Do you have a designated friend to burn your journals if anything should ever happen to you so that nobody can read your deepest thoughts? Amy's talking with Laura Tremaine about her latest book The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs that offers a new way to think about friendship. Laura shares from her personal experiences and inspires us to be better friends, make new friends, and appreciate the many different types of friendships in our lives. Amy & Laura talk about the 'Empty Chair Friend,' the 'Yes Friend,' the 'Password Friend,' the 'Business Bestie,' mastermind groups (could be a game-changer for your career), 4 things gratitude & more.
Links to Laura's books: The Life CouncilShare Your Stuff. I'll Go First.
More About Laura: Laura Tremaine grew up in small town Oklahoma and moved to Los Angeles sight unseen when she was twenty-two years old. She worked in film and television production for many years at MTV, VH1, Fox, and Paramount Pictures before pursuing writing full time. Laura has been sharing her life online since 2010. She writes about friendship, anxiety, motherhood, and marriage. Her blog posts and podcast episodes resonate with women looking for ways to connect more deeply with others as they transform from one era of life into another. Laura lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Jeff, and their two children.
HOST: Amy Brown // @RadioAmy // RadioAmy.com
GUEST: Laura Tremaine // @laura.tremaine // LauraTremaine.com
Checkout Laura's episode on Kat Defatta's You Need Therapy Podcast HERE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Good cats up bad little food for yourself life. Oh
it's pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey, it's pretty beautiful thing beautiful that for a little more.
It's exciting, said, he can't cut your kicking with Fulling with.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Amy Brown, Happy Thursday, four things, Amy here, And I
don't want to sound crazy, but I'm sort of obsessed
with the interview that I have for you today. Well,
I'm obsessed with the person. And I didn't know I
was obsessed with the person until after we had our interview.
And we probably talked for thirty forty five minutes after
we stopped recording. And she is so cool. I was
(00:56):
soaking her up. She made space for me. I had questions.
It's sort of like she became a little mini mentor
there for a second at the end, because during our
conversation for the podcast, something came up where she spoke
directly to me, and it's like, wow, Okay, I heard
that loud and clear. It's almost like she said that
for me and I needed to hear it, and now
I'm going to go do it. In fact, ever since
(01:17):
that conversation, I've already sent off texts.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I got wheels in motion.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Things are happening and they wouldn't have happened if she
hadn't have said it to me directly. I mean, it's
something that I knew I wanted to do, but she said, Amy,
do it, And sometimes we just need to be told
directly to do it. So some woman that I had
never met until this interview has potentially been a part
of changing the trajectory of how I operate my life,
(01:45):
well my career, and so it might be something that
comes in handy for you that has nothing to do
with your career. But anyway, I just wanted to say
a quick word about my obsession for Laura Tremaine, and
I went to her Instagram after our interview and immediately
started following her. And then I found a post that
(02:06):
she put up about her book, which is called The
Life Council. Ten Friends Every Woman Needs, and I thought, well,
reading this Instagram post would be an amazing way to
set up our little chat. So I am going to
read it for you. Now here's what Laura wrote. These
are her words about her book. Do not be scared
of the subtitle ten Friends Every Woman Needs. This book
(02:29):
will not make you feel shame or sadness for the
number of friends you do or do not have the
ten friendship archetypes that I lay out in The Life Council,
and my real life friends I write about as filling
these seats are relationships over the course of a lifetime.
You're not going to have all of these friend types
all at once, and many will overlap. Some are specifically
(02:51):
meant to be seasonal, like the mentor or.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
The battle buddy.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You won't always have a new friend, and it takes
time to have an old friend. An old friend is
relative in the book, I define it simply as someone
who has known you from one phase into another, not
by years. Ever since I announced the title of the book,
people have sent me messages feeling nervous about the ten
friends part. But the Life Council is meant to elevate
(03:16):
the friendships you already have, have had in the past,
or hope for in the future. It's not meant to
make you feel scarcity, but abundance in your relationships, I promise.
And then she put a little heart emoji hashtag the
Life Counsel, which I love the book. I love her?
Is it too soon to say that I love her?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I guess I'll share something else that I love since
I have it right here with me, and then that'll
make me sound less crazy. I bought Spindrift for the
first or maybe the second time, I think because it
was on sale. It's my first time buying at least
the lemon I made flavor. I think before that I
had just bought the lemon. And again, I only bought these,
or the two times that I bought these, because they
(03:59):
were on sale. And I don't know, I think I'm
a fan. I normally buy Lacroix or Topo Chico, still
love those, but this stuff is so good. So if
it's on sale near you give it a try. I
may have to try some of the other flavors. But
I always like finding a good refreshing drink. It was
actually kind of warm today, So now I have this
with me, and I am loving it. I'm loving this
(04:20):
drink just as I'm loving Laura. So see, it's not
as crazy when you compare it to a drink. But
I just think that you're going to adore her. I'm
gonna share with you now.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Her bio.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Laura Tremain grew up in a small town in Oklahoma
and moved to Los Angeles. Sight Unseen when she was
twenty two years old. She worked in film and television
production for many years at MTV, VH one, Fox, and
Paramount Pictures before pursuing writing full time. Laura has been
sharing her life online since twenty ten. She writes about friendship, anxiety, motherhood,
(04:52):
and marriage. Her blog post and podcast episodes resonate with
women looking for ways to connect more deeply with others
as they transform from f one era of life into another.
Laura lives in Los Angeles with her husband Jeff and
their two children, which you know it says here in
her bio. She writes about friendship, anxiety, motherhood, marriage, and
(05:13):
something that she shares in her book is that she
pulls out her hair sometimes, and she has since she
was a kid. And I do that I pulled out
my hair. I don't honestly know when it started high
school college for her, it was very young, but I
noticed it, or at least was told by my college
roommate that I was doing. It's almost like something I
(05:33):
didn't really notice I was doing. And I actually noticed
that I've been pulling it a lot more lately because
I don't know, I've just felt like extra nervous is
just very comforting, and so Laura and I have that
in common. I feel like we have a lot more
in common that we just don't know yet. But obviously
now since we're friends and very close, that we'll get
(05:57):
to know each other better. And by close, I mean
we've had this one talk and I'm going to play
it for you now, so here you go, enjoy well
or I've been listening to The Life Council the last
few days, and this morning, on my way to work,
I had it on and I got to the empty
(06:18):
chair part, which I know the empty chair isn't part
of the ten friends that every woman needs at some
point in their life, like for the Life Counsel, but
I like this part about the empty chair, and since
I just was listening to it today, I thought we
could we could start with the empty chair and what
that's all about.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
Okay, so the empty chair is separate from the ten
friends that I lay out for the Life Council. So
the subtitle of the book is ten Friends every Woman Needs.
But don't be scared by that subtitle. I think sometimes
people see that and they're like, oh, no, this is
not a book for me, because I don't have ten
friends I've never had ten friends. Like people feel a
lot of lack when they see like that subtitle, And
(06:58):
actually the whole book book is written from hearing from
people over the years feeling a lot of lack in
their friendships, like they don't have the types of friends
they want, they don't have enough friends, they've never been accepted,
that sort of thing. And so I wanted to lay
out these ten seats as different types of friends you
could have over the course of your life. So the
(07:19):
ten friends are over the course of your whole life,
some of them are specifically seasonal. And then on top
of those ten types of friends, which isn't, by the way,
a way to like rank your friends or necessarily tick
off a box in an unhealthy way. It's in a
way to see what we're bringing to one another's lives, right,
like the strengths in our friendships and even in our acquaintances.
Speaker 6 (07:40):
Or our neighbors or our coworkers.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
Like it's really seeing the different people in our life
and what they are bringing to the table sort of
elevating all of our relationships. But I couldn't write about
all ten of those archetypes or the different types of
friends and not acknowledge that a lot of us have
an empty chair. So I started this chapter in this
(08:03):
section of the book, you know, actually sort of recognizing
my own empty chair, and that I went through a
really painful friendship breakup. Now it's been a long time,
it's been years and years, but one of my very
best friends ended our friendship and it was as painful
to me as any romantic breakup I had ever been through.
(08:27):
And I didn't talk about it publicly because it felt
like a very private matter. But when I did start
to talk about it a few years after the fact,
so many women came forth to say that they had
also been through a friendship breakup and it had also
been devastating to them, and they felt like that there
wasn't really an acknowledgement of that in culture, right, So
like when someone goes through a romantic breakup, everyone's like, oh, yes,
(08:50):
you know, take the time to grieve, stay in bed.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Of course you're sad.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
You know, we sort of give all this space to
romantic endings, and we don't do that for friendship endings.
And so I really wanted to in a book about
friendship acknowledge that they don't all go the distance. And
some of them actually end very painfully. I wanted women
to hear and acknowledge that and give themselves space to
grieve that. It's not like just because one friendship ends
(09:17):
that there's all these fish in the sea, you can
just replace it with another friend. That is not how
deep relationship works. So that's the first part of the
empty chairs, acknowledging that a seat on our life council
that might have been filled is now empty. But then
the other part of the empty chair, and I came
up with this as I was writing it. I actually
feel like it was part of my own healing to
(09:39):
write through this that the other part of the empty
chair was that now that space is open for someone
else to come along. So if we can keep ourselves
open hearted and you know, sort of have our hands
open to whatever next friendship or wonderful relationship is going
to come into our lives, we have the chair waiting
(10:01):
for them, like we have left the light on for them.
In a way, when you close yourself off and you
say like, oh, I I'm not good at making new friends,
I don't want any new friends. I'm not going to
try it this anymore, you sort of closed your heart
you know, to having someone great come into your life,
and so I wanted the empty chair to be representative
of friendships that have ended and wonderful friendships to come. Now.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
In the book, you talk about the yes friends that
you have had, and one in particular. I have some
yes friends. They're just there're sevens on the Enneagram. They're
all about yes. And I like how you shared when
you had the yes friends it led to you also
saying yes more.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I started to say yes because I feel like my
default is no, and so I sort of needed to
train myself out of that. I wanted to see people,
you know, the people in my life for their strengths.
So sometimes say with a yes friend, for example, because
I am not a yes friend. I have yes friends,
and thank goodness I do because yes friends are so fun.
(11:07):
They bring the fun to the table. But there are
times in my life where I would have had a
type of friend that I would consider now a yes friend,
but I didn't consider them a deep friend because we
didn't have like heartfelt connection. We weren't having like deep conversations.
I wouldn't have called her in the middle of the
(11:28):
night with an emergency. She was just like maybe in
a wider friendship circle, maybe I would have considered her
an acquaintance.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
But she was really fun.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
She was the one that was maybe always putting together,
you know, mom's nights out or whatever.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
But I just.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Didn't you know, she wasn't like my deep friend looking
around and seeing like, oh no, it is wonderful to
have this type of a friend that it doesn't always
have to be deep. Like sometimes shallow friends or friends
that fall more on the acquaintance level, we don't want
to count them as someone that would be on our
life council because it feels like it should all be
very deep and meaningful, and I'm a deep and meaningful person,
(12:06):
Like I want to have those friendships too, But also
like maybe if we lightened up how we felt about
like all these amazing people in our life. Okay, well
we're never going to have a deep conversation with her,
but she's so fun to be with. You're glad you
know her. When I started looking at people like this,
This is part of me saying yes, when I started
looking at people and instead of feeling like a lack
(12:28):
that we didn't have a certain type of connection or
she didn't show up in this way, or you know,
I didn't feel a certain chemistry with her or something,
instead of feeling like all this lack or disappointed expectations,
instead of sort of reframing it and starting to think, like,
you know what she is though she's great at giving advice,
she's a wonderful lunch buddy at work, Like she's my
(12:52):
neighbor who I can call if I have an emergency
at my house because she lives across the street. Like
instead of thinking, well, I wish I was closer with
my neighbor, I can still think of it as like,
I'm so glad I have this like solid person that
lives across the street that I can call if I
need to, even though we don't have a deep connection.
I just started elevating all of the people in my
(13:13):
life to see what they brought to the world. And
then you know, when you also do that, you start
to see what are you bringing to the world, Like
who are you? On other people's life councils, because we
can sometimes instead of seeing lack in other people, we
see a lot of lack in ourselves and friendships. Like
we beat ourselves up because we we didn't bring our
(13:33):
friends soup when she was sick, or you know, we
forgot to text somebody back for three weeks or whatever.
Like we kind of beat ourselves up and think, oh,
I'm not being a good friend right now, instead of thinking,
you know what I'm I'm.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Just not nurturing. I am literally never going to bring.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
You soup when you're sick. That is not my friendship strength.
You know what I am really good at. I am
amazing at putting together the girl's weekend. I will pick
up your kids in carpool anytime you need it, or
whatever our own strengths are. Instead of beating ourselves down
for the type of friend we're not and seeing in
our friends the type of friend they're not, We're really
(14:10):
just going to like look at our strengths and what
we are. And I think that I just wanted to
like reframe it. I had to do this work for myself,
by the way, Like this is after therapy and years
of talking about this online and everything, when I had
to realize, after a really lonely season, I have to
change the way I think about this or I'm just
gonna spiral.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, I appreciated that so much.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
You sharing It's not like a book where you read
and you're like, oh, this person's just telling me what
to do. But you were like, Hey, this is what
I've done and it's really worked for me. And here's
where I went wrong, and here's where I messed up.
And I don't want other people to maybe do the
same things. I mean, I think we all have to
learn from our mistakes or how we show up or
(14:54):
how we don't show up. But I love that you
showed both sides of it, like you admitted all the
different ways in which you failed as a friend.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Oh yeah, I start the book off with a big
misstep that I made in the pandemic on a group text,
by the way, which we've all done this, like on
a group of women, and like somebody says something like,
uh like record scratch, you know that was me, Like
I accidentally I would have never done this on purpose,
but I accidentally really hurt a friend on a group text.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
And it was in the middle of.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
The pandemic when we were like, you know, every every
emotion was heightened, everyone was stressed out. We hadn't seen
each other or hugged or felt what another's energy in months,
which then makes you like suspicious or defensive or whatever.
So it just was a text thread gone awry, and
I start the book off with that for a few reasons.
(15:46):
One is because I want to cop to at the
very beginning that I'm not perfect at friendship, that I've
had seasons of loneliness, I've misstepped pretty badly. And then
I also like wanted to sort of illustrate that I
am not like arapist or a researcher. This book is
not academic. This book is from experience of talking about
friendship and living out my own friendships, the good and
(16:09):
the bad, for you know, a really long time. I'm
in my forties. Adult friendship looks so different than friendship
when you're young, and so yeah, I really I wanted
the book to feel not prescriptive, like you're saying, not like,
here's what you do, here's the exact checklist of friends
you should have, but just like, let's just talk about this,
let's think about this a little bit differently, because I
(16:31):
didn't see anyone else talking about friendship in this way
that I needed.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
To talk about it.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
We did it beautifully. I thought, thank you, it's so
well done. And in the same vein as saying yes,
you also talk about Hey, there's just certain things we
just need to.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Do the thing, and we go do it.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I'm trying to think of one of the examples, if
someone's having a graduation, or someone's having a wedding, or
someone is having a baby shower. I mean there's times
where like, oh, can I really make that happen? Or
should I be And it's almost like you're like, no,
those are the life moments we show up for those.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
I feel really passionately about this one, especially in the
last few years when self care has become all the rage.
Now listen, I'm for self care. I you know, have
had mental health stuff. I'm all into therapy, all of
those things. I understand that this self care movement is
in response to like centuries of women not taking care
of themselves in the way.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
That they should.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
And also I think it's damaging our relationships to always
put our own self care ahead of anything else. Like
I don't remember when I was growing up it being
optional to go to people's big moments like you just went.
I have five core friendship philosophies in the book, and
one of them is just go. Because I think there
(17:46):
is this, you know, a lot of talk now, especially
on the Internet and stuff that like if it's inconvenient
for you, or if you're gonna not get your full
eight hours of sleep, or if you know it's maybe
going to cost you a little money or whatever, that
you're allowed to not go to your friend's stuff. It
is absolutely damaging friendships when we do not show up
(18:08):
for one another. So sometimes it is going to be inconvenient,
and sometimes we are going to lose a little bit
of sleep, it may cost a little.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
Bit of money, but if it is within.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Your realm of possibility to go, you need to default
to going. I think we've a little bit as a
culture defaulted to not going and like canceling last minute,
or like really taking care of ourselves in a way
that puts up so many boundaries and so many walls
in our friendships that it's harming them. And so I
(18:39):
kind of wanted just to get back to a place
of like, you know what you need to go. You
need to go to someone's birthday dinner. You need to
go to their kids dance recital. You need to go
to the things that you are invited to whenever possible,
even if it requires a little bit of sacrifice.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
I want to get back to that.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Another one of the philosophies is like every selfie, which
I know you unpacked the philosophies with Kat Defauda. So
for those of you that listen to Kat's podcast, or
maybe you don't, I would encourage you to go check
out You Need Therapy and her episode with Laura because
y'all focus on those. So I'll send people to listen
to that episode. But it definitely did get me thinking
(19:30):
about how times maybe I don't show up for my
friends online. And I recently went hiking with a coworker
and she was talking about just that and how she
had noticed that sometimes from people at work she didn't
feel supported on social and I thought, oh, shoot, I
don't know that I always see her post or make
(19:52):
an effort to like. I mean, I see it, and
I'm like okay. And then since that conversation, I was
so thankful she shared it with me because I was
completely unaware that that would be something that she a
ever noticed and be that it would bother her. And
that's the big question is do you notice if your
friends aren't liking your stuff?
Speaker 4 (20:11):
And does it bother you?
Speaker 5 (20:13):
Okay, So I asked this question online, and huge kudos
to your friend for voicing it to you. Actually like
want to cheer her on so bad right now, because
it's kind of hard to say it. You feel really
lame to say, Hey, it bugs me that you don't
like my stuff online, Like it feels immature or something.
