Episode 305 | Becoming the Heroine of Your Own Life with Joan Perry
Welcome to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams.
Intro:Now here's Devina.
Davina:Hello, and welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. I'm your host, Devina Frederick, and my guest today is Joan Perry. I'm excited to interview Joan today as she is a very vocal advocate for women becoming the heroines of their own lives. Her credits include international bestselling author, business owner, and securities trader, high performance coach, pioneering high net worth investor, philanthropist, and publisher. And she hosts a podcast, The Heroin's Journey with Joan Perry, found on all streaming devices.
Davina:Joan is the author of bestselling books, including The Heroine's Journey, The Art of Becoming the Heroine of Your Own Life, and A Girl Banish the White Knight Myth and Take Charge of Your Financial Life, Random House, and Living Proof, Celebrating Gifts That Came Wrapped in Sandpaper, coauthored with Lisa Nichols. She has appeared in major media outlets such as the WSJ, CNN, Glamour Magazine, NPR's All Things Considered, The Gayle King Show, and on major stages such as the Commonwealth Club and in personal. Please join me in welcoming Joan Perry to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast.
Davina:Hi, Joan. It's so nice to see you. How are you today?
Joan:Lovely to be here. So happy to contribute to your topic. Know, want women to be asset mamas, but I also want them to have joy along with prosperity and freedom in their lives. So let's talk about that.
Davina:Good. We are. We're gonna we're gonna cover it all and probably things we never even thought we're gonna cover. We're gonna cover it all. So you are the author of The Heroines Journey, and that is you you wrote a book about this topic, and I want to get you to explain what that is.
Davina:In addition to that, you have a program around this, The Heroin's Journey, and you've also written other books as well. So why don't you start out and tell us a little bit about the books you've written and what motivated you to write them?
Joan:Well first of all, when I graduated from business school, I looked around and I said what is the success path for a woman? And the answer clearly came back to me whatever the men were doing because after all they were making the money at that point. Yeah, right. So I pulled up my skirt, marched off to Wall Street and went to work trading municipal bonds. Let's just say that being a lawyer and trading municipal bonds are both an attempt to go off and be you know serve the world, make money, do the things that we saw as being part of the traditional economic pattern.
Joan:All that was well and fine and along that way not only did I run a securities brokerage firm and trade billions of dollars of bonds in the markets, but I wrote a book called A Girl Needs Cash. And I have to tell you something very funny. When I wrote that book, I really knew that I was putting a pink skirt on a pig. And what I mean by that is that I was trying to take the perspective that the guys had as they, you know, have constructed the financial community and just put it in women's terms. And while that served to teach women a little bit more about money, what it didn't do was to change the perspective.
Joan:And what I mean by that is that the hero's journey as described by Joseph Campbell is to go out and fight the lions, tigers and bears and bring back the bacon. Right. Okay? That could look like being a lawyer, making a lot of money, coming back with a bacon and giving a large amount of money to your university or college. Right.
Joan:You know, I mean, as I go to my college reunion and I see how they celebrate. It's the men they celebrate for just that thing. In fact, I asked the president of the college that I went to, so what is success for a woman and how do you celebrate her? So all of this was kind of the thinking that was developing in my head.
Davina:Do you have an answer?
Joan:I'm still working on him. But by the way, he's reading my book right now. Because the answer is nobody has asked that question.
Davina:Right.
Joan:You know, it's not, it's obvious. We build monuments to men and they have a weapon in their hand. But how many monuments do we build to women? And yet we have a significance and a purpose and we're going to deliver something good and by the way, I want women to be asset mamas. And what I mean by that is to have your own wealth and well-being in financial stability.
Joan:But I learned something really really important. And that's that a man will go single handedly down that hole of creating income as part of his role in life. Right. Women see money very differently. Women see money so that it goes across their life.
Joan:You know, money becomes important in a divorce, in a, you know, health issue and in something that's really part of their lives. And when women talk about money, they want to know how it relates to the whole aspect of their lives. Like if I said So dig
Davina:into that. Yeah, let's dig into that a little bit more to explain that because I, so with men, the money, the getting of the money itself is an accomplishment. And with women, it's about fulfilling some need with it, usually relational of some sort or something. Right?
