"When God tells you it's time to reinvent, you listen," says Staci Wallace, best-selling author, speaker, and CEO of Fueled by Fire. In this episode, Lesley Jane Seymour sat down with Wallace to explore a unique perspective on reinvention driven by faith and divine inspiration. From her early days as a tough tomboy in South Dallas to becoming a business strategist who has shared the stage with five U.S. presidents, her journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Discover how she transitioned from a life of entrepreneurial success to leading a purpose-driven, faith-based consulting company that empowers others to create highly profitable businesses that glorify God. Wallace also shares her personal experience with physical and spiritual transformation, including a heartfelt discussion about her decision to remove breast implants for health reasons. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone seeking to reinvent themselves at any stage of life.

Bio

Staci Wallace is a best-selling author, speaker, and CEO of Fueled by Fire, a global faith-based consulting company. With 35 years of expertise in business psychology and leadership development, she empowers entrepreneurs, CEOs, and influencers to create purpose-driven, highly profitable businesses and nonprofit organizations. Stacey and her husband Larry are also the founders of Em Women, a nonprofit organization that rescues and restores the lives of women and girls facing life's most difficult challenges.

 

02:54 - Wallace started out in network marketing at 18 and has built multiple businesses

08:14 - The intersection of midlife and reinvention

14:51 - Wallace's health journey and miracle

18:25 - Wallace says God asked her to give everything away to the poor

24:08 - Fueled by Fire coaches entrepreneurs to become conduits of generosity

24:53 - How Fueled by Fire became a million dollar business

26:06 - Wallace's three tips for reinvention

 

Key Points:

• Reinvention can be driven by divine inspiration and faith.
• Physical transformations can lead to significant improvements in health and well-being.
• Midlife reinvention requires embracing who you are now, rather than striving to be who you once were.
• Purpose-driven businesses can be both highly profitable and a conduit for generosity.

 

Links and Resources:

• Visit Staci Wallace's Website
• Explore Covey Club

 

If you found this episode inspiring, please follow the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. For more resources and community support, join us at CoveyClub.com. Until next time, keep reinventing!

"What to do when you feel like crap" is the unfiltered, honest theme of this episode, featuring the inspiring Heather Chauvin. A leadership coach and former social worker, Chauvin helps successful women live, work, and parent on their own terms. She shares her journey from an early motherhood at 18 to a life-altering stage four cancer diagnosis in 2013, which propelled her into a mission to uncover how cultural expectations sabotage our dreams. Join us as Chauvin discusses the concept of being "emotionally uncomfortable," the importance of self-awareness, and actionable steps to transform your life.

 

Bio:

Heather Chauvin is a leadership coach specializing in helping women courageously and authentically live, work, and parent on their own terms. She began her career as a social worker and pivoted to coaching after a stage four cancer diagnosis in 2013. Heather is passionate about helping women uncover how cultural expectations sabotage their dreams and has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Real Simple, MindBodyGreen, and Google.

 

(00:00) - Heather Chauvin is a leadership coach who helps women live on their own terms

(01:49) - The meaning behind "emotionally uncomfortable"

(02:19) - Six months after becoming self employed, Chauvin was diagnosed with stage four cancer

(07:58) - Danielle Laporte says burning out started when she became a mother

(15:13) - People often teach that you have to lead by example to change others

(22:17) - Chauvin discusses her health and where she is now

(24:10) - Heather says women are more open to talking about mental health and emotional wellness

 

Key Points:

• Embracing emotional discomfort can lead to profound personal growth.
• Self-awareness and personal responsibility are crucial for transformation.
• Taking consistent action is necessary to create lasting change.
• Midlife transitions often prompt women to seek change and prioritize their well-being.
• Heather's journey from a cancer diagnosis to thriving shows the power of resilience and self-care.

 

Links and Resources:

• Heather Chauvin's Website
• Heather Chauvin on Instagram
• Emotionally Uncomfortable Podcast
• Visit Covey Club

 

If you found this episode inspiring, please follow the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. For more resources and community support, join us at CoveyClub.com. Until next time, keep reinventing!

"There is throughout this theme of reaching a certain age and feeling like I'm entitled to the ground I'm standing on, at least," says New York Times bestselling author Ann Leary "Sometimes just being overly nice isn't authentic." CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour sits down with the writer to discuss her latest essay collection, "I've Tried Being Nice." Leary shares her personal journey of reinvention, her writing process, and the humorous yet poignant moments that inspired her new essay collection. Perfect for anyone navigating midlife changes, Leary’s stories resonate deeply, especially with women over 50. She discusses her childhood of frequent moves, which shaped her observational skills and writing talent, and offers invaluable tips like writing authentically as if to a best friend. Highlighting the episode is Leary’s candid talk about overcoming lifelong people-pleasing, finding her voice, and the empowerment found in her essay "I've Tried Being Nice." For aspiring writers, Leary’s practical advice includes starting the writing day early and maintaining flow. This episode is a must-listen for its blend of inspiration, humor, and practical advice.

Time Stamps:

02:25: Ann Leary talks about her new book

06:18: What inspired you to go back to memoir after having written several novels?

10:15: How does moving play into being an observer and being a writer?

14:26: When did you decide that you were going to take your writing seriously?

18:45: Do you write every day or do you have a process?

23:34: Do you share your work with anybody while you're working on it?

25:28: Leaving the people pleaser club

28:30: The freedom of midlife

Key Points:

• Ann Leary's essay collection, I've Tried Being Nice, is a must-read for midlife women, filled with humor and relatable insights.
• Frequent moves during childhood helped Ann develop her observational skills, crucial for her writing.
• Writing should feel like a conversation with a friend who gets you, making it more authentic and engaging.
• Ann shares her struggle with being a lifelong people pleaser and the liberation that comes with age.
• Having a supportive writing community is essential for feedback and encouragement.

Links and Resources:

• Visit Ann Leary's Website for more information and upcoming events.
• Order I've Tried Being Nice on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
• Follow Ann Leary on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

If you found this episode inspiring, please follow the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. For more resources and community support, join us at CoveyClub.com. Until next time, keep reinventing!

 

 

FREE GIFT! 31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention

Connect with Lesley Jane Seymour & CoveyClub:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Join CoveyClub

Kristine Deer knew from childhood that she was meant to create, and when her mother gave her a box of fabric, some duct tape, and a stapler, she unlocked her passion for designing clothes. Fast-forward to college: Deer, of course, majored in fashion design before moving to New York City to pursue her career as a designer. But when The Great Recession hit in 2000, the industry changed. Deer found herself working menial tasks for other designers and witnessing a harsh corporate environment devoid of creative freedom. When she later lost her job, she was disillusioned and bereft. Leaving the city, she moved back in with her parents, determined to begin again. But how? After discovering her passion for hot yoga, Deer began to design her own yoga clothes—in particular the multi-striped rainbow leggings for which she eventually became famous. Eleven years later, she is the founder and CEO of the activewear brand K-DEER. In an intimate conversation with CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour, Deer shares her journey of reinvention both personally and professionally.

