When I really do say money doesn't buy happiness, I really have lived that.

I have seen the extent of it.

You have to be who you are and do it the way that you want to do it.

I realized that confidence was the byproduct of getting started.

It's not right, but I'm like, why can't you do it like I do it?

How's that working for you, girl?

Not great.

Not great.

I have to say, not great.

And sometimes that choice is uncomfortable.

It is is my husband and my marriage is first.

Business is easily after that.

If there was an emergency between my business and my husband, I wouldn't even hesitate.

I would absolutely burn my business to the ground and I would show up for my husband.

But the important part is to put that one foot in front of the other and start.

The fear is what holds us back.

Anyone listening right now, really be honest about your natural inclinations.

That will help guide you.

Now we know there's others out there like us.

You know, we're like, all right, midlife icons, buckle up.

Today I'm joined by the unstoppable Lisa Bilyeu, co founder of Quest Nutrition, host of Women of Impact, best selling author and certified mindset warrior.

If you've ever felt stuck in a life you built for someone else, if you've ever second guessed yourself while silently screaming, is this it?

This episode is your wake up call.

We're breaking down what it really takes to reinvent yourself in midlife.

Stop playing small and build the confidence to be completely unapologetic about who you are and what you want.

Make sure you're following the iconic midlife on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And catch the full video episode on YouTube tomorrow.

And of course, follow us on social media, heconicmidlife and redcarpetroxy.

That's me, because playing small is canceled.

Welcome to the iconic midlife, Lisa.

I'm so excited to have you here and this is just, just lovely.

I've been following your podcast and all the amazing works that you do.

I was actually driving yesterday in the car from Orange county to la, which is, you know, in traffic over an hour.

And I was just listening to your podcast on Repe and like, just going from episode to episode and just garnering so much amazing insight.

So where does this all come from?

You're so inspirational.

Oh, my God, thank you.

That's very sweet.

Thank you for having me on.

It basically comes from utter insecurity and not having any belief in myself and growing Up.

That was how I always thought of myself as I'm the follower.

I don't know much, I'm not very intelligent.

My brother and my sister were whipping smart at math.

And so I thought that that dictated whether you're going to be successful or not.

And I was the artist of the family.

And so I think the inspiration really came from looking at what life I wanted, realizing I didn't have it and that I was responsible for making the changes to get it.

And so in that I.

When you, when you're going after a goal and you don't have the confidence, you realize it is getting in your way.

The lack of confidence will get in the way of you reaching your goal.

And so because I'm so goal oriented, I said, okay, don't judge yourself.

But what do I have to do?

What do I have to change?

What skill sets do I have to develop in order to reach my goal?

So if it's confidence, I have to work on my confidence.

And so what does that look like?

And so that's kind of where my journey started and has evolved into.

So where did that click and like how did it click and when did it click?

What was that realization for you?

It's never really one thing.

I think originally it was the negative voice saying, yeah, you're no good.

Oh yes, everyone's right about you.

You are stupid.

You did fail classes, you didn't get A's, your exam.

You didn't even get B's in your exam.

Like it.

I was somewhat seeing the proof that other people were right about me.

And I think the inspiration and the change over time came where quest started.

So I was a stay at home wife for eight years.

For people that may not know, no judgment on that at all, but I had big dreams.

I want to be in movies.

So here I am in my 20s being a stay at home wife, not living out my dreams that I thought I was going to be.

And I asked myself, is this it?

Like, is this actually what my future looks like?

Project this out, Lisa, with the actions that you're doing on a daily basis.

Project this out in a year, in five years and 10 years.

And what does your life look like?

Once I did that, I asked myself, is that the life I want?

And I realized it wasn't.

And so what we ended up doing is very long story, but my husband was miserable, he was chasing money.

And so we just stopped and said, what would life look like if we were just filling up our hearts, had a mission and worked every day towards that Mission that resulted in Quest Nutrition, which was a protein bar.

As a great, supportive wife, I said to my husband, I will support you.

What do you need?

How do I help you?

And he's like, just ship bars from my live from the living room floor.

Help us make a couple of protein bars with rolling pins and knives.

And then we blinked, and it ended up growing at 57,000%, which took us from zero to a billion dollar company in five years.

Wow.

And in that moment, my husband, God bless him, was like, for us to build this company, we have to put our house up for collateral.

And what I realized in that moment is men see a house as a nest egg, women see a house as a nest.

And so he wasn't trying to insult me.

We just see it in different avenues.

So I looked at the way life was.

I said, okay.

I knew that I married a man that was ambitious, a man that was driven.

Just because I've got a ring on my finger doesn't change that I can get another house.

I can't get another Tom.

So that was the catalyst for us going, cool, let's roll the dice on Quest.

We roll the dice, we start doing well in that moment, every time I'm shipping bars from the living room floor and then taking a big sack of bag, a bag to the post office, I then have UPS come.

I mean, like, it was rapidly growing so quickly that I had choices all along the way.

I didn't have the confidence and I didn't have the competence.

And every time I hit a brick wall or every time I hit a hurdle, I just asked myself a very honest, kind question.

You can quit right now, Lisa, but you lose your house or you can figure it out.

And every moment when I was a kid, the idea of failing was so petrifying because I thought, now there's more credibility that people are going to use against me of why I'm no good.

I have to figure this out.

It is all on me.

There is no running away from this.

This is whether I like it or not, black or white.

I figure it out.

I save the company.

I don't figure it out.

I lose my house.

And so every single day I faced my incompetence.

And what that did is made me realize that no one is born perfect.

No one is born with a innate set of skills that is going to lead them to success.

And that allowed me to go, what else can I learn?

And in that is how I built my confidence.

I realized that confidence was the byproduct of getting started.

We all want the confidence before we get started.

But I realized my favorite movie, one of my favorite movies growing up was Karate Kid.

Wax on, wax off, all day long, all day long.

So I realized my journey was painting the fence.

My journey was waxing the cars.

That was part of the practice I had to do consistently every day.

And in that, I would fail.

I would learn from my failures.

I would get back up and I would brush myself off, and I would do it again in that evolution.

So that's why it wasn't.

I couldn't just answer like it was a light bulb moment.

It was an evolution of being forced to look nakedly at the situation, making concrete decisions, and declaring what I would focus on.

And playing a game called no bs.

What would it take to get there?

And that meant I had to shed ego.

I had to reframe where my ego would come from.

So my ego before was coming from being liked, being approved, being accepted.

And now my ego is coming from being the person that could grow and learn.

Even if I fell on my face, that allowed me to keep getting up over and over again.

And that kind of had then became again, the catalyst to where I am today.

Oh, that's amazing.

And, you know, one of the things when I was researching all about you is that you also come from a very traditional cultural family.

Being Greek, I also come from.

My father's Pakistani.

You know, my mother is from a small town in East Texas and is from the States, but he's Pakistani.

So it was this like, kind of like traditional battle with growing up in America and kind of, you know, like, you look around, the kids are, you know, doing other things.

It's more of a westernized sort of a thing.

And I wonder how much of that shaped you, because I don't know if you felt the same, especially being a woman growing up like that, you know, I was more taught to be, you know, a little quieter, a little more demure.

I shouldn't be so loud and be who I truly was, you know.

How much did that affect you and did that help even propel you more, do you think?

Oh, and propel me more than that, is the ending of that question, to be honest.

So, yes, Greek Orthodox, born in a very traditional house.

My dad speaks Greek.

I went to Greek school on the weekends.

Like, it was rather traditional in that sense, I think.

So.

I was definitely taught girls should speak when spoken to.

I have a very clear recollection of a man patting me on the head, telling me that.

That I shouldn't speak unless I was Addressed going to the village.

When my dad grew up in the tiny mountains of Cyprus, it was segregated.

So there was a cafe, one cafe in the whole village.

And as a woman, you weren't allowed to sit down, so you could walk in and buy stuff.

You just weren't allowed to sit down and drink coffee.

Now, growing up, I just was like, oh, okay.

Well, that's what respect means.

Cool.

I never really took that personally.

My sister, who is a true feminist, absolutely revolted against it.

But I just kind of went, okay, if that's the rule, I'll respect it, but it doesn't make me less worthy.

And so over time, as I was getting older and older, I respected God, I respected my dad, I respected my religion.

And then I went on a date with my now husband, and he's this American guy that was just curious.

And he asks me the question of why I believe in God.

And that was the first time.

And he wasn't judging.

It was just curious, right?

Yes.

Pure curiosity.

Right.

In that moment, you know what my answer was?

What?

Because my dad told me to.

It was the first time I'd actually ever been asked.

That was one of the very first moments.

I mean, this was 24 years ago now.

It was, I think, one of the first moments that I realized, wow, what else do I believe that I've never questioned?

And that moment started to open up the idea that allowed me to be like, lisa, you have a right to question things.

And in the Greek Orthodox religion, if you ask your grandmother, is God real?

She'd be horrified.

Like, she would be like, how could you even ask that?

Of course, like, it would be an insult to Greek tradition if you even asked.

So it never dawned on me to ask until my husband asked me.

So that opened the curiosity.

It allowed me to look at my life, and what else was I believing that I just didn't even question?

And then it gave me the opportunity to go inwards and go, do I actually believe this?

And when I met my boyfriend, and he's this American guy and we're talking about getting married, he goes to my dad and asks for his blessing.

Now, he didn't ask for permission, but he asked for his blessing, because as a Greek woman, that's actually quite important to me.

I'm very traditional like that.

And my dad said no.

He said no?

He said no.

Wow.

So he goes to.

He goes to my dad, and he's like, I'm in love with your daughter.

I'm going to take care of her.

I would like to marry her.

I'd love your bless.

And my dad said, no.

And he was like, why?

He didn't expect that.

He's like, why?

And he goes, how do you think that you're going to be able to take care of my daughter?

You're young, you don't have much money.

Because again, my dad's very traditional.

He comes from a tiny village in the mountains of Cyprus.

So his thing is men take care of women.

And so for him, he's like, I've fought my whole life to build a house, to put a roof over my daughter's head, and here you are.

How are you going to provide for her?

And in that moment, Tom was like, I know you see this young guy who is just in love with your daughter, but I promise you, I will take care of her.

I am a man of my word.

And my dad just thought so.

When Tom proposed to me, he said, I.

I need you to know that your dad didn't want this.

And so again, I had to be grounded, not emotional.

I call it emotional sobriety.

I had to make sure that I was emotionally sober to deal with that.

Now, what does that look like?

It meant I had to make sure that I didn't make it about me.

Why was my dad saying this?

It's a belief that he has.

Okay, why is it a belief that he has?

Because he literally has a grew up in a hut.

Like, a hut, no running water, a toilet was a hole in the floor.

So now he lives in London, has a beautiful house.

So for him, he thinks, I've spent all of my life trying to provide for my children.

This is what to me, I see as a provider looks like.

Here you are, Tom, you are have college debt.

You rent an apartment.

Like, my dad just took the facts.

So I go, okay, instead of taking this personally, my dad believes that he should take care of me.

That isn't about me.

That's about my dad's beliefs.

So it was easy for me to separate what my dad thought and what I thought.

That's where I then did all the assessment.

And I went to my dad and I just gave him the grace and I said, dad, I love you.

Tell me what you're worried about.

Because if you're able to hear people's worry, you don't have to take it on as your own worry, but it gives you more information.

So my dad said, okay, well, you guys don't know each other.

You haven't known each other long.

You come from very different backgrounds.

You're about to move to America where You don't have family.

He isn't Greek Orthodox.

How are you going to bring up your children?

Like, my dad had a laundry list of all the reasons.

And I was like, thank you.

Thank you for being honest with me, Dad.

I will take this under consideration.

And so what I did is I showed my dad respect, I took it under consideration, and I went through each line item, if you will, like a business.

And I just went, okay.

He doesn't understand the Greek Orthodox religion.

My dad's right.

So actually, thank you, dad.

You're warning me of something that I may not have realized.

So I went to Tom and I said, I really think it's important that if we have children that they are able to speak Greek and that they grew up in the Greek Orthodox religion.

And in order for them to do that, you need to be Greek and you need to learn Greek.

And he said, I love it.

I mean, let's do it.

And so we took each thing that my dad was worried about and we got aligned before we even got married.

So I know that was a long story.

But the key thing there is when someone gives you their opinion, when someone has an expectation of you, give them grace, listen to them.

You may actually be able to learn something to better your life, but don't take it as fact.

Don't take it as you must do.

This is great information for you to have, but it doesn't mean fact.

And so what I was able to do in that moment, I was able to graciously navigate respecting my Greek father, respecting his opinions, showing him grace and respect.

But I didn't accept it.

I didn't follow his leadership.

I said, thank you, but I'm still going to marry Tom.

And so that was how I handled that situation and not take other people's opinions as fact.

And I was able to then grow from that.

And then if you don't.

Can I share the punchline?

Sure.

Please?

Of course.

Okay.

15 years later.

So that happens right before we get married.

Fifteen years later, Quest is now a billion dollar company.

My dad hasn't come to America though.

So he hasn't actually seen with his own eyes what that looks like.

He kind of thought, huh, huh, huh.

So he comes to America, we take him to see Quest nutrition.

We have 300,000 square foot of space, we have 3,000 employees, and we're making 1.5 million bars a day.

Wow.

It looked like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

So we're taking my dad on this tour and my dad's wide eyed.

He can't believe it.

Everyone's calling me and Tom Mr.

And Mrs.

Bailey, which is very weird for me, but it was very sweet.

And my dad's seeing all this.

Right at the end of the tour, Tom turns around to my dad and he says, andreas, do you remember when you asked me how I was going to take care of your daughter?

And he said yes.

And Tom's like, how am I doing now?

And my dad just burst into tears.

And he was basically like, my son.

My son.

And since then, like, they've had an amazing relationship.

I mean, they've always had a decent relationship, but that was kind of Tom.

It was a driving force for my husband to prove my dad that he was going to take care of me.

And it was a beautiful way of me having that final bullet point that if you believe in something so strongly and someone in your life also believes the opposing thing so strongly, it doesn't mean that they're right.

Now here's the tough part.

That's a great story because Quest became a billion dollar company.

What if it didn't?

What if Quest doesn't and Tom and I are working two jobs, making ends meet?

Does that make my love for Tom and his love for me any less special?

No.

I would be just as happy and I would still be glad that I didn't listen to my dad.

And that's the important thing.

Because at the end of the day, when I think about if evolution plays its course correctly, my dad will die before me.

I hate the thought of it, but that's what nature intends.

If that's the case and my dad dies before me and I've spent 30 years obeying him, following his lead, following his opinion and he dies, where does that leave me?

I can't blame my dad for now not having love or whatever the scenario is.

So I approach reality with that.

I show people grace, but I don't let people cross my boundaries or try to persuade my boundaries.

And in that moment, I had finally set a boundary that I was gonna live the life that made me happy.

Unapologetically.

That is so key.

It's.

You have to be who you are and do it the way that you want to do it.

Like you were saying, you know, Quest was very successful.

Do you think?

Because this is kind of like an age old question and I know a lot of people sort of chase after the success and that' Fine, that can be one of the forces that propels them.

But do you think that money buys happiness?

Like, do you think that, you know, like, what is your thought on that.

So I want to make sure that I answer this from a very real, no bullshit place.

Because I.

I'm only looking to bring value to people's lives.

Okay.

If you're struggling emotionally, money doesn't solve that.

But of course it makes life easier.

It takes less stress.

I don't have to worry about paying my bills, I don't have to worry about if I'm going to eat, I don't have to worry about my rent.

