Podcast Ep. 078 - How to Reinvent Yourself and Your Business with Lesley Jane Seymour
Melissa:
[00:00:00] Okay. Thank you all for being with us today. I have a very special guest with me, Seymour, and she is, uh, gonna, we're gonna talk all about reinvention today. And No problem. Yeah. And I'm gonna ask her, we're gonna get started, um, with our conversation, I'm gonna ask her to introduce herself and then we're just gonna dive right in, talking about reinvention as women in midlife or going from nine to five to entrepreneurship, all that great stuff.
So lots of reinvention at all, um, stages and ages, but particularly around midlife. So welcome , and I would love it if you just introduce yourself
Lesley Jane Seymour: to my audience. Sure. I'm Jane Seymour, and some of you might know me from my previous life, which was being an editor-in-chief of various magazines.
A lot of people have followed me from magazine to magazine. Um, I did y well as editor-in-chief, I did my, then Red Book, then Mary
[00:01:00] Claire, then more. And um, you know, I've worked at other magazines. I worked at Vogue for nine years and at Harper's Bazaar for three. And, um, so a long run there. Um, then, uh, when they folded more magazine, I launched Covey Club, which is a platform for women, 40 plus who are in transition.
Mm-hmm. Um, trying to figure out what's next for them. And we really figured out how to. Help women reinvent themselves. That was the, the, I didn't really know what we were gonna do. I thought I was going to publish a vi a, a digital magazine. Mm-hmm. That's what I thought I was gonna do, because that's all I knew.
But really my why is about helping women find their voices and helping them find their next thing, whatever their thing is gonna be. Because when I had to do it, um, you know, I've had a lot of times, you know, where I've had a. Figure out what's next. But it was always within the same field. I wasn't going off and being a total
[00:02:00] entrepreneur, it was, you know, well, I had a baby.
Or you switched to a different magazine or you, you know, liked that let go from one or one went outta bus. It wasn't, but you were, the business still existed. Yeah. Um, when they closed more in 2016, the business doesn't exist anymore. I mean, if you go to, you know, if you go to a supermarket or you go to the pharmacy now, The, the magazine racks are bare.
Mm-hmm. There's nothing in there. It's a lot of chunk. Um, and it doesn't exist anymore. It's all become podcasting, which is what I believe the new magazines really are. Mm. And, um, You know, paper, paper is gone, basically, which is good for the trees, but, um, you know, sad for us who grew up in, in those kind of things.
And, um, what was interesting about Covey is when I really thought I was going to publish this digital magazine and found out that just wasn't a, it wasn't possible as a solopreneur. Um, But what we had to do during
[00:03:00] Covid is we had to really lean into the club part of it. I always knew it would be a club of some sort.
I didn't really know what that meant, but I picked the name Covey Club instead of just the Covey. The Cove, mm-hmm. Is a small group of birds and um, I had to lean into that, like what does that mean all, and I really love to connect women. That's one of my favorite things to do, is to put people in a room and don't know each other and say, you need to meet so-and-so.
You're a photographer and she has a magazine or an online thing and she needs to meet you. I love doing that. I find that really, really fun. And then to find out that they've helped each other or they've gone into business, or I just get a kick out of it. I'm a matchmaker, a bus, a kind of a business and friendship matchmaker.
I am not a love matchmaker. Every one of those don't call you. Don't call me for that. Good with the other stuff. Um, and I thought, how can I take this and actually move it online? Yeah. And um, so we did, during the pandemic, we really honed what we did. We were teaching five days a week. People really wanted, you know, they needed things to do and
[00:04:00] they wanted to connect.
Mm-hmm. And we really helped women connect, um, with each other. And that is, Where our, what our sort of mantra is now, which is we say, um, we hold a space for you while you figure out what's next. Mm-hmm. And that's exactly what Covey Club is. And my job as the kind of editor-in-chief of Covey Club is I go out there and find the products, people, places, and things for you.
Um, I edit them down. I only give you the best. I only give you the stuff I really trust. And then you decide what you need each person's journey into. The next thing is going to be different. No, yours, not the same as mine. Um, and I may need these three things. You need those five things. They're very different and um, but you'll get there.
And what we, we do is we crash people into each other with our, um, pods, which are small groups of women working together. Three to seven women at a time on any, you know, we have different areas. It could be, yeah, personal reinvention, it could be job
[00:05:00] reinvention, it could be elder care. Sometimes that's a big issue.
Mm-hmm. We have a writing pod, we have a marketing pod, we have a podcasting pod. We have, you know, All those different areas where people can get together and work in small groups and really make things happen and hold each other accountable. And now what's really fun is we're doing these three 30 day reinvention, um, uh, challenges where we put women together and we pick an, you know, Pick something like we did it in January, it was reinvention, and for 30 days you do a tiny five minute action.
Mm-hmm. And we hold each other accountable. We meet, we meet up twice a week to talk about our wins and our losses. And you'd be shocked at what you can do in a month. Like if you think, you know, you're a lawyer, but you wanna sell real estate, and you think, how am I ever gonna transition into that? Yeah. By 35 minute movements.
By the time the month ends, you're already on your way. It is a
[00:06:00] crazy thing that can happen. It sort of tears away that big mountain feeling. Yeah, the mountain is too big and I can't, I can't even approach it. And, um, once you get moving, the snowball effect happens. And, um, it's been really delightful to see people who started out, you know, they just wanted to clean out a closet and they ended up, you know, Going through their wills, going through like all, I was like, oh my God, they did their whole house.
And then, you know, and then they, the end point was this one woman said that she was gonna start doing her digital photographs. I was like, now you're insane. Like, nobody does their digital photographs. Just, that's too much. Um, you have other things to do, um, find other things to, you know, to organize and all that.
But, um, it's amazing stuff that can be done and when you do it together. Yeah. It's much easier. Mm-hmm. And when you, when you help each other as you go through this, I mean, as you know, With starting a new business,
[00:07:00] if you've been a corporate cog, it is really, really tough. I mean, for me it was very, very hard.
I mean, I've been a freelance writer here and there when I would pop in and out of being a, you know, a journalist, all that. Yeah. And that's fine. Um, but when you really wanna start a business, like, you know, and there's a lot for 20 year olds, there's nothing when you're over 40. Yeah. Like there's nobody to talk to you about how to do it.
Yeah. And unless you have some friends, You know, and, and you go into these groups with the 25 and 30 year olds and they're going boom, boom, boom, blah. And like, look at this video, and the video is going so fast you can't even see the marker. And I'm like, I can't, I can't see it. Like where is the, like what are you showing me?
Where's the button? Yeah. It's like not meant for us, you know? And it's different. It's just different. Yeah. I have noticed that. I've noticed that for sure. So we opened up that door to make, to make it, um, more friendly to women like us.
Melissa: Nice. I love that. So I would love to hear you talk a little bit
[00:08:00] about the process and the experience for you of creating a community
Lesley Jane Seymour: for reinvention
Melissa: while you're going through your own reinvention.
Lesley Jane Seymour: Oh yeah. What you learned from that process. Pretty hilarious. Yes. Well, I guess, you know, look, we all know you don't have to, you know, be in a car crash to write the story about the car crash around the corner, but boy, it sure helps, doesn't it? Yeah. Um, because you, you know what's going on. You understand the problems, you understand the issues, you understand what you didn't hear, what someone didn't tell you.
You understand the holes in the process. Um, mm-hmm. And for me, literally I was getting my degree up at Columbia. I thought that I would go into sustainability cuz it was so clear to me I wasn't gonna run another magazine. It was like I was just, if I ran another magazine, which I could have done, it'd go outta business in two years.
Mm-hmm. Like I was looking for a window that was larger than that. Yeah. So I said, what am I really interested in? Anyway, I'd always had an interest in the, in interest in the environment.
[00:09:00] So I went up to Columbia at night and got my degree. I was working on my degree for the last. That was the last four years of more at night.
And I thought what I'll do is I'll engineer it. They're gonna pull the plug on this, at some point I'll engineer it. So the two happen simultaneously, and then I'll just move over into the beauty business, which needs a lot of help, um, in sustainability. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's what I'll do next. Um, I didn't know that the Covey Club, um, thing would happen.
I didn't know my readers would be so angry on the day that we closed and they pulled the plug two years before I had my degree. So I had to decide. Yeah. Like what do I, what do I do now? Um, I finished the degree while I launched Covey Club and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do all time this thing and see what happens.
Mm-hmm. Cause I dunno where I'm headed. Um, luckily what I did is I took my severance pay and I said, I'm gonna put it towards, An an entrepreneurial idea and it was my readers who came to me and said, do something else for us. And 627 of them took a
[00:10:00] 54 question survey to the end, and I built Covey Club off of that.
I read a few books about, you know, the lean launch. I didn't build the whole thing, um, I just built a part of it. Mm-hmm. Um, And then I finished my degree in the middle of it. You know, if I, if I had known I was gonna do Covey Club, I wouldn't have started my degree, but I was so far into it, there was no point, you know, there's no point in stopping at that point.
