Reinvent Yourself

Latest Episodes:

#144 Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder atAge 31 (Sarah Nannery) Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

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

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#143 From PR to Tony-Nominated Broadway Producer (Robin Gorman) Aug 20, 2021

Show notes

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

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#142 From Acting to Making Wishes Come True (Alexa Fischer) Aug 13, 2021

Show notes

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

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#141 Sometimes You Have to Make Sacrifices to Start a New Dream (Tammi Leader Fuller) Aug 06, 2021

Show notes

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

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#140 The Power of Uber-Positive Thinking (Ashley Miles) Jul 30, 2021

Show notes

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

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#139 Going from Invisible to Visible When Taking Over the Family Business (Azra Khalfan-Kermali) Jul 24, 2021

Show notes

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

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#138 From Women’s Rights to Animal Rights (Tharaka Sriram) Jul 09, 2021

Show notes

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

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#137 Finding a Lucrative Hole in the Dying Journalism Market (Tharaka Sriram) Jul 02, 2021

Show notes

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

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#136 Grabbing Coffee with Strangers on LinkedIn ‘till She Found Her Bliss (Kate Isler) Jun 25, 2021

Show notes

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

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#135 Using Generosity and Altruism to Transform the World’s Health (Danielle Butin) Jun 18, 2021

Show notes

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

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

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