All of that is real.

And that type of stress, very emotionally damaging to a lot of people.

So I don't want to pretend that I don't have that now.

But I know what it's like.

I've collected coupons before.

I was the person that didn't have any money.

My husband was in financial college debt.

And so I know what it is like.

So on a daily basis, of course, money is absolutely easier.

It doesn't solve all your issues, it doesn't solve your mental health, it doesn't solve your physical health.

So on building Quest, I had a dream and it was a visual dream.

Because for me, it's like just having money doesn't really mean anything.

I want a visual dream.

And I'm a 90s girl.

Hip hop through and fricking through.

We love that.

Yes.

So growing up in the 90s, I was obsessed with hip hop.

So when me and my husband were dirt poor and we're building quests and we're working 20 hour days, I'm pissed Cause I'm like, I had these dreams of being in movies and here I am in a bloody hair net hand making protein bars.

Like this wasn't the freaking dream.

But in order to stay the course, I had to have an outlet.

So me and my husband, on our days off or on late at nights, we would drive around Beverly Hills and we would look at all the houses and we would say what we would like.

When Quest was big and I used to say, I want a house as a waterfall and I want a bottle of Dom Perignon and I want to twerk in front of my hubby to a hip.

Like as if I was in a hip hop commercial or in a.

Sorry, hip hop.

A song.

And so no, it actually happens.

Like years later, we sell Quest, I buy a house, it has a waterfall.

I have a bowl of Dom Perignon in my hat.

Like it's un.

Excuse me.

Unfreaking believable how real the dream became.

I couldn't believe it.

I took a swig of the champagne.

That was the moment I like to explain was the moment my gut felt like it erupted.

Now I'd had health issues growing up, I wasn't good to my body, I wasn't good to self care.

I would starve myself and binge and count calories and run on the treadmill because I thought acceptance and confidence came from looking a certain way.

So that gives you context.

So over the years I was restrictive dieting.

So it came to the point where this one moment, the moment I was celebrating being at the top of the hill, getting the goal, the day, the moment that was the day my gut fell apart.

Now as you can imagine, I go, I'm the wealthiest I've ever been in my life, but I can't stand up.

That's how bad my gut was.

I could barely eat anything after that day.

I was like, oh, I'll be better in a week, I'll be better in two weeks.

For a year I could barely eat anything.

I was at least 20 pounds lighter than I was now.

I put some pepper on my food.

My husband almost rushed me to the hospital.

Like I, I was slowly dying from malnutrition because I couldn't eat that.

Like that's how bad it is.

And I'm not exaggerating and it wasn't.

Like a thing of where you were trying not to eat, you physically could not eat.

Physically couldn't eat.

I was in so much agony every time I ate.

I had to eat such little food and I would only eat meat because I could only digest beef and coconut oil.

Like it was so bad, so bad.

So now going back to your question, you can imagine I'm the most financially successful I've ever been and yet my body is so broken and money can't fix it.

And what ended up being a part of the contribution of what broke it is building quest is me ignoring my self care is me ignoring my body, is me thinking that business came first.

So here I am, I've built a billion dollar company, but under what conditions?

Under what circumstances?

Under what, as a fault of sacrificing my health so that if I can, like I don't actually believe in God now, but if I do believe there's being out there or you know, things happen for a reason that happened on my wealthiest day on purpose.

Because I don't see money the way people see money.

Because I realized I tried to throw money at it.

I, I had the money now, right?

I tried, I went to Beverly Hills, I was like, give me the best doctors in the world, they knew jack shit they were making me bloody worse.

So all of that thinking money was going to solve everything, it did solve me not having to worry about my mortgage.

But I couldn't bloody stand up.

The intimacy with my husband was out the window because I could barely stand up, let alone have sex.

Like it was just.

So when I really do say money doesn't buy happiness, I really have lived that.

I have seen the extent of it.

But I don't want to pretend money isn't a facilitator to certain dreams.

So take my YouTube channel, my podcast.

I have lost a lot of money building that.

But it's for.

It's been a facilitator to my dreams.

So there's this weird juxtaposition between, I'm so proud.

I love being wealthy because I'm able to use it for good.

And at the same time I try not to beat myself up because in my pursuit of wealth and success, I broke my body.

So it is like a double edged sword in that way, you know, because it is nice that you have it, but there is a price almost, you know, and also, entrepreneurialship is not for the faint of heart, especially when you're working with your husband, which is similar with my situation with my husband.

You know, we're both entrepreneurs.

Yes.

Different businesses, but you know, we dovetail a lot and there's some crossover.

And you know, it is one of those things where when you're putting in the hours and you both are working so hard and like doing all the things, it can take a tol on the, the marriage and the relationship.

So during that time when you guys were building the company and even now and working together, how do you keep that connection and how do you keep that balance?

And you know where.

Because it's very easy to fall into.

Well, what I'm going through is more important than what you're going through.

There's a lot of, you know, everything going on.

It's like.

But taking the time to really listen to what the other person's going through, I think that's the challenge.

When you're so overloaded, what do you think about that?

Oh my God.

This is one of my favorite subjects.

So here's the thing.

I have over the years learned so much about business that I apply it very much to my relationship and vice versa.

So I go, what is your goal?

Like, what's your goal in your relationship?

Actually state that together and agree that you're aligned that this is the goal.

So our goal is to live the rest of our lives married Happily with each other.

It's a simple goal.

It's not like a dramatic thing.

Okay.

Happily.

I had to make sure I said that for the rest of our lives.

Okay, now you've got the goal.

What does that mean?

Like, what's the strategies you're going to do in order to make sure that you hit that goal?

And so for me and Tom, it is.

We've assessed order priority.

Now there's two different orders of priority.

Order priority from a.

If one of them comes into conflict, this is the one I will choose.

And the other one is order priority, where my time goes.

So my order priority in life is my husband.

And my marriage is first.

Business is easily after that.

It doesn't even compete.

So if there was an emergency between my business and my husband, I wouldn't even hesitate.

I would absolutely burn my business to the ground.

And I would show up for my husband.

He would do the same.

We've agreed that as a married couple in business that our relationship is the we will.

We've even used those words.

Are we willing to burn the company to the ground to save our marriage or to keep it healthy?

And we've both said yes.

Now we're aligned.

Okay, now the time thing.

On a priority level, I work with my husband.

He's been my business partner for a long time.

Now on a day to day, we spend more time as business partners that we do husband and wife.

So from a priority of time, we've agreed in order to grow our businesses and get to the goal of which you know, where we want to go from a metric standpoint and data standpoint, we need to put more time into the business than our personal lives.

Do we agree on that?

Yes.

Amazing.

What does that look like?

We sat down and we went over calendar and so we said okay, from nine during the week.

My husband works so much, he's like, I won't be sitting with you for dinner.

If I cross you in, you know, in the hallway or at your office, we'll obviously say hi, but I will not be sitting with you every night for dinner.

And I said, cool, I'm very okay with that.

But what I do need in return then is I need Saturdays as date day.

And that means that we get to spend the day together.

And so we just came up with a logistic agreement of how we spend our time.

And then the final piece is the communication.

How do we make sure that we're communicating in a language that you hear and understand?

Because I think a lot of the time we think we're saying something.

So if I say to you, you know what, I'm really tired.

If you have, I'm going to make this scenario really hot.

If you've been suffering with cancer and you've been doing chemo, tired, to you is very different than when I say I'm tired.

I mean, I got seven hours sleep instead of nine hours.

But if I say it to you, your perception of tiredness is completely different.

So we call that frame of reference.

So my frame of reference is going to be different to your frame of reference.

So if I use a word tired, it's going to land on you differently than it lands on me.

So me and my husband go, let's come up with a dictionary of what we mean when we say this word so that our frame of reference is exactly the same.

So, for instance, it is.

One of the words we have is important.

