Resilience, Reinvention, and Real Life, with my Mom, Julie Neaderthal

Julie Neaderthal 0:02

When you are educated, especially women who invest in themselves, the corollary to that is the self confidence. Nobody can take that away.

Leah Neaderthal 0:20

Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's so I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you. So one thing I've been thinking about recently is just how lucky I was to grow up seeing two powerful models of working life and two ways to have a career. My dad ran a solo medical practice for 30 years, which is basically running a small business for 30 years. And my mom went back to school later in life and worked incredibly hard and built a career doing work that she cared about deeply. And so I got to see both. I got to see somebody running a business and someone pursuing their purpose, and both of those shaped how I think about business and about work and about what's possible, especially when you're doing it on your own terms. And it's funny, in a recent kickoff call for the Academy, something really incredible came up. Every single woman who joined had a parent or grandparent who had run a business. They basically had some entrepreneurship in their legacy, in their history, every single one. And it really stuck with me, because it shows, you know, just how deep this goes, like even if we don't always realize it. So many of us are carrying that legacy forward in our own businesses. And you know, I've talked about this a little bit in my conversations with my family on the podcast. You might have heard my earlier episodes with my family. I had on my dad, Bob Neaderthal, back in episode 62 and my sister, Ariel Voorhees, who also runs a business she was episode 96 and now I'm so excited to have my mom on Julie Neaderthal and share my conversation with her in this episode, and so in this episode, in our conversation, you'll hear about what it looks like to bet on yourself and to juggle real life, you know, kids, marriage, school, work, and still go after something that matters. And you'll hear what it takes to keep showing up when the stakes are high and the timing isn't perfect. So if you're, of course, a woman, building a consulting business, maybe you're also raising a family, and you're definitely trying to do great work and make a real impact, then I know you're going to find something in here that resonates with you. So take a listen to my conversation with my mom, Julie Neaderthal, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson that you can apply to your business. Enjoy. Hi mom. Thanks for being Hi. Good morning. How are you morning? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for doing this at long last. Yeah, why don't you just start by introducing yourself for the good people. Well, I

Julie Neaderthal 3:56

I am Julie Neaderthal. I am Leah's mom. And

Leah Neaderthal 3:59

welcome to this markets paid podcast. You know, I've I've done this with dad, and I did it with Ariel, and now I'm doing it with you, because I think you have a lot to share with people. I think when I first invited you to do the podcast, do you remember what you said to me? You were like, Why would anyone want to hear anything? Exactly I have to say. I think you have a lot to share, and I think, you know, providing a little bit of a backstory, and to me and all of that, I think people really appreciate it. I also think it's kind of cool that this is before I interviewed dad. I was on somebody else's podcast, and he asked me, do you come from an entrepreneurial family? And I said, Well, you know, not really. You know, my dad's doctor, my mom's a physical therapist. But then I sort of thought more broadly. I was like, Wait a minute. On dad's side of the family, we have Goldner associates, which is like a third generation business. And on your side, there's entrepreneurship as well. So tell me about. COVID, your grandfather and

Julie Neaderthal 5:02

My grandfather was a Russian immigrant. He was trained as a tailor, so when he came to the United States, and after some time, he rented space on Coney Island Avenue, which ironically, is about a mile and a half from where you currently Yes, and he was bespoke women's fashion and Furrier. So what I remember was that this showroom was downstairs on the sidewalk. It was sidewalk to ceiling windows. Store was named Tobin, and at one time, the family lived upstairs, and the kind of clothing that he made, I mean, if you think about Mrs. Maisel, that was it. That was the stuff that was coming out of his store, matching suits. And then there was an extended family connection with gloves. I think one of my grandmother's brothers made gloves and and, oh, women walking out of there were styling and then the furs. So that was a business that I was very aware of until my grandfather had a stroke, and then they had to close that business, and that's the only entrepreneurial venture that I remember on my mother's side,

Leah Neaderthal 6:27

yeah, yeah. Well, so And outside of entrepreneurship, even, you know, I'm really lucky, even in our sort of nuclear family and my parents, because on the one hand, I have dad who is a business owner of sorts, you know, he used a doctor in private practice for 30 years. And so I have that influence or model, and then I have you who you're a stay at home mom, but also went back to school to pursue something that you were really passionate about. And I have that model too. So can you talk about that a little bit? You know, when we were young, you were a stay at home mom and sort of what happened? How did you find yourself going back to school?

Julie Neaderthal 7:10

I graduated with a humanities degree from Vanderbilt that prepared me for absolutely nothing, and I married two years later. I mean, I worked for Vanderbilt after I graduated in development, and then met dad and married, moved away, had kids, and that was all fine, and I lived a complete suburban life. You know, it was kids and volunteering and all the things that go with that. But I remember distinctly having this like epiphany moment that you and Arielle, you know, gonna leave to go to school during the day. And when

Leah Neaderthal 7:47

you were talking about kindergarten school, like we were gonna start going to school, you were gonna start

Julie Neaderthal 7:51

going to school. And I realized that at no point were either one of you gonna turn around, over your shoulder and go and what are you gonna do today, Mommy, you know you were busy with what you were doing, and you couldn't have cared less what I was going to do, and what I was looking at was complete boredom. I have friends who continue to do this and and that was fine with them, but the whole life of suburbia with exercising in the morning and playing mahjong in the afternoon, and, you know, a little bit of grocery store and a little bit of food prep, that just left me cold. And I really started thinking about how I wanted to become an interesting person. So there were a couple of things that interested me. A paralegal interested me for a while. I thought that would have been kind of fun, but in my exercise life, and I was working out every single morning, I hurt my back, and I was directed to a woman who is still practicing. She's legendary. She's premier in Nashville, Susan Underwood, and she took care of my back. And while she was working on my back, I asked her a blue million questions, how do you know how to touch this, and what is this, and where does this go? And why are you doing that? And one night, she called me at home, and she said, there is a physical therapy program that's going to open in a year and a half at Tennessee State University in Nashville, and you're going to be in it. Oh, wow, in that first class. Thought about it. I thought, well, you know, that was really kind of appealing, because dad had been coming home all this time feeding me with medical stuff that I was learning, right? I thought, well, I might be able to do this. So that's how I got started in physical therapy, somebody saw something in me, yeah. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 10:00

wow. And you just said, Okay, or was that a, well, they forgot it was, it was a difficult decision.

Julie Neaderthal 10:06

No, I don't think it was a difficult decision to kind of, it kind of clicked. You know, it's that old Buddha thing, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And I thought it was interesting enough. Actually, Aunt Martha had thought that I would be a good nurse practitioner, and Vanderbilt nursing school was opening up a nurse practitioner Bridge Program, where it was just this rapid RN program, and then they bridged you into nurse practitioner. And I went and talked to the woman who opened that and develop that program. And it kind of left me a little bit cold at that moment, because at that moment, nurse practitioners had limitations, and so I thought physical therapy was much more hands on. So I went to talk to the people who were opening the program, and they looked at my resume from Vanderbilt and said there are a few pieces that you're missing, and you've got time to catch up and do these prereqs, and then we'll talk to you about coming into this program. So when you were nine years old, and Arielle was six, so she had just started kindergarten, walk out the door. Never looked back. I started that process of prereqs. What

Leah Neaderthal 11:26

did you have to take? Well,

Julie Neaderthal 11:28

this is the interesting piece. They told me, You're missing physics, and I thought I was going to die. And they said, take physics first, and if you can get through physics. The rest of it will be easier, as I was missing physics. I was missing human anatomy and physiology, child development, a few things like that. So I went in and started taking physics. Thank God it was algebra based physics and not calculus based physics, because I had just stopped having nightmares about calculus from my undergraduate years and so and I got through it. And then another mentor appeared, and that was my older brother, who was a physics professor, who I would call and go, What are they talking about here? And he would break it down for me and break through those barriers. So I got through physics, and that gave me the confidence to do the rest of the pre works, which gave me the confidence to apply for the program.

Leah Neaderthal 12:40

Wow. What was the hardest part about going back to school? Oh,

Julie Neaderthal 12:45

geez, there were 10 of us first. I have to say, Tennessee State University is an HBCU in Nashville, and it teamed the program, teamed with Meharry Medical School, which is traditionally minority medical school. Okay, so the very first class that we took in the summer was 10 weeks long, was gross anatomy and physiology. So there were 10 of us, little white people who were admitted to this, you know, PT class at an HBCU. And we got to Meharry for gross anatomy, and we're sitting in an amphitheater, and you've seen pictures of these, you know, where the seats go, like this, and the professor's, you know, way down there at the bottom. And one of my new PT friends looked at me and she said, Well, it's the first day. Maybe they'll let us go home early. Oh, God. And Dr Jackson stood and said, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to gross anatomy. You are now 24 hours behind. Oh God. And I got home at two o'clock in the morning. Oh my gosh, two o'clock in the morning. I have no idea how I got home. I just can't tell you anything about it, but that was that was the beginning of 10 weeks of get you up in the morning and get you situated with your nanny. At the time for the summer, I would go to gross I'd come home at two o'clock in the morning. I'd sleep for four hours. I'd wake up at six in the morning. That was 10 weeks. I lost 20 pounds in 10 weeks.

Leah Neaderthal 14:25

Oh, my God, Mom, I never I didn't know. I

Julie Neaderthal 14:30

lost 20 pounds in 10 weeks, and I barely got out alive. Barely got out alive. So my whole life from that point on was, if I could get through growth, I can get through anything.

Leah Neaderthal 14:45

Oh, wow, oh my gosh. Well, and you mentioned, you know, getting us up and getting us situated. And I'm sure when school started, making lunch, or, you know, whatever, getting us out the door. How did you. Quote, unquote, like, make it work. You know, running a household, being in school, raising kids. I also do want to just acknowledge that I did not ask dad the same question, how did he make it work? And I just, I just want to sort of acknowledge my own like Pisces, I guess. But how did you make it work?

Julie Neaderthal 15:17

I am a very organized person, and I can look ahead multiple steps and figure out when I need to get started, if this is the goal, when do I need to get started, and what are the sequential steps I need to do to get to that goal? So for example, and I'll talk about dad in a minute, because couldn't have done that without him. But grocery shopping shifted. Instead of going every few days and picking up here and there and whatever I thought we needed, I had to plan out a week's worth of meals I was cooking on Sundays for the whole week, and I had to figure out a way to get all the protein in the freezer, so we could just take that out in the morning and thaw that out, and dad could cook it later on, and then the vegetables and the produce, and, you know, the starches would All follow. So just became incredibly organized. Now, dad, of course, was running his own practice. We hired summer nannies for you, right? And Ariel and we had signed you up for camps and stuff like that. So just I don't even makes me tired to think about doing it. But we did it, but when all was said and done. I have to tell you, at the end of the 10 weeks of gross anatomy, do you remember going on the vacation that we went to a dude ranch in Arkansas, right? And I slept for a whole week, and you went out and played, and I remember dad looked at me at one point. He said, I have no idea how you did it.

Leah Neaderthal 17:02

What did it mean to hear him say that?

Julie Neaderthal 17:05

Well, I mean, I was so overwhelmed, you know. And literally, I gotta tell you, I was at the bottom of the curve on gross anatomy I made. I was really at the bottom. Passed by the skin of my teeth, but that was my boot camp. That was my Outward Bound, and I had mentors for that too. Someone came forward. He was a teaching assistant for gross anatomy, and he would break it down for me. He just carried me for weeks until I finally got the hang of it. So here came another teacher upon whose shoulders I could rest until I got under my own two feet. Yeah.

Leah Neaderthal 17:56

And how long was the program, the whole PT program. The PT program,

Julie Neaderthal 18:02

in and of itself, was 24 months straight through no breaks. You started and ended with your class, and at that point it was a BS program. So it's now a DPT program. So if you count the year and a half of prereqs, I was in the whole thing for about three and a half years. Wow. So what I want to say is, and perhaps to people who listen to this, at first, my brain hurt. There were synapses that needed to occur, and I was missing millimeters of brain fiber to make a connection from one side to the next. And until I could make those synapses, my brain physically hurt. But if it's meaningful to you, you make it work.

Leah Neaderthal 19:00

Yeah, yeah. Well, so this two year program, and clearly the first 10 weeks was like traumatic for you. What do you remember for the rest of it?

Julie Neaderthal 19:09

Well, I remember sliding into neuroanatomy was next, and by that time, I was pretty good at memorizing things, and you had, there's a ton of memorization in neuro and I really thrived in neuro I liked it a lot. Neuroanatomy starts with brain dissection and and all of the information that goes from your brain into your body and out again. So I really did like that. And then the rest of it. I was good. I was gold. I was slamming it. It got easier. My study habits got better, and I got better. So

Leah Neaderthal 19:51

after three and a half years, now you're a working parent, and that's again, another connection with the listeners here, because a lot of them are. To be working parents, right? Working mostly working moms. And so what was that like for you? You're not in the in the thick of it with gross anatomy, but now you're in sort of the marathon. How did you sort of integrate this all into this new life that you were going to have after

Julie Neaderthal 20:18

PT school? Work was easy. Work wasn't easy, but I was able to to find a job that made it manageable. And your listeners probably should understand that where you and Arielle went to school was across the street from my hospital, right? So I went to interview for a job at Vanderbilt and explained to them that I had two small children at home, and what they carved out for me, but it wasn't anything exceptional. They carved out a 30 hour week, which at Vanderbilt was full time, full time benefits at 30 hours, and I started at eight and I ended at three. And it was brilliant. It could not have been better, because you got dropped off, I parked the car, walked into my building, and then you and Arielle would walk across the street and meet me after school, and that was it. That was my day. That was your day. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 21:25

that's great. And you mentioned that you're going to come back to dad like you couldn't have done it all with without dad. I mean, this was going to be a big change for him too, right, to go from having a stay at home parent to to working parents, you know? How did he respond?

Julie Neaderthal 21:41

Obviously, very supportive, and every barrier had a solution. He was not threatened by the fact that I was going back to work or going back to school. I mean, I think he was very proud of it, and in the end, we had a graduation party for me and a friend of ours made a diploma for Dad, the Mr. Mom diploma that I still have, and dad had graduated as Mr. Mom. So it was complete support we were younger. I still have no idea how we got through it, but could not have done it, any of it, without him. Conversely, few years later, when you were in college, he told me that he was going back to school to get an MBA, and of course, I had no ground to stand on to object whatsoever. I just said, Okay, we'll make it work.

Leah Neaderthal 22:45

Yeah, yeah. Well, that leads me to education has always been really important in our family. So can you speak to that? And you know, where does that come from, and how did that sort of play out?

Julie Neaderthal 22:57

Well, I have to say it's a very Jewish value, I think that's the beginning of it. When you educate yourself, you are putting something into yourself that no one can ever take away from you. You can work at a manual job, and if you get hurt, you're doomed. But when you are educated, especially women who invest in themselves, the corollary to that is a self confidence. Nobody can take that away. So that's where it comes from. I am the third of four children in my birth family, and the only girl and my parents, lower middle income, spent 25 years on education. Can you imagine, and they spent more on me as the girl than the

Leah Neaderthal 24:06

boys. I didn't realize that. Wow. So when you thought about education for Ariel and me, can you speak to that

Julie Neaderthal 24:14

we had an opportunity to send you to a school that would provide you with an education, the likes of which I didn't have growing up. I grew up in rural Middle Tennessee, eventually, that's where we ended up when I was growing up and the school was marginal. Dad had a much better education at the public schools in Nashville, so it was not even discussed you were going to go to this school. It happened to be a private school, and it happened to be a very well known private school, and we were just going to make it work. So I did not want you to go through the same experience that I went through. Mm. Have less than a stellar education. That's what we chose for you. Yeah, and

Leah Neaderthal 25:06

I loved USN and Ariel will say this too, this like there was no question that we would obviously go all the way through graduate high school, and there was also no question that we wouldn't go to college. You know, I think that in our family, that's just what you do. I sometimes I hear stories of other people who like college wasn't for me, or they did something else besides going to college. And they'll say, you know? And I'm like, No, I don't know, because in our family, that's just how it played out, like you do this, you know? And we weren't all that rebellious, and, you know, we just sort of went with it because that was what expectation,

Julie Neaderthal 25:42

right? Yeah, exactly,

Leah Neaderthal 25:45

you know, that leads me to just thinking about not being very rebellious. What was I like as a kid?

Julie Neaderthal 25:51

Well, you were, I think I may have mentioned this to you earlier. Of course, we were young. I was a young mother and no matter what people tell you, don't know squat about being a parent with that first kid, and it was your world, and we just had to figure out how to live in it, you know. And you were, you were determined, and you went after any everything that you wanted. You were not a shrinking kid at all. I don't know how I would have parented a child who was not gregarious and you were very physical as a kid, you were physically daring and got yourself hurt lots of times because, but, yeah, you just sort of, you know, you just plowed through your world and we were trailing right behind you most of the time. That's

Leah Neaderthal 26:56

funny. So, you know, going back to school, starting this career, obviously, is life changing. What do you think are a few lessons that you learned from going back to school and starting a career?

