Latest / Why Not Today? with Leslie Kane / Why Not Today? Season 1 - Episode 14 with Mary Foley, Founder of REV UP Society for Women Entrepreneurs + Host of the Live Like Your Nail Color Podcast

Transcript

Why Not Today? Season 1 - Episode 14 with Mary Foley, Founder of REV UP Society for Women Entrepreneurs + Host of the Live Like Your Nail Color Podcast · Why Not Today? with Leslie Kane

• 0:00
  All right. Good morning. Hello. My name is Leslie Kane. I'm the host of the Why Not Today
• 0:05
  podcast. This is a podcast to celebrate people who have been courageous and said, why not
• 0:11
  today? I started this podcast in honor of my father, Patrick Kane, who often said, why
• 0:15
  not today? I'm based in Reston, Virginia, a Planned Community right outside of Washington,
• 0:20
  D.C., and thanks for joining us today. I'm super excited today to have Mary Foley, who
• 0:26
  has been a friend for years and has done all kinds of courageous things. And we keep reconnecting.
• 0:32
  And it's just been a fun adventure with your friendship. And so she had just started a
• 0:38
  podcast herself, which we're going to talk about. And it's called What Now? Live Your
• 0:43
  Life by the Color of Your Nail Color. Did I get it right? I messed it up.
• 0:47
  Almost look like your nail color.
• 0:49
  That's a good nail color. And I have. Luckily, I got my nails done.
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  I love it. I love it. We can see you in person right now and you got this bright nail pink. Love
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  it. Yes, exactly. So I'm excited to hear from you, Mary, and your stories. But before we do
• 1:05
  that, I always talk about connections and how we connect with people. And I love our connection
• 1:10
  that I think we met when you wrote a book at a book signing event. For some reason, I've got to
• 1:16
  envision a hotel at Tyson's Corner. I have no idea. But we've connected and reconnected and
• 1:23
  you've moved away and just keep connecting. And I just love that. So you just never know who that
• 1:28
  person's going to be that's going to be in your life. And if you're not physically near him or
• 1:33
  you haven't talked to him in a while, then don't let it go. You know, if you get that little nudge,
• 1:36
  call him, see him. And I think a couple of years ago, we connected. I was driving through Richmond
• 1:41
  and that's where you lived and an appointment canceled. And I just reached out and like,
• 1:44
  you have time for coffee and we were able to reconnect. So it's been kind of fun. So super
• 1:49
  excited to hear from you, Mary, and all about your podcast and your courageous stories. So
• 1:55
  share a little about you before you get to the courage part. And what's a fun fact we should know
• 2:00
  about Mary Foley. Oh, my gosh, fun fact. Okay, so I was thinking as you were doing an introduction,
• 2:07
  kind of laying the groundwork for today's conversation, I was like, is it courageous,
• 2:11
  or is it crazy? You know, like it sometimes can look feel like it's crazy to you or to others
• 2:18
  when you're doing something courageous, something new to you. So all right. So when you asked me
• 2:24
  to be on this podcast, I started thinking about you said, you know, you have all these things
• 2:28
  you've done in your life. Okay, so truth be told, you know, I've been on this earth a little more
• 2:33
  than five decades, and I've been racking up not the points, but certainly the experiences, right.
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  So at this point, I hope to have a trend. And so I thought I thought, I started thinking about what
• 2:44
  are these moments where I thought immediately like, what was crazy. And the thing I really want to
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  share is highlights, because it was more as if I don't know, to me, perhaps, the different
• 2:56
  experiences and how courage kept showing up or my courage kept saying, hey, are you going to show up?
• 3:02
  Right. So the first one that definitely comes to mind is when I graduated. Okay, for you,
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  wait, wait, wait, wait, for you all your stories, a little bit about you and a fun fact.
• 3:15
  I thought a little bit about me were my stories. Okay, so the little bit about me is that I am a
• 3:20
  business coach for women entrepreneurs. And I love doing that, because I want to see more and
• 3:28
  more women entrepreneurs succeed. It's not as easy as it looks. And so that's a little bit about me
• 3:35
  and what I do every day. What's a fun fact? Fun fact is
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  when COVID started, this had been on the plan to do, it just happened to be COVID went along with
• 3:49
  it. Or the quarantine is I got a new bicycle after 20 years. They say you can get back on the bike.
• 3:57
  Well, I'm here to say you can. And I felt like a 16 year old. I didn't even, you know, I even had
• 4:04
  a donated gifted bike to me. It was my mom's 30 year old Schwinn. I mean, it was just funny when
• 4:13
  I look back, but I tried it out again. I went, I love this. It's fun. And we needed fun. And we
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  need also some stress relief during that quarantine time and I could get outside. And so since then,
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  I now have a much better bike, much more my size and suited to me. And I never thought that when
• 4:34
  I started biking again, they give me about 14 months later, I would do what's called a century
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  ride. That is 100 miles at one time, a hundred miles in a day. And I did it with my gal pal
• 4:50
  and biking buddy. And so it's always good. We are convinced we would not have made it had it not
• 4:55
  been for each other. Yeah. Yeah. But, and I thought, you know, I did it right after I turned 57 years
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  old, 56 years old. And you're like, you can't do something. It was proving to me, it was showing me
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  actually through this bike, you can get back on the bike if you keep pedaling and you, and having
• 5:15
  a goal and having a buddy makes a huge difference. So that's awesome. And it's interesting. There
• 5:21
  seems to be a theme. And I think we talked about this the other day, kind of my niche market for
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  this is a lot of the women that I've interviewed are hitting fifties and like doing different things
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  in life. So that's really cool. I think it's a great time. I've think I've been on a bike once
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  since I got my driver's license. So maybe one day. Yeah. So tell me what does courage mean to you?
