The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Woman on Top: My Journey of Self-Discovery Through Love and Money by Suzanne Leydecker

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

A Woman on Top: My Journey of Self-Discovery Through Love and Money by Suzanne Leydecker Amazon.com Suzanneleydecker.com What if your greatest gift feels like your greatest curse? Recently divorced and a newly single mother of three, Suzanne Leydecker had just begun to create a new life for herself and her children in Aspen, Colorado. Suddenly, after the death of both her parents, Suzanne inherited more money than she had ever imagined at the age of 47. All her problems were solved, right? Wrong. It was like winning the lottery. In some ways, life did get easier. But she didn’t anticipate how it would make her relationships with men a lot harder. The double-edged sword of inherited wealth became her enabler and her curse. Would she ever be able to have a successful, equal, supportive, long-term relationship? Or do love and money never mix? Honest, raw, extravagant, devastating, intimate, shocking, and often funny, A Woman on Top is one woman’s open-kimono story of how wealth impacts relationships when she holds the purse strings. Ultimately Suzanne discovers that the issue isn’t really about money. It’s about how we value ourselves, how we take responsibility for our lives, and how men and women can value each other as society continues to change.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. At least the young one there at least thinks that that makes it official. Welcome to the show, stories of the owner's manual to life. So the great thing about the stories of what people bring is they let you know you're not alone.

And a lot of times they have the blueprint to solve the problems you may have now, or you may have in the future. I know a lot of podcasts I listen to. I'm like, I don't know if I'm need this now, but I may need it in the future. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com.

You can see us everywhere there. Today, we have an amazing young lady on the show today. Her book came out November 9th, 2023. I think there was a reissue. It is called A Woman on Top, My Self-Journey, or let me recut that. Is it Monday? No, it's Tuesday. Is it, is it Monday? No, it's Tuesday, but the Alzheimer's is kicking in.

It is called a woman on top. My journey of self-discovery through love and money. And we're joined today by Susan Lidecker, and we're gonna be talking about her book and everything that went into it. It's Suzanne, right? Not Susan. You got it. All right. Let me recut that went into it. It's Suzanne, right? Not Susan? You got it. All right, let me recut that for the audio. Suzanne Lidecker.

There's too many screens. I'm flipping between. Welcome to the show, Suzanne. How are you? I'm doing great, Chris. How are you today? I am excellent. I'm just definitely holding in there on the brain cells as it comes down.

So you are a fierce love coach, author, speaker, and mother on a mission to build bulletproof women who keep their promises, learn to say no, and never take anything personally again. She's got a background in marriage and family counseling and a certificate in spiritual psychology. She blends education with a holistic approach to guide women on their journey of self-discovery. Splitting her time between Aspen, Colorado and Orlando, Florida, she empowers women to prioritize self-care and embrace their unique gifts and take charge of their lives. Welcome to the show. How are you, Suzanne? I'm doing wonderful today.

I'm sitting in my home in Aspen, Colorado. It just snowed. The leaves haven't even fallen off the trees and it's snowing. So I'm tucked in my office and here with you today. I love your introduction. You're Chris Voss. It's brilliant. And I love the fact that you said in the first minute of this is that you're here to talk to people about how they're not alone. And for me, that's become critical in my life. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times we can get alienated

and we can feel, you know, sometimes victimized or persecuted. We can kind of get in, sometimes that can kind of become its own subterfuge. But, you know, a lot of times we feel like, you know, it's us against the world and the universe. And the great thing about the human condition is a lot of us tend to experience the same things, or at least there's enough of us to spread it around. And I would like to avoid sharing the same things with people, but I guess that's not the way life works. No, it's just not. Hey, I just did a post that I'd like to share with you.

It's just a little Instagram post. There's been several studies done that rank. I'm this up okay this is a model what what causes longevity and happiness and they rank them 1 to 50 all right i hate to say it but i'm not suggesting you do any of these things but smoking drinking and eating are number 46 47 and 48 out of 50 number one is connection with other people we as human beings are meant to be a connector number two is your connection with your family weirdly enough it's it's first off society it's a whole so yes you're never going to be i tell people all the time if you think you have a problem i promise you you are not alone you know i said i i said on the post i was like if you're gonna eat drink and smoke you might as well do it with other people or you can do something like join a book

club or something that might enlighten your soul a little bit more and make connections with people as often as you can you know you make a good point because i'm a big purveyor of these meetup groups that we do for singles and stuff and we're trying to get people to come out to events and you know not sit at home do all coming and and going to their things and and so we have these big events that we throw for people. And it's just so interesting how isolated we've become with our phones, with our staying at home, you know, COVID kind of helped some of that and then remote work force as well. And so a lot of people seem to have lost the skills to go out and socialize. And like I've had people say, I'm afraid to go out and meet people i'm like you do that all day long

you're driving on the road you go to the store you go to the gas station and all that good stuff so let's get started let's get your dot com so we can get the plug in there so people can look you up on the interwebs where can find people find you at suzanne lidecker i don't know if you post my name actually i think it's at the bottom of the screen because nobody can sell it or say it dot com and which my my website is just being revamped and it's it's amazing how much i've learned it took me 11 years by the way it was published on 11 11 my whole book is all this stuff magic things about 11s as a matter of, my license plate in my car is 11. My name is Suzanne Lynn Lidecker, so it says 11SLL11,

because I think our angels might as well protect me while I'm driving down the road. We all need as much help as we can get out of the way. I'm not alone. There's a whole bunch of other freaks on the planet that think 11s are related to angels. So that's been a dream. But all the help we can get. We need all the help we can get, for sure. And, you know, connecting with your community.

