Dr. Whitney:  Hey everyone, welcome back to the Modern Mommy Doc podcast. Today I have Lydia Fenet. She is the author of Claim Your Confidence and I'm excited to have her because she is a fellow hustler. We were just talking before we started recording the podcast about all the things we've done to try to put ourselves out there, and then follow through on these commitments that we've made to bring ourselves to new heights. And I think that for a lot of moms, Lydia, we're constantly reaching. We're trying to get to new heights. And part of the thing that really holds us back actually from meeting our true potential is this idea you talk about which is the super parent. There's this myth that moms, but parents in general, can do it all, can be it all. So welcome to the show Lydia. So glad you're here. It's just our pleasure to have you and it's always my pleasure to be with other moms who have kind of the same ilk. So Lydia, tell us a little bit more about your story--it's a very interesting story-- and how you got to the place you are right now.

Lydia: Well, I grew up in a small town in Louisiana, if we start at the very beginning and I am one of four siblings. We have sort of grew up in a rock tumbler of a family, where we were always being allowed to try things and fail with so much fun. And I think as a result of that, over the course of my life, it has led me down the path where I'm really willing to try a lot of different things. And that came about in college when I read an article about a place called Christie's Auction House, this mythical auction house in New York City. And it was a place where they transact art. It wasn't a museum where you go and look at art. It was a place where they're literally buying and selling art. And the article was about Princess Diana's dresses being sold there and how this beautiful glamorous group of people showed up on Park Avenue. And all of these amazing women in their gorgeous dresses and their scarves were walking around, because they worked at this auction house and they traveled around the world.

And it seemed so glamorous that I just felt like I needed to be there. And it really became this obsession that I would work at Christie's Auction House without really having a family that was an art collecting family. I didn't really know anything about auction houses. Neither of my parents did. Our friends didn't. And it was just a series of things that finally led me there. I applied for an internship, they said no, I kept asking. I finally got it just by sheer perseverance, going back time and time again. And once I got in the doors, I didn't wanna leave. And when you work at an auction house, an amazing byproduct of that is that you see this world of auctioneering. And I've always loved the stage, I've always loved being in front of people, but I didn't really know what I was ever gonna do with that love.

I loved singing when I was younger, but I'm not a singer. In your adult life, at some point, if you're not gonna take that path, it kind of passes you by. But auctioneering really appealed to me and I tried out. I made it. I was very young, I was, in many cases, probably 10 or 15 years younger than most of the people and really one of the only women. And I passed a four-day class, where they just cut people day after day after day. And finally I was allowed to get on stage. And once I started getting on stage, I wasn't even good at what I was doing, but I just felt like I could get better. And that challenge kept me going up there time and time again. And so I was taking charity auctions by the end of my second year-- probably 80 to a hundred a year on top of a full-time job.

It became so much a part of my personality that my friends always knew that during the peak Gala season in New York City, they weren't gonna see me until 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night. But that really laid the groundwork for so many lessons that I've learned over the course of my life and ultimately became the reason I wrote my first book, The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You. Because every time I got off stage, there was a young woman standing there to tell me how much they hated selling and how they couldn't sell what they made. And how people rejecting them was them being rejected. And I just felt like there was a niche and a moment to write this book about selling as a woman.

And so that became my first book. And as you mentioned, I just finished my second book on confidence, which came out two weeks ago. And it's called Claim Your Confidence. And it's really about furthering that journey and telling those stories about continuing to find your voice and as a parent to find your footing. I have three children and, as many of us know, if you are a mom and you have a career, whether you're in the home or not in the home working, the bottom line is, you have to find your footing and you have to find your voice.

Dr. Whitney: So many pieces that I wanna dig into from what you said. First of all, let's go back to your childhood, what you were saying about being in this kind of environment where you were allowed to fail so much. What do you think your parents did that fostered that idea? Because now, looking back on your childhood, that's what you can clearly see they were doing. But of course in the moment, you didn't know. So tell me some of the ways that they raised you so that you felt like you were able to actually have resilience and you were able to actually overcome when you fell down.

Lydia: It's so funny that you asked this question, Whitney. So this morning, my eight-year-old son plays squash. And he went into a game that he really thought he was gonna win. He hasn't played a lot of matches and off he went with so much confidence. And my husband texted me on the way home and he said, "So Henry lost the match." And he came home and he came in and he was so upset. He sort of sat down, put his head in my lap and he was pretty near tears. And I opened my second book and I read him a chapter called Never Give Up, which was about when I was growing up. Everyone always knew that my family had these golden rules and one of them was never give up. And it was really something we always talked about as children. And, I said in the chapter, I learned that rule in middle school, because I played on three sports teams for four years that never won a game, literally never won a game. And I said the most amazing lesson for me was that I always thought we were gonna win the next game. And my parents, instead of saying, "You lost 50 to two this basketball game, so you're not gonna win next week." What they would say instead was, "Oof, that was a really tough loss, but I think you're gonna win next week." And I was like, "You know, I do too. I think we're gonna win next week." And it was just this amazing thing. And we never won. There was no marching off the field, "we finally did it" victory that I can remember. It was just we tried and that was enough. We got out there and we tried it. 

I left that small school to go to a boarding school in the northeast. My mom is British and so boarding school was very much a part of her life. She talked about it from a very early age and I became obsessed with going to boarding school. And I arrived at the school in Connecticut, which is called Taft. It's a beautiful school, an amazing campus. And a lot of the kids come from the northeast and the competition was fierce. And a lot of the people on the sports teams had been playing sports I'd never even heard of, like field hockey and lacrosse. And I'm also almost six feet tall. So you can imagine field hockey's not a great sport if you have to bend in half while you run down the field. And I remember getting on the third team, which is basically the intermediate team. And we lost early on and one of the girls on the team threw a stick And I remember I was eating an orange slice on the sideline and I was like, what on earth? You know, I am so competitive. But having lost so many times, it almost gives you this invincibility where you're like, God, we tried so hard but we just did not win. I really credit my parents with just letting me play on those teams and God bless them for sitting through those games because they were there every single time.

Dr. Whitney: And letting you lose. I actually think that's really interesting. I have a similar story that happened to me as I was applying for medical schools. I am not the best standardized test taker, which on the path to medicine, it's all about standardized tests. I was the valedictorian, 4.0 GPA, I'm a hard worker, I'm relatively smart. But when it came to taking all those standardized tests that get you into medical school, I just wasn't the person. And so I applied and I applied and I applied and I was rejected and I was rejected and I was rejected. And I finally got accepted to one school. And I remember the night before I got accepted my dad said, "What's plan B? What's gonna be plan B if you don't end up getting into medical school?" And my mom looked at him and she goes, "There is no plan B." And my mom is not a dance mom. She wasn't pushing me if I didn't want it, but she knew that's what I wanted. She knew that was the thing that I had visualized to be, this is the person that I wanna be. And she believed in me and she believed that the failures that I had didn't define what my success would be later. And that's what I hear you saying about building confidence: having experience with losses, having experience with failures and getting comfortable with that.

Lydia: Yes. And not being afraid to put yourself out there. Because that's the other thing: the beauty of all that failure is that you realize you survive it. It doesn't define you and it doesn't kill you. So, at the end of the day, does it feel great to lose? No. Does it feel great to fail? No. But at the same time, as you get older, every single time you do that and the stakes get higher and greater as you get older and these things are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger in your life. You've sort of built up this immunity and staying power and this resilience. When you start a business, one thing I've learned over the years is you have to almost be egoless in the failure process. If you try something out and it doesn't work, then you let the part that fails fall away and you just let it go and you move towards the things that do work. And I think the same can be said in life. If things aren't serving you over time, you can let them fall by the wayside. And again, if you just let your ego go and be like, that did not work. It did not serve what I was doing at that time or did not serve me. Let it go.

Dr. Whitney: So that was gonna be my next question, kind of differentiating, being dogged about something, going towards something when you keep failing. Where they say, doing the same thing and having the same results over and over and over again. What's the definition of that? Crazy? How do you keep from going at something full force when it's not working and you keep failing, versus shifting to something that will? And I think what you just said is you be egoless enough to look at it objectively. To say, that's not a part of my identity. Is there some other way in which it should work?

Lydia: Exactly. I'm sure that you have come across over the course of your life as I have: friends who work in jobs that they hate and it can be years long in their hatred of what they do. They don't like it, they don't like their boss. And it is the same conversation year after year after year. And that could be anything you do in your life if you keep doing it over and over and over again with the same result, you're right. It's crazy. So my point is, as a child in a very safe environment, in a sports environment, there is something set up that's a structure you cannot change. We were a small private school. We were playing huge public schools. We were gonna lose pretty much every time and that was what it was.

But in the course of life, that is rarely the case. There is always room to let things fall and to pivot. And when I say never give up, I mean never give up in the pursuit of a goal. But also remember that the standard of a goal, what you set as a goal, oftentimes is not what it's gonna look like when it hits its final success point. I've seen that in my own career, where I think that something's gonna end up one way. Where I think, this is how success looks, this is what it's gonna look like. And then when I actually get to the point where I hit the goal, it actually doesn't look anything like I thought it was going to. And that's because I let the things that don't work and don't serve me go by the wayside.

I'll give you an example. I launched a masterclass during Covid. My husband at the time had lost his job and I was the sole breadwinner of the family at that point. And also I had taken a major pay cut for my company and I thought we need to make money fast. And the easiest way I could think of doing that is through thought leadership. People need to learn things online. I have a lot of skills that all can be translated if I put a number on it. So I launched this masterclass series on four different topics, sales, negotiations, networking and public speaking.

And I did sort of a sample sale model. I was like, I'm gonna throw this out on a Sunday night. It's gonna be 25 people in a Zoom class. Here's the price. The first one sold out in less than two hours. The second one, same thing. Third one, same thing. Fourth one, same thing. Great. So I've done all four classes, so I did it again. And the first one, great, sells out. The second one took about two days to sell out and the third one was the same as the fourth one. And then I decided to do it again. And guess what? The first class did not sell out. And all of a sudden I was like, okay, so this doesn't work anymore.

But what have I learned from this? And what I learned was people were having problems with the timing because we were kind of coming to the point where people were doing things outside of Covid now. It wasn't just that we were all at home. People and the world are evolving. So the model then became, come to the masterclass if you can, if not, I can send you the video. So was it a failure? I mean, kind of. The masterclass wasn't gonna work the way it had when I set it up. It was a great success for three runs, but then it wasn't. But instead of being like, oh my god, these people aren't showing up, I would say, oh okay, if they're not showing up, they don't have to be there. Which means I can do a smaller class, I can be more tailored to those. And then eventually as we came out of Covid, that just became coaching. And all of that was five great clients, as opposed to doing these masterclasses, time and time again. I had these amazing people that have continued to work with me even through today. But that's what I mean. Never give up, right? That's all. It's all working towards something and we're letting things fall away as they don't serve us.

Dr. Whitney: I think there's so many moms who can find themselves in that statement in their working lives and also in their parent lives. I think about my daughter who has autism and what I thought success would be as a mom with her before I became a parent, especially as a pediatrician. We have a nanny who is excellent with my kids and they respond to her in a way that's different than they do to me. And so, for a long time, I felt less than because this person was able to actually have my kids act in a way that was what I originally thought would be success for me.

And I had to change my perspective to say my role in my kids' life is the attachment piece. It's the piece of me giving them the feeling of, I'm constantly here, I will never ever leave you. It's me giving them all these enriching activities. And there's other people in my life that have other functions for them. She's amazing at school dropoff and pick up. I suck at school drop off and pick up. I'm way too impatient for that. I want them to get in the car and go. I have a meeting, let's go! And she's amazing at it. And so I think for so many moms we have this vision in our head. I don't know where it comes from. Instagram. It comes from maybe our parents who were Betty Crockers and the kitchen with warm cookies when we came home. But something about how they're gonna be as a mom and then it doesn't look like that for them and they have to grapple with this idea. Of course never give up on being a good parent. But also maybe I need to change my definition of what success is.

