Motherhood, but not quite as we imagine. Thought provoking, refreshing, straightforward, sometimes taboo, often seemingly ordinary, but always honest. Welcome to School for Mothers, opening conversations we all need to have, exploring ways in which you can be fulfilled as a woman. Once a mother.
Now here is your host, Mother of Ten, Danusha Melina Durban. Hello and welcome to the School for Mothers podcast. I'm Danusha Melina Durban, your host. And today, I'm running you a conversation I had with Jenna Kutcher.
A book was not long out and I want to ask a few questions about it and because I'm what you could call nosy curious about other parts of her life too. Now she's a New York Times best selling author of How Are You Really? Hosted of the number one marketing podcast, Goldiger, Momma Two and a Small Town, Minnesota girl. And of course she's ever so used to being interviewed.
Meanwhile, I also know that she's very into syrupy pancakes. So am I, Jenna. We're on the same page there. Good emails and people carving out a life we don't have to pretend to like.
Speaking my language. Oh, and she's been avoiding small talks since 1988. Now on that topic listeners, something you won't know is that I don't send out questions to my guests beforehand because if I do they come all through stuff and shinily prepared and all gets a bit stuffy and stiff. That's an understatement to be honest.
Now after many hundreds of interviews with strangers with personal and business brands that they're shaping and upholding, I'm so much more interested in the behind the scenes kind of scrappy stuff from the front of house. Perri rehearsed gloss. Know what I mean? For instance, who knew when I interviewed 80 something that's 80 plus years, something Erica Yom, mega star feminist water in EPP 113 called Edge that she'd feel it was just the right moment to share about her preferred sex life.
I don't know what's going on about it, but off she went. Here's a little clip. I mean, there are people who have to climb out Everest and go to the top and die, but they must try. And I think sexually people can be like that.
Not everybody. Some people want warm and cuddly and some people want. I just got a laugh. You said warm and cuddly.
Sorry, listeners. If you like warm and cuddly. No, people want warm and cuddly and some people want adventure and madness. Yeah, and chaos and sweat and like, oh, you know, whatever is your need, you're trying to learn who you are.
Yes. And I have to admit, I've always preferred warm and cuddly. Oh, Erica. Whatever my heroin, my heroines to maybe my opposite.
I love you. Heroines can be your opposite, not your mirror image. See, even my most famous guests don't get questions before recording. And my conversation with Jenna is no different.
When I think back to my interview with her, I'm really not sure if I'm too soft or too hard on her. Sounds a bit kind of harsh on myself, but from you be the judge, would you? It is what it is. Hello, Jenna.
Hi, thank you so much for having me. Oh, you're really welcome. Now you're something of a sensation. I mean, I know you've got to agree here.
And obviously a leader. Now, let's get straight to it. How are you really today? Oh, today I am so good.
I am overlooking Lake Superior in the northern most part of Minnesota, and it looks like an ocean. And I just feel energized and excited, and I'm really, really excited for a conversation today. Oh, that sounds a wonderful setting to be having this. I'm quite the opposite, which is I'm in a sweaty recording studio in the UK.
Well, I started my podcast in the closet. So I know exactly how that can feel, but it's more about the message than the method, right? It is. And you know, it's such a pleasure to have the opportunity for us to get together and especially to talk about your wonderful book that I've read from, you know, front to back, from cover to cover.
And thank you for that. Now, I was wondering, I'm really curious what's stopping you from calling, how are you really? And then what? Oh, that's a great question.
You know, what's so interesting. And when I was in the process, I remember there was a state and I asked my publisher, I said, what category is this book going to be in? Because I didn't know what they would categorize it is. They said self help.
And I remember almost being like, Oh, not another self help book. Yeah, right. Because there are so many out there. However, when I really got down to it, I recognized, wait, it is a self help book, but it's more focused on the self.
And what I mean about that? And one of the best compliments I've gotten from a reader is they said, you know, I'm only seven pages in and I'm starting to hear myself again. I'm starting to hear my own voice again. And there are a lot of stories of mine woven in the book, but it's not from a place of ego.
