Welcome to A Glimpse Inside. I’m Wendy Perrotti, and I’m here on the Super PowerUp! Network, to help people affirm that there’s more to live, and it’s possible for every single one of us to live a life that’s inspired, successful, joyous, and free.
Today is part four of our four-part series on Reinvention after 40. I’ll be talking transformation stories with a woman whose work has been a catalyst for us to take stock of who we are, what we want, and why we want it. And, she continues to connect us all, so that we know we’re not alone. I’m talking about Leslie Jane Seymour.
Leslie is a media entrepreneur and founder of CoveyClub, a new club for lifelong learners, launched in February 2018. CoveyClub allows women who are 40 plus to bond over issues of interest, and concerns through virtual salons, a monthly digital magazine, which is written and produced by some of the best journalists around the world, a daily blog, weekly podcasts, and a special list for high level, one on one networking.
In January 2018, Leslie was named Editor in Chief of More Magazine, the leading lifestyle magazine for women over 40, with a readership of 1.5 million. I’ll tell you, it was my favorite magazine of all time, it’s when I became a Leslie Jane Seymour fan myself. She was Editor-in-Chief and Social Media Director of More.com.
In July 2015, she created history by having the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, guest edited an entire issue, leading to 8.5 billion media impressions worldwide. In 2008, she led More to its first national magazine award nomination. In 2012, she was nominated Executive Director of Meredith’s Beauty Center of Excellence. In 2009, she was named number four on the 2009 Most Powerful Fashion Editors list by Forbes Magazine.
Before taking over More, Leslie served as Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire Magazine, Redbook Magazine, and Teen Book YM. She was Beauty Director at Glamor, and Senior Editor at Vogue. She’s the author of two books, On the Edge: 100 Years of Vogue, and I Wish My Parents Understood.
Among all of these things, I’m also excited to announce that Leslie is collaborating with Dana Hilmer and I on our newest project, Camp Reinvention, which is a six-month program to help women transform their lives.
Leslie, I’m so excited that you’re here.
Oh! I’m listening to that list going, who is that person?
Oh my God! My tongue is tied with all of your accomplishments.
Well, I’m glad you’re a More reader, because More was really,I think, I did my best work at More. We just did what we wanted to do. We had such smart readers, they were all accomplished. Nobody wanted to talk to women 40 plus, so we just had a wide open highway, and just went after it. We had a great time.
Yeah. My friends and I read it, We talked about it all the time. I think it was really one of the catalysts in my own reinvention at that time. I absolutely loved that magazine.
Oh, that’s so nice to hear! I continuously get that from people. I get all kinds of stories, still, about things that we did, or things they read that moved them, and moved them into different phases of their life.
You know, what’s wonderful, you toil away in these editorial offices all by yourself, isolated from the consumer. In the old days, you couldn’t talk to them. Remember, there was no internet. When you hear these things back, and I’m hearing them now, now that I’m out there, from my Marie Clare days. When I say YM, they’re like, “Oh my God, I saw the YM issue, I grew up with.” You’re like, oh, all that hard work, when I would get up at five in the morning, and do all this stuff, it all paid off. That’s a lovely circular pat on the back, for all of us in publishing who are watching a business that we grew up on a loved circle the drain.
Yeah. That content has moved so many people.
It did. And it taught us a lot about how to connect with women, and what their issues are, and probably why you liked More. Also, what I’m doing with CoveyClub is I’m making sure that we talk about the hard things, that no one wants to talk about.
Yeah.
That’s how I made my stamp different. Sure, there are lots of people doing great journalism in magazines, and telling stories. But, I wanted to talk about the really tough stuff. I don’t know, that was just my thing. I feel like, one of the reasons that we don’t connect is because we don’t tell the truth to each other.
When we tell the truth to each other, we find out we have more in common than we thought.
So, with CoveyClub, you’ll see that we do the tough stuff. Like, you know, I had a good friend of mine who is a well known writer, she’s really having trouble taking care of her older, elderly mother, who is getting some Alzheimers. I found out, through some research, through a friend of mine who is a psychologist, who deals with women 40 plus. One of the big issues for our generation is dealing with these elderly parents, and feeling guilty, and horrible that we hate taking care of them, because it was so unexpected. We weren’t prepared. They weren’t prepared. These people didn’t expect to live this long, and they certainly didn’t expect to live lives where we had to be the parent.
So, it’s a mess. No one wants to admit it. They admit it in their counseling session, but they can’t admit it to each other, because they’re ashamed. So, we wrote this great piece, about when a good daughter hates taking care of her elderly mother. We do things like that, to talk about. You’re not alone. This stuff is real, and it’s hard. You’re not alone. You’re feeling the right things, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. It’s tough.
It could be that, or it could be talking about, when Kate Spade committed suicide. We went out and did some deep reporting on the horrible statistics about women 40 plus. It’s a 63% increase in suicide. Why is that? It’s because we’re all disconnected. We’re all living on our computers, we’re living on our phones. I mean, I know the irony, I have a media company that’s digital. We also do virtual events, and we also do live events to combat that. I have over 5000 “friends” on Facebook, but I’m freaking lonely doing this thing! I’m an entrepreneur, and it’s lonely.
It is, and all the silos as connected as we are, right?
Yes!
Or, as we think we are.
Very hard, very hard.