But the thing is, most of us are noticing it,
(20:34):
and most of us do care, even though we like
talk ourselves out of it, like, uh, I shouldn't care,
and I don't think that our online behavior with one
another is the number one barometer of our relationship health.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
It's not.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
But because most of us are online every single day,
and for most of us when it's not our job,
especially when we post something, it feels vulnerable, even when
we're posting good things, like it feels a little nerve
racking to put our selves out there. The lowest bar
that we can possibly have to show up for our
friends is to give them a like and a little
(21:08):
high five in the comments, like you look darling, good job,
what a fun trip? I mean, I don't know, Like
it's just not that hard. But a lot of us
either just scroll mindlessly, which is a whole kind of
other problem. But that's what we're doing or and don't
act like you're not one of these people, because we
all are.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
We have certain.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Judgments of the things that come through our feed so
we withhold our likes sometimes from like people who post
too many selfies, or for people who post their vacations
and maybe we're a little jealous, we are not going
to give them a like. I think we do this
a little bit subconsciously. And I also know there's a
(21:48):
lot of factors here of how much people are online,
what the algorithm is feeding us. It's not like completely
plain and simple, like black and white, but I know
because most of this conversation online for a long time,
I know that a lot of us feel our feelings
about what other people are posting and how people are
(22:09):
responding to what we're posting, and if they're they never
like our stuff, but we see them like our other
friends stuff, that kind of thing like we're not we
don't want to clock it. We all want to be
more mature than this. But the fact is we are
noticing it. And so if we are noticing it and
it is a thing that is affecting our friendships, then
let's just like air on the side of liking every Selfie.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
One of the friends on there is the password friend. Yeah,
and I thought, shoot, I don't know that I have
anybody that knows my passwords, and so I definitely want
to find that person because in your case, your a
girl definitely came in handy for you.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Although you didn't.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
See her as the password person right away in that moment,
but you were at a doctor's appointment and some photos
of you ended up online. You're like, oh, shoot, I
don't want people seeing these pictures of me, and I
need them down. Again. You're at the doctor and so
you have to call a friend. You're like, here's my password,
take care of it, and then she does. And then
that's when it's like, oh, here are all my passwords,
(23:09):
just in case I'm ever in this situation again. And
then I laughed out loud at some of your friends
that have you know, people in line, which I think
they would fall under the password friend maybe, but it
might have another name.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
You'll have to remind me.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
But like if they die that they have friends that
are like, yo, get my journals, take care of them,
don't let anybody read them.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
Yeah, that is real life, by the way, the password
protective friend that I write about it is literal, Like
we're talking about like someone that literally has your passwords
and obviously be like a smart human being. Don't give
out your banking passwords or anything like that, but people
who could help out an emergency situation. Some of the
social media platforms these days allow you to like designate
(23:53):
someone that you know in the event of an emergency
or something that they can then and have control of
your social media presence. I mean that is like a
trust tree level friend, right. So that's the other part
of password protector is that if it's not literal, if
you don't literally need to give someone your passwords, it's metaphorical,
(24:15):
and that the person that you would trust with a
password of level security, you can trust them with anything
like it is in the Vault. And I do tell
a story in the book about like if you in
the event of your passing, they need to come and
burn all your journals so that your kids would never
find them or anything like that. That's like sort of
(24:35):
funny also sort of literal, depending on what your life
looks like. And I just wanted to have a place
for you know, I have a password protector in my life,
not the one I write about in the book that
she is a vault for me that I need to
when I need to tell something really sensitive, really hard things,
because she will never tell anybody.
Speaker 6 (24:56):
She is a true vault of a friend.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
But like we're not any other kind of friend to
each other, really moving on each other for a long time.
She's very trustworthy, but like she's not a fun friend.
She's not a mentor. Like she's a trust tree, password protector.
Speaker 6 (25:15):
Vault, and a lot of us need that.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Maybe we need it more in certain seasons than others,
but sometimes you need to be able to, like say
a really hard thing to someone, and you don't want
to say it to the person you're going to see
at carpool the next day, Like it needs to be
someone else, right, it needs to be a password protector.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I love too that this opens up a conversation for
you to maybe have with someone else or even internal
dialogue with yourself about how one friend can't fill all
these expectations or be exactly who you need them to
be out of respect for them, you're finding, yes, like
you know their strengths and you're not relying on them
(25:55):
to fill all these needs that you have. I love
that that's a and gives us permission to either release
some of our friends of that pressure or even seek
out different types of friendships, because I think it could
probably get pretty difficult at times depending on which friend
you are, to feel like you have to fill all
(26:15):
of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Yeah, I think that's kind of the root of some
of our friendship disappointments in adulthood, is because we think, like, oh,
we're going to have one bestie, one kind of soul sister,
and she's going to be everything.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
She's going to be fun and bring me.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Soup and give good advice and pick up my kids
and have my passwords, like all the things. And maybe
we have that when we're young, or maybe we do
have that for a time, and then if that friendship
changes or shifts or you feel like they let you
down in some way.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
That's a lot of expectations to put on one person.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
I also don't want that expectation put on me, Like
I couldn't be the everything friend to someone.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
I'm not good at everything, and I don't.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Want to constantly feel like I'm disappointing someone by the
way that I'm not showing up for them. I don't
want to constantly feel disappointed in a friend that I
feel like isn't showing up in her way. It should
release not all expectations. Relationship has expectations, but it should
release some pressure of trying to be everything to everyone.
(27:24):
It's the same reason that I also write about my
husband is not my best friend, because I think we
put a lot of pressure on our partners to be
everything to us. And I'm like, no, it's not. I
feel like I need girlfriends. I have to have girlfriends
so important to me.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
You also talk about mastermind groups, and I am familiar
with them because I have a couple of friends that
are part of them. I have not been a part
of one myself, but it's on my wish list I
guess of sorts. So for anyone that maybe doesn't know
what that is or maybe how they can even create
one in their community of people, share with us what
(28:17):
it is, maybe how we can form one.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Amy You need to get yourself a mastermind. It will
change your.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Life, I've heard, I mean it really, it.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Has transformed like my whole business. I don't even think
that I would have written these lapsed two books without
my mastermind. But if you're unfamiliar I think the term
is like a trendy term. I don't know that it's
been around for that long, but it's basically a group
of people who are in the same industry. So I've
seen it almost exclusively applied to a work situation. So
(28:48):
you're in the same industry, maybe you hold a similar position,
you just do some similar work. In my case, I
work online totally for myself. I'm at home all day
alone doing my work, and you know, I don't have
a friend in the next cubicle over. I don't have
that type of coworker. So having a mastermind has allowed
me to almost have like colleagues in a formal sense,
(29:10):
and that we meet once a month, like we have
very official meetings with like structure where we talk about
what's going on in our business, what's working, what's not,
how we can help each other out. We sort of
are mentoring each other, we're giving advice, we're brainstorming.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
Now.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
I work in you know, online content creation, but I
can see this in a lot of different industries, especially
since it's become really popular to work at home, to
have other people who have a similar position that are
maybe going to be the only people in your life,
who understand what your work looks like. Like my mom friends.
I mean, they know zero about podcasting or book writing
(29:50):
or any of the things I do, like literally nothing.
I love them, but they don't understand my work life.
I needed specific work friends. And if you don't know
where to find this kind of thing, there's paid masterminds
that are like led by somebody, which I'm not judging
that or not, but if you want this for yourself,
start it for yourself. I've been in a few masterminds now.
(30:13):
Some of them are very large, like Facebook group, you know,
thirty women or whatever. And then some of them my
current one and the group that I write about in
my book, there's just four of us, and you can
just start it. You can just reach out to a
couple of people who are in your same industry. You know,
it's better for it to not be someone that is
(30:33):
like an immediate competitor. I don't mean competitor in a
bad way, but you know what I mean that's doing
the exact same thing you are doing, but maybe just
in the same general idea, and just say, hey, would
you be interested in this? Almost like an accountability group,
although it's more than that. And I think that you
have a meeting whatever.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
Works for you.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
We do once a month that makes the most sense
to me, so that it's on the calendar, just like
any other kind of business meeting.
Speaker 6 (30:57):
That you would have.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
And for those of us or freelancers or creatives or
work at home, like I said, it has been like
rocket fuel for my work.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
And when I.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
Wrote about it in the book I wrote about it
in a life council see called the Business Besties. I
write about how the first couple of years that I
met with the three other women in my group, we
were sort of work only, like we did not talk
about our personal lives hardly at all. Two of us
are married, I'm sorry, three of us are married, one
is not. Two of us are parents, two are not.
(31:30):
You know, we're sort of a mix of what our
personal lives look like, and that never came to the table.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
At first.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
It was a place where I could just be my
work self. I could be unapologetically ambitious, like I could
set goals and I didn't have to, like feel apologetic
about it. I feel like I didn't have to. Like
one of the women in my group like jokes she
never asks about my kids, which is fine, she doesn't
need to ever ask about my kids. I mean, that's
(31:57):
not what that relationship is able to just be my
work self. And I do think that in the friendship
conversation there aren't very many spaces where we can be
just one version of ourselves, right, Like we're really taught
and it feels mostly good to us to bring our
whole self to the table, Like I'm a mom and
I'm a writer and I you know, we have these
(32:19):
things and that's great.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
I am a whole person.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
Sometimes you just want to be like this one narrow
version of who you are. I don't want to talk
about mom life when I'm talking about growing my podcast,
Like I need to just like talk about strategy with
other trusted, good hearted women who I know they know
I'm a whole person offline, but they don't need to
know that version of me. I cannot speak highly enough
(32:45):
about having whatever your industry is, having a mastermind group.
You know, CEOs have been doing this for a long time,
Like this is something that I feel like has filtered
into the online realm, but it really has. Like it's
so much motivating to me to have other women that
are like kind of holding me accountable to my goals.
They're like, you said, you're going to write a book,
(33:06):
how's it going, And they're like checking in on it.