Julie Neaderthal 27:09

My priorities had shifted, and so the suburban world I had pretty much left behind, and all the stuff that goes with the suburban world and some of the pettiness that went with that, I have to share a memory, a very vivid memory that I had coming back from one of my first months at Vanderbilt, and I was working in the hospital. Vanderbilt's a teaching hospital, a level one trauma hospital, the sickest of the sick went there from a three state region, and I remember driving home thinking, 90% of my friends have no idea what I've seen today. They have no idea that their life can change in a nanosecond because all I've done today is worked with people whose lives have changed for the worst in a nanosecond, and what you think is important is not important. That was a huge lesson for me. There are people out here in the world three miles down the road from where our houses are, whose lives have been up ended forever. My job is to try to get them back out into the world. That was a profound shift in thinking for me,

Leah Neaderthal 28:43

well, and how did that play out for you? I

Julie Neaderthal 28:46

didn't have a lot of tolerance for who got invited to a birthday party and who didn't get invited to a birthday party. You know, a lot of the pettiness that that may have occurred around young kids or three couples were going out for dinner, and you were not one of those three couples who were invited. Okay, all right,

Leah Neaderthal 29:08

it's all right, there's more important stuff out there. There

Julie Neaderthal 29:12

is stuff you don't have a clue what is happening down the road from you, and you hope to God, we don't have to have this conversation.

Leah Neaderthal 29:22

Yeah, that is profound. When you thought about having this career, did you think about what you wanted Ariel and me to pick up or to learn or understand about this? Or was it, I

Julie Neaderthal 29:34

think it references back to the it's the soup and in you were raised in the ether and and we just, we just put that ether out there, you know, for both of you, and hope that you got the lessons that were out there. I mean, I remember specifically a night that one of you said, I don't want to do my homework. I'm not going to do my homework. I watch TV. It, and I just looked at you, and I don't want to do it either, but I'm doing it. We're going to sit down right here and we're going to do it together until we're all done. And we did. We sat the kitchen table and we all did our homework together until it was done. And I guess, although it's very hard to think that then 13 year old, you know, a 12 year old and a nine year old were going to say that you set a goal and then you don't stop until that's done, you finish up. Yeah, it didn't always happen. I mean, there were times that you we've talked about this before you may have done something and realized you weren't very good at it, and so we let you slide. We, you know, you dropped out, or, you know, you said, I only want to be the kid who's known to succeed. Well, that was probably a parenting mistake at our point. But later on, you got it. Somehow you got it that. Well, yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 30:56

I mean, I think that, like I do. Remember, I somebody once asked me if I've ever played an instrument, and I said, Oh yeah, I've quit all the best instruments. I think I'm a classic first child, High Achiever type, a perfectionist, where it's like I couldn't do things that I wasn't immediately good at, and if I didn't succeed right away, then I would quit. And then it became this self fulfilling prophecy where I chose not to do things that I didn't think I could be good at. And, you know, and it's and I have had to unlearn that, and at first observe it, and then unlearn it, and then learn how to be uncomfortable, right? But, like, is it a parenting thing? Perhaps to some, you know, maybe a part of it, because I was allowed to quit. And, you know, I think now that I have young kids, it's like, there's always that fine line of, like, how much do you push and how much do you make them stick with it, or whatever? And I mean, my kids are much younger than what we're talking about here. But like, I think that there's also maybe a personality thing and society and schooling and you know what, the like family expectations and all that stuff. But I don't think it takes away from the sort of silent lesson of setting a big goal and working towards it

Julie Neaderthal 32:09

correct. I think that what we're talking about is the wisdom of 10 year old who is cycling through every instrument in the band, and and a 37 year old for whom this project has meaning, or when you were designing your business, it was meaningful to you. You thought that if you broke it down into manageable steps it was going to get done. So I don't think it's the worst thing to let kids quit stuff that doesn't interest them. It doesn't hold their interest because they're not good at it. They'll find something they're good at, yeah, and they'll stick with it. Well, it's

Leah Neaderthal 32:58

interesting because I did sort of pick up this narrative about myself that, like, I quit things, you know, and I remember, you know, I got, like, a spin certification to be a spinning instructor, and I sort of let that go and, and I don't know, I just, sort of, I internalized this story about myself that I have a quitter. And recently, I was, I don't know, in past few years, I was looking at my business because I've had some great times in my business, but there's also been some really difficult times as well. And I thought to myself, this story is not true anymore. You know, I have shown up for this business every single day for 10 years, even when it was really hard. And in that way, I sort of got to rewrite I was like, I choose not to make this be the story about myself anymore. It's not true anymore. You know, right, exactly. So, yeah, I mean it because it's wisdom.

Julie Neaderthal 33:51

It's called wisdom.

Leah Neaderthal 33:55

There it is. There's some where it is,

Julie Neaderthal 33:57

there's wisdom. You've got it in spades. That's good.

