The Place: Starbucks

The Cup: Nicole was just coming back from yoga and was feeling very zen, so she decided to skip the coffee. I had an iced coffee. Mmm, mmm good!

Background: Last week I was at Starbucks catching up with Cup 19, Honoree Corder. Honoree had a meeting after our chat with Nicole. As I was leaving, Honoree introduced the two of us, we connected on Twitter after and decided we should get together for coffee as well. Ta da! {See, interesting people EVERYWHERE!}

Nicole is a woman with lots of ideas, involved in lots of projects fueled by lots of energy. She shared with me the one person who she feels helped shape her the most, the moment in her life that was the most disappointing, and a new-ish life philosophy that helps her stay grounded. We’ll get to all that and more in just a bit, but first, some:

Common Grounds

1. What is the best gift you ever got? All the art work from my kids over the years. Being a single mom, having them most of the time, with no family in town, those gifts keep me from going crazy when the kids are acting up or things just seem to0 overwhelming to even begin. Those gifts keep me sane.
   
2. What is your guilty pleasure? Food. All of it. All the foods. My go-to is sushi. I eat raw oysters once a week. But I’ll take carrots and hummus, chips and salsa, whatever.
3. How did you make your first buck? Tips from selling sno-cones at the race track in Santa Fe.
4. Where is your favorite place to eat in Austin? Oh no. That’s like asking me to choose my favorite child. Uchi or Uchiko are probably my favorites. I go there and spend a ton of money, but I never feel cheated. I also really like Clarks, Sway and Swift’s Attic.
5. What is the last movie you saw? Star Trek, at Alamo Draft House.
6. Who was the most influential person in your life? My grandmother. She is the matriarch of our family and is incredibly successful. Although my grandfather was the CEO, she ran their race track. She called the shots; did the negotiations. She is a true entrepreneur. She had a Mexican Restaurant, a drive-in theater, the concessions for the horse track, and then she became a successful Realtor. She’s one of those people who always does the right thing. When I talk about being a woman who doesn’t need to be a bulldog in a power suit, it’s because of her. She has this amazing grace, poise and elegance and yet nobody messes with her. She’s incredibly brilliant.
7. What would be the worst job for you? Anything monotonous. I like the building stage. I don’t like the oil-the-gears stage. And I’m not good at it. I don’t catch the things that could happen. I have a hard time seeing past where I’m at. I think that’s why I love start-ups. It’s always new and really interesting.
8. What is your favorite way to unwind? Yoga.
9. What is the last thing you fixed? The seal in the tank of my toilet. It had been running for a while, and one day I was in Home Depot and I asked the guy, “Is this hard?” and he said, “No,” then explained how to do it. So I went home and fixed it. I had to use my blow-dryer, but it got done. I was shocked by how much money I saved on the next water bill.
10. What’s the most interesting thing in your purse? A spin pin from Goody. {which Nicole says might be the best invention ever. She then demonstrates it’s awesomeness by quickly rolling her hair into a bun and then securing it with her spin pin.}

    

Nicole moved to Austin from Albuquerque, NM eight years ago. She’d grown up in Santa Fe but had moved around quite a bit – typically her husband would get a promotion and they’d be off to a new city. Eventually they were looking at starting a business and saw the fertile start-up land in Texas as the right place to lay roots. With some friends in Dallas, it seemed like a logical choice, but after a visit to the city, Nicole had decided Texas was a terrible idea. She said it just didn’t feel like home.

Then someone suggested they visit Austin. Nicole says as soon as they got off the plane and saw a band playing in the airport, she knew Austin was going to be home. And three weeks later, it was.

With an unsatisfying career in financial planning, Nicole was ready for something different. She said, “Being a financial planner working for a large firm was hard. It was difficult to reconcile doing right by your client and doing right by your firm. I always felt there was a conflict of interest.” Nicole had taken college courses, but had never finished her degree because they never lived anywhere long enough. Now they were staying put, so she enrolled in school, ready to finally finish. Her approach to choosing her major was surprising, although genius, really! She says, “I looked up various CEO’s and saw what degrees they had. Many of them got their undergraduate degrees in Economics, so that’s what I did.”

Professionally, Nicole has been a very busy gal! She got a real knack for technology but it’s not the technical aspects of it that get her revved up. She loves the strategy around the technology – be it marketing strategy or business development strategy, Nicole has built a name for herself in the space of technology creative strategy and she’s been noticed. In fact, during SXSW this year, she was a part of a 2013 Fast Company & Girls In Tech Salon Event – One of 20 invited to join the “League of Extraordinary Women” to discuss the leadership roles of women in business today.

It was her experience at SXSW that led her to an idea for a B Corp start-up called 3 Skirts, which will focus on mentoring and inspiring young women in technology. Nicole says, “It’s about helping young women be okay with being a woman in tech, while not having to come in wearing a red power suit and throw down. My hope is that eventually there won’t be a need for this type of organization to exist. We won’t need to have this conversation.”

“There is so much more to do in tech and innovation,” Nicole says. “Wearable and fashionable technology is going to explode. Yes, Google Glass is ugly, but that’s just the start. For example, I won’t wear a Jawbone, but if you put the technology in my Marc Jacobs watch, then I’d totally wear it.”