And because I'm a solo preneur without other people in
my life sort of pushing me and encouraging me in
a healthy way to achieve these goals, like, I don't
think I would have done it because it's so easy to.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Not do it.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Okay, well, I think you've convinced me that. I guess
if I don't have one to join, I need to
start one.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
You need to start one.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I just I'm in a unique space. Podcasting comes second.
I've been in radio for seventeen years on a very
highly syndicated, successful morning show, and that's my primary job.
And similar to you, so many people in my life
they have no idea what that entails. They just turn
on the radio and they hear us and they think
(33:49):
that's that's all that's there.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
And there's so much.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
More that is involved and goes into it, and the
content creation and you know, the show prep and client relations,
commercial endorsers, like there's so many different things, and radios
had to evolve quite a bit. Radio today is not
the radio that it was when I started in two
thousand and six and then started the podcast a handful
(34:14):
of years ago, and that's been another interesting layer. But
I'm like trying to think of different people specifically in
my seat ish across the country that I and I
already have a few girls in mind that are on
like syndicated shows or working with highly successful men as
a woman as the co host, and I'm forming my
(34:36):
group in my mind literally while I'm talking out loud
to you, and I'm I'm sort of nervous to reach
out to them and present this idea.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
But I guess I just got to go for it.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Well, first of all, you have to go for it,
because yes, I think that most people will be very
excited to receive this invitation for you. And if they're not,
it's not personal, they have too much on their plate whatever.
You you know, approach it, as I write about in
the book, like hold all of that a little bit loosely,
like if they're like, yeah, I don't have time for this,
or I don't capacity for this, or I'm going through something,
it doesn't allow for this. That's not about you, doesn't
(35:04):
mean you're unlikable or they don't see you as a
worthy colleague or whatever. But secondly, I don't want to
take too much of a tangent on this, but I
want to say it because it's important masterminds like this,
women especially can share their numbers. This has been invaluable
to me because what we don't do very often is
we keep silent about what we're making, what our downloads are.
(35:27):
You know, what we're paid for X, Y and z,
and you don't have to be one hundred percent candid
about it. But we stay so silent in these spaces
that we don't even know if we're in the realm
of normalcy for what we're being paid, or what we're worth,
what our counterpart might be getting paid or whatever.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
All of this numbers conversation.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
I think this is so important for women, especially because
our silence and are staying like politely quiet about it,
because it's like ghost to talk about money. You know
what it does? It keeps us making less because we
have no idea because we've never shared our numbers. We
don't even know what good download numbers are, or what
we should charge for a sponsored post or all of
(36:08):
these whatever these different things. We've never said it out loud.
We don't even know when you are in a trusted group,
because maybe you don't want toss that number out to
just anyone. When you are in a trusted group of
similarly enough colleagues and you can really compare notes like that.
It makes the creative industry or any industry that much
stronger because we can see, like, oh my gosh, I'm
(36:29):
way under charging for myself, because almost never do I
have women say I was way overcharging or I was
getting paid way more than everybody else. That's never happened,
like almost never. Most of the time we are devaluing
what we are bringing to the table or what we
are charging or commanding for a salary. So that's another
part of Masterminds that has been hugely valuable to me
(36:51):
because I didn't even know, like what good numbers were,
what I should ask for, what this rate should be, Like,
I didn't even know. You have to be able to
talk about this, and we are conditioned to not.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
Talk about it.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, I'm so glad that the conversation went this route
because I think that is so true, so important, and
a lot of times, yeah, we stay small because it's
like ooh, or we you said it undervalue ourselves because oh,
I don't want to I don't want to make it
a thing. Just go ahead and we'll do this. But
I don't know a man in my life that thinks
that way and says.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Oh, of course I'm not. I don't want to cause
it thing, so just go ahead and make it this price.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
Yeah, no, never and in your mastermind, Like again, I
am in a strong group of women. If I come
to them and I even have a hint of like
I'm thinking about just like letting it go and doing
this or whatever, they'll be like, oh, no, you are not.
You are going to email back immediately and say this,
this is your price, take it or leave it whatever.
They pep talk me up, They give me language, they
(37:49):
give me comps like it is invaluable to have people
around you who hold you to a good standard for yourself.
They don't even let me kind of back away and
be like okay, it's fine. Whatever they know. And then
I know if I do that, I'm going to have
to answer to them.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
So it's good.
Speaker 5 (38:07):
It's good for women to have these types of relationships,
and they do fall on your life counsel. You might
consider a coworker or a colleague in the way that
we're talking like, well, she's not like a friend, she's
like a colleague or whatever. Of course only you can
decipher like what that means to you, But to me,
I put this seat on a life council, the business
(38:28):
bestie on a life council for all these reasons that
we're talking about, because we don't want someone to be
just a colleague or just a coworker when actually this
is someone that you talk to or see every single
day that's worthy of being considered a part of our life.
You know, we are sort of devaluing each other when
I'm just like, oh, yeah, yeah, she's just a coworker
or whatever, when you're like, oh, but she sees you
(38:50):
more than you see your quote unquote bestie, So maybe
should elevate her position to a life council member.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yeah, I'm even thinking of just like you're talking about,
the encourage meant that these types of relationships the people
in the Mastermind can offer you. But also when you
are in that type of group and there's conversations happening
and they know your interests and what they have, and
they're out in the world and they're hearing of different
opportunities I see it as also an amazing way to
(39:20):
network and open yourself up to other things, because someone
might be like, oh, Laura was just saying in our
last meeting she wanted to do this, and I just
met this person that is actually looking for that, and
then boom, you have more opportunity. Yes, before we wrap,
I would love to do four Things Gratitude with you.
It's just a fun way that we get to know
(39:41):
our guests on a different level and just have you
share an Instagram follow that you love, a TV show,
a book.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
And then a food or a drink that you're into.
Speaker 6 (39:51):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (39:52):
A book that I'm obsessed with right now that I
just read. It just came out in twenty twenty three
is called The Perfectionists Guide to Losing Control. It's by
Catherine Morgan Schaffler. And I have not read a book
that has made me feel so seen since, like Brene
Brown years ago, Like, I loved this book so much.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
What number are you on the Enneagram? I'm a one
one Okay, so maybe fas Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:18):
I think that's why this book really resonated with the
Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control. It's called and it's really
about harnessing your perfectionist tendencies and why it's a good
thing and not a negative thing. Oh, I just loved it.
It's so good and I can't stop talking about it.
Clearly the TV show that I'm watching, but I feel
like the whole world is watching. But my family is
(40:38):
very invested in Succession right now. I love it so much,
so good. This season is blowing my mind. And an
Instagram follow that I'm really loving is her name's Libby
Ward and her instagram is a diary of an honest mom.
I don't know if you've seen her. She makes the
(40:59):
best videos. I feel like she is putting out some
of the mom emotions that a lot of us have
but nobody wants to say. She's saying some really hard
and beautiful things about parenthood. I actually don't even follow
a lot of people in the parenthood space, or you know,
I don't listen to a lot of parenting podcasts or
anything like that. But for some reason, I really love
(41:19):
this one diary eve an honest mom. And then I
have just been on this kick for years, so it
feels unoriginal to me. But I will just order a
spicy margarita every time it's offered.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
Hey Salter, no salt, salt, Oh no, no, no no.
But I feel you on the spicy margarita, and I
think sometimes we forget about that one. We just go
maybe regular, and you forget how fun the kick can
be from the spicy.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
I love the kick. I feel like it just takes
your night up.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
A notch definitely.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
And I when you were talking about the mom content
a second ago for your third thing, I think it's
so important to have those people in your life, whether
there's someone online or a friend of your life that
is going to speak honestly about their parenting or their
home life for what's going on, because a lot of
times we see these curated family situations or we can
(42:15):
feel very alone in our dynamics. I'm an adopted mom,
so I adopted older So now they're sixteen and twelve,
but when we brought them to America from Haiti, they
were seven and ten, and so there's just a lot
that comes with that. Yeah, there was so many times,
so I remember feeling so alone and like nobody else
(42:36):
was experiencing it. But thankfully I had a few friends
out of Austin that had adopted from Haiti that I
was able to call on but then even still, they
were in Austin and I was in Nashville, and it
just felt like there was this disconnect, and I, out
of desperation, started searching for things online and came across
this Facebook group. You had to be accepted to join.
So I remember putting my name in and waiting, waiting
(42:58):
when or I trust me, I need this, I'm good,
I'm good. And I finally got accepted, and I just
finally felt like I could exhale because I could see
other moms sharing their experiences. And then I realized they
meet once a month, and so then I started going
to the in person meetings and.
Speaker 6 (43:15):
Oh, I love this.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Oh I was so refreshing to just know you could
say something out loud and there was zero judgment.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Yeah, you know, we didn't talk about this because we're
talking about friendship today. But my whole first book is
called Share Your Stuff. I'll go First, and it is
about exactly what you're talking about, which is sharing yourself
in order to feel connection, and that if someone else
isn't saying the thing, then we need to go first.
We need to raise our hand and say the hard
thing and open the door for other people to be
(43:45):
able to say they're hard things. I mean, that was
the first and most important message I was really passionate about,
which is why my first book is about that, even
though I already had The Life Counsel sort of rattling
around in my mind. I just feel really strong about women,
especially as you can tell, like sharing themselves, like we
talked about in a work context, in a motherhood context.
(44:08):
As we get older, we do that less and less,
we become more pleasing. We don't want to rock the boat.