Leah Neaderthal 34:03

Just speaking about sort of the the ripple effect, right, with your own kids, you mentioned one time that there's a ripple effect on other people in your world, and especially, you know, I'm just thinking about the women who are listening, being like working parents, and being around other working parents, and they're running a business, and there's always a ripple effect when, when people see you running a business, right? And so you mentioned that years later you had heard from some other USN moms who who didn't realize it, but they were watching you. Can you? Do you remember what they said?

Julie Neaderthal 34:38

It wasn't so many years later, it happened pretty quickly, I would say within about 234, years after I went through school, one woman went back and was in the process of becoming a CPA, and two women went back to Vanderbilt Divinity School. Mm. And I said, Well, tell me. I mean, how is this? How's it going? What what interested you? And each one of them said, I had been playing with this in my mind, and when I saw that you could do it, then I knew I could do it. And the lesson I want to share with your listeners is you have no idea who you're influencing on any given day. Not a clue in my world. It would come back to me many years after I had had a patient and they'd walk up to me and do you remember me? Why? Sort of remember you and I remember what you told me, they would say to me years later. So women who are out there running their own business, keeping their families intact, trying to get everybody clothed and and happy and not being perfect about it all the time, there is a humongous ripple effect that you have to appreciate that it's out there. You will not necessarily see the rewards, but it is huge. And every 25 year old or under 30 year old who thinks they've got it figured out. I'm going to call the BS card on that. What do you mean? Well, I'm just going to say that's a lot of fake it till you make it kind of stuff. You have to get in there and get into the trenches and and have the confidence of doing it that leads the way and shows other women that it can be

Leah Neaderthal 36:45

done. That's really nice. You're right. The confidence piece is something that's come up a few times and

Julie Neaderthal 36:55

probably arrogantly overconfident. But go ahead,

Leah Neaderthal 37:00

it's so funny you say that, by the way, because I think you say, I'm, you know, arrogantly overconfident. But then there are times when you are like, Oh, I could never do that on something you know, that I feel like you very much could do.

Julie Neaderthal 37:11

And that's a choice. That's the wisdom of the choice.

Leah Neaderthal 37:17

Okay, okay, you've gotten compliments from some people close to you that say, and this is, you know, not to sort of toot our own horn, but I'm just sort of relaying the story like that, your daughters are very confident. How did you raise such confident daughters? And I think everyone listening is trying to do their best with their own children or people in their world that they're trying to do well by how would you answer that? How did you raise such confident kids, such confident daughters? Specifically,

Julie Neaderthal 37:47

I have to acknowledge the fact that there are many confident mothers who are struggling with their own children, despite their best efforts, who were not as self confident as the parent would hope. But I think in our case, it was the perfect storm of you had the personality and your sister had the personality, and you saw these things happen around you. Your mom going from challenging herself in very difficult ways, saying to you, if this is what you want, this is what you can do for yourself, instilling that try it, see how you like it. Thing, I think it was a matter of you saw that it could be done, but you had the personality that could absorb it, and your sister as well. So I think there are lots of pieces to this puzzle. In our case, it happened to all come together in a good outcome,

Leah Neaderthal 39:00

well, and I think it's, you know, when you first told me that story, it's so funny to be for somebody to say, Oh, you're so confident. Because there are years that I remember that I've just so insecure. I think almost, you know, don't go through adolescence without being insecure, but even through college and early 20s, just being really insecure. But you know, I certainly did have a gift, which is what I saw from you and what I saw from dad. And you know, certainly our grandmothers were strong, determined women, and especially now also at this age, just being a little more secure. But yeah, I do feel that we really did get a gift of what we saw growing

Julie Neaderthal 39:42

up, I think we're missing a big part of this conversation that I'd like to talk about, up until I did this thing for myself, I was not the most confident person I was. Is a very late bloomer. And I want to talk about being a late bloomer because I had many, many, many, many years until I was 37 years old. I was going through the motions, but didn't have a direction. And then something switched in me, and there have got to be a lot of women who are listening to this podcast, who are going through the motions, but it may not be what they're looking for, or they're working with you to help redirect or to find the purpose and the meaning. And I mean, I was 37 years old, and there's a lot of value in being patient with yourself. I am all about the late bloomers. I am. I am the most supportive of any late bloomer out there, if the Late Bloomer is recognize if that there's something missing and searching for what it's going to take to fill that void.