Like, I've been running, Chris, these mastermind dinners for women in the work. They don't have to be in the workplace. They can be mothers. They can be entrepreneurs. They can be thought leaders in Aspen and also in Orlando where I live because I want to go to the Senior World Water Ski Championship as a competitor. So I have another tribe down there and we run these groups and it's been incredible because I don't know about the communities where all your listeners are living, you know i know in uh aspen and i

don't think we think it's unique up here but that everything changed post covid and our community kind of got ripped apart and there was no longer as much we have a very intimate community here where you could go out to dinner and see 10 people you knew. Now, nothing. So I've created these mastermind dinners, which I do host for free. And I have a theme for everyone. This theme coming up is, is it ever 100% anybody's fault? I think the answer is no.

But a lot of women resort back to, it's all my fault. I did it all. No, we just don't do that anymore. But the dinners have been great ways to connect. So I encourage all of you in your communities to start joining because it gives you a safe space. You don't have to talk to somebody in a bar or invite them over to dinner and afraid that nobody will show up if you have a kind of a reason for coming together i can invite people to mastermind dinners all day long hey come join the community of like-minded women and where can women find out or people find out everybody i guess yeah find out about how to get involved with that community with you. Did they go to the website?

Yeah, go to my website, and you can sign up for it. We just did 10 ways to effectively say no. 10 ways to effectively say no. I need that. You and, I mean, my target audience is women, but I work with a lot of men. And you know how many men also say you know i i'll tell you i'll tell you what to do if you want to try it chris you just take this on for a week okay you can go back to all your bad habits or Because we all do. If it's not a hell yeah, it's a no.

Ah. And I don't care. This is a very clear way. Now, that does not mean if it's a yeah, it's a hell no. If it means it's not a hell yeah, and it has to meet all the criteria. Okay. okay so that that gives you a very clear way of reading you know responding to a woman who thinks you're hot and you're like you don't really like her how do you get out of that to going out to events that you don't really go to want to go to now the one area that i'm

finding different is that just sitting on your couch and behind your phone and whatever, get your ass and go out to the party. Right? Yeah, that's not that that is a community building thing. But other than that, if you don't want to do something, and this also means that especially for women, that means that when let's say a man asked me if he could borrow my car. I have a car in Orlando. I'm up in Aspen. It's a big, huge, honking Escalade that I call the Beast. And he wanted to borrow the Beast to drive it to Charleston.

And he wanted to pay me $600. I don't think $600 would roll the front two tires into the garage for its oil change or whatever. But he knew that the car was just sitting there. So I was like, I just agreed like an hour before to say no, if it wasn't a hell yeah. And frankly, Chris, it didn't feel like a hell yeah. But I didn't want to hurt his feelings. And I didn't want him not to like me. And I knew that, you know, he knew that the car wasn't being used.

So I had to do, I'm being very curious, I wish you had a hand raised on this show, how many people do this. I wrote 42 text messages back, because basically I didn't want him to not like me, if it really comes down to it. I didn't want him to not like me if it really comes down to it i didn't want him to not like me so i was like wrote i'm so sorry but i can't so one of the things we just added onto my website was 10 10 tips on how to say no very succinctly in a sentence no apologizing no i'm sorry i can't do that because whatever it's just, it doesn't, it's, it's not a hell. Yeah. It's a no. And you talk about that in your book, a woman on top, my journey of self-discovery through love and money.

Tell us a little bit more about some of the things you do in there. It's kind of a memoir, right? It's a memoir. And, um, you know, I realized at age 52, this all happened because a man that I thought I was going to marry and realized he was a professional athlete and not in a sport that makes any money. So I was kind of supporting the whole thing. And, you know, something happened, which I won't go into. But I was like, oh, shit, I got to get out of here and as he was you know like leaving for the last time i shouted at him at the top of my lungs because i had just inherited some money like months before i met him at age 47 and i said i am gonna write a book about called a woman with means and he's you can't write a book about that you know nothing about money oh and i was like oh of course i do it turns out that i did

not and he actually was correct so i had now i managed not to which this is in my book i actually wrote a pretty darn good book that people pick up and they don't put down i managed to go all the way through college without taking an english course i don't know any other human being that actually did that but but I did. I flunked mine. You did? All right. I'm pretty sure I flunked my high school one. So I wasn't really, you know, I could do math until calculators came up and now my brain's soft, very high level calculations. And you know, writing was no. It took me 11 years to write it because I was, again, afraid that people weren't going to like me if I told my truth. And this all, you know, I said in my book, I was like, you know 63, I recognized that my whole life has been designed just to write a book like this.

And I do have to, I hold a master's and a certificate, which might as well be a master's. But, you know, the stories that I got around love and money as a child which we all did i'm just curious would you be comfortable sharing like a couple messages that you got as a child around love money and who was in charge who paid the bills did somebody get an allowance those kind of things yeah we got allowances kids they they shared the checking account my mom would you know spend her money spend the money i think my money my mom was the purchaser account my mom would you know spend their money spend the money i think my money my mom was the purchaser of stuff so she you know we go to the store with her i i when messages you know yeah i did get you know at the counter mom would say we don't have

enough money for that you know that sort of thing because you know they didn't she didn't want to buy this cheerios that was filled with sugar that would bounce us off you know i can't blame her really but you know a lot of a lot of parents default to that because they just they're just trying to you know they're trying to get stuff done you know the store and negotiate the paying and and all that crap and then you know you got you bought a bunch of kids yelling it's it's tough being a parent and so that was that was one of them. Some of the things that I think weren't really about money but affected me was eat everything on your plate. That affected my weight. Do I blame my parents for being overweight? No, I started eating a lot

of shitty food when I was 22. And then sometimes our mom would say, if you're good at the store and you don't act out and do all the stuff that your brother does, then we'll get you a Coke and a candy bar. I think we get like a candy bar. I don't think we were allowed to drink Coke. But, you know, so we get like some sugary thing. And so all my life up until about 45, I would always, when I leave the store, I'd fill it with, you know, Mountain Dew and all sorts of crap. And then I would get a pop and a candy bar to go home and probably a bag of chips and just destroy my health. And, you know, I had to learn to overcome that lie.