Okay, what does that word mean?

We've agreed as a dictionary definition that if I say important, it means even if you're interviewing the President of the United States of America and I say it's important, you drop what you're doing and you come to me.

Do we agree on that?

Yes.

Okay, so now we know.

If I say important and we don't abuse it, that's another thing.

You can't abuse it.

If you say that 100 times in a year, it's like, well, now it's not important.

So just to give you context, I think this year we're in April.

Sorry, May.

I've used it.

I haven't even used it this year, actually.

So I will use it maybe twice in a year.

Okay.

You know we mean it.

So that's an agreement that we've come to.

There's no miscommunication.

There's no misunderstanding.

We both know exactly what this means.

The second other thing that we do is dis.

Interrupting each other.

Okay, well, to your point, what if he wants something and I don't and we've got different schedules and things like that?

I say to him, I.

If I call you once, you can ignore me.

If I call you twice, you can ignore me.

But do we agree that if we call each other on the third time, it means I again, I care what you're doing.

You have to drop everything.

Yes, we agree.

Cool.

Now I know I can reach him at any point, at any time.

All I have to do is call him three times and he will answer.

And then the final piece is, he works way more than I do.

And I think when you're an entrepreneur, you need to run your business based on your energy, your goals and your dreams and what you're willing to do.

My husband's way.

Way more willing to do a lot more than I am.

So how do you navigate different behavior?

Like, you and your husband, do you guys have the same schedule?

We have totally different schedules.

Like, he's much more of a get up at 5am, start working right away, you know, get down.

And I'd rather maybe start a little bit later than 5am and work, you know, later into the night.

And, you know, I'm more of like a night person.

So it's, you know, we have different schedules.

And then when one's on a call, then the other one's on a call and make maybe, you know, those times overlap.

It's just there's a lot going on all the time.

So it gets hard, you know.

And I don't know if you find this, but I have guilt.

Like if I see my husband working and I'm not, I.

Guilt.

I was like, oh, God, should I be work?

That was part of what led me to having such bad gut issues.

So because of my health, it became very clear to me I had to put my health first.

And so as we start to navigate working hours, I realized I can't work as hard as I used to.

I don't want to.

I don't find the pleasure in it anymore.

I was doing, I mean, 18 hours in a day was an easy day.

Now I do 12.

It's like, what?

You know, like, I'm like, okay, 12.

I can manage 12.

I enjoy.

But how do I make sure that I don't feel guilty?

And how do I protect my peace when my husband's working?

Especially if you work from home.

And so he would come in, I would be off work, I'd be trying to get peaceful.

I'd be trying to, like, unwind.

And he would walk in with a business problem.

Because we work from home, he just walks in a room.

So again, I go to.

This doesn't serve us.

Us.

It's getting like.

It's really now getting in the way of our relationship because I don't know if you're about to come to me with work or personal.

And so I get hesitant now when you walk towards me.

That's horrible as a wife to get hesitant.

Your husband's walking towards you.

Yeah.

Know what to take.

You know what's coming.

You don't want to be like that.

Right.

You want to be like, baby, every time it walks towards you.

Right.

So I was like, okay, this doesn't serve us.

This is.

Now, again, I kind of have like the orange flag.

Okay, this is an orange flag, which means that we have to come up with a strategy to get around it.

So I said, okay, what ways can I indicate to my husband that I'm not working because it's really him coming to me with business questions when I'm in chill mode?

So I was like, what ways can I indicate to him without me having to say it, without him disturbing my piece?

And I realized, have you ever been to a Brazilian restaurant?

Yes.

You know, they've got those little things that's like more meat or no meat.

Yes.

So I was like, oh, what if I have some sort of logo?

Or in like a flag, if you will.

That told him I was no longer working.

And so I just literally looked around my room and I saw a lamp.

And I was like, ah, all right, how about this, babe?

If you walk in the room and the lamp is on, it means that I'm in relaxation mode.

If you walk in, the lamp is off.

It means you can talk to me about business.

He goes, I love that idea.

So literally, within like a week, I'm sitting in bed and I'm chilling, I've put my laptop away, and he walks in, he comes, he goes, hey, babe, and the lamp's on.

And I was like, yes.

And he goes, love you.

And then he walked back out.

It was so simple as a resolve of something that was really grading on me that eventually could have been something really bad that could have been a splinter in our relationship.

Because here I am being like, you always come to me with business, and now I don't feel seen, and now I don't feel heard, and now he feels like he can't come to me with a business problem, and it just ends up spiraling.

So those are just a couple of little things that come to mind of how you navigate your scenarios with business.

And even if you don't even own your own business, let's say you are a beautiful stay at home wife and you take care of your kids and you were just exhausted and your husband keeps coming home with problems.

These are tips and tactics that you can use to navigate so that you can have the life that you really want.

Yes.

And I feel like men too, they wear their hearts on their sleeve in that way.

Like, if they've had a stressful day at work.

I feel like my husband, like, you know, acts out, like he'll be short and like, you know, not.

Not as friendly.

And it's just one of those of those things where I'm like, why can't you?

And it's not right, but I'm like, why can't you do it like I do it, you know, where it's more, you know.

Oh, that will definitely not work.

I'm sorry.

It definitely shuts down if you say.

That I'm like trying to communicate with my eyes, like, do I like me?

How's that working for you, girl?

Not great.

Not great.

I have to say, not great.

But it's so funny, you know, And I feel like, you know, it's a good point too, because I feel like a lot of other women are in this boat, right, where they're trying to navigate these things, particularly in midlife, you know, so we've sort of crossed that 40 year old mark, which, by the way, when I crossed the 40 year old mark, all of a sudden things started happening.

Like, my eyes started getting a little fuzzier.

The body started feeling like not so much like what I, you know, what I had before things started happening.

What was it like for you crossing over that sort of 40 year old or whatever you interpret midlife to be sort of a threshold.

Did you, you feel different?

Did things, you know, how did that.

So this is one that I.

I'm not.

I feel like I'm a little alone in this.

I love aging, okay?

I love it.

I was so insecure in my 20s.

I didn't know whether I was coming, whether I was going.

I didn't know what Lisa wanted, what Lisa thought, what Lisa actually needed.

I didn't have boundaries.

And it's like the last 15 years have been me waxing on, waxing off to become the person I've always wanted to be.

And so for me, it's been like, okay, I'm 40.

Oh my God, I've got at least another 40 years to keep grow, growing and changing.

Like, that's so exciting to me, especially when I know the alternative die.

Like, that's it.

That is it.

And so I have always embraced aging like that.

It's very important to me to make sure that I keep repeating that and focus on it.

Because as I start to get older, of course my skin looks different.

The things that people used to, you know, compliment you on, you don't get the compliments anymore.

So I'm not pretending that I haven't changed and things haven't, you know, almost dented me a little.

But I kind of do a lot of internal work.

So the other day I looked in the mirror and I was like, oh, man, I'm getting those bags under my eyes, which end up becoming inevitable as you get older.

And I started being like, oh, what do I do?

How do I hide it?

And here's the truth.

It is okay to not want wrinkles.

It is okay to wish that you had the youthful skin and wish that you had the youthful hair.

I just don't, don't focus on it, and I don't beat myself up for it.

And that, I think was the big key on.

Like, I can talk about the fact that, no, I don't like wrinkles.

I don't like having puffy eyes.

I wish I had the youthful skin and hair that I did.

Of course I do.

But in service of what else?

Like, in service of not having grown and not having learned and not having improved and not being proud of myself that I went from zero to where I am today, the fact that I can point my finger and go, that's where I want to go.

And that every day I can show up and get there like that, I then that's what I want to focus on.

But I don't want to pretend or ignore the truth of being sad that I don't have youthful skin.

I don't think it negates you being proud that you're getting older.

I think it's when I have to pretend.

That's the biggest trap for Lisa.