Joan:And the only time they become really interested in it is when it intersects with a life event. And that's going to bring me to the importance of the heroine's journey. Money gets really important if you lost your job, you know, if your kid needs to go to college, if you're getting divorced. Other than that, as women, we generally like not like to think about it.
Davina:Right. That's interesting. It's interesting because I've been doing this work for a long time with women lawyers. And one of the things I find is when I'm, like, when I'm working with private clients, the first questions I'm asking them is how much money do you want to make? And they, what do you want?
Davina:They never say money. They always go into, well, I want this or I want that or I want that. And they don't even relate it to money. They don't even I have to ask them, how much? What's the price tag on that thing?
Davina:Oh, I hadn't thought about it before. They're focused on what it gets for what, you know, without even putting a price tag on it or saying it. So, oftentimes I'm kind of going walking against the wind. Yes. And I'm talking with women and money because a lot of us haven't even thought about it until we faced some life event that causes to because I know that's what happened to me as well.
Joan:And me too. And I'd love if you'll share that because we have a commonality, which is the commonality of the heroine's journey. I often say that once we even get money, women have more money invested in their clothes closet, their makeup drawer, maybe their jewelry box, something they do in their savings account.
Davina:Yeah, handbags. I'm seeing a lot of very expensive handbags on people who I know because I've looked at their books and their business and say, you shouldn't be spending money on handbags at this stage where you are in your life. Right? But that's such a, a showing of wealth. Right?
Davina:Like there's an expectation that we look a certain way and represent ourselves a certain way for people to believe we are a certain type of person. Right?
Joan:But I ask I ask when I see that. But how much money is in your wallet?
Davina:Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Joan:Don't show me the handbag. Show me your wallet. You know, show me show me your investment accounts. That's being an asset mama.
Davina:Right.
Joan:And what we don't anticipate is that as part of the heroine's journey, and we'll get to this, a major disruption is going to happen in your life. And when we think about it, where are we schooled to be planning for our own retirement, understanding of money? Did your family teach you that? Did the school you went to do teach you that? We're left largely untaught.
Davina:Now, what I think is interesting about that too, is that a lot of men are too. We get in relationships with men who also have not been taught. And yet there's an assumption that what comes with the testosterone is knowledge about money. We often get married and we say, well, my husband, I try, he handles that. How many educated women have I spoken to who say, oh, I don't know what we have in our retirement.
Davina:My husband handles that. Yes. In in 2025. It's it's stunning to me.
Joan:And I'm gonna tell tell you a terrible story right now. This beautiful woman came up to me one time when I was speaking about a girl needs cash. Pearls, well dressed, lovely. And she related the the story to me. She said, can you please help me?
Joan:And I'm like, well, I'll try but probably not on a personal level right here. What she related to me quickly was that she had depended upon that. And her husband had mortgaged their house, taken all the money out of their insurance, ran up, I think it was about $350,000 in credit card debt without telling her so that he could fund his startup company. And here's the sad thing. She was now at a point that my advice to her actually had to be, you're going to need to divorce him.
Davina:Right.
Joan:And she loved him. So she didn't want to hear that. But the truth is, if something happened to him, let's say he died or whatever, she was going to become responsible for his debts.
Davina:Right. Right. Right.
Joan:And she had no concept about how she was going to live well into her life.
Davina:Right. Plus financial infidelity. Just the lie of all of that in the marriage now. Here's what I so you and I are not in our twenties and thirties anymore. Right?
Davina:And so one of the, I think one of the things, the benefits that we have for being older is having gone through some things, right? And so what I find, is a challenge for me is how to say to people that, you think you will escape it. You think, because when I was 20, when I was 30, I thought I would get married, live happily ever after for the rest my life. And I would marry somebody who had money and we would go off in this, and I would be educated and have money. We'd store off in the sunset.
Davina:Like there was a whole vision that I wasn't even really conscious, but just believed that I would have. And yet things happen in life, that change that. And it's hard for people who are in their thirties marrying with little babies and, you know, going that whole thing to even think that will ever happen. So they don't, they're focused on sort of that moment. It's hard for them to hear it from women who are older.
Joan:Absolutely. And I'm going to tell you a story. My father said, save for a rainy day. And I looked at him and I said, I'm not having any rainy days. And I totally believed it.
