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EPISODE 002 · ADVERTISING → HIGHER EDUCATION
Dr. Connie Clary on failing first, and why no career is linear
Connie Clary's first business went bankrupt. Her next job was eliminated. The consulting firm she started because a client suggested it over a conversation has now run 26 years, and led to research, a doctorate, and a classroom she says is where she was supposed to be all along. None of it was planned, which is precisely her point.
What you will learn
- She failed first. A marketing firm, bankruptcy, and the conviction she would never work again.
- The whole consulting practice started because one client told her she was good at something and she believed them.
- What has actually changed in marketing in 25 years, and the one thing that stubbornly has not.
- The rubber duck theory of AI, and the intern who lost her job in a month.
- Her rule for being a woman in the room, which is shorter and harder than most advice.
How did the consulting firm start?
By accident, and after a failure. Her first business was a marketing firm, started young. Her own assessment is unsparing: she did not really know what she was doing. It ended in bankruptcy.
The second attempt began when she was a product manager at a software company and her position was eliminated. A partner software company told her she was good at explaining to people how to run their business more efficiently, and that she should start a consulting firm.
“Tell me once and I will go, okay.”
Dr. Connie Clary, Women IN episode 2
She also knew she did not want to work for someone like the person she had just been working for, which is its own kind of business plan. The harder part came next: working out the niche, because as she puts it, you cannot build a practice by wandering around telling the gas station owner what to do and then telling the art supply store what to do. She had to apply the strategy work to herself, which Sondra notes is a distinctly uncomfortable exercise for anyone who does it for a living.
When did she know it had worked?
Sooner than she expected, and then properly at year five.
The software company that suggested it also recommended her, so work arrived faster than a first year usually allows. Her measure of success at the time is refreshingly unglamorous: it was paying the bills, and on the days she wondered why she was doing this, at least her boss appreciated her. By year five it was word of mouth and she no longer had to chase it.
Where did the business instinct come from?
This is the best answer in the episode. Her mother was the first woman chemist at Shell Oil. Her father was a senior vice president at Chase. She is the youngest of three, and all five members of the family ended up entrepreneurs, which she rightly points out is not a normal distribution.
She was also, by her own account, the child who built spreadsheets before computers existed, for homework and for household chores, in order to explain to her family how to do things more efficiently. Three business degrees later, the instinct has held.
What has changed in 25 years of marketing, and what has not?
She works with marketing and graphic design firms on process, workflow and strategy, which gives her an unusually wide view of the industry from the inside.
What has changed is the output. Television and radio became short video, which became social and digital and streaming. What has not changed is more interesting, and it is a problem she is still solving for clients a quarter of a century later.
“We just seem to keep wanting to reinvent the wheel.”
Dr. Connie Clary, Women IN episode 2
Every job gets treated as a new job. A client asks for a campaign and the team starts from scratch, rather than saying here is how we do this. It is, she thinks, close to human nature, and it is where most of the inefficiency in creative businesses lives.
What are people getting wrong about AI?
Her first move is to take the drama out of it. This is not the first technology to change how work gets done. She reaches for robots arriving in the automotive industry: it did take some people's jobs, it changed others, and the people who would not change were the ones it took from.
“It will take your job if you let it.”
Dr. Connie Clary, Women IN episode 2
Her example from the classroom is exact. If a student pastes her assignment instructions into a tool and pastes the answer back to her, what is the tool doing in that transaction? It is doing the student's job. And she is clear this is not a student problem. She recently had a client feed her own questions into an AI, so that the AI ended up explaining that client's business back to her.
The story that should worry anyone hiring right now is about a young woman who interned somewhere, was offered a job, and lost it within a month. Not for poor work. Because in front of a client, asked a question, she could not answer until she had gone back to her desk and consulted a chatbot.
The rubber duck
So what does using it well look like? She offers the rubber duck theory, borrowed from programming. If you explain a problem out loud to an inanimate object, you tend to solve it, because talking releases things the subconscious withholds while you are thinking silently.
Use AI as the duck. Have the conversation. Let it sharpen what you already know and help you put it in a form other people can follow. The people doing that are doing it right. The people handing over the job are handing over the job.
One aside, because it delighted us both: as a dissertation chair she can spot machine-written text at a glance, and the tell is the em dash. She and Sondra spent a moment mourning it together. A perfectly good punctuation mark, ruined by association.
What does she push doctoral students hardest on?
Originality, and she tells her students plainly that she is tough but fair.
Her argument about AI and dissertations follows from what a dissertation is. It is research nobody has done before, so the tool has limited purchase. At best, she says, it is a search engine on steroids, useful for finding literature and for spotting where the research has not been done yet. Everything after that has to be yours.
She is also allergic to lazy language, and the example is wonderfully specific: a proposal she was reading had used the word “rapid” five times in one sentence. Finding a word that works and then wearing it out is not writing.
Has being a woman changed what was available to her?
She describes the familiar version first. She would say something in a meeting and watch it get glazed over. Someone of another gender would say the same thing and it would land as a great idea. Nobody used the words, but the effect was isn't that cute. It happened more when she was younger, and she credits it with making her more resilient.
She is also matter of fact about her own presence in a room.
“I am a very strong and driven and assertive woman. And I do know that that intimidates a lot of men, because that's not necessarily normal in our society.”
Dr. Connie Clary, Women IN episode 2
She treats being described as atypical as a compliment. And she notes the other side too: being a woman-owned business has occasionally helped when working with government entities.
Her advice, which is shorter than most
Be yourself. If you are a strong, assertive, intelligent woman, be that. If that is not who you are comfortable being, do not perform it.
Her reasoning is the part worth keeping. People detect inauthenticity, and when they do, the dynamic changes from being intimidated by you to having something they can use against you. Trying to be someone else is not a neutral strategy. It is a worse position than either honest option.
Why is every chapter the foundation for the next?
Because she has the receipts. The failed marketing firm and the bankruptcy taught her what she now teaches. The eliminated position produced the consulting practice. The consulting produced the research, which produced the doctorate, which produced the classroom, which she believes is where she was supposed to end up.
And crucially, she can teach it because she can talk about it. She thought, after the bankruptcy, that she would never work anywhere again, because surely someone would ask whether she had ever failed in business. Instead the failure became the credential.
“This journey of life is not what I anticipated it would be, but it's ended up being a whole lot better than what I anticipated.”
Dr. Connie Clary, Women IN episode 2
She is honest that this took a long time to see, and that she is not a patient person. Her image for it is the door she kept shoving at, that turned out to be glued and nailed and boarded shut for a reason she could only understand later.
What would she ask her 25-year-old self?
Two things, and the first is a question rather than a lesson.
Why were you not more afraid of taking risks? She genuinely wants to know. Somebody told her she would be good at consulting and she did not think twice. She has always wondered what in her childhood produced that, while being glad it did.
Don't be so hard on yourself. She still fights this one. Wanting to be the best you can be slides into believing that means perfection, and there is no such thing.
Her closing note is characteristically balanced. Being a woman is not a negative and should never be treated as one, and it should not be an advantage over anybody else either. Do the best work you can. Though she does concede that women are as good as men at most things, with the possible exception of football.
Where to find Dr. Connie Clary
She consults with marketing and graphic design firms, speaks, teaches marketing, management, leadership and entrepreneurship from undergraduate to doctoral level, and is currently rebuilding a PhD program from the ground up.
Where to listen
Listen to Women IN episode 2 with Dr. Connie Clary wherever you get your podcasts.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Dr. Connie Clary?
Dr. Connie Clary is a marketing and management professor, consultant and speaker with more than 20 years advising leaders and organizations on strategy, growth and how to actually run a business. She specializes in marketing and graphic design firms, teaches undergraduate through doctoral students, chairs dissertations, and is currently rebuilding a PhD program.
How should you use AI at work without it replacing you?
Her framing is the rubber duck: if you talk a problem through out loud, your brain surfaces things it would not have surfaced silently, so use AI as the thing you talk to. What she warns against is pasting the task in and pasting the answer out, because at that point the tool is doing the job rather than helping you do it.
What does she look for in doctoral students?
Originality, and she is blunt that she is tough but fair. Her point is that a dissertation is research nobody has done before, so AI has limited use beyond acting as a search engine on steroids. She also marks down lazy repetition, and cites a proposal that used the same word five times in a single sentence.
What is her advice to women in rooms where they are talked over?
Be yourself, and do not perform a version of yourself you are not comfortable with. If you are a strong, assertive, intelligent woman, be that. If you are not, do not fake it, because people detect inauthenticity and it becomes something they can use against you.
What would she tell her 25-year-old self?
Two things. First, a question rather than advice: why were you not more afraid of taking risks? She is genuinely curious about where that came from. Second, stop being so hard on yourself, because there is no such thing as perfection.