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  If you could give a quick definition. I know it can mean lots of things, but what's courage?
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  Courage to me is
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  not giving up.
• 6:00
  Love that. And so true. Yeah. Simple. And maybe I could expand that and simply courage is
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  carving your own path and not giving up. Yeah. And you've had lots of that in your life.
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  So what I know there's lots of things you've done and we kind of pinpointed some that I knew of,
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  and I'm sure there's more. And I think you want to kind of go on in the way of highlights. So
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  share your why not today's your courage, your things you've done, because I think you've had
• 6:35
  a full life of living that motto. Well, because you asked the question, you helped me kind of
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  go, wow, I really have had a full life. And I know it, but when someone asks you to kind of review
• 6:51
  and give a synopsis, I just became more grateful of it. And it helped me actually a lot, Leslie,
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  because the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are the most powerful stories in our
• 7:02
  lives. So you made me reflect and say, what is my story again? And how does that inform me today?
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  So here's some highlights. When I thought about moments of courage, moments of gutsiness,
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  the first one that came to my mind was when I was 23 years old, I just graduated from Virginia Tech
• 7:18
  in engineering. And the only thing I knew was I didn't want to be an engineer. And it would have
• 7:24
  been a great lucrative career. But I came to the conclusion just didn't personally give me joy. And
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  I already felt depressed thinking about doing that job. I was very proud of my degree, by the way,
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  my parents, on the other hand, were deer in the headlights. What? You just gone through this,
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  we pay for it, you know, you're supposed to be launched. Right. But when I decided, okay,
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  I don't know what I want to do. But I know that's not on the list. So first, it was courage to say
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  no to that career. Even when my my student, my my peers, right, those who are my scene, there's
• 8:00
  were all seniors in college. And they're like, Mary, you know, just try it for a while. You know,
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  you know, you can always fall back on engineering. And I thought nobody falls back on engineering.
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  And I said, No, and I had to have the courage to my my peer group then then I'd have the courage
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  to tell my my parents. But the bigger thing was, what am I going to do? But the thing is, is that
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  had I not said no to that, because I think there's courage to say no to things in our lives. Yes,
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  that I even when I don't know what to say yes to yet, but is that it led me to Northern Virginia,
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  I decided to go to the big city. And that happened to be Northern Virginia, Metro DC,
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  met you in that process. And I just look for a job to pay the bills to get started doing something.
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  I wasn't looking by the big career, I'll figure it out as I go along. And that led me to a decade
• 8:50
  career with AOL when AOL was cool. And this we're talking Yes, right. I mean, it was in the 90s.
• 8:58
  That experience that decade changed my life, changed my life, and it formed me enables me to
• 9:04
  do what I'm doing today about entrepreneurship. And, and also, you know, they had a good, nice,
• 9:11
  little compensation plan that helped me out. So I'm that to me was a big, it was a big thing to say
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  that at 23 years old, when the expectations were all on me about, well, you've got this degree,
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  you're a female, you're in the minority, you know, people going to want to hire you. So that you've
• 9:30
  landed in a good place at AOL, but you started if I remember correctly, before AOL was AOL, and you're
• 9:37
  like answering calls or something like that, like not an engineering degree. It was not
• 9:44
  exactly what I was, I was working for a company whose name then it was called change its name to
• 9:52
  AOL later on, it was called quantum computer services, about 120 people in this company,
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  I was hired for the call center for a year, I was answering the phone calls that were coming in from
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  the 800 number, I was answering people's technical questions, you know, they were having to get the
• 10:09
  software working, they're billing questions, you know, just general stuff, they're ranting and raving.
• 10:14
  Yeah, I have a whole appreciation for customer service departments like that. And I thought I
• 10:19
  was going to leave, I mean, literally going, okay, you know, I'll just I was trying to figure out my
• 10:24
  life. I didn't expect to stay there then. But I did like the community, I liked the company and
• 10:31
  the culture and an opportunity, an opening came up in the training department of the customer service
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  department, they to train and I thought I can train the people to do what I did, I think.
• 10:43
  And so I was able to get that position and I, you know, there were several that applied that put me
• 10:48
  on the path Leslie to then going, I did that for I was training manager, then it was call center
• 10:53
  manager, then I was the head of corporate training for the entire company by the time I left.
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  But trust me, it was my parents are going, I don't know, she just works for some computer company,
• 11:03
  that's my daughter does right now. I mean, they really did. Yeah.
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  You know, in the early 90s. Yeah, that's right.
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  So the thing though that happened at the same time in that decade is I got married. And that is
• 11:19
  courageous in its way, but I was excited. What the courageous part was, I didn't realize until I
• 11:26
  was into it that I had married a man who had anger management problems, and he was abusive,
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  he was physically abusive, emotionally abusive. And I was just in shock. So fast forward, what
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  ended up happening was I knew it wasn't right. I didn't know how to get out of it. I finally
• 11:46
  get the courage to go dark about many courages to go to a counselor. He thought good, you're
• 11:52
  going to go get fixed. I was like, I'm going to go try to figure this out. And I really,
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  when you're in an abusive relationship, one of the tactics is when they at the by the abuser,
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  but also it's so easy to feel like so doubting of yourself. So self criticizing. And so it took me
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  a little bit, I thought, well, you know, my head was jost around. So this counselor really helped
• 12:16
  to get it straight. And then I had the courage to get the muster of the courage. She goes, you have
• 12:23
  to, after we had several sessions talking about it, you have to talk to him about this, like you
• 12:28
  can take a weekend away, or you just, you have to, you have to, you have to get a break from this.