For me, I don't know what I'm talking.

That's the biggest trap for me is if I have to pretend, If I pretend, ah, I love getting older.

These wrinkles.

I'm excited.

No, I don't want to pretend.

But the truth is, I'm so aware of the alternative.

Now, look, I do also think a big part of that comes to.

I've very much spent the last 15 years living the life that I wanted.

And if you had asked me this when I was a stay at home wife, I think my answer may have been different because as a stay at home wife, that wasn't my dream.

I wasn't happy, I wasn't content.

So if you met me when I was, let's say, 28 and you said, how do you feel?

I think I might have.

My answer may have been different now that I'm actually being really real about it and thinking about it, I think because I felt stuck, because I was like, I'm 28 years old.

Because when you're 28, you think that you're old.

So at 28 years old, I thought like, you know, oh, my God, I'm not where I said I would be.

Well, oh my God, how many years do I have left in me?

Money, you know?

So I think that that also has helped.

But ultimately I think I look at the positive side of everything.

I try to at least so with my gut, when I could be like, I can't believe this has happened.

I turn around, I'm like, thank God this happened when the moment I got the wealthiest.

Because I don't take money for granted, I don't take people for granted, I don't take my health for granted.

All because of my health.

So it's.

How do I see the positive?

Not toxic positivity, though I want to be very clear about the difference between that.

Toxic positivity is actually what kept me as a stay at home wife for so long.

Because year one, I was like, oh my God, I'm so excited.

I'm married.

Yay.

Right?

By year three, I'm like, I'm not really happy.

But you know what?

I should be grateful that I have a roof over my head.

By year four, year five, I should be grateful that I have a husband that loves me.

I was dismissing all the stuff in my life that I hated by trying to pretend that.

But.

But you have a husband that loves you.

Surely that, you know, changes everything.

But you have a roof over your head.

Surely that changes everything.

And the truth is it doesn't.

And so for me, really going, okay, what type of person do I want to be?

How do I get there?

How do I grow?

Making sure that I dress my life every quarter actually now.

And I ask myself a thousand questions.

So not a thousand.

I asked myself maybe 10 and it's, do you still want to be running a YouTube channel?

Do you still want to be in business with your husband?

Do you still want your business running out of your house?

Like all the questions which I've built 15 years to get here, I ask myself if I still want it.

That has become the biggest freedom pivot for me to make sure that I never get trapped.

And I have a feeling in a lot of women that I talk to that are in their 40s and 50s, they come from a perspective of I have never lived the life I've wanted.

Right.

Isn't that heartbreaking?

It is very heartbreaking.

But here's again, going to the positive.

Again, not positive, not toxic positivity, but the pos.

It's like.

But if you think our lifespan is until 85, as a woman, maybe not.

I hope to live some 100.

But let's just for argument's sake, 85.

At 40, you're not even 50% there.

So think about everything you've done in your life, from being born, learning how to walk, like, all the way up, and now you've got.

You can double that.

Now's the time.

So if.

If you have to turn 40 for that to finally click, amazing.

If you have to go through menopause for that to finally click, at least it happened.

Now you can beat yourself up.

You can go, oh, my God, I've just wasted 40 years of my life.

But is that going to help you?

Is that going to help you now pivot into leading the life you want?

No, it's going to make you feel bad.

So now if you can go, oh, my God, I've got 40 more years to become the person I've always wanted to be.

Now you actually get to make that change.

And I think if you don't make that change, that's where a lot of women then turn 50 and they have the regrets.

They turn 60, they have the regrets, and they're like, what happened to my life?

You know, that's such an interesting point you bring up, too, about the timeline.

There is no timeline.

Like, if you wake up when you're 40 and you're ready to go, you're ready to go, go 50, 60, whatever the number is.

But the important part is to put that one foot in front of the other and start.

Just start, you know, like, the fear is what holds us back, you know?

And I just lack of confidence.

So how does that woman do that?

How does she kind of start that?

Even that first step, like, to gain that confidence to do it.

Yeah.

So that goes back to being goal oriented.

What are you trying to achieve?

Because I think we think of the word confidence is like a stage magic superpower.

I want confidence in what?

Like, actually in what?

Because let me be honest, I've done.

I'm.

Now I do my podcast.

I'm on camera.

I was petrified of being on camera when I first started.

Were you?

I was, yes.

I was bullied and teased for my look.

So I'm like, who the hell would want to A, look at me and then B, I have a squeaky voice.

So I was just like, who would want to look and listen to me?

So I had to work through how do I build my confidence to get in front of the camera.

That's very different than when I started to public speak.

I then built my confidence on camera.

I can now come.

I literally don't even think twice when I'M on camera, I just come in, I do my thing, I'm authentic and I'm, I don't get nervous.

I don't even think twice about it.

You put me on stage, holy smokes, girl.

Right?

Exactly.

So scary.

It is one type of confidence.

Now, if I can say that and everyone's like, oh, yeah, getting on the stage would be different type of confidence.

Now put that in your entire life.

Life.

So if you're turning your life around, you have to know what you're trying to move towards.

I what's your goal if it is, I want to build a podcast.

Let's just say that I'm 40 years old and I want to start my podcast, but I've never been in front of the camera.

All right, at least you know your goal.

I want to produce an hour long video content for YouTube.

All right, that's very clear of what you're trying to do.

Now the question is, how do you build the confidence to get in front of the camera?

And that just means that you have a cheat sheet, if you will, of what you're going to do to get to do it.

It's like if you were going to the gym and your plan was, is I want to run a marathon.

You don't just run the marathon, you go, okay, I start by walking on the treadmill.

I walk for a mile.

I then the next day I'm going to eat more protein.

I'm then on day three going to walk two miles on the treadmill, where you have an entire game plan that maybe lasts six months for you to be able to figure out how on earth you're going to be sustainable for you to run the marathon on.

Now do that with the podcast.

I'm going to do a video a day.

I'm not going to post it.

I'm going to do a video a day for two weeks.

And then I'm going to ask one of my best friends who's going to be honest, but honest with grace.

And I'm going to give her a cheat sheet and I'm going to write questions so that she has the space to be honest.

And the question number one is out of one out of ten, how good do you think I am in comfortability in front of the camera?

Next question.

How entertained were you at what minute did you want to stop listening?

And I would just be write out a list of questions that gives your friend space to be honest and give you feedback.

I would then take that feedback like you would a coach and I would start to Implement it, and then over time, it becomes the wax on, the wax off.

So by the end of a year, if you do that strategy, you have slowly built your confidence in making podcast videos.

But again, it doesn't mean that yet now you're going to be able to go public speak.

It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to run the marathon.

It means that you're going to be have built your confidence in doing a podcast.

So you have to be so clear on your goal.

This is where people get lost, is they're not clear.

I want to impact people.

What the hell does that bloody mean?

Like, sincerely, I want to impact.

What does that mean?

Who do you want to impact on what in what timeline?

So I like to go, and if I can geek out for a second, I even have math equations around goals and missions.

So how does that work?

Okay.

Okay.

So if anyone's listening, get a pen and paper right now and write this, this out.

Your goal stems from your mission, right?

Because just doing a podcast video, you will burn out if you don't know why you're doing it.

What's your mission?

So I always start with a mission.

A mission usually comprises of three things.

The what, the who, and the why.

So that's where I started.

All right, Lisa, you want to do a podcast.

The what, the who and the why.

The what is.

I want to create content, video content, very specific, that I post on YouTube.

That's the what, the who.

Women.

Women who are struggling.

That's a psychographic, not a demographic.

I believe in psychographics and more impactful.

And then why?

Because I didn't have the bloody confidence.

And if I can help women build their confidence through my content, now that's a life well lived.

Okay, so now I've got my mission.

You can understand.

Now, if someone comes to me and asks me to do something, I want you, Lisa, to come and coach five women, all right?