You know, going to the store and buying shit, you don't need a reward. Yeah. You know, I have a couple interesting comments on on several of those things one your mother saying no to the cheerios because we can't afford it primarily what i see underlying that message is she just didn't feel like dealing with it and saying you know what you're aren't good for you and i'm not buying them so she just didn't want to say no either yeah second is is that i think it's interesting that so food obviously is another one that i also struggled with different ways my dad made i was the only kind

of heavy one in the family my mother father and brother were like beam poles and you know my dad used to make me stand up against the wall and you know for a straight posture and saying knockers up girls. And at the time I was knockers up girls. He said it to all females. And I was like, and now I look back on it. I'm like, dad, you probably shouldn't have been saying that. He thought it was really funny, you know, in order to lift. And he is correct. I mean, probably another time, but we posture is important.

Yes, it is. And I'm at very good posture now. I have a problem where I do that. Seeitting and I don't pull my shoulders back. Yes. Any one of those postures. Well, you can do that right now. Your dad should have told me tits up more often. I've got the man mood.

But anyway, the reason why I think my book has been so successful is that, and you can buy it on Amazon under a woman on, and my name, which is right below the screen, I think, or somewhere, is that, you know, it talks about all these messages that we get as children and how they're kind of ingrained. We know this inner child, all that stuff. And it controls and decides, like, where we're at now or influences it. And so I think the first part of my book, which I thought was going to be the most boring part, was the part where people really engage

because it makes them think about their childhood. And I wrote a very vulnerable book. Somebody said to me yesterday who had read it, and they're like, wow, that took some nerve. And it did. And I had to go back, actually, Chris, at certain points because of that boyfriend that was leaving my house, and I said, I'm going to write a book called A Woman with Means.

There was some things in there that weren't as pretty, like the time that I took one of his, this poster that I had had framed of him standing on a podium doing his sport and I just took this thing and I smashed it into about a thousand pieces glass on the floor now one I had to clean up all of it two I'm such a caretaker that I actually went out and got a new one for him. So there was, I wrote about the things when I was not at my best,

you know, because again, you say you took ownership of those. You took accountability. I did. I wrote him in a book. Yeah. You know,

I said, Hey, listen, if you think you're alone, have you done these things because i did you know so it lets people i think it makes people feel more at ease around who that who they are and you know there's dark scary things inside of all of our paths that we don't want to talk about and they're okay they don't they don't need

to come back out they can just we can just embrace them and and move on yeah you can't change the past that was one important thing i learned with eckhart's hole i was having trouble after loss of my dog and then i think i had a couple hundred of her last photos that had gotten and i was suffering from that i was really grieving and then the hard drive photos that had gotten, and I was suffering from that. I was really grieving. And then the hard drive failed that had the last couple hundred photos on her. Oh no. And so I was like,

you took my dog away from the universe and now you're taking the photos. And I have thousands of 10, probably 10,000 photos of her, but, but, and some of them were recoverable cause they'd gone into my Google photos, but yeah, I mean, it's just, it's sometimes you can feel that way. So now your journey is kind of unique. You talk about how you help women and, and especially successful women. So I think

you inherited my understanding, some, some money from your parents when they passed away and at age 47, you want to tell us a little bit like what that was about and maybe how that changed your life and gave you some different perspectives on things my life was growing up was relatively normal we played kickball in the backyard we went on a week-long vacation to lake tahoe i grew up in california and nothing was really out of the ordinary i married a man and then divorced him. And we had our own challenges around money, which I'm sure every person that's ever been divorced, we talked about this a little bit before. Like, why would you get married?

Because then sometimes you have money problems to get divorced. But all of a sudden, when I was 47, and I'm prepping to do a TED Talk, I don't have a stage yet. But the topic is how inheriting millions of dollars taught me about my self-worth. And it goes into how no matter how high your net worth goes, for all those people out there that think you won't have any problems if you have money, because you do, God is not selective, is that you will always default back to the level of your self-worth. So my level of self-worth was very low. I grew up in a relatively not physically, my brother got beat a lot, but back then it was kind of okay.

Maybe he deserved it. I don't know. I'm just teasing. Probably. Emotionally abusive. Very unclear. If you're good, you get it. How dare you ever think that I would ever give you, you're a little girl. I got called little girl a lot, which so hurt my feelings.

And so at 47, all of a sudden, there was this life insurance policy. It was a second-to-die policy. The most confusing life insurance ever. And so I never really knew. Like, I knew there was the money there. My dad lost all the rest of it. He had Alzheimer's. He created a huge multi-million-dollar business and then down the toilet because of his Alzheimer's.

But anyway, he had this life insurance policy, but I could spend an hour talking to you about how complicated that was. So I never really knew whether it was going to come through. And weirdly enough, back in 2007, they sent me two checks because it was crazy because one of them was supposed to be for children, generational skipping, that didn't work. And they got the first two checks, they send them like regular mail with a stamp on them. They get lost in the mail. Oh, God. Really?