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  I thought, oh, that's not going to go over. Right. Okay. So because big thing about abusers,
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  typically there's control. So he gave me the opportunity because of this incident that was
• 12:44
  of this incident that was going to happen that had been repeated before. And instead I ran out
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  of the apartment and essentially never came back for an entire year. And then we started to see if
• 12:53
  we could work things out. Ultimately it didn't. But the thing was, is that here I was not believing I
• 13:01
  earned this treatment. However, fear of what he would do kept me back from leaving, which is
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  something I never thought of before until I was in it. And then also I just was so ashamed. I was
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  the shame of, I let this happen to me. And then I'd never, nobody in my family had gotten divorced
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  and the feeling of failure that brought, you know, it was, so these negative emotions that are very
• 13:32
  real and tangible, but typically they're negative. Fear is a big one. This one, shame is a big one,
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  will keep us from doing the very thing and having the courage or mustering the courage.
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  I finally did because the counselor helped me kind of get my thinking straight.
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  You have the courage to get help, which is so many people love.
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  And then the courage to listen and process it, right? Think about it. Because any counselor,
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  any third party is really just a tool, whether they're information or guidance and such,
• 14:03
  you have to still take it in and decide what you're going to do for it. But you know what,
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  here's the thing. And I did finally get the courage to exit and to exit safely and get
• 14:13
  other people involved. I learned so much from that experience that it formed my life. I learned so
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  much about myself, so much about how life and relationships, even though I left the relationship
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  and the relationship was gone, I took from that everything to go forward that was positive and
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  such. So that was a big courage because then what happened is I get divorced and I decide
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  that I'm leaving AOL at the same time. I had two divorces. One was more amicable than the other.
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  But basically, I'd actually experienced the glass ceiling after all those years, which I thought
• 14:56
  was like, why? Why now? It didn't make any sense. However, I decided, well, as I looked into
• 15:04
  possibilities there, I said, nope, I think it's more my time to leave. So it was a big nudge.
• 15:08
  But it was a courageous, it was, and we talk about why not today and the courage, and it was
• 15:13
  one of those, if I remember correctly, a pivotal moment that something happened going to work.
• 15:19
  And you're like, oh, this can't work. Yeah. Isn't it something about the gym or
• 15:23
  the past? Right. Oh my gosh. It's so funny. I haven't told this story in a long time.
• 15:27
  I remember a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So what it was is I had separated from my husband,
• 15:32
  but I hadn't gotten a divorce yet. I'm going to work every day. I was the head of corporate
• 15:36
  training and I had, it just gets stressful dealing with all that. And then I had the
• 15:41
  biggest training management deliverable ever in the company of my career at that point that I was
• 15:46
  responsible for. So I had to make sure these 40 new managers went through management training
• 15:52
  in four months, 400, sorry, in four months. I still remember that. I was like, oh my gosh.
• 15:56
  Now I wasn't training them at this point. I'm coordinating it all and I'm making it all happen.
• 16:02
  But a lot was still, it was all going to come down to me internally. Did it work? Did it not work?
• 16:08
  And all the VPs and such. So yeah, so I was particularly stressed. And I had to, I was
• 16:16
  going in early one morning to, I know I had these, I had several meetings with VPs of these other
• 16:25
  departments to get their blessing, so to speak, you know, quote input on the training design,
• 16:31
  the final, like here it was. And I was on a tight deadline. So I really needed them to say, yes,
• 16:36
  oh, that was good. Thank you so much, Mary. Right. So I decided to go an extra early work out
• 16:40
  to kind of relieve some stress. And we had a small gym at the bottom floor of the building,
• 16:46
  AOL building I worked. So, you know, I get up, the alarm goes off. I put my gym clothes and stuff,
• 16:53
  my work clothes in the bag, put my gym clothes on, go to work. And I'm working out and I'm feeling
• 16:57
  good. Glad I did it, sweated off a little bit, like, okay. Then I go into the shower to change.
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  I get out of the shower, I got my towel wrapped around me, my hair's dripping wet.
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  I open up my bag for my clothes, my work clothes, and I realize I have a big, big problem.
• 17:12
  I have no pants, like I have everything else. I was like, oh my gosh. And of course, you know,
• 17:18
  you live in any metropolitan area, especially Washington, D.C., you cannot just say, oh,
• 17:23
  we're down the middle of rush hour. Let me just go, you know, home and back. And I had 45 minutes
• 17:27
  till this meeting was going to happen. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And so then,
• 17:32
  it, you know, just, it's almost like divine intervention. It occurred to me, hey, wait a
• 17:38
  minute, Mary, you're the head of corporate training, kind of like a coach. We have to wear these
• 17:44
  IDs and these lanyards around our necks. Why don't we kind of like a coach would wear a whistle?
• 17:51
  And so I got the idea. What I would do is fortunately to get too, too sweaty that morning,
• 17:55
  is that I put all my gym clothes, my workout clothes again, and we did have a casual workday
• 18:02
  or casual dress code, I should say. And I just put it back on. And then I walked into that first
• 18:07
  meeting and I said, all right, your head coach and trainer is here. Let's get started.
• 18:12
  Love it.
• 18:13
  And I had to have the guts. I have to really perform that one, like,
• 18:16
  yeah, I can't carry you overboard. And so they all laughed. That's all I wanted,
• 18:20
  Leslie. I just wanted them to laugh. And I was like, oh, and you're way ahead of your times,
• 18:24
  because fast forward, you're into the COVID world. Everybody wearing their sweats.
• 18:29
  That's right.
• 18:29
  I did have a colleague say to me, well, you're really taking this casual dress code, you know,
• 18:35
  seriously, Mary. So, you know, later that day I went home and I did change. But yeah, that was
• 18:41
  one of those moments. But here was the thing that led to where me going, okay, I have to leave.
