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interesting to hear that used to be a real factor when you walked into a room. I’ve never had to think about it. CJ: To your point, you don’t see it as a problem right now. You see that men and women get treated equally, listened to, respected … SS: For the most part. I’m the only female on our team outside of our expanded family of contract lobbyists, which has amazing badass women. You walk into a committee … they’re calling you because you’re honest, straightforward, you’re not wasting their time, you’re bringing the issue to them. And that’s why they respect you, it’s not because you’re in a cute pink dress, it’s because you know your stuff. AR: I can’t recall any problems that I’ve had, feeling discriminated against by men. I had an issue with a woman once who was older than me. A client gave me a whole lowdown about how I need to cut my hair really short and wear muted makeup and dress in conservative suits all the time. I don’t need to act and dress like a man in order to be successful. I’m going to be myself. I sometimes feel like women can be our worst enemies. KC: In my era, a lot of women never wanted to help another woman because, after all, “I made it to the top. My elbows are out and get out of my way.” I’m so happy to see that we try to help each other now. MR: You can have kids and you can work and you can balance everything. You can have it all and it’s OK. And it’s OK not to go to an event because your kid has something else. It’s going to be fine as long as you know your subject matter, you study it, and take care of your clients. AR: I think a lot of people think what we do is all relationships; all you have to do is schmooze people. It’s going to be rare that somebody’s going to vote with you based on a relationship. You have to convince them 120 | INFLUENCE FALL 2017
on the issue, so you have to know your stuff. Being a subject matter expert is much more important than the relationship. SS: Another really important lesson I’ve learned in this process: You can’t hold a grudge. There are going to be times where you’re going to go head-to-head with somebody. If you hold a grudge or get too personally tied up in things that happen, that can be a major liability. Because you’re going to have to work with the person that’s on the opposite side again. Maybe sooner than you’d hoped. JG: People’s positions in the process might change too. Someone on the outside might go inside, might come back outside, or staff changes. Someone that you may be rude to one day is going to turn out to be staff director in two years or they pop up in an agency as a Secretary. AR: Most of the successful lobbyists I’ve seen have done a great job of helping people from an early point in their career. Because those people end up places and they remember who helped them. CJ: That also goes with committee staff. They don’t have term limits. Know your stuff for those members, but you also have to know your stuff for those committee staffers. AR: You’re making an impression on not just legislators, but your fellow lobbyists and committee staff. Everybody you interact with is going to take away some sort of impression of you and how knowledgeable you are — and that reputation has a way of spreading quickly. CJ: More than 11,000 lobbyists and principals are registered in Florida. There so many issues out there, so many other lobbyists out there. How do you navigate through all of it and who’s doing it right and maybe who’s doing it wrong? MR: Jan and I work together at Ballard
and we talked a little about this. It’s teamwork. Working together as a team, talking through things. AR: Strategy and all those things are things you work through together as you’re figuring out the right approach to get the attention. You can’t light your hair on fire about every single thing. You have to pick and choose your spots. It’s not always the wrong thing. But if you do it every time something comes up, it’s like the boy who cried wolf. It’s like “Oh, another emergency on this again?” KC: We do a lot of grassroots. We want that member to know what’s happening in their district and what their district is saying needs to be done. If they get enough groundswell from their district and their people then yes, things will happen. SS: Don’t just bring yourself and your team in there. Allow (clients) to have that voice because they’re going to be most knowledgeable and passionate. AR: It shows they care too, to the legislator. I try to schedule all my clients during session to come up at least once. Some of them come up every single week. CJ: Do you have any advice you would give for a woman getting into this field and then maybe would it be any different than any advice you would give anybody going into this field? JG: I think starting out doing campaign work is a really good way for people to see how the process really begins. It takes a lot of personal inner drive to put yourself out there to run for office … and if you don’t see that person in the trenches, I think you don’t get an appreciation for why they’re there. KC: My No. 1 thing is to try it out a little bit, be an intern and see if you really do like this. If you find that you’re passionate about it, then go for it.