Didn't we have FedEx back then? I don't understand. Wow. And these were like millions of dollars worth of checks. So I saw this woman, Lavinia. I was like, you don't get me those checks. I come down to North Carolina, and I sit on your desk until you get them. And so they eventually came and I was like, it was like I'd won a lottery, right? Now, as far

as I know from all the research I've done, lottery winners usually lose all their money within three to five years. I have met the daughter of a lottery winner who thought it was all her fault because she prayed for her parents to win the lottery when she was eight, and they did destroyed the family divorced she's still carrying this grief around and she's 27 years of age

because she thinks that she did this and oftentimes lottery winners kill themselves and not dead but oh, and you don't know who your friends are yeah, you find out that when you get money Oftentimes, lottery winners kill themselves. I'm not dead. But, oh, and you don't know who your friends are. Yeah, you find out that when you get money. So, I experienced those things. I didn't know who my friends were.

And I did not, by the way, Chris, inherit. I'm not flying around in a private plane. I just had more than most of my broke friends. I live in a very wealthy community, but I somehow managed to pick everyone that was poor. Which is a very interesting thing. I was asked by the same boyfriend at one time, why are all your friends poor? Now, that was an eye-opening comment, and I was like, ooh, he's right. But it was very challenging for me, and I had a lot of shame and guilt.

I was the lucky one. And I did not. So I picked up bills. I paid for, you know, everyone. I paid for boyfriends like crazy. Only to break up with them and be a little bit poor. Ooh, I'd love some of that money back right now. Uh-huh.

Because I did what most glory i did not lose at all i did a pretty good job because i have financial skills you know but it's only been in the last four years since and really since public at the end of trying to publish this book that i figured out that i'm okay just the way I am, and I don't have to live under shame and guilt. And I believe, Chris, that in this transition that we're going from here in the 2000s, early 2000s, which is not surprising time-wise for me, that there's a lot more women that are bread earners, and they don't know how to handle it. And frankly, the men don't either. Yeah. A few things on what you said there to recap, you know, you talked about how when you,

you know, you get money, you know, you learn who your friends are, you, you, you have to kind of reestablish a new value. And then you said something about how you know externally people see something different but internally it it's hard to handle it is and i used to i used to have so many so many of my employees come to me and people when we became successful you know i grew up poor and so once we became successful and got money with our companies you know we bought all the stupid shit and big houses and everything in the cars. And, and, and I thought that would fix everything, everything that was wrong with me, everything that I don't know, I was mentally going through more childhood trauma and different things. I thought it would fix everything. I thought it would be a bandaid that would heal all wounds.

Basically you get money, you buy everything you didn't have when you grew up as a kid and then everything's fine. People love you out turns out it doesn't it it it can sometimes bring out the worst in you and worst it it kind of insulates you so you you you know you it kind of amplifies all your worst traits or problems at least it does some people and and then you kind of start having people that like you because of money but you know if you ever quit giving them money or sharing money or whatever then they don't like you anymore no i've been through that several times i have a question oh shoot did you experience when you because i got you know because i referred to people that all of a sudden went from toiling, toiling, toiling, and either they sold their company.

You're sitting in the exact same shoes that I am. So all of a sudden, you can now afford those fancy cars, fancy houses. Did you ever feel any guilt and shame over thinking that you needed to take care of everyone? Yeah. I tried doing that as a CEO of our companies. You know, I tried throwing parties for people. I tried taking care of people. I didn't get too stupid at giving out my money.

I'd been dating most of my life and I've seen a lot of guys spend money on a spouse. You know, I've had friends that have had millions and spent millions in divorce. And so that leads me into what I wanted to ask you about. So you've alluded that a lot of women now are earning a lot more money, and a lot of women sometimes are earning more money than a spouse or their prospective prospects. And it's a really big deal in the marketplace because right now what you have is, and I see this in our big dating groups that we have.

I have thousands of people in our dating groups that we give coaching to. And one of the things that I see is a lot of women, normally women date in what's called a hypergamous nature. So they date usually up on the social scale. They date a man that's above them social-wise and money-wise. Not me. Yeah, you can't. i might need to come to your workshops it's actually not a it's a feature not a bug but but what what's happened is women hyperglyphs date that way so the problem is is once they reach a certain level of income in this world it's really hard to find men above them that earn more so an example is is you know the internet right now cries out for for men who are over six foot tall earn over a hundred thousand dollars a year those two factors and finding single available men to date because

there's a lot of married guys who make a lot of money, but they're married It's it's only 1% of the single men that are out there that are available that are 6 foot tall plus and 100,000 plus so if you're a woman who makes a lot more than $100,000 You've got to find somebody who makes more than that or or you end up or you end up basically being in the game of a man, which is what you've been talking about. And I think what you help other women about, and that's what I'm trying to lead you into, is you become like my rich friends, men friends, where you end up taking care of the people underneath you because they don't earn more, they earn less. And it basically flips the role of the man to the woman and the woman now has you know i i one of my friends was a new skin gal and she made i think it's like four hundred thousand dollars a month or something holy shit and she and she always had to you know

date these she would always buy and date these bodybuilder guys because she's you know she told one of my friends she's you know i can't get a husband who makes more than me they're just not out there really that are available single and you know most guys that are billionaires and super successful they're married so she's so if i'm gonna have to pay for a man to have a man in my life just like a man would pay for a man, to have a man in my life, just like a man would pay for a woman who earns less than him, then I'm just going to buy bodybuilders. But she would have all sorts of problems. They would extort money from her. They would try and write books about her. I mean, it was the same sort of thing that men go through in breakups that are ugly with

women. Listen, I did exactly that. In my book, I wrote about three specific men i might as well they were shaped differently and named differently but and two of them were ski racers and then i left to go to the water ski world because i love water skiing and i dated a water skier and that each time it did not it turned out as said before, I had less in my pocketbook. And I, you know, however, the last chapter, I think I'm going to answer your query here is that, you know, so no matter what, yeah, I mean, I either have to figure out how to date someone poorer. Or probably Prince Charming, who's six foot tall and makes over $100,000, they're not around.

