed to find your crew, she pushed back. She kind of became visibly frustrated, and what she said to me was, Tiffany, I understand theoretically this idea of a crew, and I believe that if I had one, I could move my life forward. But honestly, by the time I go to enough cocktail parties, conferences, events, introduced myself to enough strangers, collect enough business cards, then scheduled the coffees, the tease, the lunches, by the way, I had to take off work to meet with you at ten am, you know, on a Tuesday. Then somehow curate ten or twelve of these people to form a crew, like organize gatherings and put forth our ambitions and goals. Like I have a full time job, Tiffany, I have three kids, I have a mom with a diagnosis, I have a dog. I don't have time to find a crew. So is that all you have for me? That's it? Go find your crew. And I had another one of my Tiffany's epiphanies, you know, in that moment, and just gave for a hug and said, I'm so sorry, I will help you find your crew. And that is how this began, was me realizing that women were coming to me with a pain point, just like they were coming to me with how do you manage it all? And that I was offering a solution but not in the medium that women needed in order to actually move their lives forward. So I was like, well, I'll just launch a business where I help them you find their crew, because that's what Divini does. And I just created a site. I got my crew together for a photograph and basically it's kind of simple. You apply to become a member of the crew, and our algorithm matches you with nine women in your city based on your personalities, your values, your demographics, your goals. The ten of you then become a crew and you collaborate to meet your life goals together, so as like having an accountability partner, but ten women doing it together. You interface digitally so there are in your intentions, your goals. You upload those to our portal. Your crew can see that you said you were going to lose ten pounds. Your crew can see that you were going to ask for a race and your actions against them. And you also meet in person once a quarter. I love there's an in person component because I feel like, yeah, the virtual mentor is wonderful, but when once you bring the real life part to it, that's got to be so powerful. Do you have do you have like different careers mixed all together or do our people tend to be in the same industry if they're very heterogeneous? Cruise by design, So you're with a group of women you wouldn't otherwise have been with format, So women from different industries, different racial ethnic backgrounds. What you have in common is obviously you being attracted to the values of the crew, your geographic location, and likely your industry the level, right, you tend to be peers. But other than that, you are beautifully matched together differently by design. Yeah, and so our listeners know this is Cruse, are you right? It's a spelling right in case they're looking this exactly your care dot com and and so, because you've got an algorithm for this, this isn't just Tiffany going in and playing matchmaker, then you will be able to scale this. What's your vision for the crew and where are we now? Many crew members? Yes, so we launched in May. We all launched the first application round in May, we matched one hundred women in the pilot. We have seven hundred women on a waiting list, so we didn't match everyone. We're learning a lot about the experience. We're going to bring in twelve hundred women the next round. So we launched another application round in May. And the reason why my voice sounds so terrible is because I have been in back to back investor meetings raising my seed round for the crew, So my voice is fragile. Fragile. Yeah, how's the experience of raising money been for you? I mean, because this is that's different from what you've been doing before. Yes and no. So for me, the process has been great. But I have several advantages, and one of them is that I spent about ten years of my career as a nonprofit fundraiser. I raised money. I was a major gift officer for Simmons Knowsity. I raised money for a girls school. I raised money for a nonprofit called the White House Project that trained women to run for office before I ran that organization. So I have a lot of sales experience and experience raising money. And truth be told, raising venture money for a startup is easier than raising money from philanthropists because you have something more maybe tangible, to hopefully promise in return. I guess several things. I think one is that the motive is a uniform. Every person you talk to in this you know, venture space, wants something ex return on an investment. You don't need to try to figure out did their mom have cancer? You know what? What are they concerned about? What do they care about? I also have realized that many more investors and companies are also founders themselves. That's how they came to be vcs, and so they have respect for you as a builder. They know what you're going through, so they add tremendous value and they don't waste your time. You know, very few philanthropists have ever started or run nonprofits, so they're not as familiar with the world, and so the process of raising money in this new space is much more founder centric, where when you're raising nonprofit dollars, that process is much more donor centric. Yeah, so you see this being like really big, like sort of almost social networking combined with in person networking. Is that how you're pitching it to them? And in the future, That's not how I started it. I thought I was starting like a little membership organization. But as I listen to the members, and as I learned from them, and as I adapt to what they want, it's very clear that the crew is the future of social networking. Yeah yeah, well that's really cool. So we, you know, be the next Google here, school next Facebook here that we're we've got Tiffany on and I should also mention to get in on this. I should I mentioned that. The other reason why it's going well is because I have a crew. Yeah, okay, so I'm sponsored. I have people who have made introductions for me. I have people who even the crew themselves, the women in the crew have become part of my crew. They are like, if you need us to talk to an investor about our experience, and the crew like call us, which I have, and several of them have had conversations with investors. So I know that when I have a problem, the first question I ask myself is not how am I going to solve this problem? It's who's going to help me solve this problem? And people have been amazing, and it's not just