We don't want to embarrass our kids or risk our
jobs or whatever. Those are valid concerns sometimes, but also
when we get to middle life and we've spent a
good decade not sharing ourselves, it's just detrimental to our
whole journey. So I feel really strongly about that too.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, and I have your first book, by the way,
and I would encourage people to check out both of
these books. And then also with the Life Counsel, there's
a work book, so I'll put links in the show notes,
so y'all, can you know have easy access to both
books in the work book. But thank you so much
for sharing so much of yourself because it truly does
(44:50):
help people, and people can find you online. You are
Laura dot Tremaine t r E m ai In And
thank you so much, Laura. And when you do your
next book, I would love to have you back.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
Yes, I would love it. Thank you,
Good cats up bad little food for yourself life. Oh
it's pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey, it's pretty beautiful thing beautiful that for a little more.
It's exciting, said, he can't cut your kicking with Fulling with.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Amy Brown, Happy Thursday, four things, Amy here, And I
don't want to sound crazy, but I'm sort of obsessed
with the interview that I have for you today. Well,
I'm obsessed with the person. And I didn't know I
was obsessed with the person until after we had our interview.
And we probably talked for thirty forty five minutes after
we stopped recording. And she is so cool. I was
(00:56):
soaking her up. She made space for me. I had questions.
It's sort of like she became a little mini mentor
there for a second at the end, because during our
conversation for the podcast, something came up where she spoke
directly to me, and it's like, wow, Okay, I heard
that loud and clear. It's almost like she said that
for me and I needed to hear it, and now
I'm going to go do it. In fact, ever since
(01:17):
that conversation, I've already sent off texts.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I got wheels in motion.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Things are happening and they wouldn't have happened if she
hadn't have said it to me directly. I mean, it's
something that I knew I wanted to do, but she said, Amy,
do it, And sometimes we just need to be told
directly to do it. So some woman that I had
never met until this interview has potentially been a part
of changing the trajectory of how I operate my life,
(01:45):
well my career, and so it might be something that
comes in handy for you that has nothing to do
with your career. But anyway, I just wanted to say
a quick word about my obsession for Laura Tremaine, and
I went to her Instagram after our interview and immediately
started following her. And then I found a post that
(02:06):
she put up about her book, which is called The
Life Council. Ten Friends Every Woman Needs, and I thought, well,
reading this Instagram post would be an amazing way to
set up our little chat. So I am going to
read it for you. Now here's what Laura wrote. These
are her words about her book. Do not be scared
of the subtitle ten Friends Every Woman Needs. This book
(02:29):
will not make you feel shame or sadness for the
number of friends you do or do not have the
ten friendship archetypes that I lay out in The Life Council,
and my real life friends I write about as filling
these seats are relationships over the course of a lifetime.
You're not going to have all of these friend types
all at once, and many will overlap. Some are specifically
(02:51):
meant to be seasonal, like the mentor or.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
The battle buddy.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You won't always have a new friend, and it takes
time to have an old friend. An old friend is
relative in the book, I define it simply as someone
who has known you from one phase into another, not
by years. Ever since I announced the title of the book,
people have sent me messages feeling nervous about the ten
friends part. But the Life Council is meant to elevate
(03:16):
the friendships you already have, have had in the past,
or hope for in the future. It's not meant to
make you feel scarcity, but abundance in your relationships, I promise.
And then she put a little heart emoji hashtag the
Life Counsel, which I love the book. I love her?
Is it too soon to say that I love her?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I guess I'll share something else that I love since
I have it right here with me, and then that'll
make me sound less crazy. I bought Spindrift for the
first or maybe the second time, I think because it
was on sale. It's my first time buying at least
the lemon I made flavor. I think before that I
had just bought the lemon. And again, I only bought these,
or the two times that I bought these, because they
(03:59):
were on sale. And I don't know, I think I'm
a fan. I normally buy Lacroix or Topo Chico, still
love those, but this stuff is so good. So if
it's on sale near you give it a try. I
may have to try some of the other flavors. But
I always like finding a good refreshing drink. It was
actually kind of warm today, So now I have this
with me, and I am loving it. I'm loving this
(04:20):
drink just as I'm loving Laura. So see, it's not
as crazy when you compare it to a drink. But
I just think that you're going to adore her. I'm
gonna share with you now.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Her bio.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Laura Tremain grew up in a small town in Oklahoma
and moved to Los Angeles. Sight Unseen when she was
twenty two years old. She worked in film and television
production for many years at MTV, VH one, Fox, and
Paramount Pictures before pursuing writing full time. Laura has been
sharing her life online since twenty ten. She writes about friendship, anxiety, motherhood,
(04:52):
and marriage. Her blog post and podcast episodes resonate with
women looking for ways to connect more deeply with others
as they transform from f one era of life into another.
Laura lives in Los Angeles with her husband Jeff and
their two children, which you know it says here in
her bio. She writes about friendship, anxiety, motherhood, marriage, and
(05:13):
something that she shares in her book is that she
pulls out her hair sometimes, and she has since she
was a kid. And I do that I pulled out
my hair. I don't honestly know when it started high
school college for her, it was very young, but I
noticed it, or at least was told by my college
roommate that I was doing. It's almost like something I
(05:33):
didn't really notice I was doing. And I actually noticed
that I've been pulling it a lot more lately because
I don't know, I've just felt like extra nervous is
just very comforting, and so Laura and I have that
in common. I feel like we have a lot more
in common that we just don't know yet. But obviously
now since we're friends and very close, that we'll get
(05:57):
to know each other better. And by close, I mean
we've had this one talk and I'm going to play
it for you now, so here you go, enjoy well
or I've been listening to The Life Council the last
few days, and this morning, on my way to work,
I had it on and I got to the empty
(06:18):
chair part, which I know the empty chair isn't part
of the ten friends that every woman needs at some
point in their life, like for the Life Counsel, but
I like this part about the empty chair, and since
I just was listening to it today, I thought we
could we could start with the empty chair and what
that's all about.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
Okay, so the empty chair is separate from the ten
friends that I lay out for the Life Council. So
the subtitle of the book is ten Friends every Woman Needs.
But don't be scared by that subtitle. I think sometimes
people see that and they're like, oh, no, this is
not a book for me, because I don't have ten
friends I've never had ten friends. Like people feel a
lot of lack when they see like that subtitle, And
(06:58):
actually the whole book book is written from hearing from
people over the years feeling a lot of lack in
their friendships, like they don't have the types of friends
they want, they don't have enough friends, they've never been accepted,
that sort of thing. And so I wanted to lay
out these ten seats as different types of friends you
could have over the course of your life. So the
(07:19):
ten friends are over the course of your whole life,
some of them are specifically seasonal. And then on top
of those ten types of friends, which isn't, by the way,
a way to like rank your friends or necessarily tick
off a box in an unhealthy way. It's in a
way to see what we're bringing to one another's lives, right,
like the strengths in our friendships and even in our acquaintances.
Speaker 6 (07:40):
Or our neighbors or our coworkers.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
Like it's really seeing the different people in our life
and what they are bringing to the table sort of
elevating all of our relationships. But I couldn't write about
all ten of those archetypes or the different types of
friends and not acknowledge that a lot of us have
an empty chair. So I started this chapter in this
(08:03):
section of the book, you know, actually sort of recognizing
my own empty chair, and that I went through a
really painful friendship breakup. Now it's been a long time,
it's been years and years, but one of my very
best friends ended our friendship and it was as painful
to me as any romantic breakup I had ever been through.
(08:27):
And I didn't talk about it publicly because it felt
like a very private matter. But when I did start
to talk about it a few years after the fact,
so many women came forth to say that they had
also been through a friendship breakup and it had also
been devastating to them, and they felt like that there
wasn't really an acknowledgement of that in culture, right, So
like when someone goes through a romantic breakup, everyone's like, oh, yes,
(08:50):
you know, take the time to grieve, stay in bed.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Of course you're sad.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
You know, we sort of give all this space to
romantic endings, and we don't do that for friendship endings.
And so I really wanted to in a book about
friendship acknowledge that they don't all go the distance. And
some of them actually end very painfully. I wanted women
to hear and acknowledge that and give themselves space to
grieve that. It's not like just because one friendship ends
(09:17):
that there's all these fish in the sea, you can
just replace it with another friend. That is not how
deep relationship works. So that's the first part of the
empty chairs, acknowledging that a seat on our life council
that might have been filled is now empty. But then
the other part of the empty chair, and I came
up with this as I was writing it. I actually
feel like it was part of my own healing to
(09:39):
write through this that the other part of the empty
chair was that now that space is open for someone
else to come along. So if we can keep ourselves
open hearted and you know, sort of have our hands
open to whatever next friendship or wonderful relationship is going
to come into our lives, we have the chair waiting
(10:01):
for them, like we have left the light on for them.
In a way, when you close yourself off and you
say like, oh, I I'm not good at making new friends,
I don't want any new friends. I'm not going to
try it this anymore, you sort of closed your heart
you know, to having someone great come into your life,
and so I wanted the empty chair to be representative
of friendships that have ended and wonderful friendships to come. Now.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
In the book, you talk about the yes friends that
you have had, and one in particular. I have some
yes friends. They're just there're sevens on the Enneagram. They're
all about yes. And I like how you shared when
you had the yes friends it led to you also
saying yes more.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I started to say yes because I feel like my
default is no, and so I sort of needed to
train myself out of that. I wanted to see people,
you know, the people in my life for their strengths.
