A Day in the Life in the C-Suite

Life in the C-suite is anything but predictable—just ask Whitney and Ashlie.

Whitney and Ashlie reveal the unpredictable and demanding nature of their executive roles. Sharing insights on how their days are filled with a mix of high-stakes decision-making, mundane tasks, and the constant balancing act between work and personal life.

Despite meticulous planning, their schedules often get derailed by unforeseen events. They highlight the necessity of prioritization, delegation, and mutual support within their team to maintain efficiency and sanity.

Their candid discussion highlights that leadership in any size company comes with its unique challenges and rewards.

Listen For:
03:06 – The Range and Reality of Executive Decisions
07:20 - It Takes a Village
11:05 - Learning from Overpacked Schedules
16:49 - Embracing Work-Life Balance

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Transcript

Whitney Ramirez (00:00):

They say more money, more problems, and you realize that and it's sometimes you're like, oh, this shouldn't be stressful. It's just digital marketing or this shouldn't be stressful. It's just advertising. But the stress can be real. No matter what industry you're in or what role you're in, it's there.

Ashlie Marshall (00:40):

Hey y'all. The C-suite chicks.

Whitney Ramirez (00:44):

Hello.

Ashlie Marshall (00:45):

Welcome, welcome. So we had a great plan today to record. In fact, we're a day late on our recording, but that's okay. We're here, we're making it work, we're making it happen. We wanted to talk to you guys about what a day in the life for us looks like. And of course we had some notes taken and things we wanted to make sure we talk about, but given recent events this week, we feel like it's great opportunity to talk to you about what our day looks like.

Whitney Ramirez (01:16):

Yeah, and I remember whenever, when I was first COO, I would look up on YouTube day in the life of a COO, what does COO do? And I just was really curious, what does some of the actual day look like? I never really knew, and it's so different. No one has the same day in a C-level role, but I was just always so curious,

Ashlie Marshall (01:42):

What should I be doing? What should I be focused? That was what my thing was when I went into a strategy role strategy manager, while you were COO, I would look up job descriptions.

Whitney Ramirez (01:56):

What

Ashlie Marshall (01:57):

Should someone like me in this role be focusing on? Even when I did that, and even when I saw videos on YouTube, what people focus on, it didn't help me because I couldn't turn around and apply it to what I was looking at on my computer screen every day. It was almost like I had to figure out what that role meant for our company and for me working for our company with our team. And it was very interesting time of learning.

Whitney Ramirez (02:31):

It was also like, okay, this is just not enough detail for me. It's so vague in a way how it lists out roles and responsibilities for A CEO and it's like make executive decisions for the benefit of the company. It's like, okay,

Ashlie Marshall (02:52):

Am I doing that today? And as you can hear, my current day in the life I have children present and they're going to be in my background today and it just is going to be what it will be today.

Whitney Ramirez (03:06):

Yeah. And sometimes it's like the executive decision is cleaning a toilet and sometimes the executive decision is hosting a sales meeting that could generate thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's so insane that the range for decision making can go from such little impact to such high impact, but they both affect the benefit of the company.

Ashlie Marshall (03:38):

Yeah, it's a huge decision. No matter if it's a big financial gain or loss or not. It's still, first of all, Whitney and I are very avid planners. We both have a planner. We set our weeks up based on what we know we have to accomplish that week and what we want to accomplish that week. We write those things down. I think we do it differently than each other, but we still both do it. And I think it's important for us to look at what our to-do list look like. What does that look like? So without showing us, she just shows it.

Whitney Ramirez (04:22):

I got, I mean this is mild.

Ashlie Marshall (04:27):

Yeah, yeah. It's a low key week. I definitely color coat things, so certain interactions or certain to-dos are a certain color for me. And then each day is on one day, but each day has a different color so that I can specify, oh, that was Monday. Oh, that was Tuesday, that was Wednesday. And then my other page that has different boxes of to-dos, they're color coded. So all of my financial to-dos are in green pen. All of my client to-dos are in blue pen and so on and so forth. So I also have a personal to-do list, what do I need to get accomplished for my family this week? What bills need to get paid, what kids have doctor's appointments? And by the way, doctors who have put in the automatic text message situation, thank you. I thank you greatly because my kids would miss every doctor's appointment if I didn't get a text message saying, oh, so-and-so has an appointment tomorrow. No,

Whitney Ramirez (05:26):

It's so true.

Ashlie Marshall (05:28):

So thank you for that. So while we are avid handwritten to-dos and a planner, I think Whitney does this too. She has, her calendar is on her phone and her meeting schedule's on her phone and it's constantly giving her updates. Would I be wrong about that? But I'm pretty sure you do that.