because of me. If you ask, people will be amazing. But the courage to ask is the hard part. That's definitely hard and having a crew. I mean, it's sort of this. We always talk about the importance of mentoring, but what you're getting at with this is like there's a lot of peer mentors. Yes, that having that pure relationship is often incredible. I mean, can you just talk a little bit to I mean, our listener about why that's so important for your career. I think it's incredibly important, and it's particularly important early on in your career because over time, as you and your peers grow and mature in your careers, what you're going to find is that transactionally, you become the power players, right, So it's important to cultivate that group of people very early. Mentors are great. There are people who can help you achieve clarity through guidance and encouragement. I have my stage mentors. They've been around the block more times than I have. They give me really amazing feedback. And early in your career, sponsorship is also important. People who are senior, more senior than you in the organization, who spend their capital on you. But I think that having a group of people who proverbally are climbing the mountain with you, and you know you're kind of at the same level, and you're all harnessed to one another. So somebody falls, it's like Okay, I got her, and you're kind of climbing the summit together. That is also incredibly important so that you stay relevant. You know that you're not going crazy. You know. Sometimes my stage mentors they were involved in my industry twenty years ago, you know, and so some of their information and their knowledge isn't as relevant. I think that the peer grouping is so important. I see. I'm actually so good timing for me to think about this because I'm headed to a conference where I'm going to be seeing a lot of the people that I was with medical training with, and I feel like residency process it's a little bit of an automatic crew situation. And I definitely see what you're saying about the value of making these relationships when you're lower on the totem pole, and then as each person rises, you're pulling each other up. I've already like potentially found a job, for example, for somebody that I trained with previously, but she probably wouldn't have made that connection. And now that I've been where I am a few years, I can be much more helpful compared to back when, back in the day. But you know, not every industry has such an automatic grouping like that, So that is fantastic. And I can also see how in that millennial generation it's just going to be it's going to be huge, So that's great. Yeah, So Tiffany, we'd love to hear like what a day in your life looks like now. Our listeners always love to hear about that. So how do in remind everybody how old your children are? Now? You have two? Correct? Yes, my daughter's ten, my son is twelve. I start my day getting myself ready taking my daughter to school. I try to do that as many mornings as I can when I'm not traveling. Our sons in middle school now, so he writes the best and gets himself to and from school, which is great. On any given day, I'm doing a combination of things that help me execute my passion and purpose for advancing women and girls. I might be on a call with one of my committees for my boards. I serve on the board of Girls Who Code and Simmons University. I might have a speaking event. Fortunately I did not have one of those today with this voice. You know, sometimes I have to travel for those so my days I do a lot of traveling, and my days often involved travel because I'm the founder and CEO of a new startup venture. Most of my time is spent executing on the ground. You know, in the beginning, your everything. You're the customer service representative, your fulfillment. Earlier today, I was at ups sending gifts, you know, mugs to all of our members, so you know, I'm doing whatever I need to do to move things forward. In the evening, I'm sometimes helping out with homework that's relevant to me, so I get a signed If somebody has an essay or a book report that's due that usually gets thrown at me, I read those. I have dinner, usually unfortunately not with my family, but on my own. Whatever I can, you know, grab from the refrigerator at the end. Every night, I spend way too much time dancing. I put on my Beats headset. Last night I spent two hours dancing to Beyonce's homecoming album. I should is my voice needed me to be asleep. But you know what, you it's so important to know what brings you joy and regardless of the stresses, regardless of the challenges. When I put on that beads headset and I turn on Shakira, Beyonce, Janet Madonna, one of my power sisters. Can I get to move in my body? Not only do I engage in physical fitness, it just brings me so much joy and I feel like I can do it again the next day. So last night I didn't get as much sleep because I got distracted with that. But that's what a day looks like for me. That's amazing. The urges like dance to Beyonce it ten o'clock at night. I got to work on that. I had to tap some of that. Well, Tiffany, we we always do a as part of our episodes, we do a love of the Week, So I mean it may honestly be Beyonce's homecoming. That could be fine. That could be your love of the wehones Tidun. We'll give you a minute to think of it. Sarah and I can go first. So Sarah, Sarah, what do you have for us? Well that's not really fair because I just copied mine off of yours, But well, we were talking about our hobbies and both Laura and I are into running, and well, since you're going to give yours, I'll say I really enjoy every once in a while just splurging like crazy at the local running store. Even though sometimes I do order my shoes on Amazon, it can be really fun to kind of get that real treatment and have them, you know, quote unquote match the shoes to me and pick out an outfit and feel like I'm supporting a small business. So I'll say that, Yeah, that's how it's good. I was gonna list my my Brooks running shoes. I get new running shoes from time to time, and what I love about these that I just put them on and run and it's like I did eight and a half miles the other day and I didn't feel like I was breaking in a new pair of shoes. So you know, that's that's always a good thing. So all right, Tiffany, how about you? Is this just something that we love? Is like a physical item or an experience anything. It could be an experience, a type of weather, anything. So I had an experience this week that I will cherish for so long. I was recognized by an organization called Girls Leadership that was founded by my