• 18:48
  I just, this dress.
• 18:49
  Just too much stress that you forgot your pants.
• 18:51
  Yeah. I mean, my pants were right there on the bed when I went home.
• 18:56
  I just hadn't made it to my bag. And I thought that's an early sign. You're overloaded.
• 19:01
  It's something's got to give something's got to go. So it's either your health or, you know,
• 19:05
  your job or grad school was coming up. I was just about to start this, you know,
• 19:10
  and the divorce still wasn't done. So I decided to, you know, back off on the work part.
• 19:14
  And then, yeah, and I think those things happen and you were wise enough to be aware
• 19:19
  of it and say, okay, something's not right here and I need to do something different.
• 19:26
  Yeah. And I could have just said, oh, I'm stupid. I'm dumb, you know, all that stuff.
• 19:30
  You know, trust me in the moment, I felt a little foolish. All right. But I think that's
• 19:36
  something you're absolutely right. When it comes to, you know, moments of courage,
• 19:42
  there's a lead up to them. And it's because something is not quite settled in you in your life.
• 19:48
  Could be personally, could be professionally, could be relationships, could be finances,
• 19:52
  could be all kinds of different things, but something you're like, oh, it keeps nagging
• 19:56
  at you and you just don't feel really good about it. It's one of those, it's a negative feeling
• 20:01
  or it's a hesitation or such. And that's really what you need to pay attention to. So that's what
• 20:06
  it was for me. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you got lots more courageous moments. We can go forever,
• 20:11
  but let's get some other highlights. Yeah. Some other highlights was, so here I am now, early 30s.
• 20:16
  And I didn't expect, I don't know what I expected, but I certainly wasn't in my list of things of
• 20:22
  thinking, oh, well, you know, when I'm in my early thirties, I'm going to have been, I'm going to be
• 20:27
  divorced, single again. And I'm also going to have some big, I'm going to have left my job. And so I
• 20:34
  got like a new slate. All right. I did not anticipate that. That's what happened. Now I
• 20:41
  will say that there was this in between, which was I decided to go to grad school. Okay. And so
• 20:49
  what I had figured out is that when I decided to leave AOL, because of the glass ceiling,
• 20:55
  I looked around and said, well, what direction do I really want to take my career? So I had some
• 21:00
  conversations with people that I really admired and I pinpointed an area called organization
• 21:06
  development and you could do consulting. And I was kind of, I was doing some of that without
• 21:10
  knowing that was the label. So I said, okay, I really like this work or so let me get my degree
• 21:16
  in it. And a grad degree made sense at that point. So I searched that out and then I applied to a
• 21:20
  program and all that takes time as anyone knows in grad school. So, yeah, so I decided, so that was
• 21:27
  starting that had made a commitment to that leaving AOL. And then fortunately within the first
• 21:33
  semester, I was able to get the divorce finalized so I could do that. And then shortly after that,
• 21:38
  I left AOL and what I was quote left with was grad school, which I was thankful for because I had
• 21:43
  something to focus in on. And also I knew it had a timeline, it was a two year program. So the reason
• 21:48
  I'm just saying that is because given this, for me, the scenario was I was not a fish out of water,
• 21:56
  but I was in a different stream at that point. Okay. And it was uncomfortable to be single again,
• 22:03
  even though I didn't want to be with my ex, but to be in this social dating scene again.
• 22:08
  It was uncomfortable in some ways to go to school again, meet all kinds and the environment was to
• 22:14
  meet all kinds of different people, but it was also exhilarating. You were out west too,
• 22:20
  weren't you in California? Well, what happened was right. It was a Pepperdine University on the west
• 22:24
  coast. They had a program that quote executive, meaning that we went out there over two years,
• 22:31
  we met eight times in person about a week. And so a lot of times it's out in California. Yeah. So I
• 22:36
  could go back and forth. So you're right. And during that time period, I had more flexibility
• 22:43
  and because my family relationships had gotten strained because of my marriage, I spent more time,
• 22:48
  particularly my parents, and I went on trips with them sometimes, or I said, Hey mom, let's go
• 22:53
  somewhere in the world together. And she's like, okay. Really? And I was like, yeah. So I took
• 23:00
  advantage of it as well to kind of reconnect with myself. And here's the thing though, is that with
• 23:06
  the very end of grad school, I got the inspiration to write a book. Now here's what happened on that
• 23:11
  one. And this was a moment that only I was there. So, you know, you have to believe this happened.
• 23:17
  I was journaling and actually it was a requirement in grad school and this particular program to
• 23:21
  journal. And I was journaling and unexpectedly got this idea to write a book about, you know,
• 23:31
  about career success or about what had worked and my lessons learned at AOL. It was just all this
• 23:37
  jumble of stuff really. And I thought, you know, I got so excited that I started writing the first
• 23:43
  paragraph right there in my journal. And I lost a sense of time. Have you ever had that, Leslie,
• 23:48
  where you're just, this is something so much, you know, that's a space, whatever that topic is,
• 23:55
  that that's calling to your heart. It's calling your name. And I just got absorbed. I don't know
• 23:59
  if it was three minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes. I really don't know. What I do know is at some
• 24:04
  moment I realized what I was doing. Like, and the critical voice kicked in. What is it? You can't
• 24:10
  write a book. You've never written a book. You've never written a book. You've never written a book.
• 24:13
  You know, you don't have to write a book. And I freaked out and this voice got louder and louder.
• 24:17
  And I slammed the journal shut. And I just said, I can't think about this. But it kept coming back
• 24:23
  to me. It kept coming back. And I would get excited. That was the other thing. I noticed I got excited.
