Reinvent Yourself

Latest Episodes:

#154 Don’t Think of it as a Reinvention, But as a Next Step (Marlene Wallach) Dec 03, 2021

Show notes

“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) Nov 26, 2021

Show notes

“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) Nov 19, 2021

Show notes

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) Nov 12, 2021

Show notes

"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.

SPECIAL OFFER! TRY ANY KINDRA PRODUCT FOR 20% OFF BY USING THE CODE COVEY20 AT CHECKOUT ON OURKINDRA.COM.

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 Nov 05, 2021

Show notes

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!”

#149 From PR to Flight Attendant to Literary Publicist (Lynda Bouchard) Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

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!”

#148 Using Two Cancer Scares to Redirect a Career (Kristen Carbone) Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

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.

#147 Using a Fragrance Business to Fund New Treatments for Depression (Audrey Gruss) Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

“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!”

#146 Embracing the Humility of Starting Something New (Kristin van Ogtrop) Oct 08, 2021

Show notes

“[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!”

#145 Finding a Way to Marry Life-Coaching and Interior Design (Carrie Leskowitz) Oct 02, 2021

Show notes

“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.”

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected