B-Schooled Episode #300: A Kellogg Startup Reunion With Nicole Small and Erin Krawiec

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Timestamps refer to the audio.

 

Stacy: Welcome to B-Schooled, the podcast by Stacy Blackman Consulting. I’m Stacy Blackman, and for more than 20 years I’ve worked with ambitious, high-potential people navigating business school and everything that comes after. This series is called Paths Less Traveled. In it, I’m sitting down with MBA grads whose paths evolved over time in unexpected ways. These are conversations about optionality, reinvention, and what’s really possible when you stop thinking about the MBA as a first job and start thinking about it as a foundation. Let’s get into it.

Stacy: Today is a special and very personal episode. I’m sitting down with two of my closest friends from my MBA class at Kellogg. On top of being dear, dear friends, the three of us founded a dot-com startup together and sold it before we even got our diplomas. Welcome, my two dear friends, Nicole Small and Erin Krawiec.

Nicole: Hi!

Erin: Hello!

Stacy: So happy to be talking to both of you. This is fun for us, but we’re going to try to make it interesting to others too, and not just fun for us.

Nicole: We’ve come a long way from your apartment floor at Kellogg, huh?

Stacy: Yes, we have. I have a real couch now that I get to sit on.

Erin: Hopefully we won’t go off on too many tangents like we did when we were working on our business plan.

Stacy: Exactly. Okay, I’m going to start by briefly sharing both of your bios, and then we’ll chat.

Stacy: Nicole Small has served as CEO of LH Capital, Inc. and Lyda Hill Philanthropies since 2014 and is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of both entities. As part of her work at LHP, Nicole co-founded the IF/THEN Initiative, which was built to encourage and advance women and girls in STEM. She is also the co-founder and advisor of Pegasus Park, a life sciences innovation campus based in Dallas. From 2001 to 2013, Nicole was the Eugene McDermott Chief Executive Officer of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

Stacy: Erin Krawiec is the president and co-founder of Pitch Your Peers Seattle, a nonprofit that turns philanthropy into a collaborative, pitch-driven experience where women fund impactful local causes. Her career spans entrepreneurship, high-tech business roles, and serving as an expert witness in corporate litigation, an unconventional path shaped by curiosity and a drive to make an impact. Today she focuses on building community and creating opportunities for others to engage in meaningful philanthropy. Erin is a graduate of UCLA and Kellogg.

[03:25] Stacy: I want to start by rewinding to the pre-Kellogg days, and I’ll ask each of you one at a time. Nicole, what were you doing pre-business school, and what sparked your desire to get that graduate degree?

Nicole: Sure, and thanks again for having us. This is so fun. We’ll try to be serious. Before Kellogg, I spent two years as a business analyst at McKinsey and Company. When I graduated from college, I was pursuing a fairly traditional path. I did the job search, tried to decide whether I wanted to be a banker or a consultant, and went to work for McKinsey for two years. At the time it was very traditional, and I think it still is, to do a couple of years as an analyst, go back to business school, and then plan on returning to McKinsey. So that’s what I was doing. It was just part of the path you took at the time. I did my two years and headed off to business school, where I met you guys.

Stacy: Lucky us. And why did you choose Kellogg?

Nicole: At the time I looked at all the usual suspects. One of the things I did was look around at the managers I liked the most, the ones I felt most connected with, the ones who led in the ways I wanted to work. It turned out that several of them were Kellogg grads. There was something about their project management style, their leadership style, the way they approached the work and their teams and the culture, that was really attractive to me. That was a big reason I picked Kellogg. I was two years out of McKinsey and still really young. It’s a different time today. We didn’t have as much information. I was excited about the idea that if I could go somewhere with a lot of leaders like them, I might leave and lead the way they did, with both the business focus and the cultural focus. Organizational behavior is always the thing we wish we’d taken more of. They were really great people. So a lot of the reason I picked Kellogg was that the role models I had at the firm were Kellogg people.

