Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Marla Malcolm Beck, chief executive of Bluemercury, a beauty products and spa services retailer. She believes, “If you’re hungry to get somewhere, that means you want to learn. And if you want to learn, you can do any job.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
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What were some early influences for you?
My dad was an entrepreneur. He started an insurance agency and a real estate company, and I worked in his office from the time I was 9. When I was in high school, I used to balance his books. I was also editor of the yearbook. That was interesting, because I learned that I’m not really a good project manager; I’m better with ideas and the creative side.
I also have a lot of sports-failure stories. I loved volleyball, but during my freshman year in high school, I didn’t even make the J.V. team. I was devastated, so I asked the coach what I had to do to make the team the next year, and she pointed me to a program where I played volleyball on the side for six months. I then made the J.V. team, and played varsity in my junior year and senior year, when I was the captain. I had a number of experiences like that, which taught me I could actually do anything. You just have to invest the time. You could completely fail, pick yourself up and do something great.
Did you want to be in leadership positions?
I just always ended up in them, even though I was shy. I wasn’t the best volleyball player on the team by any means, but I was reliable. It was always about no drama — just, “Let’s get the job done.” I probably got that from my dad. He had an amazing work ethic.
What did you study in college?
Political economy. I was interested in international business, but I wanted more of the theoretical and philosophical grounding. In college, I ran a student organization that was started after World War II to bring together students from around the world. We would find internships in San Francisco for foreign students. It was a global matching system, and for every one we found, we would send someone overseas on an internship.
That’s another failure story, a very public failure. I ran uncontested to be the president, gave a speech, and didn’t even get a majority of the votes. In the second election, someone ran against me, but I had interviewed a lot of people about why I didn’t get the position the first time, and they said I wasn’t human enough, I wasn’t passionate enough. So I talked more about the mission and my dreams for the organization, and I think people respected me for getting up there again, and I got most of the votes.
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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.
His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.