Middle Management Chapter 3 – Clara Villarosa Just Got Fired!

Clara Villarosa Just Got Fired!

“And I’ll rise up. I’ll rise like the day. I’ll rise up. I’ll rise unafraid. I’ll rise up and I’ll do it a thousand times again.- Andra Day

Clara Villarosa got fired at fifty-two. Want to know why she got fired?

She had used a little too much of her grit. Her hard work, and her mid-life “I’ll figure it out” skills had propelled her up the corporate ladder. In just two years Ms. Villarosa had gone from HR to bank executive.

Her first problem was that she’d done this in the 80’s. Women weren’t supposed to do stuff like that back then. They were supposed to leave that corporate ladder climbing stuff to the dudes. Clara was like, “Nah… I’m good on that. I’m going to rise up” and rise up she did.

In the eyes of her male counterparts, Clara wasn’t playing by the rules. The rules back then went like this. Young lady, you work hard, tell us your ideas, we then do them and say that they’re ours. We get the promotion. You keep giving us your ideas and hard work and we throw you a good job or two when we feel like it. Clara didn’t agree to play that game. So, in the eyes of her 80’s counterparts, Clara was a problem.

In their minds, she didn’t belong where they were. She didn’t deserve to be in their boardrooms. She didn’t deserve to have a say in corporate bank decisions, and she DEFINITELY didn’t deserve to get paid as much as they did.

Clara the Icarus had soared too high. So, they brought her into their office, slipped a piece of paper across the boardroom table and said, “Here’s a list of the complaints that we have about your work. We’ll accept your resignation in the morning.”

Clara was caught off guard, but she wasn’t new to the game. She had stayed ready so she wouldn’t have to get ready. She knew not to show any emotion or surprise. The last thing that she needed was to be called emotional.

(Sidebar: Isn’t that one of the most controllingest things you’ve ever heard. People will do crappy things to you and then call you emotional when you get upset with them for doing the crappy thing that they did to you. Holla if ya hear me!)

Clara finished the meeting, thanked them for their time, then went home and “cried big tears,” as she says in her Dream, Girl podcast interview.

Oh, about that free bonus download I was talking about earlier. You can see all of the videos, links to documents, and interviews that I talk about in this book on the download. You can pick up your free copy over at middlemanagementbook.com (<<<Will Be Up By Tomorrow) Let’s get back to our shero.

Clara came back the next day dressed in one of her best power suits. She went back into the boardroom, slid the same piece of paper back across the table with some added requirements to their “you’re fired” request.

“You don’t want me here and therefore I don’t want to be here. So, I’m leaving. I will resign. But there’s a number on this piece of paper that I want you to look at,” she said.

That day Ms. Clara Villarosa negotiated her own buyout and left with the seed money for the second half of her life adventure.

“Without a test there can be no testimony.” – Every Baptist Preacher in America

Clara took some time, thought about what she wanted to do, probably went through the steps I’m going to share with you in the upcoming chapters, and decided that she wanted to run her own business.

The only problem was that Clara had never run her own business. Add to it that she wanted that business to be a bookstore, and you can imagine all of the pushback that she got from family and friends.

Oh, but wait till you hear what she did. A year later Clara opened Hue-Man, her very first independent bookstore.

So, to recap she was a fired 52-year-old former bank executive, and she’d never run a business before, so she didn’t know if this was going to work or not. She did it anyway and it became WORLD FAMOUS! DO IT ANYWAY!

Ms. Villarosa decided that this time, she was going to bet on herself. This time she was going to do it her way, and this time she was going to do something that she loved. She knew that it was now or never – – and never wasn’t an option.

“The know-how was strong with this one.” – Yoda-ish

Don’t let the naysayers (including yourself) keep you from your own world famous whatever-the-heck it is that you want to do.

That little independent bookstore, the one that Ms. Villarosa opened in her 50’s, led her to a life that would include friendships with Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Baldwin, Oprah Winfrey, and countless other famous icons.

Her second-half pivot was just the thing she needed to step into her greater yet-to-be.

I think it’s safe to say that Ms. Villarosa’s corporate bank bosses did not have “friends with presidents and Oprah” on their bingo card for Clara.

Man’s rejection is God’s protection – Lisa Nichols

Life is filled with things that look like rejection but end up being protection.

There I was selling out venues with my rock band in Los Angeles. I’m not talking about filled kinda. I’m talking about people, who were friends of ours, couldn’t get in kinda sold out.

In the crowd I saw record executives standing shoulder to shoulder sweating because people were so crammed into the space. Still after the shows when I took meetings with them they would say “I didn’t get it”. It being the music that filled venues with people there to see an independent artist. It messed with my self-confidence.

To top it off, later I would go to another musician’s show who couldn’t even sell out a space as big as my L.A. apartment’s living room and they would have a record deal or a publishing deal.

I am telling you all of this because in hindsight all of the rejection was God’s protection. If I would’ve signed a record deal back then, I wouldn’t have made half the money I ended up making with the smaller label that I signed with. I wouldn’t have been in Forbes magazine, and I wouldn’t have toured with Levis. A different course of events would’ve been at play in my life. That could’ve meant that many of the amazing things like starring on Broadway, meeting my wife, having our family, starting multiple successful business could’ve been off the table.

Man’s rejection truly is God’s protection. As you go on your second half journey, I want you to remember that. We don’t have time for begging people to accept or celebrate us. We don’t have time to convince people that we are worth it. We don’t have time to be unsure or lack self-confidence. We… Don’t…Have…Time!

We need to be about our business, and we need to be about it like we have a purpose to fulfill, because if you’re reading this book you do! Time for step 1.

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I hope that you enjoyed it. Funny thing about this story was that this exact thing happened to my mom. Wild times those 80’s. Anyways… if you’d like to keep going just click here and I’ll see you inside the group!

Here’s the full link if the one above doesn’t work. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FW6CDYXT