My Fully Integrated Life

I’m on the airplane reviewing a proposal from a PR group to promote PINK. It’s stapled to another page that I must have printed at the same time – my mom’s zucchini recipe. And I realize how much I love my fully integrated life. I glance at my 11-year-old son, Julien, sitting in the window seat beside me. He got up with me at dawn to watch me tape a segment on FOX & Friends. “He can come in,” the guy at the door had said. “He’s her bodyguard.” I know how lucky I am to have been able to create this kind of life. It hasn’t always been (and won’t always be) like this, which makes my eyes well up with gratitude for this moment.

I try (and sometimes fail) to keep things in perspective, so when, for example, a major sponsor has a concern about how we interpreted data, or the supporting interviews for our cover profile all fall through, or when an author is upset because we didn’t run her book review, or when (due to a printer error) 16 pages have disappeared from inside our last issue (I still don’t know how many copies!), or an e-mail overload shuts down my system – I try to remember what’s most important to me: my relationship with my husband and our kids and dear friends, and the chance to have this canvas of PINK to show what we all can do to make work and life better for women.

Now it’s back to editing the stack of copy in my bag and putting out fires on the BlackBerry. I like the challenge of it – to come up with solutions when there doesn’t seem to be one. There’s always a solution, and it rarely has to be expensive or painful. I’ve tormented my staff with my belief in this. I tell them, “There is no such thing as ‘no.’ It may be ‘no,’ but just for right now.”

For instance, the fabulous Ariel Capital Management President Mellody Hobson repeatedly turned me down (or at least her handlers did) for a PINK cover two years ago. Again, recently her handlers formally declined. But less than a week later, they phoned us to say, “Yes”! Thrilled with our story and the response to it, Hobson asked us if she could be one of our panelists at our conference lunch series this fall.

When one door closes, well, there are lots and lots more doors. A PINK employee once complained that she had tried enough. “I called four times!” she announced. I reminded her that Walt Disney contacted 302 banks before he got what he wanted (a loan to build Disneyland.) I even resorted to fining employees one dollar for saying that four letter word ‘can’t.’ It seems to have worked. Today our team is extremely positive. And now more than ever we seem to have the force to accomplish our goals.

I now have tears streaming down my cheeks (I swear it’s not that time of the month) . I’m reading Della de Lafuente’s wonderful holiday feature for PINK on top career women’s most meaningful gifts (you’ll have to read this one). Luckily no one on the plane sees me, and there are no questions from my bodyguard, who is watching out the window – mesmerized – as a sparkling New York City gets smaller in the distance.

By Cynthia Good