And, you know, the biggest story that I hear from women is there's no men. And so the last chapter of my book in the epilogue, it finishes, not to ruin it for you because you should all read it. I meet this woman years ago, right? And she was married and she got, and she was constantly looking for someone. She was on Match.com. She was on all the things. She lived in Denver. We were on the same board together. Back before COVID, we met in live person. So I saw her several times, same coffee shop, with men, and she just couldn't find anyone to save her life. And so she went, and she got a job. This is all during the course of years now right so i see her this was this meeting was 2021 so it was three years ago

and i see her at this party for this this organization that we both work for and she pulls me aside and she's suzanne i just need to talk to you people often pull me aside because they know that i'm a safe space to share their most intimate selves because I share my most intimate self. She said, I'm going to quit my job. And I'm like, why? She said, I need to make more time to find somebody to marry. And I looked at her and I mean, with all the empathy in my heart. And I said, what if he never comes along?

Yeah, because he might not. So my big thing is living into acceptance of wherever you are, rich, poor, white, black, you know, male, female, homosexual or not, we all come, as you and I, I think, have both pointed out, there is no way you can avoid the complications of being human. Sickness doesn't choose whether you're rich or you're poor. help you to get your hot your blonde hair blonde but you know like above and beyond i mean it pays for all those those food water shelter things but you know the three can you identify the three most important things there are after food water and shelter chris go for it off off the cuff the chris fosh show podcast doom scrolling on TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn. Very important. That's great.

I don't know. See, am I exposing what a shallow fucking person? Well, some of the things are in the title of my book. Chris Foss Show podcast? Self-discovery through my journey of discovery through love and money. Love is high up on the list of things that we all want in whatever form that comes in which goes back to the the community thing so love can show up in a

lot of different ways money as far as i know most people want money yeah they just want money they don't care how they get it they don't have any you know they'll go to shitty jobs and do that no please don't do that please get a hold of me and we'll figure out what you should be doing and time i'm so busy i can't whatever so let's just leave time off the table i write a book about love and money weirdly enough so when you self-publish, I did on Amazon, you have to pick out two categories. You don't just publish under books. You have to publish under finance, self-help, whatever. You know, when I went to pick out two categories to be in, I was like, I had people to help me, right? But I was like, clearly, one of them is love and money. Yeah. Do you know, there is not another book.

There is not a podcast talk, a TEDx. I don't know about podcast talk. There's not a TEDx talk. I am the only person on the planet that's talking about the intersection of love and money. Ah, that's interesting. Oh, now there's multiple people, hundreds of thousands of people talking about love. Same talking about money. Has Spearmint Rhino ever done a TED Talk?

I don't know. Who? Spearmint Rhino. It's a strip club that's international. Oh, that would be really great. I was doing a joke about the connection. Okay, you know, I haven't been to an occasional strip club, but not that one. You know, so, yeah, I get a kick out of the fact that the two things that we think,

probably time comes in there. I asked this woman the other day. I was at a baby shower for my daughter. And Mia was there. Mia's about 34. And I said, oh, how are you doing? She has a three-year-old. And she's getting divorced. And I don about 34. And I said, oh, how are you doing? She has a three-year-old. And she's, I'm getting divorced.

And I don't know. Chris, sometimes my mouth does not have a filter. I'm like, does it have anything to do with money? And she looks at me and she's, oh, no. And then about 20 seconds later, she's, oh, yeah, it has everything to do with money. I mean, you go figure i've been trying to figure out what percentage of divorces are caused by difficulties with money i think i've seen studies and i have to try and figure where i got them from i saw something that said 40%. In my mind, it's around 70%.

Infidelity would be another one. Infidelity is usually caused, like the cheater is always the one that's the bad one. But frankly, between you and me and all your podcast listeners, it takes two to tango. So I was the one my ex-husband left for another woman and moved to london and i love that saying if you don't mind me rapping on that for a second i love saying it takes two to tango you and i probably come from a generation that we always said that when we'd hear about divorce or breakup we'd be you know it takes two to tango nowadays people just go on tiktok and they just slam the other person oh Oh, no.

And taking self-accountability, I talked a lot about this in the singles and dating pool because one of the biggest problems we have in there is self-accountability. It's probably the number one problem, actually, in dating and singles. No one takes self-accountability. It's always the victimhood thing. It's always the other person that did everything. When you hear them talk, you would think they were jesus christ they're perfect in the relationship and it does take two to tango there are there are push and pulls of things and and there's the thread that slowly unravels sometimes but you know we need to have more of that mentality the it takes two to tango. It's, you know, usually these things happen for a complex number of reasons, a combination.

It's hard to boil them down, I think, to one. But I've never been divorced or married. I have a comment that maybe you can use in your dating events. So, one, all the chapters in my book are all idioms. So, it starts out with the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. You better figure out what apple tree you were and throw out the rotten apples that are no longer serving and maybe you want to move to a peach grove. I don't know. Yeah, but I think I told you these before we got on your podcast. The three premises that I work on

now that changed my life, everyone's oh do this and this is gonna happen how the heck do you do it one take personal responsibility which is your accountability and that means for women don't take it all it's all my fault It's not all your fault. It just never is. You just said it in a different way. Two, say no. If it's not a hell, yeah. And can we expand on that a little bit? Yes, please.