If there's no video camera, my answer is no, because I'm so aligned of what I need to do every day.

Now, my goal stems from my mission.

The goal is the details of how you're going to achieve your mission.

So it does somewhat cover it, but the goal is the what, the how much, and by when.

So the what going back to the video content.

I'm going to create video content for YouTube.

Great.

The how much?

I'm going to do one video a week, and I want them to get to 100,000 views by when?

By December.

All right, now I know I'm doing Video content.

I know how many I'm doing.

I'm doing one a week.

I needed to get to a hundred thousand videos, one hundred thousand views by December.

Now I know my goal.

Then you lay out your strategy.

What am I going to test?

Well, I think I'm going to go after someone famous.

Because if I get someone famous on my podcast, that may bring in the eyeballs.

Oh, that's one strategy I'm going to try.

I'm going to try.

I'm going to spend $10 and put out an ad.

Right?

You have.

It gives you a list of different strategies that you can try, and then you just assess.

And what that does is, even when you fail, even if you don't get to your goal, you're still filling out your mission because you're still trying to help these people.

You can still wake up every single day feeling proud that you're working on your goal and that you're not just kind of letting fate take its course and hope that it comes to you and it allows you to know if you're actually moving towards it.

Because I think one thing that a lot of people do, especially a lot of women, is we blink and we go, what happened to my life?

Yes, yes.

I felt like I was doing the things, but I'm 50 and I'm like, what do I have to show for it?

That breaks my heart so freaking much, which is why I get so detailed.

Like, when you ask me questions, I can't just give you an easy blanket answer.

It's because I take this seriously.

I spent eight years of my life doing something that sucked the life out of me.

And so you better believe I refuse to go back there.

But how do I make sure I.

I don't go back there because I slipped into it.

So I worry I'm going to slip into it again.

And so to combat that, I've come up with these equations that allow me to compare.

Constantly assess my life, constantly assess where my hours go, and then constantly assess whether I'm actually working towards it or not.

And if I'm not, and I'm just treading water, I can then ask myself, do I grab a life raft or do I just drown?

That's true.

It's sink or swim.

You know, you made the decision, and it breaks like what we're saying.

I mean, it breaks my heart to think that some women feel like they don't have the choice when there is almost always a choice, don't you think?

I mean, there's always something, and it's really finding that within yourself.

You know, I think a lot of times we get so swayed by like external achievement and you know, there are all these things that we see on the outside, but how do we really turn inwards?

You know, say it's, you know, woman in midlife, she's been raising kids, she's been married, stay at home, mom, you know, and she just really wants to find out who she is.

How does she do that?

Okay, so it's gonna be down to each individual, but it has to be going internal.

So I, I like writing lists, I like just getting very like, no bullshit.

What does this actually look like?

And so I think the, the idea of I want to live the life for me, it's like you have to really figure out what that looks like and what fills your heart and what doesn't.

And that goes to what is your belief system?

Because I think a lot of it is we end up following what we think we believe.

But I never question, so I would stop, start with just writing what that those beliefs are like, that you feel like that you've made choices that have led you to where you are.

So let's take one as an example.

My belief is as a woman, I should be a mother.

And so let's say you never question that.

So you go and you have children and now you're 50 and you don't know how to live your life.

You want and you don't know how you got there and you don't know what happened.

So the first question is, okay, well what beliefs do you have?

Okay, I believe that as, as a woman, I should have kids.

Okay, do you still believe that?

And look, once you've had the kids, it's not that you can take them back, but what I mean is return them.

But what I mean is you can go, oh, I love my children.

My goal absolutely was to be a mother and nurture.

But the belief that I have to be there for everything that they need, do I really want to live that?

And what I mean by that is there are some women who still will show up for their children.

And their kids are 30, their kids are 40 and they will live their lives for their 30 or 40 year old children.

And so look, if that's what you want, I'm not here to judge, like literally everything I say today.

I have zero judgment on the life that you choose.

I just go, does it serve you?

Are you happy?

And what are you going to do about it?

So now going back to choices in your question, if you're in your 50s and you're still spending time dedicating your life to your children, do you.

Does that fulfill you?

Or is that what society has told you that you should do?

And if you write down and you start to write, well, this is what I was told and this is what I believe.

You could start to see the discrepancies now in that, like you can say, for instance, you're really, I really want to show up for my children, but I need to do self care.

I know a lot of mothers that won't do self care.

They'll show up for their kids kids.

And I think about long term.

Now that may be a belief system that you truly want and it serves you, or it may be something where you feel like you have to.

And so I really want to hammer the, the thing that you said about choices.

I think we can conflate choices with have to's.

So we think we have to.

I'm not even talking about parenthood right now.

I'm just taking saying in life, we think we have to, but really it's a choice that we just don't like.

So I was coaching and this one person came up to me and she's like, lisa, I've had a kid and I've re.

I like, I really wanted to have this baby, but I also had this dream about having a business.

So I've got this little baby.

It's so cute.

I build my business, I've got my baby with me, and I feel really good about what I'm doing.

But every single day, my dad comes over for dinner and he makes me feel guilty that I've started a new business when I have a newborn.

And she says, it's getting to the point where my self esteem has plummeted.

I'm questioning, am I a good mother?

I'm questioning everything.

What should I do?

And I said, well, you started with how happy you were that you had the baby and built your business, because I am.

And I said, so you're saying to me right now that your dad is the person that's making you feel guilty.

Correct.

And I said, well, your dad comes to your house.

Yes.

I was like, why do you let him in?

Good point.

And she goes, well, he's got a key.

And I'm like, okay, it's your house.

Correct?

Yes.

I was like, you can take the key away.

She goes, no, I can't.

I'm like, yes, you can.

You just choose not to.

And here's the thing, I'm not judging that you choose not to.

But you are being blind to yourself and you're fooling yourself by thinking you don't have a choice.

That's where, as a woman, I think we'd give our power away.

I can't.

I don't have a choice.

Yes, you do.

Now, if you turn around and you go, my choices are my dad feels hurt, heartbroken, neglected by me taking the keys away.

That's one side.

But then I have peace and I can build my business and love my child exactly how I want.

That's one option.

Or you say, I know what my dad's going to do that every day he's going to come over and make me feel guilty.

But I would rather that then him feel like I have abandoned him.

It's a choice.

Once you actually address it like that, I think a lot of the resentment goes away.

And going back to us women giving our power away.

You have the freaking power.

It's your bloody house.

It is your key.

And don't you dare think that your dad has the power.

That's where we trick and that's where we play.

I don't mean this in a harsh way, but I do like using harsh language.

That's where in the future we play the victim.

But I didn't have a choice.

Yes, you did.

Yes, you did.

And honestly, I think that's the most empowering thing I can bloody say.

Yes.

And sometimes that choice is uncomfortable.

It is 1000%.

A lot of the times it's society, what we've grown up with.

You know, don't create problems, don't create drama.

Don't do something that's going to upset somebody else.

We're constantly thinking about other people and we're not thinking about ourselves.

Yes.

Right.

And then the question is, how's that working for you?

Right.

That's right.

You know, and Einstein, famous quote, definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting a different result.

And once I started to realize that, once I started to realize that my life is my life and no one, including my husband, gets to dictate how I show up every day.

My dad, like, no one gets to that again, was so empowering.

Now I'm always trying to learn and grow of how I can set boundaries with grace.

I used to come in, like, because I was so petrified of setting a boundary.

I was like, a bit of a about it, if I'm going to be honest.

I was like, well, if you kind of put, you know, respect this boundary, then you can f off like, okay, that's just not A polite way of doing it.

I've now figured out better ways to set boundaries with a lot more grace and calmness.

But if that's what you have to do to like, if you have to go extreme in order to find the middle, like keep working at it.