friend Rachel Simmons, and what they do with the honorees is ask you so when you accept the award. Instead of just giving a regular thank you speech, they ask you to bring someone to the event that you want to think that has helped you realize your power and your voice. And I brought my mentor and my sponsor and my political mother, Marie C. Wilson, to the Girl's Leadership event on Monday. And she founded the Misfoundation for Women and grew that she co found to take our daughters to work day. And even though I'm smart and I work hard, there's hardly anything in my bio that isn't made possible because of Maurice C. Wilson. And to be able to stand on that stage and give her honor and express gratitude and let her know that every day I was going to continue to work my ass off so that the entire world got a return on the investment that she needed me was love. Love Love. That is a wonderful love of the week. Yes, that's probably one of our most inspiring loves of the week that we have had well well this, yeah, I'm not kidding. Like at least a year ago, I was like, I love that book. Drop the ball. We have to see if we can get Tiffany on and this has exceeded expectations. So thank you so much for speaking with us today. And if our listeners they should check out It's the crew dot com. Right, it's crew, Find your crew dot com. Find your crew. Okay, find your crew and its crew is c are you? So check that out? And what Tiffany is up to now? So Tiffany, thanks so much, thank you. So this question and answer comes to us from Instagram to our best of Worse World's feed, which just a reminder you can subscribe to you and you will get details on each week's episode and can leave your comments there. So this person asked, what do you do about bedtime? I have a nine month old daughter who has been going to bed around eight to fifteen, but it seems like she might need an earlier bedtime. I usually don't get home until six fifteen, so I feel like my already limited time with her is going to be cut even more. My hesitation to leave work earlier and finish up after she goes to bed has been that a lot of my most helpful collaborative conversations with my law partners seem to happen at the end of the day. No, that's understandable. I mean, certainly people like to say, like, oh yeah, on your way out the door, I was minting to mention this to you, like, so for some reason, people don't seem to think of this earlier in the day. Although I think there's a lot of other ways you can look at this question. Sarah, did you want to start in with your sure? Yeah, And I agree with you. It's amazing how many actually non trivial things do tend to come up at the end of a meeting or at the end of a day, which is interesting. Must be human nature for some reason. But my initial thought was, is there any way you can try to just work on shifting her schedule a little bit by manipulating the environment. If you control light cues, you may be able to get her to just sleep in later and go to bed later. If that is going to work better for your schedule. I mean it may not if you have to leave or if you have to drop her off somewhere, But if you have a caregiver that's coming to the home and she's still passed out when the caregiver gets there, maybe maybe that's okay. If you feel like you have better quality time with her at night. I've also found if my kids nap later, then they tend to lap longer, and then that can extend the bedtime at least, you know, within reason, you're not going to be able to get most nine month olds to comfortably stay up till ten PM. But maybe if that last nap, you know, starts at two thirty or three rather than one or two, you might sort of be able to stretch out the entire day a little bit. And then finally, I've always found that morning quality time, if anything, can be more fun than evening quality time because kids are less fussy, they're less clingy. You can get your coffee and just kind of play with them and talk to them. So don't discount that extra morning quality time. Yeah, i'd say that as well, like plus like two hours in the evening is not a short amount of time, by the way, Like, I don't know why she's got the story that this is like already short and already so limited, especially if she is seeing her baby in the morning, which I mean, my children woke up at the crack of dawn. Like it's entirely possible that the kid is up at six and she's leaving at eight so they've got two hours in the morning as well, in addition to these two hours in the evening, which you know, if she needs to go to bed at seven forty five instead of eight fifteen. Okay, Like I feel like that's not a huge deal, especially if you are getting that morning quality time too, and your time on weekends, and then you know, having that hour and a half in the evening with her. So I would say this is not necessarily needing to be a huge source of stress. There is no one number where you are a good mother if you spend two hours with your kid in the evening, and you are not a good mother if you spend an hour and a half. So we should we should maybe explore these stories and where they come from and all that. You know. That said, if you can also with the work thing, you might be able to get people to have these conversations earlier. I mean, one reason they're probably having these conversations when you're leaving is because that's when you're circling around and talking to people. You're like, Okay, I see you tomorrow. Oh, by the way, hey, did you get your answer to this? Go have a conversation with them earlier. Why not circle around after lunch being like, hey, how's it going. And then you know, when people see you, this thought will occur to them earlier, so you could have those conversations earlier in the day. And then also, you know, think one hundred and sixty eight hours, not twenty four. I think Sarah had put something about this in her notes. But you know, maybe you decide to stay really really late two nights a week and then leave early three days a week, right, like, you can have really productive conversations, productive conversations over dinner or something with some of your law partners two nights a week and then leave much earlier on the other three and sort of work the same number of hours, have the benefit of being seen there really late if that's important in your office, but then also still preserve quite a bit of a family time as well, so all things we can do. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with Tiffany Doofu with all her great ideas on making work and life work. We'll be back next week for more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together