Yeah. So I have a degree in case I wanna do something in the sustainability area, which is fascinating and really close to my heart. And, you know, if I find something I wanna do voluntarily down here, I will. Yeah. Um, But Covey took off. And so, um, that's what I'm doing. But there were times literally where I'd be sitting at my kitchen table saying, okay, should I be doing the project in Cambodia about sustainability, or should I be learning how to use MailChimp?
And it was like, what do I wanna do this morning? It was like this weird kind of crazy.
[00:11:00] Discordant thing that happens when you're, um, becoming an entrepreneur. It's just like that. Yeah. Yeah. Which I like. I like that it's challenging. It makes your brain, it makes your brain work in ways that it doesn't work when you're in corporate life for a long, long time.
And it challenges you, it really, really, really challenges you and, um, Boy, there's so many times where you say like, I can't do this. Mm-hmm. It's too hard. Like, there's no momentum here. Like when am I gonna get some momentum? When is the thing gonna start happening? When is, you know, when there's no momentum at the very beginning of a business.
Yeah. That is just Melissa, the worst moment. I mean, I, for me, it was until we launched, you know, it was a good year and a half of planning Covey before we launched. Yeah. But there's nothing to wake up to. It's like if you don't do anything this morning, nothing happens. Now Covey's got its own life. I mean, there are people sending me notes, I gotta do stuff.
It's that's own, it has its own
[00:12:00] momentum when you are a corporate executive. When you take over a project, the way I look at it is you're parachuting into a rushing stream. Mm-hmm. You're hoping, you're hoping you're gonna be able to swim fast enough to catch up and understand what's going on. But you are jumping in the middle, the stream is already rushing.
Mm-hmm. You're doing your own thing. You are literally, there's no stream. You have to create the stream, which is, that is a really tough climb. Yeah. So what
Melissa: was that like for you? Like how did you keep going during that time where there wasn't the validation or the
Lesley Jane Seymour: people? Right. No bad. No team. No, it was hard.
I mean, I thought of giving up many times. I thought, you know, like if I just get up from this table and walk away, that's it. It's over. Like, that's it. I can, I can decide to just like no one will know because yeah. Never been born yet. So, um, yeah. I'm a very persistent person, so I guess it was okay for me to,
[00:13:00] like, I'm, I'm actually, that's one of my better qualities is that, um, I'll hang with something because I've learned, I've learned the power of persistence being an editor in chief of many magazines where, I mean, you know, This one's dying.
This one's going out of business. Somebody else comes in and takes over. You know, you thought, you thought you were dead. They have a new boss. They get absorbed. Like, you know, life is, is not, it's not what you, you know, what you think today can radically change tomorrow. Yeah. So if you really believe in something, you may as well hang in there.
Right. Because you don't know what can happen. Even if you're like thinking like, oh my God, this is just a disaster and we can never be saved. And then, you know, then. They sell the company or you get a new partner or you know, you walk in the next day and they go, Hey, we've got a new partner for you and you wanna go in this direction.
And you're like, oh, okay. And that's exciting again, you know? Yeah. So, you dunno. So I guess I can, I've learned to hang
[00:14:00] in there through those things. Yeah. Um, and I did that with Covey as well. So how do you apply those Melissa: lessons that you learned in starting Covey Club in how you. Advise your members
Lesley Jane Seymour: now in their own reinventions.
Well, I use all that knowledge. I don't personally invi advise them because we bring, we bring in, you know, experts like you to speak on specific topics. Because I'm not an expert in entrepreneurship, I can only sort of, you know, stand on the side and go, yes, she's right. That's what I felt, you know? Um, and I'll write about it and I'll talk about it, my experience, but I don't think my n of one, um, is, you know, By any means how everybody experiences it.
I think we all have a common experience. Yeah. And we can talk to that. Yeah. Um, but we bring in experts to talk about everything. I mean, that's, that's what our teaching is about. It can be everything from, you know, executive leadership to how to, you know,
[00:15:00] how to, should you buy a franchise? How to create your personal brand.
Oh my goodness. Um, you know, How to build a website. Do you need a website? You know? Yeah. How to, how to manage your time so that you can have, you know, you can make X amount of money in one month and only work 25 hours a week. I mean, those are all the kinds of things that we put in front of people. And I'm not the expert.
I bring in the experts and um, they talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
Melissa: so in terms of how you think about reinvention and kind of that process that you see people go through and that you went through, yes. You know, how does that kind of relate to that experience of becoming an entrepreneur? I feel like cuz you thought you were going towards sustainability and you were getting the degree and you thought things were going that way and then the magazine folds early detour and here you are,
Lesley Jane Seymour: right, detour.
[00:16:00] Yeah, I think, you know, there was, we did a lot with reinvention when I was at More, more had a column called Second acts and I learned a lot from those women and one of them said something that stuck in my mind, um, for a long time, which was, It's, you know, first of all, we learn it's all about mindset. And what she said is, once you decide that you're going to reinvent, you have to keep your eyes open for every reinvention possibility that throws itself in your path every day.
Interesting. I love that. And that's an incredible, incredible insight and incredible words of wisdom, because it does. Mm-hmm. When you are, you know, it's, it's like that thing when you decide you're gonna buy a jeep, And then suddenly notice everybody in your block has a Jeep, but you didn't notice that before, right?
Yeah. It's kinda like that, that kind of awareness and um, it really is true. Once you. Once you make that decision, this is what you're gonna do. Your eyes
[00:17:00] then become open to all the different possibilities. And sometimes it will be one or two things. Like, you know, I didn't know which way my thing was gonna go.
And I had a, you know, I'd already invested in the, in the master's degree, it was a lot of money. Mm-hmm. But I'd also invested in my severance pay in Covey clubs. So, which was gonna go, which way? You know, and, um, But it, it just, and I, and I always thought that, you know, maybe I didn't, I really had no idea which was gonna go which way.
Yeah. And I, I love that, you know?
Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I love that mindset of being open to opportunity, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because that is, like you said, it's what you're looking for. You will find
Lesley Jane Seymour: Yes, fair. So if you're open
Melissa: and looking for opportunity, Rather than looking for all the things you can't do now, maybe that you're That's right.
Midlife or I can't get a job cuz I'm too old or whatever. That's
[00:18:00] right. That's right. You're opening to those opportunities and what comes up because of that.
Lesley Jane Seymour: Totally true. If you open your mind up to it, you will see it. It's a, it's a wacko kind of illogical thing, but it definitely happens. Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa: So when you talk about mindset, what are some of the other important pieces of mindset and what that means to you and kind of how you live that in your own life, in your own
Lesley Jane Seymour: reinvention?
Well, mindset, you know, we know the studies on mindset that you can have an open mindset or a closed mindset, and. We know that you can change the mindset if you want to. You can actually, even if you tend to be mostly closed, if you make a decision that you wanna have a more open mindset on something, you can.
Mm-hmm. And, um, When I, you know, I do a podcast, which is called Reinvent Yourself with James Seymour, and I've interviewed like 200 women who have in middle-aged who have done
[00:19:00] this. And some are multiple reinventors, some are, um, one time reinventors. I mean it, and it runs the gamut from everything from, you know, people who've taken over a family business to people who've had horrible health issues and worked against them and still reinvented themselves.
I mean, People who've lost everything in one year. And what you find, I find, cuz people ask me what, you know, what, like what's the thing that holds them all together in its mindset? Mm-hmm. Mm. That they believe they can do it. And there are some, you know what I call woowoo, um, people mm-hmm. Who say they see it.
And now I've never, I've never been very good at that myself personally. But there are a lot of people who say, I see myself, I see myself, you know, driving the roll race. I see my, and that's how I got myself there. And um, you know, I haven't quite mastered that visionary kind of thing, but there are people for whom that really, really, really
[00:20:00] works.
And we know that small. Visions like that. You don't have to see yourself, you know, on top of the world and, you know, being the, you know, the, the top person of everything. But you might see yourself way far down the road further. Than you are today. Mm-hmm. And that really is how you do it. Um, when I was at Vogue, I didn't ride, I didn't drive cars, but I was a really good writer and my boss at one point came to me and said they wanted to give me the car column.
And I was like, I was like, Does it matter that I don't drive? Cause this was in New York, I imagine,
Melissa: right? In New York City. Nobody drives take
Lesley Jane Seymour: to drive in New York City. I wasn't. I didn't, I didn't know how to drive. I had avoided it. But here is an opportunity, right? So I decided to learn to drive. I said, you know, I'm gonna learn to drive.
And I hired Taggarts and I learned to drive on Vogue Magazine and um,
[00:21:00] I had to learn like these. I traveled the world because that's what they do with cars. When they bring out a new car, they don't send it to your house like a mag, like a makeup item. Yeah. They trip you on trips because that's the only way they can show you how the car works.
And they have the car themselves, right. So I learned from all these guys that, you know, they taught me really, I got beyond Taggarts and then I had the best drivers in the world teach me everything. Cuz I was like going at like 50 miles an hour and they're in the backseat going, you gotta go fast. So, um, but what they taught me is I was looking right in front of me.
What they said to me is, you can't do that. You're never going to get there. You need to lift your head up and you need to look all the way down the road as far as you can go into the distance. And I was like, really? And they were like, yes. That's the way that you're gonna stay on the road the right way.
Looking down here is actually going to cause an accident. And you know they were
[00:22:00] right. And if you think about how you drive, you look way down the road. You're not looking right in front of you. And that's kind of entrepreneurship and it's, and reinvention. Mm-hmm. You have to look farther down the road.
You can't look right in front of your face. That will not get you to where you're going. So even if you're not the big woowoo, you know, Envisioning yourself at the top of Mount Everest person. Yeah. If you look just down the road far enough, um, and keep that going, you will get there. It's a very weird, yeah, very weird.
The brain will take you there. Yeah,
Melissa: I love that. I talk a lot about, um, getting to know your future self, and so it's kind of that similar idea of visualization, but for me it's, I can't always like picture her or what she looks like. Mm-hmm. I mean, I, there's like bits and pieces of like what her clothes feel like or things like that that I'll get, but what's easier for me is I'll think about what am I gonna feel like, what kind of, yes.
The feeling of feelings will I
[00:23:00] have? Yes. About myself, about my business. Yes. At that time, yes. And so that for me has been easier than like, you know, visualizing some detailed,
Lesley Jane Seymour: I don't know picture, but, but yeah, I do.
Melissa: I think it's definitely
Lesley Jane Seymour: very powerful. Um, yep. Technique visioning definitely works. Um, you know, doing a vision board, putting all those things out there for yourself, it definitely makes a difference.
Yeah. So talk
Melissa: to me a little bit about reinventing and some of the, the fear that comes up with that
Lesley Jane Seymour: and, oh yeah. Oh God. The challenges
Melissa: and reinvention. You know, cuz we all know that our primitive brains, our primitive selves want us to stay safe in the cave where there's, you know, we don't have to really be afraid.
We can just sit in our cozy. Life, but we step out and we decide we're gonna reinvent. So what is,
[00:24:00] how do
Lesley Jane Seymour: you deal with that fear? Well, the fear is, and people said things to me like, , why would you wanna take this risk? You have such a, a good reputation and people know who you are and what if you fail?
And I was like, I. Uh, I don't think I have a choice. Like I have to keep doing this. Like, just because my magazine went outta business, I was very clear that my why is helping women have a voice and helping women, you know, educating women about what the things are that they wanna do and that to have a better life around the world.
I mean, that's basically, that's what I did as an editor-in-chief of a magazine. I wasn't. Mm-hmm. It's not like my why ever changed, it's just my vehicle changed. So, It actually never occurred to me. It was like, I mean I learned very early on. I had a great therapist in my twenties who said, I guess I was at, I must have been at Bogue at the time.
I don't, or no, I guess I was at, maybe I was at Women's Wear Daily. I don't remember. I was somewhere fancy and he said, you know, even
[00:25:00] if you leave this place, you still have it when you're pasta louder. Sorry, one second. My apologies. I'll call you back. Okay. I'm on a call. Okay. Sorry about that. That's okay.
Keeps calling some, some crisis of some sort. Um, so, um, what you learn is you have, you have your experience in your back pocket. Mm-hmm. It doesn't leave you, you already have it. And, um, So I felt very confident that like, you know, so if I fail on this, I have my whole history. My history's already great. I have it.
Like this is the time to take a chance. Like, who cares? Like, I don't care. I, but I just also, I'm highly motivated, self-motivated. Mm-hmm. I'm not somebody who can sit around and do nothing. That's just not my personality. Mm-hmm. And so, um, I just plowed right ahead
[00:26:00] and just said, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna try it.
And you know, when I ran into the moment where I realized nobody was gonna buy a digital magazine, cuz it had to be a business, I wasn't doing a charity. If I was gonna do a charity, I'd do a real charity. Yeah. Um, and so I had to be a business and, you know, everybody told me, no one's gonna buy a digital magazine.
And I thought, oh, if I just make a better magazine, they'll buy it, answer it wrong. Um, And I thought, you know, this could be it. Like maybe I'm dead in the water after three months. You know? That's what I was trying and I'd spent most of my money and I was like, oh crap, what do I do now? And um, that's when I leaned into the club part and I said, you know, what would the club look like?
What would that be? What would that be? Something that people would actually pay something for? And what would that, what would that mean? And what are the things you like to do in a club? Mm-hmm. And, um, so I literally went from, from there to there. But many times I thought we were dead. Many, you know, many, many, many times.
[00:27:00]
Um, you know, and it took us a while to figure out, I was not thinking I was gonna do reinvention either because I come out of a broader look at midlife. I mean, all the magazines I ran are about midlife and they, you know, But people kept coming to me for reinvention. Moore had a big re reinvention part of it.
Mm-hmm. Um, so I thought, you know, I thought it could be part of it. Um, but I. I didn't wanna hang my whole hat on that, but everybody came to me for that. So I thought, okay, if everybody sees you that way, why fight it? Just go for the reinvention thing and you can do all those things underneath it. You can reinvent your beauty, you can reinvent your style, you can reinvent your health, you can, all those things can fall under the reinvention umbrella.
Mm-hmm. And nobody's really in the reinvention how to do it area. There are people now coming out with books. You know, that they, they interviewed people and all that stuff, but no one's been down in there
[00:28:00] really helping people and figuring out how do you do it. Yeah. And, um, so I was like, okay, like claim that territory, you know, go in there and, and hang all the other stuff you're interested in under it.
Mm-hmm. And so that's kind of what we do. Yeah, I love that.
Melissa: So what do you think are some of the, uh, misconceptions or pitfalls that. That women experience when they're in reinvention And I don't even know, like do we, like, is it like getting your period when you are like our start reinvention?
Lesley Jane Seymour: Yeah. No, but, but the, the just a
Melissa: period of life.
Do we all experience it? Do we choose it? Like, tell me a little bit about
Lesley Jane Seymour: it. You know, you mean in terms of what do women experience versus men or Yeah.
Melissa: What we experience as women.
Lesley Jane Seymour: Yeah. Well, women experience, as we say, more opportunities to reinvent than men. Mm-hmm. Cause we have the sexism that comes with a lot of our corporate lives.
Mm-hmm. And
[00:29:00] we have many more things that we're taking care of. We, I mean, these are just the facts and the numbers, right? Mm-hmm. We take care of, we tend to take care of children more. We take care of elders more. We, you know, we have, because of how we're socialized, we're doing more altogether. So, For us to be just, we can't just, you know, just think about the guys in, you know, mad men.
All they had to do was go to work and make money. Mm-hmm. You were never allowed that. We, we've got to do that and these other things that we take on. Yeah. We're the caregivers, we're the, you know, the planners of the family. We take care of health for the family. So reinvention comes more naturally to us because we couldn't be just, we can't be just single-minded, never have been able to, any, any woman who tried to be just single-minded probably has no, no nothing in her life other than herself because the world expects all these other things of you.
It's, yeah. It, it, you're just not
[00:30:00] allowed. You're not allowed to not be inventive and all those things. Having children, having all, all, you know, elders to take care of, they require moving things around and changing. You have, you know, if your kid is sick, You have to figure out, how am I gonna get to work?
How am I gonna deal with this? How am I gonna call the doctor? You're, you're rein, you're, there's in reinvention every time going on mm-hmm. In your life on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. So we're not new to this, but it's harder when you choose it. And you just try to figure out a path out there that's harder.
We're much more adept at it. I don't have men in the club, but I've heard from a lot of men. I think there's a Covey club for men to be done down the road because it's sadder for them. They say to me, you know, I don't ha, I'm not as creative as you are. I'm not as, I don't have other interests. All I have is this one thing I do and I'm good at and I don't know what else to do, so I guess I'm just gonna do this until I
[00:31:00] die.
It's really sad. Yeah. Whereas women really, we see things and we wanna change and we wanna be more, and we wanna grow because our lives are more full, which I think is great. Mm-hmm. And we have a lot more barricades. You know, we have, look, the, you know, the world is trying to push women back right now.
Mm-hmm. And, um, That's been a fight. Let, it's not, it's not, you know, getting to where we are, being able to support ourselves, being able to make our own decisions for ourselves, to have a family when we wanna have it, to have, being able to take care of our children in the way we want to. That's been a fight and.
We've had to learn to get around things, and so I think women are better equipped for reinvention in many ways just because of our natural place in society and all the things that have been asked for us about us. But it's harder because we make less money. We're less likely to get promoted. We're, there's still a
[00:32:00] ton of sexism.
We, you know, we, we made a few breakthroughs this year in the CEO e o suite, but we're mm-hmm. Falling behind in terms of boards. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we still don't have the power structure that we should have. Yeah. We live longer than men. Yeah. And we make less money and have less in savings. Yeah. So, It's a, you know, you are going to be asked to reinvent yourself at some point.
There's no doubt in my mind. Also, because of the way that business is going today and technology is moving so fast that even if you do one thing and you love it and you're great and they love you, And I've seen this happen. I have so many people say to me, oh, I don't have to reinvent myself. My company loves me.
I'm a lawyer in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then two months later, I get a call and they go, my company was bought. I was there for five years. Yeah. Now we'll do, and I don't wanna move to Newfoundland. And it's like, well, that's kind of what I was saying, like, you have to have a plan because it's not about you
[00:33:00] sometimes, right?
It just happens. Look at, look at, you know? Look at the, the Silicon Bank that went out of business over a weekend. Mm-hmm. What about all those people? Mm-hmm. They're gonna be forced to reinvent. Some of them are not gonna go into banking again. Mm-hmm. Like, you don't know what's coming down, down the road for you, so you must be prepared.
I, I do a, a talk about having a reinvention plan in your pocket, your backpack always. Mm-hmm. And having some money to fund it and Yeah. And looking at your reinvention. Having some hobbies, having other ideas in your life that you have cultivated that if you had to could become something for you. So you're not starting from scratch the day that you get handed a pink slip, or the day that you find out your business was bought, or the day that you know, you find out.
You have to move to a new city for some reason or who knows what, right? And if, if you don't have to reinvent, good for you, then use, you know, buy yourself a car, like yeah.
[00:34:00] But if you, you must plan, you must have other ideas. You must always be looking around the corners to see what's next, especially today.
Mm-hmm. And, um, and be prepared. You know, I tell my kids this, you know, um, is that you can't just sit back and say, oh, it's great. I love it here. It's wonderful. I love my boss. I love it. It's all gonna be great. We don't know what's happening. We don't know what's coming. Yeah. So you should have other ideas.
And what's great is today you can do reinvention on the weekends. You can do work on your reinvention at night. That's what I did with my, my degree, my Columbia degree. I got it at night. It was hard. Yeah. It was really, really hard. It was really hard, but, um, that, you know, we did it. Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about
Melissa: intentional reinvention.
I mean, What we're just talking about is when things happen to us and we're ready to reinvent, but then sometimes we come to a point where we're just like, you
[00:35:00] know, not happy. I, I'm ready to reinvent.
Lesley Jane Seymour: Yes. What is that process like? That's, it's a very similar process, but you get some time to plan. That's what's really great.
You can intentionally go out and actually decide, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the next three months and figure out, I'm like, done with this. I've done it. I'm really happy. I hit the top of my, my, you know, mountain and there's really no other place for me to go. And you have to, you know, the, you have to start asking yourself, what about money?
Mm-hmm. What about your responsibilities? What about contracts? You need to make sure that you don't have any problems there before you decide to leap off into something else, but you've got some time. That's what's great. You can lay the groundwork for all of that and see what you need to do or what you need to, um, have ready.
And then again, you can start your looking around again. That's what we do at Covey. We do these 30 day. Reinvention challenges. Mm-hmm. Where for 30 days you can
[00:36:00] take a five minute action plan, you can write yourself out. What I say is, what are, what are the five actions you could take today or in the next, you know, one each day for the next five days.
And they can be as tiny as follow somebody on social media. That's one. Make a call to my friend who's in the real estate business. And take her to lunch. You could pick up a book, you could listen to a podcast. There are so many things you can do to start moving yourself in that direction. And I mean, that's when it's really fantastic cuz then you can, you have the time to prepare, you have the time to plan, you have the time to, um, actually create a path for yourself.
Mm-hmm. And then, you know, you have to ask yourself, what is my personal brand? Is my personal brand what I want it to be? For going out there. A lot of people have, because of their business, their lawyers, their doctors, they're all kinds of stuff. They've had to be a personal brand of
[00:37:00] one thing, but they need to be a new personal brand of something else.
Yeah. So you have to go out, you know, if you don't know what your personal brand is, if you don't know what people think about you, you have to do some, um, personal brand auditing. We have a whole bunch of stuff on the site about that. How do you figure out what other people think about you so you know what you need to do?
Um, And then you have to work on your personal brand. Does anybody know who, what I stand for? Mm-hmm. And you have to figure out what is your why. Yeah. Cause as I, as I said to you, it, it's your why. That's going to cover, that's going to, it's a thread that runs through all your work. Mm-hmm. It doesn't matter.
It really doesn't matter what the work is. It's, does it fulfill your mission in life? What is your mission in life that makes you happy? Yeah. And. Whatever that thing is you're doing, does it still apply to that mission and there for nobody? There's, there's no one way to tackle a mission. Yeah. There is
[00:38:00] none, no one way.
And, uh, I, you know, I. People with health issues, people with, you know, all kinds of disabilities, um, decide, you know, they have to tackle it a different way than everybody else does. Mm-hmm. And we can do that as well. Mm-hmm. But you have to sit down and figure out what that why is. And that takes, that takes some work.
Sometimes it's great to do it with other people. Mm-hmm. And really understand what, what's your motivation? What motivates you. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think, you know, you can move. Yeah,
Melissa: for sure. And I think it's that why, and, and getting down to the root of it that compels you. And I think maybe that's a huge, um, part of reinvention in midlife.
It's like we're
Lesley Jane Seymour: f we,
Melissa: at least for me, I can speak from my own experiences, like really discovering
Lesley Jane Seymour: to the depth of my soul what my why
Melissa: is. And it's so compelling that that's what gets me out of bed. Right. You know, right. When
[00:39:00] there's, you know, not the validation or the appreciation or the clients or the money or whatever is the challenge, we can, you know, when our, why is that compelling, um, why that creates that energy that we're just going to, you know, walk through fire to make it happen.
Mm-hmm. That's really what can drive a, a successful
Lesley Jane Seymour: reinvention and a successful business. Yeah, you have to, you have to understand that, and you have to know that you have to just keep, you know, it's kind of like the driving thing. You have to keep making sure you're on the road, that same road that you wanna be on.
Mm-hmm. Because you can mm-hmm. You can end up in different places and that's all right. You can just, you know, it's kind of like, sir, she eventually gets you there. She may not take the fastest road. Rerouting, rerouting, routing, re re reorganizing. Yeah. So rerouting. Yeah. I love that.
Melissa: Well, I love this conversation.
Thank you so much
[00:40:00] for being with us. Is there anything that you would like to leave with us? Any last, uh, anything that I didn't ask or last words of wisdom?
Lesley Jane Seymour: Yeah, I'll just tell you that, um, you know what our favorite mantra is? My favorite mantra is, is it ain't over till you say it's over. Mm-hmm. You get to decide.
It doesn't matter what happens to you in your business or in your personal life or whatever. You're the master of your life, and you get to say when you're gonna change and when you're gonna do something new or if you're not. Mm-hmm. And you get to decide that just because you know something happens or because you are bored to tears or because you've made the mountain already, you get to decide, do I wanna go on anymore?
Yeah. Do I wanna continue doing this? And when you realize that it's under your control, Even if, even if the specific thing you were doing was, is no longer under your control. Mm-hmm.
[00:41:00] If your why is under your control, that's a whole different thing, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, you understand that it's, yeah. Then you, you know, then the, the world's your oyster.
You can solve your why any way you want to. Yeah. And you get the
Melissa: opportunity to live that life of meaning and
Lesley Jane Seymour: intention and purpose. Yes. Yes, yes. Absolutely. Yeah. That's so
Melissa: beautiful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. We appreciate you for being here and um, what is the best way for my audience to keep in touch with you?
Lesley Jane Seymour: Great. Come to covey club.com and you can, it's free. We have tons and tons of articles and downloads and essays, and we have some of the best writers in the world writing for us all about these topics. And, um, we also have the Reinvent Yourself with Jane Seymour podcast. You can check that out at Apple Podcasts.
And, um, we're all over Instagram. Covey Club, c o v E Y Club. Um, you can find us on Instagram and
[00:42:00] I'm on LinkedIn. Come follow me. It's , l e s l e y j Seymour. And, um, you know, we'd love to have anybody in the fold who is trying to figure this out and, um, you know, it's wonderful to, to work with strangers.
That's the weird thing nobody realizes, and I didn't even know this, but reinventing with strangers is so much easier than trying to. Get your friends who've known you forever to accept that you wanna do something else. Yeah. And cause they're very, you know, it's what you said about being in the cave.
They're very comfortable in the cave with you the way you are, and they don't want you to go out there and try something else. Right. It's scary. Yeah. They're scared of you. But when you walk in with new friends and new people, they'll accept you how you are. Nice. Day one. It's day one. Start over. I love
Melissa: that.
Yeah. So it's almost reinventing your own community a little bit
Lesley Jane Seymour: too. Yes. Yes. That's what's a, it's a really great thing to reinvent a part of your community. You'll still keep your old community. Mm-hmm. But to add an community that
[00:43:00] sees you the way you wanna be seen is really very rewarding. Nice. That's powerful.
Thank you so much. You all right. Take care. You too.