It's a place of I want my stories to reflect in your life circumstances or times that you've had a shared situation or emotion or that you felt the way that I felt into really think about yourself. And so the subtitle of the book is living your truth when I started a time that's not a book to be more like Jenner to learn about Jen about it's a book to invite you to come back. Yeah, that's a really beautiful description, Jenner, the distinction between memoir and self help, but also that, you know, you're really it's not meant to be about Jenner and making others Jen because that's totally impossible, isn't it? Yes.
And that was huge for me as it's like, yeah, I don't I thought a lot about Anush, I thought about my daughters reading it someday and not feeling like they had to be like their mom, but like that they were being invited and called to be themselves. And I loved thinking of it that way. Yeah, I can understand that I have four daughters and I have six sons, but I have four daughters and I mean, as we know, as daughters ourselves, how hard it is to not look to our mother to see ourselves as a replica. And that can cause so many challenges and tensions, can't it between being like them and not wishing to be like them.
And you know, it's really interesting because as I was reading particularly at the front end of the book, I was reading, oh, love by the way, I love on page 22 and around there the life inventory. And it's really great listeners, you've got to, you know, you've got to go look at that because you give the readers the chance to kind of journal and really get individual. I know that sounds, you've just said it, you know, it's it's living your truth. But there was there was this piece in the book quite a few chunky sections where I couldn't help but notice there were loads of wheeze and I know that you'll have thought this through so many times.
But I, I felt sometimes I was quite disconnected from those wheeze and a little uncomfortable because it felt like a device. And I'm thinking, and I'm a writer, I've written two books in the last year on parent identity. And I was like, Oh, Danisha, I wonder what Jenna was thinking about? What your choice about using the wheeze so much was about as a writer and a woman?
Because there of course, there's shared experience, of course, if you think about your description of childhood, for instance, my, or if only my childhood had involved, you know, being at the top of trees and feeling the wind and the breeze. And I love that description. I'm so thankful that you had that. But I didn't have that.
You know, so I guess I'm, I love the fact that you were thinking about your daughters and that this isn't made for people. This hasn't been written for people to be a replica Jenna. I wonder how we as writers can get around that to stay connected yet have diverse experience. What do you think?
So I did this emotional intelligence training as a team. So we brought in this practitioner for my entire team. And it was just something we wanted to dive in and most of us are mothers, or also, you know, partners and wives and sisters and daughters and all these different roles that we play. And I remember the practitioner saying, you know, you cannot and you're not meant to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
Like those shoes are for them. They're not for you. And a lot of times we trick ourselves into believing that empathy is walking a mile in someone else's shoes. And she said, everyone's lives and experiences look so different.
But one thing we all have in common is shared emotions, right? Like you felt guilt in your life and I felt guilt in my life. And there were probably two very different scenarios. You felt shame or exhilaration or excitement or energy.
And so when I used we, I always tried to do it around shared emotions, because even if you didn't have the same experience, you felt that feeling before. And it was such a beautiful thing when I learned that, because there are just certain things in life where I can't imagine that or I can't bat them going through something like that. But instead of saying, you know, I can't imagine going through that, I can imagine, I can imagine imagination, I can't imagine what it would feel like to do that or to lose someone or to experience that. I can imagine because I felt those feelings at different points in my own life.
And I can imagine what it feels like. And so it was a thoughtful nod of like, yeah, maybe our experiences were different, but the emotions can be shared. And I want for you to think about a time when you maybe felt that way too. Yeah, so one of the descriptions, as I say about the childhood was that immense feeling of almost freedom and an exhilaration.
It was a sensory a sensory description that you gave readers. And so I absolutely see where you're coming from and that. And as I was reading it, that's what it did to me partly because, you know, I've been my book on motherhood noise. And it's all about the noise and the kind of taking for granted assumptions about what happens once we become mothers that we will for sure experience and feel.
And one of the chapters is about guilt actually. And I take on those taken for granted because I impact them and say, well, it is that, is that so would that be the case if we weren't told that we would experience and in fact, I talk to a mother who feel guilty that they don't feel guilty. They're not feeling guilty because they actually in the most typical way, they're feeling guilty because they don't share they don't belong to the guilt club in the same way as other some other women. So I remember when I was writing that book last year, really trying to not stand in the shoes because we have no hope of doing that.
We cannot transcend our lived experiences or if you like structural locations. I'm a white woman, you know, with highly educated and I cannot, I cannot pretend and should not pretend to be anything other than that. And I grappled with we, I grappled with. So it was really, really, I was thankful to you to to re emerge myself in that.
And it's great to hear you explain where you were with it and where you are with it. It's really good. It's really, really fabulous. There was something there was something else you say in the book that really shot out at me.
And I really like and I would love more words from you on it. And it's you say almost everything I've ever wanted. I've asked for when you wanted to read, for instance, you'd be lent in for a guess. When you wanted a gig or a projector client, you pitched like your life depended on it.
And I love the story about Caitlin, your first VA, and you surrender into needing help. And I think that's great. It's such a big lesson, isn't it? And I wonder, I mean, I just touched on it actually.
I wonder how much she takes systemic barriers as important and present. For instance, I'm guessing you're not saying that any woman can work out once she works out what she wants. She can just ask for it. I'm guessing that, I'm guessing.
So that's why I'm asking you because I'm like, just trying to mean that. All you need to do is ask for it. And it happens. So what I love about the chapters surrounding the one you're talking about is that we need it with this motion with this notion of where the wool meets the work.
And here's what I mean by this. Yeah, I love that. When I first got my book deal, I asked my publisher why I mean why this book. And they said, for a lot of driven and ambitious women, it feels like there are two camps right now.
And you have to choose one or the other. Our world is so polarizing, this is no different. They said there's either the hustle side where you just wake up earlier, work more, hustle harder, never say no, always stay on the hamster wheel or the manifest side. You just simply say what you want and the universe has your back and it will deliver to you.
And they said, you live where the wool meets the work, where you hold these beautiful visions or you have these goals in mind, but you're willing to work towards them. There's actual studies done. I've had some really interesting deaths on my own podcast that I've talked about with his manifestation, the notion behind manifestation is that when you get very clear what you want and you keep reminding yourself of that vision, you will work towards it. If your Y is deep enough, if you are convicted enough, you will be progressing towards it because our human nature is to want to make progress.
And so in that line of like, I know what I want and I'm going to go after it, that doesn't disregard the work required for it. That doesn't say building a multi-million dollar company in a decade was easy. And it just says that I was clear on the direction I was going and I was willing to put one foot in front of the other. And so I think that a lot of times these days, it's like we have these visions for ourselves or our lives, or we have these like someday narratives in our head.
But when we open our eyes to the reality of here's what I'm doing today, a lot of times they're not aligned. And there's that mismatch of what we say we want versus what we're actually doing. And I think it's where that conviction lives that actually moves us into action so that a year from now, five years from now, we can say, oh yeah, I wanted that thing and it happened not by chance or by fate or by luck or because I am a certain way. But because I did the work, failed along the way, put myself out there and took the steps required to get to where I wanted to go.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's very clear from your book, that kind of combination, that cocktail of whether we meet the work and the magic of that as you describe it. And actually, I mean, I'm really getting out that we're not starting from the same place. And are we?
Which we're clearly not. I started as an orphan, you know. And so despite being a white privileged woman and being landed in a white, very wealthy family that could afford me some amazing access, etc. As you might, beginnings were very different.
And therefore, I mean, I'm certain I've been very successful. But actually, I wonder, that's my combination of things, very top layer of it. But I wonder about, because I totally get you on the manifestation and the woo and the conviction, the hard work, the focus, the, yeah, I get you on that. I guess our beginnings and our actual structural locations of where we sit, if we can't get child care, if we don't have access to money, then the job can be so much harder to land results I guess, content.
I just, yeah. And that's that was what I was wondering, where you sit with that because it's, yeah, it's quite, I know it's a loaded discussion, but it's like, you've so many classes. There's no denying that. And there should be no implication that it'll be easier the same for anyone.
In fact, I think the book is the goal of the book is to just let people's journey be their journey. And I, yes, the act of privilege or ease or how every situation looks different. But whether you inch your way closer to your dream or you leap based off of different things, you know, I talk about in the book, I like, I think as human beings, we all want to change this world. And we all want to live out our true.
And that will look different for every single person. And of course, there are things that are broken in systems that put us in different positions of power or opportunity or even in different seats at different tables. Yeah. There's absolutely no denying that.
But I think that every person has this invitation, a steep desire to have their life be meaningful and to make a difference. And whether it's in a five minute pocket of time that you steal or if it's in, you know, a 10 hour day at your leisure, I think we're all being called to something more. And I think we all go to sleep at night thinking there might be something more, but it's up to us to define what that more is and how we are able to move towards it. Yeah.
And that's one of the things that I really do like about your book, that, you know, it is an invitation, isn't it? It was an invitational, big chunky, it's big. It's it's, you know, it's a lot to it. There's loads of stories, there's loads of, there's a lot of strategies in it and lots of thoughtful insights that actually will help people consider how what is right for them through your journey, through your, your stories.
And I think that's one of the the powers of it. It really is. And let's go back to your daughters, you know, let's talk to our children. My day job, my, I call this my night job, my day job is by this, I mean, podcasting and writing books, et cetera.
My day job is actually in board rooms advising powerful leaders, so Chief Exex, presidents, et cetera. So it really comes this question comes from my own questioning around this and my own journey. And I'm wondering how we as, as leaders ourselves, can work on being safe leaders for women by making sure that we partner with people who aren't harmful to women in any ways. And why I say that is because I'd really have to grapple with kind of difficult decisions about, I work with a great deal of men and a masculinist, if you like, well, they're huge organizations.
I can't let this be very, you know, it's a prestigious list. And I'm there for party to you and partnering with organizations that aren't necessarily always lacking harm. And it's something that I've had to look at. And I wondered how you, you know, I've been a tricky few years for some of us women.
I'm not on social media like you, my mind's in, as I say, in organizations, but it's been tricky. And it was something that really hit me as, as I was reading the books, how are you working on being a safe leader? We're going to need to be for our children, aren't we? Our girls are, we need to make, you know, it's really interesting.
They always say, like, never meet your hero, right? In the sense of a lot of leaders have personas or they are in one context to their identity and a totally different person off stage or behind the scenes or whatever that looks like. And I always just ask myself, like, how can I inspire the right kind of change? Like, how can I, you know, if I'm binding myself in a seat at tables that I never imagined being at, what am I bringing to the conversation that challenges the way things have been done?
I think it would be crazy for us to not see. There's a line in the book about like, you know, our culture is so obsessed with learning, but I think what we really need to do is unlearn. Oh, yes. Like, even the history books got a lot wrong and we're learning that.
And what's super interesting for me is that generationally, a lot of times the places that I find myself in in the context of business, you know, I'm young enough to be some of these people's child. You know, a lot of the my peers, quote unquote, in the business world are the age of my parents. And so I bring a different generational impact, but I also bring a different energy to the room that really challenges the way things have been done. And ask, is this the right way or is this the appropriate way or is this the best way to make a difference?
And in that way, too, I'm also sometimes challenged. There are some as blind spots where it's like, well, this is why it's done this way. And this is how, you know, it does make a difference. So it's very interesting to do should because there are, you know, so many layers to the world that we find ourselves in.
And there are so many places where I think, you know, I constantly just have to like come back on the kind of person where like if somebody enters a room, I feel an energy better bad. And I have to trust that in myself. And I think too, as a woman in business, a lot of times, I have to recognize that like, I am not here to be saved by anyone. I am here to live out the best version of me and bring my gifts to the table.