But if you just keep blaming everybody else, if you find yourself saying it's not my fault, like some things aren't your fault, some things are other people, like that's actually true if you're in a relationship and the guy's toxic or worse, a narcissist or a psychopath, like there's nothing you, you personally can do to change him.

But you absolutely, once you spot it and recognize it, have the power to navigate leaving it's not going to be easy.

So I'm definitely not victim blaming there at all.

But going back to your point is we've been taught a certain thing, that even if a guy's verbally abusive, but if he says he loves you, it's okay.

Like we've been taught all that, that's not our fault.

But I now have a choice to address whether I want to do something different in my life.

And if that is leaving this toxic relationship, I can figure out ways to do it.

And if I am able to take that ownership, it becomes powerful.

I feel good about myself my entire life.

The time that I felt the worst is when I was giving it away to everybody else.

Will I have to be a stay at home wife life?

I have to.

I'm curious because you've done so much great work, you know, on yourself and it's actually so amazing.

I'm wondering though, do you have regrets?

Oh, this is one of those tricky questions because I the truth, a thousand percent is I really wouldn't be who I am today sitting on this couch with the exact words coming out my mouth.

If I hadn't have gone through everything that I've gone through.

But if I had a man, magic wand and you said to me, Lisa, you could still be the person you are today and make changes to your past.

Of course I would have changed things in my past.

So it's a bit of a tricky question.

But the thing that I would change the most is never associating my looks with acceptance and my own confidence.

Because that was the thing that wrecked my gut.

And my gut has been been the hardest thing I've ever had to navigate because it's been now over 10 years, my hormones, I mean I've barely had any hormones because I can't eat.

So my estrogen is non existent.

I haven't had a period in 12 years.

Again saying that I wasn't able to emotionally connect with my husband or intimately connect with my husband.

Like all of that was crappy and all of that was shitty.

And when you're not eating you get.

Get depressed and you feel badly about yourself.

And so that was hard.

And there was a moment about probably last year that I again been doing all this work and always trying to evolve that I looked at myself in the mirror and I used to judge myself and insult my gut like, I can't fucking believe you gave up.

You're so bloody weak.

Blah, blah, blah.

And it just hit me.

It saved me.

And this whole, whole time, for 10 years I've been beating myself up that my gut wasn't strong enough.

And in it sounds a little woo and I'm not a woo woo person, but I just hugged my stomach and I just looked in the mirror and I thanked it and I said, I'm so sorry.

This whole time I've been calling you weak and yet you're actually strong because you've kept me alive.

You're strong because you've allowed me to keep doing the thing that I love.

And that became the pivotal moment for me of like, wow, I've been doing this all wrong.

And so of course if I could change that, I would.

But it's taught me so many lessons.

So again, it's.

It's a hard question, but hopefully that was honest enough to.

Absolutely.

I feel the same too.

It's like I've.

Everything that I've done has brought me to this place where we're sitting and talking, you know, and it.

I look back in the past and I think about myself in the.

The twenties and say, gosh, should I have done this or should I have done that?

But you know what?

I wouldn't be sitting here right now if it wasn't, you know.

But yeah, there are a couple things I changed.

I'm like, should I really dated that guy?

Well, even that, like before I met my husband, my ex was an and.

But here's what happened.

I followed.

I dated someone that I had kind of grown up to be.

Be tore.

I don't really want to blame society for this, but I dated the guy that had the rims and that had the stereo and that had like the expensive clothes and the earring.

But I was up in the 90s guys.

But like, like those were the guys.

I dated all of those guys and they were all.

And then I met Tom and on the very first date, he walks me to his car and it's a pile of crap.

I mean, a pile of crap.

It was a.

Was an old car.

It was like an old man's car.

It was dirty.

His back seat, he didn't have the rims.

He didn't have the stereo.

Right.

So here I am, Judgment, judgment, judgment.

And then you know what he did?

He opened the car door for me.

I was 21 years old.

I dated a ton of guys before that.

And he was the first man in my life to ever hold the car door for me.

And so in that moment, I was like, screw that, I hate the car.

This is so lovely.

I can't believe he just did that.

That, like.

And he waited for me to get in and he closed the door behind me.

And so having dated the rims, the cars, and realizing they were all actually then allowed me to spot the true gentleman when he came.

So even that again, like, I could say, yes, I wish I hadn't dated that guy.

And.

But I don't.

And look, I don't want to be just.

Was it fairy taleistic?

I just, like, made that word up.

But I don't want to pretend, though, that it's all peaches and cream and everything in our lives.

Like, my gut has been tremendously impactful.

And there are women who've dated guys that have scarred them for the rest of their life.

So I don't want to be flippant on that.

And I do think sometimes it is hard to always see the positive when you're going through crap.

And that is where I go, okay, it is human nature to focus on the negative.

That's what we're built for, right?

Protect yourself.

I mean, that saved our lives when we were back in the village days, so I understand that.

But I've just learned the skill set to reframe things in those moments so they don't cripple me.

And that in and of itself is a skill set.

And so if someone could just start there and that can be even a skill that they want to focus on for now, it's like, okay, every time something negative happens, I'm going to work on using that to propel me to see something positive.

Not toxic positivity, but give me a different framing of it.

And if you keep practicing that, then maybe, hopefully you can start like, it ends up echoing throughout your entire life.

Absolutely.

So what advice would you give your 25 year old self?

All right.

25 year old self.

I mean, oh, God, I would give myself all the Lessons I've learned on diet and nutrition.

Okay.

And exercise.

I used to run on the treadmill, like one of those, you know, like counting the calories.

Now I never weigh myself.

I only lift weights.

Okay, no cardio now.

No cardio, no.

Because I realized that was so again, I can be.

I know my natural inclination.

And so anyone listening right now, really be honest about your natural inclinations.

That will help guide you.

So I go, no matter how much I try, when I'm on treadmill, I just count calories and I check how long I've been running for.

It is bad for my mindset.

So what am I going to do differently?

All right, let me try weights.

Let me see what weights are like.

Well, there was no real tracking of weights.

It was more like, I want to do 50 push ups.

And I started with being able to do five and I do it consistently.

Now I just hit my record of 41 push ups.

That's been like four years in the making.

It's amazing.

But it's got nothing to do with weight.

It's got nothing to do with like beating myself up.

I just get proud that every day I put in the effort and sometimes I'm able, I hit 41.

Other days I'll go in and I'll only be able to do 30 because I'm weak that day.

And I'll go, oh, I didn't have my protein.

So going back to knowing your natural inclination, then putting that in a strategy of like, how do you combat that?

So my 25 year old self, I would stop running and treadmill.

I would go to weights immediately.

I would stop counting calories.

I would eat a lot more fat.

That because it's been amazing for my brain, I would take ownership instead of blame other people.

I would never play the victim.

I'd only play the hero.

And I would see my superpower, I would see all of my quirks and my idiosyncrasies as my superpower instead of my kryptonite.

That's so good.

That's so good.

Radical self acceptance, you know?

Yes.

I love that self acceptance with the idea that you're always going to improve.

Because I worry that radical self acceptance means I'm good as I am and I just don't.

I love myself.

I don't always like myself and I always push myself and I always want to grow.

So even with the radical acceptance, I worry it will make me complacent and I don't want to be complacent.

So I kind of push back A little on that.

So it's like growth, mindset.

Keep.

Keep evolving, you know.

So how are you living iconically right now in your life?

Oh, what does the definition of iconically mean to you?

I think.

I think it's being so at peace with yourself and just, you know, give me a lot of different things.

But right now, I think it's just.

It's really being you, being who you are, and really putting yourself out there and living your life as truly as possible.

All right, so now.

Now I know your definition of iconic.

Can you repeat the question?

Sure, sure.

Of course.

So how are you living life iconically right now, at this point in your life?

All right, so I'm now in perimenopause.

Yeah.

Like, I'm like.

I'm telling everyone everywhere I go, I'm like, literally a person at the counter at a grocery store.

I'm like, how are you?