Lydia: Someone said this to me years ago and I will just say it to everyone listening right now: give yourself grace. It is not easy to be a parent. I have three children and they are so different. Literally each of them has their own personality. Their own ups and downs within an hour of a day. Within a minute of a day, sometimes, I think. And there are times where I feel like I'm really doing a great job as a parent. And then there are other times when I'm just like, oh God, if someone was watching me right now, I would get an F in this job. Straight F. The day's been long and I'm losing my patience because nobody seems to ever want to get in bed when they're supposed to be in bed. My mom is British, so I think we all went to bed at 6:00 PM every night. And so I don't know why I can't seem to get my son to fall asleep before 9:30. It's just all this stuff that we put upon ourselves over the course of our life, the artificial timeline issue that we all do. We're like, by the age of 30, I'm gonna have this. By the age of 40, I need to be doing this. What is this timeline? What does it matter if you do it at 41? Does it matter if you do it at 38? I mean, I don't know, but I don't think so. And it's the same thing with kids. There is that version of the mom we all thought we were supposed to be because that's what TV put out there. That's the messaging that we heard from the magazines or the books that we read when we were little about the role and the job of a mom. And I often think it all the time now, and I say this a lot when I'm speaking on panels, that we have been given a really false bill of goods as moms about what the priorities are in our life and what they should be. I have seen so many people, and have friends even, who are so fixated on getting their Easter decoration set up. And while they're doing this, I honestly sometimes think to myself like, you don't even know how to use an ATM card.

Why do you care about your dinner table setting when you have no idea what is going on in the finances of your family? Where did we end up getting that message? We, as independent people, should understand everything about our life. And yes, it's awesome to have a beautiful home, and that's so fun and great, but that is not the most important thing. And I think that was what was sold to our parents. Certainly that was sold to my mom and I think she would say that, without a doubt. But now in this world that we live in now, we have the ability to have these conversations and to open this up about what motherhood can look like and that it is not, in any way, shape, or form, bad to want to live the life you wanna live. And you know what you just said about pickup, like pickup is not your thing. You have a thriving career. You have childcare who can help you do that and take away that particular point of something that you do not wanna do and don't have time to do. Then you are living your best life right now. You are living the life you wanna live and that is your gift in life to yourself.

Dr. Whitney: Yeah, absolutely. I think too, the more that you step into these pieces of this is who I am, this is the thing that gives me energy, this is the thing that drains me completely, that helps you in business and in parenting. We talked about that idea of not giving up. We talked about the idea of being able to pivot and to see from an egoless perspective. What are the other things that you think moms or women need to know when they're in a sales position or a business position about having confidence? What are the other things that make them the best version of themselves in that world?

Lydia: There is one thing that I often hear moms say. And I think it happens with moms specifically, because there does seem to be a loss of confidence, especially if people take back seats and roles that they have or they step out to be a parent. Sometimes they go back in. And they say, what do I know? I'm just a mom. I'm just a mom. Like you birthed a child! You have kept a child alive for multiple years. I'm just a mom. No you are a mom and that is part of your history and part of what you are and who you are and what you're gonna do with your life. So I see that as the thing that we should be using to boost our confidence, because it is not easy to be a mom where everyone is relying on you all the time. And it is not easy to live the life you want, when everyone is relying on you 24/7 for everything. I think a large part of us owning our power and stepping into that power and claiming that confidence is really refocusing that word and what that means in a business environment. I'm a mom, which means I CAN. Not, I'm just a mom. There's no such thing as just a mom. Like you're a mom. Step into that power.

Dr. Whitney: Yeah, absolutely. 100%. The other thing I was gonna come back to on the whole energy draining or energy giving, is thinking about as a business woman myself, making conscious decisions around where I wanna place my energy for my team members, for other people in my family, in the world. Deciding within myself, is it worth the energy to soothe this person's anxiety or to soothe this person's needs in order for my business to move forward or my family to move forward? I learned this a lot in my pediatrics practice because we have a lot of parents who, totally understandably, are totally anxious when they come in, right? Their kid might have an ear infection. They're worried about it and sometimes that person's energy or that person's vibe, is so easy to take that on myself. And, as women, I think we do that a lot. We are caretakers and so we are being trained and conditioned to really think about others' needs above our own. But when I can stop and separate someone else's needs from my own needs or separate what's best for my business from what someone as an individual needs while still holding it with grace and honoring that person, but being able to prioritize myself first, has really helped. Have you found that on your journey as well?

Lydia: Yeah. I talk in my second book, in Claim Your Confidence, about sprints and plateaus. And one of the things that I talk a lot about is that over the course of your life or of your career, there are moments that things really feel like they're out of control. And I call those sprints. It's like, so much inbounds. So much is happening. I've gotta just get all this stuff done. It's a crazy time of year. I'm sure a lot of the moms out there can relate with those times of the year that there just seems to be a non stop barrage of everything. And then things calm down again. And what I say often with this sort of sprints versus the plateaus is you almost have to think of it and mentally think about this time where everything is getting condensed and you're feeling very overwhelmed is a time to really prioritize yourself and the things that are important to you and let everything else go. So you know, if I'm looking at you right now and you're walking into a crazy busy day. And you walk into that first meeting and there is someone completely spiraling, you have to match that with the fact that you have a very, very busy day as well. And so you have to know that part of you being there is to be there for them, but also to be able to keep on track and keep moving forward because you're in a sprint. So how do you do that? You prioritize yourself at that point and you take what they have, you condense it, you hand back the information and you keep moving. And so, for me that happens a lot in work where I'll have just an insane period. I've come off of six weeks of straight travel, to the point where I was like, "Hey guys, I'm your mom. I dunno if you guys are familiar with my face, but this is who I am in your life." And they're all like, "Oh mom, we know." But I said to them before that I'm going a into sprint, it's gonna be very busy. And then when we're done, we're gonna have a great plateau. We're going on our spring break, I'm gonna be home again, and it's gonna be fine. So anything non-essential, like podcasts or panels, I don't do. I push all of that to the side until it's a plateau, so I can prioritize the things that are important to me at that time. Otherwise, I get completely burnt out and then I'm short with my children when I do see them and I'm short with my husband and all the things that happen when you aren't fulfilled or you aren't feeling in control. You have to literally get them back and take ownership of that and make it on your terms.

Dr. Whitney: So I think this applies whether you're a business person or not. I'm exactly the same. When I'm on a sprint doing a book tour or when I'm in a PR season, those people hit you up for things that need to be a 24 hour turnaround. My head's down, I'm working. Today you sent me an email asking if we are doing video, because I need to know if I need to have makeup on. Same here. I mean, they can't see me, but my hair's not done. I just came off from doing a workout. I don't care. My laundry's sitting there in my room, because I'll get to that later. It doesn't matter right now. Like you said, the Easter decorations, is that really something your kid's gonna remember? If it's something that brings you a lot of joy and energizes you and you love the target Easter aisle, amazing, you go for it. But if it's something that you're putting on yourself as an obligation and you have more important things that you should be doing with your time and energy, please, for the love of God, just focus on those things as opposed to what you think you should be doing. And I think this truly is that idea of the supermom that we are trying to get rid. We can't do it all. We have to prioritize what matters.

Lydia: Yeah. There IS this supermom myth, but the bottom line is, people are always like, you can't have it all. You cannot. But what is your "all"? That's what you have to find. And sometimes, just a simple pencil piece of paper and a pencil are gonna be the things that are helpful in that conversation, because everybody's "all" is different. I have a schedule and a life that, for most people, probably seems manic and completely without any interest for a lot of people. It's so fast paced, it moves so quickly. There's so many things. It is what I want. I love it. I thrive on being busy. I thrive on hopping on and off of planes and traveling for one day to California and coming back to be with my kids.

Yes, I get tired at times, but this is what I want. So if I am tired, it's okay, I'm in pursuit of a big dream, that's fine. But what is your "all"? And don't let Instagram define your "all." What is your "all"? Is it that you wanna be with your kids seven nights a week on the couch eating popcorn? Do it. You wanna be an incredible pediatrician killing it as a parent? Do it. What is your "all"? Figure that out. Don't worry about what other people are doing. It has nothing to do with you. And one of my favorite quotes in the world is "Comparison is the thief of joy." And I say it to people all the time as they're complaining about someone else. Comparison is the thief of joy. The bottom line is, it doesn't matter what other people are doing. It has nothing to do with you. It's not your path. It's not your journey. It's not your dream. That's great that that person's doing that. That has nothing to do with you. Let it go. Move on.

Dr. Whitney: We're just gonna leave it there, because that was a huge mic drop. I love it. Lydia, thank you so much for being here. Tell everybody again the name of your book, where they can find it, where they can find out more about you.

Lydia: So my book is Claim Your Confidence: Unlock Your Superpower and Create the Life You Want. I am on Instagram at @LydiaFenet.  Facebook same thing. So if you need to find me, I'm very active on Instagram especially. So if you have questions, feel free to DM. But yeah, get out and buy the book. It's on Amazon. It's also in independent bookstores everywhere. And I always prefer people that buy through bookstores, because I love a good bookstore.

Dr. Whitney: Awesome. Thanks for being here.

Lydia: Thank you so much for having me.