Whitney Ramirez (05:46):

I mean, my Google calendar saves me every day.

Ashlie Marshall (05:50):

Yes.

Whitney Ramirez (05:52):

Or else I just wouldn't make it. You get time blindness, I think because one second, it's nine 15 in the morning. You're a strong start to your day, and then it's like you blink and it's 4:59 PM

Ashlie Marshall (06:08):

Bam.

Whitney Ramirez (06:09):

And so it's really hard sometimes to not lose track of time, especially on a day where you're back to back client meetings or you just have a really heavy project list and it's at the same time, these are kind of the days that we dreamed of because you never realize how much of a blessing it is to be this busy until you have clients that are suffering because they're slow and you're kind of hearing what that's like because it really does take everything working to be successful, you have to have a good sales team and you have to have a good marketing team, and you have to be doing good work, and you have to have good people who are willing to do that work and stick with your company. It takes all of that working in conjunction to have an efficient growing business. It's true, not a lot of people are blessed with that, but also it takes a hell of a lot of hard work to have all of that working in conjunction.

Ashlie Marshall (07:20):

I was just making that point to somebody on a personal level in reference to it takes a village, that comment, you can apply that in your personal life with your children and your family. You can also apply that in business. It takes the entire village to keep the ship or whatever you want to refer to it as moving forward in the right direction. We are very blessed where we do have a team of people who are very willing to do the hard work, and that is a blessing. However, we have also done the hard work as an example. We've set the example, the standard of work, the quality of work through our own actions, and we've also been very specific with the type of people that we have brought onto our team.

Whitney Ramirez (08:14):

Yeah, totally.

Ashlie Marshall (08:15):

So I think that's a big, big factor of how our c-suite operates because we're able to operate, like Whitney said, because our team is so willing to do the hard work and they're so willing to do their part to keep everything working in conjunction with each other. The minute one cog stops working, everything's halted. So as long as everything keeps working, even when they hit a snag, even when they struggle to know how to do something, they know that we're here to talk through it with them. We always encourage 'em to find the solution on their own, but we're always here as a resource. So

Whitney Ramirez (08:49):

That's true.

(08:50):

And they also have the respect that we've done what they do currently. I think a good example of this is Madison on our team, she's our social media director, and I was our social media director at one point, and so she's fully aware that I've dealt with every obstacle that she deals with currently. And so when I say I know how frustrating this is, I truly mean it and it's not me just like Willy-nilly saying, oh yeah, I'm sorry. I know that sucks. It's like, man, I know. I remember those days. I was in the thick of it at once too.

Ashlie Marshall (09:35):

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I feel that way. When we talk to the advisors too, we've spoken to clients who are no longer clients who have been quite challenging to talk to. We've been mistreated by people and we've been talked down to by people, and I think we've worked really hard to create a better environment for our advisors. And so that's key. But why is any of this important, all of these pieces, why does that matter and how does that come into a day in the life for us is we can plan all we want. We can set our week up on Sunday night, Monday morning, and it doesn't matter because the C-suite is a what we make it B, what happens and what we have to respond to and see how we work to try and be proactive to continue to create a good environment for our team and ourselves. I mean, this week has been a true example of I had a great plan for what this week was going to look like and inclement weather in my area mixed with schools getting canceled and having to pick up children early, completely derailed my week. And Whitney had her own set of challenges, and I mean it can be so stressful.

Whitney Ramirez (11:05):

I think I learned this week that there's only so much time in a day, and I've also learned that current me is in charge of what Future me does and past me decided to set up back-to-back meetings from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM on my Tuesday. And then this week I'm like, wait, I don't even have one minute between meetings to send an email and I don't have one or to eat

Ashlie Marshall (11:42):

Lunch or have a coffee.

Whitney Ramirez (11:44):

No, I didn't eat all day on Tuesday and I ended the day just exhausted.

Ashlie Marshall (11:54):

So yeah, Whitney and I had a chit chat in regards to on Wednesday because her Tuesday completely beat her up and Wednesday I picked up on her energy and I could tell something was wrong and we had an offline chat and I feel like allowing you to vent, it started you to be like, okay, yeah, I can't do that again.

Whitney Ramirez (12:26):

Yeah, I physically can, but well, actually, I physically can't because it's not fair to anyone. It's not fair to the client that I have to meet with at 3:00 PM after being on seven hours of meetings. And it's also not fair to myself or my animals who I have to get. I didn't even have a chance to let them outside. It's not really fair to anyone and it's, I'm not my best self if I'm stacking my day up like that. And then I'm like, well, if I don't, I'm playing devil's advocate in my head. I'm like, well, if I didn't schedule those meetings, I'd have meetings for next week. And it's like, okay, well am I upset when someone schedules a meeting with me two weeks out? No. Why should I feel bad scheduling meetings to where I am my best self? I shouldn't feel bad about that. And I think that's something really important that I learned this week.