Stacy: I think that still really stands. Okay, Erin, pre-Kellogg, what were you doing, and what sparked that desire to go back to school?

Erin: Similar. I was in a traditional consulting role, actually litigation consulting, doing damage analysis for corporate litigation. I got exposure to a ton of different industries, and I just felt like I didn’t want to be a consultant my whole life. I wanted to go into industry and get one of those jobs. I wanted to be the client instead of the consultant. I really liked the idea of marketing, so I chose Kellogg because it had that reputation. It was a bit of a pivot to go from traditional consulting into a company role.

[07:09] Stacy: So we all end up at Kellogg having tons of fun. First year, we had our summers. Second year, we come back. Do either of you remember the moment we birthed our big business idea? It was called WebWisher.com. I wish I could show the logos. I need to dig those up. Do you guys remember the story?

Erin: I remember there were fragments of ideas. My summer was brand marketing at General Motors. I went to Detroit and did the whole thing, and honestly, I came back having had one of the most interesting, challenging, and relevant marketing internships of anyone I knew. I got to do really cool projects, but I also felt like, that’s a big company, and I don’t know if I want that big-company feel. And I got this feeling like, this internet thing is taking off.

The year was 1999. It was the birth of consumer internet, and marketing suddenly felt like the wrong place to be. I don’t remember the birth of it all, but I do remember initiating a conversation. I remember thinking, if I were going to start a company and step into this technology frontier, who do I want to do it with? Who are the smart and awesome people to do it with? I thought of you two, and I said, do you want to start talking about businesses? And you were both immediately in. We took those fragments and worked through them. But I want to hear your versions.

Nicole: It’s so funny. I don’t remember exactly what started it, but I remember we all decided we wanted to do something. We’d all come out of traditional internships, and I’d always thought I’d go back to McKinsey. I did banking over the summer and had done the traditional thing. I remember us meeting every week.

Erin: More than once a week. It felt like multiple times a week. We were committed, and having fun, but committed.

Nicole: I remember literally lying on the floor of Stacy’s apartment, every week, throwing out ideas. We’d have an idea and try to run it down to see if there was anything there.

Erin: It was like a little incubator.

Nicole: Every single time, until we found an idea we thought was worth something. That’s what I remember. It was fun. And the lesson I try to tell people is that we didn’t get it on the first try. We probably had 30 ideas before we landed on one.

Stacy: We were going to write a book. We had all these business plans.

Nicole: Right. You don’t just wake up one day and have the idea. You have to work at it.

Erin: We developed this skill set of being able to not just have ideas, but figure out what’s a good idea and how to process through them. That was a super valuable skill set for all of us.

[10:41] Stacy: I think back to that time and it feels so ancient. It’s crazy how much things have changed. I barely had the internet to research on. Do you remember? So here’s my question: what were the things that were challenging for us then? I’ll give one example. We were quoted millions of dollars just to build a basic website, the kind of thing you could do yourself on Shopify now. Do either of you have memories of technology we have now that would have made it so much easier? Things were just hard.

Erin: Things were really hard. Even connecting to VCs would have been easier now. Networking, hiring, even logo creation. Hey, AI.

Stacy: Shout out to Suzanne Ginestro for creating our logo.

Erin: That’s right.

Nicole: Do you remember we were trying to integrate the back end with retailers? The idea was an online gift registry, so we were calling people up saying, we have this idea, would you ever consider it? Just trying to think through back-end integration with inventory.

Stacy: That was complex too. But it was a good idea. Spoiler: it sold, and it’s still out there.

Nicole: We entered the business plan competition, which was another turning point for us. Kellogg ran the Digital Frontier business plan competition, and the three of us entered. Guy Kawasaki was one of the judges. That was a turning point, because we thought, what the heck, let’s enter this thing. We probably won’t win.

Stacy: It forced us to formalize it and create it.