• 24:29
  And this was, I still had a year left in grad school, but I decided, all right, this was my
• 24:35
  courageous moment. And to myself, I said, I am going to write this book. I don't care if I give
• 24:43
  20 copies to my friends and family and that's it. I'm going to write this book. And I made a decision.
• 24:50
  And then I'm that decision. I went, well, I really don't know how to write a book. I don't
• 24:54
  know. You know, the process of it. Let me learn. Yeah. Let me find out. I became an investigative
• 25:01
  reporter, so to speak. Like, let me just, and today you can find out all kinds of stuff. So at
• 25:05
  the tips of your fingers, literally by going online. So I learned about, about that process.
• 25:11
  And then I was like, oh, and then I had the courage to give it voice to two other friends,
• 25:18
  girlfriends at dinner one night. This was about three months later. And the one woman,
• 25:25
  I had read her book called, Find Your Calling Love Your Life. Turns out she only lived about 45
• 25:31
  minutes away. She was so touched by my email. And then the woman who gave me her book was a colleague
• 25:37
  at AOL. So three of us got together. And I said to Martha at the end, I said, you know, I've had this
• 25:44
  idea about writing a book. She just came to me and I told her a little bit about it. And she was an
• 25:49
  author. And so, you know, part of me was like, yeah, what do you think? She said a few words,
• 25:54
  encouraging words. Then she emailed me the next day, Mary, I've been thinking about your book
• 26:00
  ever since and your book idea on the whole drive home. You got to write this book and I want to
• 26:05
  help you. Whoa. Wow. Well, that's awesome. Yeah. And that led to writing my first book.
• 26:11
  And it's listening to that voice. And I talked about that, what this podcast is, and that's kind
• 26:16
  of where I came with the podcast. It's like, okay, it's that little nudge. You can't let go of it.
• 26:20
  It gives you passion, gives you excitement. And then God puts people in your path. When you're
• 26:26
  obedient, you're like, okay, I'm going to do this. I don't know what it looks like, but I'm going to
• 26:31
  figure it out and definitely figure it out. So how many books did you end up writing? I think I have
• 26:36
  them all at home. Yeah, I wrote three. I haven't written one in, you know, the last one came out
• 26:41
  in 2004. So don't go like, you know, it's probably somewhere on eBay somewhere, perhaps. You just say,
• 26:49
  hey, maybe you got extra copies. But I wrote a book called Bodacious Career, Outrageous Success
• 26:55
  for Working Women, which really was lessons learned about career success when I was at AOL,
• 26:59
  both what I realized I did well, because what do you know, starting as well as my screw ups that
• 27:04
  I thought this is a really big important one and take forward. I then wrote a book called Being a
• 27:09
  Bodacious Woman, Outrageously in Charge of Your Life and Loving It. And then a few years after that,
• 27:14
  I got really playful and wrote a book called Live Like Your Nail Color, Even If You Have Naked Nails,
• 27:20
  which today I'm basing my new podcast on. But that's awesome. Yeah. But the main thing there
• 27:26
  is simply to say that I did listen to that voice and it happened in some steps for the book.
• 27:35
  So when I got done with my grad degree, I then said, I'm going to write this book. And I had
• 27:39
  this gal helping me. And I just made that commitment to myself. And I realized in that process,
• 27:45
  I don't want to go work for a company and being an organizational consultant. I have to try being an
• 27:49
  entrepreneur. And the message and the messages about being gutsy and what I call bodacious,
• 27:55
  being courageous and some how tos. I said that motivated me. I was more passionate about that
• 28:02
  than I was about organizational development, which I liked, by the way, which I felt was important.
• 28:07
  It had its purpose. That one decision to say, let me try this now, this next thing,
• 28:14
  because of writing that book, has put me on the entrepreneurial path. But it's why I'm on doing
• 28:20
  what I'm doing today, which I've been an author and a speaker and a radio show and a podcast host.
• 28:24
  And I've done workshops, all of that. And then now I'm doing business coaching.
• 28:31
  And your message is so strong about the book, first of all, being bodacious,
• 28:37
  living like your nail color, like live your life. And I think that all speaks to my message here,
• 28:43
  being courageous and why not today and doing those things that you want to do.
• 28:49
  And then the other thing, the other story, and it's amazing how many things I remember
• 28:53
  and how many pivotal moments in a life. And I quote you, like before we talked the other day,
• 29:00
  I shared some, we were talking about nail polish color and I talked about you. And I didn't remember
• 29:05
  being a book. I remember a chapter of it, but I guess it was a whole book. And then the other thing
• 29:09
  is Godiva chocolate. I quote you on that forever and ever. And it's again, a woman,
• 29:17
  being courageous Godiva chocolate. So share your Godiva chocolate.
• 29:21
  Oh, well, the story that I first shared, you know, these were sometimes I go, why do speakers
• 29:29
  steal other people's stories or, you know, it's good if you want to give them credit, right?
• 29:34
  But you know, life gives you your own stories. So this one day, who knows, maybe I was working on a
• 29:40
  book writing, but I'd had several days in a row, we've all had those where they really long
• 29:46
  days and they, you know, they were like 10, 12 hour days again and again. And I finally, you know,
• 29:51
  was almost to the end of this project I was working on, but I still had like two or three hours
• 29:57
  probably left, you know, and I said, okay, what do you do at those times? A lot of times, you know,
• 30:04
  you head for the, you have for the coffee, right? Right. And for something, some caffeine,
• 30:08
  you had for some sugar. And I was like, I got some coffee and I was like, and I had it for the
• 30:12
  chocolate. I mean, you know, I love that combination. And so a friend had recently given me this box of
• 30:19
  Godiva chocolates. And you know, when you get Godiva, you know, you don't eat them all at once.