Joan:Yeah. I just thought I was a princess of enough that I was going to go on with life. You did a really smart thing and that's how you got a law degree. Okay? I did a really smart thing.
Joan:I went to business school and got my MBA. And went into business so I could learn how to make money. I was so blessed because I had a mother who had her own business and she taught me entrepreneurialism. However, that is not enough. That is a good start but that is not enough.
Joan:Because our culture, the credit card companies, they all teach us to be victims. It's so true. Have a credit card. Like you just attain status of some sort. In my life, I've never had a credit card.
Davina:Wow.
Joan:I use debit cards. I get along just fine and I can only spend what's in my checking account because honestly, I don't trust myself to have credit.
Davina:Right. I learned that early. That's so interesting. I've been I've been, listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey's content lately, not not particularly because I love Dave Ramsey or whatever, but it came up and then I started. And now I keep listening to all these people call in talking about their money problems that I'm addicted to listening to it.
Davina:And of course, he's a huge advocate of saying, never have credit cards. Live your life without credit cards. And so there's been a lot of discussion among my friends lately talking about this and say, how do you function in a modern world without a credit card?
Joan:No need one.
Davina:Because you have a security risk of putting your bank out inform your debit card out there, everywhere. Right? So there's this there's this, belief in what he says is we've been brainwashed to think that we have to have this product. We have to have a credit score. He says,
Joan:you don't an investment account and a banking account. You put enough money in your banking account for your monthly expenses. You keep your other money in your investment account where it's not exposed.
Davina:And that's how you get by with a debit card and no credit cards.
Joan:And I wrote those things in A Girl Needs Cash. It's great about how to look at your financial life, you know, and but there's a difference. We're women. Which is what led me onward to write the heroine's journey. Because as we were saying, and it's very hard to talk to younger women because they don't want to believe it.
Joan:I didn't want to believe there was going to be upset. My apple cart was going to get upset in life. And here's the way it usually works. It comes out of the blue. Right.
Joan:Right. Somewhere around the mid fifties, something comes out of the blue. It's going to be either financial, relationship, health or self worth.
Davina:And sometimes it can be before that. It can be in the 40s. It can be in the I mean, there's all kinds of we don't know what it's going to be. We don't know what's going to happen in our lives, you know, that will change things for us. And we like to think that we will be exempt from it.
Joan:And here's what's happening. You construct the first half of your life, whether it's in your forties or your fifties or even your sixties, you construct the first half of your life for security and safety. It's all about impression. And then a very magical gift shows up. And it's called the crisis and challenge stages of the heroine's journey.
Joan:Why is it a gift? Because it calls you to your authenticity.
Davina:In the moment, we don't think it's a gift.
Joan:We don't think it's a gift. That's how
Davina:you'll know what it is.
Joan:I labeled it a disaster, the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. I was doomed. I cried. I berated myself. You know, that's all part of the first part of the heroine's journey, truly.
Joan:But when this shows up, you, your vision is shattered. Your vision of what you thought life was going to be is shattered. For me, it was a divorce. And then it was a huge family estate problem. I didn't see any of it coming my way.
Joan:But it impacted me in just in more than just the financial area of my life. Right. And that's the problem with just thinking that that being a successful woman entrepreneur and making money is going to solve all the problems of your life. It's not. And the reason I would position to you is that we're missing something as women that I'm calling back.
Joan:The hero's journey that I was describing that Joseph Campbell so determined and it's the plot line for a man's life to maturity. Okay. It's an external journey where you go fight the lions, tigers and bears and you bring back the bacon. That's not the path of a woman. In fact, when Joseph Campbell was asked, do women have the same journey in life to maturity that men do?
Joan:Shockingly, he reported to Liz Gilbert, famous author of Eat, Pray, Love, no, they don't. They stay home and cry. Oh, wow. Wow. That sent me hurling towards writing the Heroine's Journey book.
Joan:I was like, oh, no, no, no. Fortunately, Joseph Campbell matured later in life. Right before my book was ready to go to be published, I found another quote where he said, I don't really know. A woman's going to have to tell us that.
Davina:Well, at least, yeah, at least he came out and said that. So tell us what is the heroine's journey?
Joan:So the heroine's journey, by contrast, is an internal journey to claim your self worth and your voice. When that crisis hits, you are called to your authenticity, not what you were trying to make up about what your life looks to. And from the smile on your face, I can tell that you get this too. Yeah. You know?
Davina:Yeah. I've been there.
Joan:All of a sudden, my life was like an onion that was peeled to the core. Things didn't work that I'd used in the past. I didn't know what to do next. I didn't know what the vision was for me going forward. And that was all intended on the heroine's journey.
Joan:Now you might say scary, fearful. Yeah. But what I want to teach you in the heroine's journey is how to go through it with grace and ease. Because I would never change a thing that happened on my heroine's journey now because I like who I am now.
Davina:Right. Right. Definitely. I'm smiling because I can relate to that because I had, it's almost a maturity that happens, right? You're going along and it doesn't happen at the moment that the crisis happens.
Davina:It's something that happens after the crisis happens. You've passed it. You've done the hard work through it. And then you're reflecting back on it and you're saying, what what just happened? What was that all about?
Davina:And what meaning did it have in my life? And how did I come out of it? Who am I now that I'm on this other side of it? So it's so much more than just when we're going through it. And like you said, I want to make sure that people don't miss this piece.
Davina:It could be divorce, but it could be a lot of other things. A health crisis, what were some of the other things you said? A health crisis
Joan:It's one of four areas. It's a crisis of self worth. It's a financial crisis. It's a health crisis, or it's a relationship crisis.
Davina:Right.
Joan:It's going to be in one and if you're a hard nut to crack like I was, it's in more than one.
Davina:You might get the whole trifecta. You know,
Joan:at some points, I was saying, god, I know you love me. I know you're trying to help me become the best person I can be. For a moment. Could you go work on somebody else while I just digest this?
Davina:Yeah, I really need to skip some blessings right now. Yeah, no, I get that because I went through that. I am a tough nut to crack too because I went through several. I had to learn the hard way, but the big crisis for me did not result in divorce, but it did involve my marriage and money and losing my husband losing everything and, not through bad habits or anything because his business tanked. And there were some things that were going on that caused that to happen.
Davina:And then his reaction to that caused a lot of issues. So the combination of all that and it was years. It was years of going through that and recovering and saying, who am I? Like, because up until then, this is my second marriage and really the marriage that the marriage I'm still in. And, and I I was you were talking about voice.
Davina:What came out of it for me was this realization that I had buried my voice so deep that I couldn't even hear it anymore.
Joan:Your authenticity.
Davina:Right. And trying to And I remember I had a lot of people advising me. I mean, like it affected my career and everything. And I had a lot of people advising me to do this, do that, do whatever. And I had to silence all the noise because my voice had become like this little flickering tiny pilot light.
Davina:And I couldn't get it to flame until I shut out all the noise and got really real with myself, this authenticity. I said, who am I? Who do I want to be? How do I, what do I want? What do I want to do?
Davina:Because until then I had been following other people's vision of what my life should be. Particularly by very strong parents who were in my head.
Joan:Mine too. Mine too. You were busy creating your safety and security and thinking that that was going to work.
Davina:Right. Along their guidelines, the path that they envisioned. Right. And it wasn't authentically who I was and what I wanted. And I had, it was a, and I had to go through, all the pain to figure it out and then to build back from there.
Joan:Was just Would you change your thing now?
Davina:Well, if I could go back and wave a magic wand, yes, I could. But I also, when you talk about loving who you are now, I think about that often. Like, who I am now is somebody that I really love being, right? And I love my life now. And I love how I spend my days now and who I spend my days with and what I do.
Davina:Also the, the, for me starting the business I started came out of this idea of, I will no longer just sort of float around and expect, you know, other people to have answers regarding finances. I didn't have that financial security. I married somebody I thought was going to be financially secure because my first marriage was not that. I thought this is going to be and then ultimately it was me had to be my own heroine in that picture. And we're still together and we have a great marriage now.
Davina:But that took a lot of work on both of our parts to grow into who we are.
Joan:Yes, absolutely. The heroine's journey causes you to ask the big questions. That's the point. Right. Who am I?