Ashlie Marshall (13:31):

Let's unpack that for just a second because I think in fact, I know you and I are similar in this aspect and in my opinion you can tell me what you think, but in my opinion, it stems from when the company was new and it was first started and there was a little bit of toxicity in terms of the pressures put on the people talking to clients and that we needed to be available 24 7 because our clients have businesses that operate 24 7, which is on point, not wrong. But I think that for me, I know that that created a very unhealthy concept of catering to everybody else's schedule and not allowing me space for my schedule. My whole life operated and functioned around phone calls and meetings, and that's not healthy. But because I was working from home with small children, I was capable to achieve that, but it didn't necessarily mean that that was a healthy way to go about it. And so when I create my schedule now, it's hard not to immediately respond to a client's text message that doesn't require an immediate response, and it's hard not to immediately respond to the email and immediately set the meeting because it needs to be nipped in the bud giving myself the space to say, I'm going to put it in my calendar when I can fit it in. And not that immediate hamster wheel reaction.

Whitney Ramirez (15:19):

Yeah, no, it's like you have to unlearn some old ways innocence.

Ashlie Marshall (15:26):

So that's a part of our day in the life though, learning these things as we go. I'm sure there's a lot of people in the c-suite now at large companies, small companies, their own companies that feel these same things. And you have to know that it's okay to set your schedule to a reasonable degree and you don't have to respond immediately. You don't have to be on the ready to have a reaction to every single text message and every single phone call. It's okay for people to leave you a voicemail and for you to call them back if you are sitting in the doctor's office with your kid and you do not need to answer the phone.

Whitney Ramirez (16:08):

Yep. Yeah, it's so true.

Ashlie Marshall (16:12):

So that's a part of our C-suite, and I definitely think it's great that we had these experiences this week just like today with my kids being home and being in every single meeting that we had today, Whitney, you and I were on what, two different meetings together and they all were in both of them, my son and my daughter saying hi and talking with our team and just being a part of the meeting and that used to be a big don't talk, shh, mom's in a meeting. But we have created a completely different culture now and I like it.

Whitney Ramirez (16:49):

I think so too. It's just more human and it's working around life instead of life revolving around work, but you just have to think sometimes, am I upset when someone texts me back two weeks later? No, I wouldn't do that. No. I'm too anxious of a person to not respond for two weeks, but I'm never upset with anyone if they're, well, especially getting back to me, but it's just sometimes I just have to think of it from different

Ashlie Marshall (17:27):

Perspectives. All going to say our C-suite doesn't really define us or how we work. It truly is what is the focus, what should our focus be and how Whitney and I work together to define that and how we work together in, I feel like that's really important. Everybody talks about the C-suite. Oh, you've got the CEO and the CO and the CFO and all these C-suite individuals when really they're all working just the rest of the team together and it's so crucial that you have those defined spaces that you're focused in

Whitney Ramirez (18:09):

Fully, and it's also, I think whenever you're working for a smaller company under 50 employees, I think you do kind of get in your head a bit about you have the title, but you don't always feel like you're doing the exact same thing as someone in a company that has 5,000 employees and has a title. It just looks different, but it does. It doesn't mean that you're unimportant in your role or you're doing a bad job and it doesn't mean you couldn't be in that role at a larger company. It's just always going to be different everywhere, and it's okay if you're not doing the exact same things as a CFO in a Fortune 5,000 company that you would at a company with under 50 employees. It's something that I learned that was something I was genuinely stressed about. I was like, I need to make sure I know what to do in this role. But you learn it's different for everyone you're doing. You do the responsibilities for the company that you're at and you meet the company where its needs

Ashlie Marshall (19:23):

Are. I think the important part of that is no matter if you're doing it for a company of 50 or a company of 5,000, your decisions carry weight and every decision that you make when you're in a leadership role, it does not just affect the bottom line. It affects the people that are in the mud with you. It affects every single one at the company, and no matter if it's 5,000 people or 50 people, it does not make the decision any easier or any less important. It's literally the same weight if it's for 50 people or 5,000 people, it's still affecting people. So I feel like just exactly what you said, it doesn't make you less important and it doesn't make the weight of the decision any different. It's still heavy.

Whitney Ramirez (20:21):

No, it is, and it's stressful too, and the stress is something that they say more money, more problems, and you realize that and it's sometimes you're like, oh, this shouldn't be stressful. It's just digital marketing or this shouldn't be stressful. It's just advertising, but the stress can be real no matter what industry you're in or what role you're in. It is there.

