Bea Wray: Entrepreneur To Author
In episode #19 of My 2.0, guest Bea Wray, Author and Keynote Speaker, shares her transition from a career as an entrepreneur to an author.
She grew up always knowing that she’d be a psychology major and a psychology researcher. And she went to college for psychology and even did an honors thesis and was on a path to do research and hopefully eventually go to graduate school. But while she presented her thesis, expecting to fail, given it wasn’t statistically conclusive, she was shocked to receive the highest honors. Her own reaction to that was to find another career. And so she went into business, starting and leading many successful companies.
When I asked her how she compared her career with her father’s 30 year career at Ford, she said she has worked with entrepreneurs and startups. She understands imperfections and chaos and problem solving in a way which is different from people working in large corporations.
Bea’s advice to her pre-transition self is for people to always be open and true to themselves. And to be aware of your surroundings and what you want out of life and use all the incredible opportunities that come our way.
Some of the transition myths Bea would like to debunk are that career transitions cannot be done and that the next thing may not be better. She talks about our career being a three-legged stool; each leg representing industry, position and geography. And that we should never try to change all at once.
When I asked what led Bea to write the book, she mentioned that after selling the company, she took six years off spending time with her family. And when she went back to the workplace, she felt intimidated with very low confidence. And she realized she kept receiving thanks and compliments for helping people and when she reflected about her innate skills, she realized all her skills from business schools were honed by her kids. It included empathy, communication and negotiation. And that was making a difference.And one thing led to another and she started writing about it and I published a little article in entrepreneur.com. So at some point she knew a book would come out.
As she lost her confidence and was trying to figure out the next point in her career, she asks us to never let not having confidence get in our way. And if there is something we want to try or do, we owe it to ourselves to try.
She offers her advice on negotiation skills using the BATNA principal they use at HBS; the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. She explains how she has never looked for just one job, but multiple ones at a time.
Her thoughts on whether children should be allowed to fail were that being an entrepreneur, she understands the importance of establishing a culture of failure so it allows for risk taking. Which is similar to our career transitions. Taking that to parenting, we want our children to not have to be perfect, and to accept failure.
Resources.