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

For Laurie James, giving birth to four daughters in five years called for necessary life changes. Leaving her career as a recruiter, she took on the role of a full-time mom. “My third pregnancy were a set of identical twin girls,” she says, “so that was a pretty big shock to the system.” An even bigger shock came when her mother developed dementia. This meant Laurie now found herself raising four children while also managing her mother’s care. “I became one of the first people in my friend group to enter into the Sandwich Generation.” The Sandwich Generation, Laurie says, is described as having at least one child you are supporting and at least one parent that’s over the age of 65. Her attention diverted,  Laurie also found her marriage struggling. Turning to therapy and yoga for support, she was inspired when an acquaintance suggested she write a book. Laurie James talks to CoveyClub founder, Lesley Jane Seymour about how she poured her struggles, her accomplishments, and her lessons along the way into Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go. The book chronicles her personal journey through the sandwich generation while also revealing many of the dangerous flaws within the caregiving industry. As a result of writing the book, Laurie found new strength in the power of writing and reflection. “Find that time to reflect,” Laurie advises us, “because that’s where our growth happens.”

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

What do you do when you have an MBA from Stanford with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, but you’re also loving your corporate job? That was the conundrum Nicole Malcolm-Manyara faced after spending ten years at P&G.  “I worked in their oral care portfolio for kids...the Gillette business. I worked in their incubator...so it was pretty much like working for a startup but at a big company,” she says. She also worked on their CVS customer team and at Duracell. But Malcolm-Manyara always had “the entrepreneurial bug.”  After Duracell, she took a job working--mostly remotely-- for Organic Girl, the salad company.  “During that translation this whole idea came to me for Rad Royals,” cool satin pillowcases for young Black girls. Her three-year-old daughter was refusing to tie her hair in a satin scarf or bonnet to protect it from getting tangled overnight.  “And so I thought, well, why don’t I get her a satin pillowcase.” But Malcolm-Manyara couldn’t find anything that was made sustainably or whimsically designed to intrigue her daughter. For two years Malcolm-Manyara, who lived on the east coast, worked her day job on California time and used her mornings for motherhood and Rad Royals: “It evolved very quickly into a business, a brand.” She says:  “If you really want to do something, you figure out how to do it...That has driven me to carve out time...and be really really focused….I try to say, ok, if i can spend one hour a day on Royals then, you know I’m good.”  One of the things Malcolm-Manyara learned when working in the incubator was the concept of figuring out your killer issue. “If you have an idea, you sit down and try and figure out what the two or three things that absolutely have to be true in order for [you] to be successful with this idea...and you solve for those things.” 

 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

When Ann Dowsett Johnston attended her son’s graduation from Smith College she felt a “deep pang” that she says sounded like, “I will die and never have done this.” With her son’s encouragement, Johnston applied to Smith and moved into the student dorm with 25-year olds the next year. “I had broken my ankle and was in a wheelchair,” she says. “I was as old as many parents or grandparents. It was a phenomenal experience.”  After graduating Johnston, a Canadian, who had been a journalist, then vice-principal of McGill University, launched her career as a psychotherapist at age 67 dealing with women in transition--”to post-retirement, wrestling with substance abuse or career disappointment”.  When she found she missed writing, she dug into a topic she knew well: alcohol addiction (she is now 13 years sober). In 2013, she wrote the best-selling book, “Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol.”  Today she runs memoir-writing workshops (“Writing Your Recovery”) in which she encourages women to tell their own stories of triumph over grief, substance, or burnout. “We have book proposals in the alumni group before international agents now,...articles in major magazines... pieces submitted to contests,” she says. “My approach to life is that we live in chapters. When friends are retiring, mine is fresh and inspirational. It’s very new. I plan to work until I’m eighty to pay off my student debt!”

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

“First thing: get clear on what you want,” says Jennifer Pate, the very practical founder of FeelAgeless.com, a site dedicated to making women feel good about aging. “Take out paper and pen and write down how much time [you can dedicate to your reinvention]. Be realistic about what you can do.”  Ask yourself, she says:  “How much money do I need [to make]? What do I want to do? Can you name it? What are you good at? What do people compliment you on? The more you can define these things—things will start opening up.” That’s exactly how Pate made her way from being a professional dancer to casting director, co-author of a book ( “The Mothers of Reinvention”), and television contributor. Facing empty nest and turning 55 forced Pate to reassess what she wanted to do next and when she discovered “so many women at the height of their creativity and drive [who] felt we weren’t being talked to….I want to change the narrative of what it is to age today.”

 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

 

“When someone wants to recreate themselves it’s not easy,” says Marlene Wallach, author of “Wellness is in Style--An Easy Guide to Body & Soul”, former co-owner (for 17 years) of modeling agency Wilhelmina International Partnership and founder of GleemBeauty.com.  “You have to stick with it whatever it is--changing jobs, careers, industries. Go to conferences and walk up to the speaker and say, ‘I really admire you. I loved what you said and would  love to contact you with an idea I had.’”  That’s exactly how she snagged an interview with LinkedIn founder, Reid Hoffman for her book. “I wrote to him and his secretary said, ‘He doesn’t have time.’ That meant no. I wrote back four more times and sometimes just wrote a joke.” Wallach says she never looked at her moves as reinventions which sounds “overwhelming” but as next steps. “For me the next step is close, is easy. When I saw things not working, I went to the next step.” 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

“People go for their ‘type’ and that’s the worst for them,” says Sandy Weiner, dating expert and CEO of LastFirstDate.com. “Women I work with are now in their sixties and they go for CEO types. They say, ‘I’m really attracted to his resume.’ But that doesn’t make for a good relationship. You need to focus on the long term: can this person talk to me, resolve conflict? Have they created a life for themselves or are they stuck blaming someone else for who they are today?” Weiner, who is also a life coach and founder of the site, Women of Value, finds many dating clients are too “airy fairy” in their profiles which confuses men. She helps them create profiles designed to get men to think, “I’d love to meet this woman.” Quite a strange turn for a woman who graduated with a degree in art therapy, wandered through businesses in illustration and painting furniture, authoring children’s books, becoming a head writer for Nickelodeon, and eventually returning to school for her degree in coaching. When her 23-year marriage went south, Weiner found herself in midlife transition and dating again. “My friends were, too. But I was better at it and guiding them because of my training in coaching.” What has she learned? “Pay attention to your intuition. It holds the key to your ‘why’. Try things. Be bold. Make mistakes.” 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

When Debra Shriver left her native Alabama for Washington, DC, she was 26, newly married, and ready to step into a high-profile PR job. She spent the next 25 years overseeing public relations at Hearst Media, a role she still appreciates for the growth opportunities it offered. But when she felt called to reinvent her career, she acted on it. “If I didn't like the situation, I was a really good cut and run artist,” she says. “I have perfected the quit." She chose to exchange the fast-paced New York life for The Big Easy. An avid Francophile, she saw in New Orleans what she loved about France: the slower pace, the exquisite arts, and the almost Caribbean-like ease that softens each day. The city inspired a series of reinventions that led her to creating her own publishing firm, delving into photography, and writing several books of her own. Her latest, The French Leave, is an homage to both Paris and New Orleans, the cities that inspired her reinvention and captured her heart. In this conversation with Covey Club founder Lesley Jane Seymour, Shriver explains how she embraced the unbuttoned freedom of New Orleans life with a Lucy Ricardo sense of adventure. Her advice? “Don’t be the Ricky,” she says. “Life is too short.”

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

 

"I just turned 50, I was having my own perimenopausal challenges, even though I didn't really understand that that's what they were, and I wanted to go back to my roots of access to healthcare and supporting women," says Catherine Balsam-Scwaber.  "But I was so far along in my career that it was hard to imagine stepping out of what I did to try something different."

 

The Connecticut native grew up thinking she wanted to be a doctor. And after jobs in politics, news, movies, media, toys, and even crafting, she actually did end up back in Connecticut, working in healthcare. The CEO of Kindra, a women's health and beauty company focusing on menopause, talks to CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour about breaking down taboos and building up women's confidence to find what's right for them. 