• 30:26
  Right. You savor. Right. You savor them. And there are these, there's a box of truffles. So I pull
• 30:31
  open the, you know, the drawer and I look at this gold box of what I call divine chocolate, right?
• 30:37
  And I realized in that moment, for the first time ever having eaten enough Godiva chocolate and seen
• 30:47
  the label, it didn't say Godiva. My eyes got opened and in that moment, it said, go diva.
• 30:57
  And I was like, I love that story. And I just like, oh my gosh, all this time, Godiva chocolates
• 31:02
  has been inspiring me, right? To be this bodacious woman, to go after, to say, why not today?
• 31:10
  And then, you know, rewarding me with these amazing chocolates. So, you know, Godiva as a
• 31:16
  historical figure was pretty gutsy herself. I don't know that whole story, but for me, it was always
• 31:22
  go diva, go diva, go diva. It was fun. Yeah.
• 31:27
  All right. So we want another chance. We can't be here forever and ever. But so other courageous
• 31:31
  moments recently, I know your podcast, moving back home. Yeah. So things you've done.
• 31:37
  Another chapter in another chapter of my life. Now I'm still a business coach. Fortunately,
• 31:41
  with COVID, we can do it virtually and I, we can do some in person, but it became apparent to me,
• 31:47
  probably about six months ago that my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my,
• 31:57
  aging parents really could use more help. And I was only an hour away when I was living in Richmond,
• 32:04
  Virginia, and they were living in Williamsburg, Virginia, and that's my hometown. However,
• 32:08
  an hour away means you're probably not going to see some of the things that you need to help,
• 32:11
  and you can't quickly help and you can't. So I, so it was either going to be, you know,
• 32:17
  I drive much more to Williamsburg from Richmond, or I just say, let me live in Williamsburg and
• 32:21
  drive to Richmond as needed and other places. And that's what I decided to do. And that's been the
• 32:26
  impetus, but I, and that courageous decision, I could say, because I'd already, you know,
• 32:32
  after being in Northern Virginia for about 15 years and developing relationships, like with you,
• 32:36
  then I moved to this new city called Richmond. I'm developing new relationships. It felt a little
• 32:41
  bit like starting over, but I also was like a new adventure. I loved that part. And now it's moving
• 32:47
  after another 15, 16 years yet again. And it feels kind of that way, kind of, but I'm decided to look
• 32:56
  at it as a new adventure. But the, what also happened kind of in this timeframe, not in the
• 33:02
  last six months, but more like the last 18 months or so, and has to do with why bring back the whole
• 33:08
  idea of live like your nail color is because during the pandemic and all the stresses and all
• 33:15
  the negativity that kept perpetuating, you know, the depression and the anxiety and there, I dealt
• 33:22
  with my own. I'm just telling you right now, biking became my antidepressant. Okay. So, and,
• 33:30
  walking and being near water became mine. Okay. Yeah. And, and having a purpose of, of, and
• 33:35
  of helping doing my best, my darnedest to say that for all my women entrepreneurs who I was coaching
• 33:42
  for them to stay in business to somehow, how can we make this, how can you adjust and how can we
• 33:48
  make this work for you? How can you be stronger because of it? That gave me a lot of sense of
• 33:52
  those were happening, but as it continued on and on, I was just kind of like, you know what,
• 33:58
  I hate this, this, this continued to felt like almost suppressiveness. And so I thought there
• 34:04
  are a lot of negative voices. What can I do to be a positive, more public voice that says, you know
• 34:10
  what, it is still possible to create the life you want, the career you want, the, the business you
• 34:16
  want. It is, and it's so much a decision and it's so much of my, and it's so much keeping at it.
• 34:22
  And all these things have always been true. And that's where you and I connect because we're
• 34:26
  like-minded in that way. But when you're in a more crisis situation, when you're in a more
• 34:31
  pressured situation, it becomes, becomes super clear. Those things become like even more
• 34:37
  important and vibrant and vital, I should say. It also is, it's important to say, Hey, hey,
• 34:43
  there's a decision you can make and you can make it every day over and over again. So I had been
• 34:47
  already doing this podcast for a bank. That's another story. It doesn't matter. The point is,
• 34:53
  I was very familiar with doing a podcast, like doing a podcast, like you're doing a podcast,
• 34:56
  lots of people doing podcasts, getting literally your voice out there. And I went,
• 35:01
  what we need is a little fun because chip has been happening. It happens on your nails,
• 35:05
  happens in your life. All right. So how can we flip the chip? And, and so I decided to bring back the
• 35:12
  concept and the fun with it. And it's an, and that's why I decided to podcast. So here's the
• 35:19
  thing I love about your podcast. It's similar to my podcast. And I think it's so essential. And,
• 35:23
  and we can't have a shortage of these people's stories, stories of overcoming stories of working
• 35:31
  navigating through lessons learned out of that. We need to hear that again and again and again,
• 35:37
  not because we're stupid, but because it is an essential part of keeping at it. And we will
• 35:43
  always have new challenges in a good way. And we always want to keep believing and keep hearing
• 35:49
  other people's stories that made it through and get that nugget that we need in our own situation.
• 35:54
  So that's what I'm doing on Live Like Yourself. And stories, I think we learn better from stories.