Ashlie Marshall (20:56):

It is. It really, really is. So how do we spin that? How do Whitney and I, how do we work together? I feel like there's this fine line that Whitney and I dance, we dance like this. We talk about our personal lives and we're friends because it helps us to perform our roles efficiently. When I know what Headspace Whitney's in and what she's dealing with outside of work, I'm better equipped and better able to fill in where it's needed without her even asking me and vice versa. For example, I have some thyroid issues and it causes me to have periods of time of lethargy and major foggy brain and I will be upfront and be like, I am barely able to be awake right now. I'm here, I'm tired, but I can't be trusted to remember things, so please remind me and don't feel hurt when I forgot what we talked about because my brain will just completely omit sections of conversations, especially if I'm multitasking unintentionally.

(22:09):

If my children are in the room playing a game and trying to talk to me while I'm in a meeting, I will unintentionally be multitasking and my brain and when I am in those periods of time where my medication may not be being effective at that moment, then I'm going to forget everything we talked about in the meeting and Whitney knows that and she knows that because we have these personal conversations and she's able to be like, Hey, this is what we did. Or we'll be texting in a client call where I am not remembering and she is texting it to me instantaneously and we're able to functionally get through that meeting because we can support each other that way.

Whitney Ramirez (22:48):

Yeah, no, definitely. I think support in general is just so important because you just have to know that you're not alone whenever you're in the thick of it. It can feel lonely sometimes, especially when it's like I'm so deep in stress that I can't even think of a way out of this at this moment in time, but just getting it all out there, it just helps more than you can ever really imagine, especially for someone that's also in the same position that understands it and has just exact days that gets piled up sometimes.

Ashlie Marshall (23:30):

I feel like that's what Wednesday was for us this week,

Whitney Ramirez (23:34):

But

Ashlie Marshall (23:35):

While you were feeling it more than I was, our conversation was still completely, we were both venting in that moment and I feel like I was in your spot that you were in on Wednesday. I was in it last week and I was losing it. Totally. And that's the good thing too. We go through that at different moments.

Whitney Ramirez (23:58):

Yeah, that's helpful for sure it is. Now, Mikey said something,

Ashlie Marshall (24:05):

Go ahead. Part of this conversation is to kind give you an idea that the c-suite is what you make it and no matter what size of company you're working for or you're in the C-suite for, or you're aiming to be in the C-suite for the decisions are heavy and the work doesn't change, there's just more of it and you start learning how to juggle and I think the biggest factor that I didn't learn until maybe six months into being in the C-suite was prioritization. You can't get to everything. You can't. It's impossible. You can't speak to everyone, you can't be there for everyone, but you can write it all down and then prioritize the top 20%. The 80 20 rule is huge. The top 20% of things that are top priorities, those are the things you've got to focus your energy on and everything else will come naturally if you can get those key things prioritized and functioning. The more you delegate, the more you lean on your people that you've trained and you trust them and actually do trust them and delegate to them, prioritization gets better and your to-do list, it doesn't get short, but it does get shorter

Whitney Ramirez (25:29):

And you learn to prioritize things that only you should be doing because I could just really hammer myself through my to-do list, but if I do that, then I'm going to spend some time doing things that I could have given to someone else who either more qualified or more efficient than me because that's their realm versus I should have just made the decision to give that to them because I know that it would be a more efficient way to go about things.

Ashlie Marshall (26:03):

A hundred percent. I think what you said about somebody else who is more qualified, I think there's a lot of people on our team that are much more qualified than me to have certain conversations with clients and their knowledge is much higher in those areas, and they're so much smarter in certain factors that they know more, they're more qualified, they're just more timid to have conversations with clients. And I'm like, I believe in you. I believe in you. You're so much better person to communicate this than me. You can do it. And I think that's one thing that we've definitely pushed our team to do in all of our departments. You are the subject matter expert here. I want you to communicate that with such and such client and discuss this topic with them because I feel like it's better coming from you because you know what you're talking about. You're much more equipped to handle those questions and putting that trust in them, but that falls into that prioritization and delegation. If you can do that and you can encourage your team to take those things on and then trust them to do it, your C-suite will start to change.

Whitney Ramirez (27:23):

You can focus on what is more in alignment with your role and responsibilities compared to wasting your time on something that you shouldn't waste your time on.

Ashlie Marshall (27:32):

That's right. That's right. A hundred percent. Well, that's our rundown of what a day in the life for us looks like and what our C-suite looks like with these two chicks here. But we want your input. Tell us what your day in the life looks like. Give us some feedback on what you go through every day. We love to hear from you guys, and thank you for listening. And as always, we'll see you next time.

Whitney Ramirez (28:01):

We'll catch you next time. Bye.