 

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FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

Half of all podcasts reach 14 or fewer episodes and so I’m thrilled to be celebrating my 150th episode of Reinvent Yourself with Lesley Jane Seymour as we approach our 100,000th download as well!  That’s quite a record. For this special episode I’m talking with CoveyClub’s reinvention coach Dana Hilmer, who, with coach Wendy Perrotti, runs Camp Reinvention, about all that I’ve learned and synthesized from the amazing women I’ve interviewed. Here’s the reason I keep going: because women 40+ deserve to be heard and their successes and tips for reinvention need to be recorded and shared. I deliberately speak with the famous (such as Gretchen Carlson, the Fox newscaster who sued Roger Ailes and got him fired for sexual harassment) and regular people who have reinvented from every direction possible--with and without money, with and without schooling or special degrees, with or without a supportive spouse or social group, with or without fear, with or without a clue. The message? You can do it, too--no matter who you are or where you come from. Thanks as well to my wonderful podcast producer, Jonathan Alba, and to Covey’s fabulous admin, Marisa Vilarino, without whom I’d never have gotten CoveyClub or the podcast off the ground.

 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

"We should be treated like owners of our own bodies," says ER physician and CEO of Carte Clinics Dr. Gina Siddiqui. “The medical system should give you a map, and you can choose where you want to go. CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour sits down with Dr. Siddiqui to discuss her mission to transform the patient-doctor relationship. Dr. Siddiqui shares her journey from emergency medicine to founding a concierge-style medical service that offers personalized care, research, and second opinions for patients navigating the complex healthcare system.

Time Stamps

3:33 How Dr. Siddiqui got into medicine

06:47 How Carté Clinics are a reinvention of the relationship doctors have with patients

08:07 Carté Clinics help consumers navigate the medical system and get the right help

15:12 How do people get help with breast cancer diagnosis through electronic medical records?

23:51 The difference between how men and women handle healthcare

26:27 Covey recommends women take more charge of their healthcare

29:31 How to get your doctor to listen

32:34 What do you do as a patient when you are feeling ignored

34:23: Gina Siddiqui is launching Carté Clinics to help women reinvent themselves

Key Points:

• Dr. Gina Siddiqui is transforming the healthcare experience through Carte Clinics, offering personalized medical care and research.
• Patients can access a range of services, from second opinions to comprehensive health management, tailored to their unique needs.
• Carte Clinics aims to empower patients by providing unbiased, thorough medical advice and aligning with their health goals.
• Women often face unique challenges in healthcare, and being proactive and assertive is crucial in managing their health.
• Healthcare professionals and individuals in adjacent fields can find inspiration and practical advice for reinventing their roles within the system.

Join us live on Zoom with Gina Siddiqui on Wednesday, June 12 at 2pm ET! This talk will touch on unique health considerations for women after 40 and the ways women in particular must be vigilant for our symptoms and needs being minimized or dismissed.

Links and Resources:

• Visit Carte Clinics for more information and services.
• Connect with Dr. Gina Siddiqui on LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Explore CoveyClub for resources, support, and community for reinvention.

If you found this episode inspiring, please follow the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. For more resources and community support, join us at CoveyClub.com.

 

When Lynda Bouchard left her publicity job with CBS to become a flight attendant, she was chasing a dream. “I’ve always seen my life through the prism of story,” she says, “and I always want it to be a continual process of reinvention.” Her willingness to take a risk resulted in a 20-year career caring for passengers all across the world. In an eloquent and thoughtful conversation with Lesley Jane Seymour, Bouchard explains how her wanderlust led her to the American South, where she fell in love with the culture and history. After 9/11, Bouchard decided it was time to embark on another reinvention - another leap of faith - and another career change. After meeting hundreds of authors during her flights, she became aware of the common thread: New York publishing houses were not giving their authors exposure in the Southern markets. For Bouchard, this was an opportunity; she became the first literary agent to focus specifically on Southern authors, bookstores, and events. Her first client? James Patterson. Now, Bouchard is a sought-after resource for major publishing professionals. “There will be naysayers,” Bouchard advises, “but you know what? This is your dream, your passion, and it takes courage to be different. Hang on to that.”

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

Kristen Carbone had always wanted to work in an art museum, but after landing her dream museum job she soon faced a harrowing reality: her mother’s breast cancer had returned with a serious metastasis. Packing up her life, Carbone moved to Baltimore to be closer to her ailing mother. Heartbreakingly, her mother passed before turning 50. After her mother’s death, Carbone uprooted herself again and continued her museum work. But just three months after her 30th birthday, Carbone made the brave and terrifying decision to have a preventative mastectomy and reconstruction. “I felt really committed to the choice,” she says. As she learned to live in her new body, however, she experienced first-hand the challenges that many women face after treatment. Carbone reached out to hundreds of women experiencing the same issue before founding Brilliantly, a lifestyle brand whose programs and products are designed to support women living in post-mastectomy bodies. In this episode of Reinvent Yourself, Carbone talks with CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour about how cancer radically changed her life and inspired her to make an impact on the lives of other survivors.

“Depression is the number one reason in the world for disability,” says Audrey Gruss, Founder of Hopefragrances.com and Hopefordepression.org. “Thirty-five percent of people don’t respond to the meds out there.” Gruss, who began her career as the assistant to the Medical Director at the Revlon Research Center, says that since 1985, every medication has been a spinoff of Prozac, which doesn’t work for everyone. One of those who Prozac failed was her mother, Hope, who had struggled with depression since her thirties.  “It was called a nervous breakdown,” Gruss says. “It had stigma.” When visiting her mother at the hospital Gruss would ask why there was no cure and why the top companies in the brain science business were not doing research. The answer she got: research “was too expensive and it was too lucrative to simply repurpose drugs.”  After her mother passed away in 2005, Gruss, who had spent the majority of her career in the beauty sector working for name brands like Elizabeth Arden and creating the Doral Saturnia Spa in Miami, launched Hope Fragrances to fund her research foundation, Hope For Depression.  “We put together a group of leaders in each discipline of neuroscience and cellular biology,” she says.  “They are collaborating and sharing research. We are in clinical trials at Columbia University Medical Center and Mount Sinai with a brand new category of medications for people who don’t respond to Prozac.”  

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

 

“[I was at] my gynecologist’s office,” says  Kristin van Ogtrop, author (“Did I say that out loud? Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them”   (https://amzn.to/3effm1a), literary agent, and former Editor-in-Chief of Real Simple magazine.  “My enthusiasm for daily life had diminished. I was having an annual exam and I said,’ I’m depressed or going through perimenopause or need a new job’. She said, ‘Maybe all three.’” Up until that point, van Ogtrop had been a high-flying editor in the magazine publishing world who had worked her way through some of the toniest jobs in the industry--beginning at Premiere, then to Vogue, Travel & Leisure, and then to running Real Simple for 13 years.  “The reason I loved [Real Simple] was because it was the first time I’d worked for a magazine where I was the reader,” she says. “The demos were basically me: busy working mother[s]...who had great full lives and needed ways to run [them] smoother.” Since Van Ogtrop grew up with a mother who was a home economics major, she knew how to make a casserole and hem a skirt--valuable skills she imparted to her harried readers. What was not so fun: when Real Simple got caught up in corporate spin-offs and industry-driven down-sizings. “Time Inc. was a public company [and there] was great pressure,” Van Ogtrop says.  “[‘For] creative people [like me] in the company…[it]  felt like every day you died a little inside.” After she left, Van Ogtrop became a business Goldilocks, trying on various new careers, but struggling to find her path.  “One benefit of reinventing in middle age,” she says, “is not to be embarrassed to be the dumbest person in the room. I know I’ve accomplished something...in my last life and in my mid-fifties I don’t care if I look like an idiot.” Tune in to see where she ended up and how she did it.