The most significant thing that’s happened for Nicole in the last 30 days was a decision to forego another corporate gig, and instead focus on a few entrepreneurial pursuits. Earlier this year, Razorfish – where Nicole was serving at the National Business Development Manager  – made some changes. Her job would need to move to Chicago. This wasn’t an option for Nicole, so she left the company. She talked to some local firms but ultimately decided the consulting work she’d done on the side for the last year was what she really wanted to do. “I’d resisted the idea of consulting for so long because I didn’t want to simply trade time for money.” A friend suggested she look at a model where she takes an equity stake in each company she works with as a part of her compensation. That made sense. Nicole says, “It’s a great model because I’m making decent money all along, and then if one of them hits it big, I have a small stake in it. It gives me a true, vested interest in their business and I really want them to succeed. Not just because my name is associated with them, but because of the potential payout.”

A start-up B Corp, a growing technology strategy consulting practice (called Violet Crown Consulting) and, if all that’s not enough, she and a business partner are just days away from being able to talk about a very top-secret project they are launching soon. She is tight-lipped about it but says the idea came from seeing the hype of the Tough Mudder run here  in Austin, although it’s really nothing at all like that. The only other detail I got, is that surprisingly, it’s not related to technology.  So stay tuned for more on that developing story.

What does this achiever have on her bucket list? Well, there isn’t a list, per se. But she does have a goal to visit each continent and she also wants to travel to at least 50 countries. She’d even like to live in another country at some point  – which she has strategically designed her career around. She says, “As long as I have access to wi-fi, I can work.” That’s more and more true for many of us. That freedom excites me as much as it does Nicole.

Her other big life goal is raising successful and happy kids. She says, “I want to see my kids (Nicole has a boy, 8 and a girl, 10) be successful in whatever they do. I want them to find a love for something. It’s my goal, even though it’s their life. I want them to be wonderfully happy.” I think that’s totally bucket list worthy.

What has been the greatest disappointment in Nicole’s life? She tells me, “It was realizing that marriage isn’t this picturesque thing. Everything else in my life had fallen onto place so easily. We got married rather young. We were successful, we had a home and it just seemed like what we were supposed to do next. I learned in therapy that some people just aren’t meant to be together. He’s a great dad and I have so much respect for him as a businessman. We just weren’t a good partnership.”

Nicole tells me that going through the process, she felt like she had failed at marriage. She says, “I had struggled with things, but I’d never failed. Since going through this, I’ve learned to adjust my way of thinking and as a result, I don’t get disappointed anymore. I follow the concept that you can’t control the wind, but you can adjust the sails. Yoga has also been huge for me. It teaches you to let go of those things that don’t empower you or serve you. After that, there is very little left to be disappointed by.”

I love knowing what rituals or routines people follow that help them be successful. Nicole’s answer that that, “I don’t have one. In fact, the only habit I have is that I live without habits. I don’t even get up and make coffee every day like a lot of people do.” She does eventually admit there is something she does regularly in business, and that’s follow up. She tells me, “If I say I’m going to make an email introduction I do it. It doesn’t matter if I have to pull into the Starbucks parking lot to get a wi-fi signal to quickly fire off an email from my iPad, I make sure I always follow up.” Experience has taught me that this is where many business people fail, and I have to admit, Nicole may have figured out how to do the only thing that really matters.

I ask Nicole what she feels is the biggest issue facing society today, and she tells me it’s the lack of clean drinking water. Or really, a lack of water period.  Nicole says, “If there ever is a World War III, it will be over water. Not many people realize just how dire it is. Growing up on a ranch in New Mexico, we had well water. I was often told to take a short shower because the water was low. Sometimes we ran out.”

Nicole spent some time working for  an industrial water publisher who was opening a US office in Austin. It was here that this message solidified within her. “Ground water is so precious. We don’t have a lot of it and we take it for granted,” Nicole says, adding, “Like many issues in this country, it stems from a lack of conversation. Really, it’s a cause everyone can get behind. Do you like having clean drinking water? Yes? Great, let’s talk about it, because not a lot of people are.” Nicole cites a quote she heard on the topic that sums it up nicely and here is it:

Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. ~Unknown

It’s a reminder of just how precious life is and how precarious our existence could be.

For as busy as Nicole is, and as many balls as she has in the air, I’m struck by her message of simplicity. I know I’m guilty of over-complicating things; in fact, I’ve been known to turn a molehill or two into mountains over the years. OK, yesterday. Throughout our coffee, we often returned to this message of simplify.

Whether it’s in regard to technology innovation – Don’t create another piece of technology for me to wear. Add it to something I’m already wearing.  Or choosing a college degree – Who do I admire and aspire to be like? What did they get their degree in? Done!  In regard to our happiness – Worry less about the circumstances and focus only on your reaction. By doing so, you can never be disappointed.  And something as huge as our existence on this planet – Start learning about, thinking about and talking about water. Without it, nothing else matters. 

Frederic Chopin said, “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” I’m grateful for this meeting with Nicole who has proven that you can be full of fantastic ideas, full of explosive energy and boldness with elegant simplicity at the heart of all of it.

To learn more about Nicole, check her out on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.