So sometimes say with a yes friend, for example, because
I am not a yes friend. I have yes friends,
and thank goodness I do because yes friends are so fun.
(11:07):
They bring the fun to the table. But there are
times in my life where I would have had a
type of friend that I would consider now a yes friend,
but I didn't consider them a deep friend because we
didn't have like heartfelt connection. We weren't having like deep conversations.
I wouldn't have called her in the middle of the
(11:28):
night with an emergency. She was just like maybe in
a wider friendship circle, maybe I would have considered her
an acquaintance.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
But she was really fun.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
She was the one that was maybe always putting together,
you know, mom's nights out or whatever.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
But I just.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Didn't you know, she wasn't like my deep friend looking
around and seeing like, oh no, it is wonderful to
have this type of a friend that it doesn't always
have to be deep. Like sometimes shallow friends or friends
that fall more on the acquaintance level, we don't want
to count them as someone that would be on our
life council because it feels like it should all be
very deep and meaningful, and I'm a deep and meaningful person,
(12:06):
Like I want to have those friendships too, But also
like maybe if we lightened up how we felt about
like all these amazing people in our life. Okay, well
we're never going to have a deep conversation with her,
but she's so fun to be with. You're glad you
know her. When I started looking at people like this,
This is part of me saying yes, when I started
looking at people and instead of feeling like a lack
(12:28):
that we didn't have a certain type of connection or
she didn't show up in this way, or you know,
I didn't feel a certain chemistry with her or something,
instead of feeling like all this lack or disappointed expectations,
instead of sort of reframing it and starting to think, like,
you know what she is though she's great at giving advice,
she's a wonderful lunch buddy at work, Like she's my
(12:52):
neighbor who I can call if I have an emergency
at my house because she lives across the street. Like
instead of thinking, well, I wish I was closer with
my neighbor, I can still think of it as like,
I'm so glad I have this like solid person that
lives across the street that I can call if I
need to, even though we don't have a deep connection.
I just started elevating all of the people in my
(13:13):
life to see what they brought to the world. And
then you know, when you also do that, you start
to see what are you bringing to the world, Like
who are you? On other people's life councils, because we
can sometimes instead of seeing lack in other people, we
see a lot of lack in ourselves and friendships. Like
we beat ourselves up because we we didn't bring our
(13:33):
friends soup when she was sick, or you know, we
forgot to text somebody back for three weeks or whatever.
Like we kind of beat ourselves up and think, oh,
I'm not being a good friend right now, instead of thinking,
you know what I'm I'm.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Just not nurturing. I am literally never going to bring.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
You soup when you're sick. That is not my friendship strength.
You know what I am really good at. I am
amazing at putting together the girl's weekend. I will pick
up your kids in carpool anytime you need it, or
whatever our own strengths are. Instead of beating ourselves down
for the type of friend we're not and seeing in
our friends the type of friend they're not, We're really
(14:10):
just going to like look at our strengths and what
we are. And I think that I just wanted to
like reframe it. I had to do this work for myself,
by the way, Like this is after therapy and years
of talking about this online and everything, when I had
to realize, after a really lonely season, I have to
change the way I think about this or I'm just
gonna spiral.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, I appreciated that so much.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
You sharing It's not like a book where you read
and you're like, oh, this person's just telling me what
to do. But you were like, Hey, this is what
I've done and it's really worked for me. And here's
where I went wrong, and here's where I messed up.
And I don't want other people to maybe do the
same things. I mean, I think we all have to
learn from our mistakes or how we show up or
(14:54):
how we don't show up. But I love that you
showed both sides of it, like you admitted all the
different ways in which you failed as a friend.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Oh yeah, I start the book off with a big
misstep that I made in the pandemic on a group text,
by the way, which we've all done this, like on
a group of women, and like somebody says something like,
uh like record scratch, you know that was me, Like
I accidentally I would have never done this on purpose,
but I accidentally really hurt a friend on a group text.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
And it was in the middle of.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
The pandemic when we were like, you know, every every
emotion was heightened, everyone was stressed out. We hadn't seen
each other or hugged or felt what another's energy in months,
which then makes you like suspicious or defensive or whatever.
So it just was a text thread gone awry, and
I start the book off with that for a few reasons.
(15:46):
One is because I want to cop to at the
very beginning that I'm not perfect at friendship, that I've
had seasons of loneliness, I've misstepped pretty badly. And then
I also like wanted to sort of illustrate that I
am not like arapist or a researcher. This book is
not academic. This book is from experience of talking about
friendship and living out my own friendships, the good and
(16:09):
the bad, for you know, a really long time. I'm
in my forties. Adult friendship looks so different than friendship
when you're young, and so yeah, I really I wanted
the book to feel not prescriptive, like you're saying, not like,
here's what you do, here's the exact checklist of friends
you should have, but just like, let's just talk about this,
let's think about this a little bit differently, because I
(16:31):
didn't see anyone else talking about friendship in this way
that I needed.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
To talk about it.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
We did it beautifully. I thought, thank you, it's so
well done. And in the same vein as saying yes,
you also talk about Hey, there's just certain things we
just need to.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Do the thing, and we go do it.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I'm trying to think of one of the examples, if
someone's having a graduation, or someone's having a wedding, or
someone is having a baby shower. I mean there's times
where like, oh, can I really make that happen? Or
should I be And it's almost like you're like, no,
those are the life moments we show up for those.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
I feel really passionately about this one, especially in the
last few years when self care has become all the rage.
Now listen, I'm for self care. I you know, have
had mental health stuff. I'm all into therapy, all of
those things. I understand that this self care movement is
in response to like centuries of women not taking care
of themselves in the way.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
That they should.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
And also I think it's damaging our relationships to always
put our own self care ahead of anything else. Like
I don't remember when I was growing up it being
optional to go to people's big moments like you just went.
I have five core friendship philosophies in the book, and
one of them is just go. Because I think there
(17:46):
is this, you know, a lot of talk now, especially
on the Internet and stuff that like if it's inconvenient
for you, or if you're gonna not get your full
eight hours of sleep, or if you know it's maybe
going to cost you a little money or whatever, that
you're allowed to not go to your friend's stuff. It
is absolutely damaging friendships when we do not show up
(18:08):
for one another. So sometimes it is going to be inconvenient,
and sometimes we are going to lose a little bit
of sleep, it may cost a little.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
Bit of money, but if it is within.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Your realm of possibility to go, you need to default
to going. I think we've a little bit as a
culture defaulted to not going and like canceling last minute,
or like really taking care of ourselves in a way
that puts up so many boundaries and so many walls
in our friendships that it's harming them. And so I
(18:39):
kind of wanted just to get back to a place
of like, you know what you need to go. You
need to go to someone's birthday dinner. You need to
go to their kids dance recital. You need to go
to the things that you are invited to whenever possible,
even if it requires a little bit of sacrifice.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
I want to get back to that.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Another one of the philosophies is like every selfie, which
I know you unpacked the philosophies with Kat Defauda. So
for those of you that listen to Kat's podcast, or
maybe you don't, I would encourage you to go check
out You Need Therapy and her episode with Laura because
y'all focus on those. So I'll send people to listen
to that episode. But it definitely did get me thinking
(19:30):
about how times maybe I don't show up for my
friends online. And I recently went hiking with a coworker
and she was talking about just that and how she
had noticed that sometimes from people at work she didn't
feel supported on social and I thought, oh, shoot, I
don't know that I always see her post or make
(19:52):
an effort to like. I mean, I see it, and
I'm like okay. And then since that conversation, I was
so thankful she shared it with me because I was
completely unaware that that would be something that she a
ever noticed and be that it would bother her. And
that's the big question is do you notice if your
friends aren't liking your stuff?
Speaker 4 (20:11):
And does it bother you?
Speaker 5 (20:13):
Okay, So I asked this question online, and huge kudos
to your friend for voicing it to you. Actually like
want to cheer her on so bad right now, because
it's kind of hard to say it. You feel really
lame to say, Hey, it bugs me that you don't
like my stuff online, Like it feels immature or something.
