Get Your Own Coffee: Underestimated, Overlooked, and Now The Boss

Suzanne Hopgood was eleven when she got her first real job bussing tables at her parents’ hotel in New Hampshire. By seventeen, she was running the place. That’s when a chef threw a knife that barely missed her head because she’d forgotten to include turkey on the menu. It wouldn’t be the last time she had to duck and weave in her career.

In Get Your Own Coffee, Hopgood takes readers through her journey from that small—town beginning to chairing multiple corporate boards, including a NYSE company during what became known as Director Magazine’s article, “Board from Hell.” Along the way, she shows how she navigated a business world where the rules for women weren’t just different—they were kept secret until you broke them.

When her first boss told her, “You will always be underestimated. Use it to your advantage,” she couldn’t have known how valuable that advice would become. She’s had a boss grab her, throw her over his shoulder, and carry her into a business meeting. She’s been fired for refusing a boss’s late—night advances at her condo. She’s been fired for “insubordination.” She’s watched male colleagues take credit for her ideas while ignoring her voice at the table.

But she also became Chair/CEO after the proxy contest that The Wall Street Journal called “The Shot Heard Round the World,” fired executives who thought she didn’t have the authority, and slammed her files on the table before walking out of negotiations—only to have the deal she wanted waiting when she returned.

Between the corporate battles, Hopgood shares the joy she found with her husband Frank during their forty years together, biking through Southeast Asia, navigating the streets of Moscow and São Paulo, and finding laughter even in his final days.

She learned that getting ahead doesn’t mean playing by other people’s rules. Sometimes, you have to create your own—and sometimes, you just have to be bold enough to take a stand.