Erin: And second semester, didn’t we have an independent study that gave us more time to flesh out the idea and work on getting our funding?

Stacy: And the professors were so helpful. They connected us. More than the curriculum of how to be an entrepreneur, you’re getting a curriculum of business, which is what an entrepreneur needs. But it’s those conversations with the professors and classmates and alumni, the intros, the business plan competition, the conferences. We met a lot of people through that.

Erin: A lot of doors opened for us that never would have if we weren’t coming from Kellogg.

Nicole: You’re right. Being in the business school environment and winning that competition let us build those relationships with professors and all the people who rallied around us, helping us take an idea to a real company. We probably wouldn’t have been able to do that if we weren’t in the business school environment at the time. It was like our own form of a garage.

Erin: And it was really through Kellogg that we got introduced to Fortune, which ended up being fun PR.

[14:19] Stacy: I’m curious from both of you. When you went to business school, you had a vision of what you were going to get out of it, what you’d walk away with. Tools, network, whatever it was. What was that, and was it right, or did you have bigger or different takeaways? I’ll start with Nicole.

Nicole: I had a pretty traditional expectation, because I’d done the traditional path of consulting, business school, then back to consulting. I thought I’d go learn the business skills I maybe hadn’t learned, meet some people, and build a better network. I didn’t fully realize the much broader impact business school would have on my whole life. But I didn’t miss on the expectation in a bad way. I missed it in a great way.

What I got were incredible networks of people. I would never have personally pivoted and said, I’m going to start a company and be an entrepreneur, if I hadn’t met the two of you. I thought I was on this one path. Even today, I think of it as this gift of two years, or whatever your business school journey is, to stop for a minute and rethink: who am I, what do I want to do?

Had I not been there and met you all, I think I’d have had a completely different life trajectory. I got all the business skills, all those professors, the public speaking. Remember Marty Stoller’s class? Those are skills I still use every single day. So I didn’t have big enough expectations for business school. I had no idea how much my life would pivot, really because of all of you and because of being at that school. My expectations were much smaller, and they were far exceeded.

Stacy: How about you, Erin?

Erin: Like I said, I went for the marketing skills. But in the end, it’s the more esoteric things I got out of it. It taught me how to operate without a clear answer, to go out into ambiguity and take risks. It gave me a framework for evaluating ideas, not just having them. It sharpened my ability to speak in public and speak with confidence. And it exposed me to paths I didn’t know existed. Seeing people go into technology, seeing people do all these different things, it really expanded my sense of what’s possible. It normalized a non-linear career path. Even the people who came back to Kellogg, seeing how they got from there to where they were, it always felt non-linear, and that normalized it for me. You don’t have to sign on for one job and stay there your whole life. You can switch around. You can reinvent.

[18:06] Stacy: This conversation is about you guys, but ditto everything you said. Business school for me was a sliding-doors moment. Your life is going along and you think, I’ll take two years and then maybe get a different job. But it blows it all apart, and everything was different in a much better, bigger way.

Nicole: What did you think you were going to do after business school?

Stacy: I was in private equity, sitting behind spreadsheets. I wanted to move into marketing and work in brand management. I’m still a brand person. I love marketing, and I wanted a traditional CPG job, and I got it. And I hated it. I was at Pillsbury, working on the Häagen-Dazs brand, which they owned at the time. That’s maybe another conversation, but it was not what I wanted it to be. I remember us coming back and me saying, that experience was a no-go.

Nicole was like, I spent my summer falling asleep in a bathroom stall at Goldman Sachs because I hadn’t slept the night before. We were both like, oh my God, we need a new path, and we’re already in our second year of business school. What do we do? Okay, we’re going to start our own thing. So, total pivot. I didn’t do at all what I thought I’d do, except I do still love marketing. I just do it in a different way.