Oh, can I give you my third one before I forget? Sure, go ahead. I mean, don't take things personally. You know that you were talking about persecution and all that? That is just a very, very dramatic form of taking things personally. You know that you were talking about persecution and all that? That is just a very, very dramatic form of taking things personally. It doesn't help the situation any. Anyway, go ahead. And we'll get to the third one. So on the second one, I had something for it and I lost track. What was the second one? The second one is say no if it's not a hell yeah.

Say no. Now, would you equate that to setting boundaries as well? Is that the same thing in what you're doing? So I used to, I remember going to Uganda one time, and I was invited to go there to run this mastermind program for women in the workplace. Somebody had financed it. And so I went over there. First off, in Uganda, they have 54 languages, and they don't have a word to mean mindfulness.

So that was very difficult to begin with. But back then, I talked about purpose and passion, which I still think is super important. Boundary setting and taking personal responsibility. The boundary part was so hard for me to communicate about how you do this and really honestly until this was actually from a guy named Dirk Silvers Derek Silvers and he actually weirdly enough did it on a Tim Ferriss podcast who I just met Tim Ferriss the other day no idea how to get a hold of him but if Tim Ferriss if you're out there I'm still looking for you anyway so i i lost my train of thought you were stalking tim ferris no i was talking no no no so derek silver said this

thing so this woman i think i said this before i agreed i said i'll do it for one week i challenge any of you to do this for one week get a hold me through my newsletter and let me know how it goes because all of a sudden yes it set boundaries and it was such an easy way for me to discern when to say yes and when to say no sort of getting off my couch putting on real clothes and going to an event because I was too shy or something. Let me ask you this. I know women as mothers are the greatest nurturers and caretakers. I mean, without them, we'd just probably starve to death, I think, or at least my generation would have. No, no, no, no, no. Don't think so. Go ahead, finish. Yeah. I think one of the things that mothers do is they don't say no as often as they should.

And sometimes they don't take care of themselves. You know, they're a caretaker. And so sometimes they don't take care of themselves and they give first. Mom will eat last. You know, she'll prepare dinner for everybody, take care of everybody. And the mom will take care of herself last. And I've heard from a lot of women we've had on the show that, you know, they kind of do that as nurturing, but you can't give of yourself if you don't take care of yourself.

And so setting boundaries, learning to say no, learning to, you know, be okay with that. I think maybe do some mothers experience guilt that maybe, oh, maybe I should have, you know, I think I experienced some guilt with my dogs where I'm like, I should have spent more time with them today. I should have done this. But it's hard to say no. No kidding. I mean, I was a single parent. My husband moved to London.

Oh, wow. And I made up by giving my children everything. They did turn out to be pretty good. I'm happy to report but no i think that i mean that you know i mean obviously on the airplane put on your own oxygen mask first and i do not in my opinion think it is a good place for our way for women to show up as role models for their children at home anywhere so if you have a strong mother usually you have a strong sense of self i'm not talking a bully mother i'm talking one that sets boundary is very clear about what she says means what she says says what she does or does what she does and all that kind of stuff i they seem to be

men that are raised that way also seem to attract powerful women that can also speak their mind can i tell you do i have time to tell you one quick little story? Okay, so I tell, you know, the gentleman asked me sometimes, I'm on the gondola, and they're like, why did you write a book for women? And I was like, you know, when you first had your girlfriend, you met this woman, and, you know, she was so empowered, and you were like, liked her instantly. And then she kind of started liking you and she would go, oh, Chris, I don't know what do you want to do tonight? And she had no opinions, which a lot of us do. I just was reading a little meme about it. But you kind of were like, that's okay, honey. I kind of like to be liked like that. And she moves into your house and she picks up your underwear she folds the towel

she goes to the grocery store you know she does it for six months a year two years as long as whatever some women it's 15 years in the marriage and all of a sudden she's like chris i am so tired of picking up your underwear i can't stand it and i don't like going to the grocery store all the time and you're like whoa babe i didn't even know you were upset about it why didn't you just say hey chris pick up your underwear and i would have been happy to do it but you've been doing it so whatever and then she says you know chris what's your favorite sport oh what is my favorite sport i guess it's football but i'm a real fan so you know what chris i don't always like to sit and watch football on Sundays.

Sometimes I like to have a picnic in the park. And you're like, okay, dear. You told me when I met you, you love football. That, for sure. And then she's, you know, you're like, we have bikes and stuff. We can ride picnic in the park every time there's not a football game on. whatever you say. And she's, you know, it doesn't count when I have to tell you what I want, mostly they just laugh through the whole thing. Because if they haven't been through that experience, and I've been that woman, they know somebody who has, and they're laughing at them. So, as women, I'm really here to support us in, you know, not being like, oh, whatever you want to do. I mean, to a certain extent, you've got to compromise.

But say what you want, ladies. And husbands demand that their boyfriends, all men, demand that women say what they want. And by the way, tell them right up front, I hate when you open the car door or this is the most dreamy thing you've ever done because men are so confused these days. I kind of really feel sorry for them. They don't know what to do. So if we, it doesn't help if you guys ask, would you like me to open up the car door? And then she'll probably cry and say, you know what, Chris, I can't believe you had to ask me that. It doesn't count if you have to ask me.