I’m glad you brought up connection with CoveyClub. You have so many ways that people can connect, and not in that Facebook way, right?
Right, exactly.
Can you talk about the app?
Yes.
And how that works?
My crazy mountain is to connect 100,000 women.
Well, as I left the corporate world, and decided to do Covey, which was really inspired by 627 of my readers, who came to me and took a 54 question survey to the end. Can you imagine today? If someone wants me to answer three questions, I’m angry, right? They really wanted this. I was like, “Okay. I listened.” I’m a very good listener. I wrote down everything they wanted. I made a map, and I took a segment of it, and I started out there. I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m making this up.
When you get into the entrepreneur world, you’re asked for what’s called your BHAG: Your Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. The idea is that, if you don’t try to climb Mount Everest, you’re not going to get over the little hill over there, because your head’s going to be down. You’re going to be stumbling over your feet. You need the mountain, right? What’s your mountain, crazy mountain?
My crazy mountain is to connect 100,000 women. The idea is because we are living in our silos. And, also, as you get older, your silo gets more and more narrow, because you’ve been working in law, or finance, or publishing, and all you know are the people in law, or finance, or publishing. Then, maybe you had kids, and all the parents you knew were just from your kids. Before you know it, you have five friends, right? How do you expand your world, as you get older? Why should your world get narrower, not go bigger? Instead of getting narrower.
I’m an insanely curious person. I’m also over extrovert. So, listening to many, many women who feel very isolated at this time in their lives, especially if they’re facing potential, or are already in an empty nest. How do we get through that? We created the live events. We actually get together, either for dinners, or we have a big trip coming up, which is a spa trip in November, to the Savannah Spa in Phoenix. We have 60 women coming. We cut it off at 60, because we wanted it to be small. We’ll grow slowly, as we go.
We use the content to talk to each other about. We have this wonderful app, which is called CoveyConnect. What’s great is it geo locates members, so you can find people near you to talk to, you can locate people by if you want to talk to just divorcees, or people who are financial analysts, or you want to find a digital person to help you with something, you can locate all of that, that way. Also, the key part is, say, you’re going to Austin, Texas from New York, and you’re going to be there Tuesday night. You can geolocate ahead of time, whose in Austin, and send them a note, and say, “Hey, I’m going to be there Tuesday night, let’s grab a glass of wine.” You’re going to meet an interesting, successful woman, like you, for business and or friendship.
And it’s happening, right? People are using the app.
They are!
I love it.
This is what’s so cuckoo. So, I have this. This is what’s so crazy about being an entrepreneur. You have this crazy idea, you put it out there, and you’re like, “I have no idea if this is happening.” Then, you weirdly start getting, dometimes, you don’t hear anything until a year later, and people go, “Yeah, I went to one of your events.” This actually happened. I was so inspired by the event and the interview you did with this woman who created Bandier Clothing, who had been in the music industry. She just really got sick of music and wanted to do something else, so she created Bandier, which is fabulous, upscale exercise wear. She said, “I finally decided to take the plunge, and now I’m doing my fashion line, and I’m traveling the country doing my fashion.” I’m like, “Oh my God, you’re kidding!”
You say, this is what you want, and then when it happens, it’s kind of scary.
Yeah, I can tell you firsthand, from my own transformation, that’s so true.
It’s wonderful.
So true.
It makes it worth it.
We lean in, and it’s beautiful.
Yeah. It makes it worth it. I hear stories like that all the time. Then, I hear cuckoo stories, too.
Like, there’s this wonderful woman whose in the Covey app. She’s a psychologist, and she lives in San Diego. Then, a friend of mine whose in New York, who I’d gone to Columbia with, when I was getting my Masters. Those two, I saw they hooked up. I was like, “Oh, you two are talking.” I said, “What are you talking about?” It’s like, “Well, we discovered we both like to speak French, so we speak French to each other.” I’m like, “I should have put that on the list! Who knew?”
You just can’t even imagine what connects people. That’s what’s really cool. People are meeting to start businesses, or meeting because they’re traveling and they have similar interests. Even, I’m putting people together because I can see when they come in, do you know you’re in the same town? They don’t know. It’s stuff like that.
Yeah. Connection is truly, I think, the foundation of any transformation. First, understanding that we are not in it alone. Just, the mind-blowing reality that the things that we’re experiencing personally are happening to millions of other women, in the same moment, takes so much of the weight off for us, right? Then, to be able to use those women to empower, create a posse, create a platform for ourselves moving forward, it’s like a movement. A reinvention movement.
Yeah.
It’s happening right now. I’ve seen, in more than one place, that the next century is going to be run by women, and by women over 40.
Yes, we are!
Right on.
We’re taking over, finally, finally! Oh my God, finally!
Here we come.
All right, we’re going to take a really quick break. We’ve been talking with Leslie Jane Seymour, Founder of CoveyClub. When we come back, we’re going to really dig in to some transformation stories, including her own. As always, I’ll be giving you some tools that you can start using today, for creating your own transformation.
Leslie, if we want our listeners to learn more about you or CoveyClub, where can they find it?
CoveyClub.com. Covey, just so you know, so people can remember, is a small group of birds.
Okay. Just to be clear, that’s Covey with a V, as in Victor.
Yes. Covey. As some people say to me, “How do I tell my husband I just joined a coven?”
Okay. Stay with us, we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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