Stacy: So, brief summary: we graduated, we appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine, we sold our company, and we worked for the acquiring company, a super hot company in San Francisco. It was the time. It was exciting. We all left to become entrepreneurs in residence briefly, and then we scattered. Nicole in Dallas, Erin in Seattle, me in LA, doing different things.

Nicole: But still, thankfully, however many decades later, talking every week, which is the best part.

Stacy: A hundred percent.

[20:42] Stacy: Nicole, your first stop after that experience was the museum. Can you talk about the origin story and what happened there?

Nicole: The quick story is that I’d gotten a dose of what it was like to be an entrepreneur by working with you guys, and I’d gotten really passionate about startup life and about finding a business you could get excited about. We’d been entrepreneurs in residence for a short period, and in that time, like Erin said, we learned to review business plans, write them, think about what made a business successful, how you scale an idea.

I moved back to Dallas, did some work for a local venture fund for a while, and then ran into somebody who was chairman of the board of what was then the Museum of Natural History in Dallas. I’d worked for him when I was at McKinsey, because they’d been a client of mine. I was the youngest, cheapest employee at the firm, and they needed a pro bono project, so they said, go think about how you’d start a new science museum. I got to travel the world looking at science museums, and that was a job. I gave them a book and went away, thinking I’d never have that conversation again.

Nicole: Then I had the chance to reconnect. It was a nonprofit, but they wanted to think in a much more business-savvy way. The question was, can you build a new science museum from scratch? Can you think about it like a business, like a startup? What would that look like? I said, I just came out of the startup world and I don’t know anything about nonprofits, but I love writing business plans and scaling businesses, so I’d love to do that.

I took on a consulting job for about a year, helping them write a business plan for what it would look like to start a museum from scratch. And I ended up staying 12 years and becoming CEO. We built a new museum from scratch and raised a couple hundred million dollars. It’s the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. It’s been open over a decade and has seen over 10 million people, and we’re about to do a second edition, which is exciting.

Nicole: So, a little non-traditional. I never thought at Kellogg that I’d be running a museum. But all the skills I learned at Kellogg, and all the skills we gained building our startup, were almost the same set of skills. When I started, I said, I don’t know how to raise money for a nonprofit, I don’t know how to ask people to give money away. But we’d been up and down Sand Hill Road pitching our business, and it turned out to be the same skill set. The only difference was that these people didn’t get their money back.

We always said that nonprofit is a tax status, not a business plan. We didn’t aspire to lose money every day. If you make money, you can do more. No margin, no mission. You are running a business, and Erin does this work every day in the nonprofit space too. There’s a bit of a misconception. Someone actually told me at the beginning, if you put nonprofit on your resume, you’ll never get a real job again. Erin and I are both proving that wrong. But that’s how I ended up at the museum, and it was great.

[24:27] Stacy: I always say you’re one of the most humble people I know, Erin, you too. So then you were poached from the museum. Talk about where you landed and what you’re doing now.

Nicole: About 10 or 12 years ago, I left the museum and joined one of our biggest donors, a woman named Lyda Hill, who’s an incredible entrepreneur and philanthropist, and one of the most creative, interesting women I’ve ever met. She had just become a member of the Giving Pledge and had committed to giving all of her wealth away while she was alive. It’s an incredible story you can read about. I was given the opportunity to join and help her build her team and think about how she invested her capital.

Nicole: We do a couple of different things. Half my job is on the investment side, running the family office, a very traditional investment family office role. The other half is philanthropy. So half of my life we try to make money, and half of my life we try to give her money away. If we can make more, then we have more to put into the communities and causes she cares about.

On the investment side, we’re hugely focused on all things life sciences. We have a large life sciences portfolio, do a ton of venture work, and do some direct investing into life sciences companies here in Texas. We’re partners and founders in something called Pegasus Park in Dallas, a 26-acre life sciences real estate project, a million square feet, focused on social innovation and life sciences innovation.