But the thing is, most of us are noticing it,
(20:34):
and most of us do care, even though we like
talk ourselves out of it, like, uh, I shouldn't care,
and I don't think that our online behavior with one
another is the number one barometer of our relationship health.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
It's not.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
But because most of us are online every single day,
and for most of us when it's not our job,
especially when we post something, it feels vulnerable, even when
we're posting good things, like it feels a little nerve
racking to put our selves out there. The lowest bar
that we can possibly have to show up for our
friends is to give them a like and a little
(21:08):
high five in the comments, like you look darling, good job,
what a fun trip? I mean, I don't know, Like
it's just not that hard. But a lot of us
either just scroll mindlessly, which is a whole kind of
other problem. But that's what we're doing or and don't
act like you're not one of these people, because we
all are.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
We have certain.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Judgments of the things that come through our feed so
we withhold our likes sometimes from like people who post
too many selfies, or for people who post their vacations
and maybe we're a little jealous, we are not going
to give them a like. I think we do this
a little bit subconsciously. And I also know there's a
(21:48):
lot of factors here of how much people are online,
what the algorithm is feeding us. It's not like completely
plain and simple, like black and white, but I know
because most of this conversation online for a long time,
I know that a lot of us feel our feelings
about what other people are posting and how people are
(22:09):
responding to what we're posting, and if they're they never
like our stuff, but we see them like our other
friends stuff, that kind of thing like we're not we
don't want to clock it. We all want to be
more mature than this. But the fact is we are
noticing it. And so if we are noticing it and
it is a thing that is affecting our friendships, then
let's just like air on the side of liking every Selfie.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
One of the friends on there is the password friend. Yeah,
and I thought, shoot, I don't know that I have
anybody that knows my passwords, and so I definitely want
to find that person because in your case, your a
girl definitely came in handy for you.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Although you didn't.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
See her as the password person right away in that moment,
but you were at a doctor's appointment and some photos
of you ended up online. You're like, oh, shoot, I
don't want people seeing these pictures of me, and I
need them down. Again. You're at the doctor and so
you have to call a friend. You're like, here's my password,
take care of it, and then she does. And then
that's when it's like, oh, here are all my passwords,
(23:09):
just in case I'm ever in this situation again. And
then I laughed out loud at some of your friends
that have you know, people in line, which I think
they would fall under the password friend maybe, but it
might have another name.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
You'll have to remind me.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
But like if they die that they have friends that
are like, yo, get my journals, take care of them,
don't let anybody read them.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
Yeah, that is real life, by the way, the password
protective friend that I write about it is literal, Like
we're talking about like someone that literally has your passwords
and obviously be like a smart human being. Don't give
out your banking passwords or anything like that, but people
who could help out an emergency situation. Some of the
social media platforms these days allow you to like designate
(23:53):
someone that you know in the event of an emergency
or something that they can then and have control of
your social media presence. I mean that is like a
trust tree level friend, right. So that's the other part
of password protector is that if it's not literal, if
you don't literally need to give someone your passwords, it's metaphorical,
(24:15):
and that the person that you would trust with a
password of level security, you can trust them with anything
like it is in the Vault. And I do tell
a story in the book about like if you in
the event of your passing, they need to come and
burn all your journals so that your kids would never
find them or anything like that. That's like sort of
(24:35):
funny also sort of literal, depending on what your life
looks like. And I just wanted to have a place
for you know, I have a password protector in my life,
not the one I write about in the book that
she is a vault for me that I need to
when I need to tell something really sensitive, really hard things,
because she will never tell anybody.
Speaker 6 (24:56):
She is a true vault of a friend.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
But like we're not any other kind of friend to
each other, really moving on each other for a long time.
She's very trustworthy, but like she's not a fun friend.
She's not a mentor. Like she's a trust tree, password protector.
Speaker 6 (25:15):
Vault, and a lot of us need that.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Maybe we need it more in certain seasons than others,
but sometimes you need to be able to, like say
a really hard thing to someone, and you don't want
to say it to the person you're going to see
at carpool the next day, Like it needs to be
someone else, right, it needs to be a password protector.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I love too that this opens up a conversation for
you to maybe have with someone else or even internal
dialogue with yourself about how one friend can't fill all
these expectations or be exactly who you need them to
be out of respect for them, you're finding, yes, like
you know their strengths and you're not relying on them
(25:55):
to fill all these needs that you have. I love
that that's a and gives us permission to either release
some of our friends of that pressure or even seek
out different types of friendships, because I think it could
probably get pretty difficult at times depending on which friend
you are, to feel like you have to fill all
(26:15):
of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Yeah, I think that's kind of the root of some
of our friendship disappointments in adulthood, is because we think, like, oh,
we're going to have one bestie, one kind of soul sister,
and she's going to be everything.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
She's going to be fun and bring me.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Soup and give good advice and pick up my kids
and have my passwords, like all the things. And maybe
we have that when we're young, or maybe we do
have that for a time, and then if that friendship
changes or shifts or you feel like they let you
down in some way.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
That's a lot of expectations to put on one person.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
I also don't want that expectation put on me, Like
I couldn't be the everything friend to someone.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
I'm not good at everything, and I don't.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Want to constantly feel like I'm disappointing someone by the
way that I'm not showing up for them. I don't
want to constantly feel disappointed in a friend that I
feel like isn't showing up in her way. It should
release not all expectations. Relationship has expectations, but it should
release some pressure of trying to be everything to everyone.
(27:24):
It's the same reason that I also write about my
husband is not my best friend, because I think we
put a lot of pressure on our partners to be
everything to us. And I'm like, no, it's not. I
feel like I need girlfriends. I have to have girlfriends
so important to me.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
You also talk about mastermind groups, and I am familiar
with them because I have a couple of friends that
are part of them. I have not been a part
of one myself, but it's on my wish list I
guess of sorts. So for anyone that maybe doesn't know
what that is or maybe how they can even create
one in their community of people, share with us what
(28:17):
it is, maybe how we can form one.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Amy You need to get yourself a mastermind. It will
change your.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Life, I've heard, I mean it really, it.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Has transformed like my whole business. I don't even think
that I would have written these lapsed two books without
my mastermind. But if you're unfamiliar I think the term
is like a trendy term. I don't know that it's
been around for that long, but it's basically a group
of people who are in the same industry. So I've
seen it almost exclusively applied to a work situation. So
(28:48):
you're in the same industry, maybe you hold a similar position,
you just do some similar work. In my case, I
work online totally for myself. I'm at home all day
alone doing my work, and you know, I don't have
a friend in the next cubicle over. I don't have
that type of coworker. So having a mastermind has allowed
me to almost have like colleagues in a formal sense,
(29:10):
and that we meet once a month, like we have
very official meetings with like structure where we talk about
what's going on in our business, what's working, what's not,
how we can help each other out. We sort of
are mentoring each other, we're giving advice, we're brainstorming.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
Now.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
I work in you know, online content creation, but I
can see this in a lot of different industries, especially
since it's become really popular to work at home, to
have other people who have a similar position that are
maybe going to be the only people in your life,
who understand what your work looks like. Like my mom friends.
I mean, they know zero about podcasting or book writing
(29:50):
or any of the things I do, like literally nothing.
I love them, but they don't understand my work life.
I needed specific work friends. And if you don't know
where to find this kind of thing, there's paid masterminds
that are like led by somebody, which I'm not judging
that or not, but if you want this for yourself,
start it for yourself. I've been in a few masterminds now.
(30:13):
Some of them are very large, like Facebook group, you know,
thirty women or whatever. And then some of them my
current one and the group that I write about in
my book, there's just four of us, and you can
just start it. You can just reach out to a
couple of people who are in your same industry. You know,
it's better for it to not be someone that is
(30:33):
like an immediate competitor. I don't mean competitor in a
bad way, but you know what I mean that's doing
the exact same thing you are doing, but maybe just
in the same general idea, and just say, hey, would
you be interested in this? Almost like an accountability group,
although it's more than that. And I think that you
have a meeting whatever.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
Works for you.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
We do once a month that makes the most sense
to me, so that it's on the calendar, just like
any other kind of business meeting.
Speaker 6 (30:57):
That you would have.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
And for those of us or freelancers or creatives or
work at home, like I said, it has been like
rocket fuel for my work.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
And when I.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
Wrote about it in the book I wrote about it
in a life council see called the Business Besties. I
write about how the first couple of years that I
met with the three other women in my group, we
were sort of work only, like we did not talk
about our personal lives hardly at all. Two of us
are married, I'm sorry, three of us are married, one
is not. Two of us are parents, two are not.
(31:30):
You know, we're sort of a mix of what our
personal lives look like, and that never came to the table.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
At first.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
It was a place where I could just be my
work self. I could be unapologetically ambitious, like I could
set goals and I didn't have to, like feel apologetic
about it. I feel like I didn't have to. Like
one of the women in my group like jokes she
never asks about my kids, which is fine, she doesn't
need to ever ask about my kids. I mean, that's
(31:57):
not what that relationship is able to just be my
work self. And I do think that in the friendship
conversation there aren't very many spaces where we can be
just one version of ourselves, right, Like we're really taught
and it feels mostly good to us to bring our
whole self to the table, Like I'm a mom and
I'm a writer and I you know, we have these
(32:19):
things and that's great.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
I am a whole person.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
Sometimes you just want to be like this one narrow
version of who you are. I don't want to talk
about mom life when I'm talking about growing my podcast,
Like I need to just like talk about strategy with
other trusted, good hearted women who I know they know
I'm a whole person offline, but they don't need to
know that version of me. I cannot speak highly enough
(32:45):
about having whatever your industry is, having a mastermind group.
You know, CEOs have been doing this for a long time,
Like this is something that I feel like has filtered
into the online realm, but it really has. Like it's
so much motivating to me to have other women that
are like kind of holding me accountable to my goals.
They're like, you said, you're going to write a book,
(33:06):
how's it going, And they're like checking in on it.
And because I'm a solo preneur without other people in
my life sort of pushing me and encouraging me in
a healthy way to achieve these goals, like, I don't
think I would have done it because it's so easy to.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Not do it.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Okay, well, I think you've convinced me that. I guess
if I don't have one to join, I need to
start one.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
You need to start one.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I just I'm in a unique space. Podcasting comes second.
I've been in radio for seventeen years on a very
highly syndicated, successful morning show, and that's my primary job.