Leah Neaderthal 41:17

Well. And I think, you know, 37 probably feels like being a late bloomer to you, but I think now there's probably more than when you were 37 there's a lot more in the conversation about, like, having your second act being older, you know, I think I have a screenshot of like, you know, Morgan Freeman didn't start seeing until he was in his 40s, or whatever. But I hear you about, you know, being patient with yourself and letting yourself develop, and letting your letting things present themselves, really, and then listening to that and following that. You know, no matter when it happens

Julie Neaderthal 41:54

exactly, exactly. You

Leah Neaderthal 41:57

know, I want to just go backwards for a second, because I mentioned my grandmother's, you know, Adi was sort of a she was industrious. I wouldn't say she was an entrepreneur, right, but she was industrial. She

Julie Neaderthal 42:10

actually, I need to back up. My brother reminded me of something. She had a little store with a friend in one of the towns, surrounding towns that they lived in in Smyrna, and it was in like a prefab building, and it was women's fashion, and perfectly absolutely to her strength,

Leah Neaderthal 42:31

right? Because she was a seamstress, and my mother was

Julie Neaderthal 42:35

a master seamstress, right? The daughter of the tailor, right?

Leah Neaderthal 42:39

Right? She made a bunch of stuff for me and for Ariel. She has a she made a quilt for me that you know my my daughter slept on yesterday. And I always pictured her as like a a real go getter.

Julie Neaderthal 42:53

Yes, circumstances kept her from being a tremendous go getter. Of course, she was. She was born in 1920 both of your grandmothers were born in 1920s do you have to put it in context and allow for the cultural dynamic at that time? And my mother was quite the go getter. She never stayed still. She kept reinventing and reinventing and reinventing.

Leah Neaderthal 43:16

Couldn't she be considered a late bloomer who kept blooming over and over, yes, yes, yeah.

Julie Neaderthal 43:23

Clearly, as she found things meaningful, some of the things she did was was strictly financial, to keep, you know, a family going. She was a she had a series of very traumatic incidences in in her young adult life, and she was a widow, and she had to provide for two small children, and so she did some things to keep her family afloat. And then later moved when

Leah Neaderthal 43:49

you say, when you say, she's do some things. What were the things that she was doing?

Julie Neaderthal 43:52

She went to, I think it was fashion design school, or, I think it was called Fashion Institute of Technology, where she learned high end design, pattern fabrication, things like that, and she was a fabricator for an interior designer when she was younger, and that's a career that I remember her having slipcovers and draperies and pillows and all those things she could do all that,

Leah Neaderthal 44:25

wow. I did not know that. I mean, she made my drapes, but I, I remember when I was a kid, she

Julie Neaderthal 44:31

made your she made your bedspread, yeah, but I didn't realize

Leah Neaderthal 44:35

that was her background. Oh, yeah. Well, and going even, you know, a little little further back, she was in the first class of women graduates at Hunter College.

Julie Neaderthal 44:49

Well, thanks. Do you remember that to me? No, no, right? But she didn't graduate from Hunter College, so maybe she's the part that I missed, right,

Leah Neaderthal 44:57

right? So, but she definitely was in the. First Class of women, she told me at Hunter College, which is in New York City, right, and

Julie Neaderthal 45:04

to Erasmus Hall High School, she was so proud of going to Erasmus Hall High School, right?

Leah Neaderthal 45:11

And she was really proud of going to Hunter College, which I'm sure at that time was a huge deal, right? And so on the other side, meow went to University of Illinois, which, now that I'm sort of playing that back, being women at that time, and both going to college was also kind of a big deal, right?

Julie Neaderthal 45:31

Because it was during the Depression. And you this is, you know, by the time they went to colleges 1938 that you that is huge historical context, right,

Leah Neaderthal 45:45

right? I remember that Mia told me that at one point during the war, or like the war was starting up, and her father said, you have to come home. She she

Julie Neaderthal 45:58

went for one year. She did not graduate from college, nor did my mother. I remember hearing from my mother how much of a regret that was. I never really had that conversation with my mother in law about what a regret that was, but both of them, again, came from birth families where education was huge. My mother's younger brother was admitted to Yale Law School when there was a quota on Jews, and my mother in law's brother became a physician, and her younger sister went to Vanderbilt when there were very few women at Vanderbilt. So that's the whole, that's the ether that you came up from.

Leah Neaderthal 46:56

Yeah, wow. I mean, it's, it's just really profound. It's, it's profound to think about,

Julie Neaderthal 47:03

oh yeah, it is

Leah Neaderthal 47:06

two other little notes that I made, you know, just thinking about, like, again, how hard it was for me to pull out a lesson, because it's everywhere, right? But there were a couple of things that I pulled out talk to me about this phrase that you guys say all the time, luck comes to the prepared, right, right. How did that come about? How did that become your your mantra?

