The Front Row Seat

This past Mother's Day, my kids wrote me cards. That alone isn't remarkable. Kids write Mother's Day cards, sometimes because they want to, often because their other parent gently reminds them, and occasionally because they realize at 8pm the night before that tomorrow is, in fact, Mother's Day. I've received all three versions over the years and loved every one of them.

This year was different, nobody reminded them, they did it on their own, and what they wrote absolutely blew me away.

Our son, who is 12, wrote: "You are such a good person. You created a whole business dedicated to helping people and you role model to me everyday what it means to do the right thing."

Our daughter wrote: "You say that I teach you something new everyday, but without you I would not have all the knowledge I have today. You have made me proud to be your daughter."

I read these cards while I was still in bed and had to put the coffee they brought me down because my hands were shaking. Not because the words were grand or poetic, but because of what was missing from them.

Neither of our children mentioned my job title, neither referenced a specific career accomplishment. Neither of them wrote about awards or accolades or the big moments that tend to fill a bio or a LinkedIn profile. Our son wrote about character. Our daughter wrote about knowledge she didn't even realize she was accumulating. They weren't reflecting my resume, they were reflecting what they'd absorbed by being in the room with me.

And that got me thinking about what we actually pass down to the people closest to us, and how rarely it's the thing we think we're teaching.

I grew up in the live entertainment business. My front row seat to that world was not figurative, I was physically immersed. I sat in lighting booths during performances, school breaks and holidays were spent at rehearsals, in production meetings, at events. When my dad watched a run-through of a show in progress, I sat next to him and took his notes. I was his scribe before I even understood what I was transcribing.

What I took in over those years wasn't how to produce a show. Not at first, anyway, the technical knowledge came later, formally, through years of actually doing the work. What I absorbed as a kid sitting in those chairs was how my father spoke to people, how he delivered tough feedback without diminishing someone's effort, how he held a standard without holding a grudge, and how he walked into a room full of performers and crew and made every person feel like the show depended on them, because it did.

I watched what it looked like to care deeply about quality and still treat people with respect. That was the real education, and nobody put it on a syllabus.

Our kids are growing up in a different world. We're a two-career household in New York City, and the rhythms of their childhood don't look like the rhythms of mine. They're not in lighting booths or sitting in production meetings (anymore). They attend events a few times a year, they watch Supercross races on Peacock where it's readily accessible. Our daughter may come visit our offices with me in Florida later this summer. They have a keen interest in the family business, but they are charting their own paths more removed from it, and I think that's exactly as it should be.

What they are absorbing, though, is more than I realized until I read those cards.

They overhear their father, a television producer and casting director, on the phone with directors, agents, actors, writers, showrunners, and colleagues. He helps craft the stories and characters we all see when we watch his shows. He gives nuanced feedback to actors and fights for them to get their shot. He advocates for talent and for the people he works with and for. Our kids hear all of that happening in the next room, and they are taking in more than the conversation. They watch me build Pivot With Purpose from our living room, writing these newsletters at the kitchen counter, preparing for speaking engagements and workshops that coach women through career transitions. They even read these newsletters, which is both flattering and slightly terrifying.

They don't have the front row seat I had, they have a completely different one. The vantage point changed, but the education never stopped.

I think we vastly underestimate this. We obsess over what we're explicitly teaching our kids, our teams, the people we mentor. The planned lessons, the formal advice, the carefully worded "here's what I want you to know" conversations. Those matter, but the things that actually stick are the ones we never meant to teach. The phone call they overhear when you don't realize they're listening. The way you respond when something falls apart in real time. The energy you carry into the house after a terrible day and the choice you make about what to do with it. The way you treat the person who can do absolutely nothing for you.

Our son didn't write "you are a successful businesswoman." He wrote "you are a good person." He's 12. He doesn't care about my LinkedIn. He cares about what he sees when he watches me move through the world, and what he sees is apparently someone who tries to do the right thing. I cannot tell you how much more that matters to me than any professional milestone I've ever reached.

Our daughter didn't catalog what I've taught her. She described an accumulation she didn't even know was happening. "Without you I would not have all the knowledge I have today" is not about a single lesson, it's about proximity and years of being in the room while someone demonstrates, often imperfectly and without a script, how to think, how to care, how to show up.

We spend so much energy curating the version of ourselves that lives on a resume or a stage or a profile page and I am certainly not immune to this. I want the work to be recognized. I want the accomplishments to matter, I'm human. Those cards reminded me that the people who are closest to us, the ones who see us in the unperformed moments, are not keeping score the way we think they are.

They're not tallying your wins, they're watching your choices.

So if you're in a season where the visible metrics of success feel slow or elusive, where you're wondering whether the work is landing or whether anyone is noticing, consider this. The people in your front row seat are absorbing more than you know. Your kids, your colleagues, your friends, the person who just started in a role you once held. They are watching how you handle the meeting that went sideways, how you respond to the email that made your blood boil, how you talk about people when those people aren't in the room.

That is what gets passed down, not the awards, not the accolades, and not the titles. The way you made people feel when you didn't know anyone was taking notes.

From Your Biggest Champion,

Nicole