At BYU, she recalls, she was excited about dating, getting married and starting a family. She once enrolled in an economics course at BYU "and decided it started too early in the morning and was interrupting my dating life, so quickly I dropped that," she says with a laugh.

She dropped out of school to help put her husband through college, "and found myself in a situation where I needed to support my family, and I had no idea what to do," she says. "I was the girl who at 17 didn't know how to balance a checkbook."

She found her way through the job selling and installing the software in doctors' offices, which allowed her to stay home with her young children. Then came the divorce, and her path toward founding new companies.

Along the way, Rees Anderson hasn't been afraid of the gender stereotypes imposed upon women. She's even embraced some controversial stereotypes. For instance, she doesn't hesitate to cry, and she flatters men. And she does it with a sense of humor.

Once, during a tough negotiation with a new investor, she recalls feeling frustrated, having hit a brick wall. She called Layton, who is a friend and the founder and managing director of Sorenson Capital, for advice.

As Rees Anderson recalls the conversation, Layton asked her to sit down. "Why?" she asked him.

"Sit down," Layton said. "I have one word for you: Cry."

"I was so offended," Rees Anderson recalls. "I said, 'Tim, you've never treated me like a girl in business before. I can't believe you just told me to cry."'

"I'm not being rude or disrespectful," Layton said. "I'm telling you, cry."

Rees Anderson hung up disappointed, because she had never gotten what she thought was poor advice from him in the past. But she tried it.

"I'm not going to say what happened in my meeting," Rees Anderson says. "That's under confidentiality. All I can say is, the man's a genius."

During the negotiation of an asset Rees Anderson was trying to sell off, she was trying to increase the valuation price and sought advice from another male friend and mentor, who reminded her that "every man in the world believes inherently, 'I can do better than a woman,"' and it was her job to remind him of his belief.

She tried the strategy. "Very strong advice, it has worked very well," she says.

Seeking balance

As a busy CEO, Rees Anderson also works to ensure she has time for her family. Rees Anderson was a single mother for eight years before she remarried this past Dec. 31.

Because of the almost 12-hour time difference between Salt Lake City and Delhi, India, the workday in one part of the world is winding down when the workday in the other begins, and MediConnect is a 24-hour business. "Oftentimes, I have to do really late-night calls," she says.