Joan:Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? What gifts did I get delivered down the birth canal with? How am I supposed to implement them to serve other people? It dismantles your preconceived notions, the things that you were doing that actually weren't working, your notion that you could control your own life, And it asks you to come forth with who you are meant to be.
Joan:And the challenge is there's something bigger than us out there that thinks we're bigger than what we thought we were.
Davina:I think too that this idea too, that I had this sort of thing happen was like, that was it. No, that's not it. Like I've got, I know now too, that there's going to be eventually something else because life is hills and valleys, right? I have two elderly parents. I have a sister who's disabled.
Davina:I have things that could be the health crisis, be a month, like we don't know yet, right?
Joan:What else did you have more courage and strength.
Davina:Yeah.
Joan:And you knew at the time and you hero wind up. And the arc of the heroine's journey is to create your stability, awaken your authenticity, light up your expression and make your contribution.
Davina:All right, so tell us a little bit more about those.
Joan:That's the arc of the heroine's journey. My book, book, the heroine's journey, focuses primarily on create your stability. Because how do we that? I think and knowing from our conversation, you think that that's true. And just to put that into perspective, until you create your stability you're going to live in prostitution.
Joan:Now that's why it might sound a little harsh for me to say but here's the truth. Until you create your stability and get that, you can't skip forward and make your contribution. You, when you create your stability, you're creating the foundation that you need. If you don't create your stability, you're gonna marry somebody you don't want to be married to. You're gonna take a job you don't want to be married.
Joan:You don't want to be married to. You know, you're going to do things that compromise your own authenticity.
Davina:So let's talk about stability of what you mean by stability. Cause I can just, so for me, in my experience, there was a financial stability piece of it. There was like this idea that I'm going to educate myself, learn, protect myself and all of that. And also then other types of stability relationship, who do I am? What do I want?
Davina:All those kinds of things. When you're talking about stability, talk to me about what you mean by that.
Joan:I love to give a graphic example because then you'll remember it. Good. Okay.
Davina:I love graphic examples.
Joan:Imagine that your life is a flower cart. You know those beautiful kind that are wooden and slatted on the side and the woods gotten patinaed. You know and it's got four wheels. And inside that cart is loaded beautiful flowers poking their heads up for all to see. Okay?
Joan:In your flower cut cart are your gifts, skills, and talents. That you were naturally born with. Nobody comes here without gifts, skills, and knowledge and talents. We all do. But here's the deal.
Joan:You're driving down the road. You kind of feel this funny feeling and you're like, ugh, that back wheel's loose. Then you look over your left shoulder a little bit later and you're like, that wheel just fell off my cart. Now, my ass is dragging on the ground. Okay?
Joan:So, you think being entrepreneurial, you'll just get out of the cart and pull it forward because you're trying to get your gifts, your talents, your skills to market because you're entrepreneurial and you want to be paid for them because that's what we're told is a success formula. Right. But it doesn't work. So you go to the back of the cart and you start pushing. And you think, well, maybe I could just push it to market.
Joan:Well, be told, and I really get upset when I hear women say to women, get empowered. Because if all the wheels I
Davina:can't stand the word empowered. Especially thought that I'm going to empower you. I'm going to give you empowerment.
Joan:If all the wheels are off your cart, your cart is going to sit on the ground and you're lucky if you didn't get flipped into a gutter one way or the other. Right. It was so dramatic for me that I got flipped from gutter to gutter. Right. Okay.
Joan:So, what are the wheels on your cart? The wheels on your cart are people financial, physical, and self worth. I have a lens for it and what I'm looking for as I know women is financial. I most women have more on their credit cards than they do in their savings account. They people.
Joan:They marry people that they have to fix.
Davina:Yeah, I've heard that story before.
Joan:And in many cases want to dismantle your life.
Davina:Right.
Joan:They don't do the things they need to do so that their life force energy is really strong. And they say crappy things to themselves in their brains about who they are. Now how far can you push your cart? If that's your promise?
Davina:Those wheels are if one of those wheels falls off, or more than one wheel falls off. Or all four of them.
Joan:All four. And I still to this day when my life is not quite going the way I want. I think which wheel is loose? That's true. Because what the heroine's journey teaches you to do is physically source your life force energy with all the things that are good.
Joan:Enough sleep, you know, meditation. There's a whole variety we teach. Financially, to run your life like a business and make a profit at the end of the year.