And similar to you, so many people in my life
they have no idea what that entails. They just turn
on the radio and they hear us and they think
(33:49):
that's that's all that's there.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
And there's so much.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
More that is involved and goes into it, and the
content creation and you know, the show prep and client relations,
commercial endorsers, like there's so many different things, and radios
had to evolve quite a bit. Radio today is not
the radio that it was when I started in two
thousand and six and then started the podcast a handful
(34:14):
of years ago, and that's been another interesting layer. But
I'm like trying to think of different people specifically in
my seat ish across the country that I and I
already have a few girls in mind that are on
like syndicated shows or working with highly successful men as
a woman as the co host, and I'm forming my
(34:36):
group in my mind literally while I'm talking out loud
to you, and I'm I'm sort of nervous to reach
out to them and present this idea.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
But I guess I just got to go for it.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Well, first of all, you have to go for it,
because yes, I think that most people will be very
excited to receive this invitation for you. And if they're not,
it's not personal, they have too much on their plate whatever.
You you know, approach it, as I write about in
the book, like hold all of that a little bit loosely,
like if they're like, yeah, I don't have time for this,
or I don't capacity for this, or I'm going through something,
it doesn't allow for this. That's not about you, doesn't
(35:04):
mean you're unlikable or they don't see you as a
worthy colleague or whatever. But secondly, I don't want to
take too much of a tangent on this, but I
want to say it because it's important masterminds like this,
women especially can share their numbers. This has been invaluable
to me because what we don't do very often is
we keep silent about what we're making, what our downloads are.
(35:27):
You know, what we're paid for X, Y and z,
and you don't have to be one hundred percent candid
about it. But we stay so silent in these spaces
that we don't even know if we're in the realm
of normalcy for what we're being paid, or what we're worth,
what our counterpart might be getting paid or whatever.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
All of this numbers conversation.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
I think this is so important for women, especially because
our silence and are staying like politely quiet about it,
because it's like ghost to talk about money. You know
what it does? It keeps us making less because we
have no idea because we've never shared our numbers. We
don't even know what good download numbers are, or what
we should charge for a sponsored post or all of
(36:08):
these whatever these different things. We've never said it out loud.
We don't even know when you are in a trusted group,
because maybe you don't want toss that number out to
just anyone. When you are in a trusted group of
similarly enough colleagues and you can really compare notes like that.
It makes the creative industry or any industry that much
stronger because we can see, like, oh my gosh, I'm
(36:29):
way under charging for myself, because almost never do I
have women say I was way overcharging or I was
getting paid way more than everybody else. That's never happened,
like almost never. Most of the time we are devaluing
what we are bringing to the table or what we
are charging or commanding for a salary. So that's another
part of Masterminds that has been hugely valuable to me
(36:51):
because I didn't even know, like what good numbers were,
what I should ask for, what this rate should be, Like,
I didn't even know. You have to be able to
talk about this, and we are conditioned to not.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
Talk about it.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, I'm so glad that the conversation went this route
because I think that is so true, so important, and
a lot of times, yeah, we stay small because it's
like ooh, or we you said it undervalue ourselves because oh,
I don't want to I don't want to make it
a thing. Just go ahead and we'll do this. But
I don't know a man in my life that thinks
that way and says.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Oh, of course I'm not. I don't want to cause
it thing, so just go ahead and make it this price.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
Yeah, no, never and in your mastermind, Like again, I
am in a strong group of women. If I come
to them and I even have a hint of like
I'm thinking about just like letting it go and doing
this or whatever, they'll be like, oh, no, you are not.
You are going to email back immediately and say this,
this is your price, take it or leave it whatever.
They pep talk me up, They give me language, they
(37:49):
give me comps like it is invaluable to have people
around you who hold you to a good standard for yourself.
They don't even let me kind of back away and
be like okay, it's fine. Whatever they know. And then
I know if I do that, I'm going to have
to answer to them.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
So it's good.
Speaker 5 (38:07):
It's good for women to have these types of relationships,
and they do fall on your life counsel. You might
consider a coworker or a colleague in the way that
we're talking like, well, she's not like a friend, she's
like a colleague or whatever. Of course only you can
decipher like what that means to you, But to me,
I put this seat on a life council, the business
(38:28):
bestie on a life council for all these reasons that
we're talking about, because we don't want someone to be
just a colleague or just a coworker when actually this
is someone that you talk to or see every single
day that's worthy of being considered a part of our life.
You know, we are sort of devaluing each other when
I'm just like, oh, yeah, yeah, she's just a coworker
or whatever, when you're like, oh, but she sees you
(38:50):
more than you see your quote unquote bestie, So maybe
should elevate her position to a life council member.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yeah, I'm even thinking of just like you're talking about,
the encourage meant that these types of relationships the people
in the Mastermind can offer you. But also when you
are in that type of group and there's conversations happening
and they know your interests and what they have, and
they're out in the world and they're hearing of different
opportunities I see it as also an amazing way to
(39:20):
network and open yourself up to other things, because someone
might be like, oh, Laura was just saying in our
last meeting she wanted to do this, and I just
met this person that is actually looking for that, and
then boom, you have more opportunity. Yes, before we wrap,
I would love to do four Things Gratitude with you.
It's just a fun way that we get to know
(39:41):
our guests on a different level and just have you
share an Instagram follow that you love, a TV show,
a book.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
And then a food or a drink that you're into.
Speaker 6 (39:51):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (39:52):
A book that I'm obsessed with right now that I
just read. It just came out in twenty twenty three
is called The Perfectionists Guide to Losing Control. It's by
Catherine Morgan Schaffler. And I have not read a book
that has made me feel so seen since, like Brene
Brown years ago, Like, I loved this book so much.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
What number are you on the Enneagram? I'm a one
one Okay, so maybe fas Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:18):
I think that's why this book really resonated with the
Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control. It's called and it's really
about harnessing your perfectionist tendencies and why it's a good
thing and not a negative thing. Oh, I just loved it.
It's so good and I can't stop talking about it.
Clearly the TV show that I'm watching, but I feel
like the whole world is watching. But my family is
(40:38):
very invested in Succession right now. I love it so much,
so good. This season is blowing my mind. And an
Instagram follow that I'm really loving is her name's Libby
Ward and her instagram is a diary of an honest mom.
I don't know if you've seen her. She makes the
(40:59):
best videos. I feel like she is putting out some
of the mom emotions that a lot of us have
but nobody wants to say. She's saying some really hard
and beautiful things about parenthood. I actually don't even follow
a lot of people in the parenthood space, or you know,
I don't listen to a lot of parenting podcasts or
anything like that. But for some reason, I really love
(41:19):
this one diary eve an honest mom. And then I
have just been on this kick for years, so it
feels unoriginal to me. But I will just order a
spicy margarita every time it's offered.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
Hey Salter, no salt, salt, Oh no, no, no no.
But I feel you on the spicy margarita, and I
think sometimes we forget about that one. We just go
maybe regular, and you forget how fun the kick can
be from the spicy.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
I love the kick. I feel like it just takes
your night up.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
A notch definitely.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
And I when you were talking about the mom content
a second ago for your third thing, I think it's
so important to have those people in your life, whether
there's someone online or a friend of your life that
is going to speak honestly about their parenting or their
home life for what's going on, because a lot of
times we see these curated family situations or we can
(42:15):
feel very alone in our dynamics. I'm an adopted mom,
so I adopted older So now they're sixteen and twelve,
but when we brought them to America from Haiti, they
were seven and ten, and so there's just a lot
that comes with that. Yeah, there was so many times,
so I remember feeling so alone and like nobody else
(42:36):
was experiencing it. But thankfully I had a few friends
out of Austin that had adopted from Haiti that I
was able to call on but then even still, they
were in Austin and I was in Nashville, and it
just felt like there was this disconnect, and I, out
of desperation, started searching for things online and came across
this Facebook group. You had to be accepted to join.
So I remember putting my name in and waiting, waiting
(42:58):
when or I trust me, I need this, I'm good,
I'm good. And I finally got accepted, and I just
finally felt like I could exhale because I could see
other moms sharing their experiences. And then I realized they
meet once a month, and so then I started going
to the in person meetings and.
Speaker 6 (43:15):
Oh, I love this.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Oh I was so refreshing to just know you could
say something out loud and there was zero judgment.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Yeah, you know, we didn't talk about this because we're
talking about friendship today. But my whole first book is
called Share Your Stuff. I'll go First, and it is
about exactly what you're talking about, which is sharing yourself
in order to feel connection, and that if someone else
isn't saying the thing, then we need to go first.
We need to raise our hand and say the hard
thing and open the door for other people to be
(43:45):
able to say they're hard things. I mean, that was
the first and most important message I was really passionate about,
which is why my first book is about that, even
though I already had The Life Counsel sort of rattling
around in my mind. I just feel really strong about women,
especially as you can tell, like sharing themselves, like we
talked about in a work context, in a motherhood context.
(44:08):
As we get older, we do that less and less,
we become more pleasing. We don't want to rock the boat.
We don't want to embarrass our kids or risk our
jobs or whatever. Those are valid concerns sometimes, but also
when we get to middle life and we've spent a
good decade not sharing ourselves, it's just detrimental to our
whole journey. So I feel really strongly about that too.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, and I have your first book, by the way,
and I would encourage people to check out both of
these books. And then also with the Life Counsel, there's
a work book, so I'll put links in the show notes,
so y'all, can you know have easy access to both
books in the work book. But thank you so much
for sharing so much of yourself because it truly does
(44:50):
help people, and people can find you online. You are
Laura dot Tremaine t r E m ai In And
thank you so much, Laura. And when you do your
next book, I would love to have you back.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
Yes, I would love it. Thank you,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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