 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

“I was working in interior design, I had this new language, and I started seeing things in my clients homes or in their life that was reflected one with the other,” says Carrie Leskowitz, founder of Carrie Leskowitz Interiors. “So if there was something going on in their life, often I found it reflected in their home. And if there was something going on in their home, I had often found it reflected in their life. To some degree, one mirrored the other. So I started coaching design clients, and it was just so fascinating to me the things that I saw and learned.” It became a “cool niche” and she says she was “able to give my design clients not only a transformative solution to their home, but ... a transformation of their heart or their mind.”  When Leskowitz was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that left her bed-ridden, she pivoted to placing all of her interior/exterior wisdom into a book, “Om for the Home”. “That [is] really the message that I wanted to send out in my book,” she says. “That home--our home, our soul, our body...it's all one. It's all connected.” 

“I had a wonderful childhood,” says Sarah Nannery (sarahnannery.com).  “But I could never figure out why I didn’t fit in. I played differently and didn’t pick up social cues. I didn’t get the point of jokes. All through college, I studied different things.” She also struggled with prioritization and sudden changes in the workplace.  Two years ago, Nannery was diagnosed with autism which she says, ”is quite a journey as an adult.” For Nannery, who decided to share her story in the new book, What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love--with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the diagnosis of her son with autism was the turning point.  “I started to notice his heavy dependence on routine...Going to school he would ring the doorbell to get in, wait for the teacher to open the door. [Once] another family rang the doorbell and he had the biggest meltdown.” Knowing how she also gravitated towards quiet and order and shied away from peers who were messy or not following the rules, Nannery decided to check herself out. “Diagnostic tools have evolved a lot,” she says. “They’re still missing women and girls and women of color. It’s still based on white boys as is all of the medical system.”  What Nannery hopes her book will accomplish? “We have to let go of preconceptions. We’re not all ‘Rain Man’. We’re very diverse. I’m still me before and after the diagnosis. I know who I am. Now.”

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

What does a girl from Queens with a degree in PR do when she and her friends can’t find a date? She writes a dating guide: “How to Marry a Mensch”.  What about when she becomes a mom at age 35? “I felt there was judgement about being a later-in-life mom,” says author, Tony-nominated producer, and love coach, Robin Gorman. “There was no sense of community.” To increase connections she created the site, motherhoodlater.com. “It’s not like I launched it and thought it would be a thing. It was very personal at the time.”  In fact Gorman uses her personal pain points to invent solutions for others.  “I connect people for the greater common good,” Gorman says. “I’m a little type A. Definitely a do-er...I’m not afraid to put things out there.”  Gorman says she also tends to think big. “I think, ok, if I tried. I’m not afraid to fail if I really believe in what I’m doing. I go for it. It’s a personality thing.” To wit, her motherhood work led her to think there was a trend for mom shows. A highschool theater buff, she picked up the phone and called a theater in California that was producing a mom show. “I left a cryptic message introducing myself to the producers of the show. Weeks later they called me back.” When the show came east to New York, the producers invited Gorman onto the project:  “I had a background in PR and a life-long love of theater and an understanding of the parenting space. It was a perfect fit.” 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

“I was playing a lawyer. Fake blood was coming out of my mouth. Fifteen hours into the shoot lying on a filthy floor waiting for the director and sound, [I said to myself]: ‘What am I doing here? Is this what success looks like? I need to do something different...I have to do more.” So begins Lesley Jane Seymour’s discussion with Alexa Fischer, an actress (NCIS, CSI, Numb3ers, Bones), coach, and motivational speaker who is on a quest to “give wishes the power they need to become a reality.” Fischer said  “a prayer to the universe” and a friend called looking for a media trainer. 126k students from around the world took Fischer’s courses on confidence and communication. Then one day in the shower she “heard and saw” the name Wishbeads.  “I knew it was intention-setting jewelry,” she says. Dripping wet, she ran to the computer and grabbed the trademark and dot com and tried to figure out how to pull it off. Today Wishbeads (wishbeads.com) allows customers to visualize their wishes, write them down, and roll them up and place them in a bracelet.  “You wear the wish every day,” Fischer says. “When you see the wish you can focus on it.” 

 

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At 53, Tammi Leader Fuller left her big-time producer’s job in television news to go back to her “childhood happy place”--camp! Well, back to a grown-up version called Campowerment, a place for “women to learn, connect, and grow.” Says Fuller, who was in the news business for 34 years: “I was Tammi from Miami. I covered riots, the boat lift, drug dealing...I’m a storyteller at heart.” Ten years ago, Fuller moved to Los Angeles and while continuing in the entertainment field, wrote a book “about how having it all is not having it all.” In 2013, she decided it was time to produce something else: “I wanted to bring women back to the time of their life when they were carefree.” Fuller says her summers loving camp in the Poconos and invented Campowerment to bring back that sense of joy.  “We take over empty shells of camps...go in 24 hours with a team and jeuge it up and make it suitable for women to live in cabins,” she says. “ [We like to] let them be a bit uncomfortable to grow.” And yes, there are color wars and campfire songs, even a snoring cabin! “It’s heavily programmed. But in the off time people connect.”  Fuller sold her home to finance her business. “I sacrificed my life to make it happen… Now it’s eight years later.” 

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“We launched Franklyn West in the middle of the pandemic,” says Ashley Miles of her Business Growth Collective which is committed to transformation and sustainable growth for businesses and leaders. “We have an incredible portfolio of companies. Simultaneously, I’m also president of New York Women in Communications (NYWICI), the 91-year-old organization that hosted it’s 51st --but the first digital only--Matrix Awards”.  Miles, who grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as a serious equestrian, discovered her passion for journalism and advertising early on and decided she “needed to get to New York.”  “I sent hundreds of resumes to people on the mastheads of magazines to get an internship,” she says, “and only one person called me back. It was Teen People.” From there Miles went off to In Style, then helped to scale Refinery 29 into a “nine-figure business”, eventually landing as Global Chief Business Officer at Thrive Global.  What makes her business approach different? Using optimism as leverage.  “We have to shut down the inner critic,” she says. “We all have that inner voice saying, ‘I’m not worthy of making positive change in my life’  Shut it down! Ask: What is the bold picture? What do I want to be? How do I want to evolve? What is my action plan to make it happen? Get out there and network. Seeing things through an optimistic lens means anything is possible.”

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

"Anxiety is like a cult leader in the home—it’s controlling and demands attention, but understanding it helps break its power." – Laura Morton.

In this compelling episode of the Reinvent Yourself Podcast, host Lesley Jane Seymour sits down with Laura Morton, co-director and producer of the award-winning documentary "Anxious Nation." Morton, a bestselling author and mental health advocate, shares her deeply personal journey of navigating her daughter's anxiety and how it inspired her to create a film that offers hope and strategies to families dealing with similar issues. This conversation is a must-listen for any parent dealing with anxious children, providing insights, encouragement, and practical advice.

