What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of women in power?
Dysfunctional offices? Petty coworkers? Jealousy issues?
Why not things like determination? Communication? Empathy?
Hi. My name is Molly and I’m the newest member of the SGC family.
Now technically I’ve always been part of the SGC family, even if only by-proxy as the founder’s daughter. Full disclosure, I worked at this company a few years ago as a recruiter and I was TERRIBLE at it. I only lasted in that position a little over a year until I moved on to what I thought were greener pastures. HA! I had a lot of learning to do.
Even fuller disclosure, I still do.
I come from the corporate world of punch clocks, red tape, and stale coffee. I grew my career in big name companies in the marketing and business development fields, with the mindset that I needed to work for a company with hundreds of people in order to feel stable in my career – mainly to eliminate the fear of the company closing down or laying people off to make ends meet if times got tough.
If I had been any more backwards, I would have needed to carry a rear-view mirror with me everywhere just to see clearly.
Leave it to me to end up working for a small, women-owned, female-run company (and Josh!). This opportunity sort of fell in my lap and it was very hard for me to say “no”. Not just because it’s my mother’s company, and I had worked here before, and it got me out of an extremely toxic environment, blah blah blah. Nope. That wasn’t it. (Okay, that was part of it. But I promise it was only a small part.)
It was how much of a well-oiled machine this company has become since it’s founding. Run by women! CAN YOU IMAGINE SUCH A THING? Women getting along! Being helpful! Comm-u-ni-cat-ing!
And yes, truth be told, the machine needs to be re-oiled every now and then. What fine-tuned engineering marvel doesn’t? We’re all learning together and growing together. Oiling the machine together. Our society generalizes women in the workforce as not liking to see other women succeed while constantly undervaluing themselves. Or creating hostile work environments when pettiness and jealousy get in the way of sharing ideas and expanding our minds.
Such negative stereotypes are sooo commonplace in the corporate world today. And SOOO damaging. I needed to get out of it but I had nowhere to go.
But then. That marvelous day in August. I got the phone call from Ali. She wanted to meet with me to pitch this job. She explained what it was now and her vision for the position for the future. She allowed me to share my ideas, too, and what I thought I could bring to the table that this family didn’t already have. SGC quickly became a refreshing oasis from the corporate desert that had dried out my work ethic and willingness to never be complacent.
Because that’s what the business world was to me; a dried-out routine of show up, do work, go home. And that’s all there was to it. But boy, that is NOT how things are done at SGC. And it looked AWESOME. I couldn’t wait to be a part of it.
So, enter Molly.
It’s been about two months since I started here and I’ve learned more than I thought my brain could handle, at one point. It feels like I was a missing puzzle piece. But you know how you have to turn it a few times to get it to fit just right? That’s what we’re doing now, turning some puzzle pieces (oiling the machine) to create a new picture.
I couldn’t be more thrilled to work with such a wonderful group of women (and Josh!), and even more thrilled that there are no punch clocks, red tape, or (most importantly) stale coffee.
It’s nice to meet you.
