Reinvent Yourself

#159: When Career Transformation Leads to Personal Reinvention (Kristine Deer)

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!”

#158 Reinventing When Life Makes You a Double Caregiver (Laurie James)

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!”

#157 Running Her Side Hustle on One Hour a Day (Nicole Malcolm-Manyara)

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!”

#156 Graduating from Smith College at Age 67 (Ann Dowsett Johnston)

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!”

#155 Growth is in the Struggle (Jennifer Pate)

“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!”

 

#154 Don’t Think of it as a Reinvention, But as a Next Step (Marlene Wallach)

“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!”

#153 Pay Attention to Your Intuition (Sandy Weiner)

“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!”

#152 How a City Inspired a Reinvention (Debra Shriver)

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!”

 

#151 When Your Parents Expected a Doctor But You Do Everything Else (Catherine Balsam-Schwaber)

"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!”

#150 What I’ve Learned from 150 Reinvention Interviews + Celebrating 100,000 Downloads

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!”