Timestamps:

• 02:31 - 05:20: Lesley introduces Laura Morton and her impressive background.
• 05:21 - 07:45: Laura discusses the inspiration behind "Anxious Nation."
• 07:46 - 10:15: Laura shares her personal story about her daughter's anxiety diagnosis.
• 10:16 - 15:40: The impact of social media and modern challenges on children's anxiety.
• 15:41 - 18:30: The importance of open conversations about mental health in families.
• 18:31 - 22:45: Laura's advice on seeking help and the common mistakes parents make.
• 22:46 - 26:10: The making of "Anxious Nation" and Laura's experience with documentary filmmaking.
• 26:11 - 28:30: Tips for parents on managing their child's anxiety.
• 28:31 - 31:00: How to access and benefit from watching "Anxious Nation."
• 31:01 - 33:00: Laura’s final thoughts and encouragement for parents.

Key Points:

• Laura Morton’s documentary "Anxious Nation" sheds light on the crisis of anxiety among children and provides practical solutions.
• Open conversations and early intervention are crucial in managing children’s anxiety.
• Social media and modern societal pressures significantly contribute to rising anxiety levels.
• Parents should be aware of their actions and how they might unintentionally add to their child’s anxiety.
• Strategies such as mindfulness, therapy, and community support can make a significant difference.

Links and Resources:

• Watch "Anxious Nation" on Amazon and Apple TV.
• Visit the Anxious Nation website for more information and resources.
• Learn more about Laura Morton on her Instagram and LinkedIn.

If you found this episode helpful, please follow the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. For more resources and community support, join us at CoveyClub.com.

“When you figure out your ‘why’ everything else is smooth around you.” That’s what Azra Khalfan-Kermali says is the secret to success when taking over a family business.  Her father, a commercial artist in Tanzania, was a successful sign maker. When he and his wife moved to Queens, NY, he opened a sign and plaque-making family business, naming it after his daughter, Plaques by Azra (https://www.azra.com/).  “I grew up watching [my father and mother] balancing company, community, and business.” she says. “They were passionate...They socialized a lot...They were part of the community. It was nice having that childhood.”  The business targets the muslim community. “This is one of the only Islamic award compan[ies] in the world,” Khalfan-Kermali says. Though she didn’t grow up expecting to take over the family business, after a divorce from her first husband,  she decided to get her college degree, apply for the Goldman Sachs 10000 Small Business program and the Tori Burch foundation. She negotiated a price for the business from her parents (“so it was fair to my siblings”) and they accepted.  As a woman who observes the Islamic veil Khalfan-Kermali says her biggest challenge was deciding to show herself outside the home because it might lose clients. “I didn’t want my parents to suffer a loss because I was going out to meetings,” she says. “Before Google, you can’t find a picture of me. I would talk to clients and no one knew who you were or what you looked like. It was like that for a long time.” 

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“I didn’t go into [animal rights],” says Tharaka Sriram, founder of Ocean Education. “The topic found me and was a stage five clinger!...a little flame spark that got into me and created this whole different path.” In fact, Sriram, whose parents emigrated from Sri Lanka to Germany, grew up wanting to be an interpreter. “I speak six languages fluently. But when I had an internship as an interpreter in the office, I found it so boring. All you do is translate what other people do or say. There’s no place for your own thoughts...and I wanted to have my own opinion out there.” After Sriram escaped from her strict, conservative Tamil family, she went on to work for NGOs focused on women’s rights around the world. She worked on bringing micro credit to women in India and domestic violence Peru. In the small town of Tortugas, she discovered the connection between overfishing and domestic violence and her interest in marine ecology was born. “The home of marine animals is being polluted and overfished,” she says. “There’s not enough space to be free and procreate. I want to give them a voice and make them important.” 

 

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“I’m a classic case of reinvention in the middle of life,” says Elizabeth MacBride, founder of the Times of Entrepreneurship (https://timesofe.com/), a website that reports on entrepreneurship, and co-author with Seth Levine of the new book, “The New Builders: Face to Face with the True Future of Business” (https://amzn.to/3g50weh). “Seven years ago I went through divorce that left me without a job….I had seven thousand dollars in my bank account. The mortgage was $2500 dollars and my only career was as a part time writer.” MacBride, however, noticed a hole in the market at the intersection of finance and entrepreneurship and wondered why no journalist was covering it. “[The website] worked because it’s business and finance,” she says. “It was the only area that paid writers at all….I was willing to combine the storytelling with finance.” MacBride speaks with CoveyClub founder, Lesley Jane Seymour, about how to ask for employment help from friends and associates and how to really know your value. 

 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Without Fear!”

“When I left [corporate] it was a difficult transition,” says Kate Isler who’d spent 20 years (most of them overseas) in international executive leadership and as a CEO for a digital health startup. “I always identified myself as a corporate executive. I had business cards and a persona. When I left I had nothing. People stopped returning my calls. I was just Kate Isler….It made me look across my life and reevaluate: what did I want to do?” Her first steps? Kate reached out to people on LinkedIn to set up coffees or phone calls: “98% of them said yes.” She then asked them to tell her about their job: “what are your aspirations? What did you learn? I got to know people who did a variety of things,” she says. When the calendar rolled around to International Women’s Day, however, she realized that while the holiday is a major celebration of women around the world, it’s not very big in the U.S. What was missing: A market place focused on women’s small businesses. So Isler co-founded TheWMarketplace, an eCommerce platform which supports women-owned businesses, service providers and gender balanced companies. “The site is [an] economic engine for women,” she says, “and [we] earned revenue from the launch day.”

 

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13 years ago Danielle Butin, founder of Afya Foundation (afyafoundation.org) which rescues and collects discarded medical supplies to ship to 83 nations,  had a significant senior job in health care. “It did not fit what I wanted to do any longer,” she says. “I was ready to make a change. I kept making that clear. Ultimately I got a severance package to launch Afya.” Divorced, with her kids at summer camp, Butin decided that instead of looking for a job, she would travel to Tanzania to clear her head. “In the Serengeti I saw a woman bawling her eyes out. I sat down with her,” she says. The woman was a doctor in London who volunteered in Africa. She was upset because she was watching children die because she didn’t have IV starter lines. “There are moments in your life when you hear something and something inside rumbles and you have to do something about it,” Butin says. “That’s what happened to me.”  Though Butin knew nothing about international health or shipping, she knew she could “bring programs to life and inspire people.”  Back home, she began dumpster diving in hospital alleyways to see what their garbage looked like. “Because of [U.S.] hospital regulations, anything in the [operating] room has to be discarded because there could be germs or exposure,” she explains. “There are millions of pounds of [discarded] supplies.” Listen to Butin explain how Afya weathered the storm of Covid19--where hospitals who used to supply her actually called her for PPE (personal protective equipment)--and how she skirted the red tape to get supplies where they were needed. 

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“I grew up with a disability. I had an artificial leg since age four. I didn’t realize it was anything. The goal was to pass and be as normal as possible. At puberty that screeched to a halt.” So begins CoveyClub founder, Lesley Jane Seymour’s fascinating conversation with Emily Rapp Black, author of the upcoming book, “Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg.”  Black, whose previous memoir, “Sanctuary” is a brutally honest portrait of a mother struggling to balance the joy of motherhood with the tsunami of grief of losing her first born to Tay-Sachs disease-- says her disability meant she was “always really open. I never had really any privacy. People were asking me rude questions in elevators since age four.” Black, who is now an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside and at UCR School of Medicine intended to follow in her minister father’s footsteps by attending divinity school, says she was in Korea on a Fullbright when she “had a breakdown...I’d never thought about being a disabled woman.” Her new book was inspired by a visit to Frida Kahlo’s home La Casa Azul and the exhibit of the corsets and braces and artificial limbs Kahlo wore that she saw on display. “I had a huge body emotional reaction,” Black says. “I had a back brace and the leg…[Kahlo]’s such a pop culture icon. There are CVS socks with Frieda Kahlo’s face on it. But what does it mean? No one remembers she was an amputee.” 

