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Margot Machol Bisnow is a writer, wife, and mom from Washington, DC. She spent twenty years in government, including as an FTC Commissioner and Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and eight years writing a popular daily online social newsletter. Her son Austin has written successful pop songs and started the popular band Magic Giant. Her son Elliott founded Summit Series, a noted international conference series for millennial entrepreneurs, and led the purchase and development of Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah as a permanent home for their community. Her husband, Mark Bisnow, founded a national newsletter company, Bisnow Media, which was acquired in 2016. Their dog is the only one in the family who gets enough sleep.Her book, Raising an Entrepreneur: 10 Rules for Nurturing Risk Takers, Problem Solvers, and Change Makers, is based on interviews with 60 entrepreneurs and their moms, like the moms of Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Blackboard founder Michael Chasen, Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, Nantucket Nectars founder Tommy Scott; artists like film director Jon Chu and songwriter Benny Blanco: and entrepreneurs like TOMS shoes founder Blake Mycoskie and Method products founder Eric Ryan. Margot organized her findings into 10 rules, and, in an easy-to-read style, weaves in the colorful stories of the entrepreneurs to illustrate them.
Margot and I had a wonderful conversation about her book and of course, as a Mom, I was particularly interested in what I could learn from her. Most strikingly was the idea of encouraging our children to spend MORE time, not LESS, on what they love and what they are good at. We discussed the concept of encouraging passion in our children so that they will develop the “grit” they need to stick with any endeavor to become successful. Another common thread in the entrepreneurs featured in her book is that they were never judged for or afraid of failure.
Learning to lose is an invaluable lesson when it comes to picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and pushing on. As Billie Jean King said, we shouldn’t call it failure, we should call if feedback.
When I asked Margot about the piece of media that has impacted her the most she mentioned a very disturbing article in The Atlantic about the epidemic of suicides in Silicon Valley. Please check that out here.
To learn more about Margot and her book visit www.raisinganentrepreneur.com
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