We have over 30 startup life sciences companies on campus. Back to business school and our startup experience, it’s really applicable to my daily life, because I’m underwriting and evaluating venture deals, we’re helping launch these companies, and we’re trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem here.

Nicole: On the philanthropic side, we do a lot of community investing, but we’re primarily focused on nature and science. We have a huge initiative called the IF/THEN Initiative, about a $75 million investment to date, focused on getting girls, and really now all kids, inspired to pursue careers in science. We do that through a lot of media. We have TV shows. We’re launching a movie later this year. We do statue exhibits.

Stacy: Yes, I saw that. And it wasn’t just a statue exhibit, it was a Smithsonian exhibit.

Nicole: One of the things we found is that girls don’t see pictures of themselves on the walls of museums or in textbooks, and we wanted to change that. The IF/THEN Collection is the largest digital collection of photographs and videos of women in STEM anywhere in the world, and it’s free to any nonprofit anywhere.

Hundreds of millions of people see those photographs in museums across the country, and your kids’ textbooks might have one of our IF/THEN Ambassadors in them. We were also frustrated by what we saw on TV and in movies, so we launched a show called Mission Unstoppable that airs Saturday mornings and sees over a million viewers, along with TikTok channels and other fun things, with Miranda Cosgrove.

And we did the statue exhibit because there were fewer than half a dozen statues of real women anywhere in the major US cities. Rather than doing one bronze statue, we took our 120 women ambassadors and said, let’s do the largest collection of statues of women ever done in history. We 3D-scanned them, which had never been done before, 3D-printed them, and showed them at the Smithsonian.

Nicole: We just announced IF/THEN Statues 2.0, called Game Changers, launching this summer with the World Cup and FIFA. We have 26 amazing women in STEM, from Nike designers to orthopedic surgeons. The World Cup is coming up. We have nine games in Dallas, so we’ll probably sit and watch our own games, but I might have to come to Seattle too. We might bring some statues to you. So that’s a little bit of the work we do at Lyda Hill Philanthropies. It’s been really fun.

Stacy: Amazing. I love hearing about it. And there’s so much more.

Erin: It’s amazing. I always brag about it among my many friends.

Nicole: We get to do fun work. We have a great team.

[29:18] Stacy: Okay, so Erin, as we discussed a little, you’re also focused on philanthropy. You created this organization from the ground up, Pitch Your Peers Seattle. Tell us what you’re up to. How do you attract members? What are some of the organizations you’ve given to? It’s such a cool community you’ve built.

Erin: Thanks. It’s super grassroots. It’s a women-led collective giving organization. Our members pool our money, and we pitch nonprofits to each other, Shark Tank style. We have a pitch night with real 15-minute presentations and Q&As. Then we set up opportunities for members to dig in, not quite to the level Nicole is digging in with her philanthropy, but really getting in there, looking at the financials, meeting the leaders, understanding their challenges, and trying to help solve them. We really get to know three nonprofits every year.

Then we vote and split up the pool of funds, giving each a large grant. We split it 60%, 30%, and 10% for first, second, and third place. There’s a little competition in there, but it’s really more about community, education, and hands-on philanthropy, not just writing checks. We’re engaging the women in our community, networking with each other, and joining the boards of these organizations.

Erin: We’ve been around 10 years now, so we’re celebrating our 10th year. By the end of this year, we’ll have funded 30 nonprofits. We’re doing reunion events, helping the nonprofits network with each other, and building this community of philanthropy in Seattle that’s supported by our 69 members, professional women who are looking for more meaningful ways to give. It’s been a really fun adventure.

Stacy: So cool. What was the number one organization last year that got funded?

Erin: An organization called the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. They have volunteer attorneys who take cases for people in ICE detention centers, and they also take on class action suits for larger groups of people. It’s interesting out here in Seattle. We’re pretty human-rights focused, so a lot of our grants are too, but we do a lot of education-related grants as well. We’ve had really great first-place recipients, including a youth homelessness organization. I’m trying to think of all the ones over the years.

