Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Beyoncé drops a new country album, the Washington Post publishes an exposé on the life and career of the controversial LSU women’s basketball coach, and a Fortune 500 CEO gives us her view of the housing market. Have a productive Monday.
– At home. Sheryl Palmer became the CEO of Taylor Morrison in 2007. “It wasn’t the best time,” she remembers. Taylor Morrison, after all, is a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based builder of new homes—and was caught up in the housing crisis.
When she got the CEO job, the company had almost $2 billion in revenue and about 1,500 employees; it hit a low of a little more than 600 staffers as it struggled to make it through the recession. “It was a really rough time,” Palmer admits. “We had to go backwards before we could grow.”
After making it through the recession, Palmer took Taylor Morrison public in 2013. Today the company is No. 457 on the Fortune 500 with $8.2 billion in annual revenue. It’s been on the Fortune 500 for three years after growing through acquisitions, including a $2.4 billion deal in 2020 to acquire competitor William Lyons Homes. Palmer’s 17 years in the CEO seat means she’s far outlasted the average 4.5-year tenure of female Fortune 500 chiefs and the seven-year tenure of male Fortune 500 CEOs.
The difficulties of the late 2000s prepared Palmer to deal with the craziness of the past few years, from the whiplash of COVID-era housing booms to hiked interest rates. The housing crisis taught her to “separate…what we’re doing and what’s being done to us,” or to focus on the things she and the business can control rather than the market.
“Today, it’s about getting back to the basics and understanding what the customer needs and delivering it,” Palmer says. “The days of ‘build it, they will come,’ I don’t really subscribe to.”
Customers today are looking for prime locations again, after being willing to move to fringe markets during the peak pandemic, and want flexible spaces for family and indoor-outdoor spaces. Plus they’ve gotten used to higher interest rates. “The consumer has really met us halfway,” Palmer says.
With the resale market locked up as homeowners hold on to low interest rates, Palmer believes homebuilders like Taylor Morrison can play an even more important role; she says the American housing market is undersupplied by at least 2 million units. “[We’re in] a new normal,” Palmer says. “Everyone needs shelter, and we’re very undersupplied today.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Beyoncé's back. Beyoncé says her new country album Act II: Cowboy Carter was inspired by “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” It's likely that Beyoncé is referring to racist backlash she received after her performance at the 2016 Country Music Awards of her song “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks. The single “Texas Hold'em” from Cowboy Carter claimed the top spot on Billboard's Hot Country Songs, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to have a No. 1 hit on the country music chart. Fortune
- Off the court. The Washington Post published a story about the life and career of Kim Mulkey, the controversial Louisiana State University women's basketball coach. Mulkey had previously threatened legal action in the event of “a false story.” The Post notes that Mulkey's team keeps winning “but at what cost.” Washington Post
- Skims's secrets. Skims, Kim Kardashian's apparel startup, has been able to dodge a “retail Armageddon,” The Information writes, and is approaching an IPO. But the secret to its success isn't solely based on the power of Kardashian's personal brand. The Information
- Glass half empty. The heir to one of China’s largest beverage empires faces a tough road ahead as she looks to revive the Wahaha beverage company from a decades-long stagnation in sales. Kelly Zong Fuli is expected to take over as chair of Wahaha following her father’s death last month and indicated a push toward healthier drinks to save her family's multibillion-dollar fortune. Bloomberg
- Tricky tech. Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s chief product officer of responsible AI, unveiled new protections to prevent hackers from tricking AI chatbots created using the company’s Azure AI Studio into breaking its own safety guardrails. The new defenses, called “prompt shields,” will now flag instances of suspicious user behavior like asking the model to role-play an action, though Bird acknowledges that the ability to trick the model in general is “an inherent weakness of the model technology.” Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Derris cofounder Lisa Frank is now CEO of the public relations agency.
ON MY RADAR
Influencer Tori Dunlap is spurring women to maximize their savings and invest in the stock market CNBC
The rise and fall of the trad wife The New Yorker
Girl Scouts’ 58-year-old CEO has run over 8 marathons around the world including Antarctica. Her ethos on work-life balance is ‘the opposite of what most people think’ Fortune
PARTING WORDS
“Everyday risks you take, like going to dinner by yourself or cutting your hair, those do add up. They give you the competence to know that you can start your own business, and the ability to trust that you’re going to figure it out. ”
— Solidcore founder Anne Mahlum on how she built up the confidence to invest all her money into starting the Pilates chain
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