The mother of the YouTube and 23andMe CEOs has a 5-letter catchword for raising successful children and she wrote a book about it (GOOG, GOOGL)

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Palo Alto High School journalism teacher Esther Wojcicki, mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki.Joi Ito

  • Ester Wojcicki — the mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki — has a new book coming out on May 7 about how to raise successful children. 
  • Wojcicki told Fortune in a recent interview that her approach can be applied by business leaders as well, and boils down to the acronym TRICK, which stands for: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. 
  • "If you treat employees the same way, if you believe in them and give them an opportunity to perform, then they believe in themselves," Wojcicki told Fortune. 
  • Read the full Fortune interview with Ester Wojcicki here. 
  • Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

When your children get into a good college or land a fancy job, some people might ask for secrets on how you raised them. But when your kids turn out to be CEOs of some of the most influential and innovative companies in the world — they’ll ask you to write a book about it. 

That what happened to Ester Wojcicki — the mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. 

"So many people were asking me what I did with my daughters and what I did with my students," Wojcicki told Fortune in a recent interview about her new book — "How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results," which is set to be released on May 7. "I thought, Well, if everyone really wants to know how I did it, perhaps it would be easier if I just wrote a book." 

Wojcicki has a third daughter — Janet — who’s a professor at the University of California at San Francisco.

Besides raising such high-powered children, Wojcicki also runs Palo Alto High School’s storied Media Arts Program, where she’s mentored students including Steve Jobs’ daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs and the actor James Franco — who calls Wojcicki his "hero."

Read more: The new biography from Steve Jobs’ daughter offers more proof that Silicon Valley is like a small town

So what’s her secret? 

Wojcicki told Fortune that most of what she’s learned over the years can be summed up by the acronym TRICK, which stands for: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. 

She also said that the same principles of TRICK could be applied to business leaders as well. In fact, Wojcicki said Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and other leaders known for "employee empowerment" have shown interest in her methodology. 

"If you treat employees the same way, if you believe in them and give them an opportunity to perform, then they believe in themselves," Wojcicki told Fortune. "It is really crazy, but when someone believes in you, you’re willing to take more risks and willing to be more creative."

Read the full Fortune interview with Ester Wojcicki here. 

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SEE ALSO: The career rise of Susan Wojcicki, who rented her garage to Google’s founders in 1998 and is now the CEO of YouTube

Source: Business Insider – nbastone@businessinsider.com (Nick Bastone)

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