Nicole: Erin, what you’ve built is remarkable. These agencies have to go person to person to raise money, and it’s hard to raise money in these communities. For you to have built a network where they can do this pitch, what you’ve all done over a decade is really remarkable.

Erin: We’ve got these smart women members who are looking for their next thing in life, something they can add value to. And here they are. They’re people like us: women with MBAs, women who are doctors and lawyers with different expertise, and they want to give back. A way for them to give back is to do a 15-minute pitch and bring an organization $80,000 or $150,000. And the organizations don’t have to do any of the work to put the pitch together.

Stacy: That’s amazing. So proud of both of you.

Nicole: Stacy, I know this is your podcast, but you’ve started like 15 things since business school. Hopefully everyone who listens knows all the amazing things you’ve done. Every week, Stacy’s got a new idea she’s growing and building.

Stacy: Years ago I wanted to do a podcast with you guys.

[34:38] Stacy: On this podcast, we talk a lot about how the MBA is just the foundation for you to go and do all these things. I’m curious from both of you: what’s been your biggest tool, the thing you’ve taken that you still use in your roles?

Nicole: We’ve touched on some of them. The basic business knowledge was super helpful, but I’d say learning to work with and talk to people has been huge. The networking piece, and those relationships we gained at school, have helped over and over, in learning experiences, business contacts, and personal contacts. We talked about the organizational behavior piece too. The accounting is one thing, but dealing with people is another.

AI can’t deal with people. It doesn’t matter how much AI you can do today. We can use AI to underwrite a deal or do a landscape analysis. But those leadership skills, public speaking skills, and organizational behavior skills are the things that have persisted for me, because those are the skills you need in any job. It doesn’t matter the sector, the industry, whether you’re nonprofit or for-profit, a startup or a big company. Those are the skills you really need.

Nicole: The last thing is this idea of taking risk. Our three lives were dramatically changed by going to business school, and probably none of us would have seen our lives going the way they did if we hadn’t intersected, that sliding-door moment. Having those two years to try things, offer your opinion, whether in a case or a project, that risk-taking is something you have to have a little of innately, but you also have to learn it. You have to be smart about risk. The willingness to take calculated risk is one of the things I learned in business school. So those are the things in my toolkit.

Stacy: How about you, Erin? Anything to add?

Erin: I’d say it helped me feel confident, like Nicole was saying, in taking risks, but also in being in those ambiguous moments and knowing, okay, I can work my way through this, I have a structure and a strategic way of thinking that will help me get to the other side. That’s allowed me to go into ambiguous or risky things I might not have done otherwise.

Stacy: Totally agree. Decision-making in the face of chaos.

Erin: Definitely. The advice I’d give is that I thought I had this perfectly mapped-out career, but you don’t really need that, and you probably won’t stay on it anyway. If you can focus on building your skills, following your curiosity, and saying yes to opportunities that stretch you, then over time all of those experiences connect in a way you didn’t plan or predict. It makes you happier, and you end up fulfilling something you didn’t even know you’d be fulfilling. So stay open and follow your curiosities and passions.

[39:01] Stacy: That brings me to the last big question. Thinking about those three young people, if you could tell them something, what would it be? Advice to your former self. Erin, maybe you already answered it, but you can add. Or we can move on to Nicole.

Erin: I can add, but go ahead and move to Nicole, and then I’ll add more.

Nicole: What Erin just said is great. You can make a plan, but the plan never goes as planned. You need to be thoughtful about the direction you want to go, because you need to acquire the skills. But if you’re not open to where the world’s going to take you… if we hadn’t been open, who knew the first internet wave was going to explode while we were in business school? None of us knew that going in. If we’d just said, that’s the thing over there and my plan is this, I don’t know where we’d all be. I’m sure we’d be fine, but you gave great advice.