Davina:I love that. People
Joan:surround yourself with a circle of love. And boot out those who aren't on your team.
Davina:Right.
Joan:It's a skill. I've
Davina:learned to And that can be really hard if a lot of the people who are not on your team are in your family.
Joan:Yes, and we give you some strategies for that.
Davina:Yeah, but that is a very, that's something too that comes with when you go through a crisis a bit and you have a realization and you look at authentically who you are, sometimes some of the people who are your worst naysayers are the most well meaning maybe or whatever. People
Joan:tried to tell me all kinds of things about myself. And fortunately the heroine rose in me in a heroine's proclamation that said you do not know who I am. I'm not going to be measured by my fall. I'm going to be measured by my rides.
Davina:Right. Right. I love that.
Joan:And you know that because you were in that dire, let's call it dire situation. Where you had to muster everything you had inside of yourself. To get your wheels back on the cart.
Davina:Right. Right. Do you even get up and get out of bed some days?
Joan:Yeah, me too.
Davina:Right? Right. Me too. So, yeah. Yeah.
Davina:No, I understand that. I totally get it and and for me, one of the things so in my work,
Joan:me finish for you. Go ahead. And the fourth wheel is self worth. And that's learning the skill so that you only tell good things to yourself about yourself and you don't let other thing people say things about you that disable you. So for instance in my brain I have a delete key.
Joan:If I hear myself saying something crappy like, you know, I'm too fat or I'm, you know, can't do this or blah blah blah. Immediately, I go delete. That's excellent. Because that is not gonna bring me to my best self. If I don't believe in me, who's gonna believe in me?
Joan:So, those are the four wheels that you must get back on your cart and that the heroine's journey is actually the it's perfect for getting you onward, answering the questions you have and leading to you to a life of joy, prosperity and freedom.
Davina:Right. Right. The the, I love the delete key idea because I think something else that happens that we don't talk enough about is that I get a lot of content on now because of my age is menopause. And when you talk about it like you think I'm not going to go, okay, so maybe you won't go through a divorce, maybe you won't have an illness, maybe you won't. But let me tell you sister, when menopause comes along, if you are lucky enough to live long enough, you're going to go through it.
Davina:And this in itself will change who you are. It will change who you are at the core. It will change your life. It will change your body image. It will change how you see yourself.
Davina:It'll change what you thought you knew to be true in the world is no longer true about how you look or how you feel or what's going on with your body or all of that. So there are things that are going to happen regardless, right?
Joan:Of
Davina:how perfect we try to be and how perfect we try to live our lives and how
Joan:perfect our lives. Because what I want women to understand is that this is a universal process. This is a universal plot line. It doesn't matter if you're Asian or American or black or white or you know any of that. This is a universal plot line that goes through our life.
Joan:Now, we tell each other our stories. You know, I've been fascinated to watch Drew Barrymore and Kelly Clarkson telling their heroine's journey stories lately because they're going through it. You know, and we're seeing them transform and grow and become, you know blossomed women because we're meant to blossom as naturally as a rose. A rose can't say no I don't want to grow. Yeah.
Joan:You're going that we're naturally intended to blossom. Right. And when we blossom, it's on the same path line. What we haven't realized before now is we tell each other our stories and our stories are unique to us. So we find intrigue and drama in them.
Joan:But the truth is we're telling them on the same plot line. And once we understand that it gives us so much insight.
Davina:Right. Well, and also makes us feel not so alone. You realize that this isn't me being a big loser. It's just like, this is part of it. The contrast in life as well as the things that you want or desire or whatever.
Davina:There's another piece there, right? And that piece is meant to help you evolve. Like your whole purpose in life is to evolve and grow from what you experience.
Joan:Tell us. Want you to get the wheels on your cart so that when that big bump does come in the road, you have created stability that helps you get through it as easily as possible.
Davina:So tell us some of the things that you did to get your wheels back on the cart. I think that's gonna be a natural question for people is like, well, what do I do when one of these wheels falls off of my cart? So tell us some of things you did and maybe some examples of, other people you've worked with that have experience and wheels that fell off their carts and sort of how did they overcome that and get them back on? What do we do?