FREE GIFT! Don’t start your reinvention without downloading CoveyClub’s starter guide called “31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinveintion Without Fear!”

After college Kerrigan Behrens, now Co-Founder and CEO of Sagely Naturals (https://www.sagelynaturals.com/), grabbed a job at UBS because her brother seemed to like banking. Her hobby was creating lists of restaurants from which she advised friends and co-workers like a concierge. Deciding restaurant management would be more fun, Behrens entered business school, eventually landing a stint with Wolfgang Puck and later Taco Bell.  “I loved new experiences, the high and the low,” she says. “But I found myself writing my own job descriptions for restaurants which couldn’t pay me.” Behrens met weekly with a friend from business school (Kaley Nichol) who was thinking about quitting her own banking job. “Then I used CBD,” says Behrens who had long suffered from endometriosis and lower back pain. “I realized I could feel better, not because I took a Vicodin!”  With CBD products hard to find in 2015 she and Nichol quickly launched Sagely Naturals, a collection of CBD, hemp-derived roll-ons and creams, and rose quickly into 15,000 stores across the country (including CVS, Sprouts and Ulta). Then Covid19 hit and Sagely Naturals had to pivot to online.  “Pain, stress, trouble sleeping; every problem was exacerbated during Covid19,” she says. Luckily too, “people were looking for help.”

Imagine that at 45 you nab your first TV show, your second at age 50.  You snag your first book deal at 53.  Now imagine that you decide your passion project is acting. You get called in for one scene but they like you so much they call you in for a second episode.  As Beverly “Bevy” Smith, author of the new memoir, "Bevelations: Lessons from a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie" (https://amzn.to/3qVjRAZ), claims: “There is one mantra to live by: it gets greater later.” And she’s got the receipts to prove it. Smith grew up a nerdy, shy but “spoiled” kid in Harlem trying to fit in with “a bunch of mean girls.”  She broke into the cliques by dressing well, dancing, and having a quick wit. Attitude served her well and made her tons of money as a fashion advertising executive when she landed at Vibe Magazine, just as hip-hop was scaling. “They didn’t have luxury advertising,” Smith says.  “Systemic racism assumed that black and brown people would not be interested in fabulous clothes. And if they were interested, they couldn’t afford them.”  Smith showed them otherwise, hobnobbing in Paris and Milan, breaking Gucci and Dior and Dolce & Gabbana. She left to do the same for Rolling Stone magazine until she left there to reinvent again, or as she told her boss—“to write, act, juggle, be a helicopter pilot.” Smith says: “When pivoting, be an explorer. We don’t know where the [next] gift is going to come from.”

“Life was good,” says Laila Tarraf. She was head of the internet division at Walmart, then Chief People Officer for Peet’s Coffee and Tea.  “I had a good circle of friends, a daughter. I was strong and capable.” Then one day her husband passed away accidentally of a drug overdose--a mixture of alcohol, pain pills, and antidepressants.  “He always drank a lot,” says the daughter of immigrants who moved to the US from Lebanon when she was seven. “I never really understood there was a problem.” Tarraf says she “was really numb. Nothing like that had happened to me. I tried to tuck it away but feelings kept coming back. And I had this little girl who was grieving...I didn’t know how to comfort her.” So began Tarraf’s journey into therapy, deep work and her examination of the stories she had always told herself about not needing anyone or anything: “My mother was more like a child...I jumped in to take care of her. But I didn’t want to do that with my daughter.”  A short while later Tarraf’s father and then mother passed away. “In four to five years I’d suffered three big losses,” she says. Tarraf left her corporate job to get certified as a coach and write her first book, “Strong Like Water: How I found the Courage to Lead with Love in Business and in life” (https://amzn.to/2Qji649). “I grew up in a home where mom and dad fought a lot and I didn’t want to feel. It happens that qualities that saved you once, now hold you back...You have to go through the valley and break down to come out,” she says. “If you don’t there is no healing or transformation.”

Linda Fears had been the Editor-in-Chief of Family Circle magazine for 12 years when four years ago, she was suddenly laid off. “It was the biggest shock of my life,” she says. “Was I stupid? Naive?…I felt sorry for myself for a few months and was really depressed.” But Fears, who was only in her early 50s, wanted to keep working. “It was clear the magazine industry was on a deep downward slide,” she says. “Of all the magazines I worked at only one is still in existence.” Fears took her interest in health and food (she loved cooking since a child), grabbed a nutrition certification at her alma mater Cornell, and started coaching friends, then clients on how to eat better and lose weight. Later, she began the blog GoodFoodRx.net, a weekly themed newsletter that dissects a nutritional issue and offers a corresponding recipe.   Covid forced her coaching online but Fears now has clients from different states. “The silver lining for me in the pandemic is that people are eating poorly and not moving or exercising,” she says.  “I thought I’d really miss my old life. But I’m really happy to be in charge of my own hours and not clock in."

“Menopause doesn't have to be a silent struggle,” says award-winning author and health expert  Dr. Barbara Dehn. With humor and expertise, Dehn – known as “Nurse Barb” on NBC's California Live – demystifies the symptoms of menopause, from hot flashes and hair loss to shifts in sex drive and sleep patterns. She joins me here for a candid conversation about embracing the changes in our midlife bodies where she offers a treasure trove of practical advice, including evidence-based solutions like lifestyle changes, natural remedies, and hormone therapy to alleviate the discomforts of menopause. Whether you're experiencing heavy periods, sleepless nights, or a waning libido, Dehn’s insights will empower you to take control of your well-being during this transformative phase.

Products Mentioned: Black Cohosh under the brand name: Remifemin Equelle - Soy metabolite for hot flashes and night sweats  Clitoral Stimulators: Lelo Sona and Womanizer Vaginal moisturizers with Hyaluronic acid: Revaree and Rephresh Coconut oil as a lubricant Anti-depressants that work for Hot Flashes and Night Sweats:  Effexor, Zoloft, Lexapro The new medication for hot flashes: Veozah Free Download: Equelle's Menopause Toolkit

Want to dive deeper? Join us Thursday, May 23 at 6pm ET!

Join us on May 23 for Nurse Barbara's class, "Has Anyone Seen My Hormones? Your Midlife Health Questions Answered," and bring along your burning questions for a session filled with laughter, learning, and liberation from menopause myths. Until then, dive into this episode and come away with a new perspective on how to navigate the unpredictable waters of midlife with grace and gusto.

Connect with Dr. Barbara Dehn:

Website

LinkedIn

And if you're keen on reinventing more than just your approach to menopause, discover the resources, support, and community waiting for you at CoveyClub. Reinvention is a journey best shared, so don't go it alone – join us and let the reinvention begin!

 

02:17 - Rethinking your attitude about your changing midlife body is important

03:21 - After 35, your body starts to change in very small ways

06:32 - 50% of women will have irregular, heavy, heavy periods

11:30 - Talk a little bit about the racial, um, and ethnic disparities in hot flashes

18:59 - So let's talk about sex drive at midlife

22:17 - Vaginal estrogen is something that I highly recommend for improving sex drive

25:42 - What about things like hair loss? I mean, I never lost hair

28:29 - When women get enough sleep, studies show it reduces risk of dementia

 

Remember to follow Reinvent Yourself, check the show notes for product links, and explore coveyclub.com for more on reinvention. Share the love with a review, and we'll see you in the next episode. Until then, keep reinventing!