Erin: Absolutely. And the decisions you make change over time. When you decide to get your MBA, a lot of times you’re just living your life for yourself, and you don’t yet know what living for a whole family means. Once you get to the point where you have a spouse and kids, you have to make a lot of different decisions. Maybe it’s location, where you’re going to live, or how many hours you’re able to work. That’s going to change, and it’s going to impact your career. So if you can be flexible and open, and realize that it’s not the end of the world if things don’t go according to plan, because the plan is going to change.

Stacy: Maybe it’s a better plan.

Erin: Right.

Stacy: Did we just say the same thing? It’s a better plan. I believe that. There’s something even better in store that we can’t imagine.

Nicole: And the last thing I’d add is a very soft thing. It’s not a business school skill, but I think this probably happens at all business schools. I’ve only ever been to Kellogg, so I can’t comment on the others, but investing in those relationships is really important.

Erin: That’s what I was going to add. Exactly.

Nicole: These friendships will far outlast any job. The three of us were business partners and best friends, and we’ve stayed lifelong friends. We’ve been through a lot together, business things, family things, all the things. You can spend a lot of time getting your resume ready, but the job stuff is going to figure itself out. Investing in these relationships is what really matters, because as you go through life and the plan doesn’t go the way you planned, these relationships are what keep you on track. It’s a very special Kellogg thing, the positive culture there.

We’ve still got a great big group chat of friends. Going back to Kellogg last year for our reunion and seeing how many people showed up, seeing the messages from people all over the world every single day, that’s my last piece of advice. These are the things that are lifelong. You might forget your debits and credits, but you’re not going to forget these friends, and you’re not going to forget the advice they give you along the way.

Erin: I couldn’t agree more. Just quality people you’re going to meet in business school. Appreciate them.

[42:54] Stacy: Exactly. Okay, now switching gears. Two quick things. One word to describe our time at Kellogg.

Erin: I would say exhilarating.

Stacy: What’s your word, Nicole?

Nicole: Fun.

Stacy: Fun is a good one. All of it was fun. Now, this is a little game. I’ll say a question, and we all say who we think it is. Who’s the most unfiltered and likely to say exactly what everyone’s thinking?

Nicole: Erin.

Erin: Yeah, that was an easy one.

Stacy: Who’s most likely to initiate the spontaneous, last-minute girls’ trip?

Nicole: Stacy.

Stacy: Maybe. Who’s the master of quiet leadership, and gets the most done behind the scenes?

Erin: Nicole.

Stacy: Who’s most likely to negotiate the better deal at a local market or vintage store?

Erin: Not Stacy. I’d say Erin.

Stacy: I think me.

Erin: I once got called out for negotiating over a mango in Thailand.

Stacy: Who has the most diverse array of non-MBA hobbies or secret talents? I’m going to say Nicole, on your ranch. Your husband helps with that, but still.

Nicole: That’s an interesting one.

Stacy: Who’s most likely to have a genuinely shocking what-happens-in-Vegas story?

Erin: Present day? I’m still voting for you.

Stacy: Me? Okay. Who would you want to get lost in the wilderness with?

Erin: Both of you. I’ll take either one of you for sure.

Stacy: Although I’d get you more lost. Who’s the best at making the other two laugh until they cry?

Erin: You’re both good at that. I think we know why we’re friends.

[45:39] Stacy: Seriously, thank you both so much. This is probably going to be my lifelong favorite podcast that I ever get to host. Listening to you today, I’m so proud of you and impressed by everything you do and juggle. Everything we talked about is in addition to having amazing families, raising incredible kids, and making time for friends. You’re both role models to me, and I’m grateful for you. Thank you for joining today.

Erin: Thank you for hosting us. We’re so proud of you and all you’ve done. It’s nice to be a part of it, even in this little way.

Nicole: Thank you. Same here.

Erin: This has been very exhilarating.

Nicole: It’s been fun.