Joan:Well, first go to heroinesbook.com and get the book. That's free plus shipping on that site. Right now it's my gift and we just want to get this concept out so that women can start to think about their own journeys in just the fashion you're talking about. That's my wish, my hope, my mission, my purpose.
Davina:Right.
Joan:So that's the first part. Then one step at a time, the journey in the right order causes you to think about what's going on there. Okay, so let's take self worth, which is really where we start, because that's a root of it all. You know, if you don't claim your self worth, and now I treasure myself worth, I do not let anyone get in the way of it. I monitor it and I, that is the one thing I can control.
Joan:And with self worth, what I'm saying to myself about in my head is also monitoring. So self worth is the place to start. And I really had to get a deep focus on who who am I? And that's when I retorted with such vigor to say, You don't know who I am. Because people are out there trying to make a construct of who they think you are.
Joan:Right. And it may not be helpful at all.
Davina:And again, these may be people that are closest to you. People that you know, who've been in your life, they may be family, they may be longtime friends, they may be people you knew you when, and think of you as the person you were when you were 16 or as the person you were when you were 20 or whatever. And they don't know your who you are now.
Joan:And You you get an inkling of not feeling happy. And when I would say to my father, I'm just not happy. He would retort to me that I was attractive, well educated, you know, opportunities were coming my way. He was referring to all those external things. Because that's the culture we grow up in and we learn to value that.
Joan:But truly, I was saying, I'm not happy, I was talking about internally. I was talking about how I built the scaffolding inside of me that could hold me up in difficult times, in times of other people saying things about me that they were making up. You know, it it was the strength as a woman. And that's what I hope we'll come back to. When you look at women and I totally encourage you in the book to look at pick out the heroines that you've known in life.
Joan:And all some of them might be Eleanor Roosevelt or Amelia Earhart or you know even Oprah. What we've seen is in the process of them building the strength inside of them. And there's nothing stronger than a woman who claims her self worth.
Davina:Yeah. Oprah is a great example of that because Oprah talks about being about the the abuse she suffered as a child, about the racism she suffered, about the sexism and misogyny she suffered, not getting paid. You know, like they're great. There are examples all around us of, of women who've overcome and gone above and beyond. But it's not just success, like you say, in that external way.
Davina:May be somebody that lives down the street from you that you've not, that just looking at who they are as person and saying, this is somebody I would like to be that centered or that solid in myself and who I am and what I want and all of that.
Joan:In fact, if you're just looking to the external, like I was, because that's what I learned from my family.
Davina:Right.
Joan:And I got to the top of the ladder. But famously I say but the ladder was in the wrong building. Yeah. That was not really the best use of my gifts and talents. You know, of whom I would have proud been proud for me to become.
Davina:But you probably, but again, this goes back to that piece was part of your journey and shaped who you ultimately were. Right? Yeah. Because you could see what I don't want, who I don't want to be, what I don't want, what I do. But you also financially, that you had the education around that and the knowledge around that.
Davina:And ultimately that helped you to become who you are today.
Joan:I made a lot of money. Yeah. But that wasn't the complete answer.
Davina:Right.
Joan:I was more than And what I when you asked me, what did I do? One big thing I did is I started to tell myself that everything is perfect. Even in the midst of divorce and family estate problems and you know my therapist said at one time Joan there are so many fires around you we don't know which one to put out first.
Davina:You're like yay that's what I want to hear.
Joan:I was just sure that I was going to go up like Joan of Arc you know?
Davina:Oh, wow.
Joan:But I started to say to myself, I can't see the whole picture. I don't really know what's going on here. There's greater wisdom than me. So I'm just going to decide that it's all perfect as it is. And that was a huge turning point for my life.
Davina:Yeah, that is huge. And that's got to be hard, like in the to be looking around you, there's fires all around you. You think you're going to go up like Joan of Arc and say, well, this is just perfect and not sarcastically.
Joan:Exactly. This is
Davina:just perfect.
Joan:I turned my attention from blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, from blaming others to thinking that I was a victim, You know to doing the things not doing the things that were going to move me forward. And transitioned me to heroining up. Because in heroing up I had to accept the lessons. I had to accept that everything around me was burning down and maybe that was a good thing, which it was by the way. I had to accept that maybe I was being called into a new path because that was my real purpose and the way I was to best serve in my lifetime.
Joan:It called me to writing the heroine's journey book. And I'll tell you a funny story. So early on in my 30s, went to a course that a man named Bill taught. And as part of his course was on self esteem. First of all, I'd never even heard the word before.
Joan:I had no idea what it
Davina:was. Interesting.
Joan:All I knew was that I was an investment banker working on Wall Street, and that must mean I was cool.
Davina:And that's the pinnacle
Joan:for And what was I set up to a big fall? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So for our life, he gave us each what he saw as our word. And the word he gave me was women.
Joan:And I almost threw it back at him with explicative words that I don't need to say here. What? I don't. I'm working on Wall Street. I don't know any.
Joan:And I'm not sure I like any.
Davina:Well, you're one of the people who said I'd rather hang out with men than with women.
Joan:Yeah, exactly. How can you do this? How can you say this about me? I mean, it really infuriated me. So fast forward, I am running a securities brokerage firm, and I take a left hand turn and write a book called The Girl Needs Cash.
Joan:My blooming was bigger than my interpretation.
Davina:I wonder why he said women to you. I think
Joan:he was just very intuitive and he knew that I was going to be a leader in that arena and that what I was trying to do not only was it making me miserable as I fought the highly laden testosterone world to try to get my achievement out of that. He saw something greater in me.
Davina:Right. Right.
Joan:And that's why you have to decide that it's all perfect.
Davina:Yeah, I've never heard anybody say that before. Like I, For me, it's everything is always working out for me. I love that everything is always working out for me. And so if whatever's going on, When I come back to that place when it seems like there are fires, I go, everything is always working out for me, meaning that I, there is something that is going on that is working out for me and I just don't know it yet. I don't see it, but everything always does because there's always some benefit to the things that are going on.
Davina:Right. Even if at first blush, they don't look like benefits. But I've never heard that and I love that. I love it. It's just perfect as it is.
Davina:Because I think that is a it's interesting to use the word perfect because perfect is what so many women, high achieving women are focused on is perfection. They want to be they want to look perfect. They want to have a perfect relationship. They want to have that's the goal. And then of course they're told, well, nothing is perfect.
Davina:But your set, your expression that helps you is, yeah, it absolutely is perfect. What is your idea of perfect? What does perfect mean? And so you've changed that and turned it on its head in terms of what it means.
Joan:And I say to myself, life works for me and not against me.
Davina:Yeah.
Joan:And in the midst of the fires, the crisis is the challenges is that's where courage and strength of a heroine shows up.
Davina:Yeah.
Joan:That's where you frame your mindset to support yourself. You heroine up to the task you commit. That a man up.
Davina:That's what we're doing.
Joan:You commit yourself fully. I'm going to live a life of joy, prosperity and freedom. That's my mission.
Davina:I'm not externally, it doesn't look like everything is lining up the way I envisioned initially.
Joan:Yes, I no longer have an external vision of that. I have an internal vision of that. You know? That's where my own happiness lies.
Davina:Yeah. Well, I do think that that is a I think a joy and happiness, all of that is a is a choice. Like, we have to there's always a way of looking at things that can be, seeing the fires, you know, and not the not the warmth or whatever. Right? We're looking at the fire and thinking it's gonna be destructive and burn and we're not looking at the benefit of it or this that side of it or whatever.
Davina:And that is a real inside job. That's inside your brain, inside your mind, your viewpoint, how you look at things, and it changes your daily experience.
Joan:My therapist said to me, you're the strongest woman I've ever met and when she said that, I was like, I don't think so. I'm, I grew up in Illinois. I'm a corn fed girl. You know, I'm not strong and you know, it took me a while but she was right. I was stronger than I thought, had more courage than I thought, and could go forward.
Davina:Right. Right. So tell us again where we can get the book.
Joan:You can get it at heroinesbook.com. Heroinesbook Com. Heroin with an S. It's a free plus shipping offer right now, so I encourage it because it's not gonna last for long. And you can can follow me on social media, Joan Perry.
Joan:I hope to know you, support you, encourage you, and lead you on a path to heroing up. Thanks so much for having me.
Davina:Thanks. Thanks for being here, Joan. I really enjoyed our conversation today.
Intro:You're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.
