hi everybody i'm your host jodi topas of we to me we do me is a unique design and mentoring show that specifically deals with men and women in transition there is nothing more powerful than the healing power of color design and laughter and was even more interesting and more fascinating as i have a guest on that deals with women especially in transition and she is the author of a book called what's mom still got to do with it and how it impacts your career and with great honor and excitement i want to introduce my friend i can call you my friend and our and renowned author and very talented smart about transition and what people go through when they aren't in a transition and we were talking earlier and i loved your metaphor you were talking about the iceberg you were talking about were nine percent up here on the rest is below you kind of explain i don't want to do it for you you tell me you do it better tell me what what that means so people can understand the metaphor and then we'll go into how our careers and our moms impact our decisions in our  or i was thinking about that iceberg recently and that one ninth of it is above the surface and the rest is below the surface and it could be very white yes it can and when i think about women and people in their career we see about a ninth of what people have to offer people strengths we see their interest we see their skills we may see aspects of the personality but then there's so much going on beneath the surface yeah all of my years of work with people  i tend to uncover the stuff that's underneath because i feel like that's where we get blocked so the book actually is looking at some of the unconscious stuff that we may take from old relationships and how it impacts women's lives and especially our moms our moms and i mean i read i read your book and our moms are because we're the same gender you wrote there is a special different type of connection and what i love so much about your book and of course i'm related to certain characters is you this i love this i had to i had to highlight this you in your book label different types of daughters and different characteristics they had and why they had problems or not problems in their career you have the ivy daughter the maverick daughter the butterfly daughter the copy cat daughter which you said you yourself are partly that because your mom was a therapist then and fabulous person to admire you have bootstrap brenda which you peg me right away in so i loved it when i was going through the book and reading it that even though you may not be all of those people but you may be proud it's almost like a horoscope  and i you know i mostly i mostly this but good god where did they get that from i'm not that you know i'm not a serial carol i don't know why they said that but you know that was what was so cool is that i could read and pick and choose and i was primarily you met me five minutes and you're like jodi you're bootstrap brenda so i thought it might be interesting to talk about a little bit about since you were more like copycat because you had this incredible mom to admire and  talk about those two types of women because we probably don't have enough time in the show to talk about all of them because they're both familiar to us sure so your stories really fascinating one to tell a little bit about your great mom and the great person you turned out to be jody come on it's true you know i thought a lot about being a career counselor how does a career counselor become a career counselor right but when i when i do speaking at audiences i ask you know how many people when they were young wanted to be exactly like their mother right and very few people raised didn't want to be anything like them and more people raised their oh boy i say how many people feel like your father's you know really stimulated your career  d how many people do you find your mother's words coming out of your mouth but you really have no idea where that came from exactly yeah there's such a connection but none of us really grew up saying i'm going to be exactly like my mom my mom was a therapist and you know i knew  i liked what she did but i didn't want to do exactly what she did so instead of going to social work school i studied counseling psychology organizational psychology and it sort of different decisions along the way that related relate is slightly related in miami separate and then after grad school i wanted to start a private counseling practice and real estate was very expensive in manhattan so my mom had a beautiful office on thirty third street and i said why don't i use your office one day a week that you're not there and she said sure and i will never ever ever forget the day i was waiting for my first client in her office literally in her chair my god oh my god i did all these things to be completely different and better for the reality of it all r and i started talking about it i started with mother daughter relationship workshop and twelve years gosh thousands of women would come to work out their mother do water stuff yeah it was amazing work but all along i did my own thing in career development and one day i realized that if we really dig deep enough and all of the problems i was seeing in my practice with women getting stuck and not having mentors and creating their own glass ceiling and insecurities that if i d this connections to mom and i came up with the five daughter model as a framework to really offer to women to say jihad is the mother daughter relationship so you know sadly my mom died thirteen years ago and i wasn't really able to touch the stuff for a while but you know the book is really a combination of her work and my work but i made it my own and she'd be really proud of you i mean because you have a lot of good stuff to say about that category that you fall in to and i am a little bit  and be your own and that's wonderful that you can do that in and i think it's fascinating and i've been in what i do i've noticed working with women and men in transition especially women going from we did mean like for instance mary to single going literally from we to me the only thing i noticed that you have left because the only thing your spouse isn't involved in is your career so even if you wasn't your fault or mostly your fault that you failed at this big marriage it's still a feeling of immense failure all you have left is your career so how important is to feel that sense of importance of of accomplishment with your career and now spinning it over to you how does that connect to the decisions we make do we become an entrepreneur entrepreneur or are we too afraid to do that my mom never did that she said stay for safe in the same job she didn't really like right and i went out like started we did me divorce to cora like i thank you but it's you know it's a little crazy to start like that and so what i'm fascinated by