And they're like, okay.

I'm like, oh, you.

Your hormones.

Okay.

Like, I'm just.

I just can't help myself.

Like, now we know there's others out there like us.

You know, we're like, every older woman I meet, I was just like, the first thing I had.

Your hormones.

Totally.

Are you on the patch?

Exactly.

Which one are you on?

But that's.

I do want to make sure that I'm talking about it not from, like, a Debbie Downer, but like, oh, my God, yes.

I'm like a badge of honor.

Because, again, going back to.

You've got a choice.

You either hit perimenopause.

You don't.

And so I go, yeah, I want to live long enough to be able to go through the cycle, but I don't want to be blind to what it's going to do to me.

So I'm in real time assessing and navigating how I'm feeling and changing.

And so I'm actually not as driven, which is weird.

I've been driven for the last 15 years.

And what I mean now is if I'm not in the mood, I'm like, I'm just not in the mood.

So assessing how my hormones are impacting my body and then adjusting and then talking about it is how I feel like I'm being iconic right now because it is so exciting.

I feel like I am evolving into another new human, which is exciting.

And again, I tried to see the positive, and.

And it's having somewhat, though also a negative impact.

I had massive brain fog.

I've actually been doing very well today, but sometimes I just completely forget what.

I'M saying, are you grabbing for words, too?

I just will forget, like, a common word that I'm.

And you're just like, in your mind, you're just grabbing for words.

It's like, what am I trying to say?

Yes.

Yes.

And the word is.

And yeah, exactly.

The word is hello.

So it's a yeah.

And so even going back to everything we've been speaking about today, right, which is about, how do you build your confidence?

I'm now almost having to relearn what that means.

And because I've built it, and now I'm on set.

True story.

I'm interviewing someone now.

I spend, like, 12 hours.

I read people's books.

I read their every podcast.

Like, I just love it.

That's like my jam.

And then the guest comes on.

I completely forget their name.

I've spent 12 hours researching them.

I forgot, like, blank.

Not even.

Oh, it begins with blank.

Like, you're like, hey, you.

Well, the funny thing is, throughout the whole interview, I'm like, so girl.

I'm calling a girl.

The whole time, I'm like, I don't.

Know what else to say.

Now in that moment, I've been.

Remember I said earlier, I've been waxing on and off for five years, at least on my show, to be comfortable for getting in front of the camera.

Now I get a confident dent.

So I go to now being, like, in the.

At my age.

Going back to your question of being an icon, it is like, how do I never judge myself and think that I'm one and done?

How do I not feel like I'm taking steps back?

How do I look at this and go, this is the new evolution.

Not, Lisa, you've retreated.

And that's so important to me.

So now I go, okay, this is what it is.

Take ownership, Number one.

Take ownership.

What does that look like?

And I just asked myself, what does that look like?

Okay, it means I wear an OURA ring.

I try track my sleep.

Now I see if my sleep makes a difference to my cognitive behavior.

I track my glucose levels.

I wear a cgm, and I track how does my brain function when I'm peaked, if I'm in the hundreds sometimes, I didn't realize I actually plummet because I've got gut issues.

So sometimes my sugar levels go so low, I feel dizzy.

I didn't know why I was dizzy.

So being able to then track my body, my hormones, my impact, and then kind of almost gamifying it to, like, how much do.

Now I have cognitive clarity is me taking ownership and so that is part of how I'm building my confidence, being iconic, even as I age and am able to navigate this with such confidence, even when I don't feel great.

That's so great.

Okay, I hope you like games.

We have a little game to wrap things up.

We love that.

Okay, so the name of this game is Iconic or ick.

Oh, all right.

So you say if it's iconic or ick.

All right, all right.

Needing to be liked by everyone.

Ick.

Reinvention after 45 iconic hustle culture.

Oh, this is a tricky one because hustle was the thing.

And.

Sorry, I know this is rapid fire, but it's true.

Please, please.

Hustle was the thing when I was building quests, so it got me where I am today.

Now hustle is what wrecked my gut.

So is it a good thing or is it a bad thing?

I wouldn't be successful.

You never heard me.

I wouldn't be on this podcast.

So there's a bit of a tricky thing where people want to make it black and white.

Ick or iconic.

And the truth is, is that it absolutely works to an extent.

It's kind of gray.

Right.

It's in between.

Then also, let's say you're building a business and someone else else is willing to hustle.

So who's going to win at the game?

I hate to say it, but the person that's willing to, because they're like, well, you should play.

What is it Smart, not hard?

And it's like, yeah, but what about the person that's willing to do both?

That's a good point.

Yeah.

I mean, so you got to do.

What you have to do, but to an extreme, to an extent, I should say, okay.

Daily affirmations in the mirror.

Oh, iconic.

I'm just gonna be putting them together.

You've got to really believe them.

They have to actually work.

If you do it too often and too much, I think they land on deaf ears.

And I never want someone to feel like they're doing the work but not improving.

So I think that they can be very useful.

Up again.

To a certain point.

To a certain point.

Yes.

Toxic positivity.

Ick, ick.

Right?

Double ick.

Red.

Best as a power move.

Oh, a thousand percent iconic.

Totally.

Hell, yes.

Just trying to learn to do that.

Yes, yes.

It is a very, very good tool.

It's hard.

It's hard.

Okay.

Doing it.

Scared.

Oh, for sure.

Iconic.

Iconic.

Saying no without apologizing.

This is another tricky one, because sometimes you should apologize.

Sometimes you're about to hurt Someone's feelings and saying sorry doesn't demean you, but it gives somebody something that they need.

So it's very tricky that if you say no and then apologize to the extreme and to the detriment of who you are in your self esteem, hell no.

That's an ick for me.

But if you say sorry out of kindness and grace to somebody because you know they're going through a hard time and you just made their lives nicer and better.

Official Iconic.

Ask asking for help.

Oh, iconic 100.

Taking solo trips just to be alone with your thoughts and room service.

Yeah, I think that is actually depending.

I'm an ambivert, so I love being by myself, but I love being with people as well.

So I would say for me, definitely iconic.

But I think for some people, if you're an extrovert, it's like Covid.

Like it really hurt them.

So I don't even want to be like, yes, everyone should spend time alone if it doesn't serve you.

That's a good point.

There are probably so many more ambiverts like us too out there, don't you think?

Yeah, I think.

Think so.

Don't you think?

Yeah.

Okay.

Editing yourself to stay likable in the boardroom, the group chat or on social.

Media goes to the no.

Right?

All the way.

All the way.

All the way.

Celebrating your own wins, the cake, the champagne, or the group text that screams.

I crushed this a thousand percent iconic.

So, Lisa, before you go, please tell everybody where they can find you.

Oh, my God.

Yes.

So if you're listening on podcast, I have a podcast called Women of Impact by Lisa Bilyu so you can listen where a podcast found and then YouTube.

I pour my heart and soul into my YouTube channel.

I studied filmmaking when I was younger, so being able to put out video content is my heart and joy.

So you can go find women of impact Lisa Bilu on YouTube.

Wonderful.

And please definitely check all her stuff out.

It is so inspiring and you will no doubt garner a lot of jewels every time you listen or watch.

So thank you so much, Lisa.

Thank you.

That was a masterclass in burning the rule book, rewriting your identity, and owning your midlife.

Glow up like a damn boss.

Lisa reminded us that confidence isn't something you're born with.

It's something you build step by uncomfortable step sometimes.

And no, it's not too late.

Not even close.

Close.

Make sure to follow the iconic midlife on your favorite podcast platform and hit up our YouTube channel tomorrow to see the full episode and if this episode moved you, please leave a review wherever you are listening and share it with a friend and follow us.

Heiconic Midlife and redcarpetroxy for your weekly dose of boldness, relax, brilliance and midlife magic.

Until next time, unlearn the noise.

Trust your gut and keep it iconic.