Donald Trump

Mike Pence's Daughter Charlotte: Dad Taught Me the ‘First Step to Following Your Dreams Is to Talk About Them'

(Photo by Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images)

Over the last few years, Charlotte Pence-Bond has made it a habit not to mention what her dad does for a living unless she's asked.

That's because her father is Vice President Mike Pence. "If they know who my dad is, [they] have a perception of me," Pence-Bond, 26, tells CNBC Make It.

But says Pence-Bond, "I can either be discouraged by [perceptions] or I can use it to start a conversation, which is what I've tried to do."

While navigating her father's fame hasn't always been easy — "It has definitely taught me to just allow people to have their opinions and to be okay with that," she says — her father, and his rise from congressman to governor of Indiana to vice president of the United States, has taught her a lot about success and following her dreams. 

Ever since Pence-Bond and her siblings, Audrey, now 24, and Michael, 28, were kids, their dad would always tell them the "first step to following your dreams is to talk about them."

He said by speaking your dreams, you gain confidence in pursuing them.

"When things are unspoken, we tend to fear them a lot more," Pence-Bond says.

Pence-Bond first spoke her own dream of becoming a writer at the age of 7.

Though she was so young she could barely write complete sentences, she wrote out father's biography, including how grew up one of six kids in Columbus, Indiana during the '60s, and about his career as conservative radio host (before he successfully got into politics)Then she gave it to her dad as a gift.

From that day on, her dad encouraged her to keep pursuing her dream, she says. 

Seventeen years later, she wrote about it in her first published book, "Where You Go: Life Lessons from My Father": "Often, during special times with family, Dad would wink at me and say, 'You'll put this in a book one day, Booh (his nickname for me since I was little)," she wrote.

The book came to fruition after Glamour magazine asked Pence-Bond to write a story about her experience on the campaign trail with her family in 2016. The article published that October, called "Mike Pence's Daughter Reveals the Lessons Her Father Taught Her," inspired her to write a book about her father, which came out in 2018. 

Though Pence-Bond is inspired by her father, that doesn't mean she always agrees with him.

For instance, Pence-Bond says she will often call her dad after seeing a news report on something she didn't like. Though she did not name specific issues on which they disagree, she says, "usually it'll be more that I'll have questions about something."

"I'll read something in the news and I will be upset about it, and I'll call him and usually there's another side to the story," she says.

For what it's worth, Trump doesn't seem to be one of the things the Pences disagree on. Pence-Bond says her opinion of the president hasn't changed since she first met him during a breakfast meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey when he was searching for a vice president.

"Once I met their family, I really didn't have any hesitation about [my dad becoming his running mate,]" she says. "I've just always had a great experience with [the Trumps]."

Pence-Bond says she thinks her dad and Trump "complement each other."

"My dad has been in politics a lot longer and so he has that experience," Pence Bond says (though many have criticized his record).

"And I think President Trump is very appealing to people because he had not been in politics for that long," she says. (Of course, that's also a criticism of Trump.)

"I think that both of their styles are unique."

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