 

FREE GIFT! 31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention

Connect with Lesley Jane Seymour & CoveyClub:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Join CoveyClub

So here’s the problem. You’re teaching Spanish in highschool for a total of 24 years, and early on you notice your students are bored out of their minds. “I was, too,” says Jennifer Degenhardt. “I said, they need a story.” So she gathered up the “themes” and the vocabulary demanded by the curriculum and made up more interesting stories that put characters who mirrored her students--Hispanic, from underserved communities, a boy in a wheelchair, LGBTQ, or from economic disparities--and put them at the center of the action. “After three to four years of teaching [my first] book, I published it and kept writing,” says the author of now 17 books in Spanish, 6 in English, one in German, and three translated into French. Encouraged by her students, she self-published her first book on Kindle Direct, a subsidiary of Amazon. “It’s made my life very easy,” says Degenhardt. It’s a “step by step process...and you’re in charge of your own products and you can fix your own mistakes.” Her favorite quote which she put on her refrigerator and looked at every day? “If you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t stop working toward it.”  And that’s just what she did. 

When Joyce Shulman, CEO of 99walks.fit (https://www.99walks.fit/aboutus), came home in a bad mood one day during high school, her father suggested she go for a walk. “I didn’t know what was bugging me. I waked out the door and walked for two miles. I vividly remember feeling that when I walked back into the house my whole mood had shifted.”  Shulman now offers her 12,000 members daily walking classes with coaches and meditations, and preaches the research that shows just regular walking can add seven years to an individual's life. But her path to walking wonderland was not a straight one.  Shulman began life as a commercial litigator in New York City. After marrying, she and her husband launched the “world’s first nutrition bar for dogs. which grew to include cats and horses.”  The business eventually fell apart and these serial entrepreneurs began creating the first pizza boxes with 4-color advertising. Fifteen years later they launched an e newsletter for kids and families, and then, upon noticing the health crisis among women, 99walks. “The country was getting bigger and less well,” Shulman says. “And I was watching the rise of the loneliness epidemic…For me, walking with friends and for community has tremendous value.” Best of all, walking engages those “left behind from the fitness industrial complex.”  She says: “Some older women never had a meaningful fitness program. They don’t feel like they have a place for them.” Shulman hopes that walking can also help be an answer to the depression and lack of movement caused by the pandemic.

Rebecca Moses knew from an early age she wanted to be a fashion designer. Graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), she landed her first job at Pierre Cardin and launched her own clothing line. On a trip to Italy to check out a factory, she fell in love with the owner. For 20 years Moses lived and worked outside of Milan and raised her two boys. But when her husband died suddenly in 2010,  she tells CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour, her world turned “upside down.” Returning to New York City to raise her boys, she wrote a book (Rebecca Moses: A Life of Style https://amzn.to/3sYyC8k), and dove into painting, illustration and animations for organizations like the Fragrance foundation and Bergdorf Goodman. The pandemic was “a frightening time for the entire world,” she says. “My family in Italy was in a very bad way. I could hear the sirens of ambulances which drove me crazy.” Feeling “helpless” and like she had to do something, Moses went onto Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/rebeccamosesofficial/)  and asked women to share the stories of their lives during the pandemic. She offered to draw them. “Letters flew in—humorous, sad, inspirational from six continents.” Moses “painted like a mad woman and didn’t sleep.”  400 portraits later, her project which she calls the Stay Home Sisters is going strong. “These women come from all walks of life: there is diversity in backgrounds, religion, careers. What happened next is the women connected with each other and said, ‘you’re not alone.’ It became a movement.”  Moses is still taking entries! Some of the series will be shown at the Guggenheim and the portraits of nurses will be touring a hospital. “This past year witnessed lost of people revaluation gather lives,” Moses says. “Ask yourself, ‘is this the life I want to live?’"

 

For 20 years, Dara Kurtz had a successful career in finance. “It was based on society’s definition of success—done with dollar signs and size of house.”  At age 42, the words “you have cancer” stopped her dead in her tracks.  “After that I changed. I decided I [didn’t] want to go back. [Finance] didn’t speak to my heart.” Despite resistance from her husband, Kurtz quit her job and began to write a blog. “I didn’t know what I was doing....I didn’t know how to get from point A to point B.”  Kurtz had always been a journal writer, penning her thoughts about the day to her daughters and placing her journal on their pillows to read. They would write back.  “Going through breast cancer, that stopped. None of us were in that space to communicate,” she says.  Years later she rediscovered the journals tucked away in a desk drawer. Also uncovered, a Ziplock bag of letters from her mom and grandmother.  “I was blown away by how much wisdom they contained. I had a conversation with my mom 20 years after her death. I sat and sobbed... I could feel her personality and hear her words….I knew after reading those, she would have never wanted me to be stuck in grief or let her death impact my life. It was permission to go on with my life.” From that insight, her second book, “I Am My Mother’s Daughter: Wisdom on Life, Loss, and Love” was born. (https://amzn.to/3qkV0pY)

“I use the heart chakra in relationship to money,” says Leisa Peterson, Founder of wealthclinic.com and author of "The Mindful Millionaire”(https://amzn.to/35ZzkZ8). “The heart is about receiving. How great are you at receiving money? It plays out when you’re running a business and you don’t feel comfortable being paid for the value you offer to an employer or [to a] client. When we understand that this is a symptom, we look inside.” Peterson, who grew up in Northern California, began her career as a fit model to pay the bills, eventually segueing into an MBA in finance. In 2014, after losing her father, she decided to merge her interest in spirituality with her interest in finance and helping others build their businesses, create their brands, and messages. “The journey of maturing in life is what chakras — really an ancient form of psychotherapy —  inspire… I found money is merely a physical manifestation of who you are.”  For some, Peterson says, "fear is what’s under it all.”

When Broadway shut down on March 12, 2020, Margaret Skoglund was on the cusp of realizing her dream—of becoming a Broadway general manager.  She’d already handled big shows from Mamma Mia! to The Lion King. “There are 41 disparate theaters on Broadway,” she tells CoveyClub founder, Lesley Jane Seymour. “There is no NFL, no MLB organization to mobilize all of us. There is a trade organization but no headquarters….I thought, 'we’re not going to figure out how to get back into the theater any time soon'. People thought July…I decided it would be a year.” So Skoglund and a co-founder got busy, setting up a company called Virtual Broadway (www.virtualbway.com)which “connects dancers, actors, music directors to corporate America.”  She started by knocking on the doors of her college alumnae and asking: “Do you need a Hamilton actor to come teach motivational tips?” Turns out they did.  A multinational financial firm celebrated their sales team with 45 minutes of specially designed online content. A group of attorneys were led in a stress-relieving wellness activity from actors in the Lion King.  “The most fun is putting artists together who get to work at a moment that is devastating,” says Skoglund.

“I've set up over 33,000 dates. And I’m responsible for 4200 marriages.” So says Andrea McGinty, founder of 33000dates.com who says she knows how to psych out the online dating sites in a sophisticated—and now during Covid19, safe—manner.  “It’s about being proactive. If you’re in your 40s or 50s you have to learn to work the system.” McGinty says there are 104 million single people and "great men out there.” But the number one factor for success is to set the filters and, counterintuitively, ignore all those who respond in the first round. Answer those in the next round instead.  Then,  "Do a 5 to 10 minute FaceTime call or video chat—very safe,” she says. "Do[es the guy] look like his photo? What are his mannerisms? Does he smile? Do you like his eyes?” Keeping it short is the key. “You’re not looking for a chat buddy,” McGinty says. "The longer you stay on the phone with someone having fun, the higher your expectations for the date.”  McGinty, who created and sold the dating site for busy professionals called “It’s Just Lunch”, says that during the pandemic you can use attitudes toward social distancing as a cue: ask the potential date how they feel about social distancing. What do they do? “You’ll know if this is a safe person you want to meet” for an outdoor brunch, walk, or sitting around a fire pit. 