Julie Neaderthal 47:29

Dad brought this to our marriage. It's a quote from Benjamin Franklin, and it may have been something that he heard when he was in the process of becoming an Eagle Scout, because the motto of the Eagle Scouts is, be prepared. It's hard to describe it. It's it's having a plan A, and then a Plan B and A Plan C behind it, and it's what we were talking about a few minutes ago. I'm here, and in a few days, I need to be over here point B, and these are the sequential steps that I need to take to get from point A to point B. That's how you're prepared. Your listeners may not know that dad and our sailors and sailors are always concerned about redundant systems, so that if system a goes out, you've got system B and then system C, and that's the idea of being prepared.

Leah Neaderthal 48:38

I've heard it a million times and sick of it. Well, I'll even admit that, you know, it's sort of entered into our, our family lexicon. Also.

Julie Neaderthal 48:49

Oh, okay,

Leah Neaderthal 48:50

well, that's good. The other, the other thing is, this might have been a joke, but I think it's there's some truth to it. Over the years, when you guys have talked about, how do you make a marriage work? And you say lowered expectations. Again, I You always sort of said it in a joking manner, but I think there's a little bit of truth to it. Oh, there's a lot of things to it. How do you guys think about that?

Julie Neaderthal 49:16

Oh, this is also an expression that dad brought to our relationship, and it acknowledges that no one is perfect. Everyone is flawed. Nobody can be that perfect person that you dated and fell in love with and had stars in your eyes, there's poop and there's snoring and there's sickness and there is, there's screw ups, and there is, how could you have left me in the dust like that? And, yeah, that's, it's all of that no one is perfect. And it's just an acknowledgement that you can't keep the she. Machine on 24, 748, years later, there are times that the sheen runs pretty thin,

Leah Neaderthal 50:10

yeah, but lowered expectations. I think that that's something that's actually universal, beyond a marriage. Clearly, it's, you know, having realistic expectations, or managing your expectations, or going, you know, just looking at reality, just being present, despite, you know, outside of what you thought it was going to be anyway. I think there's, I think there's a lot of like you can extend that metaphor to, or

Julie Neaderthal 50:40

for every peak there is a valley, you know? It's a rhythm. It's you, it's it just, it's like a circadian rhythm, you know,

Leah Neaderthal 50:49

yeah, yeah. You also told me that every trash can has a lid. I remember

Julie Neaderthal 50:57

that he he is full of these trite little tropes. And it just was that may not fit for you, but it's going to fit for somebody.

Leah Neaderthal 51:09

I definitely heard that many times in my 20s.

Julie Neaderthal 51:13

It had to, you know, it had to do with people you thought less desirable than yourself. But, yeah, it's not your bag, but it's going to be somebody else's,

Leah Neaderthal 51:25

right, right, right, right. Is there anything else that you'd like to share?

Julie Neaderthal 51:30

No, I think we've covered it

Leah Neaderthal 51:33

all right. Well, Mom, thank you for doing this. I think people are really going to like this.

Julie Neaderthal 51:38

I at first had no idea that anything I was going to say would have any value to anybody, but I appreciate your questions, because as I was working through the questions, I saw the universality of What women go through in multiple stages of their lives, and so I appreciate having a voice.

Leah Neaderthal 52:07

Thank you. Love ya. Love you too. All right, thanks so much for listening to this conversation with my mom. It was so fun to have that. And you know, even the stuff that didn't make it into the actual episode, I just loved the opportunity to really sit down and talk to her about these things. And so many good nuggets came up. And there are a lot of lessons that you can actually take from this conversation. Like, you know, it's okay to start something new later in life, this idea that you don't have to go it alone, you know, mentors and support are critical to getting you where you want to go. This idea that confidence doesn't come first, it comes from doing the thing. And of course, as my mom and my dad always say, luck comes to the prepared. But there's one lesson I want to pull out and leave you with something I really want you to think about for your business today, and it's this, you have no idea who you're influencing just by you showing up. Because when you run your business with integrity and purpose, like I know you're doing and when you keep going, even when it's hard, you're not just doing it for you. You're actually modeling what's possible for your kids, for your clients, for your friends, for someone who's, you know, quietly watching and wondering if they can do it too. And like my mom said, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And sometimes for you, that teacher might be a coach or a mentor, but sometimes for somebody else, it might be you. You don't even know it, but just by being who you are and doing what you do and showing up, you might be that teacher for somebody else. So keep going, keep showing up. You're making an impact, and that impact is always bigger than you think. All right, so thanks again for listening, and I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai