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Join us as we investigate some of life's most vexing issues. We're looking at doing businesss differently, retirement as re-invention, death without PTSD, Wisdom and how to gain it and use it, Resilience as a strategy and understanding transitions.
Each week, we'll have either thought leaders to help us see that there is more than one way to skin a cat. And, in every episode we'll be seeking new and different solutions for each issue.
INTRO
Welcome to The Long Strange Trip. I'm Josh, the host of the show. We're going to dig into six areas together, finding real work-life integration instead of that brutal 95/5 split too many business owners live with. We're going to approach retirement as an actual reinvention rather than just stopping work, and we're facing death honestly and avoiding PTSD around death.
We're also building resilience when life throws us curve balls, we're sharing wisdom across generations, and finally, we're understanding the patterns that show up in all our transitions. I'm not coming at this as an expert. I'm a fellow traveler figuring this stuff out in real time, especially now as I navigate my own dual cancer diagnosis at 73.
Welcome to The Long Strange Trip. I'm glad you're here.
[00:00] Josh
Yeah. How are you today? This is Josh Patrick, and I'm with Joy Selleck, and you're at the Long Strange Trip podcast. Joy has a really interesting story, and actually many interesting stories. She is well-regarded. Um, off in education, became a stockbroker, and then left that and went into what we're gonna talk about today, which is resilience. And she's needed a bunch of it herself because of her own physical condition, but we'll let her talk about that. So, let's bring Joy on. Hey, Joy, how are you today?
[00:36] Joy
Very well. Thank you.
[00:40] Josh
So let's talk about resilience for a little bit. I mean, we did a little bit just before we started — is that, um, I wanna investigate this, but first let's hear your resilience story.
[00:55] Joy
Hmm. Well, I think when I think of resilience, I think of it as something that you must gather inside yourself. I, I don't think of it as something that is a gift, but rather an earned quality. And, um, I, I remember maybe the first memory I have of acting on it was when I very first got sick and I had no idea what was wrong with me, and I'd been to many different doctors, and no one had, uh, an answer for me.
And I went to the primary care physician on the small island where we lived, who was like a doctor on a family TV series that everyone loved, and was this community, just a wonderful, um, senior man. And I remember I put my hand over his arm, and I said, "I don't know what's wrong with me, and nobody is able to figure it out yet. And I want you to promise me that you won't give up until we find out what's wrong with me." And he put his arm on mine and said, "Joy, I will not give up until we find out what is wrong with you." And then we started, and he did, you know, family history, genetics, every imaginable test, on and on and on. And he did finally come up with the diagnosis, the first diagnosis.
So maybe that's an example of resilience.
[02:30] Josh
Well, it's an example of asking for help with resilience, that's for sure. Um, you know, I think you said two things which I, in my opinion, are very important. One is resilience comes from within — the opposite for me is what I call brute force resilience, where you just bull an issue that you think you're being resilient, but you're being pig-headed instead. And that was me in my early days in my business. I thought the resilience of asking help was a sign of weakness. And the truth is, asking for help is a sign of strength. And what you did, you said, "Lookit, I want you to promise me that you're not gonna give up on me, and we are going to work on this together."
[03:10] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[03:14] Josh
That's true resilience, in my opinion.
[03:18] Joy
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I remember, um, when I was in a difficult time of life, going through a divorce, moving, new career, you know, a lot of things happening at once, I felt like I was overwhelmed and wasn't sure about the decisions I was making, and I remember coming up with three questions that whenever I got that feeling in my stomach like I was uncomfortable or unsure or nervous, I asked myself: "What is really going on here? What do I need to do to take loving care of myself?"
[03:52] Josh
Mm-hmm
[03:54] Joy
"And what is my power for the good?" And if the answer to the third question was I can't find anything, then get out of the situation. And that really, during those years when I was trying to rebuild an identity really, and a new life, coming back to those three questions was good, and I did remove myself from some situations that I don't know that I would've considered doing had I not asked the questions.
[04:25] Josh
Well, we all, for whatever reason, have toxicity that will sneak into our life.
[04:32] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[04:34] Josh
I had 90 people that worked for me in my food service company when we finally got to the end, when I sold it. And we would always have what I called a brilliant jerk — who would fit in, would sneak into the company somehow.
[04:47] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[04:49] Josh
And a brilliant jerk — my definition of a brilliant jerk — is somebody who is really, really technically competent at their job and absolutely impossible to work with.
[04:58] Joy
Yep.
[05:00] Josh
And with brilliant jerks, we try to reform them. We don't just get rid of them fast. Although at the end of my career, I did get rid of them fast, 'cause I realized it is impossible with those folks. You don't even try. I would go through all the stuff, you know — warning, written warning, counseling, all sorts of good stuff to try to get them to reform. And at the end of the day, when I had to fire them, there was a line out my office that said, "What took you so long?"
[05:30] Joy
Right, right.
[05:32] Josh
When everybody in the company, around you, knows you have a brilliant jerk or somebody who is dragging you down in your life,
[05:38] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[05:40] Josh
and you let them stay in there. And your other friends who have been wondering and standing on the sideline 'cause they don't want to offend you by saying, "You need to get rid of this person."
[05:52] Joy
Mm-hmm. I had
[05:54] Josh
you
[05:55] Joy
that happen,
[05:56] Josh
finally do
[05:57] Joy
Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
[05:59] Josh
when you finally do, people will give you kudos for that.
[06:03] Joy
Yeah.
[06:04] Josh
And say, "Why'd you wait so long?"
[06:06] Joy
Right. Yeah, I had that happen with a nonprofit where I was the founder,
[06:12] Josh
Yes.
[06:13] Joy
and one of the people in the founding group volunteered to come on and be the first executive director for free until we raised enough money to pay her salary. And so we thought, "Okay, great," you know. But she was a jerk, and she was controlling, and she was insensitive. I mean, she didn't have any of the qualities that you need in a nonprofit, which is a service organization. And, um, we finally fired her, but when we did, the staff who had been working for her came to us and said the same thing: "Why did you wait? You all knew. Why did you put us through this torture?" Yeah.
[06:52] Josh
And unfortunately, most at least for me, I never had a really good answer. And my answer was, you know, "I tried, and we couldn't turn the person around," and I made all sorts of justifications and excuses for why we didn't do it on time, and it would've been better off to have said, "You know, I just made a mistake."
[07:14] Joy
Yeah, maybe.
[07:16] Josh
This is something that took me a really long time to learn is that when you make a mistake, you're really better off owning up to the mistake than trying to pretend you didn't make the mistake.
[07:28] Joy
Right.
[07:30] Josh
Um, and I think that's true for two reasons. One is that you will take action more quickly, and B, you become more real to the people around you.
[07:40] Joy
Yeah.
[07:42] Josh
At least that's been my truth. So I just wanna go back a little bit to the transitions that you went through, and what you were describing to me, um, Bill Bridges would call the messy middle. My friend Susan Bradley calls that passage. Right. But the truth is, as you go from the stages of transition where you know an ending is coming, you anticipate what it might be, and then you're in it.
[08:10] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[08:12] Josh
When you're in it, the world turns upside down.
[08:16] Joy
Hmm. Right.
[08:18] Josh
It can turn upside down. In a divorce, it definitely turns upside down. At least that's been my experience, and the training I've had over the years says that basically. I didn't deal with divorces a lot. But
[08:32] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[08:34] Josh
the truth is, something like that, it turns you upside down, and then you have all these people on the outside putting pressure on you to make major decisions when you're not in a position to make a major decision.
[08:46] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[08:48] Josh
So I've come up with a strategy which I like. I'd like to get your opinion on it — what I call fail fast, fail cheap, which is: when I'm in passage, I don't wanna make any big decisions, but I wanna start doing small experiments to see what works and what doesn't. Does that make sense to you?
[09:05] Joy
Mm-hmm. It does. Yeah. Uh, definitely it's a journey, not an event.
[09:12] Josh
That's for sure.
[09:14] Joy
And so you treat those transitional periods as a journey. And also I think be empathetic towards yourself for the turmoil it's causing, or the discomfort, or the uncertainty. I remember when I was diagnosed with mixed connective tissue disease, and I was a stockbroker with a Fortune 500 company and a VP and managing hundreds of millions of dollars. And, um, the process of reaching the decision that I needed to leave my job and go on disability — that took me two years. And finally, actually, my husband, who was my boss, had to sit me down in his office and say, "You know, you need to go home and take care of yourself. You're making mistakes. Someday you're gonna make one I can't fix."
[10:05] Josh
Mm-hmm.
[10:07] Joy
"You need to let go." And oh, it was crushing.
[10:12] Josh
I was gonna say, how hard was that on you emotionally?
[10:16] Joy
It was really hard. And then I went back to him later and said, "If I can't work anymore, I have to make a disability claim. I've had disability insurance since I was a school teacher. And what if something happens to you? What if you get hit by a bus on the way home from work, and I need security?" So then we started that horrible long process, in which we learned that the business model of a disability insurer is to collect premiums and deny claims. So, you know, that took another two years to get the claim paid.
[10:58] Josh
I'm not surprised by that. When I had my first cancer event, which was a stem cell transplant—
[11:06] Joy
Oof.
[11:08] Josh
that was the final piece, which is brutal. I was essentially disabled probably 75% of the time, because I kept going into the office and I refused to stay away. Filing a disability claim would've been ridiculous 'cause they would've just said, "No, you're still working."
[11:26] Joy
Obviously, yeah.
[11:28] Josh
Yeah.
[11:29] Joy
Yeah.
[11:30] Josh
So that's, you know, again, it's some of those disappointments that you have, and you need to have that internal resilience. You know, if you try to bull through this stuff, it just doesn't work very well in my experience.
[11:44] Joy
And a good piece of that, you know, it took me two years to get the claim paid. The way I finally got it paid was I gave my husband full power of attorney so the disability insurer couldn't talk to me anymore. They could only talk to him, and then they paid it. And he let them have it, you know, said, "I'm not weak, I'm not sick, I'm not afraid," all the things that you've relied upon with her.
But when the claim finally got approved, I remember getting in the mail the notice that my claim had been approved, and then it was even worse. I mean, I sunk to the floor in tears thinking, "Now I have to accept myself as a disabled person. I have to be that person." And what came to me that I think is so relevant to your question about, um, I lost the word.
[12:46] Josh
Okay. I lose them too.
[12:48] Joy
Resilience.
[12:50] Josh
Yeah.
[12:51] Joy
Your topic of resilience. The question that came to me that I had to answer when I officially was approved for disability was: Who can I be now within this reality?
[13:04] Josh
That's the question that people, it's the biggest question when people retire.
[13:10] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[13:12] Josh
It's who you were — is that, you know, if I'm not a business owner, who am I now?
[13:18] Joy
Right.
[13:20] Josh
And the answer, "if I'm retired," doesn't fit well with most people. Who am I now? I'm a hot stockbroker managing hundreds of millions of dollars, to a disabled person, so now you have to feel sorry for me, and I don't want you to do that.
[13:36] Joy
Yeah. I, uh, the first thing I did was interesting. I didn't have the energy or enough wellness to come up with another purpose, you know
[13:46] Josh Yes.
[13:47] Joy
which I did over time. As I got stronger, I was able to find new purpose. But, uh, it was crafts. I had an herb garden, and I started stamping the leaves of the herbs in my garden, and then I started making napkin sets and table runners, and then I entered them in the county fair, and I got a blue ribbon. And so my purpose was this simple little thing that didn't require hardly any energy, that I could do on my own time and how I felt that particular day. But it was a creative outlet, and it made me feel like I was doing something that mattered.
[14:32] Josh
You know, you became a crafter instead of a disabled person.
[14:38] Joy
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[14:40] Josh
So when people ask me what am I, you say, "I'm a crafter." At least that's what I would do.
[14:46] Joy
Yeah.
[14:48] Josh
You know, I'm still not sure what I call myself because, you know, I've gone from owning several businesses over my lifetime. I gave up the business world, and then I was unfortunately diagnosed with two types of cancer, so I started writing in CaringBridge. And CaringBridge is a
[15:08] Joy
Yeah.
[15:09] Josh
it's a website basically for people who have chronic diseases to
[15:14] Joy
I have two friends on it.
[15:16] Josh
Yep, to keep others informed.
[15:18] Joy
Yeah, it's good.
[15:20] Josh
And I started off writing about my health issues every day, and then my writing started morphing into more philosophical stuff about what I write about now in The Long Strange Trip. And I finally got to the point where I said, "You know, this isn't serving me or the people who are reading," 'cause they were coming here to see me about my health, and I'm talking about other stuff besides my health, which I find interesting. They may not. And then I experimented with writing a Substack article.
[15:52] Joy
Yeah, great.
[15:54] Josh
I enjoyed that. Then I said, "Okay, let's form" Well, I said, "Well, what am I gonna call this?" I called it The Long Strange Trip. I'm a Grateful Dead fan. Yeah. And that's a line from one of their songs. And we are on a long, strange trip as far as I can see. And then I went from that and I said, "Gee, I'm writing 2,500 words. People don't wanna read 2,500 words all the time." But I like writing long form, so I'm gonna do it. Because I was doing this for me, I figured out. I had a friend ask me a really important question: "Who are you doing this for?" And I had to think about that for quite a while, and I finally said, "For me." Then it's great that other people wanna read it. Same thing with the podcast. The podcast became, I am more of a seeker. I'm not an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination, and learning from people like you is always a gift, and one of the ways of getting that is through a podcast.
[16:58] Joy
Yeah. You know, when I was teaching composition at Arizona State University, after I quit teaching middle school, then I was teaching university composition and one of the things I had my students do, that I still apply myself and is very consistent with what you're saying: on the top right corner of their paper before they started writing their paper, they had to identify three things, purpose, voice, audience. Why am I writing this? From what point of view am I writing this?
[17:36] Josh
Yes.
[17:38] Joy
And who am I trying to reach? And if you can answer those three questions thoroughly, your writing will be much better,
[17:46] Josh
Yes.
[17:48] Joy
because you will have established the key elements of good communication, I guess.
[17:54] Josh
Well, I think that that's really important is, you know, you have to have clarity of: why am I writing this, and what do I want to communicate?
[18:04] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[18:06] Josh
I've been doing some really interesting introspective stuff based on the writing I've been doing,
[18:12] Joy
Oh, good.
[18:14] Josh
you know, which I'm finding just fascinating. And I think that's the sign of good writing — that stuff that you write forces you to look inside.
[18:24] Joy
Yeah. Yeah. I just finished a manuscript for a memoir, and the whole time I was writing it, I wasn't at all confident that it would ever be published, um, because a memoir for a fairly successful white girl is not in the zeitgeist right now. You know, it's immigrants and people who have suffered horrible things. But I learned so much about myself, I'm just shocked. It was like connecting the dots, going all the way back to my early childhood. Oh, this is what prompted this, which led to this, which
[19:04] Josh
All right.
[19:06] Joy
brought me to this, you know? It really was helpful in reaching a better understanding of myself. And the other thing, this sounds weird, I've never been proud of myself. I think women who grew up in my generation, that was not allowed. You were humble. You were in the background. You were second seat. Um, but after I wrote the memoir, I was proud of myself. I thought, "Well"
[19:38] Josh
Great.
[19:40] Joy
"you accomplished a lot, and it wasn't all easy. You weren't just a privileged white girl. You worked hard."
[19:48] Josh
Yeah. Well, you know, going into the financial services business with a major Fortune 500 company, women had a really, really hard time, especially when you were doing it. You were really a trailblazer.
[20:02] Joy
It was so interesting. It was so interesting. You know what was cool? Um, I started out with Merrill Lynch and not because I thought it was the best firm in the business, but they were known for having the best training program. So I interviewed with them and got on with them, and I was in an office in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a big office. There was maybe 30 brokers, 40 brokers, and one other woman, and she was reaching retirement age.
And one of the consistent things in my career path when I've gotten into male-dominated jobs, which being a stockbroker wasn't the only one, the women do not mentor other women coming up, typically. Maybe they do now, but then there wasn't a lot of room for women. They didn't want another woman, especially a younger woman who could take their place. So you had to make relationships with the men if you wanted to find a mentor.
But yeah, the men in that office didn't wanna deal with women clients. They weren't that sophisticated. They didn't wanna trade. They were mostly more interested in building portfolios and savings, retirement funds. Um, most of them didn't know much about the market. A lot of them had come into their money because someone died or had an accident, you know, not necessarily from their own earnings. And so they were coming in very rookie. And so that became my business, you know, I took them all. And they were
[21:44] Josh
So they
[21:45] Joy
smart.
[21:46] Josh
came to you because the men in your office didn't listen.
[21:50] Joy
They didn't wanna meet with them. Yeah, and they were not as unsophisticated as they were presumed to be. They were smart. They were thorough. They did their homework. You
[22:02] Josh
Yes.
[22:03] Joy
came up with very good ideas. There was one who got a big insurance settlement because her husband was a coach, and he was trying to fix the pitching machine on the baseball field, and the machine broke and came around and hit him in the head and caused permanent brain damage. So he was basically completely incapacitated. So she got a huge insurance settlement, which the company decided she wasn't competent to manage on her own, so half went to the bank and half went to her to manage with whoever she chose, and she chose me. So the whole time I was working with her, we compared our results to the results of the bank, and she did much better than they did.
[23:00] Josh
I'm sure she did because, A, you listened to her, and B, you said, "Okay, based on what I've learned, here's a portfolio that makes sense." And banks, you know, it's like, I tried using Vanguard at one time, and they were so rigid in what they had for investments. I said, "This is not for me. You're not doing what I want."
[23:22] Joy
Yeah.
[23:24] Josh
"You have 100 zillion funds. Why are you limiting me to have six?"
[23:30] Joy
Yeah. Yeah.
[23:32] Josh
You know, it's sort of like you're treating your clients like they're idiots.
[23:38] Joy
Yeah.
[23:40] Josh
And that happens. I mean, I'm gonna say that one of the challenges of being a woman in a man's world, just being a woman that needs services that come from men, is that men often treat women like idiots. They're very demeaning. They talk down at 'em. They tell them what they should be doing instead of listening to what are the issues that they want.
[24:02] Joy
Right.
[24:04] Josh This is my challenge with and I'm gonna get off on a tangent here for a second, I really dislike wirehouses, and the reason I do is that the most important part of managing wealth is what does that wealth do for you as a person?
[24:20] Joy
Mm-hmm.
[24:22] Josh
Not the return. I mean, if I get 8% or I get 10% or I get 12%, the difference doesn't make a difference in my life.
[24:32] Joy
Mm-hmm
[24:34] Josh
What makes a difference in my life is having people help me learn what my money can do for me in my life.
[24:42] Joy
Yes. And I think that that was a big part of my business model, really listen to the client, ask a gazillion questions about: what are your dreams, what are your goals, what are your fears, what's your short term, what's your long term and then building a portfolio that I could say, "This part of the portfolio represents this that you told me about you. This represents" You know, so that they knew that I was responding to their needs, their fears, their goals, not my model. And that was also different from the men in the business in those days.
There was one really great story where I joined a women's group. I had moved to California and was a broker there, and joined a women in business group, and gave a speech about making a career change about going from being a scholar to a stockbroker, and what I learned from that, et cetera. And an accountant in the group sent me a referral after that, and the referral was a deaf woman who had come into some money, had no investment experience, but was ready to build an investment to secure her safety and future. And it was really challenging to work with her. There was an interpreter when we were on the phone. I had to make handwritten notes when we met in person, so in case she couldn't lip read something, I had it written down for her. So it took a long time. And we got the portfolio she wanted.
And the accountant then sent me a referral, a man who had sold a business he'd owned since he was out of college, for multi-millions of dollars, and had no debt, and basically would be investing most of it. And I was like, "This is huge. I mean, this is the biggest client I've ever had. My gosh, thank you so much." And she said, "The deaf lady was a test."
[26:50] Josh
Well
[26:52] Joy
"You passed the test."
[26:54] Josh
Makes sense.
[26:56] Joy
Yeah.
[26:58] Josh
Joy, unfortunately we are out of time.
[27:02] Joy
Oh, darn. We were just getting started.
[27:06] Josh
That's what happens that happens a lot. The time for our podcast goes by really, really fast. Um, so how would people find you, and what would you like them to do after listening to you on this show?
[27:20] Joy
Read my books.
[27:22] Josh
Okay. What's your book and where can they find it?
[27:26] Joy
I have one book called You Don't Look Sick. They're both on Amazon. They're both on my website, which is Joy Writes www.joywrites.com. That's also my email address. Um, the first book is called You Don't Look Sick: Living Well with Invisible Chronic Illness. The second book is a novel called Cee Gee's Gift — C-E-E G-E-E — about a young girl who has a gift of being able to foretell the future and how she changes a small Texas coastal town. And, um, hopefully the memoir will be out soon. I'm working on a sequel to Cee Gee's Gift. And I love speaking. If anybody needs a public speaker for something, I love speaking.
[28:10] Josh
Sounds great. Now I've got two things I would like you to do. One is to please go to wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast, whether it's on YouTube or on iTunes, and give us an honest rating and review. If you really like the show, give us five stars. If you really hate the show, give us one star and I'll just cry a little bit, and you won't see it, so it doesn't really matter anyhow. But don't show it to
[28:38] Joy
Well if you think, Go ahead.
[28:40] Josh
me. Don't show me the one-star ones.
[28:44] Joy
Oh, I love to hug my haters. That's one of my favorite things.
[28:48] Josh
The other thing is that I would, if you think that you would be a good guest on the show, just send me an email, and we'll have a conversation about it. That's what happened with Joy. She sent, actually, I sent Joy an email, but that's a different story. And to get to my email address: it's jpatrick@stage2solution.com. That "solution" is singular, and "two" is the number two. jpatrick@stage2solution.com. I'll send you a link. We set up a time to talk, and we'll see if this is right for you.
[29:22] Joy
Right.
[29:24] Josh
This is Josh Patrick, and we're with Joy. And thanks a lot for stopping by. You're at the Long Strange Trip podcast. I hope to see you back here next week.
OUTRO
Josh Thanks for spending this time with me today. I really appreciate you being part of this journey. I'd be grateful if you'd leave an honest rating and review. It helps other people find these conversations, lets me know what's landing with you and what isn't. If you love the show, give us five stars, and if you hate it, give it one star and I'll just cry a little bit.
Keep asking the hard questions. Keep being honest about what's difficult. And remember, we're all just trying to figure this out together. I'll talk to you next time on The Long Strange Trip.
Thanks for stopping by.