Rebecca Warner grew up reading Cosmopolitan Magazine, believing Editor Helen Gurley Brown's mantra: You can do anything you want to. “It proved to be true,” she says today. By age 28 Warner had worked her way up to VP at the largest commercial bank in Florida, was raking in the bucks, and buying a condo. “But like lots of women in banking in the 70s, 80s, and 90s,” she says, "I was overcoming sexism and jealousy.” When the governor of the state called a special legislative session to enact stricter abortion laws, Warner was infuriated and sat down to write a book about it. “I stayed in banking but enjoyed the life of writing,” she says. That's even though the book was rejected by publishers. Subsequent years took Warner into caring for her ailing parents. She self-published the rejected book, then wrote another self-help manual for women seeking relationships, and now, “My Dad My Dog” (https://amzn.to/3t1jE1b) about caregiving. “I had the feeling I should be the person to talk about caregiving because I’d done it. I could bring people together with resources and support and lift up these in-home caregivers.” Warner says 1/6 of the country takes on “caregiving in some capacity” and that’s only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Getting control of your finances gives you a sense of “independence" and “self-reliance” says Claudia Mott, CFP, CDFA (Certified Financial Planner and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst). She should know. After spending 13 years as a sell-side analyst on Wall Street with copious travel, she burned out and decided to stay home to raise her three kids. Her husband, who also worked in finance, did the taxes and like many women, she says she "simply signed off”.  While driving her daughter to preschool, she heard a radio add for financial planning and decided to go back to school.  One day she looked deeper into her family’s finances and discovered her husband had a secret bank account supporting a girlfriend. For that reason, Mott says she can understand the “shame” very successful women feel who have not grabbed hold of their financial wellbeing. “If I had a dollar for every time women say ‘I’ve been stupid’” she says, she’d be rich.  But Mott believes everyone can benefit from taking hold of their financial security. “The first step is acknowledging , ‘Am I going to be all right?’” she says.  “Lots of divorcing women are fearful of the first year and how to manage the financial picture….But you can learn to be on your own and you’re managing.”

 

“I started [the gallery] on a shoe string,” says Marguerite Oestreicher “A friend was an artist in an old townhouse in [New Orleans]. The front half was a gallery and so I set up shop and found artists.” Since she didn’t want to go “commercial,” she says that "the gallery supported itself but it didn’t make money.” To keep herself financially afloat she landed a job as a magazine editor, later, becoming the publisher. She had just moved all her art from her gallery to her home when Katrina hit. It was her home that flooded.  Oestreicher shuttered the gallery  and evacuated with her son to North Carolina where she landed a job working for a conveyor belt company.   “Katrina was a reset—in thinking, in resilience, in reinvention,” she says. "No one died in my family. But seeing how people suffered. I knew I couldn’t do a corporate job. I wanted to do something to make [New Orleans] a better place.” And she did that.  Today Oestreicher is Chief Advancement Officer for the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity. Her key to reinvention?  “Find your strengths and ask, where would these skills be good?”

“I always come back to passion,” says Robin Salls, the pro-age powerhouse behind Tangled Silver magazine and the #IAmSilver beauty movement. “Look at what your passion is and see if you can turn it into something else where you can build a revenue to support yourself.” In an industry where glossy pages often tell tales of youth and retouching, her vision is a refreshing call to action. Lesley Jane Seymour sits down with the fierce entrepreneur to discuss the ins and outs of cultivating a niche magazine at a time when print is said to be on the decline. Salls shares her personal journey from a business-minded mom to a magazine founder, her insights on the gray hair revolution, and the unexpected challenges and triumphs of starting a magazine from scratch. For anyone contemplating a change – whether it’s your hair color or your career path – this conversation will teach you how you can turn your passion into a successful reinvention.

If you're inspired by Robin's story and seeking your own reinvention, join CoveyClub for resources, support, and community with like-minded women. Don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe for more inspiring stories of transformation!

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“I had two little girls and my husband had cancer and my brother had AIDS. They died in the same year.” So says writer Rosemary Keevil, who spent the next six years as a “high functioning alcoholic.”  Unable to understand her own pain and to manage her high-powered career as a TV news reporter, she  turned to alcohol—and,  after a night with “Mr. Wrong”, a dip into cocaine. “It was shameful,” she says. “I was driving the kids while high.” One day she blacked out in behind the wheel. “I got a letter from the police that I was seen driving erratically,” she says and that sent her to a friend’s spiritual retreat where she learned about rehab. “I knew this was the next step.” That’s where she began to understand that the “only way to get past [grieving] is accepting it….It was the same with addiction: I had to accept my abominable behavior as a mother.”  Today, her memoir, “The Art of Losing it; A Memoir of Grief and Addiction” (https://amzn.to/387UFS1) shares her struggle in the hopes that others will realize they are not alone—and that they can change the outcome. “Acceptance…doesn’t let you off the hook,” she says. But it “allows me to move forward. It’s what I do today that is important.”

 

Anne Bokma spent four years writing a column about people who are spiritual but not religious; then she spent a year actually trying 24 different ideas for her book called “My Year of Living Spiritually” [https://amzn.to/3lqB03D]. “I did drumming circles, reiki, singing in choirs, and a pilgrimage to Thoreau’s pond,” she says.  “I gave up booze. Did witches. Learned to read tarot cards and even did magic mushrooms!” All of which is surprising if you know Bokma’s religious heritage. She grew up in a town of 1000 people in Ontario, the daughter of Dutch immigrants in a very religious household which taught her that we are all born sinful and should not mix with those outside the culture. Bokma went to journalism school and in her 20s, left the sect:“My family was devastated by my departure…. I had to struggle with my loss of family—especially my mother; I felt I’d lost my best friend.” Bokma talks with CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour, about how she reinvented herself spiritually, found her way back to a relationship with her mom, and how she designed a morning routine to change the way she approaches each new day. “None of us get to midlife without loss,” she says. “It’s a universal truth. But if you can speak honestly about loss, you can connect."

At age 29, Linda Olson was strapped inside a van that stalled on a railroad track. A train hit the van and she went on to live her very full life as a mother, radiologist, and triple amputee. At 71, she has published her first book, a memoir called  GONE (https://amzn.to/2TQf85q), and is newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.  After the train accident, she says, “I had a choice to make: Do I want to be happy or not?” There were people standing at the end of her hospital bed unable to look her in the eye when she decided “I want to make them happy and so I focused on their mental attitudes.  It worked. They put me in a wheelchair, I went out to the garden and started making lists of what I am going to do when I got back home.” Growing up, Linda’s mother would post a list of her daily required activities on her door and the focus—both then and after the accident-- helped her get through each day feeling accomplished. “I still have the lists [I made that day],” she says. “They got me back into rehab and after four months I walked a mile with my prosthetic legs.” Today she is still pushing the boundaries of her physical abilities. “After 41 years there are new things I have to figure out,” she says, "—like filing my nails with one hand.” Her husband used to do it for her, but just the other day, Linda says she designed a way to do it herself. “It’s about accepting, adapting, innovating. Make a game of it, “ she says.