No Boneheads. And Always Do the Right Thing.
I have two company values that sound like they belong on opposite ends of a corkboard. One sounds like something you'd yell across a job site. The other sounds like something you'd embroider on a pillow.
But they are the same value. They have always been the same value.
Let me be honest about what "No Boneheads" actually means, because it is not just about people who make dumb mistakes. We all make dumb mistakes. That is not what I am talking about.
I am talking about people with shitty attitudes. People who lead with judgment instead of compassion. People who cannot extend a little grace because they are too busy being right. Thirty-five years in emergency rooms taught me that the people who make it hardest on everyone else are rarely the ones in crisis. They are the ones standing around the crisis with their arms crossed, certain they would have done it better, offering nothing but attitude.
I do not have time for that. I never did.
That is No Boneheads. And it lives right alongside Always Do the Right Thing, because the right thing almost always requires compassion, and compassion has no room for someone who has decided judgment is easier than kindness.
I built Cover Yr Assets on that same river.
When I sat down at sixty-eight with a pair of scissors and a problem I had been quietly living with for decades, I did not have a business plan. What I had was thirty-five years of watching women get told no when they knew the answer. I had a body that knew exactly what it felt like to be exposed at the worst possible moment with no cover and no options. And I had a complete unwillingness to keep pretending that was just how it had to be.
No boneheads. Meaning: I am not going to overcomplicate this, and I am not going to work with people who treat other people badly. I am going to say the true thing plainly, build the thing that actually works, and surround myself with people who lead with kindness instead of attitude.
Always do the right thing. Meaning: even when it is harder. Even when it would be easier to cut corners on materials, on labor, on the truth about where something is made. Even when nobody would know the difference except me.
Here is what that looks like in practice. The Stealth Skort is made by women in the USA from recycled materials. Not because it is the cheapest option. Because it is the right one. Patent pending, because I built something that did not exist and I am not going to pretend someone else thought of it first.
It also looks like this. When a manufacturing partnership came along that looked good on paper but did not hold up under the question "can we say this is Made in USA and mean it" — I walked away. Not because it was easy. Because a bonehead decision and a wrong decision are usually the same decision, just dressed differently.
I think a lot of women have been taught to choose between being kind and being clear. Between doing the right thing and saying the true thing. I have never believed those were actually in conflict. The kindest thing I can do for a woman is tell her the truth. The most respectful thing I can do for my customers is build something that actually works instead of something that just looks good in a photo. And the least I can do is not surround myself with people who make either of those things harder.
No boneheads. Always do the right thing. Two values, one river, same direction.
If that is the kind of company you want to support — one that tells the truth, builds the real thing, leads with compassion, and does not waste your time pretending otherwise — that is who we are.
Buen Camino.