That's not working either. Yeah. I mean, you can't expect people to be mind readers, but that's a whole nother. No, we expect people to be mind readers.'t expect people to be mind readers but that's a whole no we expect people to be mind readers we expect men to be mind readers i don't do i mean but all women don't do that no some of all the ones don't i think some of the ones that really need therapy be careful you're on the air yeah no i'm completely fine with it. I study a lot of women and men's nature. No, not all women, I think, don't communicate their things, but there are some women that do it. And really, the approach of, you know, someone should just read my fucking mind is literally insane. Knock it off. Literally. Yeah. Go see a therapist and work out why you're doing that. That's basically my message. So as we round out the show, give us the final pitch out on people.

How can they get involved with your services? How can they get to know and onboard with you better? Book consultant stuff. Tell us about some of the wares you do on your website. Yeah. Services you offer so that people can know what's the... So recently, for the last year and a half, I've been trying to be a life coach and speaking gigs and whatever. And I was spending so much money, frankly, and time getting this business off the ground based on a book is like a calling card.

But I frankly just said no to most of it recently. And I've gone back to, you know, really, I'm going to re-edit my book and do it on Audible. So all you people that cannot do it without Audible, which is me, it will be coming out by January. And, you know, the best way at the moment to connect with me is through my website. And there's a little thing. It will give you the 10 top lead ways to say no effectively and succinctly. Maybe you should go on it, Chris, and then you can get the 10 top lead ways to say no effectively and succinctly, maybe you should go on it, Chris, and then you can get the 10 top ways to say no. They're really good.

Anybody knows how, anyways, I've done a whole bunch of blog posts, and I want to try to get in some literary magazines, HuffPo, and some other stuff about how to say no and why and what kind of message would you get and how would you respond to it quickly so it doesn't take you a half an hour to write back no because you don't want people to think you're a bad person. And we're going to see. As my career develops and continues to grow, certainly if you're in Aspen, Colorado, let me know or Orlando, Florida because I would love to have you join my mastermind dinners. They're brilliant.

When do you have the next one coming up? I have a big one coming up in Snowmass at The Collective, which is Snowmass is about 15 minutes away from Aspen, on December the 3rd. Very excited about that. And you know what? I think you just gave me an idea. I think what we're going to do is live stream them. That's a good idea. So people can be part of if they're not in the area.

You gave me that idea just now. Because I catch a lot of live streams and I love it. Just to see what I'm up to. And if you have any brilliant suggestions and you're like, hey, we would love to have you come speak for us or whatever, completely 100% open. I'm just not chasing it down to convince people that I know what I'm talking about.

I'm pretty good at what I do because I have a lot of life experience and a lot of education experience. But mostly this has come from the hard knocks of life. It always comes from the hard knocks of life. It always comes from the hard knocks of life. Why is that? Can't it just be easier? No, because it was easy. We'd all sit in the prologue of my book. I'm like, what would we be doing?

Sitting on our couch eating bonbons. I had to look up what a bonbon was, but life would be a bowl of cherries. I mean, what would we be doing? Definitely. You know, this is called, this game is called, this is the Earth School

and the game is called life. Yeah. That's how you play it. Whatever your hand is. I think there was something I said or something someone said once about how, well, actually, you know, your cathartic moments,

your troubles, your faults, the stuff that, I mean, the fact that you survive some of the stuff that we go through in life as human beings, it makes up who we are. And like I say on the show, the stories are our own experience of life, our stories. I mean, we are a compilation of all of our stories without them, without the hard times, without the cathartic times, without the ways we learn to survive and overcome and get through

stuff. We wouldn't be anything without those no you know i can even look at my childhood and some of the things i didn't like or some of the things that happened to me in life and i i can look and go god i really wouldn't i really would have liked not to have gone through that experience but the person it shaped me to be is so much better than i don't know what I would be without that experience. You know what I mean? And I think a lot of people, you know, we can look at that.

And that's why books like yours are important. Yeah. And, you know, for everyone to know, really just to piggyback on that is you're not alone. Like whatever your trials, tribulations, whether you have money, whether you don't, as I said before, like it's all okay. It's just about how we navigate. And that is true for me as well. So get us your dot coms as we go out. Tell us how people can onboard with you. I see on your website that they can book a conversation with you or reach out to you. Yep. And also I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn under my own name, Suzanne Lidecker. So you can definitely reach out to me there. I have a wonderful team of social

media people that help me. Recently, I've just been going not off non-script. I just post something about who I really am and whatever struggle I'm going through or success I'm having. And it's being very well received. It would be great if you want to like me on any of those platforms and, you know, keep in touch. This is why I do this is because I love hearing about other people's stories. And I so appreciate you, Chris, for the open conversation that you're willing to have about what's gone on in some parts of your life that helped shape me to be a better person. And, you know, we had a down deep

intimate conversation, I think. And, you know, that's what I want to encourage people to go out and do with people that you love. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't, I tell people this, you can't solve a problem that you're having unless you take accountability for your 50% of the thing, you know, 50, 50, you can't solve it until you address it. You know, it's, it's like alcoholics that go to AA. The first thing you have to do is say, I have a problem. And, and until you do that, you can't fix the problem. And there's so many people, you know, I've seen people go through marriage after marriage and they do the same damn thing in each marriage that sabotages it.