And I want to make sure that I'm at tables that are doing good in the world. And so it's very interesting. I think that's a really great question. And thanks to it's something that a lot of people don't don't know about or think about when it comes to things like accountability or ethics or, and how do we pull people to the standard that we want in the world, especially when we're not the person like going to stream so to speak.
Yes, exactly. And as we create futures for our children, both, you know, male and female and non-binary who actually, you know, we want that future wealthy better than the place that we're navigating right now that has become very tricky and disempowering for a lot of people. Yeah, for me too, it's like, if I want people to see themselves reflected in the different versions of success being put out into the world, right? Because I think for so long, we were shown one way of success or success looks a certain way.
And so, you know, it's important to when you're looking around the table, like are there people who have different experiences than you that look different than you that bring a different perspective to the table? And if not, how do you either invite them into the room or eggs in that room? And what does that look like? And I think that's a beautiful challenge for all of us.
Totally. And also when we find ourselves sitting at seats at tables that don't align or challenge so radically what we're here for that actually we we make decisions about maybe not retaining that seat. Sometimes we have to give up that seat because it's, you know, it's not good for us. And actually not for good for our mission in that change that we know we're here for.
I have a last question for you. It's light. It's kind of it's a slightly different, but there's this delightful piece when you talk about you describe your dad's mowing and immaculate the yard when you're when you're growing up and how you hate it raking as a chore. And as a working mum, I wonder what your two top chores are that you hate.
You know, it's so funny. So my daughter, Coco, who's three and a half and every single Saturday for years, we've done a mommy, Coco date. It's just this like time together. It's just really focused intentional time.
And we started going to this new coffee shop and there's this beautiful shop attached to it. And it has like these really beautiful, her expensive taste like dang it. And so we've had to start giving her chores to earn quarters, put towards what she wants to say for and just brings me back to those days. And so one of them is emptying the diaper bin for the pale.
I hate that. Oh, that's a great one. And the second one I would have to say is, meaning of the dog mess, and wherever that is, you mostly in the yard. I think it's yard things.
You know, I just don't really like that. My husband is really good at both of those things. The connection is the poop, the shit, the shit, you just don't like the shit. And it's really funny because when I was reading your life in Montreal, I was like, there is only one negative question on here.
And it's not that they're positive negative. It was just like positive facing. It's like not want to do any longer. Yeah.
And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. So it kind of says a lot about you. Genesis has been an absolute pleasure. It really has.
And you know, I'll be obviously sharing how to get hold of your book and obviously more about you anyway, if by chance, Elizabeth hasn't learned about you. But quite honestly, I would expect they already know about you. So let's, you know, thank you so much. It's been great.
It's been really good. Oh, Denise, you are amazing. So you can find out more about me at jennacuture.com. That is the home on the web that leads you to all of the places I'm the host of the Gold Digger Podcast.
So if you are entrepreneurial or love marketing and strategy, we talk about how you can work smarter to get back to life. So it's more about how to unlock a life that feels good and doesn't just look good. And then of course, you can grab my book, How Are You Really Anywhere Books Are Sold or Go To How Are You Really Booked.com. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the work that you do.
Thank you. I'm sure possible cross a game. Absolutely. Maybe I'll get a table that we love being at together.
That would be awesome. Exactly. Exactly. Jenna was a great sport.
Write to me on Hello at School For Mothers.com and tell me what you think. I'd love to know that's Hello at School For Mothers.com. Now, next episode is going to be something very different. I've had to work up to this.
I'm getting myself together to tell the story about the one and only episode I ever recorded that I was just too scared to publish. That's right. There's one episode that I recorded but didn't release. It's with someone, you know, I am 99.9% sure about that.
And I'm pretty sure you'll have strong opinions about her. I'm not going to spoil it by saying exactly who it is or even to give you any clues. But let's just say she's a polarizing voice in the UK, which is why I'm calling the next episode, the episode I was too afraid to publish. I really hope you'll join me.
Until then, take care.