is that you really like you said before you dig underneath that and figure out like why did i make that i do what i do why don't i go the opposite and not play it safe and this stole my money into something that never existed why did you do what you do i find that fascinating and i so enjoyed you know reading your book and learning i was so much there were so many things that related to me directly and there's so many things i probably want to talk to you about after i think we need to go to recess eat masses amounts of carbs and like discuss  because you know what happens right the happy part is fulfilling in exciting in the part that is terrifying makes you want to order it's like oh my gosh you know you know we do what we do so i'm in a similar field as my mom used to be opposite but as a bootstrap so bootstrapped daughter from the framework mother they were the parents of five daughter in other words they had to take care of them of exactly had an alcoholic mother and immigrant mother but somehow their mother could be the mother and the daughter had a lot of responsibility so what's interesting about your career i looked at your studio and jodi amazing work no but it is  clean and gorgeous and sometimes we work out things in our career that we didn't have in childhood and so not to make any assumptions but as a but as a boot who maybe didn't have if you were the grown up then you're continuing to organize people  to new and to take care of your space because sometimes people's inner space feels chaotic and it's the only thing you have tangible enough to control soft as a bootstrap brenda or broods bootstrapped if i'm that and i am its only thing i can face i can move the coffee table i can choose the paint color i make my space control but i don't always have this that's where you come in well i so that's where i need you yeah people think i'm so that's tricky that people are insecure at the same time so true so we have more than just our career we have our bodies we have our exercise we have our strength women people are strong and we don't always know how strong we we're always a work in progress and quite frankly if we weren't it would be damn boring it would be so boring i am so far from perfect nor do i ever want to be and i talk about what i do work with clients and i'm trying to create a space that's nourishing and comforting through color design and laughter because my get does laughter you know what i call it acceptable flaws i call it perfect imperfection and your the same way you don't have to be nobody strive because if you're striving for bat for that that's a really sad moment in your life if you've evolved as a lot of bootstrap daughters you know my quote for her is that she feels the weight of the world on his shoulders right she grew up having to be the  of being vulnerable yeah i can let go of that and let other people take care of them a little bit right so true so true and that's why i think i am going to keep reiterating how important it is to seek out somebody like you or all of the very least by your book because every woman out there listening we all have these qualities and all of you fall into whether you're a butterfly or a copy cat all have a mother w somewhere so i think we talked about this area in the green room but i can't talk about it now well talk at lunch after wine but we we came out of that area and because of that that separation comes into play is really where women have trouble right a mother can give you a look and you crumble oh my gosh somebody else to give you a look and it's i don't care it's so important and you think you may think it is and you may say oh god i don't get along and it's ok and they're so different but you know what deep down it's so intensely hurtful when it's not positive it's so awful when you're being criticized ye some of these women are being criticized it's also not good when the mother tells you everything you do is perfect you know because that's not reality at all but also when you're criticized as a kid you believe it's you know you don't you don't think it's your mother knowing grow up and you're like wait  can't moms and we can't blame ourselves for all our children's woes well we absolutely cannot monster our best but the point is that we are really trying to forgive what we could forgive and t the best and then move forward and we hope our moms are happy themselves yeah because because it criticizing it was kids and then we feel criticizing them as adults well let me wait a minute wait a minute maybe that was about you not may i that's right and it usually is it really is and you do you do want them to be happy and the trick i think the trick my god i've been in and therapy for thirty years and i think that's part of the reason i can be strong and inspiring is because i'm aware of the differences and i'm always learning learning like that's why i loved your book i learned even more i read it i learned it i connected to you i'm so glad when you want i connected on the phone for how many hours of two hours oh never met each other came to my state my show women going into the workplace and this stuff manifest not only in career choice and transition but how women show up to work because if you're bootstrap leader yasser everything's problematic daughter and the billing a little you may be the employee who shows up late so we're yeah this shows up at work at the about work it is about yourself it's so true and work is in hugely important i mean this is how we make a living this is how we function and especially like i said in the beginning when you've women who have the career and can you imagine you know like clients all the time where now oh my gosh i'm fifty years old and starting out having said that we're take a quick break we're going to take a quick commercial break and i'm going to give you one of my a down and dirty design tip so enjoy this break i hope you learned something and we will be back with a lot of momentarily seen a few everybody jody topix back again with my special guest alon a legit who is if you just turned in author of what's mom still got to do with it we're having a fascinating conversation how moms can impact your career positive and negatively and both it's not like it's one of the other it's a little bit of this it's a little bit of that's it's kind of like i don't know it's a little bit it's like making a stew your throat when they don't you taste it you're like too much you know you fix it so she's she's i want to going to take the salt out of your relationship out of your stew if it's possible so getting back to what we were talking about and you know you mentioned a few of the different characters in the book which give a beautiful description of what you may or may not be and what i liked and i said in the beginning i'm going to reiterate is that i related to bootstrap brenda but i also related to other other characters in the book and took from it and it was kind of very eye opening for me and i went oh my gosh you know what do you help me do there have been times being the i keep saying bootstrap i'm so sorry the bootstrapped brand after reading your book i felt forgiveness because it's like asking someone to speak french who's never taken a french class and you're madam because they can't tell you where the bathroom is and french my god if the person or your mom doesn't know when they did the best they can you have to come from a place of forgiveness but that takes some time yes and some therapy you know what forgiveness is but i also don't think or and there's a few steps before exactly you know when when they are best friends with my mother that doesn't make sense to me but yeah there has to be some separation otherwise you're telling your best friend all your problems well your mother then is just going to worry about you right she's going to worry because she's going to have to worry and she tells you all her problems then then there's that incredible worry about her so we need to be our own people yeah we could be incredibly close but i think awareness of where the boundaries of dysfunction lies comes before forg i agree with you i didn't yeah i mean we're not even here that our mom when i said i'm writing this book about a self help career book for women about a mother daughter relationship a lot of women would people would look at me and say mother daughter and career that's never been paired before and it's because we haven't had a lot of role models in the workplace being our generation a lot of our mothers were not in the workplace so i see women as very true create their own glass ceiling who don't have that confidence because they never saw it at home and it had generations and generations of men have come before us yes and we're not even aware of exactly where our limitations might lie where we unconsciously hold ourselves back so yes i think separation awareness forgiveness and then and then stepped inside and thriving yeah in our own skin right in the shadow you know you never want to be in the shadow and i think that's what i think is is very fascinating about this topic is i don't think people ever i never once until i met you and read your book who neck did my career my successes my failures to my mother never it didn't occur to me i blamed it all on myself oh my gosh i didn't get this it was my fault i got this fabulous other up and lift our so it's really important we haven't had those role models women need to find a role model find a mentor because if you didn't have a mom who was successful in the workplace i saw it as i saw you and what did you set your chair i said to my mom like why don't you ever different way and i think that that's why this is a really interesting topic it's not something you would think of normally and my book i am i don't need to pat myself on the back but i think i want to just get drive home the fact that people don't understand that your space and where you live and the colors you choose dictate an instant mood it makes you feel good bad depressed calm agitated if you choose the right colors if your space is set up in a way that flows for you you will also be happier only exteriors and then when you take care of this stuff which is the interior you start to become a complete person  it's empowering to see that you can laugh after the trauma you can find happiness again like we're not in the depths we could we have the power to change our own space and our own lives that's right and i think that's what we should and we talk about what i love about us is i talk about the ex you talk about the internal space and even the space of your body changing to me while i was going through my divorce losing my house creating this business i was sprouting chin hair my breasts were dropping to the floor i told you what was dropping in the bathroom i can't say on t v but that's so i got a full those puppies up like a like a like a towel and put them back in the linen closet but all right but if i can't make fun of myself how can i help  can't say you know what i am not perfect and things happen and i p five times a night actually i got to talk about it in the workplace you know being an h r person is aware of like don't go into your performance review saying  great at everything except you know where your limitations are hire people who can do the things that you don't want to do i'm not miss technology i mean i figure it out right this is what i love about my strange is there i love  you know i like how about your next book on life there is no no that's going to be a work by writing and being in my head not my well that's was funny you are beautiful at talking to people you're just a pleasure we spent two hours on the phone without even meeting for i was in my show room and now we're here and the show will end in about four five minutes and we're still again and i feel like we only been talking five minutes quite frankly i would love love to have you come back yeah i honestly i would love to have you come back because i feel like we just touched the surface of what you do and what i do and there is such an overlap and what a pleasure to meet somebody that found in that sense something i would have never really thought about that the other point i found it out of my passion yet my husband said it was like a quaker meeting and this was my quake right now because there was no work that was more precious than the mother daughter workshops that my mom and i did i mean it was powerful and intense and emotional and sad and happy and we got so much attention and then after she died i was void of it and i love the work i do any joy and i love the counseling but i really thought it was something to say that's me and that's why it works and i think you are also your work is all about you right and that's my point in the book that if we just in reaction to society or our values or our mothers or fathers we don't become ourselves and you and i do work that is so authentic and i think everybody needs authentic work some people just want to go and work in a in a bank and they like i'm sorry and that's a good but for creative people for designers to therapist or work is such an integral part of ourselves that when people when i see patterns in the workplace that aren't going well you know it's not people to understand that it's hard for them to to know that that could be a problem well that it could be and you can you can change it's all change only your space is changeable to make you feel happy and nursed you were a life in the workplace can be you then carry it through in the world right you need to figure out what's inside and where you come from and then you need to say it in a certain way yeah it's absolutely true well having said that we are off the show is ending in seconds i want to