I've seen people go through five marriages that way. And they're doing the same thing every time. And they never take accountability, self-accountability. It's always the victimhood narrative. It's always the other person's fault. Nothing they do. You know, they were Jesus Christ. They were perfect. They walked on's fault nothing they do you know they were jesus christ they were perfect they walked on water in the marriage you know you know it's really important

for people to do that because until you address that and that's kind of what therapy does and different things that are we always recommend to people professional therapy people don't buy crystals buy crystals too no yeah if you like crystals buy crystals go ahead and i'll i'll i just always tell that joke on the show it's an old callback but but yeah i mean you want to you want to take and get professional help i get i get so many people that are like hey hey chris i'm gonna you know go do astrology and i'm like that's not gonna fix the fact that you're a fucked up human being hey you know what i would leave you with is that we can even the therapy part and i have a master's in marriage and family counseling but until you make a a shift and do something differently i work with clients and i'm like i don't give two shits what

you want to do differently if you want to put your left shoe on before your right shoe, if you normally do it the other way around, something will shift in your life. You know, you can go address in therapy if you need to all your problems that you had with your mother when you were a child or for me, my father and my mother, really. Or you can just make a choice to do something differently. And for me, over a course of four years, it changed my life. I was an unhappy, miserable human being. Not entirely, but I cried a lot and I got upset. I was very, very emotional. And now I'm so much more balanced and happy.

And even my three now grown children have all commented numerous times, like, you're just different. So I treat them differently. I just show up differently. I used to cry all the time. I probably would have cried on this podcast. Not that you shouldn't cry, but, you know, that victim mentality crying is not very attractive, honestly. Don't do that anymore. Yeah.

And you can't fix your problems. If you're, you know, some people celebrate their victimhood for attention. No, I know. Yeah. And so they just, I liken it to a pig who wallows in its mud pit. You know how pigs do? Yeah. And I grew up near a farm what can i say right now

the gen z years ago what's a farm and basically you can google the kids and and you'll tell them you'll be like come out of the mud pit you're you're in your mud pit that you made you know it's i heard tori amos at a concert one time say know, she was in this victimhood mentality stage for a while. And her friends just started saying to her, get off the cross, man. We need the wood. And a lot of people do that. I mean, I might have been guilty of doing that sometimes in my life. I'm sure we all have.

But, you know, my thing is that start small. If you can't get out of the mud pit, just go to the next door neighbor's mud pit. And maybe there's a little more water and a little less dirt. A little less dirt. So you can have experiences. I'm all about creating things that get you to pat you on the back. And then it makes you want to go out and you want to celebrate the small wins. You can have instant change.

Read Joseph Spencer, you know, rewiring the brain. But it's challenging to do and i think that if you can have small wins like i'm going to put my shoes on backwards every day for a week and see what happens you'll be surprised you will be surprised actually something's gonna happen i think i'm gonna do that this week i'm gonna take that challenge on myself you're gonna turn them the other way around no No, I'm just going to put, you know, you probably put the right shoe on first every morning. Like you put your, which leg do you put through to your pant when you get into your pants? I'm not even sure. Like, I don't. Come on. You do it every morning. I don't pay attention. I'll often, next time I put my pants

on, I'll definitely be like, I'm sure you do it the same way every time. Probably. Yeah, that's most likely true. Or do you know what hand you brush your teeth with? I'm right-handed, so it's my right hand. Try brushing your teeth with your left hand for a week. You want to do that together with me? Yeah, that'll...

One week? I don't even know if I have strength. Actually, my left arm is stronger than my right arm. You'll be fine. Get an electric toothbrush. How do I get a hold of you to see how you have my email oh yeah okay all right that'll go to you so i want to see can we talk in a week can we agree can we agree to brush our teeth with our left hands i'll try i'll try no there's no trying chris do a little thing. You're like Yoda. Do you want something? Do you need to pick something easier?

I don't know. Let's figure out what the pants thing is and putting the pants on. That might be easier than brushing my teeth. Okay. That's fine. I don't know. Yeah, okay. All right.

So let's round out the show as we go out. Give people your dot coms. Where can people find you on the internet? Suzanne Lidecker. So it's S-U-Z-A-N-N-E-L-E-Y. It is in yarn. D is in dog. E-C-K-E-R dot com.

And then you can find me under my name on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Thank you very much, Suzanne, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Loved it. Really just loved it. Mm-hmm. And thanks to Ronis for tuning in. Order up her book wherever fine books are sold.

A Woman on Top, My Journey of Self-Discovery Through Love and Money, out November 9th, 2023. 11. I'm sorry, what? 11-11. Oh, 11-11. Okay. I'm just reading the hardcover version of the hard I don't know how that got in there I'm gonna have to get that corrected let me see what the paperback says the paperback says

nine and the kindle says the kindle doesn't give a date because it's kind of the way it is it does show that the publisher published it on November 11th yeah but for some reason Amazon says the ninth and one of the reasons we always quote the date that Amazon says is because people watch our videos five to 10 years from now. And anytime I say there's something new coming out or some crap, they'll be like, it's not new. It's like the video is five to 10 years old. And by the way, that is not the second rewrite. That is the first book, but I am going to do somewhat of a rewrite on it because I like to try to tell people, don't use need. You don't need to do anything.

I should. You know, I want to, which now I'm having a problem with want because it means that there's some kind of lack. I'm choosing to is a much clearer message to the universe. Buy those crystals. I got crystals everywhere. I don't know where they are right now i also got a dog just in case if you ever i ever need to talk to myself i talk to my dog that's why i have two dogs plastic so dogs yeah i have two personalities and or maybe six i'm not sure which but then then they can talk to each other you know i can have a dog to talk to for whatever.

We could do a whole other podcast on the voices. In our heads. Thank you very much, Suzanne, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortuneschrisfoss, linkedin.com,

fortuneschrisfoss, chrisfoss1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com. You'll see all the Facebook groups we have over there for the show. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.