• 35:59
  We relate better to some stories than reading a book about principle. And it, the hearing other
• 36:05
  people's stories gives you hope to say, okay, if they can do it, why not me? And give you that
• 36:12
  courage and the why not todayness to say, you know what, Mary did it. And look at, I mean,
• 36:20
  when we're in it, you don't see all the blessings, but when you go through things and you go to the
• 36:27
  other side, you're like, wow, just like you saying, looking at all your milestones of courage and all
• 36:32
  the things you've said since very young, you've had a very courageous life. And it's those stories
• 36:38
  too. You know, people relate to it. And they're like, oh, I might want to do this. I appreciate
• 36:43
  you saying all that, you know, you knowing me and reflecting on me. And I think because it's also,
• 36:47
  that's what people tend to see, right? They tend to see these bigger actions or these moves and stuff.
• 36:52
  But how I experienced Leslie was very different in some ways, I think, than other people experience
• 36:57
  me. And that's why I want to bring this up is every gal listening. As much as you've seen the courage
• 37:04
  and like these successes, you know, I had a lot of what one could classify as failures or classifies
• 37:12
  of mistakes or just like, it not only just wasn't easy, like I stumbled, I stumbled through it. And
• 37:19
  I think that's something we don't always talk about so easily, but it is the truth. So I really
• 37:27
  accept that life is difficult. Yeah, it's joyous and has great moments. And I'm grateful. But when
• 37:34
  by simply accepting life is difficult, if I want to make something out of it, it's going to be,
• 37:40
  there's always going to be something else, something that's a chart. And then to say,
• 37:44
  oh, sort of life is difficult. Oh, it shouldn't be that way. I go, actually, because life is difficult,
• 37:51
  and we pursue something and we take a risk and we see what happens and we keep at it. It's more
• 37:58
  meaningful. Absolutely. And you never know. And those obstacles and those hard things turn into
• 38:05
  blessings. Somebody said to me one time, says, the things don't fall in your lap, unless your
• 38:11
  lap is out there. So doing those courageous things. And actually, it's kind of funny, I don't know if
• 38:16
  we've ever talked about this, but AOL actually did a story on me and my business. And I thought it was
• 38:24
  just for the local AOL office, but they interviewed me. They started a thing on home-based businesses
• 38:29
  and they interviewed me and it was for all of AOL. So one night, I'll never forget, it was this
• 38:35
  Sunday night and the store, when you logged into your AOL email, the stories that came up was
• 38:40
  Oprah Winfrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, somebody else and me. You're up there with the big leagues, right?
• 38:47
  I was. And it hit, got so much publicity. But what people saw was, at that point, I think I'd been
• 38:53
  in Mary Kay for 15 years. They saw, I started a Mary Kay business and that's the other thing I do,
• 38:57
  which I didn't really talk that much about, but I started a Mary Kay business and then I had a pink
• 39:02
  Cadillac. So they saw a hundred dollar start and a pink Cadillac and a successful life. And they
• 39:08
  thought, I can do that too. They didn't see the 15 years of the nose and the fears and the courage
• 39:14
  and the why nots todays and people just see the end. So I think if we can share more stories with women
• 39:20
  about what we've done and the courageous things and just listen to your gut and just do those
• 39:25
  little things and don't quit, don't give up. Yeah, all of that, which is why at the very beginning,
• 39:31
  you said, what's courage? Not quitting. And then I said, well, creating the life you want
• 39:37
  and not quitting. So there's somewhat of a, what do I want to move towards? Right? What's the
• 39:42
  direction? Yeah. And I think we've talked about a lot of these things while we've talked, but I always
• 39:47
  say, what encouragement would you give somebody else to say why not today and do those things they're
• 39:52
  afraid to do? Start the business, quit the job, write the book, leave a marriage, all the things,
• 39:58
  help your parents. I would say, one of the things I would say, and again, listening is,
• 40:05
  is make a decision not to live with regret. Now here's how I define regret. And I made this decision
• 40:12
  when I was in my twenties. I said, I don't know if I'm going to live till 80 or plus years old,
• 40:16
  but I want to be able to look back and say, oh, I didn't have any regrets. And so to me, regret is
• 40:22
  not trying. This is also saying, what really is failure? Failure's not trying. That's how I define
• 40:31
  it. Because otherwise failure is I screwed up, thing didn't go right. If you're going to do
• 40:38
  anything new in your life, in your business, in your career, you're not going to do it very well
• 40:44
  the first time you do it. Absolutely. We got to practice. You have to, right. And you've got to
• 40:50
  learn. You learn by doing. And then, so even one of the principles that I use with my business
• 40:56
  clients is learn, review, adjust, learn, review, review, learn, adjust. You got to go, what worked,
• 41:03
  what didn't work. Okay. Learn. Oh, I need to learn. I'd learn something here, you know, right before
• 41:08
  we got on this podcast, I said, Hey, we're talking about earbuds. You learn something about earbuds
• 41:12
  and you adjust. You say, what do I need to do differently now? Okay. And you just keep going
• 41:17
  and you keep right. And you know, we can make this thing of courage.
• 41:21
  What's that? I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. So we can make this thing.
• 41:26
  I didn't say anything. Go ahead. Well, it was just the internet was going,
• 41:29
  yeah, you know, but technology, we can feel like the courage. I have to be Wonder Woman
• 41:35
  when most of the time Wonder Woman is we wonder what the heck happened to our lives. We wonder
• 41:39
  what, right. How we're going to deal with the situation. That's the true Wonder Woman.
• 41:43
  You know what really courage is? It's the courage to be the one that's going to be the one that's
• 41:48
  Wonder Woman. You know what really courage is? I think requires just basically two things. One
• 41:57
  is that I think a key for me, courage has been as I looked back for all the different moves
• 42:03
  that I made, it was a sense of direction. I was either moving towards something or away from
• 42:10
  something. Frankly, engineering and my ex-husband was moving away. But I learned a lot about that.
• 42:16
  Then when I decided to write the book and decide to entrepreneurial career, I was moving
• 42:20
  towards something. So what's your sense of direction on something? And it gets fueled
• 42:29
  often. And I think that where and the word courage actually is a French word that
• 42:33
  has based on a French word with the word heart in it. It's fueled by I did not know that
• 42:39
  passion and conviction. So I think it's like Bon Secours. You ever heard of Bon Secours?
• 42:48
  It's a big national hospital. Bon means good. Secours heart. It really simply means good heart
• 42:54
  in French. And I put down my heart necklace this morning. Well, it's not only just passion,
• 43:02
  it's passion. I really want something. But passion is more than just being excited.
• 43:12
  I think passion means there's a deeper reason why this is important to you.
• 43:17
  You had mentioned earlier to me, she said, hey, do you want to mention your music? I said,
• 43:23
  yeah, because I think it's important. And that to me was an important thing to say,
• 43:29
  you know, not perfect life hasn't been easy for me. And you said, you know, I'm passionate about
• 43:35
  helping women in some way with domestic violence who are experiencing that and supporting safe
• 43:40
  houses and counseling and otherwise. You know, it's something deeper than just there's a lot
• 43:45
  of good things out there, right? And a lot of it's irritable. What's that one? I think also,
• 43:50
  oftentimes, sometimes it's a conviction. I will tell you that what my ex part of it was,
• 43:55
  yeah, the conviction of I didn't deserve that kind of behavior. But the bigger conviction is
• 44:03
  I'm not my I have too much to experience in life to be in that kind of gate continue to be oppressed.
• 44:12
  And I had that conviction. So so sense of direction, fueled by conviction, passion,
• 44:19
  passion and desire. And the second big thing about their courage, it's just take the first step.
• 44:25
  Exactly. Just say why not today? Yeah. And so you say, well, why not today? Well, I can't.
• 44:31
  And then here's expect that all the critical negative voices and thoughts will go through
• 44:38
  your head. Oh, absolutely. I can't do this or that's not good. That didn't work or something
• 44:44
  that is in a negative, the cants and the limiting thing. You know what? You first have to go, yep,
• 44:50
  those things have been true in the past. And this is where I say flip the chip. You can say, well,
• 44:56
  it hasn't worked yet. Right. But it will. But I'm going to figure out and again, what's the next
• 45:02
  step? What's the next thing smallest little thing I can do to move in that direction? Right. So
• 45:08
  and I often when I have that idea or thought, you get all those negative things happening. I kind
• 45:15
  of know like, all right, it's that I'm convicted. Like if things start stop me and there's too many
• 45:20
  things, I'm like, all right, I got I'm a hard head enough to like, I'm going to file through it.
• 45:24
  I got to do it. Yeah, we could go on and on and on and on and on. And I'm excited. I'm going to be
• 45:30
  on your podcast. So we'll have to continue this and maybe we'll have part two and maybe even
• 45:35
  do some coaching around courage at some point. But I always try to connect back to my dad.
• 45:41
  And I don't know if you've ever met my dad. I'm honored to be able to meet your dad. But he was
• 45:46
  definitely a character. And I always have this question and people like, well, I never met your
• 45:49
  dad. But it's kind of like how the connections and a kind of a funny story is going to AOL is my dad
• 45:57
  often told the story of when AOL was quantum computers, whatever they think, put things in
• 46:03
  everybody's mailbox and rest and saying, do you want to be a part of this company? And my dad's
• 46:07
  like, I never did. And I really wish I had. But right, I think a lot like you, my dad had a big
• 46:14
  journey. And when he passed away, and my brother, writing the eulogy, and he's like, my dad always
• 46:20
  had plan A, B, and then C. So things, the thing didn't work. And then it went to a different thing
• 46:27
  was a better thing. So he got in a car accident in high school, how much I've told the story, but
• 46:31
  that's where he lost the vision of his eye and he wore a knockout. And that's where his logo came
• 46:36
  from. And because of that, he was supposed to play football for USC. And because of that, he
• 46:42
  couldn't. So plan B was we went to Notre Dame, which these days, who would have thought, oh, yeah,
• 46:47
  by the way, I'm just going to go get on a train and go to Notre Dame. But that's where my mom grew
• 46:51
  up. And that's where they got married. And so many things happen because of a plan B. So you just
• 46:57
  never know. So thank you so much for sharing. And this was so much fun. And as I said, we could talk
• 47:02
  forever and ever. You can, so how do people find you? Oh, I want to say first, thank you for the
• 47:08
  invitation. It's been fun. And I love how our connection continues. For those who want to
• 47:13
  explore more about who is this Mary Foley, literally, my business coaching is at Mary Foley.com,
• 47:20
  M-A-R-Y-F-O-L-E-Y.com. And my new podcast and everything live like your nail color is at live
• 47:28
  like your nail color.com. By the way, you can also for the podcast, if you're already on
• 47:34
  Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, look up live like your nail color with Mary Foley,
• 47:41
  and you'll find it. Great. And the Why Not Today podcast is on Apple, iTunes, and also Spotify,
• 47:48
  you need to teach me more tricks. We're working together on this and release an episode every
• 47:54
  other Saturday. And I've been doing this since March. I'm excited that we haven't missed one.
• 48:00
  We are trying to start a movement with Why Not Today. So say not why not say why not say and I
• 48:05
  actually if eventually this will be on video. And if it is we have Why Not Today cups, tumblers,
• 48:13
  that and then I've actually got Why Not Today t shirts for men and women, because I want people
• 48:18
  to be able to say why not today. So thanks again, Mary. It was super fun to have you and
• 48:24
  the rest of you. Thanks for listening. And just remember to say why not today.
• 48:27
  Why not today. All right, stop the recording.